Bitter Herbs Read online

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  Willow began to seethe. She drank her soup in silence. Tom said nothing either until their empty plates were exchanged for the next course.

  ‘I can’t think why you insisted on coming to a game restaurant and then ordering crab soup and sole Colbert,’ he said when they were alone again.

  It sounded like deliberate provocation, which made Willow think that he must also want to move on from silent dissatisfaction into some kind of open conflict. She stopped even trying to conceal her irritation.

  ‘I don’t remember insisting,’ she said just as snappishly as he had spoken. ‘You asked if I’d choose a restaurant and I’d read a review of this place, which made it sound enticing. I’m not hungry enough for game tonight. But I think the place is good, don’t you?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Tom, picking up his knife and fork to attack the grouse on his plate. He ate about half, crunched painfully on a piece of shot, cursed, and then gave up.

  Willow paid no attention to him as she concentrated on her sole and the interesting idea it was suggesting to her. Having been surprised at the quantity of butter involved in the dish, she wondered whether it was possible that Marilyn had simply been feeding her aunt cholesterol-inducing food in an attempt to precipitate the expected heart attack. That might not constitute deliberate murder, but it could have explained the young woman’s apparently guilty defence of herself.

  Willow was distracted from her easy thoughts of death only when Tom leaned across the table to refill her wine glass. She saw the tidily positioned knife and fork on his half-full plate.

  ‘Aren’t you hungry either?’

  ‘Not particularly. Will, I’m sorry. I …’

  At last, she thought, as she waited for the announcement of his impending departure from her life.

  ‘I’m a pretty poor companion tonight. When you’ve finished, I’d better take you home and get out of your hair.’

  ‘Tom, is there someone else?’ she asked abruptly.

  He stared at her in such obvious dismay that she began to wonder if she had completely misread his moods and rudeness.

  ‘Why? Is there for you?’ he asked, sounding troubled and much less angry.

  Willow shook her head, saying: ‘Certainly not. Are you working again tonight?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘I wondered if you’d like to come back to the flat and have coffee or a drink. We could talk undisturbed there. Mrs R. went ages ago and there’d be no one to overhear us.’

  ‘Even though I’ve been so bloody bad-tempered?’ said Tom, laying one strong hand, palm upwards, on the white tablecloth. He looked like himself again for a moment.

  ‘Even so,’ said Willow, still puzzled. She put her hand over his for a second.

  Tom sighed and drained his wine glass. Willow finished as much of her deep-fried sole and parsley butter as she could manage and signalled for her bill.

  ‘It’s my turn,’ she said firmly before Tom could do more than open his mouth, let alone his wallet. After some of the things he had said to her, she was not prepared to let him pay for her food.

  They walked quickly back to her flat, huddling into their coats as the cold bit into their cheeks and gripped their feet. When she had unlocked the street door, she shuddered and started to hurry upstairs.

  ‘Come on, Tom, the only hope of getting warm again is to get to the fire fast.’

  He laughed for the first time that evening and easily overtook her on the stairs.

  ‘Here,’ she said from several steps below him. He turned back and she threw him her keys. He caught them easily and stood, looking first at them and then at her with a deliberation she could not understand. After a moment he shrugged, unlocked the door for her and handed back her keys.

  She let him hug her as soon as they had got rid of their coats, even though she felt that there was still a great emotional distance between them. After a moment he started to stroke her short red hair and eventually he tipped her head back and kissed her.

  ‘Was I awful?’

  ‘Utterly frightful,’ she said, wishing that she could understand him and wishing even more urgently that he would either leave her or get back to normal. ‘Go and make the coffee as a penance.’

  ‘Okay ma’am.’

  Willow left him to it and went into the drawing room to switch on all the lamps and remove the fireguard. With the light of the fire flickering on the pale walls and pointing up the warm colours of the cushions and flowers and books, the room looked quite as appealing as any of Gloria Grainger’s and even friendlier in its emptiness.

  Tom filled it up a few minutes later as he returned with a pot of coffee and two cups.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Willow as he handed her one. ‘Now tell me about it.’

  ‘Oh, it’s just a pig of a case.’

  ‘I didn’t mean the case, Tom. Tell me, please, what it is that’s eating you.’

  He frowned.

  ‘Only the case,’ he said, apparently lying. He started to talk very fast, piling short, staccato sentences on top of each other. ‘Young, married woman messily bludgeoned to death at home. No evidence of a break-in. Husband, apparently grief stricken, begs us to find the killer.’ Tom gave a short, humourless laugh.

  ‘He even appeared on television to appeal for witnesses. Did you see him on the local news last night?’

  ‘No, I hardly ever watch it,’ said Willow. ‘It always seemed to be about murders on the tube and so I gave up.’ Tom shrugged and started to talk at a more normal speed.

  ‘Despite the television tears, he can’t quite hide a kind of sickening cockiness that we’ve all seen before. We all know he killed her, but even though he’s got no alibi we can’t prove he was in the house at the time of the murder. He must have washed and got rid of his bloody clothes before he called us; there wasn’t any evidence on him. We’ve had forensics in the drains and, sure enough, they’ve found traces of her blood – but that only tells us someone washed, not who. There are no fingerprints that can’t be explained by ordinary domestic contact except for enough gloved smudges for a defence lawyer to use to suggest there was an intruder.’

  ‘Tricky.’ Willow’s voice was cold. She could see that the case might be troubling anyone involved, but it did not sound much worse than any of the others Tom had seen.

  ‘If we don’t get any evidence that he was in the house at the time – or a confession – then he’s free to go and do it again. I know that he did it, but if he keeps his nerve and doesn’t confess, it doesn’t look as though there’s anything we can do. I hate bloody domestics!’

  ‘Aren’t most murders?’

  ‘What, domestic? Yes. But familiarity doesn’t breed either contempt or acceptance, just loathing. You wonder how the poor women managed to live with men with that much violence in them and not realise their danger; and then you look at the inadequate sod of a husband and you can’t imagine anyone being afraid of him, because he seems so pathetic until you catch that half-suppressed self-satisfaction. He doesn’t look sinister, just pathetic and tearful until you see that private smile. You wonder why they ever married – either of them – what they thought they’d get from it and what torment they put each other through before one of them took the ultimate sanction against the other.’

  Ah, thought Willow, perhaps that’s it.

  ‘Child abuse is even worse,’ Tom said so quickly that she thought he must have seen something in her face and was talking to stop her putting it into words. ‘Because at least a spouse has some choice in the person he or she ends up with – and the possibility of getting away. It makes you despair sometimes.’

  ‘More than when you’re faced with serial killers?’ asked Willow, knowing that she was helping Tom run away from the things they needed to sort out but suddenly afraid of what she might uncover if she forced him to talk.

  ‘They’re so rare, Will, in this country, whereas domestics are hideously common to any AMIP,’ he said holding out
a hand. He seemed to be showing gratitude for having been given an excuse to digress, which only added to her confusion.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk in initials,’ she said, noticing how pettish she was sounding and hating it.

  ‘I thought you knew it means Area Major Investigation Pool,’ he said. He frowned and looked at her carefully. ‘You’ve never been afraid of me, have you, Will?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ she said, wondering what was coming next. ‘Although I was a trifle daunted by your determination to arrest me for the murder of Algy Endlesham.’

  ‘I never planned to do that.’ Tom’s eyes glinted and she was relieved to see something of his old character back again. ‘The only thing I was anxious to do with you was break down your idiotic pretence of being a dowdy, prematurely middle-aged, back-room civil servant.’

  ‘The only thing?’ Willow considered the passion that had exploded between them when he had been sent to investigate a murder at the department where she worked. It seemed a great pity that it should have been lost.

  ‘It’s true that there was one other thing then.’ Tom paused and then added so quietly that she hardly heard him: ‘Just as there is now.’

  ‘Is there?’ she asked quietly. ‘Still?’

  He nodded. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ she admitted.

  Willow thought that while they could be honest with each other about sex they might still have a chance.

  ‘Well, thank God for that at least,’ said Tom. ‘Shall we go to bed?’

  Over the months since they had first become lovers, their lovemaking had gradually fallen into a pleasant routine, but that night it was different. There was more desperation in Tom and yet Willow found herself resistant.

  The cold emptiness of the mill seemed to beckon, but she could not yield to its paradoxical welcome without running away from him with their differences unresolved and unexplained. She was not prepared to do it, even though she had stopped short of the ultimate confrontation that evening.

  With her mind clear on one thing at least, Willow eventually slept, only to wake soon after nine to see Tom dressing.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. He turned at once.

  ‘I didn’t mean to wake you. You look tired.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said, pushing her red hair back from her face and rubbing her smarting eyes. ‘You’re not working today, are you?’

  ‘I thought I’d go back to the nick and see how they’re progressing with the interviews. We’ve held off arresting the husband while we scrape around for evidence, because we’ll only be able to hold him for thirty-six hours without charging him, but it’ll have to come. I need to see how the DIs are getting on.’

  ‘Mightn’t they get on better if they didn’t feel overlooked by the DCI?’ said Willow, using the initials she knew made him feel at home. He managed a quick smile.

  ‘Possibly, but it’s my first murder since I was transferred to Five Area and I must crack it. If I go over the little toerag’s various statements again I may hit on something we can use to force him into telling the truth.’

  Willow pushed herself up into a sitting position and contemplated Tom’s tight, unhappy face. In normal circumstances he never used the crude argot of his colleagues.

  ‘You once said,’ she said, smiling at him and aware that she must look awful with the remains of the previous day’s eye makeup all over her face, ‘that you could make anyone confess. I think you told me that you hated that, but isn’t it a talent you need now?’

  He stood with his sweater in his hands.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, elbowing it over his head. ‘But it hasn’t worked so far. I need some kind of lever – mental lever – and I haven’t found it yet. But I may. Is it unfair to leave you alone on a Sunday?’

  She shook her head, suppressing her instant relief at the prospect of a whole day to herself, without even Mrs Rusham’s smooth, self-effacing presence. ‘Not at all. I’ve got to go and see someone this morning anyway.’ Still thinking that it might be possible to get back to what they had once had, she added: ‘D’you want to come back for supper? Since there’s no Mrs Rusham, it’ll only be scrambled eggs.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ he said, walking towards the bed. He bent down to kiss her, smelling reproachfully of toothpaste. Willow bent her head so that his lips met her forehead. He stepped back and added more coldly: ‘See you later then.’

  ‘Good luck, Tom.’

  He raised a hand and left. Willow got out of bed and scrubbed her teeth hard before doing anything else. Then since she had plenty of time before her meeting with Posy Hacket, she made herself a pot of coffee and, collecting newspapers from the hall, took them back to bed.

  She drove herself to Islington in twenty minutes and had to spend another fifteen reading her notes of the meeting in Kew until half-past eleven. Tucking the bulging leather notebook into her shoulder bag, she got out into the cold and locked the car.

  Posy Hacket’s flat seemed to occupy the top floor of a tall, stuccoed house that looked as though it needed some serious repairs. There was no sound from the intercom after Willow pressed the relevant bell, and she was about to ring it again when she heard the sound of someone coming downstairs. A moment later she found herself face to face with a woman whose appearance fitted the sharply critical things she wrote far better than the coy, little-girl name of Posy.

  She must have been at least three inches shorter than Willow, but her slim figure and tight black jeans and polo-necked sweater made her seem taller than she actually was. Looking at her intense, unmade-up face and the seventy of her grey-streaked, dark ponytail, Willow wondered why on earth she still called herself Posy instead of Rosemary or whatever else her real name might be.

  ‘Come on up,’ she said, unsmiling. ‘It’s a bloody awful day, isn’t it?’

  ‘Horrible,’ said Willow, thinking that the ‘bloody’was the first sign of human warmth.

  Posy led the way upstairs to her flat, which was as much of a surprise as her appearance had been. The room into which she ushered her guest was immense. Light poured into it from windows on both sides. It was furnished with a mixture of the tatty and the sleekly modern and made Willow more interested than ever in the character of its owner.

  It looked like the room of a single woman, but Willow, who had for years maliciously enjoyed watching other people misreading her because of her appearance, did her best not to jump to any conclusions. All the same, she could not help looking around the room for genuine clues to Posy’s identity.

  A long desk, supporting word processor, fax machine and photocopier, appeared to consist of an old door slung across two short filing cabinets. Another, larger, cabinet stood to one side with an overflowing wastepaper basket in front of it. A shelf ran along one wall, carrying an eclectic mixture of old hats, each one skewered to a polystyrene wig stand with an antique hatpin. Old textiles hung on the walls between modern paintings and there was a single, very odd, modern carpet at the living end of the room, which was warmed by a Scandinavian cast-iron stove.

  There were two beautifully simple, supple, leather chairs opposite a big Edwardian sofa that was piled with cushions and woven throws of assorted primary colours.

  ‘Sit down and I’ll get some tea,’ said Posy abruptly. ‘Tea all right for you? Or a herbal or coffee?’

  ‘Tea would be wonderful. I’ve drunk too much coffee already this morning.’ Willow smiled. ‘It’s good of you to offer. I spent most of yesterday afternoon in Gloria Grainger’s icy house pining for a cup of tea.’

  ‘What did you think of it?’ asked Posy, standing in the doorway and looking over her shoulder at Willow.

  ‘Enviable.’

  The journalist laughed, suddenly looking not only much more human but also more attractive, and disappeared.

  She was back a little later with an immense brown teapot on a tray with a pair of hand-thrown mugs, two silver teaspoons, an open carton of milk and a glass sugar bowl. Having poured t
he tea, she said:

  ‘Okay, so what do you want to know?’

  ‘Anything you can tell me about Grainger; if it could be favourable, so much the better.’

  Posy grimaced.

  ‘You’ve come to the wrong person. I thought she was poison: pernicious, vengeful, gross … And that’s based merely on her work and on her suing me. I never had anything to do with her before the interview, thank God, but what I’ve heard from other people makes my loathing seem quite mild.’

  ‘That’s rather my difficulty,’ said Willow. ‘I’ve got to write something complimentary, but it’s looking increasingly difficult as I talk to people who were involved with her. They all seem to have disliked her, which seems unfair even though I do accept that she was a bit of a bully and surrounded herself with victims.’

  ‘The last point may not have been entirely her fault,’ said Posy reluctantly. ‘Victims have a way of finding people to bully them.’

  Willow was silent as she thought through that remarkably depressing idea. After a while she said:

  ‘Can you think of anything else to explain or excuse her?’

  The journalist shook her head. ‘No. All I can think of is my rage at what she’s been writing all these years and about what the case was going to do to me.’

  ‘The libel case, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’ Posy looked up and Willow saw such anger in her eyes that she wondered about the journalist’s motives for criticising Gloria Grainger’s books so bitterly.

  ‘I’ve spent months in hell. My legal bills are already vast. A lot of the editors who commissioned stuff from me before are wary now and so my income has been cut just when I need it most, but I will never withdraw what I wrote about her. Never.’

  ‘It sounds as though it’s been vile,’ said Willow frankly. ‘Do you regret your article?’

  Posy shook her head, her face set and angry. ‘What I wrote was absolutely justified and it needed saying.’

  ‘Even though Gloria Grainger’s books are so unfashionable nowadays?’

  ‘Absolutely. They may be unpopular with reviewers but they’re still borrowed in vast numbers from the public libraries.’