by Ruth Rendell
"What did you mean by people who ’have’ been at work with you, Mr. Devenish?"
"Oh, only that I had to sack a chap for incompetence and drinking. The general manager he was. He resented it. Naturally, I dare say. And there’ve been others. But all this is reaching too far out."
"I’ll have the general manager’s name just the same, sir."
Once more out in Ploughman’s Lane, Wexford peered down the drives of the houses on each side of Woodland Lodge, both of them separated from the Devenishes by a good forty feet. Vine had already called on their occupants, none of whom had heard or seen anything in the night. He and Lynn were still carrying out house-to-house inquiries.
The chief constable came on the phone again as soon as Wexford got back. "When does that local paper of yours come out, Reg?"
"Kingsmarkham’s, sir, not mine. The Couriers on the streets on Friday morning."
"I see. That girl, the second one to be taken, Lizzie Crowne is she called?"
"Lizzie Cromwell."
"Lizzie Cromwell. I dare say you weren’t thinking of questioning her about the little girl?"
What a lot you could say, Wexford thought, and make your meaning very clear, without calling a spade a spade. "No, sir."
"Right. Good man."
Lizzie Cromwell wasn’t exactly backward, certainly not retarded, far from being the kind who were candidates for an institution. But she was slow, innocent, with rather a low IQ. Devenish had denied that his daughter was behind others of her age, but that was something he would deny. Everyone associated with him, his wife, his children, his home, had to be perfect, you could quickly see that. Still, eighteen months old was extraordinarily late to walk, especially these days when babies seemed to do things earlier and earlier, and if one of his daughters had been unable to talk at nearly three, Wexford thought, he would have been seriously worried.
Was there a link? Did whoever had abducted Lizzie also abduct Sanchia because they liked or needed or were attracted by something in the unintelligent? It was an unpleasant thought. And in that case why had the same people, if they were the same people, chosen to abduct the highly intelligent Rachel Holmes? He wished he knew what the child looked like, but in the absence of a photograph—he had refused the family group—he had no idea.
Karen brought Rachel home that evening. She hadn’t wanted to come, she had refused to come, so Karen had stopped trying to persuade her, told her what she could be charged with, and spoken first to her supervisor, next to the head of her department, and finally to the vice-chancellor himself. Sulkily, Rachel gave in. The journey took a long time because although it was possible to drive from Colchester to Kingsmarkham without going into London, there was a traffic jam on the M25 all the way from Brentwood to the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge over the Thames and another one on the M2. It was nearly nine before they reached Stowerton, where Karen left Rachel to spend the night in her mother’s house.
Wexford said he would see Rachel first thing in the morning. He had personally phoned all the people on the Devenishes’ lists, even those three Devenish said Sanchia had never known. All sounded innocent, shocked, sympathetic. He asked them to tell no one of their conversations with him, and they undertook not to do this, but you couldn’t really trust men and women to be discreet in a situation like this one.
Most people on the Muriel Campden Estate believed that Orbe no longer lived there. The man seen departing from 16 Oberon Road was certainly Orbe himself—who else could it be? The question was, where had he gone? Various answers, all speculative, were supplied. Colin Crowne said he had been moved to the Mid-Sussex Constabulary Headquarters outside Myringham. It was big enough, for one thing, and it had suites in it, he knew that for a fact. Orbe ought to be locked up in a cell, but they wouldn’t do that, they were too soft. They would put him in a suite with luxury bathroom and fitted kitchen. Brenda Bosworth said he had been sent to a former health farm, one of those that, as everyone knew, had been converted into detention units for high-profile sex offenders who had served their time.
In the opinion of Tony Mitchell, the peacemaker, Orbe had been given a flat in some distant place, probably in the North, as part of a Government Witness Protection Scheme, but John Keenan said witness of what and that was only in America anyway. His wife, Rochelle, adhered to the suicide theory. That was where he had been going on Sunday night, to kill himself. They would probably find his body in the river or hanging from a tree in Cheriton Forest and good riddance to bad rubbish. Miroslav Zlatic said nothing, being incapable, even after twelve months in this country, of speaking a word of English, but he waved his arms about and shouted imprecations in Serbo-Croat. Live and let live, said Sue Ridley, he won’t do any harm, he’s too old and worn-out.
All, however, were unanimous in the belief that Orbe was no longer among them. Of Suzanne and her fiance they had seen nothing. Too ashamed to show their faces, said Debbie Crowne. Then, passing along Oberon Road on his way home from work, Joe Hebden spotted a man coming out of No. 16 and putting two milk bottles out on the step. A little old man, it was, with the face of an ancient baby and a mop of gray hair, wearing a T-shirt and trousers far too big for him. He scurried back and slammed the door as if menaced by a gunman, but not before Hebden had seen who it was. Tommy Orbe, beyond a doubt.
In his own words, Hebden went back to his and got straight on the blower.
10
Her mother had stayed at home, taking the morning off work, to be with her. As if she were a child, Wexford thought with some disgust, as if she couldn’t look after herself. And it wasn’t even as if the girl were moderately nice to her. Their home life must be hell. Rachel’s going off to university would have been a relief.
"It’s time you told us the truth, Rachel," he said. "You know that, don’t you? You know that the latest girl to go missing is a child of not yet three years old?"
"They wouldn’t have taken her."
"Rachel, darling, how can you be sure of that?" Rosemary said it in the kindest possible way.
Perhaps it sounded like someone humoring the simpleminded, for Rachel snapped at her, "Because she wouldn’t serve their purpose. Because I was there and I know these people. You weren’t and you don’t."
Karen Malahyde looked as if about to say the girl could know nothing about it, but with a glance at Wexford she restrained herself. "Still, I think you do know where this house is that they took you to."
"You are aware of what it looks like," said Wexford, "and, frankly, the description you gave us matches nothing in the neighborhood. There is no such house. There is no house or bungalow with shingles on its front and a coniferous tree in the front garden." Then he said, watching her mutinous, petulant face, "However, there is a house in Sayle that has a big deciduous tree in its front garden, a white house called Sunnybank of just one story, with a rose-pink door and a green pantiled roof."
Rachel Holmes was much given to blushing, no doubt to her own mortification. She put her hands up to her face but couldn’t hide the deep flush, as pink as Mrs. Chorley’s door, making her denial, "I don’t know what you’re talking about," particularly ineffective.
She sniffed, eyed her mother, then turned away. Not knowing where to look, she stared at the door as if longing for carpet and floorboards to part and welcome her into a concealing world below.
"Mrs. Pauline Chorley," Wexford went on, determined to be relentless. "What can you tell us about her?"
"I’ve never heard of her!"
People would lie less—or learn to deceive more skillfully —if they understood how easy it is for a trained investigator to detect lying. For a while after she first told her story, when she came voluntarily into the police station, he had believed her but largely because she was a victim, because there seemed no motive for not telling the truth. Now, as she expostulated, he knew she had never heard of Pauline Chorley just as she clearly knew Pauline Chorley’s house.
"I think Detective Sergeant Malahyde told you that we’d like to
take you on another drive, this time to Sayle, to see if you recognize the house."
"Okay. I don’t mind," Rachel mumbled. She sat up straight and some of her old assertiveness came back. "But I’ve got to get back to the university tonight. So long as you know that."
"Would you like me to come with you to Sayle, darling?" Rosemary Holmes asked.
Wexford wondered if he had ever talked so humbly and ingratiatingly to Sylvia. He hoped not, he thought not, it obviously didn’t work anyway, as Rachel showed, rounding on her mother.
"No, I would not. I’m not a child!"
It was difficult to say who was the more embarrassed by the confrontation, Pauline Chorley or Rachel Holmes. Unless this was some bizarre conspiracy, some deep-laid plot—and Wexford knew it wasn’t—they had never seen each other before. Like all people in this situation who have led sheltered lives, Mrs. Chorley was fearful that she was going to be accused of something she hadn’t done, wouldn’t have dreamt of doing, but might still find herself for years ahead suspected of. Rachel stood there with hanging head. She barely reacted except to stare, quite suddenly and compulsively, at an area of the white carpet approximately in the middle of the living room. It was as if she were looking for something that should have been there but wasn’t. Wexford concluded that this was simply a technique for holding herself aloof from the situation, and he insisted they go over the rest of the house.
But back in the car, she admitted that if Mrs. Chorley wasn’t Vicky, her house was the house. She had been taken there by Vicky on that Saturday evening two weeks before. In those rooms she had been drugged, told to cook and mend socks, and in one of those bedrooms she had been put to bed and given "suitable" clothes to wear. Apart from their both being women and much the same age, she said, Vicky and Pauline Chorley had nothing in common. They were completely different physical types. Vicky could drive and Mrs. Chorley couldn’t. Mrs. Chorley was plainly nervous, while Vicky wouldn’t have been afraid of anything.
"You cleaned that house?" Wexford asked, remembering how he had doubted that explanation when it was first given. "Those white carpets?"
"Yes, those carpets. And I dusted all that junk and all that naff furniture. And I cooked and everything. I told you. And I tried to mend the guy’s socks."
Wexford went back to the house. Pauline Chorley opened the door tentatively and was aghast to see him again. She went white, he thought she was going to faint, and he stepped quickly into the hall.
"Sit down, Mrs. Chorley....That’s right. Believe me, I don’t suspect you of anything. I believe you too are a victim of some very unscrupulous people, but you are guilty of nothing."
The color returning to her thin, pinched face, she gave a little nervous laugh. "The way I go on," she said, "flapping around and nearly passing out, I’m amazed you don’t think me guilty."
"That’s only on TV. Now, will you help me? Will you answer a few more questions?"
She nodded.
"Have you and your husband been away on holiday lately?"
"How could you possibly know?"
"Say I guessed."
"We went to Cyprus for a fortnight and came back at the end of last week."
’’And you had a house-sitter, didn’t you? You didn’t want to leave your beautiful house"—God forgive me, he thought—"empty and perhaps a prey to burglars, so you answered an advertisement from someone offering to house-sit. Her name was Vicky something and she had impeccable references."
Mrs. Chorley stared at him in wonderment. "Her name was Victoria Smith and she did have good references, but I’m afraid I didn’t follow them up. She was so— well, so practical and down-to-earth and nice, and obviously a really good housewife, that I ... well, I suppose I’ve been a fool."
Not to check out references, you have, he thought, but he didn’t say so.
"How about Jerry? Was he her husband, her son?"
"I never saw or heard of any Jerry. She came on her own, she was here a day and a night before we left, so that I could show her everything, if you know what I mean, and she never mentioned any Jerry." Mrs. Chorley asked her question tentatively and as if expecting no answer.
"What... what has she done?"
"I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to tell you that."
"I see."
He could tell she was relieved, she didn’t really want to know, it might be too unpleasant. But she had to ask, her husband would expect her to ask. He could almost hear her thoughts.
"Will you let me have her address, please, Mrs. Chorley?"
"Yes, of course, I’ll be glad to."
He was positive it was false. Not that it didn’t look all right, just a normal Myringham address, a poor street of terraced houses between the bus station and, ironically, the police station. But it would be a place this Victoria Smith—"Smith" indeed, was it likely?—would have lighted on by consulting a street plan or a driver’s road map. He thanked Mrs. Chorley, promised to let her know what came of it, and on the doorstep asked her a final question.
"A phone? Yes, of course we have one. It’s in my bedroom. But I mostly use a mobile and have it with me when I’m out in the garden."
If anything more was needed to confirm Rachel’s account, this was it. The phone was in the principal bedroom, and Vicky had kept that bedroom door locked. He went back to the car. Mrs. Chorley would have something to tell her husband when he returned home from his long commuting that evening. Was he the kind of man who would be interested and laugh and long to know the outcome? Or the other kind, one only too happy to have an excuse for admonishing and berating his wife for her carelessness?
Rachel was sitting in the back, mouth set, brows drawn together. "Can I go back to Essex now?"
"Sorry, Rachel," said Karen, "we’ve got a few more questions we’d like answers to." She was driving. "Back to the police station, sir?"
Wexford nodded. He said nothing.
They went back through Pomfret. After about ten minutes Rachel said, "I haven’t done anything wrong, you know. You haven’t any right to keep on at me like this." When neither Wexford nor Karen replied, Rachel repeated what she had said, but more querulously.
"You’ve done your best to obstruct police business," Wexford said quietly, "and you’re lucky not to be charged with that."
Tasneem Fowler was a woman of Pakistani parentage, born in west London, who had been married at seventeen to an Englishman and had two children before she was twenty. At the group therapy sessions sometimes conducted by Griselda Cooper, Tasneem had told the others that for years she had endured her husband’s brutality, and when he beat her, as he did most frequently on a Saturday night, she had never called the police. She was afraid that if she did so, Terry Fowler, the breadwinner, would be taken away and the family broken up. But when he broke her jaw and knocked out three of her teeth—previously he had never knocked out more than one at a time—after a weeklong stay in hospital, she had been afraid to go home and had come to The Hide.
Things should have been better for her after that, and in many respects they were. Some satisfactory dental work had been done on her damaged mouth, she had the promise of a flat from Kingsmarkham Borough Council, and she had signed up with Myringham University as a mature student to take a BA degree. But when she came to The Hide, she had had to leave her sons behind. They were only six and four and got on well with their father, who had never raised his hand to them. Tasneem had a legal separation from her husband and awaited a divorce, but she had no chance of getting custody of Kim and Lee while she had no home.
What she hadn’t aired at the group therapy was that every day she spoke to her friend and former next-door neighbor in Titania Road, Maria Michaels, to ask about the boys, how they were and sometimes if they had forgotten her. She phoned from the pay phone in the hall at The Hide or Maria phoned her. Tasneem was afraid to go home to see them, and their father wouldn’t allow them to come and see her.
"I’ll go and see them if you like," Sylvia said to her. "I’ll s
ay I’m a social worker. Well, I am a social worker."
"You’re very kind."
"I know how I’d feel if I were separated from my boys."
Sylvia felt like crying but she controlled herself, and next day she went around to the Muriel Campden Estate and gained admittance to 27 Titania Road by saying she was from the council’s Family Department. Terry Fowler was a weedy little man and as fragile-looking as his wife. Sylvia, who was a big woman, tall and well-built, thought that if he tried anything with her, shed give him as good as she got, she wouldn’t stand for it. But she knew how fallacious was this argument. Men are stronger than women, and abused women are often too demoralized even to try to fight back.
He might be little, but he was as aggressive as a small game bird. A frustrated sergeant major, Sylvia thought, one who wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of finding himself in that position but who nourished secret dreams of power and bullying. Realized through domination of his little boys? She didn’t think so. Although he spoke curtly to her, barking out "yes" and "no" and "right," with them he was gentle and patient. People were odd.
Out in the hall, as she was leaving, the older boy, Kim, said, "Our mummy’s gone away and she’s never coming back."
A heartstrings wrencher if ever there was one, Sylvia thought as she walked back along Oberon Road. That was something she wouldn’t be telling. She had hoped to have a moment alone with those boys, to tell them their mother sent her love, but there had been no opportunity. When she got home, she phoned The Hide and spoke to Tasneem, telling her that she had been to Titania Road and that all was well, the children were happy and healthy. Tempted to tell a lie, to say they missed their mother and sent her messages, she restrained herself. It wouldn’t do.
