by Ruth Rendell
‘On the subject of convictions, sir,’ Barry Vine said. ‘I’ve done my report, but it may be helpful for everyone here to know what Rick Samphire has a record for. He’s got one conviction for assaulting his then wife, Alison. He broke her jaw and kicked in two of her ribs. And he’s got another for knocking down a man outside a pub in Myringham.’
Thanking him, Wexford said, ‘I’d like you all to investigate the Samphire background. Not just Rick but Ross too. So far all we’ve got is “golden opinions from all sorts of people” and I don’t believe anyone can be that pure and excellent.’ He glanced in Burden’s direction. ‘No, Mike, I can’t say I agree with you that having a rather daring nude hanging up in one’s living room constitutes an utter breach with virtue.’
Vine and DC Coleman laughed and Burden had the grace to join in.
‘And now will someone kindly get me the Surrage Samphire website up on the computer and all the information from it we can. That’s not a bad way to start.’
He stood behind Bal in the open-plan office and when he exited from the programme he had been studying, asked him to summon up the Samphire web-site on to the screen. Bal had typed in ‘www when Wexford stopped him with, ‘Since when can’t you spell, Bal?’
Bal looked up, his hands poised above the keys. ‘Where have I gone wrong, sir?’
Wexford didn’t answer. He was staring at Bal’s misspelling. ‘I think maybe you’ve gone very right. Don’t change anything but add an A, a C and a Y, will you?’
Mystified, Bal did so.
‘Congratulations.’ Wexford patted him on the shoulder. ‘By being unable to spell you’ve solved a mystery that’s been vexing me for the past two months. Now print out everything you can get under “Surrogacy”, will you? Everything that’s on offer.’
Chapter 21
‘I’ve been a fool,’ Wexford said. ‘I should have known weeks ago. My own daughter is doing it and still I didn’t see. If it wasn’t drugs and it wasn’t prostitution, what else could bring in money in thousand-pound tranches but surrogacy?’ He tossed a sheaf of printouts across the desk at Burden. ‘“Intended Parents”, “Surrogacy the answer to your dreams”, “Host or Gestational Surrogacy”, “Straight Surrogacy”. Listen to this.
‘“Straight surrogacy is when the egg of the surrogate mother and the sperm of the intended father are employed. The process can take place in an IYF clinic but more often the technique of artificial insemination is used at home. The baby is biologically the child of the intended father and the surrogate mother. Host surrogacy uses the eggs of the intended mother combined ‘with the sperm of her husband or donor sperm. A baby conceived by this method has no biological connection to the surrogate. . .“ Yes, yes, well, we know that. I may be thick but I’ve known the facts of life this past half- century. It wasn’t that kind of surrogacy that Amber and Megan were doing.’
Burden scanned the sheets of paper, shook his head and put them down. ‘It says here, which I think I knew, that it’s illegal to advertise for a surrogate in this country. They recommend joining one of the surrogacy agencies.’
‘I don’t think Megan and Amber did that either, do you?’
‘Are you saying they were doing nothing illegal?’
‘I’m sure they were doing plenty that was illegal. Sit down and I will a tale unfold. Some of this will be my own invention but not much. It started - probably - with Megan reading a story in a tabloid, one of those stories about a surrogate mother refusing to give up the child she’d given birth to. Maybe she also read that this woman’s introduction to surrogacy had been via the Internet. But Megan hadn’t access to the Internet. All that equipment in the Prinsip - Bartlow menage came later from the ill-gotten gains. The only access to a computer she had was through one of those Internet Cafes - not much use since she’d never in her life used a computer. Her sister Lara had, but to ask her would mean taking her into her confidence.’
‘Then she met Amber,’ Burden said.
‘Then she met Amber. In the Bling-Bling Club, where Lara took her one evening. I don’t know when or how the subject came up but I can see that those two girls had one thing in common. They were both very young, Megan nineteen then and Amber seventeen, but they’d each had a baby. That was the “qualification” Megan told Lara she’d need to have. What more likely than, sitting at a table next to each other, Megan and Amber talked about what they had in common? Now I’m not suggesting that these two girls talked about surrogacy at their first meeting but I believe they made a date at the Bling-Bling to meet again, perhaps at a café somewhere and then at Amber’s home where Amber had access to a computer.’
‘You’re saying that at the cafe meeting, say, Megan outlined a plan she had for the pair of them to set up as surrogate mothers? Not “host” but “straight” mothers?’
‘That’s right. Megan hadn’t got it in mind to go near any IVF clinics or surrogacy agencies. First they had to find out what they could about it from the Internet, which Megan couldn’t use and Amber couldn’t use with much expertise, though they had one in the house. Her stepmother could use it but asking her stepmother obviously wasn’t on. John Brooks, on the other hand, knew about computers; he would help her. We know she asked him because he told us so.’
‘What, asked him to get a surrogacy website up for her?’
‘Maybe she asked him to find the website for her and what he found put the idea into his head and he told his wife, his wife who very much wants a baby. He didn’t want that known, that’s why he lied to Hannah. But back to Amber and Megan.
‘They could do no more without joining a surrogacy agency because it’s illegal in this country to advertise for a surrogate or for a surrogate to advertise. But it’s not illegal to join an agency and be introduced to couples who need a surrogate mother to bear a child for them. I think I know someone who’ll know all about surrogacy agencies...’
The scent from Sylvia’s stove was one of the most glorious Wexford had ever smelt. That it contained meat of various kinds was unmistakable even if Naomi Wyndham had not already condemned it as unsuitable for a pregnant woman, children and indeed anybody except perhaps himself whom she considered too far gone in culinary vice to b salvaged. He was sitting in his daughter’s kitchen with Dora, Naomi and Mary Beaumont, creator of what she told him was a cassoulet, its ingredients goose, pork, bacon, beans and herbs.
‘I shall just have vegetables,’ said Naomi with a stagy shudder. ‘If I ate that I should be thinking all the time of what it was doing to my aorta.’
Mary laughed. ‘I’ve seen a few aortas, darling, inside and out,’ she said, ‘and it’s my belief people are better off if they don’t know they’ve got one.’
‘Have some more wine, Dad,’ said Sylvia. ‘Mum can drive.’
‘Just one of the claret, then,’ said Wexford. ‘Naomi won’t object to red wine. Even Dr Atkins isn’t against that.’ Naomi was beginning on a fierce denunciation of the Atkins Diet when he interrupted her. ‘Naomi, as a sensible woman’ - God forgive him! - ‘you won’t mind my asking you this. When you and Neil decided you wanted to find a surrogate mother were you members of an organisation combating. . . er, infertility?’
‘We were members of two. Babies for All and SOCC.’
‘SOCC?’
It was Mary who answered. ‘The Sussex Overcoming Childlessness Circle. They’re based here. I work for them.’
‘You’re a nurse, aren’t you?’
‘Midwife, darling. My work for SOCC is voluntary.’ Naomi gave a tinkling laugh. ‘Advertising for a surrogate and advertising yourself as a surrogate is against the law but there’s nothing to stop you meeting and talking about the great tragedy in your lives. Nothing to stop you bringing someone who might think of becoming a surrogate so long as you are punctilious in referring her to Babies for All.’
‘Or, I suppose, if she offered her services privately to a couple among your membership.’
‘That too, of course.’
‘They’d be fools if they d
idn’t check her out thoroughly before having anything to do with her,’ said Mary robustly.
Thoughtfully, Wexford said, ‘But people often are fools or they can be very reckless if they’re desperate. And it’s hard to think of anything a woman especially can be more desperate for than a child of her own.’
To his astonishment, Naomi took his hand and squeezed it. He looked at her, scarcely able to believe that this woman he had thought superficial and shallow was capable of such deep feeling. Tears had come into her eyes and glittered there, unshed.
Dora drew a sharp hard breath, ‘What do you want to know for, anyway? You’re so accustomed to interrogation you take it with you wherever you go.’
He managed to laugh. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll shut up. Can we eat now, Sylvia? That beautiful smell is almost too much for me.’
When they came into the old bank building at nine next morning, Ross Samphire was again there on his own.
‘Rick’ll be along any minute,’ Ross said.
He was halfway up a pair of aluminium steps, attaching fruit and flower mouldings to the centre rose of a ceiling.
‘He won’t run away when he sees me, will he?’ Burden spoke drily. ‘I don’t want to go chasing him down the High Street again.’
‘I can guarantee he won’t. You leave it to me. Here he is now.’
A night’s sleep had done nothing to improve Rick Samphire’s appearance. Seeing them together for the first time, Wexford marvelled that these two men could be twins. Seen side by side - Ross had come down the ladder to smile and say, ‘Hi, Rick. How’re you doing?’ - they looked like the characters in one of those ‘before’ and ‘after’ advertisements.
He spoke the longest sentence they had yet heard from him. ‘If I’ve got to talk to you I want to do so in the presence of my brother and I don’t want to go some where else where my brother can’t hear what I say and what you lot say.’
The expression of gratification on Ross’s face was almost funny. He smiled and gave Rick’s shoulder a squeeze.
‘I’ve no objection to your brother being here,’ Wexford said. ‘First, I want to know where you were on the evening of June the twenty-fourth between eight and ten p.m.’
‘Ross was away on his holidays,’ he said as if his brother’s whereabouts must be his first concern. ‘Me, I was in the Mermaid with Norman.’
He had no need to think about it, Wexford noted, had no hesitation in supplying a name and a place from four months in the past.
‘Who’s Norman?’
‘Norman Arlen,’ Rick muttered.
‘Right. Mr Arlen’s home address, please.’
Wexford had known Ross would intervene sooner or later. It turned out to be sooner. ‘You can’t be serious. Everyone knows where Norman lives. His home is famous.’
‘Not in the circles where we move,’ said Burden.
‘Well, then. It’s Pomfret Hall.’
No alibi at all would have made a better impression on Wexford than the elaborate one constructed for the night of the tenth to eleventh of August. It had the air, as Burden said afterwards, of being the work of a committee, as perhaps it was. His head bowed, mumbling, Rick said he had been at his ex-wife’s, looking after his children.
‘It’s the only way I get to see my kids. Looking after them. Her and the bloke she’s with, they went out. It’s my house she lives in with him. She got that just through being divorced. Sitting’s the only chance I get to see my kids. The dad counts for nothing these days. I’m joining Fathers4Justice.’
His hand back on his brother’s shoulder, Ross cut in with, ‘Alison lives in Myringham. Rick does a bit of sitting for her. It’s not an ideal situation but what can you do?’
‘Nothing at all in your case,’ Burden snapped, ‘I didn’t ask you. If you want to stay while we talk to your brother, please keep quiet.’ Ross looked hurt rather than offended. ‘You weren’t looking after your kids at two o’clock in the morning,’ Burden said to Rick. ‘When did you leave your ex-wife’s place?’
‘Not her place, mine,’ said Rick, making it plain that he never intended to give his unjust treatment a rest but would worry at it whenever the subject arose, however remotely. ‘It’s my house I bought on a mortgage with money I earned.’
‘What time did you leave?’ said Wexford roughly.
Ross raised his eyebrows and said like a solicitor called, to protect a suspect, ‘Now surely there’s no need to take that tone?’
‘I shall take what tone I like. Let’s get on with this. What time did you leave?’
Ross contented himself with casting up his eyes. Still mumbling, Rick said, ‘About eleven it was. They came back and I went. The kids were asleep. I don’t say more than I have to to her and her bloke. I went off and my poxy car broke down.’
‘You know I’m going to get you a new car, Rick,’ said Ross.
Losing his temper but not showing it, Wexford said with controlled venom, ‘Please don’t interrupt again, Mr Samphire. If you do I shall have to ask your brother to come down to the police station.’
Suddenly Rick began to talk without being questioned or prompted. It sounded as if what he said he had learnt by heart or had it thoroughly dinned into him. If I wasn’t convinced before that this guy is our man, Wexford thought, I’m coming close to it now.
‘I was on the road out past Pauceley. It’s the A3923. The motor stalled and it wouldn’t start again. I looked but I couldn’t find what it was. I was a good eight miles from home. I knew I’d have to leave the car and walk it.’
‘Are you a member of the AA or RAG?’
‘Do I look as if I am? I haven’t got a phone anyway. I can’t afford a mobile. She’s skinned me alive so I can’t afford things like that. Everything I’ve got she takes off me.’
Deciding that he could only proceed by putting words into the man’s mouth, Wexford asked if he would agree it was now midnight. Rick nodded. ‘Did anyone pass you? You must have seen other cars? Did anyone stop?’
‘Permission to speak, sir,’ said Ross.
‘All right. What is it?’
‘There was one driver stopped. He offered Rick the chance to make a phone call. I said to him next day, why didn’t you call me and he said he didn’t want to disturb me at that hour.’
‘Your brother could have told me that,’ said Wexford. ‘What was this driver called?’
By another feat of recall, possibly of a learnt piece of fiction, Rick said, stumbling over the name, ‘Steve - well, Stephen Lawson. He’d come from the Cheriton Forest Hotel, he said. He offered me a lift but that wasn’t no use to me. He was going in the opposite direction. He’d come from where I was going.’
Here at last was something that could be checked. If there really was a Stephen Lawson who had been staying at the Cheriton Forest Hotel on the night of the tenth of August, he should be easy enough to find. ‘So you walked home to Pomfret?’
‘Took me three hours. I’m not fit like I used to be.’
All right,’ Burden said. ‘What became of your car? Was it collected next day?’
‘Rick phoned me and I had a recovery service bring it to my place.’
‘All right, Mr Samphire. That’s enough,’ said Wexford. ‘Since you can’t keep quiet, we’ll go to the station.’ Seeing that Ross intended to come with them, ‘Not you. If I need to talk to you I’ll do so alone.’
Rick Samphire shuffled into Kingsmarkham police station like one entering the ante-room to hell. Abandon Hope All Ye who Enter Here might as well have been written above its newly installed automatic doors. Wexford took him into the less pleasing of the interview rooms with its whitewashed brick walls, vinyl-tiled floor and the kind of furnishings you might have found in a nineteen-fifties kitchen.
Here they resumed the interrogation.
‘Why was the car taken to your brother’s house? Why not a repair shop?’
‘We used our own mechanic, if you want to know,’ said Rick.
‘Of course we want to know. T
hat’s why you’re here. What were you doing on the morning of the first of September?’
Rick didn’t seem surprised by the question. If this date meant nothing to him, wouldn’t, he have come back to them with a ‘When?’ or a ‘Say again?’ not kept to his morose expression and said, ‘I was in the old bank building. Along with Ross and Col.’
‘That would be Mr Colin Fry?’
‘Right.’
‘When did you get there and when did you leave?’
‘Eight I got there. Eight a.m. and I left at four p.m. Colin will tell you. He’s a good bloke, is Colin.’
‘Now, Mr Samphire,’ said Wexford, ‘tell us about the Sussex Overcoming Childlessness Circle and surrogate mothers, will you?’
‘I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about,’ said Rick. ‘Overcoming what?’
‘The Sussex Overcoming Childlessness Circle or SOCC.’
Suddenly red in the face, his dull eyes narrowed, Rick burst out, ‘If you want to know what I think about childlessness, I’ll tell you. It’s a bloody good idea. I wish to fuck I was childless. I wish mine had never been born.’ Suddenly articulate, even voluble, he came out with it almost triumphantly. ‘I didn’t want them. She wanted them. But when they’re born you like love them, you can’t help it, and it’s you that have to pay the price of them for the rest of your bloody life.’
It wasn’t the sort of day for going to the Gooseberry Bush for lunch. Sunlight should have been sparkling on the waters of the Kingsbrook, a Michaelmas mildness in the air and no wind to blow away the table napkins. All that could be said for this day was that it had stopped raining. A whitish mist, cold to the feel, hung above the river.
‘Apart from that fry-up,’ said Burden, ‘this is the first time you and I have had a proper midday meal since the beginning of August.’
Wexford passed him the menu. ‘And it isn’t as if we had anything to celebrate.’
Wexford took a draught of his sparkling water. ‘I wonder if there’s a restaurant worth its salt that isn’t serving sea bass now while we speak. Thousands of them must be consumed every day. When I’m feeling hard-done-by or things at home get rough, I thank God I’m not a sea bass.’
