The Rottweiler (v5)

by Ruth Rendell

  Her mother who, for the past month, had lived in alternating hope and dreadful fear, identified the body in the mortuary; approaching, staring, turning away like a woman sleepwalking.

  All this time Jacky had lain there no more than two streets away from the mews where Jeremy Quick lived as himself, as Alexander Gibbons. Driving his car through the West End was something he seldom did but he had done it on the night Jacky left the club she had been to with her friends. As it was long past the restricted hours, he had parked in a rare empty space on a single yellow line because he saw the girls. Four of them, all a little drunk, merry and now perhaps tired. It was Gaynor Ray all over again.

  He approached them and was no more than a yard away when he turned into a phone box and pretended to make a call. Already excited, tingling with it, he remembered Gaynor and her silver cross, the willingness with which she had accepted his offer of a lift. What was happening to him he could no more understand now than he ever could. Analysis of his feelings deserted him while he was looking at the girl he would next kill. His intellect was subsumed in this stronger faculty, which wasn’t sexual or anger or something fools called bloodlust. Was it an overmastering desire for revenge?

  Three of the girls went off, down Tottenham Court Road, perhaps seeking an all-night bus. The one he had singled out—why? He didn’t know—turned down a side street and waited at the kerb, for a taxi, it must be. It was twenty past one and there were no taxis. There were no people either, not in this narrow darkish street.

  The greyish-white light of a single street lamp glittered on the earrings she wore. Brilliants set in the silver like diamonds in white gold—some chance! He started the car. If he had stayed there he would have been sick, have had to get out and retch into the gutter. Once before, when he had tried to resist this impulse and had only succeeded because the girl had unlocked a door on to the street and gone inside, he had actually thrown up. Not this time.

  Immaculate as usual in dark suit, white shirt and blue tie, he doctored his accent as far away as possible from the Nottingham tones he grew up with. A public school drawl replaced it as he pulled up where the taxi she wanted might have stopped, and said, ‘Where are you going? Don’t look like that’—she wasn’t looking like anything, only surprised—‘I’m really not a strange man. I’ve got a daughter of my own your age and I’m absolutely safe.’

  ‘Wandsworth,’ she said, and she named the street. ‘It’s by the common.’

  ‘Sure you feel OK? You wouldn’t prefer to wait for a cab?

  ‘There aren’t any. Were you going there yourself?’

  ‘Balham,’ he said. ‘It’s on my way.’

  He had driven her southwards, almost passing his own house, into Chelsea by the World’s End and down the Wandsworth Bridge Road. They talked all the way, she about the friends and the evening they had had; he, congratulating himself on the scope of his imagination, had invented a wife who was a doctor, a daughter at Oxford, a son taking A Levels. When they were nearly at Wandsworth Bridge, he turned off into an even lonelier and emptier side street.

  ‘I don’t think this is the way,’ she said, not fearfully but as she might say those words to a friend who had taken the wrong turning.

  ‘I know. I wanted to do like the taxi drivers and look it up in my guide.’

  He unfastened his seat belt and leaned across her to open the glove compartment. But instead of taking out his London guide he had put his hand over the length of electric lead which lay inside.

  When it was done he didn’t even move the body from where it still sat. Passers-by, if there were any, would suppose his passenger asleep. It was a risk but taking risks lifted it above the inexplicable and the sordid. Perhaps taking risks also made it seem more like a game, less real. However, she couldn’t stay there for long. On his way to the mews, where he had in any case meant to stay the night, he passed the dumped waste in the front garden. Huge houses here, all separate, all with gardens full of dense shrubs and tall trees. A few lights were still on but none in this house, of course, and none in those of the immediate neighbours. Usually he didn’t bother with hiding a body but something told him this time that concealment might be wiser. He had taken off her earrings the moment he knew she was dead. As he had told himself before, it was Gaynor Ray all over again …

  Passing that way on foot a week later he had been gratified to see the layers of fibreglass which had been her sole covering were half-buried now under bricks and sand and broken wood. It might be a long time before they found her. It was.

  The discovery briefly distracted him from the worry which never really left him now: speculation as to what had become of his strongbox. A happy outcome was, of course, possible. Apart from the thieves growing fed up with it and discarding it somewhere unopened, there was the chance the objects inside might not be recognised for what they were. And if they were recognised those who had taken the strongbox might decide it was better to do nothing, it was safer. Were they not just as criminal as he? The likelihood of people in their situation going to the police was small.

  As each day passed and nothing happened, his mind grew easier. Perhaps his best course would be to vanish back into his true identity and become Alexander Gibbons for ever more, as he had intended to do when he planned to marry the fictitious Belinda. Since the burglary the flat in Star Street had become less desirable to him. He sensed that the astute Inez had become distrustful. Not that she suspected him of his true offences, he was sure of that, but of lying and prevarication she did. Being alone with her was no longer pleasant or amusing, and he had begun avoiding that cup of tea and chat in the mornings. Once or twice he failed to go to work in the mews house but stayed all day in the Paddington area, walking about, sitting in cafés drinking coffee, always wondering if someone was following him. Sometimes he was sure he had a shadow who dogged his footsteps along the Bayswater Road, up Westbourne Terrace and over the bleak and lonely hump of Bishop’s Bridge. But long before he reached home the man or woman behind him turned out not to have been following him at all but merely going the same way as he was and at the same pace.

  The newspapers were full of the discovery of Jacky Miller’s body, of interviews with her mother, her relatives and friends. One of these, with the particular friend who had given her the earrings, alerted him more sharply to his danger, for the girl, shown the pair he had bought and planted in the shop, denied these had been her gift. The hoops of her earrings had been studded with twenty brilliants, she had made a point of counting them, while the pair the police showed her had only sixteen. Somehow, a pair identical to the ones she had bought were found in a jewellers and a photograph of these beside one of the pair he had bought appeared in every paper as well as on television.

  This must be bad news for him, Jeremy thought, up in his flat, again absenting himself from work and today from his rovings around north-west London. If the thieves of the strongbox saw this story, and they would, of course they would, things would be worse for him. They would know, if they hadn’t before, that the earrings in the box had twenty brilliants in their hoops and were identical to those in the photograph. Why, oh why, hadn’t he thought to count those glittering glass fragments before buying the substitute pair? Because it wouldn’t have crossed his mind, he wouldn’t have imagined the number might have any significance. Did that mean he despised women who adorned themselves with cheap jewellery? Or even that he looked down on and, more than that, loathed, women? Perhaps. He couldn’t, at the moment, think of one he knew that he liked.

  Except his mother. Of the rest it was true. Besides—and he seemed to have made a strange discovery—his mother wasn’t exactly a woman, she was unique, his mother. Outside categories, outside sex. This delving into his inner self left him feeling exhausted and he was sitting in his chair, half asleep, when the phone rang. Few people knew this phone number. The other tenants, of course, Inez, now, presumably, the police.

  He let it ring, five times, six times. Then he lifted the receiver.


  CHAPTER 20

  The voice was a woman’s, the accent, Jeremy thought, what you might expect from this kind of lowlife. The words were unreal, or perhaps surreal. He wondered if man or woman had ever asked this question before of anyone.

  ‘Is that the murderer?’

  He made himself speak. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s the Rottweiler, innit?’

  This time he didn’t reply. He hated that sobriquet.

  She said, ‘I got your safe and the shit in it. You wan-nit? You better answer. Not talking’s not doing you no good, Mister Gibbons.’

  He wouldn’t admit even to himself that this frightened him. Alerted him, he thought. How did she know? How could she know? ‘What is it you want?’ he said.

  Following the time-honoured style of the blackmailer, she said, ‘You’ll see. I’ll call again later and you better be there.’

  That she knew his name was, for the moment, the most alarming thing. Of course it wasn’t just she alone, there would be others, certainly one other. Somehow they had broken open his strongbox and cruelly taken their time in approaching him. He marvelled at his use of that word ‘cruelly’ even in his thoughts, silently, internally, in the silence of his mind. Cruel, he repeated to himself, cruelly, cruelty, cruellest. The way she had spoken his real name was cruel. Besides that, he couldn’t understand how she knew it. He had brought no documents here for intruders to find. His insurance policy, share certificates, passport, car insurance, current tax return, credit card statements, driving licence and all the rest were securely locked up in his desk at 14 Chetwynd Mews. But wait a minute … Where was his driving licence? Not this last time but back in March when visiting his mother, he had been stopped for speeding. Only five miles per hour over the limit but this officious motorcycle cop had stopped him. Of course he hadn’t his driving licence on him but, obeying the rule to produce it within five days at the nearest police station, he had done so, pocketed it and returned to Star Street. What had he done with it? In spite of that woman’s telling him not to leave the house—he wasn’t going to take instructions from a woman, especially one with a voice like hers—he went out, walked up to Norfolk Square and took a taxi to South Kensington.

  Halfway there the thought came to him that his mother had never, not through all his infancy and boyhood, told him what and what not to do, she had never instructed him. She had loved him. His second thought was, what if by some horrible coincidence or some find he couldn’t identify, they had also broken into 14 Chetwynd Mews. But he was letting nervousness bring him fantasies. The burglar alarm was on as usual and everything inside inviolate. In the desk he found all the documents he had enumerated—with the exception of the driving licence. Then it came back to him. He had meant to bring it here but had done what is so easily done, put it in a ‘safe place’ in the Star Street kitchen, the drawer where he kept brochures telling him how to work the microwave and the dishwasher. Why would they look in there?

  He didn’t know why but they had. No driving licence. He went out into his roof garden, a bower of bliss on this fine day, the first geraniums out, little trees in pots putting out new leaves, the tree fern fresh green, its fronds unfurling. He scarcely noticed it, he scarcely noticed the scent of the hyacinths, but sat down to await that woman’s call.

  ‘I’ve told him’, said Zeinab, ‘I’ve put it in the bank till after the wedding. Then it won’t matter what he thinks, it’ll be too late.’

  She reminded Inez of those girls in Victorian novels who married rich men, only confessing their load of debts to the bridegroom after the ceremony. But marriage was an irrevocable bond in those days … ‘You’re going through with it, then?’

  Instead of answering directly, Zeinab said, ‘The wedding’s June eighth at St Peter’s, Eaton Square. I hope you’ll come.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem very appropriate, considering he’s Jewish and you’re a Moslem.’

  ‘It’s all the same God, isn’t it?’ said Zeinab in a pious voice and she contemplated her engagement rings, one on each hand, the small diamond Rowley Woodhouse’s and the huge one Morton’s.

  ‘Where are you going for your honeymoon?’ This from Freddy, who had walked in from the street.

  He and Zeinab seemed to have settled their differences and decided to let bygones be bygones. ‘Bermuda,’ she said and corrected herself. ‘No, that’s with Rowley. Me and Morton are going to Rio.’

  ‘You can’t marry both of them.’ Freddy didn’t wait for her reply. ‘I’m thinking of getting married myself.’ Since no longer working for Inez, he had resumed his old habits of examining and occasionally dusting the pieces on sale. Striking an orator’s attitude, clutching a soapstone camel in his left hand, he began to hold forth. ‘Marriage is an institution I feared was falling into disuse, but not a bit of it, it is rather on the up and up, in other words, becoming the fashion. Mark my words, in a few years, cohabiting, all this living together without benefit of register office, will be a thing of the past, not to say frowned on by them in the know …’

  ‘What about you living with Ludmila, then?’ said Zeinab.

  ‘Living with her is not correct, Zeinab,’ said Freddy with dignity. ‘As is well known among them as matters’—a friendly glance for Inez—‘Ludo is a tenant in this house, while I am resident in London Fields. Mark my words …’

  Inez had marked them long enough. ‘Freddy,’ she said quietly as a customer came in and Zeinab glided gracefully to serve him, ‘Freddy, while you were looking after the shop that afternoon I was at the police station with Becky, are you quite quite sure no one went into the back? Not some friend of a tenant or casual caller?’ Her mind roved over Rowley Woodhouse, whom none had ever seen, and Keith Beatty and his family, and, as an orange car pulled up outside, Morton Phibling. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ said Freddy. ‘I swear on my mother’s head.’

  ‘And you never left the shop unattended for a moment?’

  ‘Never!’

  Knowing him, Inez was inspired. ‘Or attended, come to that?’

  ‘Ah, now that’s a horse of another colour.’ While Freddy nodded sagely, she put her hands up to her face, disbelieving. ‘Ludo was here. I nipped down the road,’ he said, ‘to pick up our documents.’ Inez didn’t care what documents, listened in near-screaming impatience while he outlined how he and Ludmila needed this voucher and that certificate from the agent in order to maximise the benefits of their heavily discounted weekend in Torquay. ‘Ludo was left in charge for five minutes.’

  ‘And she didn’t leave and was there when you got back?’

  ‘Ah, now I didn’t say that, Inez. You’re putting words into my mouth. What I said was that she was left in charge, right? What happened in point of fact was that Ludo recalled while waiting for my return that she had inadvertently left the iron on in her apartment and she …’

  Morton came in, trotting jauntily, and his suddenly youthful smile made Inez wonder once more where on earth she had seen him before. The few seconds he took to remove the baseball cap he was unaccountably wearing gave Zeinab the chance to slip Rowley Woodhouse’s ring into a drawer. ‘My beloved is a lotus in the garden of Allah,’ he declaimed, in a possible reference to Zeinab’s religious persuasion, and planted a kiss on her cheek.

  It was all too much for the customer who made a quick excuse and left.

  ‘You’ll lose me my job,’ grumbled Zeinab.

  ‘So what, my treasure? You’ll be resigning anyway on seven June.’

  They began whispering, Zeinab irritably, Morton with his arm round her and a soppy smile on his face. Inez took up her interrogation of Freddy where she had left off. ‘So no one was here for some minutes? Anyone could have come in?’

  ‘Not “some”, Inez. Not “anyone”.’

  She gave up. She would have to tell Crippen or Zulueta and then they would be back. Meanwhile, Freddy might as well make himself useful. ‘Look, if you’ve nothing to do, would yo
u mind taking my watch in next door and getting Mr Khoury to put a new battery in it?’

  It was unfortunate but somehow not unexpected in the general gloomy scheme of things, everything going wrong all the time, that James, Keith Beatty and his sister all happened to arrive together. This was something that might have been avoided if even one of them had phoned her first but none had. James scarcely bothered to conceal his dismay, and worse his distaste, for the Beattys. He and Becky were in the kitchen, while she found drinks for all the company, beer for Keith, orange juice for Kim and Will, wine for him and her.

  ‘I suppose this is to be a home-from-home for all his mates, is it?’

  ‘I’d no idea they were coming, James.’

  ‘Why do I bother? It makes no difference as far as being alone with you goes.’

  He went back into the living room without another word. No doubt he had already picked up the crossword puzzle, she thought, as she poured herself a generous glass of whisky and drank it down, a swig from the bottle being inadequate in these circumstances.

  The girl had seated herself on the sofa next to Will and was talking to him in a friendly, easy fashion. If he said nothing himself, he hadn’t made one of his gestures of rejection, turning his back or moving to an armchair. She was a pretty girl and seemed nice, Becky thought, her skirt not too short and her make-up sparing. Why was she suddenly thinking like someone twice her age, she asked herself. Was this the effect of staying at home being a carer, with little prospect of her servitude coming to an end?