Simisola

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘Mr and Mrs Khoori are not at home.’ Her next words sounded like a phone answering machine. ‘Please leave a message if you would like to.’ ‘Juana what?’ said Burden. ‘Gonzalez. Now you go. Thank you.’ ‘Ms Lopez,’ said Wexford, ‘Ms Gonzalez, you have a choice. You may either talk to us here and now or else come with us back to Kingsmarkham to the police station. Do you understand what I’m saying?’ It was necessary to repeat this several times, for him to repeat it and for Burden to put it into slightly different words, before there was any sort of response. Both women were mistresses of the art of silent insolence. But when Juana suddenly said something in what he took for Tagalog and both broke into giggles, Wexford thought he could understand the misery of Margarita’s sister Corazon who had been laughed at for missing her children. Juana repeated the incomprehensible words, then apparently translated them. ‘No problem.’ ‘OK. All right,’ said Rosenda. ‘You sit down now.’ There seemed no need to penetrate further into the house. The hall was a vast chamber, pillared, arched, alcoved, the walls panelled and with recessed columns, very much the kind of room guests must have been welcomed into at a Pemberley or a Northanger Abbey. Only this was new, all new, barely finished. And even in the early nineteenth century, even in winter, no great house would have been as cold inside as this one. He sat down on a pale blue chair with spindly gold legs but Burden remained standing as did the two women, side by side, enjoying themselves. ‘Did you work for Mr and Mrs Khoori when they were in the Dower House?’ Burden had to take them to a window and point out the woods in the valley, the invisible roofs. Nods encouraged him. ‘And again, of course, when they came here in June?’ More nods. He remembered what Cookie Dix had said about shutting people up. ‘Do you go out much?’ ‘Go out?’ ‘Into town. Go and see friends. Meet people. Go to the cinema. Do you go out?’ From the vertical, their heads moved horizontally. Juana said, ‘Don’t drive car. Mrs Khoori go shopping and we don’t want cinema, have TV.’ ‘Was Corazon with you at the Dower House?’ His very anglicized pronunciation of the name had them in giggles again and the way he said it repeated by each of them. Then, ‘She was cook,’ said Juana. Memory returned. The medical centre and a woman who broke the no smoking rule. ‘She had to have the doctor? She was ill?’ ‘Always ill she was. Homesick. She went home.’ ‘And that left the two of you,’ Wexford said. ‘But there was another servant, at the same time as Corazon or perhaps after?’ It was hard to tell if they were blank or wary. He sought political correctness, saying carefully, ‘A young girl, seventeen or eighteen, from Africa.’ Almost shivering from the cold, Burden showed them the photograph. The effect was to stimulate more laughter. But before Wexford could decide whether they were laughing from race prejudice, simple wonder that anyone could suspect them of an ability to identify this girl or from a kind of pleasurable horror – Sojourner’s face seemed to look more deeply dead each time he produced the photograph – the front door opened and

  Anouk Khoori came in, immediately followed by her husband, Jeremy Lang and Ingrid Pamber. ‘Reg,’ she said, not a bit discomposed, ‘how lovely! I had a feeling I might find you here.’ She held out both hands to him, one of them holding a cigarette. ‘But why didn’t you let me know you were coming?’ Wael Khoori said nothing. His was invariably the manner of the highly successful millionaire businessman who puts on a genial, smiling, silent front, while seeming to be quite elsewhere, preoccupied by distant things, high finance, perhaps the Hang Seng index. He smiled, he was patient. He stood waiting. ‘We have come home for lunch,’ said Mrs Khoori. ‘Electioneering is very hard work, I can tell you, and I’m famished. Isn’t it lovely and cool in here? Of course you must stay to lunch, Reg, and you too, Mr . . .?’ She addressed Rosenda in exactly the same friendly rather breathless way, ‘I do hope you can put on something delicious and quick, please, as I have to get back to the fray.’ Khoori spoke. He ignored everything his wife had said. She might not have said a word. ‘I’m quite aware of what you’re here for.’ ‘Really, sir?’ said Wexford. ‘We’ll talk about it then, shall we?’ ‘Yes, of course, after lunch,’ said Anouk. ‘Come along, into the dining room everyone, and quickly because Ingrid has to go back to work.’ Again she was ignored. Khoori simply stood his ground while she swept up Jeremy and Ingrid, an arm round each of them, and propelled them across the hall. Ingrid, pinched and pale in her sleeveless dress, nevertheless turned to give him one of her flirtatious looks, arch, tantalizing. But she was changed, the blue glance had lost its power. Her eyes had lost their colour and for a moment he wondered if he had imagined that brilliant azure, but only for a moment, for Khoori was saying, ‘Come with me. In here.’ It was a library but a quick glance round showed him it was not of the kind one would use for reference or wish to spend much time in. The Khooris had perhaps said to a firm of interior decorators, put shelves all over the walls and fill them with suitable books, old ones with handsome bindings. So The Natural History of the Pyrenees in seven volumes had been supplied and Hakluyt’s Voyages and Mommsen on Rome and Motley on the Dutch Republic. Khoori sat down at a reproduction desk. Its green leather inlay had been made to look as if quill pens on parchment had been scratching at it for centuries. ‘You don’t seem surprised to see us, Mr Khoori,’ said Wexford. ‘No, I’m not, Mr Reg. Annoyed but not surprised.’ Wexford looked at him. This was very different from Bruce Snow’s assumption that they were traffic police. ‘What do you suppose this is about?’ ‘I suppose, I know, that those women or one of them have not applied to the Home Office for an extension of their stay. This, despite their extreme desire to stay and my having had the applications typed for them. And their knowledge that they can only stay under the provisions of the Immigration Act of 1971. All they have to do is sign the letter and take it to the post. I know because this is what happened last time, when they first came to us and had been granted an initial stay of six months. You have to keep a constant eye on these people and I haven’t the time to be as vigilant as I should be. So, very well, that’s that. What do we do to put matters right?’ A little subterfuge would do no harm, Wexford thought. ‘Simply reapply, Mr Khoori. A mistake was made but made in good faith, apparently.’

  ‘So I reapply and this time make sure the application gets to its destination?’ ‘Right,’ said Burden, transforming himself into an Immigration official. He began inventing with a facility Wexford could only admire. ‘Now, this woman Corazon, we understand she wanted to change her employment, which is of course illegal. Under the provisions of the Act she’s only permitted to work for the employer whose name is on the stamp in her passport.’ ‘There was some story about the other servants ill-treating her . . . well, being unkind to her. She was always in tears.’ Khoori shrugged. ‘It wasn’t very pleasant for myself and my wife.’ ‘So, understanding she wasn’t permitted to work elsewhere, she went home? When would that have been?’ Khoori put up one hand and smoothed his casque of white hair. It fitted him like a wig but it plainly was not a wig. The hand was long, brown, exquisitely kept. He frowned a little while he thought. ‘About a month ago, maybe less.’ And it was exactly four weeks to the day since Wexford had first encountered Anouk Khoori at the medical centre. She still had a cook then, a servant who had perhaps fallen ill through homesickness and the cruelty of others. ‘Would you mind telling me, sir,’ Wexford said, ‘where the money came from for her return flight?’ ‘I paid, Mr Reg. I paid.’ ‘Very generous of you. Just one other thing. I’d like you to set me right on this question. Would you say it was true that in the Gulf States the labour laws don’t recognize domestics as workers but treat them as family members?’ Suspicion that this might be a trap flicked in Khoori’s eyes. ‘I’m not a lawyer.’ ‘But you’re a Kuwaiti national, aren’t you? You must be aware if this is so or not, if it is in fact taken for granted.’ ‘Broadly speaking, I suppose it’s so, yes.’ ‘So that families from the Gulf States do bring in servants as family members or friends, having no status as domestics and therefore no protection from abuse? And although
it’s clear they are coming in not on holiday but to work they are allowed to stay as visitors.’ ‘Possibly. I’ve no experience of it.’ ‘But you know it happens? And that it happens because refusing entry to domestics either as workers tied to one employer and restricted to twelve-month stays, or as family members or friends and ostensible visitors, might discourage wealthy investors like yourself from coming here at all?’ Khoori gave a loud braying laugh. ‘I’m damned if I’d be here if I had to wash my own dishes.’ ‘But you have never personally brought anyone in under those special circumstances?’ ‘No, Mr Reg, I have not. You can ask my wife. Come to that, you can ask Juana and Rosenda.’ He led them into a vast cold dining room with ten windows down one wall and a painted ceiling. Some ten feet under the depicted cherubs, cornucopias and lovers’ knots Anouk, Jeremy and Ingrid sat at a mahogany table big enough for twenty-four, eating smoked salmon and drinking champagne. ‘We are celebrating my victory in advance, Reg,’ said Anouk. ‘Do you think that a very foolhardy thing to do?’

  Her husband whispered something to her. It evoked a tinkle of laughter, not however a happy sound. The repulsion she held for Wexford came back and he turned instinctively to look at Ingrid, beautiful fresh young Ingrid whose hair was still crisp and smooth and skin glowing with health but whose eyes had become as dull as stones. As he looked she took a pair of glasses from her bag and perched them on her nose. If she had changed, it was nothing to the change that had come over Anouk Khoori. Under the make-up she had gone bright red and her features seemed to knot up with tension. ‘It’s that girl who was murdered, isn’t it? That black girl? We’ve never seen her.’ Her carefully modulated voice grew shrill. ‘We know nothing about her. We’ve never had anyone working for us here but Juana and Rosenda and that Corazon who left and went home. I think it’s awful this happening today. I will not have anything like this happening to spoil my chances!’ As her voice rose on to a high note of panic, Juana and Rosenda both came into the room, the former with a carafe of water on a tray, the latter carrying a fresh plate of brown bread and butter. Their employer’s vexation, the sudden angry distress that Wexford at any rate had never witnessed before, caused them a mirth they could barely conceal. Juana had to hold her hand tightly over her mouth while Rosenda’s lips twitched as she stood staring. Wexford had scarcely anticipated her inspired guesswork. Or was it less guesswork than genuine guilt? ‘You tell them,’ Anouk shouted, ‘you tell them, you two. We never had anyone here like that, did we? You love it here, don’t you? No one ever hurt you, you tell them.’ Juana’s laughter broke free. She was beyond controlling it. ‘He crazy,’ she said, gasping. ‘We never see no one like that, do we, Rosa?’ ‘No, we never see no one, no way.’ ‘No way we don’t. Here your bread and butter. You want more lemon?’ ‘All right,’ Wexford said. ‘Thank you. That’s all.’ Evidently remembering that he had already voted, Anouk shouted at him, ‘You can get out of my house! Now! Both of you, get out!’ With a little gasp, Ingrid had got up, clutching her napkin. ‘I shall have to go. I must get back to the office.’ Rosenda was holding the dining room door open, murmuring, ‘Come on, come on, you got to go now.’ ‘You’ll give me a lift, won’t you?’ Ingrid said to Wexford. It was Burden who answered. ‘I’m afraid not.’ ‘Oh, but, surely . . .’ ‘We’re not a taxi service.’ Behind them in the dining room Anouk had given way to a crisis of nerves, uttering little staccato cries. Khoori said to no one in particular that it might help to bring the brandy. Wexford and Burden made their way across that desert of a hall to the front door, escorted by both giggling women. The heat outside met them in a wave, a positive sensuous pleasure. They were barely in the car when Ingrid came out followed by Khoori who handed her into the car they had arrived in. ‘I’ll bet that’s the first time a Rolls like that has ever brought anyone to the Benefit Office,’ said Burden, starting the engine. ‘Looks a bit different without her contact lenses, doesn’t she?’ ‘You mean that blue was lenses?’

  ‘What else? I suppose she got allergic and had to leave them off.’ Perhaps it was from the scent of his after-shave, but Gladys Prior knew it was Burden before he spoke. She even spelt his name out before he spoke, persisting with the joke that afforded her so much amusement. Wexford’s enquiry brought fresh gales of laughter. ‘Is he in? Bless you, he hasn’t set foot outside in four years.’ Percy Hammond was at his Mizpah, looking out across his Plain of Syria. Without turning round, identifying them by their voices and their footsteps, he asked, ‘When are you going to catch him, then?’ Wexford said, earning a surprised and perhaps admonitory glance from Burden, ‘Tomorrow, I should think, Mr Hammond. Yes, we’ll catch . . . er, them, tomorrow.’ ‘Who’s going to have that flat opposite?’ said Mrs Prior unexpectedly. ‘What, Annette Bystock’s flat?’ ‘That’s the one. Who’s going to have it?’ ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Burden. ‘It’ll probably go to the next-of-kin. Now, Mr Hammond, we’d like a little more help from you . . .’ ‘If you’re going to catch him tomorrow, eh?’ Burden’s expression showed all too plainly what he thought of Wexford’s wild boast. ‘What we want you to do, sir, is go back over what you saw from this window on July the eighth.’ ‘And, more importantly,’ said Wexford, ‘what you saw on July the seventh.’ It would have been unprecedented, he would never have done it, not actually done it, but Burden nearly corrected Wexford. It was on the tip of his tongue to murmur, you don’t mean that, not the seventh, he saw no one on the seventh but that girl with the blue lenses and Edwina Harris and a man with a spaniel. It was all in the report. Instead of saying it, he coughed, he cleared his throat just a little. Wexford took no notice. ‘On the Thursday morning, very early, you saw this young chap who looked a bit like Mr Burden here come out of the house with a big box in his arms.’ Percy Hammond nodded vigorously, ‘About four-thirty it was, a.m.’ ‘Right. Now on the previous night, the Wednesday night, you went to bed and to sleep but you woke up after a while and got up . . .’ ‘To spend a penny,’ said Gladys Prior. ‘And naturally you looked out of your window – and you saw someone come out of Ladyhall Court? You saw a young man come out?’ The old wrinkled face was distorted even more by the effort of remembering. He clenched his hands. ‘Did I say that?’ ‘You said it, Mr Hammond, and then you thought you’d made a mistake because you definitely saw him in the morning and you couldn’t have seen him twice.’ ‘But I did see him twice . . .’ Percy Hammond said, his voice dropping to a whisper. ‘I did.’ Wexford took it gently, moving with care. ‘You saw him twice? In the morning – and the night before?’ ‘That’s right. I knew I did, whatever they said. I saw him twice. And the first time, he saw me.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘He wasn’t carrying a box that first time, he wasn’t carrying anything. He came to the gate and he looked up and looked straight at me.’

  It was the last visit he would pay to Oni Johnson. She had nothing more to tell him. By her openness she had saved herself and next day she would leave Intensive Care for a room to be shared with three other women in Rufford Ward. Laurette Akande came out to meet him. She looked at him and spoke as if the past month had never been. She had never lost a daughter and he hadn’t found that daughter, there had been no anguish, no suffering and no joyful reunion. He might have been a sympathetic stranger. Her manner was light, her voice brisk. ‘I wish someone could get that boy of hers to have a wash. His clothes and his hair smell, not to mention the rest of him.’ ‘He’ll be gone when his mother goes,’ said Wexford. ‘It can’t be soon enough for me.’ Oni looked pretty, sitting up in bed wearing a pink satin quilted bedjacket over the bandages, much too hot for the temperature, the obvious gift of Mhonum Ling. Mhonum was on one side of the bed, Raffy on the other. It was true that he smelt unpleasant, his curious hamburger and tobacco odour battling, and winning the battle, against his aunt’s Giorgio eau-de-toilette. ‘When you going to catch him then?’ said Oni. He was fated, it seemed, to be that afternoon the butt of eveyone’s laughter. Oni laughed and then Mhonum laughed and Raffy joined in with a sheepish snigger. ‘Tomorrow.�
� ‘Are you kidding?’ said Mhonum. ‘I hope not.’ It was developing into a pattern. Sylvia drove the children and Neil into Kingsmarkham, Neil went to his job club, promising to meet them later, and Sylvia homed on her parents. Or, more often, her mother. Wexford never asked how long she had been there by the time he got home, he didn’t want to know, though later Dora sometimes told him, always qualifying these grumbles with a prefatory ‘I really shouldn’t talk like this about my own child . . .’ ‘I don’t suppose you’ve any objection,’ Sylvia said when he walked in, ‘if I take part in the unemployed march tomorrow?’ He was surprised to be asked – and just a little touched. ‘It won’t be the kind of event in which arrests are made. There’ll be no setting fire to property and no overturning of cars.’ ‘I thought I ought to ask you,’ she said in a tone that implied long-suffering dutifulness. ‘Do as you like as long as you don’t frighten the horses.’ ‘Will there be horses, grandad?’ Wexford laughed. He thought he was due for a spot of laughter whose meaning eluded the others. The doorbell rang suddenly. No one ever came to their door and rang it in the Colonel Bogey mode: da-da-di-di-di-pom-POM. Such jauntiness was wholly unexpected. Wexford went to answer it. His son-in-law was on the doorstep, grinning widely, insisting on shaking hands with him. ‘Can I have a drink? I need one.’ ‘Of course.’ ‘Whisky, please. I’ve had a wonderful afternoon.’ ‘I can see that.’