Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘Oh, yes. She was a great favourite with both of them. She’d known them since they were nine and seven, that was when Katrina started working at the school.’

  ‘Anything you want to ask, Barry?’ he said to Vine.

  ‘Just one thing. Can she swim?’

  ‘Joanna?’ For the first time Effie Troy smiled. The smile transformed her almost into a beauty ‘She’s a top- class swimmer. When the woman who taught PE was off sick for a whole term Joanna took the students to swimming and gave lessons to the first and second years. That was a year before she gave up.’ She hesitated, then said, ‘If you’re thinking of the floods - that is, that there could have been an accident, don’t. Joanna was always saying how terrible the last lot we had were, the damage they’d do, she wished she could hibernate till all this was over. She had quite a thing about it. And the upshot was that in October she never went out except in the car. When she talked to us on Friday she said to me that once she got to the Dades she wasn’t going to set foot outside till she drove home on Sunday evening.’

  No outings then, no trips. And the rain had come down more heavily on Friday night and most of Saturday than it had on any single two days in the October floods. Joanna Troy wouldn’t have gone near Savesbury Deeps. She wouldn’t have taken Giles and Sophie for a nice Sunday afternoon walk in macs and wellies to see the water rising over the top of the Kingsbrook Bridge. When she went out, as she must have done, she went by car and the children with her. Because, Burden thought suddenly, she had to. Some thing happened to make it paramount for them all to leave the house at some time during the weekend...

  ‘You mentioned a course she teaches on the Internet. Would you happen to know. . .?‘ He was certain she wouldn’t. Neither of them would.

  George Troy didn’t but that didn’t stop him beginning a lecture on the intricacies and obscurity of cyber space, his own total inability to understand any of it and his position as an ‘absolute fool when it comes to things like that’. Effie waited for him to finish his sentence before saying quietly, ‘www.langlearn.com.’

  ‘By the way, the media have been told,’ Wexford said. At the look on Burden’s face he added, ‘Yes, I know. But it was a directive from Freeborn.’ Mention of the Assistant Chief Constable’s name evoked a groan. ‘He says it’s the best way to find them and maybe he’s right.’

  ‘The best way to get calls and no doubt e-mails from all the nuts.’

  ‘I quite agree. We know in advance they’ll have been seen in Rio and Jakarta, and going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. But they may be in a hotel somewhere. She may be renting a flat for the three of them.’

  ‘Why would she?’

  ‘I’m not saying she is, Mike. It’s a possibility. We know so little about her. For instance, you say she has a good relationship with the Dade kids. Suppose it’s more than that, suppose she’s so fond of them she wants them for herself.’

  ‘Adopt them, you mean? They’re not exactly the babes in the wood. The boy’s fifteen. She’d have to be mad.’

  ‘So? The very fact that she’s disappeared and with two children makes her a bit out of the ordinary, doesn’t it? Did you get to see the shepherd of the gospel flock?’

  Burden had. He and Barry Vine had walked up the road a hundred yards or so to a house very different from the Troys’, a semi-detached bungalow, plain and unprepossessing. The Rev Mr Wright had been a surprise. Burden had a preconceived idea of what he would be like, an image which derived from television drama and newspaper stories of American fundamentalists. He would be a fanatic with burning eyes, a fixed stare and an orator’s voice, a tall, thin ascetic in a shabby suit and constricting collar. The reality was different. Jashub Wright was thin certainly but rather small, no more than thirty quiet voiced and with a pleasant manner. He invited the two officers in without hesitation and introduced them to a fair-haired young girl with a baby in her arms. ‘My wife, Thekla.’

  Seated in an armchair and given a cup of strong hot tea, Burden had asked the most important question. ‘Did Giles Dade attend church last Sunday morning?’

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ the pastor answered promptly. No beating about the bush, no wanting to know why Burden wanted to know. ‘Nor the service in the afternoon. We have a young people’s service on a Sunday afternoon once a month. I remarked to my wife that his not coming was odd and I hoped he wasn’t unwell.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Thekla Wright was now holding the baby in the crook of her left arm while passing the sugar basin to Vine with her right hand. Vine helped himself freely. ‘It was so unusual that I rang up to ask if he was all right,’ she said. ‘We were both anxious.’

  Burden leant forward in his chair. ‘Would you tell me what time you phoned, Mrs Wright?’

  She sat down, placing the baby, now fast asleep, on her lap. ‘It was after afternoon service. I didn’t go in the morning, I can’t go to every service because of the baby, but I did go in the afternoon and when I got home - it was about five - I phoned the Dades’ house.’

  ‘Did you get a reply?’

  ‘Only the answerphone. It just said no one was available, the usual thing.’ Thekla Wright said very politely, ‘Would you mind telling us why you want to know all this?’

  Vine explained. Both Wrights looked deeply concerned. ‘I am sorry,’ Jashub Wright said. ‘That must be deeply distressing for Mr and Mrs Dade. Is there any thing we can do?’

  ‘I doubt if there’s anything you could do for them personally, sir, but it would help if you’d answer one more question.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Burden had found himself in a fix. These people were so nice, so helpful, so unlike what he had expected. And now he had to ask a question which, unless he phrased it with the greatest care, must sound insulting. He made the attempt. ‘I’ve been wondering, Mr Wright, what attracts a teenager to your church. Forgive me if that sounds rude, I don’t mean it to. But your, er, slogan, “The Lord loves purity of life” sounds - again, forgive me - sounds something more likely to arouse - well, derision in a boy of fifteen than a desire to belong to it.’

  In spite of his apologies, Wright looked rather offended. His voice had stiffened. ‘We practise a simple faith, Inspector. Love your neighbour, be kind, tell the truth and keep your sexual activities for within marriage. I won’t go into our ritual and liturgy, you don’t want that and anyway it too is simple. Giles was a con firmed member of the Church of England, he’d sung in the choir at St Peter’s. Apparently, he decided one day that it was all too complicated and confused for him. All these different prayer books in use, all these Bibles. You couldn’t be sure if you were getting the RC mass or matins of 1928 or happy-clappy or the Alternative Service Book. It might be smells and bells or it might be tambourines and soul. So he came over to us.’

  ‘His parents aren’t members of your church? Are any of his friends or relatives?’

  ‘Not so far as I know.’

  Thekla Wright cut in, ‘We’re simple, you see. That’s what people like. We’re direct and we don’t compromise. That’s the - well, the essence of us. The rules don’t change and the principles don’t, they haven’t changed much in a hundred and forty years.’

  This intervention provoked a glance from her husband. Burden couldn’t interpret it until she said, rather humbly, ‘I’m sorry, dear. I know it’s not for me to talk about matters of doctrine.’

  A smile from Wright brought a little flush to her pretty face. ‘What did it mean? That she mustn’t intervene because she was a woman? ‘We welcome new people, Inspector, though we don’t make a song and dance about it. Youngsters, as I’m sure you know, often have much more enthusiasm than older people. They put their hearts and souls into worship.’

  To this neither Burden nor Vine had any response to make.

  Thekla Wright nodded. ‘Would you like another cup of tea?’

  The experience he had related to Wexford. ‘He wasn’t particularly fanatical. Seems quite a decent chap and his church is simple
and straightforward, nothing suspicious about it.’

  ‘Sounds as if you’ll be their next convert,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘You’ll be popping along there next Sunday morning.’

  ‘Of course I won’t. For one thing, I don’t like their attitude to women. They’re as bad as the Taliban.’

  'Anyway, the main thing is that Giles Dade didn’t go to church on Sunday morning and. it seems that if he was at home he would have gone, come what might. Nor did he go in the afternoon. On Friday evening when Mrs Dade phoned from Paris the answerphone was not on but it was on Saturday evening and again on Sunday evening. All this makes it look as if the three of them left the house some time on Saturday. On the other hand, the answerphone may have been on on Saturday evening for no better reason than that they all wanted to watch something on television without being disturbed.'

  ‘Now on Saturday evening, as the whole country knows, the last ever episode of Jacob’s Ladder, in which Inspector Martin Jacob dies, was shown on ITV. It’s said to have had twelve million viewers and it may well be that Giles and Sophie Dade and Joanna Troy were among them. To put the answerphone on would be the obvious way of assuring peace and quiet. Giles’s failure to go to church next day is much more indicative of when they left the house.’

  ‘Early on Sunday morning,’ said Burden, ‘or possibly around lunchtime. But why did they leave? What for?’

  Chapter 4

  The water had advanced during the morning and was now within inches of the wall. Dora had been taking photographs of it, first when it was approaching but not touching the mulberry tree, later of the point it had reached by four o’clock. Dusk had come and now dark ness, a merciful veiling of that sight. The camera had been put away until the morning.

  ‘I couldn’t do it,’ said Wexford, half horrified, half admiring.

  ‘No, Reg, but you’ve never been much of a photographer, have you?’

  ‘You know I don’t mean that. We’re about to be engulfed and you’re taking pictures.’

  ‘Like Nero fiddling while Rome burned?’

  ‘More like Sheridan sitting in a coffee house opposite the burning Drury Lane Theatre and saying that surely a man could have a drink by his own fireside.’

  That made Sylvia laugh. Not so her new man whom she had brought round for a drink. It wasn’t the first time Wexford had met him and he was no more impressed than on the last occasion. Callum Chapman was good-looking but neither clever nor a conversationalist. Did good looks in a man really mean so much to a woman? He had always supposed not but unless his daughter was the exception he must be wrong. Charm too was lacking. The man seldom smiled. Wexford had never heard him laugh. Perhaps he was like Diane de Poitiers whose good looks meant so much to her that she never smiled lest the movement wrinkle her face.

  Now Chapman was looking puzzled by Wexford’s anecdote. He said in his nasal Birmingham tones, ‘I don’t see the point of that. What does it mean?’

  Wexford tried to tell him. He explained how the theatre was virtually the playwright’s own, that his plays had all been performed there, he had put his heart and soul into it and now, before his eyes, it was being destroyed.

  ‘Is that supposed to be funny?’

  ‘It’s an example of panache, light-hearted bravado in the face of tragedy.’

  ‘I just don’t see it.’

  Sylvia laughed again, quite unfazed. ‘Maybe by tomorrow Dad’ll be having a drink beside his own pond. Let’s go, Cal. The sitter will be fidgeting.’

  ‘Cal,’ said Wexford when they had gone. ‘Cal.’

  ‘She calls him “darling” too,’ said Dora mischievously. ‘Oh, don’t look so gloomy. I don’t suppose she’ll marry him. They’re not even living together, not really.’

  ‘What does “not really” mean?’

  She didn’t deign to answer. He knew she wouldn’t. ‘She says he’s kind. When be stays the night he makes her morning tea and gets the breakfast.’

  ‘That won’t last,’ said Wexford. ‘That New Men stuff never does. He reminds me of that Augustine Casey Sheila once brought here. The Booker shortlist bloke. Oh, I know he’s not in the least like him. I admit he’s not so obnoxious and he’s got a pretty face. But he’s not clever either or entertaining or . . .’

  ‘Or rude,’ said Dora.

  ‘No, it’s not that he’s like Casey, it’s just that I don’t understand why my daughters take up with these sorts of men. Ghastly men. Sheila’s Paul’s not ghastly, I’ll grant you that. He’s just so handsome and charming I can’t believe he won’t be off chasing some other woman. It’s not natural to look like him and be neither gay nor unfaithful to your wife or partner or whatever. I can’t help suspecting him of having a secret life.’

  ‘You’re impossible.’

  She sounded cross, not teasing or indulgent any more. He went to the window to look at the water, illuminated now by his neighbour’s lamp, and at the steadily falling insistent rain. Not long now. Another half-inch or whatever that was in millimetres and it would be at the wall. Another inch...

  ‘You said you wanted to see the news.’

  ‘I’m coming.’

  Just the bare facts coming after another rail crash, chaos on the railways, congestion on the roads, another child murdered in the north, another newborn baby left in a phone box. Just an announcement that the three were missing, then their photographs much magnified. A phone number was given for the public to call if they had information. Wexford sighed, thinking he knew well the kind of information they would have.

  ‘Tell me something. Why would a bright, good looking, middle-class teenage boy, a boy with a comfortable home who goes to a good school, why would he join a fundamentalist church? His parents don’t go there. His friends don’t.’

  ‘Perhaps it provides him with answers, Reg. Teenagers want answers. Lots of them find modern life revolts them. They think that if everything became more simple and straightforward, more fundamentalist, in fact, the world would be a better place. Maybe it would. Mostly they don’t care for ritual and facts that ought to be plain covered up in archaic words they can’t understand. He’ll grow out of it and I don’t know if that’s a shame or something to be thankful about.’

  He woke up in the night. It was just after three and rain was still falling. He went downstairs, into the dining room and over to the french windows. The lamp was out but when he turned out the light behind him and his eyes grew used to the dark he could see out well enough. The water had moved up to lap the wall.

  Two men were unloading sacks of something on to the police station forecourt. For a moment Wexford couldn’t think what. Then he understood. He parked the car, went inside and asked Sergeant Camb at the desk, ‘What do we want sandbags for? There’s no possible chance of the floods reaching here.’

  No one could answer him. The driver of the truck came in with a note acknowledging receipt of the sand bags and Sergeant Peach came out from the back to sign it. ‘Though what we’re to do with them I don’t know.’ He looked at Wexford. ‘You’re not far from the river, are you, sir?’ He spoke in a wheedling tone, though half jokingly. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like a few. Take them off our hands?’

  In the same style, Wexford said, ‘I wouldn’t mind helping you out, Sergeant.’

  Ten minutes later four dozen had been loaded into a van Pemberton drove to Wexford’s home. He phoned his wife. ‘I can’t get home to put up the fortifications till this evening.’

  ‘Don’t worry darling. Cal and Sylvia are here and Cal’s going to do it.’

  Cal.. . He didn’t know what to say and came up with an ineffectual, ‘That’s good.’

  It was. Especially as it was once more pouring with rain. Wexford checked on the calls they had received as a result of the media publicity but there was nothing helpful, not even anything that seemed the suggestion of a sane person. Burden came in and told him the out come of calls on the various friends and relatives of the missing children. In the main, negative. Giles’s a
nd Sophie’s maternal grandparents lived at Berningham on the Suffolk coast, where in the seventies and eighties had been a large United States Air Force base. They seemed to get on well with their grandchildren but they hadn’t seen either of them since September when they came to stay in Berningham for a week.

  Roger Dade’s mother, remarried since her divorce from his father, was apparently a favourite with the children. Her home was a village in the Cotswolds and she lived alone. The last time she had seen them was at their half-term in October when she had stayed for three nights with the Dades, leaving under some sort of cloud. A quarrel, Burden had gathered, though no details had been given. Katrina Dade was an only child.

  ‘How about Joanna Troy?’

  ‘No siblings,’ said Burden. ‘The present Mrs Troy has two children by a previous marriage. Joanna’s been married and divorced. The marriage lasted less than a year. We haven’t traced her ex-husband yet.’

  Wexford said thoughtfully, ‘The answer to all this is with Joanna Troy, don’t you think? I don’t see how it can be otherwise. A boy of fifteen isn’t going to be able to persuade a woman of thirty-one to take him and his sister off somewhere without telling their parents or leaving any clue to where they were going. It has to be her plan and her decision. Nor can I see how she could have taken them away without criminal intent.’

  ‘That’s a bit sweeping.’

  ‘Is it? All right, give me a scenario that covers everything and in which Joanna Troy is innocent.’

  ‘Drowning would be.’

  ‘They didn’t drown, Mike. Even if it remained a possibility, what became of her car? Or, rather, her dad’s car. Who fell in and who rescued whom? If by a huge stretch of the imagination you can get that far, isn’t it a bit odd they all drowned? Wouldn’t one have survived, especially in four feet of water?’

  ‘You can make anything sound ridiculous,’ Burden said peevishly. ‘You’re always doing it. I’m not sure it’s a virtue.’