by Ruth Rendell
'All George did was an occasional bit of babysitting,’ Wexford went on. ‘Amber took driving lessons and passed her test the following February. Her doting father bought her a car. Meanwhile, her less than doting stepmother was left to mind Brand. She did try a nanny - remember she could easily afford it - but for some reason this didn’t work and she was obliged to give up her job.'
‘At about this time, the winter after Brand was born, Amber began going to the Bling-Bling Club - driving herself there, incidentally, up until the end of June. Her friends, Ben Miller and Lara Bartlow, also went to Bling-Bling and one night Lara brought her sister Megan along. This is guesswork but very likely a fact that these two girls talked about their babies, Amber’s Brand who lived with her and Megan’s child who had been adopted three years before. On that occasion, or possibly later, Megan put forward the surrogacy idea. It wasn’t that they were much alike, they hadn’t a similar social and educational background, but each of them had what Megan called “the qualification”.
‘To find out more about surrogacy they had to know more and the best way to do that was to go on-line. Megan hadn’t a computer but Amber had or she had access to one. She asked John Brooks to show her how to find a website. My guess is that John Brooks found several surrogacy websites and SOCC’s in particular.’
‘Surely he enquired what she wanted them for?’
'Why surely? I think he was too much interested from his own point of view and his wife’s. Gwenda Brooks wanted a baby. Maybe he did too - then. Remember, this was long before he met his boyfriend or perhaps even knew he was attracted to his own sex. He told his wife, she got in touch with SOCC and hence Norman Arlen and Miracle Tours. The rest, as they say, is history.’
‘Amber and Megan went to Frankfurt,’ said Burden. ‘They carried out their insemination or whatever you call it at the Four Horses Hotel - or they didn’t carry it out but said they had’- pocketed the “deposit” and came home. Where they may have deceived other people into thinking they were pregnant by them. Megan’s pregnancy may even have been due to insemination with Konig-Hensel’s contribution. Only a DNA test could have shown that. But it’s more likely to have been the result of normal sex with someone she picked up or even with the gallant Prinsip triumphing over sterilisation.’
Wexford finished his coffee, looking regretfully at the trace of rich dregs in the bottom of his cup. He sighed, said, ‘But, you know, Mike, it was all irrelevant. All this surrogacy stuff, the scam, the cruel deceit. We spent weeks on it. No doubt we wasted the public’s money on it. You trawled among the lowlife, looking for a drugs link - and finding nothing.’
‘I did find cocaine’s come down in price so much that these days a line costs no more than a cappuccino.’
‘Really?’ Wexford was silent for a moment, digesting this. Then he said, ‘All that came out of it of use to us was that those two girls knew each other. Nothing else. Amber’s and Megan’s surrogacy scam I’d call the biggest red herring I’ve come across in my whole career. Neither of those girls was killed because she’d set herself up as a surrogate mother or taken money under false pretences. That may have been a crime, but it wasn’t the crime we were investigating.’
‘You could say Megan was killed because she knew Amber but why was Amber killed?’
‘Amber was killed because she accepted Vivien Hilland’s offer of a flat, a flat in a suburb of London. If she had said no she might be alive today and if she were alive, Megan would be too. But she accepted. Of course she did. What young girl in her position would have refused?’
‘What I don’t understand’, said Burden, ‘is why George and Diana Marshalson didn’t buy her a place. George is comfortably off and Diana is rich. I should think they have at least what the Hillands have at their disposal.’
‘Yes, but though George might have wanted to be rid of Brand, he didn’t want to lose his daughter. It wouldn’t even have been like her going away to university. If he had bought her a flat he might hardly ever have seen her again. Now the first attempt on her life was made a week after she accepted the Hillands’ offer. That was the twenty-fourth of June and about a week after that she became eighteen. That’s irrelevant too, though for a long while I thought it couldn’t be.’
‘That attempt’, said Burden, paying the bill, ‘was made by Rick Samphire, right?’
‘Of course,’ said Wexford as they left the café and came out into unexpectedly warm sunshine. ‘Of course. But it wasn’t his idea or his motive. He was merely a mercenary, put up to it and paid to do it, by someone else. There were three murderers in this case, Mike, apart from those accessories, Arlen, Lawson and the rather naive Fry; We’ll go back now, round up those of the team not out serving a grateful public and tell them the rest of it.’
They gathered in his office Damon Coleman was there, looking as if about to fall asleep standing up. He had to ask if he could sit down and that was enough to make Wexford tell everyone to be seated. DS Goldsmith and DC Bhattacharya, though behaving with perfect propriety; had been standing closer together than is usual in social, still less business, circumstances. Sitting down evidently would only have been to their taste if it had been permissible to hold hands. Karen Malahyde kept giving them sentimental glances but Barry Vine ignored them. He probably hadn’t noticed, was very likely rendering in his head the mad scene from Lucia di Lammermoor. The others sat at the back, looking both hopeful and apprehensive.
‘I want to thank you all’, Wexford began, ‘for the good work you’ve put in on this case. We haven’t been very speedy. It’s nearly four months since we began looking for the answer, but after thorough and painstaking work we got there in the end. So thank you very much.’
Afterwards no one could decide who began the clapping. Burden, who clapped half-heartedly along with the rest but looked disapproving, was loud in his denials of having had any part in it. In his opinion, it was all part of this lovey-huggy over-courtesy that masked an inner soullessness. It was the impulse that made people put flowers in cellophane on strangers’ death sites. If Wexford was thinking along the same lines he couldn’t tell from the Chief Inspector’s inscrutable expression.
Wexford waited for silence, then said, ‘There were three killers in this case, not the Samphire brothers on their own. Let’s get straight on to June the twenty-fourth, Midsummer Day, when Rick Samphire parked his car in Yorstone Wood and walked through the wood to Yorstone Bridge, carrying in a backpack a lump of concrete he picked up off a building site and wearing, over his other clothes, a grey fleece with its hood up. It wasn’t cold, so I suppose he wore it for disguise. From a short distance one man in a hood looks much like another.'
‘Rick’s aim was to drop the concrete block off the bridge when Amber Marshalson passed underneath it in her silver Honda car. He had no motive. He was simply doing what he was paid for: to kill Amber. But being an accident-prone and clumsy man, someone who does nothing quite right, he made a mess of it. He blew it. He got the wrong car, catching by one of his typical mistakes the dark-grey Honda driven by James Ambrose. Mavis Ambrose died as a result of her injuries. That was the first murder.'
‘Slow on the uptake as he is, Rick must have known he’d got the wrong car. Before he fled the scene he’d have caught sight of Amber alive and well if horribly shocked. He went back the way he had come and as he approached the place in a clearing in the wood where his own car was, he was seen by Megan Bartlow cycling home from her grandmother’s house. Whether he saw her he hasn’t said. Now what I think she saw was a man in a hood and she saw him only in profile in the light from her bicycle lamp.’
Karen had her hand up as if at a press conference. ‘What is it, Karen?’
‘Surely he’d have seen her light, sir? It would have been quite dark by then in the wood.’
‘You mean, having attempted to kill one girl, why not kill the other one who’d seen him? My guess would be that it wasn’t in his brief. His brief was to kill Amber Marshalson. Killing someone else as well w
ithout sanction might be out of order. Ross wouldn’t like it. Rick would think that way. I think the how had been left to him. If it had been down to his brother Ross he would never have come up with such a risky method. It was literally hit-and-miss, wasn’t it? He hit all right but he missed his target.'
‘And yes, Ross Samphire was behind it. He put Rick up to it, though it wasn’t he who put up the money. Strange as it sounds, Ross offered the task of killing Amber to his brother out of fraternal love. He was, in fact, as he’d done many times before, giving him a job. A well-paid one-off job. The payment was five thousand pounds. But of course, as he’d also done before, Ross miscalculated Rick’s efficiency and underestimated his accident-proneness. Love tends to do that in the love object.'
‘Now Ross has never been in trouble with the law. That is, he has never been prosecuted. He’s never been caught. But I suspect that petty crime has been as much a part of his life as it has of his brother’s. Certainly he has had a long association with Norman Arlen. Apparently he and Rick were at school with him. So it was Norman Arlen who was roped in to provide Rick with an alibi for the evening of Midsummer Day. He and Rick, we were told, were drinking and later eating in the Mermaid right through the relevant time Rick was dropping concrete blocks off bridges.'
‘Beyond a doubt, another attempt must be made. The others were squeamish about actually doing the killing. Rick had two convictions for violence. Unlike Ross, he knew about violence, so it had to be Rick giving it another go. He did. On the eleventh of August. At some time before two on that morning, Ben Miller dropped Amber on the corner of Mill Lane, Brimhurst Prideaux. Rick, wearing his hooded fleece, had again parked his car in a sheltered place and was waiting for her.’
‘How did he know she’d come there at that time, sir?’ This was Damon Coleman who knew all about waiting for people in streets and on corners.
‘He was told,’ said Wexford. ‘Told by Ross who made it his business to find out such things, Ross who had told him - because he had expert information - at what time Amber would pass under the bridge. Now he told him what time Amber might be expected home from the Bling-Bling Club. As we know, this time Rick was successful. He had, however, been seen. Lydia Burton saw a man in a hood walking along the grass verge when she went out to walk her dog at midnight. Now you may think it very odd of her, in her peculiar position, to have mentioned this to us unless she had some ulterior motive. We shall see.’
Putting his hand up, Damon asked, ‘Was she the third killer in the trio, sir?’
'Ah, you’ve latched on to that, have you? Let’s leave it for now. Let’s ask ourselves why Rick didn’t take the thousand pounds out of Amber’s jacket pocket. The answer probably is that he only did what brother Ross told him to do and his instructions didn’t include helping himself to Amber’s property. What we also don’t know is who gave her the money, only that it was payment for agreeing to be a surrogate parent. Perhaps we need not know beyond realising it was a member of SOCC, the childlessness circle whose moving spirit was Norman Arlen. But Arlen had nothing directly to do with it and nothing directly to do with Amber’s murder. This is where Stephen Lawson comes in. And, no, Damon, he’s not your third murderer - sounds like something out of Macbeth, doesn’t it?’
Their blank polite faces showed him that they had no idea whether it sounded like something out of Macbeth or not. It was no use lamenting the loss of poetry from the nation’s mindset. It was gone, never, he supposed, to return. ‘Stephen Lawson may work for a charity as a fund-raiser. He also works or worked for Norman Arlen. He’, he went on, ‘was paid to invent that story about encountering Rick with a broken-down car on the Sewingbury-to-Pomfret road. Meeting Rick was a lie, though all the rest was true.'
‘We must suppose Ross was gratified by his beloved brother’s success. Next time he took his paramour round to Colin Fry’s knocking shop, he was no doubt able to outline his achievement. Value for money, I expect he called it. All should have been well now, all four of them having got what they wanted - if he got nothing else out of it, Arlen had the satisfaction of doing ill, of perpetrating evil, a favourite occupation with him. All should have been well but for Megan Bartlow.’
Wexford gave the others - Burden had to listen to it again - an outline of the scam carried on by Amber and Megan. He went on, ‘Megan hadn’t realised just what she had seen in Yorstone Wood. Even if she saw the newspaper accounts of the block dropped off the bridge and Mavis Ambrose’s death, the only connection she need then have made with Amber was that Amber was driving one of the other cars. But when Amber was killed she put two and two together.'
‘She hadn’t recognised the hooded man in Yorstone Wood but some time later, maybe two or three weeks later, she was walking along a street in Sewingbury with her father when they saw Ross Samphire getting out of his car and going into his house. Megan saw him in profile and probably from the back. Now the man in the wood wore a hood and it was growing dark. The only light was from her bicycle lamp. I’m suggesting she saw him only in profile. Ross was also seen by her in profile. He has a mass of thick dark curly hair and he looks healthy, which Rick does not. But - remember this - they were twins. Identical twins. Once they had looked exactly alike, both no doubt with thick dark curly hair and bright eyes and good skin. Time and prison and smoking and probably a poor diet had taken their toll on Rick, a fate from which his brother had not been able to save him. It was Ross whom Megan saw. She saw the same profile as the man in the wood but without a hood and in broad daylight. She took them for one and the same.'
‘How she made contact I don’t know but she knew Ross’s address. Probably, as soon as she saw him out on foot, she followed him, told him she recognised him and threatened him with the police. Now Ross could have said it wasn’t him but only by exposing his twin brother, his beloved brother. Megan therefore must die but this time Ross didn’t dare entrust Rick with the task. There would be no second chance if he messed it up. He would have to do it himself. Perhaps he said there has to be a first time, it’s the first step that counts. Whatever it was, he arranged to meet Megan at Victoria Terrace where he would soon be working on refurbishing those houses.’
Hannah put up her hand. ‘Why there, guv?’
‘I’m almost inclined to take the easy way out and say, why not? But he couldn’t have met her in the open in daylight where they might be seen. After dark she wouldn’t come. She’d be too afraid. He couldn’t go to her place or she come to his. When he suggested Victoria Terrace it seemed all right to her. She went over the night before, remember, to check the place out and no doubt she thought there’d be enough people about to ensure her safety.’
‘As for Ross, he went to the old bank building with Rick and Colin Fry at eight in the morning. Colin was given a painting job on an upper floor which - and this is important - he couldn’t break off halfway through. Once he’d started he had to complete the whole wall. Ross took care of that. He was on the ground floor with Rick. At ten to nine he got into his car, which was parked on the bank forecourt, drove to Stowerton, picked up a brick from the pile stacked up outside Victoria Terrace, met Megan and killed her. He stuffed her body into the cupboard and drove back. The whole thing would have taken him half an hour or, at most, forty minutes.’
‘Colin Fry had never seen him leave because he had to concentrate on his paint job. Why did Ross put the body in a cupboard? He certainly couldn’t take it out in daylight -and remember it was by now between nine thirty and ten in the morning. I don’t yet know why he left it there but my guess is that he asked Rick to dispose of it and do so after dark Rick was alone and this is an important factor. Ross was seldom alone. He has a wife and two children. He runs a business. He also has a girlfriend who must be very important to him for him to go to these lengths for her. But Rick was on his own. No one was watching him. No one at that time suspected him. The disadvantage of Rick was that he was careless and accident-prone. Perhaps Ross impressed on him the importance of getting rid of Megan�
�s body. If her body was hidden or buried somewhere it might not be found for months and never connected with Amber. But Rick didn’t carry out his instructions.’
‘Why not? We don’t know - yet. Maybe he didn’t know how or where. Maybe by the time he’d decided on a place and a means days had gone by. The weather was still very hot, if you remember. The body had begun to smell. Decay had started. Perhaps he simply couldn’t face touching it to get it out of there and reasoned that in time the smell would fade, only he and Ross and Cohn Fry would be working in there and Megan’s remains could be moved by Ross himself.’
‘We can all have a break for coffee now and I’ll resume in a quarter of an hour.’
Wexford phoned the Assistant Chief Constable’s office and asked for an appointment to see him. That day if possible. A date was fixed for four in the afternoon. He drank his coffee on his own and in silence, thinking about things, speculating what might have happened if Rick had removed and buried Megan’s body. It might easily not yet have been found. In that case they would never have connected the two girls, the surrogacy scam might never have come to light or Norman Arlen’s deception been exposed.
For a moment he let his thoughts dwell on Sylvia and her new baby. Mary Fairfax would be her name. It had a fine ring to it. Dora was already allowing herself to hope once more that Sylvia and Mary’s father might get together again. And of course a baby should have a father living with her, though so many didn’t these days. Wexford caught himself up. His first priority was this case and explaining it satisfactorily to his team, then to the Assistant Chief Constable, to review the babies incidental to this whole sorry business, motherless African babies - what would become of them? - Megan’s adopted baby, the baby Megan never carried to term, the babies longed for by the two German couples and Gwenda Brooks, the baby Brand himself He went back into his office and the waiting team. A hand went up before he had even begun.
