by Ruth Rendell
“Where?” said Zillah.
“It’s a place in Essex near Romford. The car was parked by the side of a road in a residential area where there are no parking restrictions. A resident called us to complain about it. He said it was an eyesore.”
Zillah laughed. “What am I supposed to do about it?”
“Well, Mrs. Melcombe-Smith, we thought you might know how it came to be put there.”
“I don’t know but if you want my opinion, Jerry-I mean, Jeffrey-dumped it there because at last he’d found a woman with a nice car who’d let him have unlimited use of it. For the first time in his life, probably.”
They exchanged glances. “He didn’t have any particular associations with Harold Hill?”
Eugenie had come into the room. “Who’s Harold Hill, Mummy?”
“It’s a place, not a person.” Zillah said to the policeman who’d asked, “He never mentioned it to me. I should think he just used it as a rubbish dump. He was like that.”
“Who was like that?” Eugenie asked after they’d gone and the babysitter had come. “Who used a place as a rubbish dump?”
“Just a man,” said Zillah.
Neither child had once referred to their father after Eugenie first asked and got no reply. Accomplished at putting off unpleasant things until tomorrow or next week, Zillah sometimes wondered if she would ever need to tell them any more. Or did Eugenie already know from the newspapers, from gossip, from words overheard? If she did, had she told Jordan? Zillah certainly wasn’t going to say anything in front of the babysitter, a woman who hadn’t yet got above herself as Mrs. Peacock had. This time, when the doorbell rang, it was Ronnie Grasmere.
“I don’t like him very much,” said Eugenie as Zillah got up to let him in. “You’re not going to marry him as well, are you?”
Minty didn’t think much about the woman who’d called once she was gone. Maybe she’d been from the police and knew Minty went to the cinema a lot. She hadn’t noticed that the woman had gone next door and she went to call on Laf and Sonovia herself to ask about the shower man. Although they’d been out in the garden, having a glass of wine and a late snack, they’d heard the bell. Laf plied her with Chilean chardonnay and Duchy Original ginger biscuits, and seated her in one of their white patio chairs-the fourth one was occupied by Mr. Kroot’s old cat-but she thought they’d given her funny looks. She asked Sonovia about the shower man and Sonovia said he’d promised her to come at the beginning of next week.
“When it’s builders,” said Laf, “the beginning of the week is Thursday morning and the end of the week is next Monday.”
Sonovia laughed but Minty didn’t like it much. Jock had been a builder and Laf ought to have remembered. Still, she told them about her search for his grave. They might have some advice.
“What makes you think he’s in Brompton?” Sonovia asked in the kind of smiley way she talked to her four-year-old granddaughter.
“I had a feeling. Not voices telling me, it wasn’t that. I just knew.”
“But you didn’t know, my deah. You just thought. I don’t trust these feelings. It’s the same with premonitions. Nine times out of ten what you’ve felt isn’t true at all.” Laf gave Sonovia a warning cough but she went on just the same. “You have to find out these things for sure. With certificates and-and things.”
Minty looked helplessly at Laf. “Will you do it for me?”
He sighed but said in a hearty voice, “Of course I will, you leave it to me.”
“What does she mean, not voices telling me?” Sonovia said when Laf had seen Minty out. “She really is going crazy, she’s worse than ever.”
Unhappily, Laf shook his head, then nodded. “It’ll be easy finding out where Jeffrey Leach is buried, it’s done in five minutes, but do I want to, Sonn? I mean, what am I going to tell her? ‘Oh, yes, he’s up in Highgate or whatever but he wasn’t really Jock, he was the one murdered in the cinema and his name was Leach’? As I’ve said, that I won’t do.”
“You’ll just have to pass it off.”
“That’s what you always say but it’s not so easy. She’ll ask me again, won’t she?” And then, he thought, but didn’t say aloud, Am I going to say anything to the DI? I mean, the guy was stabbed, murdered, and she’d been his girlfriend, she’d been, or thought she’d been, engaged to him. But she’s my neighbor, she’s my friend, I can’t do that to her. She’s not right in the head but as for murder, well, she’d no more do murder than I would. He shivered.
“Not cold, are you?”
“I’m getting that way. And the mosquitoes are coming out.”
Sonovia gathered the sleeping cat up in her arms. “Dear God, I’ve forgotten to tell you. Mr. Kroot’s dead. He passed away this morning. It went straight out of my head. Picking up the cat reminded me.”
“Poor old boy.” Charitable Laf looked doleful. “I dare say he’s better off where he is. Keep Blackie, shall we?”
“I wouldn’t leave him to the tender mercies of Gertrude Pierce.”
When Minty had let herself into it, her own house had a ghostly feel. Perhaps any empty house is like that at dusk, until the lights are on, the curtains are closed, or laughter breaks through. No laughter but such silence, such stillness, such a sense of waiting for things to happen. The house is holding its breath, bracing itself for what will come in.
Instead of switching the hall light on, any light on, Minty walked slowly about, challenging the house to show its ghosts. She was a little afraid to turn round but she did, walking back the way she had come, going round and round. At the foot of the stairs she looked up them, as up a well by night, for there was no light at the top. Out of the deep shade Jock came down. He was just the same ghost as he’d been when she first saw him. It was as if she’d never got rid of him. It only worked for a little while. For three or four months, she thought, as she met his pale, stony eyes.
She closed her own eyes and slowly turned round so that her back was toward him. There was absolute silence. If he touched her, his hand on her neck or his breath cold against her cheek, she thought she would die. Nothing happened and she turned round again, forcing her eyes open as if strength were needed to push the eyelids up. No one was there, he had gone. From outside came the sound of a car moving along the street, its windows open and rock music thudding out. She thought, He comes back because I can’t find his grave, because I can’t put flowers on it like I do on Auntie’s.
“Now listen, Minty,” Laf said when he’d brought round the papers. “I’ve done that bit of detective work you wanted. Your Jock wasn’t buried. He was cremated and his ashes scattered.” Up to a point, this was true. Laf always tried very hard not to tell lies, only straying from the straight and narrow path when the truth was too cruel. For instance, Jeffrey Leach had indeed been cremated but his ashes had been collected from the undertakers by Fiona Harrington, who had told a police officer acquaintance of Laf’s what she intended to do with them. “Somewhere in West Hampstead,” he said, and was disappointed to see Minty’s face fall.
“Where could I put my flowers?”
Laf had a picture of a cellophane-wrapped bunch of chrysanthemums lying isolated and forlorn on the pavement in West End Lane. It would be as if someone had died there. Though he wasn’t usually so cynical on the subject of human nature, he wondered how long it would be before a dozen other similarly wrapped bouquets joined it, the “mourners” having no idea to whom they were paying homage.
“Well, Fortune Green was what she said.”
A sort of green triangle with trees, he thought vaguely. He expected more requests or even demands from Minty but when one came it was very different from what he anticipated.
“Will you get Sonovia to phone the builders again?”
“Give them time, Minty,” he said, rather taken aback.
She seemed to be listening for something as she stared into a corner. Then she shook herself like someone coming out of a daze. “You said the beginning of the week is Thursday and
the end of the week next Monday but Monday’s gone and they haven’t come. I’m never going to get my shower at this rate.”
Chapter 34
ONE OF THE LAST sightings of Jims was in Le Tobsil restaurant in Marrakesh. A Liberal Democrat MP, visiting that city with his wife as part of a Moroccan tour, saw him through the window. He couldn’t have afforded to eat there himself. The MP wouldn’t have been surprised to have found him with a young and handsome male companion, but Jims was alone. He mentioned this interesting glimpse to a friend in an e-mail and the friend told a newspaper. That was the beginning of the ongoing and endlessly fascinating “Disappearance of Gay MP” story.
In late August a journalist claimed to have encountered him in Seoul, where Jims granted him an interview. But everyone who knew Jims was highly skeptical about this as none of them could imagine him setting foot in Korea, while the text itself with its admissions of shame, regret, and contrition sounded very unlike him. Neither his agent nor, naturally, his bank was prepared to divulge anything of his whereabouts, though presumably they had some idea. Attempts were made to get the truth out of Zillah, though it took a while to find her as by this time she had let Willow Cottage on a year’s lease to an American novelist and moved into Long Fredington Manor with Sir Ronald Grasmere.
“I’ve always wanted to come back here,” said Eugenie, “and now we’re moving out again.”
But no one took any notice, as usual.
Zillah had no idea where Jims was and cared less. From now on, all her efforts were to make Ronnie happy and convince him he was mistaken when he said that, following his recent divorce, he was done with marriage forever.
From time to time Violent Crimes or Miss Demeanor appeared on television-the only slot they got was two minutes at the end of Newsroom Southeast-to tell an apathetic public that they would never give up the hunt for the Cinema Slayer and killer of Eileen Dring. An arrest would be made in the not-too-far-distant future. They had many leads on which their team was working day and night. Fiona and Matthew and Michelle sometimes watched these programs but without much anxiety or sense of involvement. Their ordeals were over. The police had shown no interest in any of them for weeks now. Their neighbors once more passed the time of day with them, no one crossed the street when they approached, and Fiona had had the graffiti on her gateposts removed and painted over.
Gradually, she was recovering. She no longer expected it to be Jeff when the doorbell rang or to find him waiting for her when she came home. The time was past when she woke from her sedative-induced sleep to wonder why he wasn’t lying there beside her. These days she could agree with friends she had thought unkind that after all, she’d only known him for eight months. It wasn’t really long enough to be sure of one’s feelings. Knowing what she now knew of him, she’d never have been able to trust him, he’d deceived her so often and told so many lies. Sometimes she asked Michelle if she was forgiven for categorizing her and Matthew as among Jeff’s enemies, and although Michelle always said yes, of course, and to forget all about it, Fiona went on asking her as if she doubted the sincerity of her replies.
Michelle had lately been rather quiet and thoughtful so that Matthew often asked her if anything was wrong. She smiled and said, “Far from it. Everything is fine,” and with that he had to be satisfied. He wanted to repeat their weekend away, perhaps abroad this time, and Michelle said she’d love to, but could they postpone it for a few weeks? He’d met quite a lot of new people through his television program and they’d done an unheard-of thing and had a dinner party for eight, a number that included Fiona and a personable man in his thirties Michelle thought might do as Jeff’s replacement. Matthew said not to matchmake, it never worked, and Michelle promised she’d do no more.
One evening, when they and their next-door neighbor had met for drinks, Michelle made something very close to a little speech of thanks to Fiona: “It was your food ideas which really started Matthew eating properly. It came out of your inventive mind. And it was poor Jeff”-she could call him that now-“who taught me to lose weight. He didn’t know that’s what he was doing but he was. Those taunts of his didn’t make me do what those stupid police seemed to think I’d done, they changed me from a great, gross, fat woman into a-well, a reasonable size sixteen.”
“You were always beautiful to me,” said Matthew.
She smiled at him and squeezed his hand. “It did make me hate him for a bit. I can admit it now I don’t think anyone will mind.” But although she saw as much of Fiona as she had ever done, though she kissed her affectionately and constantly reassured her, she remembered what she had said to Matthew at the time of the betrayal: “I can never feel the same about her again, never.” It was still true, though she hid it and would always hide it, even from him.
She was healthier than she’d been for more than ten years or she looked healthier, so Matthew was concerned when she said at eight in the morning that she was off to their GP’s office. She’d made an appointment and told him she wouldn’t be long.
He felt a sudden surge of terror. “What’s the matter with you, darling?”
“I won’t know till I’ve seen the doctor, will I?”
It was then that he thought he saw bewilderment in her face and some apprehension of misfortune. She decided against telling him her symptoms, said only that she wouldn’t be long and he mustn’t worry.
The story Natalie concocted out of her hopeless encounter with Nell Johnson-Fleet and her second abortive attempt on her the next day, the troubling meeting with Linda Davies, her sad interview with Fiona Harrington, and her incomprehensible confrontation with Araminta Knox were, she had to admit, something of a failure. None of the newspaper editors to whom she offered it was interested. Other stories had replaced the Cinema Slayer and the Old Bag Lady in the public consciousness. It might be another matter if all that talk of clues and leads on the television last night led to an arrest, but otherwise…
Natalie had done her best with it. She had even had one more go at the voters’ list, widening her search, just in case another woman with something that might be construed as “mint” in her name turned up. She even went back to Laf and Sonovia, and tried to dig deep into their memories, but all they said was that they couldn’t describe a man they’d never seen. After that she followed the modern procedure that used to be known as “spiking” the story and kept it on a floppy disk for what she thought of as the unlikely event of the murderer being found.
The Wilsons had been dismayed by this further visit. Laf saw it as an attempt to implicate Minty in something she couldn’t possibly know anything about. It never crossed his mind that she might be the killer, not gentle, quiet Minty with her strong moral sense and horror of violence. How many times, for instance, had he and Sonovia heard her say she was in favor of a return to capital punishment? But it was strange about Jock Lewis. No evidence that he could find had linked him with Jeffrey Leach until the police found the “boneshaker” in Harold Hill. Nothing had been in the newspapers about that, it was hardly a newsworthy item, but Laf, of course, knew it. Without saying a word to Sonovia or his children, without telling any of his fellow officers why, he managed to get a look at the car himself. The trouble was he simply couldn’t remember. Several times he’d seen the “boneshaker” outside Minty’s house but he’d never taken much notice of it beyond remarking to Sonovia that since the fuel emissions test came in you saw far fewer old bangers about on the roads. He couldn’t even remember whether it was dark blue or dark green or black. The Harold Hill car was dark blue but so dirty, so encrusted with dead leaves, smoke deposit, and squashed insects, that it would have been hard to say if it was the car or not, even if he’d remembered more about it.
“I wish I’d seen him from the window,” Sonovia moaned. “I can’t understand why I didn’t persist. It’s not like me.”
It was coincidence that Jeffrey Leach and Jock Lewis both had twenty-year-old cars, shared a pair of initials, had both once lived in Queen’s Park, but
no more than coincidence. Jock had disappeared out of Minty’s life almost a year ago while Jeffrey Leach wasn’t killed till April. He wasn’t going to mention it to the DI, who’d only think he was getting above himself. Besides, Minty was a friend.
But she was getting more and more peculiar. It was only the other day Sonovia had said to him that if you didn’t know she was on her own you’d think she was surrounded by crowds of people all the time. Invisible people, that is. You could never hear much through the walls, these old houses were well built, whatever they said about the neighborhood, but she’d heard Minty shouting to go away and leave her alone and only the other day she’d been sitting in the garden when Minty had come out to hang up washing and was talking nineteen to the dozen to some old woman and a man she called Wilfred, and to Winnie Knox, who’d been dead three years. It made Sonovia’s blood run cold to hear her.
The police couldn’t make up their minds whether Leach had dumped the car himself when Fiona told him to use hers or whether his killer had done so. Only his fingerprints were on the inside of it, his and those of an unknown person, probably a woman.
Six weeks had passed since Sonovia first asked the builder for an estimate for Minty’s shower. When he didn’t come she complained and he said he’d been ill with “summer flu.” Sonovia wondered if it was a good idea for him to come at all, if any stranger should be allowed at number 39 when Minty was so odd, talking to people who weren’t there, always looking over her shoulder and shivering.
“She’s harmless,” Laf said, on his way next door with the Sunday paper.
“I know that, my deah. It’s not him I’m thinking about, it’s her. I mean, people getting the wrong impression. It’s enough to give the whole street a bad name.”
“You get that shower done for her. It’ll be a tonic. Lift her out of her depression.”
Laf went next door. Minty still had her latex gloves on, she’d been scrubbing the kitchen floor. On an impulse, Laf asked her if she’d come to the cinema with him and Sonovia the next day. In her characteristic way she said she didn’t mind and could she make him a cup of tea? Not once while he was in there did she seem to hear voices or talk to invisible people or look over her shoulder.
