by Ruth Rendell
‘It’s Colin. I’ve been trying to get you all the morning.’
‘It’s my Saturday morning at work.’
‘I tried yesterday too.’
People who resented the fact that one wasn’t permanently sitting by the phone waiting for their calls exasperated John. ‘Well, I’m here now.’
‘That chap I met at your house on Thursday, is he a mate of yours? I mean, is he a close friend?’
John said slowly, ‘Do you mean Peter Moran?’
‘That’s him, yes. The guy who came out and asked where the loo was.’
Colin spoke as if John had had a whole houseful of people with him that night, a party. But of course he might have thought he had, he might even resent not having been asked. John said, choosing his words,
‘He isn’t a friend of mine. He’s the man Jennifer is living with. She was here too. It was all very awkward, that’s why I couldn’t ask you in. I don’t really want to talk about this on the phone, Colin.’
Colin’s voice sounded very strange. He said, ‘Are you sure Jennifer is living with him? I mean, like that?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it, Colin. I said I didn’t.’
‘Look, you couldn’t come over, could you? Or I could come to you? Mother would like to see you. Come and have a cup of tea.’
John said decisively, ‘Not to talk about Jennifer, I don’t want to do that. Really, Colin, that’s not on. I have to sort all that out on my own.’ He relented a little. Colin, after all, was his oldest friend. Colin had listened to his confidences far more readily than he had when hearing the confessions of Mark Simms. ‘I hope Jennifer will come back to me, I’m hoping it’s only a matter of time. You do see, don’t you, that it’s really not on to discuss it with any outsider. Even you,’ he added.
‘I don’t want to talk about Jennifer,’ Colin said. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. All I want to do is give you some information about Peter Moran I think you might find useful. I want to tell you where I last saw him.’ Colin paused to give his statement the fullest dramatic impact. ‘It was in court.’
11
GOING HOME FOR the weekend was almost unheard of at Rossingham but most people got taken out on Sundays. Parents came or godparents or uncles and aunts. On the whole, going off for lunch and tea with those vaguely designated ‘friends’ wasn’t encouraged.
‘It’s remarkable,’ Mr Lindsay had been heard to say, ‘how many of the senior men in Pitt have beautiful aunts no more than eighteen years old.’
He might have been including Angus Cameron who one Sunday in late June was called for by a pretty blonde girl who arrived in a Mini. Mungo, on the other hand, was taken out to lunch at the Mill Hotel in Rossingham St Clare by his parents with Ian and Gail. It was Charles Mabledene’s sister’s fifteenth birthday and after the whole family had been out to lunch and tea they would take her back to Utting.
‘Isn’t it rather peculiar,’ Mungo said to Graham O’Neill, ‘that we never knew till now he had a sister at Utting?’
‘We never knew he had a sister, full stop. He’s very secretive.’
‘I suppose we shall all be on top of each other for lunch,’ said Mungo gloomily and he was right, the Mabledenes, Camerons and Graham’s uncle and aunt being given contiguous tables. Angus and his girlfriend had disappeared in a blast of black exhaust from the Mini which needed a new silencer.
Charles Mabledene was well aware of the implications of his sister’s school. He and she had been in the junior school at Utting together and she had continued there after the Common Entrance, while he on that historic and never to be forgotten occasion, had ‘come over’. But he wouldn’t stoop to explain all this to the Director of London Central. Early in his life Charles had adopted the enigmatic dictum, ‘never apologize, never explain’. Indeed, he had had no personal contact with Leviathan, Medusa, or any other agent of Western Intelligence since the interview in the safe house at 53 Ruxeter Road. On that occasion Leviathan had told him he must ‘prove you’re ours’ but so far no test had been set him. Apart, that is, from the normal run of his duties. And even these had not been pressing – a small photocopying job, the setting up of a new drop – leaving him plenty of time for experimenting with Banham locks and, of course, for his flexi-prep.
The new drop was under a loose stone beneath the horse trough in Rossingham St Mary market place, the one in the cricket pavilion having ceased its function when the brickwork in the wall was unexpectedly repaired. On the pretext of buying a birthday card for his sister, he had been given Mr Lindsay’s permission to go to the village on Friday afternoon, and there he had taken from under the horse trough the latest command in Spytrap: ‘Repossess Reynolds’ books.’
Charles knew what this referred to, a work on chess and two on yachting which Angus’s friend Bruce Reynolds had two years before lent to an Utting man called Simon Perch, who was one of Stern’s Stars. Though repeatedly asked, Perch had never returned them and this was the only way to get them back. It would be quite easy, Charles thought, seeing that he was actually going to Utting later that day, though Leviathan had not known that when the command was issued, assuming only that Dragon had another kind of special ‘in’ at Parker’s and Stern’s school. Was this then the test? Would it almost be better for Dragon not to secure the borrowed books?
Nicholas Ralston, or Unicorn, whom he could see with a huge family party at the opposite end of the dining room, might just as well have been asked. It was more his mark really. In a way it was rather a feeble task to set someone of Dragon’s undoubted acumen and brilliance. If he was being tested, would it be to his credit to fail? On the other hand, he would be very surprised if by now Leviathan and Medusa didn’t know very well that he had a sister at Utting. On balance, the test should be passed.
It was Charles Mabledene’s overriding ambition that when Mungo Cameron retired, as next year he surely would, the mantle should fall upon his own shoulders and the directorship of London Central become his.
While they were having coffee he did his new trick and produced a bunch of carnations from the sleeve of his mother’s rather strange new white satin jacket. She shrieked with delight. Charles had picked the carnations in Mrs Lindsay’s private garden very early that morning before anyone was up. The locked front and back doors of Pitt presented no problem to him. His parents and his sister seemed to assume that some occult agency was at work and even to suspect that the flowers weren’t real. Charles smiled indulgently at them.
There were areas of his mind which sometimes troubled him, but not the area that did the magic. That was a mere matter of the quickness of the hand deceiving the eye and of a rather gruelling discipline. His gift for discerning what others thought and, more than that, of divining what might happen in some future anticipated situation – this was what gave him pause and made him wonder. The thought processes of others interested him, he was one of those rare people who, though selfish and unscrupulous, are more interested in others than in themselves.
Now, for instance, he was wondering where they would go that afternoon. It was his sister’s choice, for it was her birthday, and there were many options open. Several great houses in the neighbourhood as well as Rossingham Castle; the wildlife park at Songflete; the otter sanctuary on the Orr at Orrington; the Life in Tudor England exhibition at Togham Hoo; a boat on the river from Orrington up to Rostock Bridge. Her face told him nothing. She was fond of clothes and the Tudor exhibition had plenty of dresses in it. And she liked boating, she was cox of the Utting junior boat.
Otters, he said to himself and he didn’t know why. It was this not knowing why that sometimes made him uneasy. When his prediction was as unlikely as this one he would have liked to be wrong. They had profiteroles for pudding. Profiteroles were her favourite. Charles watched the Camerons leave the dining room, marvelling at those men’s height. They were like another race. Mungo was probably a whole foot taller than he. His father looked across the table.
‘Have you decided where
you want to go, Sarah?’
‘Otter sanctuary,’ she said. ‘I’m torn between that and Togham but I really do think the otters.’
Charles sighed to himself.
There were European otters and Asian otters, pairs of them each in their own section of the river. At feeding time which was at three-thirty they dived and swam for the fish the keepers threw in out of reeking buckets. Charles was a better photographer than his sister, so to oblige her he took pictures of otter cubs. On the way back, after tea in Orrington, they got in a traffic jam on the motorway caused by weekend roadworks and the car threatened to overheat.
‘I’ll ruin this car if I drive her any further,’ said his father. ‘I’m going to drop her at the works and pick up another one.’
‘The works’ was what all the Mabledenes called the garage at Rostock. Charles’s father drove the BMW on to the forecourt and let himself into the office to find the keys for one of the secondhand Volvos which were lined up for sale outside. Charles hadn’t been down at the works for ages. He didn’t know what it was that made him get out and wander about among the cars, through the big shed with the turntables and out to the back where vehicles awaited repairs or service. That flair he had, he supposed later, that ESP or second sight or whatever you called it. The red car, a Datsun, had its offside rear wing quite badly dented and the light unit smashed. There was a very obvious smear of green on the bodywork where the red paint had flaked away. Charles was glad now that he had taken those otter pictures for his sister, for the camera was still slung round his neck. With a quick glance round to see that no one was looking he took two shots of the red car, carefully ensuring the inclusion of the number plate.
He returned by way of the office, having composed his face into that expression of innocence and naïvety which seemed so much to please his mother. It was becoming second nature to him now and he no longer needed to practise it in front of a mirror. Through the big plate-glass window he could see his father still rummaging around in the office. Charles pushed open the door and felt it stick as it seemed to be obstructed by something in its passage across the doormat. He bent down and picked up the envelope which he could feel contained a bunch of car keys on a ring with a fob. On the envelope was printed the number of the car he had photographed and the name Whittaker . . .
By now his father had found the Volvo keys. Feeling pleased with himself but revealing nothing of this, Charles handed the envelope to his father, they all got into the Volvo and set off for Utting in the outer eastern suburbs.
‘Shall I get this film developed for you?’ Charles said to his sister and added untruthfully, ‘Someone I know in the camera club at school will do it for free.’
Naturally, she agreed. Charles decided to finish up the film in taking some useful pictures of Utting. You never knew when that sort of thing might come in handy. His sister was in Curie House but in the general mêlée of boys and girls returning from Sunday outings and the in any case far freer atmosphere than ever prevailed at Rossingham, he had no difficulty in penetrating Huxley and inquiring of someone who looked like a prefect where Simon Perch’s room was. The prefect seemed to know Perch quite well, might even have been a friend of his, and helpfully told Charles he wasn’t back yet and wasn’t expected before eight. The worst part for Charles was picking the lock of Perch’s door. Not because it was difficult – those simple locks on interior doors never were – but because of the risk of being seen, the process necessarily taking two or three minutes.
He found two of the books on the shelf above the counter top Utting people used as desks. The chess book wasn’t there though and a search of the room failed to find it. Perch had probably taken it home and left it there or never brought it to school. The only thing of real interest in the room was a telescope mounted on the windowsill with its sights turned to the city. Charles had a squint through it. It was amazing how much was to be seen and how clearly. He could even see the clock on the CitWest tower and read that the time was six-twenty-two and the temperature seventeen degrees. In the absence of a flash bulb he wasn’t able to take much of a photograph of the room but he did his best. As far as he knew, this would be the first picture anyone at London Central had of the interior of Utting. He left the building without mishap, carrying the two books in a green and white Marks and Spencer’s plastic carrier he had found in Perch’s wastepaper basket.
Re-entering Curie where his parents were still closeted with Sarah’s housemistress, Charles passed Rosie Whittaker in the hall. She knew Sarah and looked as if about to speak, but he froze her with a cold uncomprehending stare.
12
CONSTANCE GOODMAN BELONGED in that category of women who are nice to their children’s friends but not very nice to their children. This had been evinced in the friendly wave she gave John from the car after rapping crossly on the window to summon Colin. In her seventies now, she was known to three generations whom she had taught at primary school. John – and Cherry – had been among her pupils, though her own son never had. Those former pupils, when she met them, she tended to call ‘pet’; her son, though the term was often less than affectionately bestowed, was ‘chickie’. And Colin did have something of a chicken-like look with his pink beaky face, small dark eyes and curly hair. He had seemed quite excited when he let John into the house, rather resembling Harpo Marx when suppressing glee.
‘Nice to see you, pet,’ Mrs Goodman said, creaking about on arthritic joints, laying the table for a tea John hadn’t felt he could possibly eat. ‘I’ll make myself scarce for ten minutes and you and Colin can have your chat.’
She had made it very plain that she knew what it was Colin had to impart but was being discreet.
John waited until she closed the door and said, ‘What on earth is it?’
That was three weeks ago now and he had done nothing with his information. He had been torn, in perhaps the worst dilemma of his life. It was as if he needed something to happen, something that would either trigger off a disclosure or show him that he must bury what Colin had told him. Present always in his mind was a desire not to behave badly, yet perhaps disclosing this would not be bad, would be a duty as well as his own salvation. Scarcely a vestige of triumph remained that without guessing precisely, he had been right about the thing that lurked behind Peter Moran’s dull eyes.
Making his way out to Colin’s on the Honda that Saturday afternoon, his feelings had been very different. He had been curiously buoyant and hopeful, though with nothing then on which to base this optimism. Colin and his mother lived a long way out of the city, on the outskirts of Orrington really, and it took him nearly half an hour to get there. The bungalow, which he hadn’t visited since Jennifer left him, had such a stark and barren look about it that you might have thought it brand-new but for the unmistakable building features – you couldn’t call it architecture – of the early sixties. The garden consisted merely of closely mown grass, flowerless and treeless, while the house was a low-roofed L-shape of light pink brickwork with square metal-framed windows. Once John had tried giving Colin rooted shrub cuttings and boxes of seedlings but what became of these he never knew, certainly they never appeared in that garden.
When he and Colin were alone together and two more doors had been heard to close on Mrs Goodman, a woman of ostentatious tact, Colin again asked him if it were really true Peter Moran was living with Jennifer.
‘I’ve told you so,’ John said. He was beginning to learn that people don’t necessarily listen attentively when one confides in them, but still he said, ‘Surely I told you so when Jennifer first left me?’
‘You may have done. The name didn’t ring a bell – then.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t be so mysterious.’
‘How much do you know about this chap, this Moran?’
‘He’s about thirty-five. He comes from around here – or I think he does. He’s got a degree, economics or philosophy or something. I believe he was once a teacher, I’m not sure. He hasn’t got a job now, that�
��s for sure. He’s renting a tumbledown sort of cottage out at Nunhouse that I suppose the dole pays for.’ John knew he sounded contemptuous but he didn’t care. ‘Oh, and he’s got one of those little French cars that aren’t really cars, if you know what I mean.’
Colin started to laugh. ‘You really love him, don’t you?’
‘What do you expect?’
‘How did Jennifer meet him?’
John didn’t much care for the question. ‘I don’t know how she first met him. It was a long time ago.’ He hesitated. He said with difficulty, ‘They were engaged but he broke it off just before – the wedding. That would have been about four years ago.’
‘Four years ago, ‘said Colin, ‘I served on that jury at the Crown Court at Orrington. Do you remember that?’
John remembered. Colin had made a fuss about taking time off work and the inadequacy of a juryman’s pay.
‘When I saw Moran at your house on Thursday I recognized him at once and when I got home I looked him up.’
‘What d’you mean, looked him up?’
‘You know me, making notes of everything. I noted down everyone who came up in court and made a few comments of my own. It was helpful at arriving at verdicts. Your Peter Moran was one of the people before that court. Do you want to know what he was charged with?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Assault on a child under the age of thirteen,’ said Colin. He moistened his lips, evidently embarrassed. ‘I mean indecent assault.’
Mrs Goodman put her head round the door.
‘Finished, chickie?’
‘You know what I’ve been telling him, so I doubt if it matters much.’
‘Don’t be sarcastic with me, chickie. I can’t spend all night in the kitchen.’ She dumped on the table a tray of tea things, including a huge brown teapot and an equally dark and heavy-looking fruit cake.
‘Please, Mrs Goodman,’ John said. ‘I honestly don’t mind.’ He looked at Colin. ‘I can’t believe it.’ But he could. It explained so much, Peter Moran’s abrupt leaving of Jennifer, Jennifer’s belief that she was the only woman there had ever been in his life, his failure to get work in his own field, above all that suspicion of horror John had always felt about him. ‘What happened to him?’ he asked. ‘I mean what was the’ – he couldn’t find the right word – ‘punishment?’
