Wolf to the Slaughter

by Ruth Rendell

  'Let's go back and see,' said Wexford. The sun and the warmth made their walk across the street too short. 'Makes all the difference to the place, doesn't it?' he said as they passed up the steps and the cold stone walls of the police station enclosed them.

  Drayton sat at one end of the office, Kirkpatrick at the other. They looked like strangers, indifferent, faintly antagonistic, waiting for a train. Kirkpatrick looked up, his mouth twitching.

  'I thought you were never coming,' he said desperately to Wexford. 'If I tell you what I was doing in Stowerton you'll think I'm mad.'

  Better a madman than a murderer, Wexford thought. He drew up a chair. 'Try me.'

  . 'She wouldn't come out with me,' Kirkpatrick mumbled, ‘on account of that damned car. I didn't believe she was going to that party, so,' he said defiantly, 'I went to Stowerton to check up on her. I got there at eight and I waited for hours and hours. She didn't come. God, I just sat there and waited and when she didn't come I knew she'd lied to me. I knew she'd found someone richer, younger, harder - Oh, what the hell!' He gave a painful cough. 'That's all I did,' he said, 'waited.' He lifted his eyes to Burden. 'When you found me yesterday morning at the cottage, I was going to tell her, ask her who she thought she was to cheat on me!'

  Black against the sunlight, Drayton stood staring his contempt. What was he thinking? Wexford wondered. That he with his dark glow of virility, a glow that today was almost insolent, could never be brought so low?

  'It got dark,' Kirkpatrick said, ‘I parked my car by the side of Cawthorne's under a tree. They were making a hell of a racket in there, shouting and playing music. She never came. The only person to come out was a drunk spouting Omar Khayyam. I was there for three hours, oh, more than that

  Wexford moved closer to the desk, folded his hands and rested his wrists on the rosewood. 'Mr Kirkpatrick,' he said gravely, 'this story of yours may be true, but you must realize that to me it sounds a bit thin. Can you produce anyone who might help to verify it?'

  Kirkpatrick said bitterly, 'That's my affair, isn't it? You've done your job. I've never heard of the police hunting up witnesses to disprove their own case.'

  'Then you have a lot to learn. We're not here to make "cases" but to see right is done.’ Wexford paused. Three hours, he thought. That covered the time of arrival at Ruby's house, the time when the neighbour heard the crash, the time when two people staggered from the house. 'You must have seen the party guests arriving. Didn't they see you?'

  'I put the car right down the side turning till it got dark, down by the side of the launderette.' Hs face grew sullen. 'That girl saw me,' he said.

  'What girl?'

  'The girl from Grover's shop.'

  'You saw her at seven when you bought your evening paper,' Wexford said, trying to keep his patience. 'What you were doing at seven isn't relevant.'

  A sulky flush settled on Kirkpatrick's face, ‘I saw her again,' he said, in Stowerton.'

  'You didn't mention it before.' This time impatience had got the upper hand and every word was edged with testiness.

  ‘I'm sick of being made to look a fool,' Kirkpatrick said resentfully, ‘I'm sick of it. If I get out of this I'm going to chuck in my job. Maybe someone's got to flog soap and powder arid lipstick, but not me. I'd rather be out of work.' He clenched his hands, if I get out of this,' he said.

  'The girl,' said Wexford. ‘Where did you see the girl?' .

  ‘I was down the side road by the back of the launderette, just a little way down. She was coming along in a car and she stopped at the traffic lights. I was standing by my car, then. Don't ask me what time it was. I wouldn't know.' He drew his breath in sharply. 'She looked at me and giggled. But she won't remember. I was just a joke to her, a customer who'd kept her late. She saw me standing by that thing and it was good for a laugh. Lipdew! I reckon she thinks about me and has a good laugh every time she washes her ...'

  Drayton's face had gone white and he stepped forward, his fingers closing into fists. Wexford interposed swiftly to cut off the last word, the word that might have been innocent or obscene.

  'In that case,' he said, 'she will remember, won't she?'

  11

  Sunshine is a great healer, especially when it is the first mild sunshine of spring. Paradoxically it cooled Drayton's anger. Crossing the street, he was once more in command of himself and he could think calmly and even derisively of Kirkpatrick. The man was an oaf, a poor thing with a pansy's job, emasculate, pointed at and pilloried by women. He had a pink arid mauve car and he peddled cosmetics. Some day a perfume plutocrat would make him dress up in a harlequin suit with a powder puff on his head, make hin knock on doors and give soap away to any housewife who could produce a coupon and sing out a slogan. He was a puppet and a slave.

  The shop was empty. This must be a time of lull, lunch time. The bell rang loudly because he was slow to close the door. Sunlight made the shop look frowstier than ever. Motes of dust hung and danced in its beams. He stood, listening to the pandemonium his ringing had called forth from upstairs, running feet, something that sounded like the dropping of a saucepan lid, a harsh bass voice calling, 'Get down the shop, Lin, for God's sake.'

  She came in, running, a tea towel in her hand. When she saw him the anxiety went out of her face and she looked petulant. 'You're early,' she said, 'hours early.' Then she smiled and there was something in her eyes he was not sure that he liked, a look of conquest and of complacency. He supposed that she thought him impatient to be with her. Their date was for the evening and he had come at half-past one. That was what they always wanted, to make you weak, malleable in their long frail hands. Then they kicked you aside. Look at Kirkpatrick. 'I can't come out,' she said. ‘I’ve got the shop to see to.'

  'You can come where I'm taking you,' Drayton said harshly. He forgot his rage at Kirkpatrick's words, the passion of last night, the tenderness that had begun. What was she, after all? A shop assistant - and what a shop! -a shop girl afraid, of her father, a skivvy with a tea cloth. 'Police station,' he said.

  Her eyes went very wide. 'You what? Are you trying to be funny or something.'

  He had heard the stories about Grover, the things he sold over the counter - and under it. 'It's nothing to do with your father,' he said.

  'What do they want me for? Is it about the advert?'

  'In a way,' he said.'Look, it's nothing, just routine.'

  'Mark,' she said, 'Mark, you tried to frighten me.' The sun flowed down her body in a river of gold. It's only a physical thing, he thought, just an itch and a rather worse one than usual. Repeat last night often enough and it would go. She came up to him, smiling, a little nervous, ‘I know you don't mean it, but you mustn't frighten me.' The smile teased him. He stood quite still, the sun between them like a sword. He wanted her so badly that it took all his strength and all his self-control to turn and say, 'Let's go. Tell your parents you won't be long.' She was gone in two minutes, leaving behind her a breath of something fresh and sweet to nullify the smell of old worn-out things. He moved about the shop, trying to find things to look at that were not cheap or meretricious or squalid. When she came back he saw that she had neither changed her clothes nor put on make-up. This both pleased and riled him. It seemed to imply an arrogance, a careless disregard of other people's opinion, which matched his own. He did not want them to have things in common. Enough that they should desire each other and find mutual satisfaction at a level he understood.

  'How's your father?' he said and when he said it he realized it was a foolish catch phrase. She laughed at him.

  'Did you mean that or were you fooling?'

  'I meant it.' Damn her for reading thoughts!

  'He's all right,' she said. 'No, he's not. He says he's in agony. You can't tell, can you, with what he's got? It's not as if there was anything to show.'

  'Seems to me he's a slave driver,' he said.

  'They're all slave drivers. Better your own dad than some man.' At the door she basked in the sun, stretching h
er body like a long golden animal. 'When they talk to me,' she said, 'you'll be there, won't you?'

  'Sure I'll be there.' He closed the door behind them. 'Don't do that,' he said, 'or I'll want to do what I did last night.' You could want it like mad, he thought, and still laugh. You could with this girl. My God, he thought, my God!

  There was, Wexford thought, something between those two. No doubt Drayton had been chatting her up on the way. Only that would account for the look she had given him before sitting down, a look that seemed to be asking for permission. Well, he had always supposed Drayton susceptible and the girl was pretty enough. He had seen her about since she was a child but it seemed to him that he had never before noticed the exquisite shape of her head, the peculiar virginal grace with which she moved.

  'Now, Miss Grover,' he said, 'I just want you to answer a few routine questions.' She smiled faintly at him. They ought not to be allowed to look like that, he thought wryly, so demure, so perfect and so untouched. 'I believe you know a Mr Kirkpatrick? He's a customer of yours.'

  'Is he?' Drayton was standing behind her chair and she looked up at him, perhaps for reassurance. Wexford felt mildly irritated. Who the hell did Drayton think he was? Her solicitor?

  'If you don't recognize the name, perhaps you know his car. You probably saw it outside just now.'

  'A funny pink car with flowers on it?' Wexford nodded. 'Oh, I know him.’

  'Very well. Now I want you to cast your mind back to last Tuesday night. Did you go to Stowerton that evening?'

  'Yes, she said quickly, 'I always do on Tuesdays. I take our washing to the launderette in my dad's car.' She paused, weariness coming into her young fresh face. 'My dad's ill and Mum goes to a whist drive most nights.'

  Why play on my sympathies? Wexford thought. The hint of tyranny seemed to be affecting Drayton. His dark face looked displeased and his mouth had tightened. 'All right, Drayton,' he said, not unpleasantly, ‘I shan't need you any longer.'

  When they were alone, she said before he had time to ask her, 'Did Mr What's-his-name see me? I saw him.' 'Are you sure?'

  'Oh, yes. I know him. I'd served him with an evening paper earlier.'

  ‘It wasn't just the car you identified, Miss Grover, not just an empty car?'

  She put up one hand to smooth the soft shiny knob of hair, ‘I didn't know the car. He used to have a different one.' She gave a nervous giggle. 'When I saw him in it and knew it was his it made me laugh. He thinks such a lot of himself, you see, and then that car ...'

  Wexford watched her. She was far from being at ease. On her answer to his next question, the significant question, so much depended. Kirkpatrick's fate hung upon it. If he had lied.

  'What time was it?' he asked.

  'Late,' she said firmly. Her lips were like two almond petals, her teeth perfect. It seemed a pity she showed them so seldom, ‘I'd been to the launderette. I was going home. It must have been just after a quarter-past nine.' He sighed within himself. Whoever had been at Ruby's had certainly been there at nine-fifteen, ‘I'd stopped at the traffic lights,' she said virtuously. God, he thought, she's like a child, she doesn't differentiate between me and a traffic cop. Did she expect him to congratulate her? 'He'd parked that car down by the side of the garage ...'

  'Cawthorne's?'

  She nodded eagerly, ‘I saw him in it. I know it was him.' 'Sure of the time?'

  He had noticed she wore no watch on the slender wrist, ‘I'd just come from the launderette. I'd seen the clock.' There was nothing more he could do. Perhaps it was all true. They had no body, no real evidence against Kirkpatrick after this. A fatherly impulse made him smile at her and say, 'All right, Miss Grover, you can run along now. Mr Kirkpatrick ought to be grateful to you.'

  For a moment he thought the shot had gone home, then he wasn't sure. The look in her big grey eyes was hard to interpret. He thought it might be a relieved happiness, no doubt because he was terminating the interview. Her departure seemed to deprive the office of some of its brightness, although the sun still shone. Her scent remained, a perfume that was too old for her innocence.

  'That girl was got at,' Burden said wrathfully.

  'You could be right there.'

  'We should never have let Kirkpatrick out of here yesterday afternoon.'

  Wexford sighed. 'What had we got to hold him on, Mike? Oh, I agree he probably thought up that alibi between yesterday afternoon and this morning. I daresay he went straight round to Grover's when he left here. That girt wasn't at ease.'

  'Show me a Grover who wouldn't do anything for money,' Burden said. 'Like father, like daughter.'

  'Poor kid. Not much of a life for her, is it? Cooped up all day in that dirty little hole and carting the washing about in the evenings because her mother's playing whist.'

  Burden eyed him uneasily. The expression on his chief's face was tolerant, almost tender, and it puzzled him. If he had not known Wexford to be almost as uxorious a husband as himself, he might have believed... But, no, there were limits.

  'If he was outside Cawthorne's, sir,' he said, 'and if he was there at half-past nine, he's clear and we're wasting our time with him. But if the girl's lying and he did it, he could have disposed of Anita's body practically anywhere between here and the Scottish border. She could be lying in a ditch anywhere you can name in half a dozen counties.'

  'And where the body is the weapon is, too.'

  'Or he could have gone home to a place he knew and dumped her in the thickest part of those pine woods in Cheriton Forest.'

  'But until we know more, Mike, searching for that body is impracticable, sheer waste of time.'

  ‘I wouldn't mind having a go at Kirkpatrick over it,' Burden said with sudden ferocity. 'Having a go at him in his wife's presence.'

  'No. We'll give him a rest for a while. The king-size question is, did he bribe that girl?' Wexford grinned sagely. 'I'm hoping she may feel inclined to confide in Drayton.'

  'Drayton?

  'Attractive to the opposite sex, don't you think? That sulky brooding look gets them every time.' Wexford's little glinting eyes were suddenly unkind. 'Unless you fancy yourself in the role? Sorry, I forgot. Your wife wouldn't like it. Martin and I aren't exactly cut out to strut before a wanton ambling nymph ...'

  'I'd better have a word with him» then.'

  'Not necessary. Unless I'm much mistaken, this is something we can safely leave to Nature.'

  12

  The lighter had been lying on the desk in the sun and when Wexford picked it up it felt warm to his hand. The tendrils and leaves of its vine design glowed softly. 'Griswold's been getting at me,' he said. At the mention of the Chief Constable's name Burden looked sour. 'According to him, this is not to be allowed to develop into a murder enquiry. Evidence inconclusive and so on. We can have a couple more days to scout around and that's our lot.'

  Burden said bitterly, 'The whole place turned upside-down just to get Monkey Matthews another few months inside?'

  'The stain on the carpet was from the fruit of Ruby's imagination, Anita Margolis is on holiday, the couple who staggered down the path were drunk and Kirkpatrick is simply afraid of his wife.' Wexford paused, tossing the lighter up and down reflectively. 'I quote the powers that be,' he said.

  'Martin's watching Kirkpatrick's house,' said Burden. 'He hasn't been to work today. Drayton's still presumably hanging around that girl. Do I call them off, sir?'

  'What else is there for them to do? Things are slack enough otherwise. As for the other questions I'd like answered, Griswold isn't interested and I can't see our finding the answer to them in two days, anyway.'

  Silently Burden put out his hand for the lighter and contemplated it, his narrow lips pursed. Then he said, 'I'm wondering if they're the same questions that are uppermost in my mind. Who gave her the lighter and was it sold around here? Who was the drunk outside Cawthorne's, the man who spoke to Kirkpatrick?'

  Wexford opened his desk drawer and took out his Weekend Telegraph. 'Remember this bi
t?' he asked. 'About her breaking off her engagement to Richard Fairfax? ‘I’ll bet it was him. Mrs Cawthorne said he left the party around eleven and Cawthorne said he dumped a brandy glass on one of his diesel pumps.'

  'Sounds like a poet,' Burden said gloomily.

  'Now, then, remember what I said about Goering.' Wexford grinned at the inspector's discomfiture. 'According to Kirkpatrick he was spouting Omar Khayyam. I used to be hot on old Khayyam myself. I wonder what he said?

  "‘I often wonder what the vintners buy.