Road Rage

by Ruth Rendell

  “We’ll take a break,” said Wexford.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m quite sure. I’m going to pass on what you’ve told us to the rest of the team and see if it sparks off any ideas. We’ll start again in an hour.”

  Three children from Stowerton arrived at the police station at eleven with a bagful of bones. They had discovered them, they told the duty sergeant, in one of the heaps of earth, now temporarily abandoned, at Stowerton Dale. One of them put forward the opinion that the bones were Roman, the others that they were of recent origin, the detritus of a serial killer’s massacre.

  “Sounds like Manfred’s been busy,” said Wexford when he heard about it, and explained about Bibi’s German shepherd.

  “They’ll have to go for analysis,” said Burden despondently.

  “I suppose so. Anyone can see most of them are spareribs and the rest are what’s left over from an oxtail stew.”

  “What did they mean about negotiations start on Sunday?”

  “I wish you hadn’t asked me that question.”

  Karen Malahyde sat with Dora drinking coffee. She thought Mrs. Wexford shouldn’t have another cup, she had already had three, and told her so very kindly and politely. Dora said, all right and please to call her Dora, she couldn’t be doing with that Mrs. Wexford stuff, and did Karen think there might be any orange juice available? If she wasn’t expecting the freshly squeezed kind, Karen said, something could be rustled up, the sort they called “made from concentrate.” Dora fell asleep in the quite comfortable armchair but woke up when Karen came back. Why did Karen think they hadn’t sent her suitcase back with her? And those presents she had been taking to Sheila, baby clothes and a kimono and books? What possible use could it be to them?

  “I think we ought to wait and talk about that when Mr. Wexford and Mr. Burden come back, Mrs.—er, Dora.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. You only know orange juice is the real thing when it’s got bits in it, don’t you?”

  Wexford and Burden came back together and Burden started the recorder.

  “I was asking about my suitcase,” Dora said. “It doesn’t matter all that much. In a way nothing matters but that I’m back and so far the other hostages aren’t, but why would they want it? It’s just an ordinary medium-sized fiber case, dark brown, with my initials on it. And there were the other things I was carrying, presents for Sheila and the baby.”

  “It’s possible,” said Burden, “that in their haste to get rid of you they simply forgot.”

  “Can we go back to the beginning now?” Wexford shifted his chair out of a shaft of sunlight coming through one of the gym’s long windows. “Can we start at last Tuesday morning?”

  “Right.” Dora sat back, curled her legs up under her. “I had to phone for a car. There’s a taxi firm called All the Sixes and I phoned them because their number’s easy to remember. It was getting on for half-past ten. I wanted to catch the eleven-oh-three, which was allowing plenty of time. Anyway, what I got from All the Sixes was one of those recordings that are so maddening. You know, ‘Please hold the line,’ and the voice goes up on the ‘please’ and up again on the ‘line.’ And then it goes, ‘Your call will be answered as soon as possible,’ and then a burst of ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.’ So I found that flyer they’d sent us and called Contemporary Cars.”

  “The voice that answered?” Karen said. “What was it like?”

  “A man’s. Ordinary, rather flat and dull. No accent. Quite young. It was exactly ten-thirty, by the way. I happened to look at the digital clock on the video while I was talking. He came very promptly—about seven minutes later, I should think.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Not very precisely. I’ve thought a lot about it. I can only say he wasn’t very tall, maybe five feet eight, he was thickset, and he had a beard. He walked a bit stiffly, he was bandy-legged. Oh, and he smelled. There was a peculiar smell about him.”

  “D’you mean B.O.? Sweat? A sweetish fried onion smell?”

  “No, not that. More like nail varnish remover. Acetone, is it called?” She looked from one to the other of them, suddenly much livelier, her tiredness driven away by the excitement of talking of it all. “Like nail varnish or remover, not exactly unpleasant, just odd.

  “The doorbell rang and I fetched my case and the parcels—well, shopping bags, from the living room before I answered the door. The idea, you see, was that he’d carry them to the car for me. But when I opened the door he was standing at the front gate with his back to me. I suppose I should have called to him to take the case but I didn’t, I just said good morning or hallo or something and he nodded. I put the case and the parcels outside the door on the mat, pulled the door shut after me, and locked the deadlock.

  “He was in the car by then, in the driver’s seat. I didn’t think it was odd, I just thought he was rather rude. He hadn’t even opened the car door for me. I did just glance at his profile before I got into the car, but most of his face was covered by this black curly beard. The car was full of his smell. He had longish thick dark curly hair and a pullover or sweatshirt that was a sort of grayish-blue.”

  “What sort of car was it?” Burden asked.

  “Small, red, a VW Golf, I think. Anyway, it was like my daughter Sylvia’s.” Dora added dryly, “If I were a detective with reason to be suspicious I’d have taken the number but I’m not and I didn’t.”

  Burden laughed. “Were you wearing a seat belt?”

  “What a question! Of course I was wearing a seat belt. Remember whose wife I am.” Dora shook her head, exasperated. “I had the suitcase in the car with me, on the seat beside me, and the parcels on the floor. He drove the usual route to the station, but he did a sort of detour in Queen Street. There was a bit of a holdup, there mostly is, and I didn’t think anything of it. Taxi drivers go all sorts of odd ways these days to avoid traffic.

  “We stopped at a red light on the junction of York Street and Old London Road. Now, of course, I know it was deliberate that he drove to that particular crossing. The lights are pedestrian-controlled. Someone waiting there pressed the button as the car approached, the light turned red, and we stopped. The left-side rear door was opened and this man got into the car.

  “It all happened so quickly, I couldn’t have struggled or cried out. For one thing I was trapped in the seat belt and, you know, it takes a moment or two to extract oneself from a strange seat belt, it’s not like the one in one’s own car. And I didn’t get a look at him either, no more than a fleeting glimpse of someone young and tall with a stocking over his face.”

  “You mean he was standing at the lights with a stocking over his face?”

  “There was no one else about,” Dora said, “but I think, I have the impression, he pulled a stocking over his face with one hand while he opened the car door with the other. It meant I couldn’t see his face at all, only that it looked rubbery. But that would be the effect of a stocking on anyone’s face, wouldn’t it?

  “He pulled a hood over his own head and then one over mine. I couldn’t see anything for a moment, I was struggling and trying to shout, I was aware of handcuffs going on. It wasn’t pleasant. No, much worse than that, it was—it was terrifying.”

  “Would you like to take another break, Dora?” Wexford asked.

  “No, I’m fine. I expect you can understand that I was very frightened. I suppose I was more frightened than I’ve ever been in my life. After all, I haven’t been in that many frightening situations, I suppose I’ve been sheltered. And there was nothing I could do. It was a bit better when I could see. He adjusted the hood, pulled it down, and then at least I could see.

  “I could see outside for a moment and that we were on the old bypass. He pointed to the floor, indicating I was to get down there. So that I couldn’t be seen from outside, I suppose, or see out. I obeyed him, of course I did, and sat on the floor.

  “I think I was in the car for about an hour. It might have been longer but I don
’t think it was less than an hour. I didn’t struggle anymore because it wasn’t any use. I was terribly afraid. It’s not much point saying that now, so I won’t go into it. I was afraid I’d lose control of myself in various ways and I wanted to avoid that more than anything. I tried to stay calm, I tried to breathe deeply, but that wasn’t easy sitting on the floor with the hood on.

  “The car turned in somewhere, through a gate or just into a narrow street or even around the back of a factory or warehouse, I just don’t know. But it went much more slowly and it kept taking bends to the right and left. Then we stopped. The hood was still turned so that the eyeholes were at the back. I think he’d only adjusted it at the beginning to show me it did have eyeholes. Anyway, I couldn’t see a thing, just a stuffy blackness, and my hands were handcuffed in front of me.

  “My arms were taken by one of them on each side of me. I think it was the driver on the right-hand side because he didn’t seem all that much taller than me and his arm felt quite thick and pudgy. And the smell of him … The one on the other side held my arm very hard, you could call it an iron grip. I had the impression of long thin strong fingers. He didn’t smell of anything. I can’t say if it was country air or town air and it was the same sort of temperature as at home.

  “I sensed, I heard, a heavy door being unlocked, then opened, and I was taken inside. I wasn’t pushed in or flung in or anything, just walked down the steps and in, brought to one of the beds and helped to sit on it. They took the hood off me first, then the handcuffs, but they kept their own hoods on. He had stubby brown hands and the other one had long fingers. That was when I saw Ryan. They went away, closed the door, and locked it behind them.”

  “We’ll break for lunch,” Wexford said, “and then I’ll want you to have a rest.”

  The best thing would have been to take his wife out to lunch. Wexford kept reverting in his mind to ways of doing this, even if it meant having Burden and Karen Malahyde along as well. But he really knew he couldn’t do it. Not today, not in these circumstances, not the Olive and Dove’s new La Méditerranée restaurant, a nice bottle of wine, salades de crevettes, sole meunière, and crème brûlée. Another time. Next week but not today. He sent out for assorted sandwiches, smoked salmon, cheddar and pickle, ham and tongue.

  She was looking a bit better. The talking must be doing her good. Of course, tiredness and shock notwithstanding, it would do her good. That was what psychotherapy was about, talking to people who not only listened but wanted more than anything else to listen. It was much better for her than keeping it all inside, lying in bed stuffed full of Akande’s sedatives.

  He let her have another cup of coffee. A lot of nonsense was talked about coffee, about its speeding effects and its caffeine, but you never heard of anyone who actually came to harm through drinking it. She put cream in hers and sugar, which she never would have done at home. The rest he had tentatively said she should have she had rejected.

  Burden started the recorder. It was he who asked the first question.

  “You were alone in the room with Ryan Barker, is that right?”

  “For a while, yes. He was very frightened, he’s only fourteen. I talked to him. I told him not to worry too much. If they were going to hurt us they would already have done so. I think I realized by then that we were hostages, though I’d no idea what the ransom could be. Ryan said he knew he ought to be brave—being a male, I suppose was what he meant, and later he said his father had been a soldier who’d died in battle, in the Falklands—but I said, no, he didn’t have to be, he could bawl the place down if he liked and that would fetch them back and we could ask them why we were there. Mind you, I was scared stiff myself, but having him there was good for me, because I couldn’t show it in front of him.

  “Anyway, we weren’t alone for long. Roxane was brought in. I’m taking it you do know Roxane Masood is one of the hostages?”

  “Roxane Masood and Kitty and Owen Struther are the others,” Karen said.

  “That’s right. Roxane was a good deal less passive than I was, I can tell you. She was struggling as they brought her in and when they took the hood and the handcuffs off her she tried to fly at them.”

  “Who brought her in?”

  “The driver and another man. Another tall one, taller than the driver, but not as tall as the one who was in the car with me. As far as I could tell, in his late twenties, maybe thirty. He took the handcuffs off Roxane and the driver took the hood off her.

  “Roxane made for their eyes with her fingernails even though they had hoods on. The thin man fetched her a great blow across the head and she fell over. She fell on the bed and I think she passed out for a while. I went to her and held her and she came round and started to cry. But that was only because he’d really hurt her. It wasn’t crying like Kitty Struther.

  “They brought the Struthers in about half an hour later. He was the stiff-upper-lip sort. He reminded me of Alec Guinness in The Bridge on the River Kwai. You know, very stiff and straight and English, refusing to have any dealings with his captors, that sort of thing. The other man that brought me, the one with the rubbery face, he brought Kitty in. She spat at him when the hood came off her. He didn’t do anything, just wiped it off.

  “I once read in a book how amazed someone was to hear a really refined ladylike woman use foul language in a situation that was—well, like this one. They wouldn’t have believed she’d known it. Well, that was how I felt about Kitty Struther. The spitting and then the words she used.

  “I suppose it was hysterics, but she screamed and yelled and pounded on the mattress with her fists. After a bit Owen tried to calm her down, so she started punching him. I don’t think she knew what she was doing, but she screamed for a very long time. The rest of us just sat there, appalled. And then she began this soft awful weeping. She curled up like a fetus and buried her face and at last she fell asleep.”

  Dora stopped, sighed, slightly lifted her shoulders. “I expect you’d like me to tell you what I can about the rest of the people who were holding us.”

  “Would you have a look at this, please, Dora.” Burden had produced a photograph, which he held out to her. “Could the dark one, the driver, be this man? Forget the beard, beards can come off and go on at the drop of a hat. Could this be your driver?”

  Dora shook her head. “No. I’m sure not. He’s thin, this man, and older. Somehow I know the driver wasn’t very old, and he was heavier.”

  When Karen had taken Dora away to get a cup of tea, Wexford asked, “Who is it?”

  Burden put the photograph away.

  “Stanley Trotter,” he said. “He also smells. We had a bit of news in today. I haven’t bothered you with it, you had enough on your plate. It’s from the police in Bonn, Bonn in Germany.”

  Wexford thought. “Where Ulrike Ranke was at university?”

  “That’s it. You remember the pearls? The eighteenth birthday present of matched cultured pearls for which her parents paid thirteen hundred pounds?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Well, she sold them. Needed the money rather than jewelry, I reckon. The Bonn police have found it and the jeweler who gave her seventeen hundred deutsche marks for it.”

  “Not generous,” said Wexford, having done his mental arithmetic.

  “No. Did she buy herself another string for twenty, something to show the parents if need be? Certainly she bought one because we know she was wearing a string of pearls in the Brigadier photograph. And was that the one … ?”

  “It’s not Trotter, Mike,” said Wexford. “He’s not her killer and he’s not Dora’s driver.”

  13

  The signboard, planted in the grass verge, read: EUROFUN, THE ONLY INTERNATIONAL THEME-PARK IN SUSSEX. The lettering was white on a blue background and underneath it someone had painted, not very expertly, a small deer or chamois, a windmill, and what might have been the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Damon Slesar swung the car in through the open gates, or rather, the one open gate, the other bein
g off its hinges and leaning against the fence, and up a track that would be two ruts of mud in winter.

  The theme park had been arranged as a series of paddocks, through which the track wound in a haphazard way. Its distant appearance was slightly redeemed by an abundance of trees that hid some of Euro-Fun’s worst excesses, though most of these were revealed as prospect became foreground. Each section bore the name of the country represented there, lettered on a swinging sign suspended from tall pillars rather like barbers’ poles. The whole had grown shabby with the years and there were few visitors. Five people, three adults and two children, were walking about in bemused fashion in the area labeled Denmark, dubiously eyeing a wooden dollhouse with a green roof and a plastic facsimile of the Little Mermaid seated on the edge of a stagnant pond lined with blue polyethylene.

  What precisely visitors to the place were supposed to do wasn’t clear. Perhaps only walk, look, and wonder. A man and a woman were doing that, especially from their expressions the wondering part, among rain-damaged wax tulips in the shadow of a monstrous red and white plastic windmill, while a couple of preteens sat on the steps of a chalet staring at a cuckoo clock. The cuckoo had come out in front of the clock face and, the mechanism breaking down at this point, stayed out, silent, its beak permanently frozen open in the cuckooing position.

  “You ever brought your kids here?” Damon Slesar asked.

  “Please,” said Nicky Weaver, “do me a favor. Oh, look at the Parthenon! Can you believe it?”

  It looked as if made of asbestos but was probably plasterboard, the pillars whitewashed drainpipes. A figure that properly belonged in a shop window but was now dressed in white pleated skirt and black jacket stood in front of the Acropolis strumming at a stringed instrument. Next door was Spain with a papier-mâché bull and matador and then came a ticket office and car park. Adjacent to the car park stood a sprawling bungalow in need of paint.

  The man who came out was middle-aged, in cable-knit pullover and gray corduroy trousers. He was one of those men who have practically no hair on their heads and a great deal on upper lip and cheeks. In his case it was gray and shaggy, a thick drooping mustache and slightly curly side whiskers.