The Rottweiler (v5)

by Ruth Rendell

  Inez went with him to the street door. She felt rather guilty because she had come close to suspecting him of lying—well, of fantasising, reinventing his past. Nothing worse than that and yet she felt she had to make it up to him. ‘Which nights won’t Belinda be at the hospital this week?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday probably.’

  ‘Bring her in for a drink on Wednesday if you can?’

  ‘I’ll let you know. I hope we can make it.’

  Now she had opened it there was no point in locking the street door again. She turned the sign to ‘open’. Mr Khoury had come out and was putting down his sun-blind. Inez liked to see this just as she liked seeing café tables go out on the pavement—even if she dreaded the sight of the couples sitting at them. It meant summer was on the way. Mr Khoury never waved but dipped his head in a kind of court bow in her direction.

  She went back into the shop and phoned the police.

  As far as Will could remember, he had never been down here before. Everything was unfamiliar. The children’s home had been in Crouch End, in the London Borough of Haringey, Becky lived in Primrose Hill and Inez in Paddington. These three locations bounded his London and he knew no other. It was a departure for Keith too, whose work was invariably in St John’s Wood, Maida Vale and the environs of the Edgware Road, though his family home was in the district to which they were heading. But they turned off long before they reached Harlesden.

  The block of flats in which they were working wasn’t quite in Ladbroke Grove but in a street which turned out of it. Keith had a parking pass from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, so there was no need to feed meters or keep moving the van to elude wardens. The work they were to do, painting living rooms and bedrooms in three one-bedroom flats, was for a landlord, not an owner-occupier, and Keith had been instructed, with a wink and a nudge, to keep the costs down and not do too painstaking a job.

  ‘So I said to him,’ said Keith as they toiled up the stairs, carrying their equipment, ‘I said to him, “It’s not in my nature not to do the best I can. If you don’t like it,” I said, “you’d best look elsewhere for some cowboy to do the job. Suit yourself,” I said. He looked down his nose a bit but he never said another word. You’d think they’d have a lift in a place like this, wouldn’t you?’

  Most of what Keith had said was incomprehensible to Will. The lift part he understood. ‘Right,’ he said.

  ‘Greed is what it is. That’s what’s wrong with folks today. You look around you, you’ll find everybody’s on the make, that’s the cause of crime, that’s what makes them all do’—Keith sought for a way to end to his sentence, could only come up lamely with—‘the things they do. Say what you like’—he looked over his shoulder, suddenly nervous on this empty staircase of free speech—‘there was something to be said for the Communists.’

  Will had nothing to say for the Communists, so remained silent. They let themselves into the first flat with the landlord’s key.

  ‘Smells like it’s been shut up for six months,’ said Keith. ‘Get the windows open, will you?’

  Crippen and his sidekick were already there by the time Zeinab arrived. He had brought Zulueta with him. Handling it with gloves on, the detective sergeant was sitting at Inez’s desk examining the cross and chain through a magnifying glass.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Zeinab, kicking off her stilettos.

  ‘I found that.’ Inez pointed at the desk.

  ‘Is it the one?’ Zeinab looked over Zulueta’s shoulder, her cheek close to his hair, treating him to a gust of Jo Malone’s Tuberose eau de toilette.

  ‘Looks like it,’ said Zulueta.

  ‘Makes you go cold all over seeing it like that. My—er, a friend of mine reckons that chain’s what she was garrotted with. Is that right?

  Neither officer answered her but Zulueta looked shocked at such appalling indiscretion or possibly at its close proximity to the truth.

  ‘Now, Mrs Ferry.’ Crippen perhaps felt that he had lost the control over this small gathering he ought by rights to have. He reasserted himself. ‘We shall have to conduct a search of these premises. If you object I shall have no difficulty in obtaining a search warrant.’

  Inez stood up. She had had enough. No one had thanked her for informing the police about the cross, all they had done was reproach her for not calling them at nine the previous evening. In her opinion she had been treated at least as the Rottweiler’s accessory from the moment the two officers arrived and now she was angry. ‘I have no objection at all,’ she said coldly. ‘I don’t know why you assume I’m obstructing you. Nothing could be further from my thoughts.’ Their behaviour was a far cry from the courteous way in which Forsyth had handled helpful witnesses. ‘If this goes on I shall put in a complaint.’

  ‘And I’ll sign it,’ said Zeinab, always loyal. ‘Treating you like you was a criminal.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I put your back up,’ said Crippen, making things worse. ‘Give the station a bell, Zulueta, and see if you can get Osnabrook and Jones over here for the search. Now, Mrs Ferry, if you’ve calmed down a bit, who comes into your shop? I mean, I want to know who could have put that necklace, ornament, whatever, in here.’

  ‘Hundreds,’ said Inez.

  ‘At least twenty a day.’ Zeinab turned on Crippen the full force of her shining black eyes. ‘More some days.’

  ‘You don’t make twenty sales a day?’ The incredulity in his voice was another insult. ‘They don’t all buy stuff?’

  ‘Half do,’ said Zeinab, not altogether truthfully.

  ‘Then there are your tenants. I’ve seen some of them in here.’ He made it sound as if Inez were running a brothel. The street door swung open and Morton Phibling marched in. ‘Is this another tenant or a customer?’

  ‘This is my fiancé.’ Having had the forethought to wear the right engagement ring this morning, Zeinab flashed it in Crippen’s face. ‘Mr Phibling.’

  Although Morton looked a lot like the public perception of a gang leader in his blond alpaca coat, with his tussore cravat and Rolex watch, his air of wealth rather impressed Crippen. ‘I doubt if we shall need you to help us in our enquiries, sir,’ he said.

  Morton ignored him. ‘What happened to you on Saturday, my rose of Sharon, my lily of the valleys?’

  ‘You may well ask,’ said Zeinab. ‘My dad wouldn’t let me out. You know what he’s like. He locked me in my bedroom.’

  ‘And there am I, heartsick and alone, waiting for you at my solitary table in Claridge’s, too distressed to eat, too disappointed to do anything more than sip brandy. Are there no telephones in your father’s mansion?’

  Whatever answer Zeinab might have made to this was cut off by the scream of a police siren. The message sent to Osnabrook and Jones had been distorted in its passage and both were under the impression they were being called to a robbery with violence. Once there and enlightened, they set about searching the shop with Zulueta’s help.

  ‘Now the tenants,’ said Crippen. ‘Just let me have their names, will you?’

  ‘Mr Cobbett in one flat on the second floor and Mrs Gogol in the other and Mr Quick on the top.’

  ‘Then who has the first floor flat?’ Crippen asked his question in a very suspicious way as if she were attempting to conceal a felony.

  ‘Well, oddly enough, I do. Or did you imagine I slept on the floor down here?’

  They found the fob watch. It too was on a table top in another darkish corner, lying on a green plate in the shape of a cabbage leaf and concealed behind the row of toby jugs. It was by then nearly midday. Crippen wanted to know what time the tenants came home from work and Inez said that since Ludmila and Freddy never went out without passing through the shop, they must be at home.

  ‘Why didn’t you say so before, madam?’

  ‘You didn’t ask me. Mr Quick should be home by six and Mr Cobbett earlier than that, about half past four probably.’

  Inez didn’t like telling him ab
out Will, but if she hadn’t he would have found out from some other source. Will was vulnerable, he would be frightened of a man like Crippen, he wouldn’t know what to say, he wouldn’t understand. Should she try to explain? Better not, better leave it. She could just imagine the inspector’s reaction to hearing someone was—well, what was Will? Autistic? Not really. Mentally defective? Certainly not. The politically incorrect phrase sounded deeply offensive these days. He had a mild chromosomal problem, that was all. Surely Crippen would realise and be gentle …

  In spite of insisting she wasn’t obstructive, she asked them to ring the bell outside for Ludmila, rather than go upstairs by way of the interior door. Osnabrook stayed behind, stubbornly certain that he would find the keyring and the cigarette lighter if he only searched for long enough. Having the police about wasn’t good for business, Inez thought, or having a police car parked outside wasn’t.

  Zeinab had gone out to sit with Morton in his car, where they appeared to be arguing. She came back, flushed and annoyed, and set about repairing her makeup which their heated exchange had brought to meltdown point. ‘I should never have mentioned my dad,’ she said. ‘Now he wants to meet him and ask for my hand in marriage. That’s what he says. It’s expected of him, he says. Over my dead body, I told him. If he tries that one it’s all over between us.’

  ‘It’s your own fault,’ Inez said robustly. Though sure Osnabrook was out of earshot, she lowered her voice. ‘You’ve presented yourself as an old-fashioned girl, not to say medieval. I mean, you haven’t—well—slept with him or Rowley, have you?’

  For good reason shocked by this suggestion, Zeinab flushed underneath the foundation and cheek gel. ‘Absolutely no way.’

  ‘Well, then. Girls do, you know, these days. Certainly when they’re engaged. You said yourself, Rowley told you engagement was the modern marriage. I don’t suppose he meant wearing a ring and putting a notice in the paper. Don’t they pressurise you?’

  ‘What do you think? All the bloody time.’

  Inez laughed. Looking aggrieved, Zeinab changed the subject. ‘You do realise, don’t you, that the Rottweiler must have been in here, disguised as a normal customer. Maybe he bought something. He spoke to us. And all the time he was sneaking about putting them dead girls’ things in your shop.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I realise.’ Inez turned the inevitable sigh into a cough.

  Crippen and Jones came back at five thirty. By then Will had been home about half an hour. Leaving Zeinab in charge of the shop until they closed at six, Inez went upstairs as soon as she saw them get out of their car. It wouldn’t have occurred to Will, who was already watching television, to offer a visitor a cup of tea, so Inez directly asked him. She would make it, she said. He mustn’t mind, everything would be fine, but two policemen were coming to talk to him about the girls’ murders—did he know what she was talking about? He nodded, though he didn’t, not really. She’d be there, she said, feeling like a suspect’s solicitor called to the police station, but she’d be in the kitchen at least until they’d been there a few minutes.

  Will seemed accepting, not nervous. He turned off the television at Inez’s suggestion. As the sound was cut off the outer doorbell rang. Will knew how to handle this. He picked up the entryphone, said hello, then pressed the keypad to unlock the door. The two officers came upstairs and Will said what Inez mouthed at him to say, ‘Come in, please.’

  ‘Mr Cobbett?’

  Will nodded, though no one ever called him this. Outside in the kitchen, Inez watched the kettle come to the boil.

  ‘Have you ever seen this before?’ Jones produced from his pocket the silver cross, still inside its sterile bag.

  Will looked at it, shook his head, said, ‘I’ve never seen it.’

  ‘Do you know what it is?’

  Among the far more glorious jewellery in The Treasure of Sixth Avenue had been a gold cross of much the same size. Will remembered it well, as he did most details of the film. ‘It’s a cross.’

  ‘It was the property of Gaynor Ray whose body was found in Nottingham last week. You remember that, don’t you?’

  This was a cue for Inez to declare her presence or let a noise obviously made by human agency declare it. She clattered the teacups and when Crippen said, ‘There’s someone in there,’ came out with an innocent smile.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Mr Crippen?’

  ‘Thank you but no. I was under the impression we were alone.’

  ‘Really? Tea for you, Mr Jones?’

  Jones looked at his superior officer, looked away, flung off caution and said he would. Very much, thank you. Inez smiled a smile of triumph. She said airily, ‘I’ll drink my tea and then I’ll go. I’m afraid I can never drink it while it’s hot.’

  ‘You’re sure you have never seen this before, Mr Cobbett?’

  ‘He told you he hadn’t,’ said Inez, sustaining her role as supportive lawyer.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Ferry. Go into Mrs Ferry’s shop much, do you?’

  ‘I never go in the shop,’ said Will. ‘I did one day.’ He tried to remember the day of the week but he couldn’t. ‘One day I did, didn’t I, Inez?’

  ‘It was last week and it was the only time you ever did.’

  As the words came out, Inez realised their implication, but what else could she have said? Will was always transparently truthful. Perhaps he was too innocent and guileless to know how not to be. He smiled uneasily.

  ‘All right, Mr Cobbett. That will do for now. We shall want to see you again. Come along, Jones, if you can’t drink that tea you’ll have to leave it.’

  Assuring Will that she’d be back, Inez went with them, carrying her cup and saucer. Brutally, Crippen said on the stairs, ‘What’s with him? A bit weird, isn’t he? A bit missing in the upper storey?’

  Inez was outraged but she knew she had better not show it. ‘Will Cobbett,’ she said with dignity, ‘is a normal young man who happens to have learning difficulties. He can read but not easily. I doubt if he ever sees a newspaper and I can tell you he never watches news programmes.’

  ‘A bit missing, then, like I said. D’you reckon this chap Quick will be back by now?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘We’ll give him a bell, Jones, and if he’s not home we’ll wait in the car till he is.’

  Upstairs again, Inez returned Will’s cup and saucer and washed them up along with the rest. It was six o’clock and Will was watching a quiz on Channel Five. He didn’t seem upset or in any way discomfited by the police visit. Inez heard Jeremy Quick’s footsteps mounting the stairs, then the street doorbell. She returned downstairs just as Crippen and Jones were climbing up.

  ‘All these stairs would be the death of me,’ said Crippen.

  Jeremy Quick impressed them as being a decent, respectable, eminently normal citizen. No learning difficulties there, no wilful refusal to take refuge in laziness and remain ignorant of what galvanised the whole country. Strangely enough, he commanded Crippen’s respect because he offered them no refreshment. Anxiety to show hospitality to the police was, in Crippen’s eyes, merely an ingratiation method, showing an anxiety to cover something up. And that nonsense about never going in the shop but once, for instance. The Cobbett chap was obviously on close terms with Inez Ferry. Was it reasonable to suppose he’d only once been in there? Once, and that at the crucial time? A few days before the cross was found and just after the unearthing of Gaynor Ray’s body and the revelation of what was missing from her bag.

  Quick, on the other hand, was perfectly frank about his friendship with the Ferry woman. He dropped in every morning on his way to the station and she made him tea. Probably fancied him. Most women would, Crippen thought, tall, upstanding, well-dressed bloke like him. He didn’t at all dislike Quick looking at his watch, saying, ‘If you’re happy with what I’ve said, I do have things to do …’ nor his curt, ‘Goodbye. Close the door on your way out.’ No sucking up there, no guilt making him want to get in well with the authoriti
es.

  ‘We may want to see you again, sir,’ he said. It was routine. He doubted if they would.

  When they had left, Jeremy watched their departure from the window until he saw their car disappearing round the corner into Norfolk Square. His sense of smell was acute, more like a dog’s than a human being’s, he had sometimes joked and now he sniffed with distaste the lemony scent ‘with a hint of aromatic herbs’ Jones had left behind. A well-known men’s cologne, he thought, cheap and nasty. A smallish vodka and tonic in his hand—people said vodka had neither smell nor taste but he knew differently—he walked out on to his roof garden. The clocks had gone forward and it would be an hour before the sun set. Its late afternoon warmth, golden and benign, was bringing into flower his tulips in their green-painted tubs and his yellow jonquils. One of the little bay trees was in golden blossom, for the first time since he had bought it. On the table stood a blue and white pottery jar filled with pink and yellow and lilac freesias, beautiful things with a delectable perfume. He inhaled their scent, closing his eyes.

  After a moment or two he opened the drawer under the table, took a sip of his drink, and lifted out from among pens and pencils, computer discs, rolls of adhesive tape and a small calculator, a black and gold keyring with a Scottie dog in onyx suspended from it, a silver cigarette lighter with the initials NN on it in red stones and a pair of silver hoop earrings set with tiny brilliants.

  CHAPTER 9

  Plans had been made and rejected for the disposal of these small objects. At first Jeremy had thought of dealing with them much as he had with the silver cross and the fob watch, by secreting them among the bric-a-brac in an antique shop. Not in Inez’s this time, however, but elsewhere. Such shops abounded in Church Street and also in Westbourne Grove. He would have had no difficulty. But he had no legitimate reason for going into them, apart from as a potential buyer, and he might be remembered by the staff or proprietor, especially if the lighter and the keyring were soon found. The earrings, as yet, were rather a different matter. Another idea, more a joke really, had been to place each one in the immediate vicinity of where the girls had lain. This too was fraught with problems. Boston Place, for instance, where Caroline Dansk had died, was rather exposed to public view, even after dark. The long row of houses on one side of the street and the towering brick wall on the other, without a trees or any cover, made returning there at all perilous.