Road Rage

by Ruth Rendell

  Setebos, Setebos and Setebos,

  Thinketh he dwelleth in the cold of the moon,

  Thinketh he made it, with the sun to match,

  But not the stars,

  The stars came otherwise.

  A white sports car was parked on his drive. He recognized it as belonging to Paul Curzon, Amulet’s father, and when he went upstairs he saw that Sheila’s bedroom door was shut. The two of them were in there and their baby with them. Instead of causing him pain, it pleased him, it gave him a tiny idea of peace, if not comfort.

  If he was going to get any sleep it was better to get it not immediately but later in the night. Sleep that came at once would vanish after an hour and leave him wakeful and a prey to every kind of dreadful anxiety for the long hours to come. But sleep came, he lost himself in it after a short struggle, and slipped into a dream of Dora, of Dora and himself when young.

  Why is it always our younger self in dreams, and even more so, the younger selves of those close to us? No book had ever offered him the answer to that, no dream expert analyst, for dreams are not expressive of our wishful thinking or surely they would all be happy and optimistic. In his dreams his daughters were children, his wife a young woman, and he, though unseen by himself, the dreamer, felt young. This time he had come up to a tower, like a castle rising out of a great empty plain, and she was leaning out of an upper window, extending her arms to him.

  Her hair was very long, as it had been in the early years of their marriage. It hung over the windowsill and down the stonework of the tower like Rapunzel’s in the fairy story, only Dora’s hair was dark, black as a raven’s wing. He came close to the tower and took hold of the hair in his two hands, not intending to climb it, of course, even in the dream he knew real people didn’t do that and in any case he was far too heavy to attempt it. She smiled down, but suddenly a terrible thing happened. The weight of her hair was too much for her or his hold on it was too much, and with a cry she toppled forward and plunged from the window. He awoke, uttering a continuation of that cry, shouting as if they were calling out a protest together.

  No one came. His room was far enough away from Sheila’s for her to hear nothing. Besides, like most dream shouts, it had come out strangled and muffled. He lay for a while in the dark, then got up and walked about. We are all mad at night, someone had said. Mark Twain, maybe. It was true—or, in his case, was it? Didn’t he have something to go mad about?

  In the morning that announcement would come. Presumably, via radio and television, later in the newspapers. But what if it didn’t come? What if the assurance given Montague Ryder came to nothing because some higher decision affected it, because someone—the Home Office? the Department of the Environment?—thought it would smack of giving in to the demands of terrorists?

  Nicky Weaver had told him what he already knew, that it was highly unlikely the hostages would come to harm. On the other hand, her assumptions were based on statistics of the kind of kidnapping carried out solely for monetary gain. These Sacred Globe people were fanatics; money didn’t come into it with them. If they killed, who would they kill first?

  Stop it, he said to himself, stop it. They’ll kill no one. It wouldn’t be Dora, anyway, if it was the youngest or the oldest they chose. He looked at the time, then wished he hadn’t. It wasn’t yet two. If he must think, he ought to be thinking of possible connections between this suspect and that, this suspect and that place—only there were no suspects. As for the place, maybe that was an angle they had neglected up till now and should neglect no longer.

  He was at a loss. Where did you start? With the people always. Find a suspect and you were a good way to finding a place. If that announcement didn’t come … The Chief Constable had given a guarantee it would come. He put the light on and tried to read. It was a history of the American Civil War, lent to him by Jenny Burden, well-written, exhaustively researched, containing many descriptions of the carnage in that terrible conflict, of wounds, of slow death.

  He kept seeing Dora afraid. She was strong, but she would be afraid. Anyone would be. His mind was partially distracted by a thought for that girl Roxane Masood, whose mother had said she was claustrophobic. Confinement in a tiny room wouldn’t bother Dora any more than confinement in a banqueting hall, but the claustrophobe …

  At about four he fell into a jerky fitful sleep. Waking just before six, reflecting on the events of the evening before, he remembered where he had previously encountered Damon Slesar. It was that “Good night then, sir” that brought it back to him. That spurious word “then,” inserted like an apology.

  It had been at a conference he had attended more out of curiosity than anything, for its subject was the differences between British and Continental European police practice. There had been speakers from France and Germany and Sweden. Nothing strange about Slesar’s being there, of course, except that most of the others had outranked him. In many ways it was admirable to see a man of his age and rank so wisely putting himself in the picture. On the Saturday night Wexford saw him again, this time in the local pub, where Wexford was dining with a commissaire he knew from an investigation that had once taken him to the South of France. Slesar and some cronies sat at the next table, drinking whisky.

  Afterward, having stuck meticulously to fizzy water, Wexford with Commissaire Laroche was making for his car when he saw Slesar heading for his. It hadn’t occurred to Wexford that after drinking as Slesar had been, he would attempt to drive. But, accompanied by the two friends he had sat with, he was unlocking the driver’s door.

  Wexford had spoken almost involuntarily. “Better not.”

  Slesar looked at him. His eyes were glazed. There was a loose uncoordinated look to his face, the muscles out of control. He said, “I’ll be fine.”

  By now there must have been half a dozen people around them. Wexford kept his voice light, almost jovial. “Come with me. I’ll drive you back. Someone can fetch your car in the morning.”

  Slesar seemed to realize how many witnesses to all this there were. His dark face reddened. You could clearly see it in the lamplight. “You’re right, sir,” he said, and then, “Jim’ll drive me.” He touched the man behind him on the shoulder with more perhaps of a stagger than a touch, holding on to the car for support. He looked at Wexford and said, “Good night then, sir.”

  A sensible man. A man who could take reproof and remain cheerful. Wexford was glad he had remembered, as far as he could be glad about anything, and pleased to have Slesar on his team. He got up and went downstairs in his dressing gown, a dark red affair more like velvet than toweling, which Sheila had given him for his birthday. Paul was in the kitchen, making a cup of tea, the baby, awake but not crying, in the crook of his left arm.

  Wexford asked himself if it was good for an actor to be quite so good-looking these days. Paul Curzon had perhaps been born half a century too late. Amulet’s black hair was his, or perhaps it was Dora’s … Wexford put out his arms for the child, for he wasn’t best pleased to see someone holding a baby and boiling a kettle at the same time.

  “How are things?”

  How much did Paul know? Only that Dora was missing? “Just the same,” Wexford said.

  The first local news, Newsroom South-East, would be just before seven. There might be something on radio before that. He didn’t want to hear it—or not hear it—in anyone else’s company, he wanted to be alone.

  “You didn’t mind me staying the night, did you? I miss them—well, I miss Sheila and I rather want to get to know that baby so that I can miss her too.”

  Wexford managed a sort of laugh. “I’m glad you did.” An idea came to him. “You know, Paul, I wish you’d take her home, take them home.”

  “But you need her here. She says you need her. She says she doesn’t know what would happen to you if she wasn’t here.”

  Wexford shook his head. Misunderstandings always depressed him. It was even worse when they happened between people who were close, who thought themselves knowledgeable
of the other’s mind. He would have to be tough.

  “Frankly, it only adds to my worries having her here. Don’t look like that. She’s very important to me, I love her dearly, and that’s an understatement, but while she’s here on her own with the baby I keep wondering about her, if she’s all right, what she’s doing, and I can do without that, Paul. I never see her, you know. I’m never here except at night. Take her home. Please.”

  Paul passed him a cup of tea. “Sugar?”

  “No, thanks. Take her up a cup and tell her you’re taking her home.”

  “Okay. I’d love to. There’s nothing I’d like more. If you’re sure …”

  “I’m sure.”

  He had forgotten how simply comforting it was to carry a baby about. A stupid feeling came over him that if only he could walk about the house like this for hours with this warm cuddly child held close against his chest, things would be better, he would worry less, he would be less prone to terrible fancies. The large blue eyes looked calmly up into his own. Did such young babies normally have eyelashes of that length and thickness? Her skin was like cream and like mother-of-pearl too.

  He carried her into the living room and looked out of the window at the sun coming up and into the dining room and out of the French windows at the garden full of long shadows. She pursed her mouth and blinked when he told her he was waiting for Newsroom South-East, that an hour had never passed so slowly before.

  Paul came back and took her from him.

  “Breakfast,” he said, and to Wexford, “She only woke once in the night.”

  “What did Sheila say?”

  “She’ll come home with me, but she won’t promise to stay.”

  Radio Four had nothing to tell him. He left it on because it was better to have voices and music and a weather forecast than silence. It occurred to him that a way of using up the time would be to shower and shave and get dressed, so he did all those things. By the time he was done, and he had tried to dawdle, it was still only a quarter to seven.

  He put on the television as well as the radio. They talked only about money and business at this hour, and the inevitable sports. He heard the letter box as the daily papers came through. Nothing on the front pages of either of them, nothing inside. He reminded himself that to the vast majority of the population of the British Isles this wasn’t really news. You cared only if you lived nearby—or if you were a fanatic. It would be news all right if they knew. If they had been told of the hostages and the demands and the conditions. That would drive the Lebanon and European Monetary Union off the front pages and prime time.

  Newsroom South-East, here it was now. The pretty dark young woman talking first about a visit Princess Diana would be paying to a Myringham hospital, and then …

  “The Highways Agency announced last night that all work on the Kingsmarkham Bypass is to be suspended. This is due to an environmental assessment of the river Brede and Stringfield Marsh, which must be carried out under a European Habitats and Species directive before work can continue.

  “Though certain to be no more than a temporary suspension, it may last for some weeks. We talked to Mark Arcturus, of English Nature. Is this good news for the protest groups, Mr. Arcturus, or is it only—”

  Wexford switched it off. A great wave of something more than relief, something like happiness, had flooded him. He put his hand up to cover his mouth, the way children do not only when they have said something injudicious but when they have thought it. That he could be relieved at these people’s victory! That he could be filled with joy!

  It was all nonsense, anyway. What was he thinking of? Dora was still in their hands. All the hostages were stil in their hands, and he was nowhere nearer finding who Sacred Globe were and where their headquarters was than he had been twenty-four hours ago.

  The news traveled fast. When Burden, with Lynn Fancourt, began his inquiries at the camp at Pomfret Tye, the tree dwellers were already celebrating. Someone—Sir Fleance McTear’s name was suggested—had supplied them with a good imitation of champagne. A fire had been made on the edge of the heath and they were sitting around it, singing “We Shall Overcome” and drinking sparkling wine.

  “It’s strictly in contravention of a bylaw,” Burden said sourly to Lynn, “lighting bonfires. These so-called nature lovers, ecologists, or whatever, they’re always the worst.”

  He recognized the couple whose tree house had burned down back in the summer, admonished them for the fire, and started on his questions. They asked him if he didn’t think it was great news, man, and didn’t he reckon that word “suspension” was nonsense? What they really meant, man, was that they were giving up on the bypass altogether and “suspension” was just a way of saving face, didn’t he agree?

  Neither Lynn nor he got very far with rooting out clues to Sacred Globe and they moved on to Framhurst Great Wood. There, to Burden’s surprise and considerable dismay, they found Andrew Struther and the redhaired Bibi sitting on a log in conversation with half a dozen tree people.

  Struther jumped up, looking guilty.

  “I say, I know what you must be thinking, I’m frightfully sorry but it really isn’t that way. I haven’t actually disclosed a thing.”

  “Come over here, will you, Mr. Struther?”

  Bibi seemed to take his departure as an excuse for getting to know the tree people better. She got up off the log and followed a young man in nothing but a pair of shorts and a big straw hat to where a ladder was placed up against the trunk of a massive chestnut. He indicated to her to go ahead of him and went up close behind her as she took her first upward steps, giggling wildly.

  Burden said, “May I ask what you’re doing here, Mr. Struther? You have friends among these people? Yesterday you indicated to us that you didn’t even know a bypass was planned.”

  “That was yesterday.” Struther had gone rather red. “You can actually learn quite a lot in twenty-four hours, Inspector, if you put your mind to it. I thought I’d better learn something, considering what’s happening to my parents.”

  “I hope you’ve said nothing to any of these people about that.”

  Now it was an aggrieved look that Burden got. “No, I haven’t. I was bloody careful about that. I made a point of it. I was told not to and I haven’t.”

  “Then what exactly are you doing here? I don’t suppose you’re making an environmental assessment.”

  “I thought if I talked to them, one of them might give me a clue about who would do a thing like that, who’s likely to be—well, a sort of terrorist.”

  Precisely, in fact, what he and the rest of the team were doing. It sounded strangely feeble on Struther’s lips.

  “I’d leave that to us, if I were you, sir,” Burden said. “It’s our job, you see. Leave it to us and get off home. Someone will be along to see you later.”

  “Really? What will that be about, then?”

  “I’d prefer to leave that till later, Mr. Struther, as I’ve said.”

  The girl had disappeared inside a tree house. Struther looked wildly about for her, began shouting, “Bibi, Bibi, where are you? We’re going home, darling.”

  The tree people watched him impassively.

  Karen Malahyde had run the woman called Frenchie Collins to earth at her mother’s home in Guildford. Nicky Weaver, Damon Slesar, and Edward Hennessy were working on flimsy material given them by the SPECIES cadre, and Archbold and Pemberton were tracing by phone and computer environmental activists nationwide. Wexford had a meeting scheduled for two-thirty. He had already spoken to the Chief Constable and his deputy and talked on the phone to Brian St. George.

  The editor of the Kingsmarkham Courier sounded indifferent and Wexford thought he knew why. If he had been allowed to use the story when the letter first came from Sacred Globe on the previous morning, he would just have got it into this week’s edition of his newspaper. Now, on Friday, it was too late. As far as he was concerned he would have been happiest if nothing more had been heard from Sacred Globe, the
hostages, or the police until the following Wednesday evening.

  “I still think you’re making a mistake,” he said. “When something like this happens the public has a right to know.”

  “Why do they?” said Wexford rudely. “What right? Who says so?”

  “It’s a first principle of journalism,” said St. George sententiously. “The right of the public to know. Muzzling the press never did anyone a mite of good. Not that it’s any skin off my nose, I couldn’t care less, only I don’t mind it going on record that I think you’re making a grave mistake.”

  But the Chief Constable said, “We’re going to keep it dark, Reg, as long as we can. Frankly, I’m surprised we can. But since we can, let’s keep at it.”

  “It’s Friday now, sir. I’ve a hunch the press isn’t going to be all that interested. They’d think of it as a waste, using a piece of news like that at the weekend.”

  “Really? I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

  “What they’d like,” said Wexford, “is to have the embargo lifted on Sunday evening. Great stuff for Monday morning’s papers.” He suppressed a sigh. “If you approve, sir, I’d like to tell the hostage families of the—well, the conditions and the threat. I think we ought to. I’ll do it myself.”

  Audrey Barker and Mrs. Peabody first. He would go to Stowerton on his own, then to Clare Cox in Pomfret, finally to Andrew Struther, as soon as the meeting was over. The Chief Constable seemed to think it a good idea. You could keep it from the press but not from those families, not in fairness and humanity.

  His own family was just as much involved as the Masoods and Barkers and Struthers, and saying good-bye to Sheila that morning, he had promised to phone her whether there was news or not. He would keep in touch daily, twice daily. Before he left he phoned Sylvia, told her that her sister had gone back to London, that he was all right, he was fine, but there was no news.