by Ruth Rendell
The passing of time without a sign from him should have hardened those feelings until she was able to dismiss him altogether. After all, it wasn’t as if this had been a full-blown love affair. She had spoken to him a few times on the phone, twice been out with him. Her pride might be hurt but that was all and by now she should be well on the way to forgetting him. She couldn’t. He had been so nice, so charming, on their two dates, funny, sensitive, interested in her, obviously admiring. And she had been mildly, then strongly, attracted to him. On that scanty level of intimacy, she would have said—on their way home from the party, say—that he was the last man in the world to behave like that. Obviously, she hadn’t really known him at all. Or was it rather that there was something she hadn’t understood about him? Could it be that his leaving her like that was not a sign of a lack of sensitivity but because of it? He had known she wouldn’t want anyone else around while she dealt with Will, so ever-tactful, he had made himself scarce?
In that case, why hadn’t he phoned her that evening or next day? So her thoughts went round and round, condemning him, then making excuses for him, finally coming to a conclusion that the only way of laying these speculations to rest was for her to phone him. She had nothing to lose by phoning him. He could put the receiver down when he heard her voice, he could tell her he didn’t want to see her again, in which case her initial feelings would be confirmed and she would know there was no use in maundering after him. Or he could give her a second chance, agree to come over and discuss the problem of Will.
Her heart sank, though, when she thought of the weekend ahead. Tired, too weary of the whole Will business and too fond of him to make a stand, she had agreed to let him come over on both Friday evening and Sunday. For the whole day on Sunday. If she phoned James and it worked, he wanted to see her and arranged a meeting, she’d have to stipulate Saturday as the only possibility. Why not? She didn’t have to have her wandering-round-the-shops morning. It was beginning to trouble her conscience, anyway, as trivial and almost shame-making.
She would phone him. She finally made up her mind as she was driving home from work on Wednesday evening. But coming to a decision was one thing, carrying it out quite another. She drew back, she cringed, from the idea of phoning this man she had known so briefly and doing what amounted to asking him for a date. Several times she approached the phone, put her hand to it, retreated. At last, when it was nearly nine, she poured herself a stiff gin, let it take effect before she lifted the receiver, then quickly dialled his number.
Of course he was out. His voice on the answering machine brought him back before her eyes, his good looks, his pleasant easy manner. She left no message but tried again five minutes later. Had she ever given him her mobile number or her office number? She couldn’t remember. In any case, it was unlikely he still had it. Suppose he had forgotten her, even her name …
After the long beep, she said into the phone, ‘James, it’s Becky Cobbett. Please give me a call. I’d like us to talk.’ She gave her home number, then those for her mobile and her office. The effect of the gin had been so stimulating, so self-confidence building, that she had another, immediately wishing she hadn’t.
Early in the morning, she woke up with a headache. Two aspirins helped but they also stunned her. She would have liked to fall back into bed and sleep for hours, but she couldn’t, she had to be in the office early. There were no messages for her from her own answering service. What had she imagined? That he was so longing to speak to her that he’d call in the small hours?
By eight thirty she was at her desk, and in the morning conference that was the cause of her early arrival by a quarter to nine. Becky was too good at her job to allow herself to be distracted from the important matter in hand by thoughts of a remotely possible but improbable love relationship. That was dismissed until the conference ended at ten thirty. Back in her own office, she resisted dialling into her home number to pick up any messages there might be, but drank the coffee her secretary brought her, made half a dozen essential phone calls and took twice as many—each time hoping it might be James—turned her attention to the rough draft of the marketing plan she was compiling, and at one went down the road to the little bistro for lunch.
She couldn’t eat. It was all ridiculous, to lose one’s appetite from tension over will-he-phone-won’t-he-phone. At her age too, when she ought to know better. She longed for a stiff drink but knew this was the brink of the slippery slope. All her adult life Becky had had to resist the lure of hard liquor and occasionally had yielded to it, never bingeing and never totally abstaining, but drinking a little or quite a lot every day. She had long ago fallen into the precarious situation of needing a drink before undertaking any big enterprise, meeting any challenge or encountering alarming departures from the norm. To this temptation she often refused to give in but the struggle exhausted her, leaving her drained. She meant to fight it now but tired as she was, the headache not entirely gone, she found the battle too much for her and she gave in.
The gin, vodka and whisky bottles in her office cupboard had never been kept secret. Along with tonic and sparkling water, they often came out when a guest or colleague arrived to discuss something—so long as the time was after five thirty. Her secretary knew about it and she and Becky sometimes partook at the end of a hard day. Becky got out the brandy now and poured rather over an inch into a glass. It would serve both as bracer and hair of the dog. She swallowed it quickly, poured another for more leisurely absorption and, trying to empty her mind of emotion, dialled home for her messages.
There was only one, and that not from James but from Inez Ferry. Unlike most people, Inez had given the time of her call, no more than half an hour before. As Becky listened she had to sit down, it was such a shock.
‘Becky, it’s Inez. This is urgent. It’s Thursday the twenty-fifth of April and the time is one forty-five. I knew you wouldn’t be at home but I haven’t got your office number or your mobile. Listen, Becky, Will’s been arrested, they’ve been holding him since last night. The police were in here and the detective inspector told me. Call me back as soon as you can.’
Inez had tried to explain to Crippen that Will was not quite—well, of course he wasn’t retarded, you didn’t use that term any more. He ought to know that, she said indignantly, fixing him with a resentful look.
‘All right, all right, keep calm,’ said Crippen. ‘As a matter of fact, he seems quite normal to me. He doesn’t speak but there’s nothing new in that. A lot of them have got silence off to a fine art.’
‘Will isn’t capable of getting anything off to a fine art, as you put it. What’s he charged with? Have you got him a lawyer?’
‘There’s no need to get heated, Mrs Ferry. I don’t know why you’re so upset. Cobbett hasn’t asked for a solicitor and he hasn’t asked to make any phone calls. You ought to appreciate that on our part, very—er, very, what’s the word I want?’
‘Stupid?’ put in Freddy. ‘Ignorant? Bigoted?’
In spite of her dismay, Inez couldn’t help laughing and her feelings warmed to Freddy. ‘I suppose you mean magnanimous,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I don’t agree. You don’t seem to realise that you’re holding a man with the mental age of a little boy and treating him like some—some old lag. What’s he supposed to have done, anyway?’
‘That we can’t tell you,’ said DC Jones who had accompanied Crippen. ‘Suffice it to say that we are currently conducting a comprehensive search of the Queens Park–Harrow Road area for evidence.’
‘What evidence?’
Neither policeman answered her but Freddy said lugubriously, ‘Some poor girl’s body, I expect.’
Agreement to or rejection of this suggestion were cut off by the phone ringing. It was Becky Cobbett. Inez spoke to her, covered the earpiece while she said to Crippen, ‘His aunt wants to come to the police station and have me with her. I suppose that’s all right with you?’
Jones lifted his shoulders, dropped them. Crippen said cryptically, ‘If
you must.’
The visit to the police station was quite useless. They weren’t allowed to see Will, were told nothing and largely ignored. A friendly sergeant in uniform eventually took pity on them, and brought them tea and chocolate chip biscuits. Inez was on tenterhooks because she could smell the liquor on Becky’s breath from a yard away. Becky had picked her up at the shop and driven her here, and all the time Inez had been afraid they would be stopped and Becky breathalised. Some time or other, maybe not till the evening, Becky would have to drive them back again—please God, with Will—and surely then the police would detect what she had detected from the first. In spite of being in Inez’s opinion quite far gone on what smelt like brandy, Becky had been on her mobile at least half a dozen times, talking to the office.
Inez thought about Freddy whom she had left in charge. Everything would probably be all right, though she would have been easier in her mind had it been Zeinab. Freddy was honest, she was sure, and though not stupid, deeply silly. If she had been asked to explain—after all, didn’t the two terms mean much the same thing?—definition would have defeated her. Perhaps she meant he trusted people too much and he looked at the world from the point of view of an innocent who believes himself to be sophisticated—a dangerous illusion. Becky had gone up to the sergeant’s counter to ask if they had come up with an answer to her question of whether Will could have a solicitor. Couldn’t she get one for him? Presently, Zulueta appeared, said that since Will hadn’t uttered a word he didn’t need a lawyer and, sitting down with them, asked them what was Will’s connection with Sixth Avenue, Queens Park. Why had he bought a spade? Why had he been digging up the garden of an empty house?
Becky was completely mystified by this. As far as she knew Will had never set foot in Queens Park unless he had worked there with Keith Beatty. ‘Look, how long can you keep him here?’ she asked. ‘It must be twenty-four hours by now. This is outrageous.’
‘Actually,’ said Zulueta, looking at his watch, ‘it’s just twenty. He can be held in custody for thirty-six hours and then—you may be sure of this—we can get an extension. In this case, without difficulty.’
Bored on her own and not the kind of woman who likes going about without a male escort, Ludmila had come down to the shop soon after Inez’s departure. She was proud of her continuing blondeness, which she swore was not touched up, and her emaciation, so she usually arranged herself to show off both these advantages. In a skin- (or bone-) tight floor-length dress of dark-green silk with a mauve pashmina draped over her arms, she reclined in the grey velvet armchair, her legs crossed and her hair spread across the chair back like an antimacassar. The pashmina she had just ironed, leaving a burn on the hem by the fringe, but the brown mark she had artfully folded in over her elbow. Her pose was not designed for any man’s entrapment, Freddy being trapped already, but when Anwar Ghosh strolled in for a word or two with his mate, she stretched herself more sinuously.
Anwar took no notice of her. ‘What’s with the old woman?’ He looked about him as if Inez might be hiding behind one of the cabinets.
‘Doing business with the police,’ said Freddy importantly. ‘I’m in charge.’
‘What business?’ Anwar didn’t much like the sound of that. It was to his advantage that the police took the minimum of interest in Star Antiques.
‘It concerns that backward boy who lives next to me,’ said Ludmila in a curious Baltic accent.
Longing to justify his existence by actually selling something while Inez was absent, Freddy said, ‘Nothing to do with us. You going to buy something now you’re here, An? Things are a bit slack this afternoon.’
Anwar looked anything but keen. ‘Something like what?’
‘How about that nice bust of Queen Victoria? Though why “bust” I’m sure I don’t know. More head and neck, I’d say. Or that lovely glass cat? Look great in your flatlet, that would.’
‘I’m a minimalist,’ said Anwar, shaking his head. ‘I’ll be back in a tick. I gotta find a toilet, I need a slash.’
He disappeared in the direction of the Edgware Road. ‘Going to the one in the Metropole Hotel,’ said Freddy admiringly. ‘Nothing but the best for that young man.’
‘Is he gay?’ Ludmila asked only because she could hardly believe anyone heterosexual could be proof against her charms.
‘He’s too young for that,’ Freddy said incomprehensibly, but then he often said things that seemed to have no logical or experiential basis.
‘Why were you in his place, anyway?’
‘I never was, Ludo.’ Detecting something threatening in her expression, he said, ‘I swear on my mother’s head!’
‘You have no mother, you fool.’
Freddy was about to say that, like everyone else, he did once have a mother and had only said that about the bust and the cat because these ornaments would look good anywhere, when Ludmila said in scolding tones, ‘Have you picked up our weekend vouchers yet?’
‘I’ll pop up to the travel chap right now. You’ll look after the shop, won’t you, sweetheart?’
‘Well, I’m here, aren’t I?’
The travel agent who was making arrangements for their weekend break was just round the corner in the Edgware Road. When he had been gone about a minute, Ludmila stood up, stretched and the pashmina fell off her arm, revealing the burn mark for anyone to see. This reminded her that she had left the iron on. With a hasty glance up and down the street to check no one was heading for the shop, she went out by the interior door and up the stairs.
Anwar, who hadn’t been near the Metropole but watching from the alley opposite, sauntered into the shop and, much more swiftly, into the back. He took the key from the back door and let himself out again by the tenants’ street door. The best place and quickest for the job he wanted was down in the underpass beneath the Edgware Road where it was crossed by the east-west flyover. To the people of the neighbourhood, especially the women, this underpass provided both safety and danger, safety from the relentless unceasing traffic pouring down the A5, but danger from the dubious characters who congregated in the passages and the occasional menacing loiterer. Easier, really, to cross above ground on the lights. But Anwar had no fear of the underpass. People were afraid of him.
The man who ran the place where they mended shoes, engraved tags for dogs’ collars and cut keys, was always affable and pleasant but Anwar suspected him of total honesty. That was enough to make him suspicious. Still, he never asked questions as to why one wanted a key copied and he didn’t ask now.
‘Half an hour?’ said Anwar, laying Inez’s back doorkey on the counter.
‘Oh, come on, son. I’ll need an hour.’
‘Three-quarters?’
‘OK. But not a minute under.’
It was just after six when Crippen appeared and said to Becky in a surly tone, ‘We’re letting Cobbett go home.’
She jumped up. ‘Where is he?’
‘He’s coming. I’ve had a doctor see him.’ Crippen spoke in the manner of a responsible person piously proud of doing his duty. ‘The doctor can’t account for his refusal to talk.’
Becky turned away. How different would Forsyth’s conduct have been, thought Inez, in similar circumstances. For an instant, vividly, she saw Martin’s face as he showed that tender empathy with the aunt of the poor boy his men had wrongfully arrested. Tonight, when at last she got home, she would put all this behind her and watch Forsyth and the Forlorn Hope, she’d forget Will and Becky and Freddy and Zeinab, and indulge in her therapy …
They brought Will in. Like a zombie, he walked mechanically, his legs stiff, his head hanging. Becky ran to him and threw her arms round him. He let himself be hugged, staring blankly over her head at the window and the long slanting sunbeams of late afternoon. Then, with a wondering slowness, as if learning the move for the first time, he brought up his hands and laid them against her back.
Not a word did he utter even when they were in the car, Inez in the back, he in the passenger seat next to
Becky. One good thing, thought Inez, Becky’s body must have processed the alcohol in her blood by now. The police had seemed unaware of it. The traffic was heavy, nose-to-tail queues from Maida Vale down to Marble Arch and not much better going up. ‘Thursday evening,’ said Inez. ‘Late shopping in Oxford Street.’
‘Of course I shall take Will home with me,’ said Becky. ‘He can’t be alone.’
To her shame, Inez was enormously relieved. Instead of luxuriating in Martin’s company for a couple of hours, she had imagined herself up and down the stairs, checking on Will, feeding Will, continually obliged to phone Becky.
‘I suppose he’ll have to take time off work?’
‘He will? I should think that’s the least of our worries. What about me?’
‘Becky, I’m so sorry. Did you find out anything about what they suspected him of doing? Why he’d been in—wherever it was—Queens Park?’
‘They said they’d want to see him again, but I expect they always say that. They found him digging in a garden and when they asked him he wouldn’t answer. Of, course the truth is he couldn’t answer. He can’t speak. Very obviously, I’d say, he’s lost the power of speech. They’ve had masses of them digging up all the gardens round there and searching through sheds and garages. They told me that but they wouldn’t say why. Looking for Jacky Miller’s body, I suppose.’
