by Ruth Rendell
‘Oh, yes. Tom Ede told me all about that. Goldberg – you remember him? – he had a friend called Sophie Baird. It’s one of those close “best friends” situations you often get between a woman and a gay man. She was living with her partner also in St John’s Wood in a house that happened fortunately to belong to her. She works as a PA to some company chairman and her partner runs or ran a removal business. That among other things, one of which is driving trafficked women here from Eastern Europe.
‘I had no idea. But when she and I were talking about those two girls and she told me about the towering rage he had got into when she talked about her befriending an illegal immigrant, that he had struck her and ultimately walked out on her, I started to wonder. Those seemed extreme steps and then his name came back to me. John, she called him, always referred to him as John, but his surname was Scott-McGregor. It wasn’t very far from that to come to Gregor or Gregory. I suppose I knew when I saw an unmarked white van outside that place in Churchlands Road. One of those, you might say, is very like another but this one had a distinguishing mark. A snake-shaped scratch on the bodywork above the offside rear wheel.’
Wexford and Dora had been on two long holidays, one to Charleston and Savannah in the United States, the other to Turkey to Ephesus and the site of Troy. They were still commuting between London and Kingsmarkham, but having not enough to do was beginning to make him fidgety when an envelope arrived addressed to ‘Mr Wexford’, forwarded by Tom Ede and postmarked Kiev.
The printed card inside told him that Colin and Vladlena Jones announced the birth of their son Igor on 10 April 2011. The address looked like a private house, it looked as if they were living there. Wexford thought he would write back and find out, but he was sure he need worry about Vladlena and her possible fate no longer.
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Copyright © Kingsmarkham Enterprises Ltd 2011
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ISBN 9780091921460
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