Road Rage

by Ruth Rendell

  Burden had the morning papers. POLICE IN THE DARK. VANISHED: RYAN, OWEN, AND KITTY. MY BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER, A FATHER’S STORY.

  “I’m not in the dark about how she died,” Wexford said. “I think I know exactly how that happened. Last Thursday, when they took her out of the basement room, they put her somewhere else, and it wasn’t with Kitty and Owen Struther. The Struthers may not even have been together at that stage. They put Roxane on her own somewhere and it was somewhere high up.”

  “On one of the floors above the basement room?”

  “Maybe. The trouble is—one of the troubles is—that we don’t know what kind of a building we have to deal with here. Or even if it’s only one building. It could be a factory complex or a barn or a big house with a basement or a farm with cats. On the coast, somewhere with a beach. Whichever it is, Roxane was taken to an upper floor, perhaps three or four stories high, and shut up in a room. I think it was a small room, Mike.”

  “You can’t possibly know that.”

  “Yes, I can. She was claustrophobic and they knew that. Sacred Globe knew it. Dora saw them look at each other, the pair who were outside the washroom door while Roxane was inside screaming and beating on it. They knew and they acted on that knowledge. To subdue her. To punish her.

  “I was thinking the other day that whatever Sacred Globe might be, they aren’t cruel or stupid, but I’ve had to revise that view. So many people are cruel when they have the opportunity, don’t you find?”

  Burden shrugged. “I daresay. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Give them power and someone or something weaker than themselves. That seems to be enough to make them torment that someone or something. Have psychiatrists ever investigated this? Have they tried to find out why something weak and vulnerable inspires compassion in some people and cruelty in others? I don’t know and I don’t suppose you do.” Wexford shook his head, in sorrow, in anger. “They put her in a small room high up. That would have been sometime on Thursday. She endured it for nearly two days, at what a cost we’ll never know.” He was silent for a moment. Then he said suddenly, “Have you got a phobia?”

  “Me?” said Burden. “I’m not very partial to snakes. I get a bit jumpy in a reptile house.”

  “It’s not the same thing. If it was a phobia you couldn’t go near a reptile house. I’ve a phobia.”

  Burden looked interested. “You have? What is it?”

  “That’s the last thing I’d tell you. Oh, not you, anyone. My wife knows. The point about being phobic is that you don’t tell anyone, you daren’t. Phobos means fear. Suppose some joker sent you the thing you’re phobic about through the post in a parcel? That was why Roxane should never have let Sacred Globe know about her phobia, but she couldn’t help herself, poor girl. They couldn’t send her the thing she was phobic about, but they could shut her up in a small room.

  “On the Saturday afternoon, when she was nearly mad with terror, she tried to escape. Perhaps there was a drainpipe, or some climbing plant to give a foothold, perhaps there was a roof that could be reached or a ledge. Or she thought could be reached. But it couldn’t and she fell. She fell thirty feet to her death, Mike.

  “In falling she broke her arm, her ribs, both her legs, and she struck her head a great blow. Perhaps she wouldn’t have fallen if she had been—how shall I put it?—in her right mind? But phobics aren’t, not when they’ve been exposed to the thing they’re phobic about for two days and a night.”

  Reflecting on this for a moment or two, Burden said, “Sacred Globe couldn’t have expected that. It’s possible they were appalled by what happened.”

  “If they were amateurs who’d bitten off more than they could chew, they’d be appalled all right. The likelihood is that they hoped to get what they want and release all the hostages unharmed. That’s no longer possible. There they were with a body on their hands, a body they hadn’t killed.”

  “You could say they murdered her when they put her in that room,” said Burden.

  “You and I could, Mike. It wouldn’t stand up in court.”

  “Why did they bring her back here?”

  Wexford considered. “Perhaps because they didn’t want the body. The body was a further liability to them. What were they to do with it? Burial is the only real possibility if you’ve a body on your hands. We can forget about weighting it down and dumping it in water unless they’re on the coast. And we’ve no reason to think they are. They’d have to have access to a boat, total privacy, darkness.

  “But they didn’t kill her, Mike, they only put her into a position for her to kill herself by accident. If they compounded it by burying the body and it was found later, as it surely would have been, who would then have been made to believe they weren’t directly responsible for her death? This way a pathologist would soon discover her death almost certainly to have been accidental. So they got rid of the body. They took it away on Saturday night, in the small hours of Sunday morning probably, first putting it into a sleeping bag they happened to have.

  “I think they took it to Contemporary Cars because they had a grievance against them. Thus they kill two birds with one stone. Maybe they’ve got it in for Samuel and Trotter and company because they so quickly contacted us after the holdup. I’m beginning to think they’re a vindictive lot.”

  They were interrupted by the arrival of Pemberton, who believed he had found the source of the sleeping bag.

  “London?” said Wexford. “Where in London?”

  “Outdoors doesn’t supply many retail outlets,” Pemberton said, “and they only supply sports shops, not department stores. Most of their stuff goes to the north of England but they do supply a shop in north London, in NW1, and one in Brixton.” Brixton … why did that ring a bell? It would be on the computers somewhere, whatever it was there would be a record. “Go on.”

  “The north London one’s in Marylebone High Street. That’s when I had a bit of luck, sir. They’d taken six of those sleeping bags, the camouflage kind, and six in green and purple, but while the colored ones had all sold they hadn’t been able to shift any of the camouflage.”

  “Negative sort of luck, wasn’t it?” said Burden.

  “I went to Brixton. The shop’s called Palm Springs in High Street, Brixton. They told me they only had four of those sleeping bags and two of them were still in stock. The manager himself took one of them, they came in just before he went on a camping trip, that was August twelve months. He remembered it without any trouble, but then I reckon you would. Better than that, though, he remembered selling the other one because it was on the same day.”

  “I don’t suppose he knows who he sold it to?” said Burden.

  “Yeah, well, that’s too much to expect, isn’t it? It was a woman, he knew that. And he remembered she was going to Zaire. Well, he said Zimbabwe at first but then he corrected himself.”

  “Right,” said Wexford. “Well done. And now you can get yourself in front of Mary’s computer and go through a million kilobytes to find the connection.”

  “There’s a connection?”

  “Oh, yes, I’m sure of it.”

  Seventy hours and not a word from Sacred Globe.

  Having swapped cars with Damon Slesar, Karen sat outside the gates of Marrowgrave Hall, awaiting developments, awaiting anything at all. It had seemed wise to be in a gray car today and let Damon have the blue one, though she didn’t think it had registered with Brendan Royall on the previous day that she was following him.

  She had started off at Goland’s Farm, parked among the tree people’s cars. The Winnebago was there, but whether or not Brendan Royall was she couldn’t tell. His curtains were drawn and all her binoculars could do for her was show her that the cab was empty. Today there was no one about and all the windows in the house were shut as if its occupants had gone out for the day.

  She was tired. She and Damon had met for a meal the evening before at a much more upmarket place than she had had in mind, La Méditerranée, the Olive and Dove�
��s newly opened restaurant. They had eaten and talked and found they had a tremendous amount to talk about, that they were interested in all the same things, the state of the world, the millennium, what was happening to their own environment, the equality of the sexes, as well as crime and punishment. It had made the conversation at their previous meetings seem like small talk, and after the restaurant indicated that it wanted to close up, they had gone on to a drinking place in the High Street that stayed open till all hours.

  By that time they were only drinking Cokes, but really she should have been at home in bed. He wanted to come up to her flat with her, but she’d said no regretfully and they’d kissed good night, passionately but like stars in an old Hollywood movie, the kiss leading nowhere except to the mutual promise to see each other again soon. So now she was tired when she shouldn’t be and sitting here in a warm car, the sun shining outside in a mild sort of way, she was afraid she might fall asleep.

  Fear of that sent her out to walk around a bit. She didn’t really look like a tree person but she could just have passed for one in her jeans, black T-shirt, and cotton jacket. No one, in any case, would take much notice of her in her flat shoes, neutral clothes, and with her long hair scraped back tight and her face as nature made and colored it.

  Somewhere a dog was barking, or several dogs were barking, yapping, and howling. The noise was coming from the Winnebago. Well, Royall was said to be an animal lover. No doubt, he had dogs of his own, but that they were there meant he would be back, and soon.

  Near the house were a lot of concealing trees and high hedges. She had a look at the back of the house with its churchy windows. Would a church or chapel, which was what this had once been, have a crypt? There was no sign of anything like that and the windows weren’t hidden or any arches plastered over. She had just returned to her car and was winding down a window to let in some fresh air when a yellow 2CV came tearing into the field and swept around between the rows like something taking part in the Monaco Grand Prix.

  Royall got out of the car and then Freya got out. She opened one of the rear doors and four small beagles bounded out. It took her and Royall some minutes to catch them and thrust them into the Winnebago. Freya was in her usual mummy wrappings and she tripped on the hem of her skirt and fell sprawling. Brendan made an attempt to brush mud off her and then she got back into her car and he got into the cab of the Winnebago.

  Karen expected them to return to Marrowgrave Hall and they did. Patsy Panick appeared outside the front door as they drove up and laughed and clapped her hands when all the dogs were released. Karen had heard of someone shaking like jelly but never before witnessed this phenomenon. Patsy’s fat shook as if balloons were inside her clothes.

  The beagles ran around in circles, wagging their tails. Karen counted eleven of them. Brendan and Freya managed to catch the dogs, carrying them or otherwise propelling them into the house, and Patsy, no doubt exhorting everyone, dogs and all, to have something to eat, shut the door behind them.

  The sleep problem reappeared. It was hotter now and Karen did in fact doze off but only for a split second. Barking awakened her. The two people she was keeping under surveillance had reemerged from the house in the midst of their gamboling pack. While they got them into the Winnebago and Brendan also stowed a suitcase, backpack, and large drawstring bag, Karen called in to Kingsmarkham police Station.

  “They’re leaving,” she said. “I’m going to stay with them, see where they’re going, but I think they’re going a distance.”

  “Chief Inspector wants to talk to you. I’ll put him on.”

  Wexford said, “When you’re done with that I want you back here. Remember a woman in London who was ill, who’d been in Africa?”

  “Yes, of course, sir.”

  “She’s your pigeon. When you’ve done with Royall and his girlfriend.”

  The Winnebago was packed now with dogs and luggage. Freya, it seemed, wasn’t going with him. For a moment Karen thought she was leaving separately, but she was only putting her car away in the big empty garage. Patsy and Bob had both come out now, Bob with a slice of something in his hand, a piece of pizza or pie or even a sandwich. All Freya got from Brendan by way of farewell was prolonged eye contact while he held both her hands, but Patsy was hugged and perhaps kissed too, only Karen was too far away to tell. Brendan gave Bob a slap on the back, waved good-bye, apparently to the house, and jumped into the cab. Karen retreated under the trees.

  He drove out a lot more cautiously than he had when at the wheel of the 2CV. The beagles were all barking and yelping. Karen followed the Winnebago through Forby and along the Stowerton Road. She had been right, he wasn’t going anywhere near Kingsmarkham or the bypass site, but heading for the M23 and then perhaps for its link to the M25. She kept behind him until he came to the approach road to the motorway, watched him enter it, and then she turned back for the old bypass and Kingsmarkham.

  At the police station the first thing she did was ask if there had been anything from Sacred Globe. Damon, who told her how he had followed Conrad Tarling about all day on foot—it was true the man never used a car—said there had been nothing. It was more than seventy-two hours, or three days, which sounded even more, since the message in Dora Wexford’s suitcase. Damon had left Conrad Tarling up a chestnut tree, where he had retreated into his tree house, pulled down the tarpaulin curtain, and no doubt curled up inside like a squirrel.

  “I’m hoping we can meet this evening.”

  Karen, who had turned back to her computer screen, said they could in a way, of course they could.

  “What do you mean, in a way?”

  “You and I can both go up to London and talk to a woman called Frenchie Collins, who may just possibly have bought a camouflage sleeping bag. Will you drive?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’d love to.”

  “The bones those kids found in the heap of earth at Stowerton Dale,” Wexford said, leafing through the forensic reports that had come in, then sitting down and reading. “Shin of beef and pork knuckle, much as we thought. Now the clothes Dora was wearing, brown linen suit, amber and white spotted voile blouse—what the devil is voile, Mike, or should it be ‘vwahl’?—tan calf pumps—that’s shoes—tights in a shade called ‘nearly brown,’ bra and panties in white silk and Lycra, white silk slip with coffee lace. Sounds right.

  “A small food stain on the blouse has been identified as made by instant coffee and a liquid soya compound. That’ll be the nonlactic soy milk. Dora kept herself very clean, I must say, I should have been coated in spaghetti and jam. Now here’s something rather more encouraging. A great many interesting substances were taken from her skirt: her own hairs and someone else’s, a young person’s, long and dark, therefore most likely Roxane Masood’s; a cocktail of grains of chalk, breadcrumbs, cobwebs, powdered limestone, sand, and cats’ hairs. Rather a large quantity of hairs from a Siamese cat and a black cat.”

  “There are seven million cats in Great Britain,” said Burden in a neutral tone.

  “Are there really? There aren’t, however, seven million cases of a black cat and a Siamese found in conjunction.” Wexford referred back to the report. “Iron filings, which rather points to some kind of factory or workshop. But listen to this. They also found the kind of dust they suggest could be the substance that adheres to the wings of butterflies and moths.”

  “What?”

  “Apparently—there’s an explanation here—butterflies’ and moths’ wings aren’t solid colors, painted on, so to speak. They’re not like the colors of a bird’s feather or an animal’s fur, but the patterns are made up by an arrangement of colored dust. If this is worn away or rubbed off, the insect can’t fly. The suggestion is that what may have happened is that Dora’s rather long full skirt brushed against a cobweb in which a butterfly or moth had been caught and had died …”

  “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  Wexford had fallen silent. His eyes moved up the page again. He laid the sheets of
paper down, looked up. “Mike, the dust was rose-pink and brown.”

  “So? A lot of butterflies are pink and brown.”

  “Are they? I can’t think of any. Black and red, white, yellow and orange, but pink? The only insect I can think of that is predominantly pale brown with pink wings, rose-pink underwings, is the rare Rosy Underwing. They’re found in Europe and in Japan but in this country only in parts of Hampshire and east Wiltshire.”

  “How on earth do you know?”

  “I’ve been interesting myself in this sort of thing lately. Must be this bloody bypass. Anyway, I read up about this rare Map butterfly and in the course of that I read a lot of other stuff.”

  Burden looked at him, half smiling. The Chief Inspector never ceased to give him cause for wonder.

  “I don’t know why I remember about the Rosy Underwing but I do. Of course we’ll check all this out. Maybe on the Internet? But I do remember that part about the few specimens being native to Wiltshire. Who do we know lives in Wiltshire?”

  It took Burden only a few seconds to remember. “Conrad Tarling’s family.”

  “Exactly. Do we have an address?”

  “On the computer.”

  Twenty minutes and they had it all in front of them: British and European butterflies and the Conrad Tarling printout with biography and family history. The Tarling parents’ address was Queringham Hall, Queringham, Wilts. Wexford had already been studying the Great Britain Road Atlas, calculating distances. He felt a small anticipatory shiver that came with a sense that this could be it, this could be the breakthrough.

  “Queringham’s right on the Hampshire border, Mike, halfway between Winchester and Salisbury.”

  “Not the seaside, though, is it? And it’s too far away. We’ve fixed on a radius of sixty miles, remember.”

  “This is sixty miles. Sixty-three or -four, I’d reckon. Your actress friend was wrong when she said Tarling walked eighty miles, a spot of sycophant’s hyperbole, that was. This is a big country house by the sound of it, Mike, no doubt with a lot of outbuildings, right in the middle of Rosy Underwing country—and Rosy Underwing dust came off Dora’s skirt.”