by Ruth Rendell
Barry Vine was at this moment searching the flat over the souvenir shop occupied by Keith Prinsip and Megan Bartlow with PC Overton to help him. DS Goldsmith and DC Bhattacharya were pursuing enquiries in Brimhurst. Burden had gone to talk to the Marshalsons in an effort to find out more about the curious friendship between Amber and Megan. Karen Malahyde had just returned from visiting the souvenir shop. She said to Wexford, ‘The chap who runs it is called Jimmy Gawson - hence the name Gew-Gaws. Ghastly, isn’t it?’
‘I know him,’ said Wexford. ‘I’ve known him for years. Rehabilitated drunk.’
‘Right. That figures. He says he came in as usual at ten on the second and Megan wasn’t there but there was this note on the door which just said “Back soon”. He says now he had a feeling all wasn’t well but I think that’s hindsight.’
‘He’d better not have too many feelings like that if this is murder.’
‘No, sir. Gawson says after he’d been there a few minutes a woman came in and said she’d tried to get into the shop about nine fifteen but it was locked up and that notice on the door. He hasn’t seen Megan since.’
Wexford put Vine’s list into his pocket and went out into the comparative cool of the evening. One car still remained on the forecourt, as much an interloper’s as Daniel Hilland’s had been. But Wexford said nothing to Darren Lovelace about towing or clamping. He said nothing at all. Well named, Lovelace had a pink baby face with soft red lips, blue eyes, fair but thinning curly hair and the perpetually surprised expression of a fruit bat.
‘Reggie, babes!’
It was worse than being called ‘guv’, far worse. But everyone got it: ‘Mikey, babes’ and ‘Barry babes’ and, if he encountered the Deputy Chief Constable, probably ‘Sammy, babes’. Wexford said, ‘What?’
‘Just a couple of questions.’
‘I’ve given you everything you’re getting. You were there just now and that’s your lot.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Lovelace, ‘I hope you won’t regret it. No, don’t look like that, not that naughty face. Did you think I was threatening you?’
‘I came out for some fresh air and what I found was you.’
‘Some people love me. Well, my mother does. You aren’t exactly whizzing through this Marshalson business, are you? You haven’t got anywhere at all as far as I can see.’ Sorrowfully, Lovelace continued, ‘I don’t want to do this, it hurts me more than it hurts you, as they used to say in my distant schooldays, all changed now thanks to the Charter of Human Rights, but I’m going to have to do a piece about your lack of progress. I really am, Reggie, babes.’
Usually skilful at repartee, Wexford always found himself bereft of wit and innocent of innuendo in the face of Lovelace’s onslaughts. ‘I can’t stop you.’
‘You may not be right in other respects but you’re right there, ducks.’
Sylvia couldn’t remember when she had last been so angry She had just got home from work, having picked up the boys from school, and had made herself a pot of tea. It is a peculiarity of the British, and probably the British alone, that to cool down on a very hot day they drink very hot tea. Sylvia really believed it was more efficacious than iced water or orange juice and she was drinking her first cup when the doorbell rang. She dragged herself to the front door, noticing that her ankles were swollen, which hadn’t happened in her first two pregnancies. It was hotter and she was older, she thought despondently, and opened the door to Naomi and a woman she vaguely remembered seeing somewhere before.
That had been at five thirty. It was nine now and her fury was fading. Robin and Ben had finally gone to bed after the usual complaints that it was too hot to sleep, they could hear a dog barking, a bee was buzzing against the window and it was mean not letting them play video games in their bedrooms. The night was a purple sort of colour and she could see what whoever it was meant when he called this ‘the violet hour’. A bird was singing somewhere among the weary leaves. A nightingale, she’d have thought, only nightingales don’t sing in September. What the hell was Naomi playing at?
She had said, ‘May we come in, dear?’ in that sweet little winsome voice. Sylvia sometimes wondered how Neil could stand it. ‘This is Mary, Mary Beaumont. She’s come to live next door. Now you didn’t know that, did you?’
Sylvia had no option but to say hello to this Mary, a rotund black woman with a friendly smile, and invite them both in. As for ‘next door’, the Old Rectory had no immediate neighbours. ‘You mean the cottages at the end of the lane,’ she said in a cold tone, recalling where she had seen Mary, and at once despised herself for being an unjustified snob.
They went into the rectory’s cavernous and little-used drawing room, which was bitterly cold in winter and cool in summer, even on the hottest day.
Mary sat down with a sigh of pleasure. ‘It’s lovely in here. Like air-conditioning.’
So long as you don’t think you can settle there for the rest of the evening, thought Sylvia nastily. Naomi, who had legs like sticks and ankles the span of a child’s wrists, was staring at her feet.
‘Your ankles are a bit puffy Sylvia. I expect Mary will have something to say about that. Now I’ll fetch the drinks, shall I? I’m sure you’ve got sparkling water in your fridge.’
Though fairly watchful of her alcohol intake, Sylvia had been looking forward to a large glass of Sauvignon. She turned to Mary. ‘What does she mean, you’ll have something to say?’
A ready laugher, Mary burst into a merry peal. She shook with laughter, her cushiony breasts and plump shoulders wobbling. ‘I’m a midwife, darling. Get it? The idea of bringing me here is I keep an eye on you.’ The rectory was a big house and the kitchen a long way away. Naomi wouldn’t be back yet. ‘Don’t you worry. You’ve got no pre-eclampsia coming.’
‘Keep an eye on me?’
‘I don’t know why, darling, but don’t you worry. I won’t be always in and out, seeing how you are. Too busy myself, for one thing. But with that Naomi, you got to humour her, get it?’ Mary didn’t explain how she came to know Naomi. ‘We’ll drink our water - not that I wouldn’t rather have something a bit stronger - and then we’ll be going,’ she said. ‘See the back of us, darling, and you can put those feet up. Them your boys out there? Lovely boys, I must say.’
True to her word, Mary drank down her water in two gulps, got up with surprising agility for one so large and said her husband would be waiting for his tea. The idea that any female should provide sustenance for any male shocked Naomi as much as it would have appalled Detective Sergeant Goldsmith. She was silenced and by the time she began protesting that they had only just come, Mary was out in the hall. Still, she managed to have the last word.
‘Mary lives in Gamekeeper’s Cottage, Sylvia. I’ve written down her phone number for you but you probably won’t need it as Mary has promised me to pop in very frequently.’ Behind her back, Mary winked. ‘Of course I’ll still often be around myself to give you moral support but do watch those ankles, won’t you?’
To Sylvia, who had a lot of her father in her, this suggested her spreading her legs and feet out in front of her and staring at them for half an hour at a time, as in some yogic or meditative exercise. She had saved her glass of wine until this violet hour and the quiet. The mosquitoes that, attacked her mother left her alone. She watched a moth alight on a mossy stone and spread flat its Persian-carpet wings. The wine was reducing her bad temper to a minor irritation. Mary had been so funny that she began to feel she wouldn’t have minded all that much if she had ‘popped in very frequently’. How had Naomi come across her? And what on earth did she think Mary could do if Sylvia smoked cannabis, drank brandy, ate soft cheeses, threw away her vitamins or, come to that, had an abortion? Well, no, not this last. It was too late for that.
When she had finished her wine she went upstairs to check on her sleeping Sons and then she walked up the lane in the cool, as cool as it would get all night. A little wood separated the rectory from the two cottages, Gamekeeper’s Cottage an
d Shepherd’s Cottage, that faced the church. The latter was in darkness but in Gamekeeper’s lights were on and a bright television screen could be seen through the front window but neither of the occupants. I don’t suppose I’ll ever see her again, thought Sylvia as she walked back Why would she bother with me?
Prinsip’s home had surprised him. Barry Vine had expected a tip, old clothes stuffing carrier bags, car and bike magazines in stacks, broken furniture which would never be repaired and plates, cups and glasses waiting not to be washed but rinsed under a cold tap. The flat over the souvenir shop wasn’t like that. Knowing that Prinsip lived on the benefit, DS Vine wondered where all the electronic equipment had come from, a new desktop computer, very state-of-the-art, a CD player with huge speakers and a portable CD player lying alongside it, a DVD player as well as a video under the TV and a brand-new drum kit which made Barry’s soul shrink as he thought of the noise this couple must make.
He hadn’t come alone. With him was a drug-dog handler, PC Overton, and the dog himself, last of the drug-dog team, useful in the purge of two years before. All the others had gone back to the forces they came from but this dog remained, semi-retired and now the household pet of the Overton family. His name was Drusus, not because PC Overton was a student of Roman history but on account of its being the only name anyone could think of which began with ‘dr’ for ‘drugs’. No one had ever called him by that name. A docile but enthusiastic golden spaniel, he was known to everyone as Buster.
A reluctant and puzzled permission to allow the dog on his premises was extracted from Keith Prinsip. He asked rather pathetically if it would help to find Megan and when told it very likely might, nodded his head. Buster galloped up the stairs to the three rooms at the top which were Prinsip and Megan’s home but his excitement was short-lived. Obviously losing confidence in the revitalising of his career, he grew more and more despondent as, sniffing expertly in corners, under furniture and inside drawers, he could only draw his nose away unsatisfied.
Prinsip gave him a surreptitious chocolate which Buster was chewing with gusto when PC Overton spotted him. Apparently, no chocolate had ever before passed Buster’s lips and an argument broke out between the two men, Overton telling Prinsip roughly that he ought to know better than to give harmful substances to a working animal and Prinsip answering that Overton was a cruel master. The fracas was put an end to by Barry Vine, who declared that his own search was being seriously interrupted by ‘a lot of nonsense’. It was he who finally found the drug, in the pocket of another pair of Prinsip’s ragged jeans. The paper screw of cannabis, maybe ten grammes, Prinsip indignantly defended as being for his own use and no longer illegal. Vine said nastily that it was amazing how well informed ignorant illiterates could sometimes be on matters of law when it came to their own interests.
‘Who are you calling ignorant?’ said Prinsip.
‘I was merely making a general observation.’
No longer fighting Buster’s corner, Prinsip said he didn’t think much of the dog as a sniffer when he couldn’t even find a spot of weed.
‘He’s trained to find only class A substances,’ said PC Overton loftily.
Chapter 13
It was too hot to sleep and when Wexford heard the paper come just after six he got up, went downstairs and picked up his copy of the Kingsmarkham Courier from his doormat. There was Lovelace’s story with that old photograph of himself, taken years before, drinking a half of bitter in the Olive and Dove’s garden. He made tea, took it up to his wife and, passing her the paper, said, ‘It ought to be easier the second time but it’s not.’
‘I don’t know why it should be.’
‘I suppose I thought it wouldn’t happen again.’
‘Shall I read the story and tell you if it’s safe for you to read?’
Her tone had been impatient. ‘You know me better than that,’ he said. ‘If it’s there I have to read it.’
Hannah bought her Courier from the paper shop in Brimhurst St John, which opened at eight. The lead story said Wexford was getting nowhere with his investigation of Amber Marshalson’s murder and a photo graph of him drinking beer carried the caption, ‘DCI Loses the Plot’. She threw it into the back of the car, supposing the guv was impervious to this sort of thing by now. Within five minutes she was in Brimhurst Prideaux, parking the car a few feet from where Mill Lane joined the Myfleet road. She had twenty minutes before her meeting with John Brooks and she picked up the paper.
All the faults and intrusions of the media stemmed from male journalists, in Hannah’s opinion. Therefore she wasn’t much surprised to see Darren Lovelace’s byline above this one or to read a series of inaccurate statements and wild exaggerations. The job was getting on top of Wexford and he was ageing fast. As could be seen from the picture, he was subject to inexplicable violent rages and paranoia. No progress had been made towards finding Amber Marshalson’s killer and now another girl, a friend of hers, was missing. Did anyone ‘not living in cloud-cuckoo-land’ have doubts that she too would be found murdered? The Chief Constable was on the point of taking Wexford off the case and replacing him with someone younger. As for the ‘loved ones’ of the missing girl, left in the hands of such an inept investigator, they had the Courier’s deepest sympathy.
Much as Hannah liked and admired ‘the guv’ and knew all Lovelace’s stuff was ill-informed slander, she had to admit that Wexford was a man and she couldn’t help feeling that a woman would in the nature of things do the job better. Someone like herself, for instance, in, say, ten years’ time.
It was twenty-eight minutes past eight. She got out, locked the car and walked up to where John Brooks’s VW was parked as usual - but not usually at this hour - outside number two Jewel Terrace. She had been looking at his car, for no particular reason except to use up the remaining minute, but when she turned round she saw him in his front garden, standing just inside the gate.
‘Well, Mr Brooks, at last. .
She had hardly got the words out when he said in a low voice, ‘Can we do this in my car?’
There was no need to ask him why. The front door was ajar, his wife was inside and might hear anything that was said. ‘As you like,’ she said.
The sky was overcast this morning but the heat had already begun. It had scarcely diminished during the night. As John Brooks’s car was parked, the passenger window was on the offside. He wound it down about two inches but left his own closed. Hannah glanced at him. Some would have called him good-looking. He had the face of a minor celebrity a pop singer or a TV presenter, bland, soft and mobile, with unremarkable features but for his eyes, which seemed to have more whites round the irises than most have. He was thin and dark, and those eyes were a dark blue-grey.
'What’s the problem?’ he said in the minor celebrity’s voice, which is far from that of the Keith Prinsips of this world but not too ‘posh’ either.
Hannah was going to take a great leap here. It was not what Henry Nash had said but Brooks could always deny it if it wasn’t true. ‘The problem, Mr Brooks, is that you’re in the habit of going out for drives in the middle of the night and you went out on the night Amber Marshalson was killed.’
‘What if I did?’ Her calculated guess had paid off. ‘I wasn’t killing her.’
‘Did you know her?’
Perhaps he thought the original ‘problem’ wouldn’t be pursued, for he looked relieved. ‘Of course. Everyone knows everyone in a place like this. She was a nice kid. Actually, I helped her find something on her laptop when she was having problems.’
‘I thought you were a health and safety officer.’
‘OK, I am, but I know about computers and she knew I did. She came round and asked me for help.’ He glanced at his house and the half-open front door. ‘My wife didn’t like it but there was nothing, less than nothing, between me and Amber. I mean, I thought of her as a child.’
A child who’d had a child, Hannah thought. ‘What was wrong with her computer?’
‘
Nothing, really. These kids are usually brilliant at technology but she wasn’t. She couldn’t get the hang of it. She wanted me to help her find some website and I did. Easy-peasy, actually.’
And what website would that be?’
‘I mean I showed her how. I don’t know what it was.’ She could tell he was lying. ‘Is there anything else? Only I do have to get to work.’
Hannah said smoothly, ‘Oh, dear, yes, Mr Brooks. There is quite a lot else. If you have to get to work I can always see you there. Say in half an hour?’
He sighed. ‘Ask what you have to ask now and get it over.’
‘I simply want to know where you go in the night time. Easy-peasy, as you say.'
‘I can’t sleep. I just drive around and sometimes I can get to sleep when I get back.’
‘You drive around for two hours? Where do you go?’
Brooks was growing angry. His pupils seemed to shrink and the whites round them to grow. ‘I’m not obliged to tell you that. I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m an innocent man and I very much resent being interrogated like this.’
‘Yes, well, I’m afraid you are obliged to tell me. I don’t have to remind you that this is a murder case. Failure to tell me will be obstructing the police in their enquiries.’ Hannah had always wanted to say that and up till now had never had the opportunity. ‘I’ll come to see you at work in your lunch hour. When is that? One till two?’
A terrible feeling came over Hannah that he might prefer her to come back this evening and be once more closeted in this car with him. She was dining with Bal at seven thirty.
Duty came first, of course. ‘If you’d prefer to see me here again this evening. . . ?‘
She was glad she had made the offer. All right. Come to the works if you must. One thirty?’
