features of a stranger. I was so busy looking at her that I missed the first few words.
ââ¦near Barnes bridge early yesterday morning. She was named by police today as Carolyn Hamilton, a 23-year-old dancer who had studied at the Royal Ballet School and performed with the City Ballet and the modern company Left Feet First. She lived in North London. Police do not suspect foul play.â
I sat for a while watching the weather man count the clouds on his sweater. I thought about the colour of the water in the park where Amy and I had thrown the bread. And the cold. And doctors. Iâve always had this recurring thought about doctorsâhow they must feel when they lose a patient, and how youâd have to be a truly arrogant bastard to believe that it really wasnât your fault. Itâs probably good I didnât go into medicine. From the mantelpiece where I had stuck the pictures, a dead girl grinned out at me, all past and no future. I felt like talking to someone whoâd known her. But Miss Patrick wasnât answering the phone. Some cases just never get off the ground.
CHAPTER FOUR
E ventually the client gets in touch. If only to tie up loose ends. I could see how she wouldnât much want to talk to me, so it was nice of her to let me off the hook.
ââ¦understand there was nothing you could have done.â
She was probably right. The river police had been called out on Monday morning just after 10.00 a.m. when a man walking his dog had seen something caught up in the weeds. That meant, at the very earliest, that Carolyn Hamilton must have entered the river some time on Sunday night. Even Charlie Chan would have been hard pushed to follow a trail from Cherubim to the river in two days. But honourable failure didnât make me feel any better. Sunday night. I kept putting pictures to the words: a split screen with me scouring grease from the kitchen sink while she floated with the current downstream. Maybe I should have spent Sunday at her place instead of Kateâs. Who knows, she might have gone home to pick up her ballet pumps, just to end it gracefully. Either way she must have been carrying some sort of ID for them to track her down so quickly. And the reason Miss Patrick hadnât been answering the phone was because by then she had been in a hotel room in London, recovering from a short car ride to the morgue.
I offered her my condolences. It sounded tawdry even though I meant it. I didnât mention the word âsuicideâ and she didnât offer it. She said nothing to explain the death; no talk of motive or even where her surrogate daughter might have been for the last seven months. For all she knew I might even have found out. Though with precious little help from her. Still, this was not the time to bitch about the things I hadnât been told. If it hadnât been for the fact that I owed her, I would have left any talk of money until another day, but I didnât want her to think of me slyly rejoicing in three hundred pounds unearned. As it was she didnât seem to care.
âAs far as Iâm concerned itâs irrelevant, Miss Wolfe. I employed you for the week and we had a business arrangement. I insist you keep the money. You were doing a job. Neither of us were to know you would be too late.â
For a woman who had just lost the thing she loved most in the world she was handling it very well. I could see her, sitting by the telephone, her backbone straight as a die, allowing no curves or hollows for the sorrow to dwell in. If it was a veneer I wasnât going to be the one to crack it. In certain respects private detectives are just like policemen, theyâre supposed to be tough, but in fact theyâre just frightened of emotion. Itâs a form of inadequacy really, though there is method in it. After all, when you get down to it, itâs just a job. Employed by someone you didnât know to find someone youâd
ââ¦near Barnes bridge early yesterday morning. She was named by police today as Carolyn Hamilton, a 23-year-old dancer who had studied at the Royal Ballet School and performed with the City Ballet and the modern company Left Feet First. She lived in North London. Police do not suspect foul play.â
I sat for a while watching the weather man count the clouds on his sweater. I thought about the colour of the water in the park where Amy and I had thrown the bread. And the cold. And doctors. Iâve always had this recurring thought about doctorsâhow they must feel when they lose a patient, and how youâd have to be a truly arrogant bastard to believe that it really wasnât your fault. Itâs probably good I didnât go into medicine. From the mantelpiece where I had stuck the pictures, a dead girl grinned out at me, all past and no future. I felt like talking to someone whoâd known her. But Miss Patrick wasnât answering the phone. Some cases just never get off the ground.
CHAPTER FOUR
E ventually the client gets in touch. If only to tie up loose ends. I could see how she wouldnât much want to talk to me, so it was nice of her to let me off the hook.
ââ¦understand there was nothing you could have done.â
She was probably right. The river police had been called out on Monday morning just after 10.00 a.m. when a man walking his dog had seen something caught up in the weeds. That meant, at the very earliest, that Carolyn Hamilton must have entered the river some time on Sunday night. Even Charlie Chan would have been hard pushed to follow a trail from Cherubim to the river in two days. But honourable failure didnât make me feel any better. Sunday night. I kept putting pictures to the words: a split screen with me scouring grease from the kitchen sink while she floated with the current downstream. Maybe I should have spent Sunday at her place instead of Kateâs. Who knows, she might have gone home to pick up her ballet pumps, just to end it gracefully. Either way she must have been carrying some sort of ID for them to track her down so quickly. And the reason Miss Patrick hadnât been answering the phone was because by then she had been in a hotel room in London, recovering from a short car ride to the morgue.
I offered her my condolences. It sounded tawdry even though I meant it. I didnât mention the word âsuicideâ and she didnât offer it. She said nothing to explain the death; no talk of motive or even where her surrogate daughter might have been for the last seven months. For all she knew I might even have found out. Though with precious little help from her. Still, this was not the time to bitch about the things I hadnât been told. If it hadnât been for the fact that I owed her, I would have left any talk of money until another day, but I didnât want her to think of me slyly rejoicing in three hundred pounds unearned. As it was she didnât seem to care.
âAs far as Iâm concerned itâs irrelevant, Miss Wolfe. I employed you for the week and we had a business arrangement. I insist you keep the money. You were doing a job. Neither of us were to know you would be too late.â
For a woman who had just lost the thing she loved most in the world she was handling it very well. I could see her, sitting by the telephone, her backbone straight as a die, allowing no curves or hollows for the sorrow to dwell in. If it was a veneer I wasnât going to be the one to crack it. In certain respects private detectives are just like policemen, theyâre supposed to be tough, but in fact theyâre just frightened of emotion. Itâs a form of inadequacy really, though there is method in it. After all, when you get down to it, itâs just a job. Employed by someone you didnât know to find someone youâd
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