Simisola

by Ruth Rendell

  Gardens. It’s then that Diana Graddon sees her. Or, rather, she sees Annette and when she comes out a second time, she sees Sojourner at the front door of Ladyhall Court.’ ‘To be precise, she sees Annette leaning out of the window talking to Sojourner. Did Annette let her into the house? Did she want to be let in?’ ‘Annette must have told her that if she wanted work, or wanted the dole, her only course was to come to the Benefit Office next day, the Tuesday. Maybe she said to ask for her and gave her her name but didn’t let her in. She wasn’t very free about letting people into her flat.’ ‘So what did Sojourner say that made Annette wonder if she should tell the police?’ ‘You think that’s what it was? It was Sojourner that told her that, whatever it was? This was twenty-four hours, more than twenty-four hours, before she spoke on the phone to cousin Jane on Tuesday evening.’ ‘I know, Mike. I’m guessing. But look at it this way. Sojourner said something to Annette that she didn’t like or made her suspicious. What it was we don’t know, very likely what she was going to tell Oni but never did, something about the man who beat her and maybe where he lived. However, we do know that Sojourner never took the advice Annette presumably gave her, to come to the Benefit Office next day. ‘When she didn’t come, don’t you think it likely that Annette became uneasy? Perhaps she wanted to discuss whatever it was with Sojourner before she took any steps. But by that time Annette was feeling unwell. She went home, went to bed, was ill enough to tell Snow she couldn’t see him next day but was still worried enough to pass her worries on to her cousin. ‘As to why I think the something the police should know came from Sojourner, well, she died that night, didn’t she, she was murdered that night. She couldn’t go to the Benefit Office because she was dead. And her failure to come must have compounded Annette’s fears – only with that virus, believe me, for the time being you’re not thinking about anyone but yourself.’ ‘So on the Monday evening, Annette just sent Sojourner back home, wherever that was?’ ‘She behaved, no doubt, as anyone would in the circumstances. Probably she didn’t give any advice at all beyond telling her to come to the Benefit Office. Unfortunately, tragically, Sojourner had nowhere else to go but home. What happened next we’ve no idea, but we can make a reasonable guess that someone at home, father, brother, husband even, some male relative, shall we say “punished” her for running away?’ ‘The person she was afraid was pursuing her?’ ‘Oh, yes.’ ‘How did he know about Oni Johnson? How did he know about Annette?’ ‘She told him, don’t you think?’ Burden looked as if he would like to ask why but he didn’t. ‘You said Sojourner “told him”. Told who? Her father? Her brother? Husband? Boyfriend?’ ‘Husband or boyfriend, it would have to be. We know all the black people here, Mike, we’ve found them all, we’ve talked to them. But she may have had a white boyfriend.’ All the while Wexford talked he had been thinking, inescapably, of Dr Akande. It sometimes seemed to him that all roads led back to the Akandes and that, conversely, every route he took he found one or other of the Akandes there. He picked up the phone and asked Pemberton to come up. ‘Bill, I want you to get on to Kimberley Pearson’s family and find out everything you can about them.’

  Pemberton attempted to disguise his incomprehension and failed. ‘Zack Nelson’s girlfriend,’ said Burden. ‘Yes. Oh, sure. What, parents, d’you mean? Where are they?’ ‘I don’t know. I haven’t the faintest, somewhere within a radius of twenty miles, say. There is, or was, a grandmother. I want to know where she lived and when she died. And Kimberley’s not to know. I don’t want a hint of this reaching Kimberley.’ With a flash of insight that surprised Wexford and pleased him, Pemberton said, ‘Do you reckon Kimberley’s life’s in danger, sir? Is she the next girl he’s after?’ Wexford said slowly, ‘Not if we keep away from her. Not if he – or she – thinks we’ve done with her. I’m going back to the hospital. I want to talk to Oni again.’ He added, remembering what Freeborn had accused him of, ‘But I’m not even going to drive down Stowerton High Street, I’ll go the long way round.’ Mhonum Ling was there. If there were to be a competition for the most over-dressed woman in Kingsmarkham, Wexford thought, it would be hard choosing between Oni’s sister and Anouk Khoori. Mhonum’s ankle-length pink skirt was just short enough to disclose her jewelled sandals. The tee-shirt she wore was a far cry from Danny’s; it had sequins on it. He held Oni’s hand for a moment and she gave him one of her tremendous smiles. ‘I’m going to take you through all that again,’ he said. She made a face of mock-horror but he thought she enjoyed it really. Raffy walked in, carrying a ghetto-blaster, mercifully not on. Wexford he was used to by now but he gave his aunt the sort of look more likely to be on the face of someone who has seen a lioness on the loose. When Oni repeated the things Sojourner had said in Yoruba, Mhonum shrugged her shoulders and turned her head to look Raffy up and down. ‘When she’d gone out of sight,’ Wexford said, ‘did the children start coming out? Or did a lot of parents arrive before that?’ ‘Mothers and father, mostly mothers, they start coming five, ten minutes before children come out. That one in the car parked right by my feet, the one I moved on, she was the first. Then all the others start coming.’ ‘I’d like you to think carefully about this, Mrs Johnson. Did you get the impression she ran away from you because she was afraid of one of the parents seeing her?’ Oni Johnson tried to remember. She screwed her eyes tight shut with the effort of concentration. Mhonum Ling said, ‘You know her name yet?’ ‘Not yet, Mrs Ling.’ ‘What you bring that radio in here for, Raffy?’ she said to her nephew and, without waiting for an answer, ‘You go down the drinks machine and fetch a Diet Fanta for auntie and one for your mummy.’ She produced a handful of change from her pink patent-leather bag. ‘And have yourself a coke, good boy, hurry up now.’ Opening her eyes, Oni said, ‘No good, I don’t know. I never did know. She frightened, she in big hurry, but I don’t know what she frightened of.’ He went down the stairs with the silent boy pattering along in front of him. Raffy stopped at the drinks machine, stared hopelessly at the keys and the pictures above them. Diet Coke he could wrest from it. Fanta presented more of a problem. Wexford put out a finger as he passed, tapped the relevant key and walked on out to the car park. At least a hundred cars had arrived since he left his. He was remembering how he had told the Chief Constable and a good many other people besides that he would have this case solved by the end of the week. Early days, though, it was only Tuesday.

  Turning out of the hospital gates and into the roundabout, he nearly took the first exit. Then he remembered he had to avoid the High Street and drove round to the third. Perhaps he was being over-scrupulous. No one was following him, the idea was ridiculous, it wasn’t as if he intended to stop outside Clifton Court, still less call on Kimberley Pearson, but he took the third exit just the same. He might have saved Oni Johnson’s life but he had terribly endangered it first. This devious route took him along Charteris Road and into Sparta Grove. He hadn’t been along that street since the little Epson boys were taken into care, and he had only gone there then to say a few words into the television cameras about parents who went off on holiday and left their children at home unattended. Now he tried to remember which of this three-storey Victorian row was their house. Not a slummy house at all, the Epsons weren’t poor, if they didn’t want their children with them they could easily have afforded to pay a child-minder. He was driving slowly. Ahead of him a man came out of one of the houses, closed the front door behind him and got into a pink car parked at the pavement edge. Wexford pulled in and switched off the engine. The man was tall and heavily-built, fair-haired, young, but he had his back to him and Wexford couldn’t see his face. He wasn’t Epson. He was too young and Epson was black, a Jamaican. The car moved off, gathering speed very rapidly, tearing round the corner into Charteris Road. He had seen that man in that car very recently and he had an idea the circumstances were somehow distasteful or that he wanted to avoid thinking about them. That, no doubt, was the reason he couldn’t remember. He sat there for a moment or two but memory had deserted him. His rou
te home took him through the industrial estate, a stark and deserted place, half the factories boarded-up or to let. A narrow country lane led back on to the Kingsmarkham road and ten minutes later he was in his own house. The answer to things had sometimes in the past come to him, directly or indirectly, from Sheila; from a remark she made or her latest interest or passion, or something she had given him to read. Whatever it was, it had set him on the right road. He needed her now, a word or two from her, a pointer. But it was his other daughter visiting him this evening with Ben and Robin, having arranged to meet Neil in her parents’ house after his job club session. Her indulgent mother had invited them all to stay for supper. Even as he digested this, Wexford thought how much Sylvia would hate being termed, even in his secret mind, his ‘other daughter’. No father ever struggled so hard not to show the preference he felt and no father, he thought, so signally failed. As soon as he walked in the door he had realized he must resist phoning Sheila while Sylvia was there, or at least while Sylvia was in earshot. The evening was warm. They sat outside, a ring of chairs round the sunshade table, and Sylvia’s suggestion that they eat there was met, inevitably, by a version of her older son’s favourite phrase. ‘Mushk eler.’ ‘Well, it’s a problem for me,’ said Wexford. ‘You know I can’t stand al fresco eating, all those mosquitos. It’s the same with picnics.’ The boys and their grandmother immediately engaged in argument about the merits and demerits of picnics. Sylvia, ignoring them, lay back in her chair, half-closed her eyes, and began to talk about her counselling course, how completely different was the approach from when she did her social sciences degree, how the emphasis here was on people, on human interaction, on enabling and personal interdependence . . . It was

  ridiculous, Wexford thought, the way he was behaving, afraid to phone Sheila secretly, lest she had her answering machine on and would therefore ring back after an hour or two. How soon would Sylvia and family go? Not for hours. Neil wasn’t expected for an hour. Dora took the boys with her into the house. Robin was to lay the table, she said. The expected response didn’t come, presumably because it was a problem. ‘Wouldn’t you like a drink?’ he said to Sylvia, as much to stem the tide as because he wanted one. ‘Sparkling water. Mostly we’ll be dealing with depression and anxiety states. But there’s always a lot of domestic violence and you have to bear in mind the secrecy imperative in creating confidence in the client. We shall counsel each other, I mean, of course, initially . . .’ When Wexford came back with her water and his beer she was still talking. She seemed to have reached the physical abuse by strong people of other, weaker people. Her eyes were shut now and she was staring up through her closed lids at the blue summer sky. ‘Why do they do it?’ said Wexford. He had interrupted her in mid-flow. She opened her eyes and looked at him. ‘Do what?’ ‘Men beat up their wives, people mistreat their kids.’ ‘Are you really asking me? Do you really want to know?’ A pang, a guilty wince, was the effect on him of these questions. It was as if she was amazed that he wanted to know anything she could tell him. She would talk, she would assert herself, on and on, relentlessly, but not to entertain or inform. To get back at him, to show him. Now he sounded as if he really wanted to know. Her tone was one of incredulity – you’re asking me? What he really wanted was to find a way of escape and phone Sheila. Instead he said, ‘I’d like to know.’ She didn’t answer directly. ‘Have you ever heard of Benjamin Rush?’ ‘I don’t think so.’ ‘He was the Dean of the Medical School at the University of Pennsylvania. Oh, nearly two hundred years ago. He’s known as the father of American psychiatry. Of course there was slavery then in the United States. One of the things Rush maintained was that all crimes are diseases and he thought not believing in God was a mental disease.’ ‘So what’s he got to do with physical abuse?’ ‘Well, I bet you’ve never heard of this before, Dad. Rush made up something called a Theory of Negritude. He believed being black was a disease. Black people suffered from congenital leprosy but in such a mild form that pigmentation was its only symptom. Do you see what holding a theory like that means? It justifies sexual segregation and social maltreatment. It means you’ve got a reason for ill-treating people.’ ‘Wait a minute,’ said Wexford. ‘What you’re saying is that if someone is an object of pity you’re going to want to use physical violence against them? That seems cock-eyed. It’s the contrary of everything social morals teach us.’ ‘No, listen. You make someone into an object of – not so much of pity as of weakness, sickness, stupidity, ineffectiveness, do you see what I mean? You hit them for their stupidity and their inability to respond, and when you’ve hurt them, marked them, they’re even more sick and ugly, aren’t they? And they’re afraid and cringing too. Oh, I know this isn’t very pleasant, but you did ask.’

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘So you’ve got a frightened, stupid, even disabled person, silenced, made ugly, and what can you do with someone like that, someone who’s unworthy of being treated well? You treat them badly because that’s what they deserve. One thinks of poor little kids that no one can love because they’re dirty, covered in snot and shit, and always screaming. So you beat them because they’re hateful, they’re low, they’re sub-human. That’s all they’re good for, being hit, being reduced even further.’ He was silent. She mistook his silence for shock, not at the content of what she had said but because she had said it, and quick to make amends, said, ‘Dad, it’s horrible, I know, but I do have to know about these things, I have to try to understand something about the doer as well as the done-to.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘It’s not that. I know that. I’m a policeman, remember? There was something else you said, it struck a chord. One word. I can’t remember . . .’ ‘ “Sub-human”? “Ineffectiveness?” ’ ‘No. It’ll come to me.’ He got up. ‘Thank you, Sylvia. You don’t know how you’ve helped me.’ Her look went to his heart. For a moment she looked like her son Ben. He bent over and kissed her forehead. ‘I know what it was,’ he said, half to himself. ‘It’s come back to me.’ Upstairs, at his bedside as yet unread, were the leaflets and brochures Sheila had sent him, the literature of her latest passion. He would read them as soon as Sylvia had gone. But he had also remembered something about the man who came out of the Epsons’ and had been driving the Epsons’ car. He hadn’t seen his face. And he hadn’t seen the face of whoever was driving that car when a little boy had come out of the Thomas Proctor gates and got into it. Wexford could see that little boy quite clearly, a brown boy with brown curly hair, who could have been that man’s son but only if his mother was black and only if he had fathered him when he was a boy himself. Was this the man Sojourner had been running to escape a fortnight before? No, Wexford thought, that wasn’t the way it was at all. . . .

  Chapter Twenty The usual call on the Akandes must be postponed. If Wexford’s guess was right, he would be in no mood to face them with this at the forefront of his mind. And what was there to say? Even the common pleasantries, weather commentary, enquiries after their health, would come stiltedly. He thought of how he had tried to prepare them, telling them to abandon hope, and he remembered Akande’s optimism, flaring one day, dying the next. He drove himself to work, passing the Akandes’ house but keeping his eyes on the road ahead. Reports awaited him on the progress of the house-to-house enquiries but they were negative, they had yielded nothing apart from racism among unlikely householders and an unsuspected liberal attitude where prejudice was most anticipated. When it came to human beings, there was no knowing. Malahyde, Pemberton, Archbold and Donaldson would keep on all day, ringing doorbells, showing the photograph, asking. If Kingsmarkham produced nothing, they would begin on the villages, Mynford, Myfleet, Cheriton. Wexford took Barry Vine with him to Stowerton. They avoided the High Street and went by way of Waterford Avenue where the Chief Constable’s house was. The neighbourhoods changed very quickly in Stowerton and it was a long stone’s throw to Sparta Grove. Wexford smiled to himself as they passed the house, thinking how near Freeborn had been to it all, this . . . well, conspiracy, wasn’t it? – going on
under his nose. The pink car was parked in the road, back where he had first seen it the night before. In the broad daylight of a sunny morning it looked very dirty. A finger graffitist had written ‘Clean me now’ in the dust on its boot lid. Not a window in the house was open. It seemed empty – but the car was there. The doorbell wasn’t working. Vine banged smartly on the knocker and remarked, looking up at the closed windows, that nine in the morning was early for some people. He knocked again and was about to bellow through the letter box when the sash of an upstairs window was raised and the man whose back Wexford had seen the evening before and had been unable to identify, put his head out. It was Christopher Riding. ‘Police,’ said Wexford. ‘Remember me?’ ‘Should I?’ ‘Chief Inspector Wexford, Kingsmarkham CID. Come down and let us in, please.’ They waited a long time. Scuffling noises came from inside and the sound of something made of glass being dropped and broken. A string of muffled curses was followed by a dull thump. Vine suggested wistfully that it would be a good idea to kick the door down. ‘No, here he comes.’ The door was opened cautiously. A child of about four put his head round it and giggled. He was peremptorily pulled back and the man whose face had appeared at the