Vault ciw-23

by Ruth Rendell

  Though Wexford felt that he knew Damian Keyworth thoroughly, could have made a character sketch of him, the two of them had never met. Once he knew that Wexford was no longer a policeman, but had only the rather dubious status of an ‘expert adviser’, he might well shut the door in his face. On the other hand, he would know his caller had a strong connection with the police, could bring the police to his door at any time – could he? – and would likely know about the visit to the house next door and the encounter with Trevor Oswin.

  As he almost reached the turn into West End Lane he realised that no one knew he was here. More than that, no one except Vladlena knew the nature of the house with the pillars. And would Vladlena ever disclose it? He should have told Tom and, hesitating no longer, he pulled out his phone and called Tom’s number. Almost at once he was put on to Tom’s voicemail. At least he could leave a message. As for Dora, she was too accustomed to being a chief detective inspector’s wife to ask him where he was going or what he was doing. When he came to think of it, as he thought of it, now, his job had been a real adulterer’s charter, one which he may have considered once or twice of using to his own advantage, yet never had.

  When he had passed Keyworth’s house in his quest to find a parking place, no lights had been on. Now the ground floor was brightly lit and a table lamp could be seen in a front bedroom. He rang the bell. In making his character sketch of Keyworth, he had drawn no picture of him. And yet he was surprised that the man was solidly built, broad-shouldered, rubicund and with a lot of fair hair.

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  Wexford asked if he could talk to him. He had decided to be truthful, more or less, and said that, though no longer a policeman, he had a police connection. He was looking for a missing woman, the sister of Mrs Colin Jones, of Clapham. Even as he spoke he could tell that Keyworth knew. He knew Wexford had been to the house next door, he knew he had talked to Louise Fortescue both the day before and three months before.

  ‘You had better come in.’

  Keyworth took Wexford into a hallway and then into what Louise had called the lounge, both rooms furnished in a so-called ‘French’ style with ornate chairs and pie-crust tables, the walls silk-panelled in crimson and every surface having a gilded rim. It was far more like Wexford’s idea of a brothel than the real brothel next door.

  ‘Sit.’

  As if I were a dog, thought Wexford. Keyworth was one of those who think saying ‘Sit’ instead of ‘Sit down’ and ‘Come’ instead of ‘Come in’ is a sign of a masterful personality, of a man who is a leader of men. Instead of an exploiter of women and a trafficker of children.

  ‘What do you want to know that you don’t know already?’

  In for a penny, in for a pound. It was an expression of his father’s, applicable here. ‘Alyona Krasnikova, why was she killed?’

  If it was a shock tactic, it succeeded. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. You can’t expect me to admit to that. It’s preposterous. What do you take me for? I’m a chartered surveyor.’

  ‘You’re a ponce,’ said Wexford, but to himself.

  ‘That place next door, I know what it is, but it’s quiet, it’s well run. Mr and Mrs Oswin run it very discreetly.’ Keyworth, who had been standing over Wexford, suddenly sat down. ‘Brothels – actually it’s time they had a new name, something more contemporary – brothels, as I say, are becoming respectable. Men of all classes use them, don’t think twice about it. The sooner the police realise that the better.’ Wexford listened patiently. ‘Anyway, it’s nothing to do with me. If that girl came here to me – it was years ago, years – it was because I’d once been to her for sex. There, I’m being very frank.’

  ‘I know why she came, Mr Keyworth. She didn’t know you. If she had she’d have avoided you like the plague. She wouldn’t have gone into the lion’s den. She hoped you’d give her refuge.’

  Keyworth swivelled round in his chair so that he was facing a white and gold desk. He pulled open a drawer, said, ‘I’d like to give you something for your trouble. You’re not police. I doubt if the police take much notice of you. I don’t suppose you get much of a pension, do you?’

  Wexford said nothing. The man was too ridiculous to make him angry. He was simply interested to know what he was going to be offered. A cheque was passed across the desk, held out to Wexford. The sum was ten thousand pounds. He looked at it, at its pale blue surface, patterned like wallpaper, the writing an incomprehensible scrawl, except for the figures which were clear enough. He handed it back, said, ‘Use it to buy passports for those poor girls.’ And he an ex-policeman! Whatever next?

  He went back the way he had come and let himself out of the front door, crossed the road and sat down on the seat where Vladlena had sat, wondering why it was there and who had put it there. Perhaps it was only to offer rest to those commuters exhausted after their struggles with Transport for London and before they began the walk home. While he was inside Keyworth’s house someone had parked a white van on a yellow line outside. Why should that alert him to something unsuspected? One unmarked white van was much like another and there must be thousands in London. It was time he went home himself. After he had watched an elderly man, eminently respectable to look at, lock his car, approach the brothel house and press the bell to be immediately admitted, he got up. His car was further away than he remembered. He passed the car the punter (if that was the word) had just left parked on a double yellow line, passed the white van, pausing for a moment to take in the snake-shaped scratch on its rear nearside, and walked along the silent street. Houses were brightly lit, but most behind hedges or tall shrubs and trees. Street lamps laid a skin of yellow light on the damp stone surfaces.

  He heard footsteps behind him and stepped closer to the hedge to let whoever it was pass him, a young woman sprinting along in five-inch heels. At the bottom of this gradual incline he could see his car, always a comforting sight, signifying rest, safety, a refuge, the means of getting wherever you wanted to go in privacy. How awkward it must have been when you relied on a horse, a carriage or a cart. No protection from the weather, no means of safeguarding that transport unless you had a servant to leave with the horse and that would have its own problems. He was thinking along these lines, trying to put himself in the shoes of the poor man who must have relied on what his father had called ‘Shanks’s Pony’, when he saw someone move off from where he had been standing under the overhanging branches of a tree and walk round the corner. Sheltering from the rain? It hadn’t rained for hours. Never mind. He was gone.

  Wexford unlocked the car with his remote and walked round to the offside front. His hand was on the driver’s door when a powerful whiff of tobacco smoke struck him. He spun round and took the knife in his shoulder instead of his back. It felt like a blow, not a cutting sensation but a blow, as if he had been struck with a heavy implement. This is what it must have been like for Sylvia, he thought, when she was stabbed as I’ve been stabbed. For that’s what it is, the man under the tree – the one that seemed to go away – has stabbed me. He kicked out and hit softness, fatness, his legs weakened and gave way and his last thought before he lapsed into unconsciousness was, how much they must care: ten thousand pounds or this. Then it was darkness and the damp hard ground underneath him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  AN ATTEMPT HAD been made to blow him up, a woman had tried to run him over and there had been other efforts to cause him grievous bodily harm, but until now he had never been the victim of a stabbing, Britain’s murder method of choice. It might have been much worse and would have been if he hadn’t swung round in the nick of time. There is nothing vital to be damaged in one’s shoulder. Apparently, the knife was very long. If he had taken its blade in his back, between his ribs, it might have pierced a lung or his heart. And his rescue was as much due to Tom as his own nose for the smell of tobacco.

  After Dora, Tom was his first visitor. He brought neither flowers nor grapes, an omission for which Wexford was thankful
.

  ‘Tell me something. How did you get to me so fast? Ten minutes at the most from when I left that message.’

  ‘I was just round the corner,’ Tom said. ‘I was in church.’

  Wexford recalled that frustrating drive past the shops and the garage and the little chapel. ‘The United Free Church?’

  ‘That’s it. I’m always there on Sunday evenings.’ Tom spoke simply and he smiled. ‘My phone pinged in the middle of a hymn and I nearly didn’t pick up the message. But it made me uneasy, I don’t know why. You weren’t uneasy.’ He laughed. ‘Everyone was staring at me – and not in a friendly way.’

  ‘And I fetched you out of Evensong.’

  ‘The better the day, the better the deed,’ said Tom.

  He told Wexford that Number 8 Churchlands Road had been raided and Trevor Oswin, his wife and Damian Keyworth arrested and charged with brothel-keeping, trafficking and false imprisonment. Oswin would also be charged with the murder of Alyona Krasnikova when a case had been prepared against him.

  ‘I think we can make it stick. He’s scared stiff and I hope we’ll get a confession out of him.’

  Sylvia came next. She kissed him, smiled ruefully at the dressing on his shoulder and said, ‘Snap!’

  ‘Yes. But it might have been worse – for both of us.’

  ‘We’re moving tomorrow. You’ll have your house back. You can go home.’

  ‘When they let me.’ Home is Kingsmarkham, he thought. Not the coachhouse, lovely though being there has been and will be again. One day.

  ‘I was very – well, ungracious, Dad. When you let us all move into your house. Ungracious and ungrateful. Thank you, though. I don’t know what we’d have done without it.’

  The worst thing about being wounded at his age, he thought, maybe at any age, is that you feel so tired. He realised that most of the time he never felt tired, but he did now, overwhelmed by exhaustion. He loved seeing Dora because all he had to do when she was there was have his hand held and not talk, close his eyes and drift off to sleep, wake again and be glad she was still there. But he would talk when Burden came. He would tell him the whole thing, how he had worked it out. Then he wouldn’t be tired.

  ‘They want to keep you in another couple of days,’ said Dora.

  ‘I know. They’re afraid of infection.’

  ‘Mike says he’ll come tomorrow.’

  It might be hurtful to show too much enthusiasm. ‘That’s nice of him,’ he said in a lacklustre tone. ‘Fine if he’s not too busy.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Why do I detect an under current of madly longing to see him?’

  He laughed, but said no more. Next day, when Burden arrived, Wexford was in the bathroom and as he returned to the ward, the young nurse with whom he was a favourite whispered, ‘Your son is here.’

  ‘I knew I’d aged,’ he said to Burden, ‘but not that much. Or maybe it’s that you look remarkably young today.’

  ‘I haven’t brought you anything. Can one man give another one flowers? It seems a bit funny.’

  ‘I don’t want flowers or anything else for that matter. They’ll bring us tea in a minute. Do you feel up to hearing about the Vault?’

  ‘It feels a bit weird hearing it in a hospital. We ought to be in the Olive.’ Burden drank some of his tea. ‘And this ought to be wine.’

  ‘They do let me have the occasional glass of red, but it has to be at the appropriate time. Well, the Vault. This is how it was …’

  Two days later he was sent home. Hospitals avoid keeping their patients in over a weekend. He was driven home to Kingsmarkham by Dora and by dint of exercising an iron self-control, did no back-seat (or passenger-seat) driving. Each time he felt like saying she was going too fast or braking needlessly he examined his reactions and asked himself if, a man being at the wheel, he would have criticised . He decided he would not. Well, he might if the man was his grandson Robin, but that would be on account of Robin’s youth. And Dora was his wife. Maybe all the more reason for not finding fault with her. Suppose it was one of his daughters? Yes, he might well criticise them. A good rule would be never to back-seat drive. No one ever took any notice, anyway.his driving

  Thus the drive passed in pleasant and perhaps valuable speculation and when they got to Kingsmarkham Dora asked him if he was feeling all right. ‘Fine. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh, no reason. I just wondered why you never asked me if I was keeping my eyes on the road or if I’d like you to drive.’

  ‘No doubt I was asleep.’

  He hadn’t been, but once in the house he went to bed and slept for three hours. The phone woke him and he reached for it. Burden was adamant that there could be no visiting the Olive and Dove, but he would come round if that was all right.

  ‘Don’t do anything silly.’ Dora didn’t speculate what the nature of the silly thing might be. Something to do with food or drink, no doubt. ‘I shall go and see Sylvia’s new house.’

  Burden was early. He must really want to hear the rest of it, Wexford thought, and thought simultaneously that once, not long ago, such an idea wouldn’t have entered his head. A sudden soreness in his shoulder brought him back to the matter in hand. The story of the girl, its beginning and its ending.

  ‘For a while,’ he began as Burden was pouring the wine, ‘I thought she must be a cleaner employed by a certain Mrs Jones.’

  ‘Why do you say “a certain”?’

  ‘Because she’s near to being that “worst enemy” you were talking about earlier. She’s the one who complained to the Police Complaints Authority – not about me, of course, but about poor Lucy Blanch, the DS. You’ve no idea how often in the past months I’ve had to stop myself short and remember I’m no longer a policeman.’

  Burden listened in near-silence while told of the quest for Vladlena and later of the escape of Alyona and her attempt to throw herself on the mercy of Damian Keyworth. ‘Trevor Oswin had known Keyworth slightly for years. His brother Kevin had done a building job for him and Trevor had done the driving of the van. Apparently, Kevin Oswin’s sight is too bad for him to drive. They weren’t exactly on social terms then, but it was about this time that Keyworth lost his driving licence through being startlingly over the limit. Trevor started driving for him and they got to know each other better. Keyworth wanted to move and Trevor told him the house next door to his in Churchlands Road was for sale. Keyworth bought it and when he seemed to find money no object Trevor invited him to invest in the company he and his wife were running next door and come in to it with them. It seems Keyworth didn’t turn a hair when he found out the nature of the firm. They called it a model agency, but Keyworth knew very well what it was.

  ‘Keyworth, of course, had no mercy. The night Alyona came to his house, by making some sort of promise to her, presumably, he got her into one of Oswin’s cars – he had no car of his own – and drove away. He must have known by this time that either he or Trevor Oswin had to kill her. If she were left free she might tell the police, having a fair idea that trafficking was a serious offence in this country, but even if she dared not do that, she would tell someone. She would tell someone that she had been a sex slave – horrible term but apt – and that there were others like her at the house in Churchlands Road.

  ‘Another serious consequence for Keyworth was that his fiancée Louise Fortescue, who was living there with him, saw the girl and drew the obvious conclusions. Once he had handed Alyona over to Trevor Oswin or, more likely, called Oswin and asked him to drive to an appointed place and meet him and the girl, he would have no more part in it, but have returned to Churchlands Road where he found Louise packing. What reasons he gave to justify himself I don’t know, but she left and that was the end of their engagement.’

  ‘He could hardly have said, “No, she wasn’t my girlfriend,”’ said Burden. ‘“She was just a trafficked immigrant I forced into prostitution with my mate next door.”’

  ‘Right. I believe Alyona was handed over into the tender care of Tre
vor Oswin, my assailant. He killed her, possibly by strangling, possibly by bludgeoning her. Her skull was fractured, as was Harriet Merton’s.’

  ‘And put her body into that vault in Orcadia Place? Was that really the safest place from his point of view he could have put it?’

  ‘I think so, Mike. It was either that or driving her to open country or woodland and leaving the body there to be found quite quickly. Subearth Structures, represented by Trevor’s brother Kevin, were the last firm to go round there and look at the place after Rokeby had decided he wanted an underground room. As you will remember, Trevor also went and while Kevin was in the house with Rokeby Trevor went down into the vault. He saw the bodies and he must have understood that no one else had seen them. By that I mean none of the other plumbers, builders, assessors, what you will, had seen them. Because if they had it’s inconceivable they wouldn’t have reported what they had found and it would have been all over the media.

  ‘Therefore, it was a safe hiding place and a burial chamber in which to bury poor Alyona’s body. So, with the body in his car, he parked in the mews after dark and tried the door in the wall. As usual it wasn’t locked. The body was dragged into the paved yard, the pot removed, the manhole cover lifted and the body dropped into the vault.

  ‘Now, Trevor had decided on what Teddy Brex had ten years before decided on, to return there one night soon and pave over the manhole opening and those bodies would never be found. It would be a simple task for him. He had himself once been in the building trade. But when he went back the door into the mews was locked and bolted, as it always was when the Rokebys were away on a long holiday. Trevor had to take the risk of the bodies being found one day, as they were, two years later.’