Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘What on earth for?’ Burden asked as they began the walk back.

  ‘For my own amusement. It’s Friday night and I need a bit of hush.’

  He wasn’t himself capable of looking up the electoral register on the Internet but Dora was. In the past six months since this innovation came to their household she had learned computer skills.

  ‘You don’t want it downloaded, do you? It’s miles long.’

  ‘No, of course not. Just show it to me and tell me again how you scroll down or whatever it’s called.’

  There it was, on the screen before him. He had the addresses of the elders of the United Gospel Church and he viewed the register street by street. Just as he thought, not one of the elders bore the names their parents had given them. Hobab Winter had been - and in the register still was - Kenneth G. while Zurishaddai Wilton was George W. Only Jashub Wright of all the church hierarchy was still named as he had been at his baptism. Next Wexford turned to the Bible. This he could also have summoned on the Net but he had no idea how and didn’t want to call Dora from her television serial.

  He had told Burden he was doing this for his own amusement but there is nothing amusing about the Book of Numbers. All you could say for it was that it inspired awe and sent a shiver down the spine. It was something to do with the absolute obedience these people’s God demanded from the Israelites. Had that too been handed down to these Good Gospellers along with their adopted names? He was looking these up, discovering that Hobab was the son of Raguel the Midianite and Nun the father of Joshua, when Dora came back into the room. She looked at the screen.

  ‘Why are you interested in Ken Winter?’

  ‘He’s one of those Good Gospellers. An elder and he calls himself Hobab, not Ken. And he lives in this street, a long way down but this street.’ The familiarity with which she had referred to the man suddenly struck him. ‘Why, do you know him?’

  ‘You know him, Reg.’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t.’ said Wexford, who wasn’t sure and now remembered how several faces at that meeting had seemed recognisable.

  ‘He’s our newsagent.’ She was starting to sound exasperated. ‘He keeps the paper shop in Queen Street. It’s his daughter that delivers the evening paper, a girl about fifteen.’

  ‘Ah, now I know.’

  ‘I feel for that girl. Sometimes she’s still in her school uniform when she starts that paper round. She goes to that private school in Sewingbury; the one where the children wear brown with gold braid. It’s not right a girl of her age being out after dark and I really think...’

  He was wondering whether all this was of any significance when the phone rang. Wexford picked up the receiver.

  ‘Dad?’

  The voice was unrecognisable. He thought whoever it was had a wrong number. ‘What number do you want?’

  ‘Dad, it’s me.’ Feeble, shaky, gasping. ‘Dad, I’m on a mobile. It’s so little, I hid it on me.’

  ‘Sylvia, what’s happened?’

  ‘Cal - Cal beat me up and locked me in a cupboard. Please come, get someone to come...’

  'Where are the children?’

  ‘Out. Out with Neil. It’s Friday. Please, please come...’

  Chapter 18

  To go himself would be wrong. The proper thing would be to send two officers, say Karen Malahyde, trained in dealing with domestic violence, and DC Hammond. But he couldn’t have sat at home and waited. He phoned Donaldson for his car and he phoned Karen at home. She wasn’t on duty but she didn’t hesitate. By the time Donaldson got to his house she was there too.

  ‘I must come,’ Dora said.

  ‘He may be violent,’ Wexford didn’t want to stop her but he had to. ‘He is violent. I’ll phone you when I find her. I won’t leave you in the dark a moment. I promise.’

  For the first ten minutes of the drive to the remote rural place where Sylvia - and once Neil too - had bought and converted the Old Rectory; Karen was silent. When she spoke it was to say she didn’t under stand, not Sylvia, Sylvia couldn’t be a victim of this kind of thing.

  ‘Not after all the time she’s worked at The Hide. I mean, she’s seen the results of it day after day. She knows.’

  ‘When it’s your personal life you see things from another perspective.’ Wexford had been wondering the same thing. ‘You say to yourself - and to others - “Yes, but this is different.”

  The Old Rectory was a big house approached by a curving drive about a hundred yards long. The front garden, if such it could be called, for the house stood in its own grounds and was surrounded by garden, was overgrown with shrubs and overhung by tall trees. Maybe because of this Sylvia always kept the place a blaze of light when dusk came, for her own comfort, perhaps, or that of her sons. But tonight it was in dark ness, total darkness, for not a glimmer showed or chink between drawn curtains. If the curtains were drawn. Even when Donaldson had driven up to the door it was impossible to tell. Rain dripped from the branches of trees and water lay in puddles on the paving stones.

  The place looked as if no one lived there. When was Neil due back with the boys? Nine? Ten, even? They could lie in in the morning, they didn’t have to go to school. Wexford made his way to the front door in the light from the car headlights and put his hand to the bell. It is a peculiarity of the parent-child relationship that while children invariably have a key to their parents’ home the parents never have a key to theirs. Wexford’s sixth law, he thought wryly, half forgetting what the others were. No one came to the door. He rang again. As he turned round a great gust of wind blew rain into his face.

  What was he going to do if Callum Chapman refused to let him in? Break in, of course, but not yet. Karen got out of the car with a torch in her hand and shone the beam over the front of the house. All the windows were tight shut. Wexford went back to the door, pushed in the letter box and called through the aperture, ‘Police! Let us in!’ It was for Sylvia’s benefit, not because he thought it would have any other effect. He could make his voice very loud and resonant, and projected it as energetically as he could when he called again. Maybe she could hear him, wherever she was.

  He and Karen picked their way round the side of the house. Doing this was impossible without getting very wet. Untrimmed shrubs, most of them evergreens, encroached on the path, their leaves laden with water. Rain dripped from the trees in large icy drops. Without the torch the darkness would have been impenetrable. As it was, its bulb cast a greenish-white beam, a shaft of foggy light to cut through the wet jungle and show equally wet long grass underneath. It lit up a red plastic football one of the boys must have kicked there in the summer and been unable to find.

  ‘Does no one do any gardening round here?’ Wexford grumbled, remembering as he’d said it that his own contribution to horticulture was sitting outside and admiring the flowers on a summer evening. Such a pursuit seemed unreal this evening, an illusory recall. ‘The back door should be here somewhere, at the end of the extension.’

  It was locked. Was it also bolted? The back of the house was as dark as the front. By the light of the torch he glanced at his watch. Just after eight thirty. What time would Neil bring the boys back and did he have a key? Very unlikely. Another one of Wexford’s laws might be that the first thing an estranged wife does when turning her husband out of what had been their joint home is to take away his key.

  Then he remembered. ‘In the shed,’ he said to Karen, ‘in that outhouse place there, she used to keep a key to the back door. Neil made a kind of niche in a beam on the far side from the door. The theory was that no one could guess it was there.’

  ‘The kind of person who might want to get in would guess all right,’ Karen said. ‘There’s nowhere to hide a key and be sure it won’t be found.’

  ‘As I told her. She said she’d take it away but I wonder...’

  At least the shed door wasn’t locked. Inside it was a gloomy place, mediaeval-looking with its beamed walls and a ceiling where the timbering came down so low that Wexford could
n’t stand upright. There was no interior light and never had been. Once a cottage and home to a family, it had last been lit by candles. The motor mower, unused garden tools, plastic sacks and cardboard crates were no more than bulky shapes in the darkness. He took the torch from Karen and directed its light on to the fifth beam from the door, revealing ropes of cobwebs and an irregular round fissure in the black oak that looked as if it might have been a knot hole. His hands must be larger than Neil’s for only his little finger was small enough to reach inside. But reach it did and when he wriggled it about and then withdrew it something metallic dropped out on to the floor. He bent down to pick up the key, straightened with a cry of triumph and gave his head a mighty whack on the beam.

  ‘Are you OK, sir?’ Karen was all concern.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said, wincing and rubbing his head, still seeing stars and floaters and coloured flashes. ‘Good thing she didn’t take my advice.’

  So long as the door wasn’t bolted. . . It wasn’t. He turned the key in the lock and let them in. Laundry room first, then kitchen. Karen felt for switches and put the lights on. A meal had been eaten at the kitchen table, begun but not finished. Wine had been drunk, half a bottle of it, and most of it, he guessed, consumed by Chapman, for the glass where he normally sat was empty and the other, Sylvia’s, full. Wexford walked out into the hall, switched on more lights and called out, ‘Sylvia? ‘Where are you?’

  A door opened at the top of the stairs. It was rather near the top of the stairs, only about a yard from the top step. Chapman came out of it. ‘What are you doing here? How did you get in?’

  ‘I have a key’ said Wexford who, in case he didn’t know about its hiding place, wasn’t going to tell him. ‘I rang the bell twice and you didn’t answer. Where’s Sylvia?’

  Chapman didn’t answer. He looked at Karen. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Malahyde,’ she said. ‘Tell us where we can find Sylvia, please.’

  ‘Not your business. None of this is your business. We’ve simply had a row, normal enough, I should think, between partners.’

  Suddenly Wexford knew where she would be. In the place she and Neil had called the dressing room, though it was really no more than a walk-in clothes cupboard. There was a lock on its door, he’d noticed that one day several years ago when Sylvia had the flu and he was visiting her. He set his foot on the bottom stair and when Chapman didn’t move said, ‘Come on, let me pass.’

  ‘You’re not coming up here,’ Chapman said, and then, revealing he didn’t know about the phone call, ‘I don’t know what’s brought you here except maybe her usual whingeing but she doesn’t want you and nor do I. It’s between us, it’s a private matter.’

  ‘Like hell it is.’

  Wexford went on up and tried to push past him. Chapman was shorter than he but a lot younger. He drew back his arm and struck Wexford a blow which failed to connect with his jaw but landed on his collar bone. Luckily, perhaps luckily for both of them - for Wexford was forced to think what the results of hitting him might be - the force Chapman had to bring to this made him stagger, lose his balance and tumble down the top stairs. He was up in a flash, his face red with rage. Wexford stood where he was, filling the square of carpet at the top, making a barrier which, to get past, Chapman would have had to make a fierce fight of it.

  And he was on the stairs again, his fists up, when Karen called his name. She called it softly.

  ‘Mr Chapman!’

  He turned. He ran down the stairs. Perhaps he’d decided, Wexford thought afterwards, that if he attacked a woman, another woman, her superior officer would be down those stairs in a flash to defend her. As he would have done, as he was starting to do. It all happened very fast. One second Chapman was reaching for Karen’s shoulders, reaching perhaps for her neck, the next she had taken him in some kind of hold, thrown him into the air and cast him with a smash on to the hail floor.

  ‘Well done,’ said Wexford. He had forgotten all about those karate classes she had regularly attended last year and the year before. It worked. He had seen it done in the past but never so effectively. Within a moment he was putting on lights, making for the dressing room. Karen followed him.

  ‘Sylvia!’

  It was ominous that the silence was maintained. ‘Why, come to that, hadn’t she heard him the first time? Her bedroom door wasn’t locked and nor was the one to the dressing room. He opened it. It was empty but for the rows of clothes on hangers.

  ‘Sylvia, where are you?’

  Not a voice but the sound of feet drumming on something. There were a lot of bedrooms in this house and all had cupboards in them. But Chapman had come out of the one at the top of the stairs. . . It was Karen who found her, in that bedroom, in the place they called the airing cupboard, though nothing had been aired in it for decades. The heat inside was tremendous, pouring from the boiler and an ill-insulated immersion heater turned full on. It must have been close on 40 degrees Celsius. She was sitting on the floor, sweat streaming off her, surrounded by the clothes she had presumably been wearing but stripped down now to a thin skirt and a T-shirt. Her ankles were tied together with what looked like a dressing gown belt but her hands were nearly free. No doubt she was managing to ease herself out of whatever bound them. He saw why she hadn’t answered. Presumably after she’d made that call, but for some other reason, Chapman had taped up her mouth with sticking plaster.

  He picked her up in his arms and carried her out, laying her on the unmade bed. While Karen worked gently on her mouth to ease the plaster off, he phoned Dora, told her all was well and no longer to worry. Then he turned back to look at his daughter. Karen removed the last stubborn edge of the plaster with a swift and probably painful rip. Sylvia put her hand on her upper lip and whimpered through her fingers. She had two black eyes, a dark-red contusion down her cheek and a cut between upper lip and nose that the plaster had covered, though covering it had obviously not been its purpose.

  ‘He did this to you?’

  She nodded. The tears welled up in her eyes. Rage filled Wexford with a burning tremulous heat. He felt as if he might explode with it as he heard Chapman returning, coming up the stairs. The power of rational thought had left him when the overwhelming anger poured in, possible consequences were forgotten, prudence cast to the winds. He swung round and fetched Chapman a heavy well-aimed punch to the jaw. It was remarkable that he could do it, he thought afterwards, for he hadn’t hit anyone since boxing at school, but he had done it all right, he had done it as to the manner well-taught. Sylvia’s lover lay sprawled on the floor, apparently unconscious, his mouth open. My God, thought Wexford, suppose he’s dead?

  Of course he wasn’t. He began to struggle into a sitting position.

  ‘Don’t let him come near me,’ Sylvia screamed. ‘You should be so lucky;’ muttered Chapman, rubbing his jaw.

  ‘I want him out of this house. Now.’

  Wexford thanked God for it. What would he have done if she had decided to forgive him? It might happen yet. . . Karen said, ‘Can you come downstairs, Sylvia? Are you up to that? I’m going to make you a hot drink with plenty of sugar in it.’

  She nodded, eased herself up with difficulty like an old woman. ‘My face must be a sight,’ she said. ‘My body will be worse only you can’t see.’ She looked at Chapman with loathing. ‘You can pack your bags and go. I don’t know how you’ll get to Kingsmarkham. Walk, I suppose. It’s only about seven miles.’

  ‘I’m not fit to walk,’ he grumbled. ‘Your bloody father has nearly killed me.’

  ‘Not near enough,’ said Wexford, and then, because , it was the only way he could think of to be sure of getting rid of him, ‘We’ll take him. I don’t want to but he’ll never do it on foot.’ That remark of Chapman’s in the Moonflower suddenly came back to him, something about skiving off on the taxpayers’ money. ‘I’d rather see him dead in a ditch but it’s only the good die young.’

  They got Sylvia downstairs. He could see the bruises on
her legs now. Why hadn’t he understood when he saw that red bracelet-like contusion on her wrist at Christmas? Because he couldn’t believe a woman who worked in a refuge for victims of domestic violence would herself put up with abuse from a partner.

  Oddly enough, Chapman came too. A hangdog air had replaced his truculence. He trailed behind them, silent, looking as if he might start crying. Karen put the kettle on and made tea for Sylvia, herself and Wexford. Sylvia’s was very sweet and milky, the way she never took it normally but which seemed to com fort her now. Colour came back into her battered face and she began to talk. Wexford had believed she would have preferred to defer explaining until Chapman was out of the way but she seemed to take pleasure, as he confessed he would have done, in telling it all in her attacker’s presence.

  ‘He wants to marry me. Or he did. I don’t suppose he does now. He kept on and on at me and once or twice he hit me.’ She looked at her father and cast up her eyes. ‘I’m a fool, aren’t I? I of all women ought to know better. I can only say it’s different when it happens to you. You believe them when they promise not to do it again...’

  Chapman interrupted her. ‘I do promise, Sylvia. I won’t do it again. I’ll swear on the Bible, if you like. I’ll make a solemn vow that I never never will. And I still want to marry you. You know all this only came about because you wouldn’t marry me.’

  She laughed, a dry little laugh that stopped because it hurt her. ‘We had a really big row this evening. I said I wouldn’t marry him and I didn’t want him living here any more. I told him to go and he started on me. He knocked me down and punched my face. I got away from him and ran upstairs. I thought I could lock myself in my bedroom but that was a fatal mistake. It was better for him having me up there. Easier to get hold of the sticking plaster, for one thing.’ Chapman got a look of such viciousness Wexford was nearly shocked. ‘This house is so cold it’s a good thing I was wearing so many clothes - well, it is in one way. I nearly died of the heat in that cupboard but it meant I had my mobile with me, in the pocket of my cardigan.’