The Rottweiler (v5)

by Ruth Rendell

  Ludmila marched up and down the shop, making a big scene about the robbery and the mess her flat had been left in.

  ‘The place ransacked,’ she kept shouting, ‘and all my wedding rings stolen! All of them! Jan’s ring and Waldemar’s, these I mind most, all of them gone!’

  ‘I never dreamt’, said Freddy, looking troubled, ‘you’d been married so many times, Ludo. It puts a different complexion on things.’

  She took no notice of him but began tearing at her hair as if she wanted to pull it out by the roots. Inez went to the window, watching for the arrival of the police officer who had promised to come ‘within the next half-hour’.

  ‘You had much nicked?’ said Freddy when Jeremy came in.

  ‘Not much. A watch I rather liked. Some cash.’

  ‘I’ve been lucky,’ said Freddy when it was clear Jeremy wasn’t going to ask. ‘All my valuable property is safe in my home in Stoke Newington.’

  ‘Moved again, have you, Freddy?’

  While Inez turned towards him to ask this irresistible question, a car drew up outside and DC Jones got out, followed by a uniformed officer. Suppose they’ve already found my safe, thought Jeremy, suppose they found it discarded and empty …

  Planned to be eaten at a table in the open air and overlooking the river, lunch had instead been taken indoors in a restaurant where the management had to turn the heating on. It was a bright day on the whole but from time to time hailstones burst out of the sky and rattled on the elaborately cobbled pavements. James had seemed uneasy and Becky was anxious, no matter how she tried to relax. Will was staying at home. They had left him a cold lunch of a pork pie, hard-boiled eggs, quiche and pickles, and promised to be back by three thirty at the latest. Becky had prepared the lunch, knowing he wouldn’t eat salad and afraid to leave him anything hot, while James did the promising.

  He was quite good at this, or he thought he was, but Becky knew that telling Will he wouldn’t want to spoil his aunt’s pleasure and it was good for her to get out of the house sometimes was not the way to win him over. Will thought Becky’s greatest joy came from being in her own home with him. To her dismay, she could tell he didn’t like James. Of course, he still didn’t speak, and though childlike, was sufficiently not a child to control his facial expressions. He would never pout and frown as a real nine-year-old might but was a master of the amiable nod and smile.

  She could read his face expertly—she had had plenty of practice—and she saw his unease with James in the way his unhappy eyes followed her every move, shifting them only to look at James with a hard implacability. The second time she had seen that glance, directed this time at James’s back, she almost said she wouldn’t go out, it wasn’t the nice day they had been promised and they would do just as well at home. But the thought came to her that if she did that it might be weeks before she ever went out again without Will, might not be until after he had recovered his speech and his confidence, and gone back to Star Street. It was of all this that she had been thinking in the restaurant as they ate their asparagus and drank their Sauvignon.

  ‘We have to talk,’ James said, words which struck her with a cold shock.

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘I really like you, Becky. I’m very attracted by you and I’m more sorry than I can say that I deserted you for those weeks for no good reason.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ she said.

  He made no answer. ‘If I’d known you for a long time, if we’d really got to know each other, perhaps I’d understand and I’d be willing to share you with a—a dependent nephew. If it was like that and it had happened that Will had to move in with you for a time I’d accept that and—wait. But it’s not, is it? I’ve never even been alone with you at home in your place or mine for a couple of hours. As for staying the night …’

  Ridiculously, at her age, she found herself blushing. She had looked at him, willing him to stop. He didn’t.

  ‘As for staying the night, I think you’d say that’s not possible with Will there. I know you would.’

  ‘Yes, I would.’ Unwillingly, the words were forced from her, ‘I don’t know what he’d do..’

  Their main course came. She had no appetite for it but she knew that somehow it was for her to mend things, make ‘we have to talk’ a profitable, not a negative, exercise. ‘James,’ she said, with no confidence in what she had to say, ‘it won’t go on. It’s just unfortunate you and I happened to meet at the same time as the police put Will through—well, all they did put him through. He’ll get better. He’ll go home and the most I’ll have to see him is once a week.’ In all her years of guilt, had she ever felt as guilty as she did now? Had it ever weighed on her so heavily that she felt she had betrayed Will even more than when she let him go to that home? ‘I really’—she had been going to say she loved him but she amended that—‘am fond of him. He’s my responsibility, especially at the moment.’

  ‘He’s not mine,’ said James with a harshness that hit her.

  She had thought she might have to leave the table, go outside and be sick. A superhuman effort controlled that. ‘Give me—two weeks,’ she said and, hating to plead but pleading, ‘Please. Just two weeks and things will be quite different.’

  ‘All right,’ he had said. ‘All right. At least we’ve got everything out in the open now.’ Oh, you don’t know, she thought, you don’t know. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’

  Her lunch had been spoiled but she had never had much hope of its success. The time pressed on her and while she talked absent-mindedly, she thought of Will at home alone, perhaps of his lunch being a disappointment, of the television refusing to obey the remote—was its battery still good?—and of the phone ringing in her absence. James seemed very unwilling to go back. They could walk, he suggested, along the South Bank as far as Westminster Bridge. Had she ever been in the aquarium? They might do that.

  ‘We said we’d be back by three thirty.’

  ‘Ah, right. We’d better go, then.’

  Will was fine. He had eaten the food she had left and even washed the dishes. The television was on and he was happily watching an old black-and-white film. Becky made tea, produced the pastries which Will loved and James looked at as if she had offered him a plate of maggots. He picked up the paper for today’s crossword but either couldn’t do it or hadn’t the heart to make a serious attempt, and sat staring out of the window as if in the depths of rather boring thought. Becky reflected miserably that if he was going to go on like that for the next two weeks—if he stayed the course—she might come to dislike him and never want to see him again. That would solve all their problems.

  At six, when the television had been on for three hours, he got up and said he must go. He had promised to call in and see his sister, but he would be in touch, he’d ring her. A smile of relief and positive pleasure spread across Will’s face and when James had gone he relaxed into the cushions, laughing uninhibitedly at the screen and flashing conspiratorial glances at Becky. Once he winked, something she had never seen him do before.

  She had been unable to eat any supper but Will had. In spite of having lazed on the sofa all day, he was voraciously hungry for his favourite meal, the eggs, bacon, chips and fried tomatoes she cooked for him. When the doorbell rang at eight she thought it might be James come back, that he was sorry he had sulked and been less than kind, but all would be different for the future … Not James but Detective Constable Jones, whose appearance in her living room struck some chord in Will, reminded him of his overnight-in-the-cell experience or simply shocked him.

  Whatever it was, it restored his power of speech, so that he burst out, jumping up, ‘No, I’m not coming! I won’t come, I’m staying here!’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t love it to bits, darling,’ Zeinab was saying to Morton Phibling. ‘But you know what Inez said. Don’t wear it in the street, she said. It wasn’t as if you was coming to pick me up in the Lincoln, was you?’

  ‘I would have if you’d let me co
me to your home.’

  ‘I’ve told you a million times my dad’d kill me. And you.’

  Instead of the boat trip, they were in Kew Gardens. Morton had remembered that boats made him seasick. Zeinab hadn’t wanted to go to Kew. She liked flowers, especially orchids and arum lilies, but gardens left her cold. Morton had only been keen on the visit because when he was at school he’d learnt a poem about going down to Kew in lilac time, it wasn’t far from London. Zeinab thought it was much too far from London and told him so several times. She wasn’t worried about the diamond pendant, which she thought she remembered leaving on a shelf in the bathroom cabinet at Dame Shirley Porter House. Her engagement ring (the big one, not Rowley’s more modest affair) was on her finger and she flashed it proudly whenever anyone was looking. There was nothing else to do in here.

  Morton went some way to retrieving the day by taking her to tea at the Ritz. Zeinab, who never put on weight, ate two chocolate eclairs and a large slice of strawberry tart with cream. Despite this, she was giving serious thought to breaking things off with Morton. It was nearly time, before all this wedding dress business and fixing the date and inviting guests brought things to a crux. She wanted to get one more large present out of him first, though. The Jaguar took them to Hampstead where Morton’s driver was imperiously told to stop on the corner and let her out in case Mr Sharif was watching.

  Morton was driven back to Eaton Square, of course, while Zeinab had to get a couple of buses to Lisson Grove. Algy and the children were watching Mary Poppins on television. An uninvited and unexpected guest, Mrs Sharif sat in the most comfortable chair, eating Godiva chocolates.

  ‘What a day I’ve had,’ said Zeinab, hoping her mother would think she was the only woman in Marylebone who had been at work this holiday Monday. ‘It’s all go.’ Her mother’s opinion was of no importance to her but if she disapproved of the goings-on with Morton and Rowley she might refuse to babysit. Thinking of Morton reminded her of the diamond pendant. She went into the bathroom and looked in the cabinet. The pendant wasn’t on the shelf. She must have taken it out of there and put it in the bedroom. Crossing the hall, she was hindered in her search by Algy who said he had something to say to her he would prefer Mrs Sharif not to hear.

  ‘If it’s about me going about with Morton and Rowley,’ said Zeinab, ‘don’t bother. I don’t get any fun out of it either and it’s bloody hard work. I’ll have you know Morton’s friend Orville Pereira who’s a billionaire asked me out but I said no. On account of you. So there.’

  ‘It’s not about that. It’s about the exchange.’

  ‘What d’you mean, exchange?’

  ‘This couple phoned. They’d seen my ad and they’ve got a flat in Pimlico they’re giving up on account of wanting one around here. It’d be free of hassle, Suzanne, it’s the same council, it’d be quick.’

  ‘I don’t know, Alge. It’s a big decision. I don’t even know where Pimlico is.’

  ‘I do. I could show you. Your mum’ll stay with Bryn and Carmel, and we could go down there and have a look. We could look at the outside, at any rate.’

  ‘OK,’ said Zeinab. ‘I don’t mind. But while we’re about it, let’s have a meal somewhere, might as well make an evening of it. First I’ve got to find that necklace thing Morton gave me.’ His black look made her giggle. ‘I’ve got to find it to flog it, haven’t I?’

  The pendant wasn’t on the dressing table or inside it, it wasn’t in the drawer where Zeinab kept her jewellery and it wasn’t mixed up with her cosmetics—two big drawerfuls. What had she been wearing on Friday? Her usual costume of clingy white sweater and black miniskirt, she supposed. She always did, she was now. Her leather jacket would be worn only if the weather was very cold while Zeinab would rather have got pneumonia than cover herself up in a topcoat. She looked in the pockets of the jacket. The pendant wasn’t there, not surprising as she hadn’t worn it since last Friday, not, indeed, since March.

  What had she done that day? Come in to work with Morton, shown off the pendant, had that row with Freddy, he’d called her a tart and she’d called Ludmila a Russian cow, then there’d been some customers, then—she remembered suddenly—she’d told Inez she’d be having lunch with Rowley and Inez had said to take off the pendant and she had. But what had she done with it? Nothing that she could recall. Just put it on the table, the top of which met the base of the mirror, while she redid her face. She must have left it there. Forgotten all about it and left it in the shop …

  Well, it would still be there. She’d get it tomorrow. Back in the living room, Reem Sharif was grudgingly agreeing to Algy’s proposal.

  ‘If them kids eat any more of my chocolates they’ll be sick as dogs. And if I’m stopping here half the night I’ll want a meal. Where you going to eat?’

  ‘Chinese,’ said Algy.

  ‘You can bring me in a lemon chicken platter, then, and egg-fried rice—oh, and sesame prawn toast to start. Not a minute after ten, mind. I’ll be starving by then.’

  The police hadn’t taken Will away, Becky told Inez on the phone, but they’d questioned him on and on about some break-in. Had there been one at the shop?

  Inez told her about it. ‘But that’s preposterous thinking Will had something to do with it. He hasn’t been here for a week.’

  ‘I don’t know if they really think it,’ said Becky, ‘but that was the drift of what they said. They wanted to search my flat but I put my foot down, I said absolutely not, and they went away, this DC Jones said to get a warrant, but that was last evening and no one’s been back.’

  ‘I know Jones,’ said Inez. ‘Not as well as I know Zulueta and Osnabrook, not to mention Crippen, but I do know him.’

  Becky said she was sorry, she ought to have asked if Inez had had anything taken. She listened while Inez listed the things that were missing, making her laugh about Ludmila’s wedding rings.

  ‘Will’s got his speech back,’ Becky said. ‘Last night. The shock of seeing Jones, I expect.’

  ‘Then he’ll soon be coming back here?’

  ‘I hope so, Inez,’ she said, and Inez detected a wistful note in her tone.

  The phone call had come while Inez was waiting for Zeinab to arrive. She was no later than she always was. For the first time on a weekday morning since last October when he had stayed in bed with a bad cold, Jeremy hadn’t come into the shop for his tea. It hadn’t been a formal arrangement but just the same he could have given her a call, stopped her putting an extra teabag in the pot. She suspected he hadn’t gone to work. Seeing him at the wheel of that car yesterday morning came back to her. Instances of incongruous behaviour were always occurring in his life recently. He must have told her at least three times that he had no car, wouldn’t have a car in London, considered it antisocial to pollute the atmosphere with fumes. Of course, it was possible the one she had seen wasn’t his at all, but that he had hired a car to go to his mother’s. But he’d also said he couldn’t drive. Being with the police so much must have infected her with their way of thinking, for she found herself wondering why she hadn’t noted down the registration. Still, she knew what the car looked like, a silver Mercedes.

  Zeinab rushed in at a quarter to ten. People who were incorrigibly late, Inez had noticed, were always in a hurry, always breathless and panting when they did arrive. Without a word to her, with scarcely a glance, Zeinab rushed to what everyone called her mirror and the console table below it. Inez saw her face, aghast, incredulous, in the mirror and her hands scrabbling among the little ornaments on the adjacent display tables. She turned round, holding up her hands as if about to pray. ‘It’s gone!’

  ‘What’s gone?’

  ‘My pendant Morton gave me. I left it here on Friday when I went out to lunch with Rowley and I—I forgot it!’

  Inez knew the pointlessness, despite the temptation, of telling someone in Zeinab’s situation that she should have been more careful. She would know that now or else she never would. Now to break the news, but gently. �
�I’m very much afraid we had some trouble yesterday.’ She paused for this to prepare the way. ‘A break-in, I’m sorry to say. Things were taken from everyone. I suppose—well, it seems likely they took your pendant.’

  ‘Oh, my God, oh, my God, what am I going to do? What am I going to say to Morton?’

  Inez happened to believe, as Martin had, that telling the truth is always best. No prevarication, no ‘white lies’, and no putting off the evil day. But saying so would sound sententious. ‘Perhaps you won’t need to tell him anything yet,’ she said, though it went against the grain. ‘The police may find it.’

  ‘What am I going to do if he asks?’

  ‘He’s never asked about the other things he’s given you, has he?’

  ‘There’s always a first time,’ said Zeinab. ‘The police won’t know it’s missing, will they? I’d better go down there and tell them.’

  ‘Phone them,’ said Inez, intent on preventing Zeinab from avoiding her job for another hour or two. ‘Ask for DC Jones. And I’d like a word with him too. I want to tell him about the dirty white van with the notice in the back that always used to be outside. It may be important.’

  The search of her home was worse than an actual burglary would have been, thought Becky. Jones and a PC in uniform went through every room, investigating drawers and emptying out the contents, peering into wardrobes, feeling in coat pockets, taking out books one by one and searching behind them. Any book that was particularly thick Jones opened, looking for one of those secret compartments. Her own jewellery was closely examined, particular attention being paid to her mother’s worn and scratched wedding ring. In the study, now Will’s bedroom, they found in a drawer in the workstation a pair of woollen gloves. They were hers, bright red and almost too small for Will to get his hands in, but Jones seemed to look on this find as very serious, the allegation being that Will had worn the gloves while raiding Inez’s house.

  They found nothing else to bear out this theory but they went on searching methodically, inspired and energised by the discovery of the gloves—why had she ever put them there and when?—moved into the living room where they hunted all round Will who sat, fearful and hunched, in a corner of the sofa. When they began on the books and sleeves of videos, he made a whimpering sound and ran out of the room to seek refuge, not in the study but in her own bedroom. There he lay face-downwards with his face buried in the pillows and there Jones saw him when he put his head round the door, looking for Becky. Jones said nothing but pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows, a grimace there was no one to witness.