Not in the Flesh

by Ruth Rendell

  “But it was a perfectly respectable thing to be doing, a useful, valuable thing.”

  She agreed rather reluctantly, “Yes. Perhaps so. But Vivien and I, we'd have thought it a dull thing, we'd have thought it boring, and we wouldn't have understood how it could have been important enough to take him away from us almost every evening. I mean, I can understand now that Dad and Mum could have needed the extra money, but I wouldn't have done then. They never talked to us about money. Mum said to me after he-well, after he'd gone, that children could have terrific anxieties if they thought their parents were short of cash. They imagined themselves without a home, sleeping in the street, that sort of thing. But then I thought, if he'd taken on this researching thing, Mum would have mentioned it when Dad went missing-and she didn't.”

  “We wondered,” said Wexford, recalling that this had been Burden's idea. “We also wondered if your father had perhaps embarked on something which, if it was successful, would bring him a lot of kudos, but if it failed might make him seem ridiculous. Forgive me, but that's the way I have to put it.”

  “That's all right. I'm past all that. But I don't know, I just don't know.”

  He nodded. “All right.”

  Hannah, who had been silent up till then, spoke for him. “Will you lend us your ring?”

  There was no eager response. Selina touched the ring, covered it with the fingers of her left hand. Then, without answering, she pulled it off and handed it to him in one of those rapid gestures people make when they know they must relinquish something they desperately want to keep.

  “Thank you. It will be quite safe.”

  Hannah wrote her a receipt for it. Selina looked at it strangely, as if to receive this slip of paper was the last thing she expected to be given in exchange for a precious possession.

  “What do you want it for, guv?” Hannah said when they were seated in the car and Donaldson was passing through Croydon.

  “I'm not sure yet,” he said, not entirely truthfully. “Is this your street or is it the next one?”

  “This one.”

  She got out of the car and ran up the stairs to the front door. Just as Donaldson pulled away, Wexford looked at the front window and saw her head and Bal's silhouetted behind the thin curtains. He rested his head back against the cushion and thought about the two women who called themselves wives-in-law. They had invited him to Athelstan House, he hadn't made the appointment himself. Why had they? There had been nothing they wanted to tell him he hadn't heard before and nothing they wanted him to tell them. He remembered the tray with the biscuits on it and the open jar of lemon curd and an unpleasant thought came to him. Would that wasp which had feasted on it have died if Maeve hadn't first crushed the life out of it? Was that why she had been so quick to seize upon it, even risking a sting?

  Bizarre as it seemed as midmorning refreshments, that lemon curd had been intended for him. Was it too far-fetched to think of poison? Of course it was. He must be overtired. Wearily now, he found himself fingering the ring in his pocket. It might have been one of those talismans that abound in fantasy literature, a magic ring that would make him invisible or give him his heart's desire. Perhaps he should make a wish.

  “Keep Shamis Imran safe from harm,” he said under his breath, and added, “What a fool I am.”

  24

  Something dull and subdued about Matea made him ask. Very young people have a glow about them that starts to fade in the mid-twenties. Jane Austen called it “bloom.” In Matea's case, the bloom had clouded, dulling her eyes and turning her hair lifeless and lank. Though she was as polite as ever, there was a lassitude about the way she served them.

  “How are you, Matea? Are you all right?”

  The tone in which she said “Fine” would have been funny if it hadn't sounded like misery. She came back with their naan and a jug of water in which she had forgotten to put any ice.

  “I wonder what's going on in that family,” Wexford said. “Akande's alerted the Social Services, but there doesn't seem much to be done. According to Mrs. Dirir, Shamis was running around as normal the day after they got back. She couldn't be doing that if she'd just undergone mutilation.”

  Burden made a face. “It's nasty, isn't it? It makes you wonder how feminists-all women in fact-can concentrate on any other aspect of persecution of women while female genital mutilation flourishes. Why isn't half the human race up in arms?”

  “Is this my old friend Mike Burden talking?”

  Burden didn't change color. Blushing was a reaction he had left in the past. “Well, those are Jenny's ideas. I can't say I don't agree, though.”

  Matea brought their chicken tikka and Wexford poured them glasses of water. He said nothing about the lack of ice. “I'm going to see Tredown this afternoon.”

  “Is that purely sick visiting or because you want a talk?”

  “I hope he'll want to talk to me.”

  “What, a deathbed confession?”

  “It could be,” said Wexford. “Last time I saw him I had a feeling he might say a lot if he could be apart from those two women. Realistically, though, I think only he can tell me how he found Hexham to do his research for him. Was it through some sort of advertisement or by word of mouth? How many times had Hexham been to Athelstan House and how and where did he go when he left on that particular day? In a taxi to Kingsmarkham station? On foot? Surely not. It was pouring with rain. Or did he never leave the place alive? Those are the things I want to know, or rather, the things I'm likely to find out.”

  “Do we know how long Tredown has got?”

  “You mean till the end? Till death parts him from those two wives of his?”

  “I suppose I do, yes.”

  “Weeks rather than months, I think. Do you want some halva? Or some yogurt? What I like about this place is that it takes its name literally, it's a passage to India and it picks up national dishes all along the way.”

  Afterward he wondered why he had chosen to go in his own car to Pomfret instead of letting Donaldson drive him. It had something to do with the awesome nature of this place, its function as death's waiting room, its humane and tender purpose. Officialdom should not come here and disrupt these last peaceful days where palliative care was all and hope was over.

  When he came here before, just to have a look, he had noticed there was nowhere to park cars in the front of the building. He drove in through the gateway, past the pond with the ducks, the hostas and the bulrushes, and followed the paved path that led around the side of the hospice to the back. Here was another arrow pointing to the rather distant car park, an area screened off by trees and shrubs. Five cars were already there and one of them was Maeve Tredown's, the dark red Volvo. He experienced a slight sinking of the heart, a feeling composed of exasperation and a sense of the futility of his coming here at all. He had told her he would be visiting that day. Couldn't she have taken the hint? Or was it rather that she (and possibly Claudia Ricardo, too) had come because he was coming? He could see someone in the car, but it was too far off for him to be sure it was Maeve.

  Reflecting on this, he began walking slowly along the drive-way toward an arrow marked “Reception.” When he reached the side of the building and was between its brick wall and a tall chain-link fence, wondering if there was any point in his staying, he heard a car behind him. It was going fast, too fast to negotiate this fairly narrow passage, and he leapt aside. As he did so, turning to face the oncoming vehicle, instead of stopping its driver accelerated. He shouted and threw up his arms, but the car drove straight at him, scooping him up onto its bonnet and swerving to scrape its bodywork along the wall.

  It was a bizarre, unreal happening, something he'd seen in films, only heard of in life. He teetered there, sliding, kicking on the slippery surface, trying and failing to get a grip on something, anything. Slithering off, making frenzied sounds, calling for help, he crashed onto the paving stones up against the fence, his right hand out to break his fall. Pain shot up his arm. Afterward h
e said he knew he was alive because he heard a bone in his wrist crack. The dark red Volvo hesitated only for a moment before charging toward the gateway and out into Pomfret High Street with a roar and a gush of exhaust fumes.

  Hannah had slipped the ring on, but it was too big for the third finger of her slender hand, fitting rather more tightly on the middle finger. It seemed an omen. She might wear the diamond Bal had given her for her engagement; no wedding band should ever replace it. If they wanted children she could have them without benefit of matrimony. She was too young to worry about inheritance tax, and the law would be changed by then, anyway. No, she'd never marry, she thought, as Damon came down the police station steps and got into the driving seat.

  “She's on a week's holiday and she's staying with her mother,” Hannah said. “Godalming somewhere. Salterton Street. God knows where that is, you'll have to use the satnav.”

  Fascinated by modern technology, Damon was delighted to get the chance. The satellite navigation voice, not unlike Hannah's own, directed him the opposite way to where he would have gone if left to himself. He sighed happily. “This woman, isn't there some nutcase boyfriend who's paranoid about her knowing other guys?”

  “You're quite safe,” said Hannah, laughing. “It's only one particular guy. She's left him behind in my neck of the woods.”

  The little house in a Godalming backstreet was found with ease but no more quickly, Damon insisted, than he could have done on his own. He was mildly disillusioned. Letting them into the house was a very old woman, small, shriveled, stick thin, in a short-sleeved sweater and leggings that would have fitted an undersized twelve-year-old. It was hard to believe she and tall brawny Bridget Cook could be mother and daughter.

  “You're not wanting to take my ring off me?” were almost the first words Bridget said.

  “We'd just like to compare it with this one, Miss Cook,” Hannah said. She held out the ring Selina Hexham had lent Wexford on the palm of her hand.

  “I don't know if it'll come off.”

  Bridget struggled with the ring, twisting and pulling it, failing to move it over the swollen joint.

  “Come on, love,” said Mrs. Cook in her birdlike twitter, “let me have a go. I've got just the thing. Wait a minute.”

  A jar of Vaseline was produced, the finger anointed, and at last the ring began to slide. Mrs. Cook gave it a final pull over her daughter's knuckle and the two rings lay side by side. Each had a chased design of leaves, as if a laurel wreath encircled them. Hannah looked closely, lifted each one in turn up to the light while the always obliging Mrs. Cook produced a magnifying glass. “Forever” was inside Bridget's, and “Forever” inside Selina Hexham's, identical promises engraved at the same time, in the same italics.

  “Let me see.” Lily Cook brandished her magnifying glass. “I can't see that even with my glasses. Oh, look, fancy that. Who's that other one belong to, Bridge?”

  “I don't know,” Bridget said sadly. It was as if some assumption she had made had been destroyed at a blow.

  “May I borrow it, Miss Cook?”

  “I knew you'd ask.” The sadness in Bridget's tone had deepened. “I have to say yes, don't I? Tell me one thing. Did he nick it?”

  In a manner of speaking, Hannah thought. “I can't tell you that,” she said, but she was touched suddenly by unusual emotion, by fellow feeling for a sister-woman. “The important thing is he gave it to you. He wanted you to wear it.”

  It is surprisingly difficult to crawl on two legs and an arm, easier (but more painful) when you bend the damaged limb at the elbow and swing it back and forth. He was afraid that if he stood he might find he'd broken more than his wrist, but he tried and made it to the wall of the building, where he hung on with his left hand to a drainpipe. Not an ache but an intense burning soreness shivered through his body. In the morning he'd be a mass of bruises, but he was alive and not, he thought, much harmed. They would ask him, he knew very well, if he had lost consciousness. He wasn't sure. Had he? How was it that he didn't know? There seemed to be some missing minutes in his recall of the past ten, a black curtain coming down like a brief dropping off to sleep. Well, he'd tell them that. His phone was all right. As he began to key in the numbers a car turned in from the road and he recognized it as Raymond Akande's. It stopped before it reached him. Dr. Akande jumped out.

  “Someone tried to run me over in a car,” Wexford said.

  “Tried to?”

  “Failed, as you see. It was more a case of me running over them. I got tossed onto the top of the car and think I've broken my wrist. Look, I've got to make a phone call.”

  “No, you haven't. I'll take you to the infirmary myself.”

  “Thanks but this is something else.” Akande helped him into his car and there, when the sharp pains associated with movement had subsided, he spoke to Burden. “I want you to go to Athelstan House and arrest Maeve Tredown. What for? Attempted murder. That's right. Attempted murder of me. ”

  His notion that she had tried to poison him hadn't been so fantastic after all.

  “Of course you have to stay in overnight if they say so,” Dora said in the mildly scolding voice she used when he was recalcitrant. She sat by the bed he had rejected in favor of the armchair next to hers. “They've got to take X-rays and things. A scan, that doctor said. And they're going to put a plaster on your arm.”

  “When Jenny Burden broke her wrist they put a pin in. She didn't have a plaster. Why can't I have a pin?”

  “Don't be so childish, Reg. What were you doing at the hospice, anyway?”

  “Visiting Tredown. Or trying to.”

  “A corporal work of mercy, as the Catholics say?” She didn't wait for his answer. “I'm reading The First Heaven. Sheila kept on saying I have to, and I must say it's not a hardship. I'm loving it.” She hesitated, then said tentatively, “Would you think I was mad if I said the only thing is he didn't write it?”

  “My sentiments entirely,” said Wexford. “Here, give me your hand. Two minds with but a single thought we are. I wish they'd let me go home.”

  She shook her head. “Don't get run over again, will you?” To his dismay he saw a tear in her eye, but she said brightly, “Here's Mike. You'll want to talk to him.”

  “Don't go,” he said, but she was halfway across the ward. Burden kissed her cheek, came to the bedside, and stood over him. “What happened?” Wexford asked.

  “Court in the morning,” Burden said. “Of course she denies it, says you walked-well, ran-out in front of her. Are there any witnesses?”

  “Of course not. If there'd been anyone around she'd have postponed it till another day.”

  “Sure.”

  “Like I've had to postpone seeing Tredown. But she must be seriously afraid of me, don't you think? Did you have a look at the car?”

  “Both of us did. I took Barry with me. There are scratches on the bonnet and a couple of scrapes made by the heel of your shoe where I guess you tried to get a purchase and both sides are scraped to hell. There's a long dent all along the nearside. But so what, Reg? She doesn't deny hitting you, she just says it wasn't her fault. And she's got the nerve to say she's not a very good driver. I don't think we've a chance of making the charge stick, other than her leaving a scene of an accident.”

  “I don't think so either,” said Wexford, “but that doesn't matter all that much, seeing that we'll very shortly have her back in court on an even more serious charge, she and her henchwoman, Ricardo.”

  “And will we make that stick?”

  “God knows, Mike. We can only try.”

  25

  The two rings spilled out of the plastice zipper bag onto the lap of his blue-check dressing gown. One was tagged with the name “Cook,” the other “Hexham.” Hannah handed him a magnifying glass, apparently having no faith in his unaided eyesight.

  “Did you notice the chasing on the Cook ring is very slightly more worn than on the Hexham?”

  She hadn't. “Why d'you think that is, guv?”
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  Dora had called him childish on the previous day and no doubt this was the word for his unreasonable hope that none of his fellow inmates of Frobisher Ward heard the title she gave him. Still, we all have our vanities and our touchiness, he told himself, we are only human. “Because one was on someone's finger more than the other. Three years went by when Miller had the ring before he gave it to Bridget Cook and in those years no one wore it.”

  The ward sister came up to them, told Hannah she would have to go as the doctors were doing their rounds. “And I expect he'll let you go home, Mr. Wexford.”

  “I thought they always called people by their first names these days, guv,” whispered Hannah.

  “I expect that like most of us,” said Wexford blandly, “they call them by the name they prefer.”

  At home he found a reception committee of daughters and grandchildren. “I haven't been at death's door,” he told his social-worker daughter.

  “They all want to write their names on your plaster,” Sylvia said. “What is it about the British that they always have to queue?”

  “They learn it at their mothers' knees,” said Wexford, holding out his cast for the two boys. “I don't believe you can write, you're too little,” he said to Amy.

  Shouting, “I can, I can,” she executed a bold squiggle in red felt-tip and he told her how clever she was.

  Anoushka, in her mother's arms, managed a scribble but Mary really was too little to do more than crow and laugh.

  “I've been calling on the Imrans,” Sylvia said when he and she were briefly alone.

  “You have?”

  “I'm a child care officer-remember?”

  “And what have you found?”

  “Not much,” she said. “Shamis starts school next month. She's excited about it. I don't tell them why I'm visiting and they haven't asked. Maybe they think it's all part of the service, something that we do for every family with a preschool child. If only we had the resources!”