by Ruth Rendell
Half an hour later, the search complete and nothing found but the gloves, the wedding ring and a man’s watch which she occasionally wore because it had a large clear face, Jones asked her if she and Will were really aunt and nephew.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘He seems very familiar with your bedroom.’
Perhaps Becky should have told him to mind his own business. She didn’t. ‘I can prove it if you’d like to see my birth certificate and his mother’s and his. I deeply resent your suggestion.’
‘OK, Ms Cobbett, keep calm. That’ll be all for now. We may well be back.’
Will was still on her bed, his fingers stuffed in his ears, though neither officer had made much noise. Suppose he refused to move all day? Suppose he wanted to stay there all night? If she and James had a real relationship, if this had become a love affair, she could have phoned him and asked his advice or help. The terms they were on at present were too fragile for that. There was no one really she could go to and ask for aid. She realised when the morning was nearly over that for the first time since she took Will in, she hadn’t been in touch with the office or sent any e-mails or faxes. And next week she was due to return to work.
She went back to her bedroom. He had fallen asleep where he lay, but it was a restless sleep in which he muttered and twitched, his hands opening and closing like someone intent on restoring feeling to numb fingers. That sensation of panic overwhelmed her. She went back into the living room and poured herself a large whisky.
CHAPTER 19
Opening the strongbox was even more difficult than Anwar had supposed. He started by taking it to a motor mechanic friend of his who seemed to have the tools needed, but although the friend tried everything, its door remained shut. More subtle means would have to be used. But Anwar knew very well the near impossibility of trying numbers to fit a code combination. It would run into millions of attempts, billions, before you succeeded.
He and Keefer went back to St Michael’s Street in Keefer’s now spotless white van. Anwar took Zeinab’s diamond pendant from under his pillow and put it in his pocket. Later he’d take it to a jeweller he knew, an Indian though not a relation—he wouldn’t risk trying anything on with relatives—who wasn’t exactly crooked or even bent but a little bit, as his father might say, ‘on the skew’. So tired he could hardly keep his eyes open, a trickle of spit trailing out of the corner of his mouth, Keefer sat on the floor in a corner, doing a line of cocaine to wake him up. Anwar would have thrown him out, only he knew his friend in this mood. He was liable to stand out on the landing, beating at the door and howling. Since coming into money, Keefer’s indulgence in Class A substances had been unrestricted.
Anwar sat on the bed with the strongbox. He tried Inez’s burglar alarm number, the birth date of Alexander Gibbons—whoever that might be, obviously someone of significance in Quick’s life, possibly Quick’s own pseudonym—which he got from his driving licence: 7 July 1955. A man about Quick’s age, then. Interesting—but the four digits didn’t make up the right code. Quick’s phone number next, Inez’s phone number and the number of the shop. Nothing worked. Maybe he should stop for now and pursue some other line. He’d set Flint to tailing Jeremy Quick, follow him when he left in the morning, see where he went. If Alexander Gibbons and he were one and the same he must presumably take on Gibbons’s character from time to time, resume being him. And Gibbons would be his real name, Quick the pseudonym. He, Anwar, would have found a way to have a driving licence in another name if he’d wanted to, but Jeremy wasn’t as clever as he. Few were.
Keefer was jumping galvanically, his legs twitching and his feet drumming on the floor.
‘That’s what comes of taking a cocktail of that shit,’ said Anwar. ‘You’d better stay here. I’m going out in the van.’
He was too young to drive but he could. The van was uninsured and he had no personal cover. Neat in the pinstriped suit, he drove up to Brondesbury Park and his parents’ house. His sister Arjuna was at home, also skiving off school, he supposed, but both his parents were working, ‘to keep you children in the style to which we were never accustomed’, as his father put it.
‘Hello, stranger,’ said Arjuna, more like one’s old auntie than a fourteen-year-old.
‘Hi.’
Anwar wasn’t going to waste time on her. He went upstairs to his bedroom where he had a computer with Internet access. There, he quickly entered the London electoral registers website, knowing his efforts might take him hours but determined to be patient. Almost two hours passed before he found what he wanted. Luckily, the place where the man lived, or was supposed to live, was as nearly central as Star Street but in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Chetwynd Mews, 14, Gibbons, Alexander P. No need now to tail Jeremy Quick. He would go there himself and spy out the land.
By this time Uma and Nilima had also come home.
‘Mum’s been asking where you are,’ said Nilima accusingly.
‘You can tell her I’ve been here, can’t you?’
‘I suppose you’re going back to your friend in Bayswater. It’s a girl, isn’t it?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know, nosy Nilima?’ said Anwar, slamming the back door as he left.
How often would Quick go home and become Alexander Gibbons? Maybe every day, maybe only occasionally. And why did he? One thing was sure, if he could afford to keep two homes going and one of them in a Kensington Mews, he truly was the diamond geezer Freddy had said he was. Therefore, no more time must be wasted before that strongbox was opened. It might well contain something as valuable as the pendant. Suppose he couldn’t get it open, would he then try bringing pressure to bear on Gibbons-Quick to open it himself? In Kensington, though, not here.
Anwar parked the van in St Michael’s Street and walked back to the Edgware Road, where in a newagent’s he bought a paperback A–Z London guide. In his room Keefer had reverted to his somnolent state and was lying on the floor foetus-fashion. Anwar kicked him in the ribs, for no reason but his own personal satisfaction. Keefer didn’t stir. I hope he’s not dead, thought Anwar, not out of affection for his friend but imagining attempts to get the body down the stairs unseen and out of the house.
The London guide showed him that Chetwynd Mews was a turning off Launceston Place, W8. Drive or take the tube to Kensington High Street. Easy-peasy. Now to have another go at the strongbox. After a couple of fruitless hours, Julitta and Flint appeared. They looked dispassionately at Keefer, whom they had seen in this state before.
‘Do you wonder’, said Julitta, ‘that I told him to fuck off? Who needs that around the house? Haven’t you got that open yet?’
That was not the way to speak to Anwar. ‘You try then, bitch. You couldn’t open a can of beans let alone a safe.’
‘OK, I only asked.’
‘Was there something you wanted? If not you can piss off and take him with you.’
It took all three of them to get Keefer on to his feet. Julitta took one arm and Flint the other. Anwar heard them thumping down the stairs, Julitta’s heels clacking, Keefer muttering and swearing, his booted feet kicking the treads. Back to the strongbox. It was beginning to look as if he’d have to get Gibbons-Quick to open it himself. Torture him a bit—oh, yes, easy-peasy, he might open it but he’d go to the police the minute they left with descriptions of them all. It was important to Anwar to keep his unblemished record and his reputation, as yet only sullied by school truancy.
Now he was trying any combination. One-two-three-four and five-six-seven-eight. All four digits the same, six-six-six-six, eight-eight-eight-eight. Nothing worked. Just for fun, for nothing but liking to see it because it was his, the number he’d never use for a safe code, it was too obvious, and certainly the number Gibbons-Quick had no possible reason to use: three-three-eight-six. His own birthday and birth date, the third of March 1986. Wasting time, he admonished himself, but he keyed it in.
The strongbox emitted a low growl, then two clicks and i
ts door slid open.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Anwar said and he closed his eyes. When he opened them again the door still stood ajar. ‘Come on, get yourself together. You’ve done it.’
But what was this? A pair of cheap earrings, a lighter and the kind of girl’s watch you pinned on. The disappointment which came at once faded as he began to realise. Those were the earrings, Jacky Miller’s, that lighter belonged to one of the other girls and the watch to a third. It had been in the papers and on telly day after day. Two murdered girls and a third who had probably been murdered. Gibbons-Quick had their property, or had had it. That must mean he’d killed them. He was the Rottweiler. What other explanation was possible?
Anwar Ghosh was old in villainy but still he was only sixteen. He came from what his head teacher would have called ‘a nice home’ and had grown up in an Indian middle-class tradition of hard work, protracted education, careful husbandry and the importance of family life—hugely extended family life. The thought that he, the son of professional people and destined for great things, had broken into the flat of a serial killer and robbed him turned him cold all over. It was as if the icy spray from a shower head where there is only cold water had hit him with a nasty shock. For a moment, but only a moment, he considered dumping the strongbox and its contents, telling the others it contained no more than costume jewellery junk and a few notes, and then dropping it over one of the bridges into the canal.
But the strongbox was a potential money-maker. And in no small way. It might make thousands, tens of thousands. Remember Gibbons-Quick is loaded, he told himself. Remember he’s got two homes. He’s a diamond geezer. What to do about it? Sit here in the quiet and think. Think about the next step. And he must never forget the man was very dangerous.
Just before five Anwar was in the mews, sitting in the white van. He didn’t dare leave the van in case the traffic warden who had been prowling about in here, but was on his way out just as he arrived, came back. He had parked outside number nine but on the opposite side, where there was a brick wall with creepers all over it, from which number fourteen could be easily kept within his sights. The house incorporated a garage and when Anwar looked through its small window he saw a silver Mercedes inside. Unlike Inez in similar circumstances, he noted down the number.
His discovery hadn’t yet been fully realised, hadn’t become part of the day’s work, or just one of those things. Every time he thought of those objects being inside there, sweat broke out on the palms of his hands and his forehead, and he found himself asking if he was dreaming, it couldn’t be. But it was, it was. And now he was going to capitalise on it. Hold on to that, he told himself every time that dreaming stuff came back, hold on to that.
Gibbons-Quick was in the house. Anwar hadn’t seen him go in but he’d seen him at a window. Easily recognisable if encountered only twice, one of those times when the man was returning home—well, to one home—after some evening trip out, the other when walking up the Edgware Road and he and Freddy were coming out of Ranoush Juice. Just now G-Q had appeared at an upstairs window, looked down into the mews and drawn the curtains. And that was the guy who had killed all those girls, put a garrotte round their necks and pulled it till they were dead! It was unbelievable. No more of that, said Anwar sternly, it happened, right? It’s him.
And here he was coming out of the house just as the traffic warden reappeared at the other end of the mews. Where was he going? Back to Star Street, via Kensington High Street tube station, it looked like. For part of the way Anwar followed him until it became impossible, there was too much traffic and all wanting to go as fast as possible. Having no driving licence and no insurance, Anwar knew the folly of attracting attention to himself while at the wheel of Keefer’s van.
On the drive home, he reflected on his researches into Gibbons-Quick’s life. A double life, obviously, therefore one—or two—with much to hide. A man who could disappear from one life and reappear in the next, and one with a bizarre sense of humour. For two days now he would have known that his strongbox had gone and that the thieves would succeed in opening it if they tried hard enough or had his kind of staggering luck. Only the exceptionally stupid would get bored with trying and dispose of the box unopened. So the Rottweiler must be expecting some kind of approach, maybe even an approach from the law.
The next step, thought Anwar, would be to gratify his expectations—but prepare the ground carefully first.
Will was a frightened child. All the thin veneer of grown-upness built over his inner self by the encouragement of friends, of Becky and Monty and Keith, seemed to have been peeled away by the police. Sometimes he lay face-downwards on Becky’s bed, sometimes he huddled in a corner of the sofa, staring into space or gazing at the sky out of the big window. Television still provided entertainment, so long as it was totally anodyne, gentle quizzes purposely designed for the low IQ, it seemed to Becky, children’s cartoons, historical comedy. But even this last often contained scenes of violence, duels, the rough handling of prisoners, punishment and death, and all this made Will quail and bury his head in the cushions. Detective series, war films, news programmes, all these were out of the question. The sight of a uniformed policeman on the screen or even a plainclothes man in raincoat and soft hat, caused him to whimper aloud and run from the room to the sanctuary of her bedroom. She had given up sleeping there, leaving it to him, and moved into the study at night.
True to his word of giving it a trial, James continued to come. He might have been a social worker himself, compiling a case history, for all the closeness there was between him and Becky. He kissed her when he came in much the same way as she kissed Will, helped her get tea, told her about events at the office, offered her a second television set for her own use in the study.
‘Thank you very much but it’s not worth it,’ she said with more optimism than perhaps she felt. ‘Will must go back to his own place in the next week or two. I’ve had two weeks off and I’ve got one more. After that I have to go back if I want to keep my job.’
James had become addicted to The Times crossword. He did it every time he came and Becky, glancing at it before dropping it into the recycling, saw how his facility with it had improved. Seldom now were there blank spaces where he couldn’t solve a clue and find a word. When he left he kissed her on the cheek and said he would ‘look in’ again in a day or two. Before he arrived and immediately after he left, she swallowed a gulp, or two gulps, of whisky straight from the secret bottle she kept on a hidden shelf in the kitchen.
Another visitor was Keith Beatty. It brought Becky dismay to see the shock on Keith’s face when he saw Will and she realised how she had grown used to his deterioration. For a few minutes Keith didn’t know what to say but he rallied, made an effort on which she silently congratulated him, and talked about the current decorating job, his wife, his children and his sister.
‘Kim’s really missed you, Will. She keeps asking how you’re getting on, said you were going to get in touch and fix another date, and then this. She hasn’t much time for the police after this, I can tell you.’
Becky marvelled that he still seemed to think—as he had thought from first acquaintance with her nephew—that Will was a normal person who happened to be rather reserved and for some reason had missed out on essential schooling. Was that the sister’s attitude too?
‘I might bring her over to see you, if that’s all right with Miss Cobbett, I mean Becky.’
‘Of course.’
What else could she say? And Will, who was always suspicious of James, visibly improved in Keith’s company, speaking a little, answering his enquiries and smiling much as he had smiled before the police found him digging up that garden. Perhaps he would be the same with Kim. Becky saw it as a kind of therapy. This might be the way to get Will restored to his old self.
Keith evidently believed he had simply been physically ill, had had flu or a virus. She should be grateful to Inez, she supposed, for creating this belief among Will’s acquaint
ances. As for her, almost for the first time since he was born, she had ceased to feel guilt. By giving up her life to him, her future and her very self, she had rid herself of guilt, but only for him. It was there in strong measure over her job, failure to work from home as she had intended, her career and her once-potential lover. No doubt it was part of her nature and if she banished it from one area it only resurfaced in another. Drinking had become an essential part of her lifestyle, and the worst kind, the secret, covert, conspiratorial sort, and the conspirators were her ego and her unconscious.
None of that introspection solved the terrible difficulty of what to do when she was due back in her office. If she wanted to keep her job she must go back. She was twenty years away from retirement and she had intended, in any case, never to retire.
Near despair, she listened while Keith chatted about his small son starting nursery school and Will nodded, smiled and said ‘Good boy’ or ‘He’s big now’, and thought how she was caught in the carer’s cage, in the trap with no escape hatch, the thankless, unpaid, laborious and mind-numbing boredom of looking after the unfortunate.
That same week the body of Jacky Miller was found in the front garden of a house in South Kensington. The house had been gutted and, although a good deal of the debris had been collected and removed, an area in the front where once had been a lawn was again covered with bricks, battens, chunks of fibreglass, broken glass and wrenched-up floorboards. The fibreglass was unpleasant and perhaps dangerous to handle because the thick fuzzy yellow stuff was made of fine filaments of glass. Bare hands thrust into it came out covered with innumerable hair-thin scratches. It was therefore the last of the piles to be taken away and when it was, the driver of the builders’ waste truck uncovered a dead girl, fast decomposing.
