Марк Миллс – The Whaleboat House (страница 9)
‘You make any headway on the dead girl?’ he asked.
‘Name’s Lillian Wallace.’ From Abel’s expression, it rang no bells with him. ‘Her father’s some Wall Street whiz. I spoke to him earlier, broke the news. The family’s driving up tonight. There’s a formal identification of the body set for noon tomorrow.’
He didn’t tell Abel that he planned to be at the morgue a good hour earlier to scrutinize the results of Dr Hobbs’ autopsy before the body was released to the custody of the family.
‘Speaking of corpses,’ said Abel, reaching for his pack of cigarettes. ‘Any news from Lydia?’
‘She called a couple of nights back.’
‘Collect?’
Abel had never liked Hollis’ wife, a fact he had half-heartedly attempted to disguise while she’d been around. Now that she was gone, he felt no such compunction.
‘Still with that stoop-shouldered fucker, is she?’
‘Seems so.’
‘What did she want?’
‘A divorce.’
Abel looked at Hollis long and hard, weighing the news. ‘What did you say?’
‘What
‘Knowing you – “Come back, dear, all is forgiven.”’
‘I said yes.’
‘You didn’t?’
Hollis nodded.
‘I’m trying not to smile.’
‘I can see that.’
‘Good on you, Tom,’ beamed Abel, raising his glass in a salute. ‘To the stoop-shouldered fucker. May he soon come to know that your loss is not his gain.’
The gentleman in question was a New Jersey artist of Scottish extraction, a competent watercolorist who had summered in East Hampton the previous year at a boarding house on Accabonac Road. Hollis had no idea how Lydia had come to meet Joe McBride. He didn’t wish to know. It pained him to think of the numerous liaisons the pair had doubtless contrived behind his back; and it still puzzled him that he hadn’t read the signs, the clues, he of all people. Hindsight offered no illumination. Even casting his mind back to that time, he could recall nothing out of the ordinary. Had she taken special care over her appearance? Had she been more remote or badtempered with him than usual? Had she shown any undue aversion to sex? Probably, but nothing he could remember. It had simply happened, without his awareness, almost in his very presence.
This was the saddest indictment of their relationship, the unspoken pact of mutual indifference they had allowed themselves to sign up to. He had been immune to her, even as her heart soared. Could he really blame her for leaving?
One small part of himself clung to the notion that ultimate responsibility lay with Lydia, that things would have been different if she had only supported him in his hour of need, rather than chiding him for destroying his career, and their lives with it, on a matter of principle.
In his heart, however, he knew it was he who had betrayed their childhood dream, hatched in the gloomy passageways of the four-flight walk-up tenement where their families lived, vowing to each other that life would be better for them – no bedbugs, no roaches, no shared hall toilet stinking of CN disinfectant, no El trains hammering past outside, drowning out their whispers, the flat, dead eyes of the passengers staring in on their wretched lives. And so it had proved, their first halting steps on the ladder of selfbetterment against the downdraft of the Depression years, ever upwards, until he had lost his footing, dragging her with him into the void.
At the age of twenty-nine, way before his time, Hollis had already faced the grinning demon all men must confront in their lives, the one who mocks you with the certain knowledge that you’ve climbed as high as you’re ever going to, that you’ve scaled the peak, that from here the only way is down.
They were doomed even before they moved out to Long Island, he knew that now. Life in East Hampton – the village, its people, the cloying parochialism – became just another rod to beat him with. Lydia waxed sentimental about the city they had been forced to leave behind them, the same city she had spent the past twenty years of her life lambasting. She dreamed of Manhattan stores she had never shown any inclination to visit when they lived there: Macy’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bonwit Teller. She subscribed to the
Hollis had always tried to keep a wall between his work and his home life, to spare Lydia the daily round of depravity he witnessed as a detective. Since moving to East Hampton, he had maintained this wall, though for different reasons – to shield her from the banality of his work, to deny her the tools of further castigation.
As for himself, he had simply become inured to the desperate drudgery. He no longer bothered to return the smiles and waves while out on patrol. When called on to deal with some minor misdemeanor – the theft of a few hay bales or a family feud come to blows – he struggled to muster any concern, professional or otherwise, for the victims. The daily crowings and criticisms from Chief Milligan washed over him where once they had made his blood boil with impotent anger. He became an observer of a world he no longer inhabited although he moved through it: a muted world, clouded, like squinting at a painting.
That had all changed as of today when he saw the earring backstud lying in the sand beside the head of Lillian Wallace. A moment of clarity, a detail, the world unexpectedly thrown into sharp relief.
‘Have you heard of a fellow called Labarde?’ he asked. ‘Conrad Labarde. He’s a fisherman, in Amagansett.’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘He was the one pulled the girl from the sea.’
‘Sure, I know him, to nod at. We crossed in high school. He got yanked out like most of the fishing kids. We didn’t mix much, the East Hampton boys and the ’Gansetters, you know – a rivalry thing. I remember him, though.’
‘Carries a limp.’
‘A limp?’
‘Left leg.’
Abel shrugged. ‘Not back then. Hell of a ball player, if I remember right. Could be he picked it up in the war.’
‘He’s a veteran?’
‘Not all of us managed to dodge the draft,’ said Abel with a wry smile. He knew this was unfair, that Hollis’ job as a detective had excluded him from military call-up.
‘We all passed through Camp Upton about the same time. I don’t know where he ended up. Come to think of it, maybe he never saw action. He didn’t show at the Memorial Day parade, this year or last.’ Abel stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Why all the questions?’
‘No reason,’ said Hollis.
In truth, the tall Basque with the unsettling gaze had been preying on his mind all day. In the first place, he had also picked up on the woman’s earrings – that was impressive – and then when Hollis feigned uncertainty of their significance he had simply smiled enigmatically, seeing through the front.
How had the fellow got his measure so quickly? And his parting words, the studied weight of the delivery – ‘See you around, Deputy.’ They had never met before, why should they ever see each other again? If it was a message, it was one that Hollis had yet to fathom.
‘When you’re ready,’ said Abel.
‘What’s that?’
‘Come on, Tom, something’s up. I can see you thinking; shit, I can almost hear it.’
Hollis didn’t reply.
‘All I’m saying is … in your own time, if you want to talk about it.’
At that moment Lucy appeared from the house, hurrying towards the table, the oven gloves barely a match for the heat from the glass dish she was carrying. Dropping the dish on the table, she shook out her scalded fingers.
Hollis and Abel stared: patches of ocher-brown paste showing through a husk of dirty white, like snow on a muddy paddock during the spring thaw.
‘Lou, what in God’s name …?’ muttered Abel.
‘Sweet potato and marshmallow surprise,’ she replied proudly.
Six
Conrad found himself counting his steps as he walked – ten paces to every breaking wave, the spume washing around his bare feet. He resisted the urge to hurry ahead, the darkness not descended yet, measured strides over the tide-packed sand at the water’s edge. One-to-ten, one-to-ten. The mental metronome of a route march, memories of the ragged hills east of Cassino invading his thoughts, the sound of the collapsing waves not unlike the hollow report of distant artillery fire, unseen shells reshaping the Italian landscape.
Looking up, he saw a couple coming towards him, arms linked, bodies pressed close, stepping out at twilight. He thought of turning away, veering off towards the dunes to allow them a clear passage along the shore, not wanting to intrude on their moment. But they had seen him now, and a sense of propriety drove them apart.
They approached through the blue-black light, eyes downcast like guilty children.
‘Good evening,’ said the man stiffly as they passed.
A thought occurred to Conrad, and he stopped in his tracks. ‘Excuse me.’
The couple hesitated, turning.
‘Do you walk here every evening?’ asked Conrad.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I was just wondering if you walked here most evenings.’