No More Dying Then

by Ruth Rendell

  “Shall we have some television?” she said, trying to keep the weariness out of her voice. “There’s quite a good film on, I believe.”

  “Too much homework,” John said, “and I can’t do the maths till my father comes. Did you say he’d be back at ten?”

  “He said about ten.”

  “I think I’ll go into my room, then.”

  Grace and Pat sat on the sofa and watched the film. It was all about the domestic lives of policemen and bore little relation to reality.

  Burden drove to Stowerton, through the new part and into the old High Street. Fontaine Road was parallel with Wincanton Road, and there, years and years ago when they were first married, he and Jean had for six months rented a flat. Wherever he went in Kingsmarkham and its environs he kept coming on places that he and Jean had been to or visited on some special occasion. He couldn’t avoid them, but the sight of them brought fresh hurt every time and the pain did not diminish. Since her death he had avoided Wincanton Road, for there they had been especially happy, young lovers learning what love was. Today had been a bad day, bad in that for some reason he was ultra-sensitive and prickly, and he felt that the sight of the house where their flat had been would be the last straw. Control might go utterly and he would stand at the gate and weep.

  He didn’t even look at the street name as he passed it but kept his eyes fixed straight ahead. He turned left into Fontaine Road and stopped outside number 61.

  It was a very ugly house, built about eighty years ago, and surrounded by a wild untended garden full of old fruit trees whose leaves lay in drifts on the grass. The house itself was built of khaki-coloured bricks with a shallow, almost flat, slate roof. Its windows were the sash kind and very small, but the front door was enormous, quite out of proportion, a great heavy thing with inset panels of red and blue stained glass. It was slightly ajar.

  Burden didn’t go into the house at once. Wexford’s car, among other police cars, was parked against the fence which divided the end of the street from the field Stowerton Council had turned into a children’s playground. Beyond this came more fields, woods, the rolling countryside.

  Wexford was sitting in his car, studying an ordnance survey map. He looked up as Burden approached and said:

  “Good of you to get here so fast. I’ve only just arrived myself. Will you talk to the mother or shall I?”

  “I will,” said Burden.

  There was a heavy knocker on the front door of number 61, shaped like a lion’s head with a ring in its mouth. Burden touched it lightly and then he pushed open the door.

  2

  A young woman was standing in the hall, holding her hands clasped in front of her. The first thing Burden noticed about her was her hair which was the same colour as the dead apple leaves that had blown in on to the tiled passage floor. It was fiery copper hair, neither straight nor curly but massy and glittering like fine wire or thread spun on a distaff, and it stood out from her small white face and fell to the middle of her back.

  “Mrs. Lawrence?”

  She nodded.

  “My name is Burden, Inspector Burden, C.I.D. Before we talk about this I’d like a photograph of your son and some article of clothing he’s recently worn.”

  She looked at him, wide-eyed, as if he were a clairvoyant who could sense the missing boy’s whereabouts from handling his garments.

  “For the dogs,” he said gently.

  She went upstairs and he heard her banging about feverishly, opening drawers. Yes, he thought, it would be an untidy house with nothing in its place, nothing to hand. She came back, running, with a dark green school blazer and an enlarged snapshot. Burden looked at the photograph as he hurried up the road. It was of a big sturdy child, neither very clean nor very tidy, but undeniably beautiful, with thick light hair and large dark eyes.

  The men who had come to search for him stood about in groups, some in the swings field, some clustered around the police cars. There were sixty or seventy of them, neighbours, friends and relatives of neighbours, and others who had arrived on bicycles from further afield. The speed with which news of this kind travels always amazed Burden. It was scarcely six o’clock. The police themselves had only been alerted half an hour before.

  He approached Sergeant Martin, who seemed to be involved in some kind of altercation with one of the men, and handed him the photograph.

  “What was all that about?” said Wexford.

  “Chap told me to mind my own business because I advised him he’d need thicker shoes. That’s the trouble with getting the public in, sir. They always think they know best.”

  “We can’t do without them, Sergeant,” Wexford snapped. “We need every available man at a time like this, police and public.”

  The two most efficient and experienced searchers belonged, properly speaking, in neither category. They sat a little apart from the men and viewed them with wary scorn. The labrador bitch’s coat gleamed like satin in the last of the sun, but the alsatian’s thick pelt was dull and rough and wolflike. With a quick word to the man Sergeant Martin had admonished not to go near the dogs—he appeared to be about to caress the alsatian—Wexford passed the blazer over to the labrador’s handler.

  While the dogs explored the blazer with expert noses, Martin formed the men into parties, a dozen or so in each and each with its leader. There were too few torches to go round and Wexford cursed the season with its deceptive daytime heat and its cold nights that rushed in early. Already dark fingers of cloud were creeping across the redness of the sky and a sharp bite of frost threatened. It would be dark before the search parties reached the wood that crouched like a black and furry bear over the edges of the fields.

  Burden watched the small armies enter the wide swings field and begin the long hunt that would take them to Forby and beyond. A frosty oval moon, just beginning to wane from the full, showed above the woods. If only it would shine bright, unobscured by that blue-black floating cloud, it would be a greater asset than all their torches.

  The women of Fontaine Road who had hung over their gates to see the men go now strayed lingeringly back into their houses. Each one of them would have to be questioned. Had she seen anything? Anyone? Had anything at all out of the way happened that day? On Wexford’s orders, Loring and Gates were beginning a house-to-house investigation. Burden went back to Mrs. Lawrence and followed her into the front room, a big room full of ugly Victorian furniture to match the house. Toys and books and magazines were scattered everywhere and there were clothes about, shawls and scarves draped over the furniture. A long patchwork dress on a hanger hung from a picture rail.

  The place looked even dirtier and frowstier when she switched on the standard lamp, and she looked stranger. She wore jeans, a satin shirt and strings of tarnished chains around her neck. He didn’t need to admire her, but he would have liked to be able to feel sympathy. This woman with her wild hair and her strange clothes made him immediately feel that she was no fit person to be in charge of a child and even that her appearance and all he associated with it had perhaps contributed to that child’s disappearance. He told himself not to jump to conclusions, not yet.

  “Now, what is the boy’s name and how old is he?”

  “John. He’s five.”

  “Not at school today?”

  “It’s half-term for the primary schools,” she said. “I’ll tell you about this afternoon, shall I?”

  “Please.”

  “Well, we had our lunch, John and I, and after lunch at about two his friend from next door came to call for him. He’s called Gary Dean and he’s five too.” She was very composed, but now she swallowed and cleared her throat. “They were going to play in the street on their tricycles. It’s quite safe. They know they have to stay on the pavement.

  “When John goes out to play I look out of the window every half-hour or so to see he’s all right and I did that today. You can see all the street and the field where the swings are from my landing window. Well, for a bit they played on the p
avement with the other boys, all boys from around here, but when I looked out at half past three they’d gone into the swings field.”

  “You could make out your son from this distance?”

  “He’s wearing a dark blue sweater and he’s got fair hair.”

  “Go on, Mrs. Lawrence.”

  She took a deep breath and clasped the fingers of one hand tightly in the other.

  “They’d left their tricycles in a sort of huddle on the pavement. The next time I looked they were all on the swings and I could pick out John by his hair and his sweater. Or—or I thought I could. There were six boys there, you see. Anyway, when I looked out again they’d all gone and I went down to open the front door for John. I thought he must be coming in for his tea.”

  “But he wasn’t?”

  “No, his tricycle was on the pavement by itself.” She bit her lip, her face very white now. “There weren’t any children in the street. I thought John must have gone into someone else’s house—he does that sometimes although he’s not supposed to without telling me so I waited—oh, five minutes, not more—and then I went into the Deans to see if he was there. It gave me a shock,” she said, half-whispering. “That was when I first started getting frightened. Gary was there, having his tea, and there was a boy with him in a blue sweater and with fair hair, but it wasn’t John. It was his cousin who’d come over for the afternoon. You see, I realised then that the boy I’d been thinking was John ever since half past three was this cousin.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “I asked Gary where John was and he said he didn’t know. He’d gone some hours ago, he said—that was how he put it, hours ago—and they thought he was with me. Well, I went to another boy’s house then, a boy called Julian Crantock at 59, and Mrs. Crantock and I, we got it out of Julian. He said Gary and the cousin had started on John, just silly children’s teasing, but you know what they’re like, how they hurt each other and get hurt. They picked on John about his sweater, said it was a girl’s because of the way the buttons do up at the neck, and John—well, Julian said he sat on the roundabout by himself for a bit and then he just walked off towards the road.”

  “This road? Fontaine Road?”

  “No. The lane that runs between the swings field and the farm fields. It goes from Stowerton to Forby.”

  “I know it,” Burden said, “Mill Lane. There’s a drop into it from those fields, down a bank, and there are trees all along the top of the bank.”

  She nodded. “But why would he go there? Why? He’s been told again and again he’s never to leave the street or the swings field.”

  “Little boys don’t always do as they are told, Mrs. Lawrence. Was it after this that you phoned us?”

  “Not at once,” she said. She lifted her eyes and met Burden’s. They were greenish-grey eyes and they held a terrified bewilderment, but she kept her voice low and even. “I went to the houses of all the boys. Mrs. Crantock came with me and when they all said the same, about the quarrel and John going off, Mrs. Crantock got out her car and we drove along Mill Lane all the way to Forby and back, looking for John. We met a man with cows and we asked him, and a postman and someone delivering vegetables, but nobody had seen him. And then I phoned you.”

  “So John has been missing since about three-thirty?”

  She nodded. “But why would he go there? Why? He’s afraid of the dark.”

  Her composure remained and yet Burden felt that the wrong word or gesture from him, perhaps even a sudden sound, would puncture it and release a scream of tenor. He didn’t quite know what to make of her. She looked peculiar, the kind of woman who belonged to a world he knew of only through newspapers. He had seen pictures of her, or of women who closely resembled her, leaving London courts after being found guilty of possessing cannabis. Such as she were found dead in furnished rooms after an overdose of barbiturates and drink. Such as she? The face was the same, pinched and pale, and the wild hair and the repellent clothes. It was her control which puzzled him and the sweet soft voice which didn’t fit the image he had made of her of eccentric conduct and an unsound life.

  “Mrs. Lawrence,” he began, “we get dozens of cases of missing children in the course of our work and more than ninety per cent of them are found safe and sound.” He wasn’t going to mention the girl who hadn’t been found at all. Someone else probably would, some interfering neighbour, but perhaps by then the boy would be back with his mother. “Do you know what happens to most of them? They wander away out of pique or bravado and get lost and exhausted, so they lie down in some warm hole and—sleep.”

  Her eyes dismayed him. They were so large and staring and she hardly seemed to blink at all. Now he saw in them a faint gleam of hope. “You are very kind to me,” she said gravely. “I trust you.”

  Burden said awkwardly, “That’s good. You trust us and let us do the worrying, eh? Now what time does your husband get home?”

  “I’m divorced. I live alone.”

  “Yes, well, my chief will want to know about that, see your—er, ex-husband and so on.” She would be divorced, he thought. She couldn’t be more than twenty-eight and by the time she was thirty-eight she would probably have been married and divorced twice more. God knew what combination of circumstances had brought her to the depths of Sussex from London where she rightly belonged, to live in squalour and cause untold trouble to the police by her negligence.

  Her quiet voice, grown rather shaky, broke into his harsh and perhaps unjust reverie. “John’s all I’ve got. I’ve no one in the world but John.”

  And whose fault was that? “We’ll find him,” said Burden firmly. “Ill find a woman to be with you. Perhaps this Mrs. Crantock?”

  “Would you? She’s very nice. Most of the people around here are nice, although they’re not …” She paused and considered. “They’re not quite like any people I’ve known before.”

  I’ll bet they’re not, thought Burden. He glanced at the patchwork dress. For what respectable social occasion would any woman choose to wear a thing like that?

  She didn’t come to the door with him. He left her staring into space, playing with the long chain of beads that hung round her neck. But when he was outside he looked back and saw her white face at the window, a smeared dirty window that those thin hands had never polished. Their eyes met for a moment and convention forced him to grin uneasily. She gave no answering smile but only stared, her face as pale and wan as the moon between clouds of heavy hair.

  Mrs. Crantock was a neat and cheerful woman who wore her greying black hair in crisp curls and a string of cultured pearls against her pink twinset. At Burden’s request she left immediately to keep Mrs. Lawrence company. Her husband had already gone off with the search parties and only Julian and his fourteen-year-old sister remained in the house.

  “Julian, when you saw John walk off towards Mill Lane, did you see anything else? Did anyone speak to him?”

  The boy shook his head. “He just went off.”

  “And then what did he do? Did he stand under the trees or go down the lane?”

  “Don’t know.” Julian fidgeted and looked down. “I was on the swings.”

  “Did you look over towards the lane? Didn’t you look to see where he was?”

  “He’d gone,” said Julian. “Gary said he’d gone and a jolly good thing because we didn’t want babies.”

  “I see.”

  “Honestly, he doesn’t know,” said the sister. “We’ve been on and on at him but he really doesn’t know.”

  Burden gave up and went to the Deans at 63.

  “I’m not having Gary hounded,” said Mrs. Dean, a hard-looking young woman with an aggressive manner. “Children quarrel all the time. Gary’s not to be blamed because John Lawrence is so sensitive that a bit of teasing makes him run off. The child’s disturbed. That’s what’s at the root of the trouble. He comes from a broken home, so what can you expect?”

  These were Burden’s own sentiments. “I’m not blaming Gary,” h
e said. “I just want to ask him some questions.”

  “I’m not having him bullied.”

  These days the least bit of opposition was liable to set him off.

  “You’re at liberty,” he said sharply, “to report me to the Chief Constable, madam, if I bully him.”

  The boy was in bed but not asleep. He came down in his dressing-gown, his eyes sulky and his lip stuck out.

  “Now, Gary, I’m not angry with you. No one’s angry. We just want to find John. You understand that, don’t you?”

  The boy didn’t answer.

  “He’s tired,” said his mother. “He’s told you he didn’t see anyone and that ought to be enough.”

  Burden ignored her. He leant towards the boy. “Look at me, Gary.” The eyes which met his were full of tears. “Don’t cry. You could help us, Gary. Wouldn’t you like everyone to think of you as the boy who helped the police to find John? All I want you to tell me is if you saw anyone at all, any grown-up, by the lane when John went away.”

  “I didn’t see them today,” said Gary. He screamed and threw himself on his mother. “I didn’t see them, I didn’t!”

  “I hope you’re satisfied,” said Mrs. Dean. “I’m warning you, I shall take this further.”

  “I didn’t see that person,” Gary sobbed.

  “Well, Mike?” said Wexford.

  “It looks as if a man’s been hanging about that playing field. I thought I might have a go at the people in the end houses overlooking the swings field.”

  “All right, and I’ll try the two end ones in Wincanton.”

  Did Wexford remember that he and Jean had once lived there? Burden wondered if he was attributing an excess of sensitivity to the chief inspector. Probably. A policeman has no private life when on a case. He made his way to the bottom of Fontaine Road. The fields were dark now but occasionally in the far distance, he could make out the gleam from a torch.

  The last two houses faced each other. One was a detached bungalow, vintage 1935, the other a tall narrow Victorian place. Both had side windows facing the field. Burden knocked at the bungalow and a girl came to the door.