by Ruth Rendell
‘When I was a young DC in Brighton about a hundred years ago we used to come across them. Brothels, I mean. I suppose if I got someone to find “brothels” on the Internet I’d just get quantities of porn.’
‘That’s an understatement,’ said Burden. ‘Come to me instead. What is it you want to know?’
Wexford told him about Vladlena and the sale she had proposed to make. ‘Where would she go? Who would she have asked? There’s a perfectly respectable-looking massage parlour in Kilburn High Road near the Tricycle Theatre – sorry, you don’t know where that is – but it did occur to me she might have tried there. I shall have to find how long it’s been there, and you know how these outfits come and go. The girl in the vault has been dead at least two years.’
‘You know, Reg,’ Burden said, passing the nuts it was no longer necessary to avoid, ‘as you’ve rightly just pointed out to me, I don’t know London well, but I’ve enough knowledge of the way these things work to say that this girl is most likely to have tried Soho. If those places don’t outright advertise prostitutes everyone knows prostitution is what they offer.’
‘You mean she’d just call at some lap-dancing club or place where there are strippers.’
‘She might if she was desperate enough to get what was to her a large sum of money,’ said Burden.
But it was more than two years ago, Wexford reminded himself. Had she complied and been killed because of what she had done and what she might tell? It seemed a possibility.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
IT WAS MONDAY morning and Wexford and Lucy Blanch were on their way to see Mildred Jones. Neither of them looked forward to the visit. The day began badly with Martin Rokeby emerging from his front door and shouting at Lucy not to park the car in front of his house. She moved it a few feet, explaining that they had calls to make in the neighbourhood and there was nowhere else to put it. Rokeby began on a long peevish complaint, the gist of which was that the police had been investigating this case for months and still had got nowhere.
They walked round the corner and into Orcadia Mews. Wexford was glad to be back in London for no better reason than that his stay in Kingsmarkham had been horrible. Returning from his evening out with Burden, he was told by Dora, whispering, that another child had joined the household, a schoolfellow of Mary’s. The previous week Sylvia had promised this little boy’s mother to have her son for the night while the parents celebrated a wedding anniversary. Ben would have to share his room with this child, had at first refused outright, then agreed with an ill grace and after putting up a lot of conditions.
‘You and Dad might have given me a little more notice you were coming,’ Sylvia had said, causing Dora to explode.
‘This is our house, Sylvia! How dare you tell me we should have given you notice to come to our own house!’
‘I wish we didn’t have to be here,’ said Sylvia. ‘I’m not getting any pleasure out of it. Thank God I’m back at work.’
Wexford had not even attempted to bring about a truce but had gone straight to bed. Guilty now because he and Dora were occupying the largest of the four bedrooms, he lay awake for a long time, to be awakened almost at once by shouts and running feet in the passage outside. The little boy guest had been sick. He needed comforting and cleaning up and his bed sheets changed. In the morning Sylvia refused her father’s offer to take all of them out for lunch, so he and Dora were on their way back to London by eleven.
Mildred Jones had had her once-pink front door repainted. Now it was lime green. Although Lucy had phoned her to arrange their visit, Mrs Jones behaved as if their appearance on her doorstep was the first she had heard of it. ‘I’ve told you everything I know,’ were her opening words, without even the preamble of a ‘Good morning’ in reply to Lucy’s polite greeting.
Assessing this woman’s character, Wexford had noted how dramatically she was changed by her view of the day ahead of her. When about to lunch with a man, she was ebullient, confident and assertive, but with a blank or tedious day in prospect she became petulant and sullen. Today was evidently going to be blank or tedious. Her mood seemed also to affect the way she dressed, to the extent that she wore unflattering clothes on bad days and attractive ones when things looked to be going well.
‘I can’t offer you anything to drink,’ she said as she led them into the living room. ‘Raisa’s too busy.’
This attitude, that any domestic task must be performed by the cleaner and never by the employer, brought a humourless smile to Wexford’s lips, a reaction he was later to regret.
‘Something amuses you?’
He took it to be a rhetorical question and said nothing. Lucy said they would like to talk about Vladlena. Was she aware that Vladlena had a sister who had come to this country with her in a minibus driven across Europe?
‘She’d be another illegal immigrant? Because if so, I don’t want to talk about her or any of them. I told you before’ – she glowered at Wexford – ‘I’ve been frightened out of my wits I’d be in trouble with the immigration.’
‘We’re not concerned with immigration, Mrs Jones …’ Wexford began and Lucy added what he hadn’t felt it was incumbent on him to say, ‘We’re concerned with the identity of the young woman whose body was with the others underneath Orcadia Cottage.’
Without exciting plans for her day, Mildred Jones was wearing no make-up to cover her sudden pallor. Her face turned a yellowish white. ‘You mean you think that girl in the hole, the cellar, was Vladlena?’
‘We only want to eliminate her from our enquiries,’ Wexford said.
‘That’s what you all say. I’d like a pound for the number of times I’ve heard that on TV. What a ghastly idea.’
How much he would have liked to say that – considering her attitude towards her former cleaner – he would have expected her to be pleased at the prospect. But he had wanted to say that sort of thing when he was a young policeman decades ago. Now he was old there was all the more reason to restrain himself. Instead, politely, he asked Mrs Jones how Vladlena had usually been dressed.
Dress was a subject, he could tell, which greatly interested her. ‘She wasn’t what you’d call elegant.’ She laughed, and paused to let her wit be appreciated. ‘She wore this one cotton frock day in and day out. I asked her about it and she said it was all she had, so I took pity on her and gave her a couple of cast-offs of my own. She was practically anorexic, so of course she had to take them in a bit before she could wear them.’
‘Did you ever see her in a miniskirt and wearing a leather jacket?’
She looked at Wexford as if he had asked something obscene. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Just answer the question, please, Mrs Jones.’
‘A leather jacket, yes. A miniskirt, no.’
As she spoke, a diffident Raisa put her head round the door. ‘You like coffee, madam?’
‘No, I wouldn’t. When I want you I’ll call you.’ Mildred Jones turned back to Lucy. ‘I saw her wearing a black leather jacket and a long floral skirt, not a very attractive combination in my opinion.’
‘Where was that?’ Wexford asked. ‘When she was shopping for Mr Goldberg?’
‘Of course not. Whatever put that idea into your head? It wasn’t round here at all. It was in Oxford Street. I’d been in Selfridges and when I came out I found the police had closed the street to traffic. Some silly woman had run across in front of a bus and got knocked down. So, of course, everyone had to suffer and while I was walking all the way to Marble Arch to get a taxi – carrying heavy bags I may add – I saw her coming out of that cheap store, Primark. She was doing all right, carrying bags of stuff she’d bought.’
This meant little to Wexford, but he could see that Lucy’s reaction was very different. ‘Are you sure, Mrs Jones? The closing of Oxford Street for a street accident was only about a year ago.’
‘I know that.’ Mildred Jones eyed Lucy indignantly. ‘I hope you’re not calling me a liar.’
‘You’re tellin
g us you saw Vladlena a year ago?’ said Wexford.
‘For God’s sake. How many times do I have to tell you?’
‘Once more, please, to be sure.’
‘I saw her a year ago.’
He and Lucy were silent until they had rounded the corner into Orcadia Place. They looked at each other and laughed and Wexford said, ‘Maybe we should be thankful for small mercies. I’m glad to know she’s alive and apparently quite prosperous, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, of course I am. I’m glad she’s not the girl in the patio-tomb, but someone was and it did look as if it was her.’
‘I’d like to think she was out of it, clear of it. But I don’t think she can be. She may know all sorts of things we don’t dream of. She can’t be the girl in the vault, but she may know who the girl in the vault was. Besides, I confess I’m curious.’
‘So am I,’ said Lucy. ‘I’d like to know what happened to her, how she got from being a homeless, poverty-stricken sort of – well, waif – to owning a leather jacket and shopping in Primark. Shopping at all, come to that.’
Wexford said nothing. He thought of what Vladlena had told Sophie Baird she would do to get money. He must really be getting old. He was certainly getting soft if the means she had spoken off could revolt him so deeply – yes, even shock him. He who had believed nothing could shock him any more.
He was curious and Lucy was curious, but did their curiosity justify trying to find Vladlena? It was too late. All that was of importance to them was that she was not the girl in the vault. She had a sister somewhere in this country, a cousin somewhere in London. David Goldberg knew nothing of her whereabouts and nor did Sophie Baird. What of those others living in the immediate neighbourhood? The Milsoms? The Rokebys themselves? Then there was Mildred Jones’s ex-husband Colin Jones. He had known Vladlena, even if she had never attracted him. Wexford thought it was possible that in the two years or so that Vladlena had worked for Mildred Jones and then for David Goldberg she had occasionally talked to the neighbours and perhaps mentioned her relatives. Put like that he could see it was a long shot. But then there was the driver, the man who suggested she sell her virginity. Who was he? Was there any point in asking those people he listed?
Sophie said Vladlena and the driver had met in a pub in Kilburn. His mind went back to Kilburn High Road and the massage parlour. Could he have told her that if she agreed to his proposition, the transaction could take place in one of the upper floors of Doll-up?
But Vladlena was alive or had been a year ago. Whatever might be the truth of all this, whatever any of these people might have to say, the young woman’s body in the tomb could not be Vladlena’s.
It could come to be a matter for the Vice Squad, Wexford thought, but first a preliminary reconnaissance was called for. Tom agreed to a search for Colin Jones being made online and WPC Debach was given this task. Wexford himself set off for what called itself a ‘beauty centre’. He had come prepared with a story to gain himself entry to the two upper floors if admission to them was refused, and he glanced up at the top windows before going in. All four were masked in opaque blinds.
A receptionist asked if she could help him. Wexford had already noted the array of treatments on offer, from chiropody to full-body exfoliation. One specially caught his eye and he asked if he could book a Brazilian massage. Certainly, but their masseur was fully booked until the following Monday.
‘Masseur?’
The look he got was unfriendly. ‘Do you have a problem with that?’
‘I expected a masseuse.’
‘Really? I wonder if Doll-up is quite the location you are looking for?’
Location! He put his head on one side, said in a lower voice, ‘What goes on upstairs?’
‘I have no idea,’ she said stiffly. ‘The premises have nothing to do with us. They are quite separate and are, I understand, to let.’
‘Do you know who the agent is?’
‘No, I do not. If that’s all, Mr Er –? I am rather busy this morning.’
He walked down a narrow side street from which he could see the backs of a row of buildings of which Doll-up was the nearest. From here it looked even smaller than from the High Road. The building was just one room wide and if there were more than three rooms, however subdivided they might be, on the ground floor that was all there were. Back in the High Street he noticed a shabby door in the wall next to the ‘beauty centre’. There was no nameplate, no bell, no knocker, only a letter box. He flapped the lid of the box without much hope of anyone answering and no one did answer, but a window above was flung open and an elderly man put his head out.
‘Go away! How many times do I have to tell you randy bastards this is not a knocking shop?’
Wexford started laughing. How he wished he could tell this irate chap that he was a policeman. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I understand your place is to let.’
‘I’ll come down.’
He was a short spare man with a lot of hair on his face and none on his head, dressed in a black sweatshirt and jeans. ‘I’ve told them again and again what’ll happen if they give the place a bloody stupid name like that. But do they take any notice? Do they hell. That’s why I’m moving out. For ten years I lived here in peace and quiet and then they came along and buggered it up.’
‘So you wouldn’t recommend me to take it?’
‘No, I wouldn’t, but I can give you the name of the agents if you like.’
Tom was amused. ‘Well-spotted, Reg,’ he said. ‘Not your fault it was a wild goose chase. Should I send Miles along to the agents so he can give that flat the once over?’
‘If you feel it’s worth it, but I’m sure it’s perfectly innocent.’
‘Rita Debach has run Colin Jones to earth.’
She had found him in Kendal Avenue, SW12, and a phone number for him. Finding someone was easy these days, Wexford thought, even when his was a name shared by hundreds. You might know where he lived, but after that he was lost to you if he failed to come to his door or answer his phone. Messages were left for him to contact the police, but for what? What help could he be, a man who was once married to Mildred Jones, who had lived in the house where Vladlena worked and who had once recommended to Martin Rokeby a contractor he had already found? When I think of him, Wexford reflected, it’s always as the man whose shirt Vladlena burned …
Two days ahead, the weekend would not be spent in Kingsmarkham. Relations between Wexford and Dora and their elder daughter were too strained for that. Sylvia had phoned, but there had been a coolness on both sides. Her reason for calling – that she had found a house, though not yet sold her own – led her to say that she would speed things up as much as she could because she knew ‘only too well’ that she and her children weren’t welcome in her parents’ house.
So those parents stayed in London, walked on the Heath, bought books in Hatchards and socks for Wexford in Marks & Spencer’s and on the Saturday night went to the theatre to see Sheila play Mrs Alving in Ibsen’s Ghosts. On the Monday morning, when he called the number of the house in Kendal Avenue, a woman answered.
She was Mrs Jones, she said. Her husband was away on business but would be back on Wednesday. She would tell him the police wanted to talk to him. Her tone was that of a woman speaking of a promise rather than a threat and she sounded quite unfazed.
The threat came from the first Mrs Jones. And if it wasn’t aimed at him, it concerned him. Tom told him as soon as he walked into the glass-walled office.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
‘SHE CONTACTED THE IPCC,’ said Tom. ‘Mildred Jones, I mean.’
For a moment Wexford had to think what the initials stood for. Of course, he knew perfectly well, but for a moment the meaning had eluded him.
‘The Independent Police Complaints Commission? What on earth is that about?’
‘Well, it’s about you.’ Tom laughed to soften the blow. ‘Lucy’s in trouble for taking you along to interview her.’
‘Old Mildreadful is
what Goldberg calls her.’
‘Yes, but for goodness sake, she doesn’t know that?’
‘Of course not, Tom. What’s her specific grievance?’
‘It’s all rubbish, but she alleges you “laughed scornfully” when she “declined to provide you with refreshment”. That you asked her to answer a question in the manner you would talk to someone who was under arrest, and that Lucy allowed you to conduct the interview as if you were the police officer and she, I quote, had “just come along for the ride”.’
‘I see.’
‘The thing is that Lucy will have to be investigated and two officers appointed to do that. There’ll be no investigation of you, of course. In the eyes of the IPCC the onus will all be on Lucy and you don’t exist.’
‘Thanks very much,’ said Wexford. ‘Taking me on as your aide wasn’t such a good idea after all, was it?’ Tom made no reply. ‘I shall quietly disappear.’
‘No, I was wrong,’ Tom said in the quiet and just way he had and was what had made Wexford like him. ‘I shouldn’t have insisted you accompany an officer, but have left you to your own devices. I’m going to leave you to them now and ask no questions.’
‘Fair enough.’ As he said it Wexford was aware that it was an expression he hadn’t heard for years and he repeated it with emphasis. ‘Fair enough.’
He was left with nothing to do until Wednesday, unless he made tasks for himself. Any task connected with this case would now require careful thought. He must explain to those he interviewed that they were under no obligation to speak to him. They could show him the door and probably would. He must become a private detective without any sort of licence to practise, not even the fame which attached to a Hercule Poirot or Peter Wimsey, their names on everyone’s lips, their exploits chronicled. His role was more that of the private eye who – no longer even able to occupy himself spying on adulterers – was reduced to searching for missing persons. He wondered how on earth he was going to introduce himself to Colin Jones.
