Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods

by Ruth Rendell

  Chapman hadn’t known. He shook his head, perhaps at his own lack of foresight in not searching her before making her prisoner. Sylvia said, ‘He came back later and taped up my mouth and tied up my feet and hands and put me in that cupboard, the hot cupboard. That was deliberate torture. I don’t know what he meant to do next, go out maybe in my car, or wait - till Neil brought the boys back. . . . Where are the boys?’

  As she asked that question the doorbell rang. Wexford went to answer it. Ben and Robin rushed in, making for the kitchen. Seeing their mother in that state wouldn’t be pleasant for them but they would have to know some time. He told Neil as briefly as he could what had happened.

  ‘Where is he? Let me get at him.’

  ‘No, Neil. Not you too. As it is, I shouldn’t have hit him and God knows what he’ll do about it. He’s going anyway. The best thing will be for Sylvia and the boys to come and stay with us. I’ll get Karen to drive them in Sylvia’s car.’

  ‘I’ll take them,’ Neil said.

  Sylvia had apparently told her sons she had fallen down the stairs. She had come out of the bedroom where the airing cupboard was, it was dark, she had missed her footing and crashed down the entire flight. Whether they believed that this would also account for her black eyes Wexford couldn’t tell. But they seemed satisfied with the explanation and excited, as children mostly are, at the prospect of going away for the night. Chapman, the fight knocked out of him, had gone upstairs to pack suitcases.

  ‘Why did he turn all the lights off?’ Karen asked.

  ‘I don’t know. He was always saying I was extravagant with electricity but it’s my house and I paid the bills. I don’t know what he thought would happen when Robin and Ben came back Maybe he was going to tell them I wasn’t feeling well and had gone to bed and keep me in there all night. He’s capable of it. Oh, I’m such a fool.’

  So Neil drove his family to Wexford’s house while Wexford and Karen took Chapman with them. He had brought so many cases, boxes and plastic carriers, fifing up the car boot, that Wexford was driven to wonder how many of Sylvia’s possessions the man had filched. It was worth almost anything to be rid of him. No one spoke. Donaldson at the wheel was consumed with curiosity, his ears on stalks for the hints of enlightenment that never came. He was directed to drive to a district of Stowerton he wouldn’t normally have associated with the chief inspector’s daughter or anyone belonging to her. There, in a street that ran along the back of a disused factory, he was told to drop their passenger outside a run-down block of flats with a nameplate from which several letters had fallen and never been replaced and where only one of the four globular lamps above the entrance was working. Donaldson was preparing to carry those cases and boxes up the steps to this entrance but Wexford said no, leave them on the pavement.

  Chapman got out and stood there, surrounded by his, and possibly Sylvia’s, property.

  ‘Goodnight,’ said Wexford, his head out of the window.

  The last they saw of him was a weary figure humping inelegant luggage across the pavement, along the path and up the steps. There was so much of it that he would have to make several journeys. Maybe that would be the last they saw of him and maybe not, Wexford thought, his experience of life telling him that couples when they parted seldom made a clean break of it but drifted together again and apart again, the whole sorry process punctuated with rows, reconciliations and recriminations. Not this time, please, not when it was his injured daughter.

  How about charging Chapman with causing Actual Bodily Harm, say, or even resisting arrest? He thought not. This was his daughter. Was he going to pre-empt any accusations which might come from Chapman by first telling Freeborn what he’d done? Chapman could be revenged by accusing Wexford of assault, but he was unlikely to do this when it meant admitting he’d been laid low by a man much older than himself. Wexford couldn’t honestly say he regretted what he’d done, for the blow he had struck hadn’t been for Chapman alone but for all the ghastly men who had been in and out of his daughters’ lives over the past years. The weedy bore Sylvia had been running around with between Neil and Chapman, the awful literary prizewinner and poet Sheila had gone about with, and back, back to her drama school days, the idiot called Sebastian something who had dumped his dog on them and which Wexford had had to take walkies. I won’t think about any of it now, he thought, I’ll force it out of my mind.

  He said goodnight to Karen and thanked her for her help. When she had gone he asked himself what it was, what had happened that evening, which kept teasing at the back of his mind. Something to do with that stair case it was, and the way the bedroom door opened only a couple of feet in from the top riser. Anyone coming out of that room could easily fall down the stairs, as Chapman had fallen part-way when he had overbalanced after hitting Wexford. He concentrated. He revisited the scene in his mind’s eye.

  The configuration of staircase and bedroom door was the same at Sylvia’s as at Antrim. A matter of awkward and clumsy design in both cases but safe enough if caution was used. Imagine, though, someone coming to that bedroom door . . . No, not ‘someone’; Joanna Troy. Because he was in that room doing that weary everlasting homework, the homework his father insisted on over and above the call of school duty, and Joanna came to the door and knocked, maybe to tell him it was time to put the light out and go to sleep. Possibly Roger or Katrina Dade had asked her to see the children didn’t stay up too late. Perhaps she had come before, even two or three times, and, exasperated, he had flung open the door and pushed her away.

  It was impossible. No fifteen-year-old boy would do that unless he were a criminal psychopath in the making...

  Chapter 19

  There comes a time in every case if it is a complex one, when the investigating officer reaches an impasse, when there seems no way forward and no unexplored paths to go along. This is what had happened to Wexford in the Missing Dade Children affair. He had thought he had a strong lead in the matter of the Good Gospellers, but not one of the enquiries his officers had made revealed any thing suspicious beyond the fact that they knew Passingham Hall woods and Giles Dade had been one of them. Each one of the elders had been alibi by his wife and, in some cases, by his children. Joanna Troy’s past had interested him but it had mostly been concerned with things she had done and not with things done to her. Now that she was dead, probably murdered, her own offences were of little account. ‘Who cared any longer that she had been accused of stealing a schoolboy’s money? That her marriage had been a failure? Or that another boy had been attacked by her and years later died by falling over a cliff? She was dead, dumped in her car in the bottom of a waterlogged quarry. As for all the teenagers closely or remotely connected with her, Giles and Sophie, Scott and Kerry Holloway, Hobab Winter’s daughter, children would figure in her life. She was a teacher.

  The Dade children were probably dead too. Wexford knew very well how simple it may be to find a body when it has been buried in its own back garden or in next door’s, how almost insuperable when the killer has disposed of it in some distant place, perhaps hundreds of miles away, which even he has never visited before. He knew he should be looking at the case from an entirely different angle to those which he had explored already. But which angle? Where to start?

  Well, he could ask Lynn Fancourt about the Dade children’s school friends, though most had been dismissed from the case. It was Sewingbury Academy’s uniform that was brown and gold and which Dora said she had seen the Winter girl wearing when she did her father’s paper round.

  'What’s her name?’ he had asked her.

  ‘One of those strange Bible names. Dorcas.’

  ‘Dorcas?’

  ‘I said it was strange. Come to think of it, it’s not really any stranger than Deborah only one’s fashionable and the other’s not.’

  Now he said to Lynn, ‘Is she on the list?’

  She scanned it. ‘No. Was she Giles’s or Sophie’s friend?’

  ‘I don’t know. They’re the same sort of age
and they go to the same school. She lives in my road and she’s the daughter of the Queen Street newsagent.’

  ‘D’you want me to go round there and ask her if she knows Giles, sir?’

  Why? What on earth was the point? He shook his head. ‘If I decide to pursue it I’ll go round there myself.’

  Another disappointment. He consoled himself with his relief that at least his garden hadn’t flooded again, while some low-lying properties in Kingsmarkham, especially those near the river banks, were once more inundated. Life at home now included Sylvia and her sons, for she was afraid to go home lest Callum Chapman come back How could she tell whether he had a key or not? She had taken his key which he had mislaid and she had found in the bedroom they had shared. He might easily have had another cut during one of their quarrelsome periods when he was pressing her ‘to make things permanent’ and she was telling him that if he went on like that he would have to leave. To her father and mother she continued endlessly to explain how it was possible she had endured him for even a day after he first struck her, she who had been the most ardent and the most vociferous campaigner against violence in the home, she who had almost daily advised women to leave abusive partners whatever promises they made or undertakings they gave.

  ‘It’s different when it’s happening to you,’ she repeatedly said. ‘It’s a real person with good qualities, it’s someone who strikes you as deeply sincere whatever else he may be.’

  ‘Strikes you is right,’ said her father, who had scant sympathy with all this now time had passed and her wounds and bruises healed. At least Chapman hadn’t attempted to have him charged with assault. ‘You could leave off the rest of that sentence. You’re a grown woman, Sylvia, you’re a mother, you were married for God knows how long. Whatever Chapman did to you you’ve only yourself to blame.’

  Dora thought him very harsh. ‘Oh, Reg.’

  ‘Oh, Reg, nothing. She’s a social worker, for God’s sake. She ought to know a lowlife when she sees one.’

  Relations between him and his elder daughter were fast returning to what they were before Sylvia left her husband and miraculously became a nicer person. And he was back in the morass of guilt he struggled to be free of by repeating to himself a kind of mantra: You must not show favouritism of one child over the other. But Chapman was gone and that was something to rejoice about.

  One of the difficulties was that they still had very little idea when Joanna and the Dade children left Antrim.

  Let alone why. All of them had been there on Friday and overnight. Joanna had presumably still been there on Saturday morning and for part of the afternoon since her car was there. Giles was seen on Saturday afternoon, probably as late as half past two. On Sunday morning the car was gone. It was therefore reasonable to suppose that Giles and Joanna were alive and well by early evening on Saturday - but was it?

  To Burden, over lunch in the Moonflower, he said, ‘We know Giles went out at around half past two but we don’t know when he came back. If he came back. We know Joanna was in the house because her car was seen on the driveway by Mrs Fowler and according to her father she never walked anywhere if she could help it. But we really have no idea where Sophie was. No contact was made with her, so far as we know, after she spoke on the phone to her mother in Paris on Friday evening at about seven thirty;’

  Burden nodded abstractedly. He was ordering their meal with care. It had to be served fast, it had to be ‘healthy food’, to which he had lately become addicted, and it had to be as fat-free as possible for Wexford’s somewhat raised cholesterol. Dragon’s Eggs were still on the menu and another one, even worse, had been added: Flying Fleshpots.

  ‘It sounds awful,’ said Wexford, ‘but I’m going to try it.’

  ‘I shall ask Raffy about its fat content,’ Burden warned, though he had little faith in an honest answer. And when this enquiry was put to him, Raffy, efficient and smart as ever, replied that it was lowest in fat levels of any dish they served.

  ‘It’s got Lo-chol in it, sir, which has actually been clinically proven to lower cholesterol.’

  ‘You made that up.’

  ‘I’d never tell a lie, Mr Burden. Especially to police officers.’

  Making a face, Wexford drank some of the sparkling water Burden insisted on. ‘To return to our ongoing problem,’ he went on, ‘did Giles ever come back from wherever he went? We’ve no reason to suppose he ever came back and none really to think he didn’t. Come to that, where did he go?’

  ‘To the shops? To visit a friend?’

  ‘Those Lynn questioned say they didn’t see him the entire weekend. Scott Holloway tried to speak to him on the phone but failed. He may or may not have gone round there, he says not and it’s not much use saying I don’t believe him. And where was Sophie?’

  ‘In the house all the time with Joanna, surely?’

  ‘Maybe. But we don’t know that. All we can be sure of is that Joanna, Sophie and Giles left the house or were taken from it some time on Saturday night.’

  Burden said carefully, ‘There’s a strong possibility someone else came to the house on Saturday after the rain began. Just because no one saw him it doesn’t mean he didn’t come. It’s even possible Giles brought this per son back with him.’

  ‘Scott? If Giles had called on the Holloways and taken Scott back to his house, Mrs Holloway would know. No, if Scott went there he went alone and, I think, much later.’

  ‘So you’re saying’, said Burden, ‘this is someone we haven’t included in our enquiries.’

  ‘That’s right. Because he or she has left the country. We know, for instance, that Giles’s and Sophie’s passports are here and Joanna’s is here, but we know nothing about anyone else’s. And it’s not much use to us if we don’t know who this person is. Was Joanna killed at Antrim and killed by this person? Did it take place in the hall and was it caused by her falling or being thrown downstairs? As far as we know she never left Antrim until Saturday night and when she did leave Giles and Sophie were with her. Was this caller driving her car? It must have been someone they or one of them knew, that they invited in.’

  ‘As we know, the neighbours saw no one,’ said Burden, ‘after Mrs Fowler saw Giles leave the house. But I’m inclined to think there was a visitor to the house that night and that he came by prior arrangement. Or it could have been a chance visit.’

  Wexford’s Flying Fleshpots and Burden’s Butterflies and Flowers arrived, the former indistinguishable from lemon chicken, the latter prawns, bamboo shoots, carrots and pineapple fancifully arranged. A large bowl of prettily coloured rice accompanied these dishes. At the next table a very affectionate couple, who contrived to link his right hand and her left while manipulating chop sticks with the other, were both eating Dragon’s Eggs.

  Burden pursued his theory ‘He’d want to get her body away. We’ll say he had some sort of grudge to settle. We’ve heard about Joanna beating up Ludovic Brown while they were still at school and there may have been other instances of the same thing. She did coach children for their GCSEs. Suppose she attacked one of them and the child’s father wanted revenge.’

  ‘Then he’d have gone to her home, wouldn’t he?’ Wexford objected. ‘Not to the Dades.’

  ‘He may have enquired of the neighbours, Yvonne Moody, say, as to where Joanna was. No, he couldn’t have. She was away at her mother’s. Perhaps he followed Joanna or his child told him she might be at the Dades.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Wexford was dubious. ‘The logistics are a bit funny. Your X finds out where Joanna is, though how is a moot point, and he goes up to Antrim on Saturday evening. He knows he’s got the right place because her car is outside. He rings the bell and some one lets him in.’

  ‘Joanna might not have done if she recognised him as antagonistic to her,’ Burden put in quickly, ‘but Giles or Sophie would have.’

  ‘Right. Presumably he makes a row. I mean, you’re not saying he sits down and has a cup of tea with them and watches telly, are you? No, h
e makes a row and blusters but he can’t do much in front of the kids. So he somehow gets Joanna out into the hail - this is the sticky bit, Mike - and he gets her there alone. Twirling his moustaches, our villain hisses something like, “I’m I going to get you for this, my proud beauty” and whacks her round the head. She screams, falls over and hits her head on the side of the clothes cupboard. Giles and Sophie come running out. “What have you done?” They find that Joanna is dead. The body must be removed and hidden. So X persuades the kids to go off with him in Joanna’s car? It must have been persuasion, not force. They weren’t babies, they were fifteen and thirteen. The boy will be quite strong. Remember how tall he is. They could easily have resisted. But they don’t, they agree to go. They make their beds, they put Joanna’s clothes into her case, but they don’t take a change of clothes for themselves. Why do they go? In case they might be blamed along with X? I don’t much like this part, do you?’

  ‘I don’t like it but I can’t think of anything better.’ Burden drank some water. ‘How did X get to the Dades’ house? It must have been on foot, maybe part of the way by public transport. If he or she came in their car that car would still have been there on the Monday. And they didn’t leave in it, they left in Joanna’s. Did he leave fingerprints? Maybe they were among the unidentifiable left about the house, many of them smudged by Mrs Bruce’s fanatical dusting. Then there’s the T-shirt with Sophie’s face on it. Did X tell Sophie to bring the T shirt so that he could drop it out of the window at the Kingsbrook Bridge as a red herring? That presupposes an intimate knowledge of the Dade family on his part.’

  ‘It doesn’t if he simply asked the children to bring something by which one of them could be immediately identified. But still. . . I don’t know, Mike, there are so many holes in it and so many questions left unanswered.’ Wexford looked at his watch. ‘It’s time I paid my visit to the Dades,’ he said with a sigh.