by Ruth Rendell
Although the weather was dry, a long wet spell had only just ended. Deeply indented footprints, one set of a size eight shoe, the other of a size twelve, had ground into the flowerbed under the balcony. These same prints crossed the rear lawn to where there was a gate in the tall wattle fence, and alongside them went parallel grooves about two inches apart.
‘I reckon,’ said Burden, ‘they had a set of those wheels people have for pushing heavy luggage along. That’s what they used. The sheer cheek of it!’
Loring shone his torch. ‘They rested it down here, sir, in front of the gate. Must have been a bit of a blow when they found their motor gone and they had to keep on wheeling.’
In vain they searched the lane, the ditches and the copse which bordered the lane on one side. They didn’t find the safe and no fingerprints were found on the window ledges or in the study at Baron’s Keep. The thieves had worn gloves.
‘And Big Feet,’ said Burden in the morning, ‘should have worn snow shoes. There aren’t going to be many villains about with great plates of meat like that.’
‘I’d think of Lofty Peters first thing,’ said Wexford, ‘only he’s inside.’
‘Well, he’s not actually. He came out last week. But we were round at his place, knocking him up at midnight and waking all the neighbours, and there was no doubt where he’d been all evening. He was blind drunk, smashed out of his mind. I reckon this lot came down from London. Old Pollard’s been shooting his mouth off around the City about his missus’s diamonds and this is the outcome.’
‘The van was nicked,’ said Wexford. ‘I’ve just had a call from the super at Myringham. They found it ditched on the edge of a wood with the licence plates missing.’
‘What a lively time we are having,’ said Burden, and he looked out of the window at the geraniums on the forecourt and the shops opening, striped awnings gradually being unfurled, shoppers’ cars moving in, the July sun spreading a great sheet of light and warmth across the Pomfret Road – and a little figure walking through it in unseasonable black. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘I don’t believe it, not another one!’
Wexford got up and came over to the window. The small stout man in the black cassock was now on the forecourt, walking between the geranium tubs. In his arms was a bundle that was undoubtedly a baby. He was carrying the baby very confidently and securely as might be expected in one who so often performed the sacrament of baptism. Wexford watched him in silence, craning out to follow the priest’s progress under the overhanging canopy and through the swing doors into the police station.
He said in a distant speculative voice, ‘You don’t suppose, do you, Mike, that this is the latest craze? I mean, we’ve had wife-swapping, are we going to have baby-swapping? Maybe it’s something that bored young housewives are going to take up instead of going to evening classes or playing with their deep freezes.’
‘Or maybe there’s a maniac on the rampage who gets his kicks from changing them all round and confusing their mums.’
‘Musical babes,’ said Wexford. ‘Come on, let’s go down and see.’ They descended to the foyer in the lift. ‘Good morning, Father. And who might this be?’
The priest in charge of the Catholic church of Our Lady of Loretto was leaning against the long parabola-shaped counter behind which the station sergeant, Sergeant Camb, presided. The sleeping baby in his arms was swathed, indeed tightly cocooned, in a clean pale blue cellular blanket. Only its face, fragile yet healthy-looking, and one hand were exposed. Thick dark lashes rested on the rose-leaf skin, but otherwise the child was fair, eyebrow-less and with fine downy hair as bright as a new copper coin. Holding it with tender firmness, Father Glanville looked round from his conversation with the sergeant to give Wexford a mystified grin, while Polly Davies stroked the baby’s tiny fingers with her own forefinger.
‘Your guess is as good as mine, Mr Wexford. I went over to the church just before nine and when I came back this little one was on the front steps of the presbytery. My lady help, Mrs Bream, had come in by the back door and hadn’t even noticed him.’
‘You found him just like that?’ said Wexford. ‘Just wrapped in that blanket and lying on the doorstep.’
‘No indeed. He was wrapped in this blanket inside a cardboard box. The cardboard box,’ said Father Glanville, smiling, ‘is of the kind one sees in grocery supermarkets. This particular one has printed on it: Smith’s Ready Salted Crisps, Ten Family Packs.’ He added rather anxiously, ‘I’m afraid I haven’t brought it with me.’
Wexford couldn’t help laughing. ‘Well, don’t throw it away. It’s very likely a vital piece of evidence.’ He came closer to the child who slept on regardless of the talk and the four large alien presences. ‘You brought it straight here?’
‘I brought him straight here,’ said Father Glanville with the faintest note of reproof in his voice. Wexford reflected that he ought to have known the priest would never refer to any human soul, however youthful, however unknown and unidentified, as ‘it’, and then he said:
‘I suppose he is a he? Blue blankets don’t necessarily denote maleness, do they?’
The three men, for some obscure reason known to none of them, turned their eyes simultaneously on Polly Davies. And she, somehow recognizing that to ascertain gender was her peculiar function, gently took the baby out of Father Glanville’s arms, turned away and began unwrapping the blue blanket. The baby woke up and at once began a strenuous crying. Polly re-wrapped the blanket, set the child against her shoulder, her hand pressed against the four-inch wide back.
‘This is a little girl, sir.’ She put the baby’s cheek against her own. ‘Sir, don’t you think it’s Karen Bond? I’m sure it is, it must be.’ Her voice had a catch in it. To her own evident horror, there were tears coming into her eyes. ‘To think someone just dumped her, someone else’s child, on a doorstep, in a cardboard box!’
‘Well, the someone couldn’t have left her in a better place, could she?’ said Wexford with a grin at the priest. ‘Come now, Constable Davies, this is no way for a liberated woman to go on. Let us pull ourselves together and go and phone Mrs Bond.’
Trevor and Pippa Bond arrived together, having again been brought to the police station in Susan Rains’s car. The young husband was plainly terrified that the child would turn out not to be theirs, that their journey would prove to have been a cruel and vain awakening of hope, and for this reason he had tried to persuade his wife not to come. But she had come. Nothing could have kept her away, though she was fuddled and dazed still from Dr Moss’s sedatives.
But once she saw the baby the muzziness left her and the glazed look went out of her eyes. She seized her in her arms, crushing her until Karen cried out and struggled with all her nine-week-old energy. Inscrutably, Susan Rains watched the little drama, watched her sister throw the blue blanket on to the floor, shuddering as she did so, watched the tears run down her cheeks on to the baby’s head. Pippa began frenetically examining the white frock, the matinée jacket, the minute socks, as if hunting for visible germs.
‘Why don’t you burn the lot?’ said Susan very coolly. ‘Then you won’t have to worry.’
Trevor Bond said quickly and awkwardly, ‘Well, thanks very much, thanks a lot. I’ll just see these girls of mine home and then I’ll get off to the office. We’ve got a lot on our plates, always have this time of the year.’
‘I’ll take them back, Trev,’ said Susan. ‘You get off to work. And I’ll phone Mother.’
‘I’d let Dr Moss have a look at Karen if I were you,’ said Wexford. ‘She seems fine and I’m sure she is, but better be on the safe side.’
They went on their way. Susan Rains walked a little behind the others, already marked for her role as the eternal aunt. Wexford’s thoughts went to her nephew, her brother Mark’s child, though he didn’t know why he should think of him just then, and then to young Ginger, that grass orphan, down in Bystall Lane. He picked up the blanket – young Ginger’s blanket? – and examined it, coming to the conclusi
on at the end of a few minutes’ scrutiny of its texture and its label, that it was made of pure wool, had been manufactured in Wales, was old but clean and had been mended in one corner by someone who was no tyro when it came to handling a darning needle. From its honeycombing he picked a quantity of hairs. Most of these were baby hair, very fine red-gold filaments that might (or then again might not) all have come from the same child’s scalp, but among them were a few coarser longer hairs that were clearly from a woman’s head. A red-headed woman. He was thinking about the two red-headed women he had encountered during the time Karen was missing, when there came a knock at the door.
Wexford called, ‘Come in,’ and Sergeant Willoughby first put his head round the door, then advanced a little sheepishly into the office. Behind him came Burden.
‘The young chap I saw driving that van last night, sir,’ said Willoughby, ‘I knew his face was familiar, I knew I’d seen him before. Anyway, I’ve remembered who he is. Tony Jasper, sir. I’m certain of it.’
‘And am I supposed to know who Tony Jasper is?’
Burden said quickly, ‘You know his brother. His brother’s Paddy Jasper.’
‘Paddy Jasper went up north.’
‘That’s what they said,’ said Burden, ‘and maybe he did, but his girl friend’s back living round here. You know Leilie Somers, he’s lived with her on and off for years, ever since she left Stowerton Secondary Modern when she was sixteen.’
‘D’you know where she’s living?’
‘In one of those flats over the shops in Roland Road,’ said Burden.
Roland Road was in Stowerton, running behind and parallel to the High Street. Wexford’s driver took him and Burden along the High Street to reach it and, looking out of the window, Wexford saw Pippa Bond’s mother walking along, shop-window-gazing and pushing a pram that was higher and grander than her daughter’s and of a rich dark green colour. Its occupant was presumably her grandson. Mrs Leighton was also dressed in dark green and her dyed hair looked redder than ever.
The car turned left, then right into Roland Road. The row of shops, eight of them, was surmounted by a squat upper floor of aimlessly peaked roofs and, on its façade, a useless adornment of green-painted studs and beams. The block had been put up at approximately the same period as Baron’s Keep, the time which Wexford called the Great Tudor Revival. He remarked to Burden that the whole face of urban and semi-rural Britain would have been changed immeasurably for the better if architects in the third and fourth decades of the century had revived the Georgian instead of the Elizabethan. Think of it, he said, long elegant sash windows instead of poky casements, columns instead of half-timbering and pediments instead of gables. Burden didn’t answer him. He had given a push to the door between the newsagent’s and the pet food shop, and it gave under his hand and swung inwards.
The passage was rather dark. At the foot of the stairs was a pram from which a young woman was lifting a baby. She turned round as the light fell on her and said:
‘Oh, hallo, I was just coming back to shut that. Were you wanting something?’
Burden was inspired. He said, remembering Leilie Somers’s character, guessing at her hopes and fears, ‘We’re looking for Mrs Jasper.’
The girl knew at once whom he meant. ‘Leilie’s door’s the one on the right at the top of the stairs.’ The baby on her hip, she parked the pram a little way down the passage, pulled and fastened the cover up over it.
‘Do you know if her husband’s at home?’
Her reply came guilelessly up to them as they mounted the steep stairs: ‘Not unless he’s come back. I heard him go out at just after eight this morning.’
At the top there was a door to the left and a door to the right. Burden knocked on the right one, and it was so rapidly opened that it was apparent Leilie Somers had been listening behind it. And she wanted them inside the flat just as fast. Her neighbour was steadily coming up the stairs and Leilie knew better than to let her hear the law introducing itself or see warrant cards flashed. She was a thin little person of twenty-eight or nine with a pinched face and hennaed hair. Throughout her whole youth she had been the mistress of a man who lived by robbery and occasionally by violent crime, and she had herself been in the dock. But she had never come to adopt, as other such women adopt, an attitude of insolence or truculence towards the police. She was always polite, she was always timid, and now as Wexford said, ‘So you’ve moved back to your old stamping ground, Leilie,’ she only nodded and smiled nervously and said yes, that was right, she’d moved back, managed to get this flat which was a piece of luck.
‘And Paddy with you, I gather.’
‘Sometimes,’ she said. ‘On and off. He’s not what you’d call living here.’
‘What would I call it then? Staying here for his holidays?’ Leilie made no answer. The flat seemed to consist of a living room, a bedroom, a lavatory and a kitchen with covered bath in it. They went through to the living room. The furniture in it was ugly and cheap and old but it was very clean and the woodwork and walls were fresh white. The room had been re-decorated perhaps only the week before. There was still a lingering smell of paint. ‘He was here last night,’ said Wexford. ‘He went out around eight this morning. When’s he coming back?’
She would be rid of the man if she could be. Wexford had that impression now as he had received it from her once before, years before. Some bond she couldn’t break bound her to Paddy Jasper, love or merely habit, but she would be relieved if external circumstances could sever it. Meanwhile, she would be unremittingly loyal.
‘What did you want to see him for?’
Two can play at that game, thought Wexford, answering questions with another question. ‘Where was he last evening?’
‘He was here. He had a couple of pals in playing cards and for a beer.’
‘I don’t suppose,’ said Burden, ‘that one of these pals was by any chance his little brother Tony?’
Leilie looked at the rug on the floor, up at the ceiling, then out of the window so intently that it seemed there must be at least Concorde manifesting itself up in the sky if not a flying saucer.
‘Come on, Leilie, you know Tony. That nice clean-living young Englishman who did two years for mugging an old lady up in the Smoke.’
She said very quietly, now staring down at her fingers, ‘’Course I know Tony. I reckon he was here too, I don’t know, I was out at my job.’ Her voice went up a bit and her chin went up. ‘I’ve got an evening job down the Andromeda. Cloakroom attendant, eight till midnight.’
A sign of the times, was what Wexford called the Andromeda. It was Kingsmarkham’s casino, a gambling club in a spruced-up Victorian house out on the Sewingbury Road. He was going to ask why an evening job, what had happened to her full-time work – for at the time of his last encounter with Leilie she had been a stylist at Mr Nicholas, the hairdresser’s – when his eye fixed itself on an object which stood on one end of the mantelpiece. It was a baby’s feeding bottle with dregs of milk still in it.
‘I didn’t know you had a baby, Leilie,’ he said.
‘He’s in the bedroom,’ she said, and as if to confirm her words there sounded through the wall a reedy wail which quickly gained in volume. She listened. As the cries grew shrill she smiled and the smile became a laugh, a burst of laughter. Then she bit her lip and said in her usual monotone, ‘Paddy and them were here babysitting for me. They were here all evening.’
‘I see,’ said Wexford. He knew then beyond a doubt that Paddy Jasper had not been there, that his friends had not been there, but that on the other hand they, or some of them including Jasper and his brother, had been up in Ploughman’s Lane robbing Baron’s Keep. ‘I see,’ he said again. The baby went on crying, working itself up into a passion of rage or misery. ‘Is Paddy the child’s father?’
She came the nearest to rudeness she ever had. ‘You’ve no right to ask me that, Mr Wexford. What’s it to you?’
No, maybe he had no right, he thought. That ninety-nine
out of a hundred policemen would have asked it was no reason why he should. ‘It’s nothing to me,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Leilie. You’d better go and see to him, hadn’t you?’
But at that moment the crying stopped. Leilie Somers sighed. In the flat next door footsteps sounded and a door slammed. Wexford said, ‘We’ll be back,’ and followed Leilie out into the passage. She went into the bedroom and shut herself in.
Burden let them out and closed the front door. ‘That’s her second child, you know,’ he said as they went down the stairs. ‘She had a kid by Jasper years ago.’
‘Yes, I remember.’ Wexford recalled Father Glanville’s implied admonition and said carefully, ‘Where is he or she now?’
‘She’s a baby batterer, is Leilie Somers. Didn’t you know? No, you wouldn’t. The case came up when you were ill and had all that time off.’ Wexford didn’t much like hearing his month’s convalescence after a thrombosis described as ‘all that time off’ but he said nothing. ‘I was amazed,’ said Burden severely, ‘to hear you apologizing to her as if she were a decent respectable sort of woman. She’s a woman who’s capable of giving a helpless baby a fractured skull and a broken arm. Those were her kid’s injuries. And what did Leilie get? A suspended sentence, a recommendation for psychiatric treatment, all the nonsense.’
‘What happened to the little boy?’
‘He was adopted,’ said Burden. ‘He was quite a long time in hospital and then I heard that Leilie had agreed to have him adopted. Best thing for him.’
Wexford nodded. ‘Strange, though,’ he said. ‘She always seems such a gentle meek creature. I can imagine her not knowing how to cope with a child or being a bit too easy-going or not noticing it was ill, say, but baby-battering – it seems so out of character.’
‘You’re always saying how inconsistent people are. You’re always saying people are peculiar and you never can tell what they’ll do next.’