Harm Done

by Ruth Rendell

  "Who were you going to sell them to?"

  "You’d be surprised." Flay was becoming increasingly confident that he had done nothing wrong, or rather, that he had committed no indictable offense. "There’s a market for weapons. It’s an industry. Don’t you watch no TV? Supplying arms is big business worldwide."

  "That’s tanks and guns and missiles and whatever," said DC Archbold, "not your piddling petrol in a Ribena bottle."

  "Not so piddling," said Flay, "when you think what it can do. It’s a funny thing, you know, how it’s getting harder all the time just to get hold of a glass bottle. All cans it is these days and plastic."

  "You were going to tell me who you sold your petrol bombs to," said Vine.

  "Was I? Pardon me, but I don’t think you asked. As a matter of fact, I never sold none of them. I give one of them away, for a sample like, and one of my nail bombs. Then"—Flay assumed a pious, caring expression—"on account of the tragedy what happened here, I destroyed all my stock. Search the place if you want, be my guest."

  "We will, you can be sure of that. So you didn’t make a profit on them. Who did you give the sample to?"

  "Colin Crowne," said Flay.

  "So you’ve said before. Crowne was ill in bed with shingles."

  "I can’t help that. I don’t know what he done with it. I give it to him in the Rotten Carrot, that’s all I know. And it’s no use asking me if I saw who threw it—if it was one of mine—because I wasn’t there. You got all this out of my Kaylee, didn’t you? Don’t trouble to deny it. You got it out of Kaylee when her mum was out of the room, you wormed it out of her, she’s only four years old and that’s illegal what you done."

  "Mrs. Flay was present throughout the interview," Vine said stiffly.

  "You can tell that to the judge," said Flay, "when I’ve writ about you to the chief constable."

  A warrant was obtained and the house of which Jackie Flay was the tenant was searched. Nothing was found, neither petrol nor nail bombs nor stolen goods.

  17

  Both boys resembled their father, but in different ways, each favoring a different aspect of him, so that Edward had his height, his dark, wavy hair, high forehead, and straight nose, while Robert shared his eye color, sensitive, rather full mouth, his high cheekbones, and his grace of movement. Their mother seemed to have contributed nothing to their genetic makeup; not a trace of her could be seen in either young face. Did the little girl look like her? Wexford had no means of knowing. The people on the Muriel Campden Estate and in the Glebe Road area had records of their children not only filling albums but on film. The Devenishes of Ploughman’s Lane had one picture, and that taken by a newspaper when Sanchia was a baby, out in her pram.

  "We don’t take photographs of people," Edward explained, if it was an explanation. "We take them of places."

  Wexford was questioning each of them individually, in the presence, of course, of their mother. He asked Edward first to cast his mind back to when Sanchia disappeared, to close his eyes and attempt to re-create that night, beginning with the exact time he had gone to bed, if he had read in bed, when he had put the light out, and how soon he had fallen asleep. The boy followed this procedure, or Wexford thought he did, and said he didn’t read much and never in bed. He had been playing a computer game and left it on by mistake, so that it was still on when he woke in the night and he had to get up and turn it off.

  "What woke you?" Wexford asked him.

  The boy said he didn’t know and added, with the first sign of perception he had shown, "You don’t ever know what wakes you because by the time you’re awake, it’s stopped." He hadn’t known what time it was either. It might have been the sound of someone coming up or going downstairs.

  "That wouldn’t wake you, Edward," Fay Devenish said. "Dad or I often go up- or downstairs after you’re in bed and you don’t wake up."

  "Then I don’t know," the boy said, and he gave his mother a look Wexford couldn’t interpret. It seemed resentful yet puzzled. "I said I didn’t know and I don’t."

  "Are you fond of your sister?"

  "Of course I am. She’s my sister."

  Fay Devenish began to cry. Most boys of twelve, brought up as these had been, in this environment, would have gone up to their mother and put an arm around her shoulders, at least told her not to cry, in some way comforted her. Edward sat stony-faced. He looked away. She dabbed at her eyes, seemed to be making a stoical effort at controlling herself.

  Wexford went on, "Did you ever think you would have been happier without your sister? If, for instance, your sister had never been born?"

  Fay made a little murmur of protest, the sound a woman might make if she cut herself or was stung by an insect.

  "I’m sorry, Mrs. Devenish, but I’d like him to answer."

  She nodded, rather hopelessly.

  "Edward?"

  The boy, whose expression hadn’t changed, said, "I don’t know. I got used to having her around." He hesitated. "I suppose I thought it was funny, I mean it was strange, having her when me and Robert were so old."

  "But you never thought of harming her in any way?"

  "Chief Inspector, I’m sorry, but I can’t have this." To his knowledge, Fay had never been so assertive. Color had come into her face and her eyes were bright. "I can’t sit by and hear you ask him things like that."

  "Very well, Mrs. Devenish. That’s all, Edward."

  "Can I go now?"

  "You can go. Tell your brother I’ll see him next."

  He was smaller than Edward but would probably attain his height in two years’ time. Many children, especially boys, have inquiring or mystified expressions, not surprising, Wexford thought, when you considered the state of the world they lived in. But in the eyes of these two was something more than that, something they shared but he had seen in few others, a look of bitter bewilderment. It was particularly evident when they looked at their mother.

  He asked Robert about that night, but the boy could remember even less than his brother. To the question as to whether he had been fond of Sanchia, he replied that he supposed so: "I liked her all right."

  Wexford noticed this past tense if Fay Devenish did not. But she gasped when Robert said, "She’s dead, isn’t she? The kids at school say she’s dead."

  "Do you know a friend of your mother’s called Jane, Robert? Miss Jane Andrews?"

  Before the boy could answer, Fay said quickly, too quickly, "She’s not a friend of mine."

  "Robert?"

  "I think so. A long time ago. We never see her anymore."

  Wexford said he had nothing more to ask him. The child went away and his mother began crying again. "She’s not a friend of mine, she’s not. You shouldn’t have said that in front of my children."

  "It’s understandable that you’re upset, Mrs. Devenish, but there are one or two more things I must settle while I’m here."

  "That’s all right, but you shouldn’t have ... Oh, what’s the use?" She pulled tissues out of the box on a side table, dried her eyes, and blew her nose. "I won’t cry anymore. What is it you want to know?"

  "It’s not so much what I want to know as what I want to have. When I asked you for a photograph of Sanchia, you offered me only a family group. I refused it then, but I’d like it now. It’s better than nothing."

  "My husband will be home in a minute."

  "That’s fine. It’s best for you not to be alone too much. But it’s not a reason for your not finding a photograph for me. All we have at present is a poor, smudgy shot taken by the Courier, and we don’t even have the original."

  "I saw that picture in the paper," she said, as if answering him, as if explaining. "The person who took it, I didn’t even know they were taking it."

  "Perhaps you’ll have a look now." A conviction that Devenish’s homecoming would put an end to everything useful he could accomplish here made him urgent. "Please, Mrs. Devenish."

  She went reluctantly. They had been in the living room and he heard her go int
o the study, then upstairs. Once more he asked himself why the missing little girl wouldn’t or couldn’t speak, why those boys’ eyes were so troubled, and a fresh question, also to be unanswered, was why their mother had cried when he had simply asked her elder son if he was fond of his sister. And did she now dislike Jane Andrews so much that she wept at the imputation the woman might be her friend?

  She came back and he noticed changes in her. She had powdered her face and made up her eyes and mouth, put on perfume and changed her shoes for a more elegant pair. Something had been done to make her hair look thicker, and the resulting arrangement had been sprayed with lacquer.

  "Here," she said, "I’m afraid that’s the best I can do."

  Two snapshots. He could see at a glance that they were pairs or groups of people, not a single one of the child alone, but now was no time to take a closer look. Fay Devenish jumped at the sound of her husband’s key in the lock.

  Wexford said quickly, "May I take these? They’ll be returned to you, of course."

  "Yes, take them."

  She might have been a spy passing the plans to an enemy agent, so low and urgent was her voice, more a hiss than a whisper. She stood up, running her hands down her dress as if she could smooth away weariness and pain and anxiety.

  "I was just leaving," Wexford said as Devenish came into the room.

  The man kissed his wife. Not a casual kiss but passionate, the kind of kiss, Wexford thought, a little embarrassed, that should never be bestowed and received in the presence of others. Devenish’s lips lingered on Fay’s passive, half-open mouth, then he drew slowly away. To Wexford he extended his hand, smiling, warm, said, amazingly, that he was afraid they were giving the police a great deal of trouble. Wexford resisted saying, as he always did resist, that he was only doing his job. Walking back to his car, he asked himself if it was his imagination that Mrs. Devenish had wanted him to stay longer, would have been content for him to sit down and talk it all over once again. Yet she had dressed up for her husband’s homecoming and responded gratefully to his kiss.

  "I’ve been wondering about the older boy, Edward," Wexford said to Burden later in the Europlate. "They don’t give much away, those children. They’re cagey and secretive, their eyes are puzzled. I have even wondered if they were abused children."

  "The father?" said Burden.

  "One would suppose so. There’s no evidence. It may be that this whole affair of Tommy Orbe put the idea into my head, and it’s hardly an idea, it’s more a thought without foundation."

  "The fact is," said Burden, "that child abuse is the fashion. You can’t open a newspaper without reading of some fresh terrible case somewhere. It’s ghastly but it’s not that common, and I can’t see Stephen Devenish in that role."

  "I’m not so sure. He looks capable of violence and we know he has a bad temper. What are you going to eat? Three kinds of herring with new potatoes—that’s Swedish—or maybe Hungarian goulash. Is Hungary in the European Union?"

  "God knows," said Burden. "I’m reading the blackboard. Sparkling water to drink, inevitably?"

  "When we find that child, we’ll have a bottle of the Widow."

  Wexford ordered the herring and potatoes and Burden bacalao from Portugal. "Dried salted cod with something done to it. We had it when we were in the Algarve last year."

  "It sounds disgusting. I got some photographs from Mrs. Devenish. D’you want to see them? They’re not up to much, just out-of-focus family groups really."

  Burden gave the pictures Wexford laid on the tablecloth a fleeting glance. "Worse than useless, I’d say. I don’t know why you’re bothering with them. Either Devenish took her or one of his sons."

  "If it was one of those boys, Sanchia is dead."

  Burden looked at him. "You mean Devenish could have hidden her somewhere, he may even have engaged a nanny and set her and the nanny up in a rented flat somewhere, that’s a possibility. But if one of her brothers took her, he must have killed her. He’d have nowhere to hide her and no wish to hide her, as far as I can see. He’d have taken her because he was jealous of her position in the family, killed her to get her out of the way—and then what?"

  "Hidden the body." Wexford poured mineral water for both of them. "And hidden it somewhere nearby. His mother says he can drive. Perhaps he can. He may be able to drive a car in theory, but I doubt very much if he could maneuver it out of that drive by night. They’re both big boys, either of them could have carried her, and probably she wouldn’t have cried if either had lifted her out of her coat. So if Edward did it—or, come to that, if Robert did it—he killed his sister somewhere in the garden, possibly by strangling her, and back we come to your point."

  "What then? Either is strong enough to carry a three-year-old some distance, but dig a grave and bury her? How long would it have taken? Would they even know how to set about it?"

  Their food was brought by the Europlate’s proprietor, a fat man who for some reason always wore a starched and spotlessly white apron, though he was not the cook. In the opinion of some of his patrons it was done to give him a French appearance. He combined in his looks supposedly typical features of many of the Union’s members, being black-haired and mustached like a Spanish bullfighter, with the regular thin-lipped profile of the Scandinavian, the olive skin of the Greek, and the high cheekbones of the Slav. Some said his name was Henri, others Henrik or Heinrich, and he was called by all these. But his English was spoken in the pure accent of the Lowland Scot, and now, as he set each plate down, he expressed the opinion that a wee bi’o’fish would set them up for the day, as it fed the brain.

  "I can do with some of that," Burden said when Henri had returned to the back regions. "We know it wasn’t one of the boys, though, don’t we? It has to be Devenish, or according to my as yet unfed brain, it has to be. Why he took her and where he put her we don’t know, but we can be pretty sure if he took her, she’s alive."

  "Fathers do kill their children, you know that."

  "Sure, and it’s a monstrous crime but it’s usually accidental, the result of violent abuse. Devenish had no reason to do it."

  "No reason in your estimation, maybe. How about jealousy? How about seeing her as the one person with the power of coming between him and his wife? Of separating him from his wife? He looks as if he’s in love with his wife. He greets her as passionately as if they’ve known each other a year and been parted for the past six months. We know a lot about these people by now, Mike, but we know very little of their feelings. What do we ever actually know of anyone’s feelings, come to that, even when they’re our nearest and dearest? Devenish may have disliked and resented Sanchia. Sanchia may have been her mother’s favorite, preferred over her sons—preferred over him?"

  "I sometimes wish," said Burden, "that we had ordinary, normal people to deal with."

  "Are there any? Do you realize, Mike, that you’ve contrived a possible scenario for Devenish? I don’t think you meant to, but you have. He’s sexually abused all his children and now turned to the little girl. This happens in her bed during the night. He doesn’t in fact take a sleeping pill, he only tells his wife he does. That night he paid his usual visit to her, accidentally killed her, carried her body downstairs, and buried her in the garden."

  "How about the car, then?"

  "Not in the garden. No, you’re right. He took the body away somewhere and buried it."

  Burden put down his knife and fork. He wiped his mouth on a dark blue napkin with the EU logo in its center and picked up the menu. Suddenly he said, "I don’t feel like eating anymore. I was going to have the Olde English Summer Pudding or the zabaglione, but all this talk of what Devenish may or may not have done has rather put me off Silly, isn’t it? I’m not usually like that."

  "I shall have a pudding," said Wexford stoutly. "I shall have something called rød grø, which I am certain I’m not pronouncing correctly. As Henri said, I have to feed my brain."

  "Are you going to arrest him?"

  "Henri?"<
br />
  "No, Devenish, of course."

  "Not yet," said Wexford. "He won’t run away, you know. He’s absolutely confident he’s safe. I’d say he always is, in everything he does. He knows best, he is right, Devenish rules okay. Doubtless it’s the secret of his success, total confidence in himself."

  "I’d like to see what happens to this famous confidence," said Burden viciously, "when we get him in court."

  "I’m dining with a client—remember?"

  Once upon a time, when her husband made that remark, and made it ten minutes before he was going out to his engagement, Sylvia would, in his words, have laid into him. She had been known to lean against the front door, holding it shut, while she lectured him on her rights as a woman and told him that the children were his as well as hers. But she had spent half the day at a seminar entitled "Psychological Abuse in Relationships," and it was either this or, more likely, her experiences at The Hide that affected her, so that she asked herself if today’s lecturer would have on many occasions accused her of verbal abuse. It chastened her, she liked to think of herself as virtuous, upright, and politically correct, and she forced out pleasant words: "That’s all right. I’m on a short shift, the eight to midnight, so I’ll ask Mother to have Robin and Ben, shall I?"

  "It might be best." He said it abstractedly, then, "Do as you like. I’d better go, I’ll be late."

  What had she expected? That he’d go down on his knees? A good-bye kiss, even a good-bye? The front door closed after him. She phoned her mother, packed the boys’ pajamas and clothes for the morning. It was still half-term, so her father wouldn’t have to take them to school.

  Could she keep it up, being nice to Neil, if most of the time he behaved as if she weren’t there? Would they ever have sex again? Would she ever have sex again, since she couldn’t imagine it with any other man?