by Ruth Rendell
“How were you to know her?” Wexford had asked. “You were to give her a lift, but how were you to recognize her?”
“You mean, she wore a yellow ribbon and I wore a big red rose? There was nothing like that. I never, thought about it, I was just there and she was supposed to be there but she wasn’t.”
A scatty woman who seemed unable to collect her thoughts for two minutes at a time, Mrs. Strang gave the impression of being harassed by everything in her surroundings and perhaps by life itself. The cottage she lived in with her husband and three children was frighteningly disordered, with papers mixed with clothes, chairs laden with newspapers and magazines, used cups and glasses set or left beside vases of dead flowers, an iron switched on, its red light glistening, standing upended between a naked loaf of bread and an open packet of kettle descaler.
She herself, perhaps about to use the iron, wore a diaphanous dressing gown over blouse and slip and clutched in her left hand something made of crumpled red material that might have been a skirt or a pair of trousers. Without relinquishing her hold on it, she sat on the edge of the table, crumpling the red stuff to a worse state of creasedness while running her right hand through her wispy, reddish gold hair.
“I won’t keep you long,” Wexford said. “I can see you’re getting ready to go to work.” He couldn’t keep his eyes off that iron, which seemed to come closer and closer to her muslin frills as she swayed nervously back and forth. “But did Rachel know the make of your car? Its color?”
“Oh, I don’t know, I can’t answer.”
“Had Caroline described you to her?”
“You’ll have to ask her. I can’t remember.” She brightened and suddenly smiled. “I knew she had dark hair. I was looking for a dark-haired girl. And Caroline said she was very good-looking.”
“Mrs. Strang, you’re about to singe your, er, dressing gown.”
“Am I? Oh, God. Thank you. Caroline’s not here, she’s back at college, you could phone her and ask her. Or I could. I must get this skirt ironed, you must excuse me, I’m late . . .”
He knew enough. Rachel had no more idea as to the woman due to give her a lift than that she was middle-aged and driving a car. Someone else had come along at eight and picked her up, and when Rachel said, “Mrs. Strang?” or some such thing, this woman had agreed, had fallen in with the misapprehension, and used it to her advantage.
Was she the same woman who had offered a lift to Lizzie Cromwell? And had Lizzie, in spite of what she’d said, accepted it? To risk acting on this wild intuition would be criminal. There must be a search, and next day, if she hadn’t come home, he would have Rosemary Holmes up before the television cameras, But she’d come home. She’d walk into the house on Oval Road. She wouldn’t be distraught or soaked to the skin, she would simply stroll in and, after her mother had had hysterics, ask what all the fuss was about. Or else, instead, she’d turn up at her university with a considerable amount of explaining to do. He turned his attention to his post, first to the document that lay uppermost on his desk.
If someone addresses you, in a letter, by your given name and signs himself “yours always,” you may confidently expect your correspondent to be a close friend. This printout of an E-mail began “Dear Reg” and ended “Yours always, Brian,” but Wexford would not have placed Brian St. George, editor of the Kingsmarkham Courier, in that intimate category. The very sight of it filled him with apprehension. No communication he had ever received from St. George had been supportive or even cooperative with police strategy He had looked at this one without putting on his reading glasses, and he stared at a glazed muzziness of dancing print for a moment. But he knew that was no good, and after only a brief hesitation, he put on his glasses and read St. George’s letter.
Dear Reg,
It has come to my attention that the infamous pedophile, Henry Thomas Orbe, is due to be released from detention at the end of this week. His home was and still is on the Muriel Campden Estate in Kingsmarkham and I have been reliably informed that he intends to return to the house, currently occupied by his daughter and her partner, when he leaves prison, where he has been for the past nine years, on 17 April. Now, a large number of parents with young children, to whom Orbe must pose a threat, live on the Muriel Campden Estate and my intention is to run a lead story in this week’s edition of the Courier, informing interested parties of Orbe’s return. I am sure you will agree that Orbe is a dangerous man and that no child can be safe while he remains at large.
I will be interested to receive your comments. If the Mid-Sussex Constabulary would care to supply me with a statement of Orbe’s current situation and perhaps their general opinion on the arrangements made for released pedophiles, I will be delighted to print it.
With my very good wishes,
Yours always, Brian
Wexford sighed. It wasn’t only a wonder what induced St. George to call him by his first name and end in that affectionate way, but a mystery why the man should want to. At their last meeting, which had been in connection with the hostage-taking over the proposed bypass, he, Wexford, had been atrociously (but justifiably) rude to the editor and had received a good deal of abuse in return. The answer, no doubt, was that St. George wanted some thing. Wexford’s approval?
He decided - quite quickly - not to reply. After all, much as he would have liked to, he couldn’t stop St. George and the Courier in their mission. Barring an injunction to restrain them, they would go ahead whatever happened. Wexford tried to remember Orbe but could recall only a newspaper photograph from long ago of a fat-faced man with bleated chin and forehead. That didn’t mean much.
Anyone would look dreadful in one of those blown-up snaps. Orbe, the man, had entirely faded from his memory. Of course the crime, whatever it was, hadn’t happened in the Kingsmarkham area and he hadn’t arrested him.
He was wondering whether he was capable of summoning up Orbe’s CV or dossier on his computer, of filling with information the pretty blue screen over which clouds swam and birds flew, when Barry Vine came in. “How’s the Rachel Holmes search going?” Wexford asked.
“Nothing new, sir. But I came to tell you something else. You know we had a second clothes robbery?”
“Oh, yes. The First Gear boutique.”
“Well we’ve got someone for both, the First Gear and the craftswoman, the designer. You were right when you said they used a child to get in. ‘A sort of Oliver Twist’ were your words if I remember rightly. I don’t know how old Oliver Twist was - I can’t say I’ve ever read the book or seen the film - but this kid’s four.”
For a moment Wexford said nothing. Orbe’s face, die remembered face, reappeared in some picture frame of his mind, and he asked himself which was worse, to use a small child sexually or to teach that child to break and enter and steal. The former, no question about it, but still . . .
“You mean this villain - what’s his name, by the way?”
“Flay. Patrick Flay. He lives in Glebe Road.”
“This Patrick Flay put a child of four through that fan light and instructed him how to open the door?”
“Not quite, sir,” said Vine. “It was a girl, his own daughter, and while it was a fanlight the first time, my belief is that this second time she went in through the cat flap.”
“The cat flap?”
“Yes, sir. It’s a sort of trapdoor that hangs on hinges that the cat pushes open with its head and - ”
“I know what it is.” Wexford shook his head, more in sorrow than in anger. “Before the things were invented they used to cut a hole in the door, and the story is that Isaac Newton cut a hole for his cat, and when she had kittens, he cut six more holes.”
Vine stared at him. “He must have been bonkers.”
“Well, no. They didn’t have Mensa in those days, but he was just as bright as Mr. Burden. He was a great physicist, he discovered gravity, among other things. But that’s the point, that very clever people can be daft in some ways. Anyway, I don’t believe it. I told
you just to make it plain that I know what a cat flap is. Where’s this Flay? Downstairs?”
“He’s called his solicitor and the guy’s on his way.”
“I hope and trust you haven’t brought the little girl along as well?”
Vine looked a little affronted. “I left her with her mum, sir. I’ve talked to her . . . ‘
“In the presence of her mother, I hope?”
“Of course. Mother claims to know nothing about it, but the child - she’s called Kaylee, K-A-Y-L-double-E - told me her dad got her to wear gloves. He said it was cold and she must keep them on, and they went out together and round the back of this house where her dad showed her the little door that belonged to ‘the pussy cat,’ I quote, and he said never to tell what she did, so she wasn’t going to tell me. But afterwards her dad gave her a Dracula.”
“Gave her a what?’
“It’s a kind of ice cream,” said Vine.
They went downstairs together. On the way Wexford asked if the missing textiles had been discovered and Vine had to admit that they had not. Flay, a man of twenty-five who wore his reddish hair in dreadlocks, though he was white and that hair was sparse, sat at the table in the interview room, smoking while he awaited his solicitor. PC Martin Dempsey sat on a chair inside the door, his hack to the wall, his eyes fixed impassively on the table legs.
Vine switched on the recorder. “Detective Chief Inspector Wexford and Detective Sergeant Vine have entered the room at four fifty-two. Present also are Police Constable Dempsey and Patrick John Flay.”
“I’m not saying a word till my lawyer gets here,” said Flay.
Wexford didn’t answer. He had been sitting down for no more than a minute when Lynn Fancourt brought the solicitor in. This was a young man Wexford had never seen before but whom he knew to be James Beamish of Proctor, Beamish, Green. Vine noted his arrival and began questioning Flay, whose sullen expression had changed to one of pleasurable anticipation once his solicitor was beside him. His smiles turned to laughter when Vine asked him about his daughter. “You’ve got that wrong for a start. She’s not my kid, she’s the wife’s. I’m like her step-dad. The wife had her before we like moved in together.”
“You seem to have a good relationship with her,” said Wexford.
“What, with Kaylee? Of course I do. I love kids.”
“You love her so much that you teach her to go into someone else’s house and steal someone else’s property.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Flay, grinning widely. “If you believe what a four-year-old kid, practically a toddler, tells you, you’re barking. She’s got an imagination, has Kaylee. She tells stories, right? Well, some would call them lies. I mean, I wouldn’t, not me, I’m a tolerant sort of guy, but there’s some as’d give a kid a clip round the ear for telling the sort of porkies Kaylee tells.”
“So you didn’t make her wear gloves and put her through a fanlight into the householder’s cloakroom and then through a cat flap into the householder’s basement?”
Wexford was aware of how ridiculous it all sounded. Any outsider would almost have thought Flay’s mirth justified. He was looking at Beamish now, grinning and shaking his head.
“You didn’t teach her how to open the window and put the property out from the inside.”
“Zilch. Are you kidding?”
“Kaylee wasn’t taught to enter that house and steal the property?”
Beamish raised his eyes languidly. “My client has already told you no, Mr. Wexford.”
Wexford was thinking how to rephrase his questions when a note was brought to him by Lynn Fancourt. He didn’t even glance at it he was so sure it was to tell him Rachel Holmes had come back, but he spoke into the recorder to announce he was leaving the room and that Lynn had taken his place. Outside, he unfolded the paper. Not a word about Rachel but a message from the assistant chief constable designate asking him to call him as a matter of urgency. Of course, it was a bit early for Rachel’s return. If she came back at the same time as Lizzie Cromwell had returned, she wouldn’t be in Stowerton before six. The moment he was back in his office he phoned Southby.
“Orbe,” said the voice that always barked out its clipped sentences. “Henry Thomas Orbe. Mean anything to you?”
Would he have known if he hadn’t had St. George’s letter? Wexford would never have thought he had reason to be grateful to the editor of the Kingsmarkham Courier. “Pedophile, sir,” he said promptly. “He’s been inside for nine years, coming out and home here next Friday.”
“Right.” Southby sounded faintly disappointed. “I just thought you should know that the local rag’s going to run an in-the-public-interest story about it on Friday. I dare say it will pass off without incident.”
So Southby too had had a letter from St. George. I wonder if that one began Dear Malcolm, thought Wexford. He started up the computer and after several false moves resulting in rather frightening admonitions on the screen, managed to access - hateful computer language but nevertheless a source of pride when you got it right - Henry Thomas Orbe.
“Born South Woodford, London E18,” he read, “20 February 1928, the third son of George and Annie Orbe, of Churchflelds, South Woodford. Educated Buckhurst Hill County High School until age sixteen. Convicted of gross indecency 1949 and again in 1952, sent to prison on the first offence for two months and on the second for eighteen months. Convicted of gross indecency with a minor in 1958 and sent to prison for eight years.”
Sickened by the dreary repetition almost as much as by the squalid nature of the offences, Wexford pressed the page-down key and was gratified to find that it worked. It actually did the job it claimed to do, which was far from being the case, in his opinion, with most computer moves. Up onto the screen came the last page of Orbe’s sorry catalog. Wexford drew in his breath. The man had gone to prison for manslaughter nine years before, having been sentenced originally to fifteen years for his part in the rape and death, of a twelve-year-old boy.
Two other men had been involved, of whom one had received the same sentence as Orbe and the other eight years. There was no mention in the dossier of Orbe’s marriage or marriages and nothing about a daughter. Wexford noted that Orbe must be an old man now, more than seventy Would he still be a danger to children? You would have to know the man and know a lot more about pedophilia than Wexford did to answer that. But of one thing he was sure: something was wrong with a society that set free such a monster, even a worn-out, aged, broken monster, into a community with a bigger population of small children than anywhere else in the neighbourhood.
By nine he knew he had been wrong and the Rachel Holmes disappearance wasn’t going to follow Lizzie Cromwell’s pattern. A kind of guilt overwhelmed him, as if it were his fault she hadn’t come back. He was thankful he had said nothing of that hope and certainty of his except to Burden. What he had said to Burden would remain between them. He had tried to compensate by suggesting that the search go on after dark, but even he had to admit this was impossible, for it was a black, moonless night of heavy rain.
Vine, whom he phoned before he went to bed, told him he had had to let Patrick Flay go. Without enough evidence to charge him Vine was obliged to release the man, still laughing, in the company of his solicitor. For a while Wexford stood at the landing window, looking out at the night. It was a habit of his, to stare out, when all was still and silent, and it amused him to see that Sylvia did it too. Maybe you could inherit a gene of meditative sky-watching. Rain fell steadily, insistently, long silver needles of it puncturing the dark. He thought then of Lear’s words when he reproaches himself for having paid too little attention to the plight of the homeless and dispossessed - poor naked wretches. . . that hide the pelting of this pitiless storm - the women who cried to Sylvia for help, such victimized children as Kaylee Flay and the missing girl. But she, probably, was dead by now, lying in a waterlogged ditch.
In Detective Sergeant Vine’s opinion people like the Flays - and he made no
such reservations as Sylvia Fairfax did - shouldn’t be allowed to have children and, if by some contravention of the law they did have them, should not be allowed to bring them up. What was the care system for if not to protect children against the likes of Patrick Flay? Why was there fostering and adoption if these processes weren’t put to better use?
He arrived at the ground-floor flat in Glebe Road, the half of a shabby, run-down house, to find both Patrick Flay and Kaylee’s mother at home, and the little girl, when he began to talk to her, firmly set on the stained and battered sofa between them, squeezed between them, with no possibility of escape. She was a child of mixed race, born of a white mother, a woman as fair, freckled, and ginger- haired as Patrick. But Kaylee had dark brown hair in tight ringlets all over her head, dark brown eyes, and a light olive skin. Under the left one of those eyes was a darker mark, a bruise that hadn’t been there before, and Vine knew, as surely as if he had seen the blow struck, that one of those two had hit her in the face. Jackie Flay, perhaps, but more probably Patrick, and Vine also knew why that blow had been inflicted.
A choking feeling of impotence and frustration almost inhibited him from speaking, and as he afterward told Wexford, the worst part was knowing there was little he could do about it.
“You can notify the Social Services,” said Wexford. “There’s a good case here for threatening the Flays with putting the child into care. So what happened?”
