Women watched the performance from doorways or hanging out of windows to catch a glimpse of what might be on the TV news that evening. But the plastic Venetian blinds at Café Leila remained down. The sight of this play-acting little ghost caused the owner to shake with dread.
McCall told Lexie he’d ring later to say if he discovered anything new. For now, he couldn’t help smiling, seeing Hoare comb back his silver hair as a TV camera crew set up to interview him. Weekly paper reporters stood behind the tripod and scribbled down his every word. If only they knew.
‘We need people to think back hard,’ Hoare said. ‘Do they remember seeing Ruby that afternoon? If so, what was she doing? Where was she going, was she with anyone? It is vital we find out every last detail.’
The young TV researcher asked Hoare why the reservoir was being searched.
‘We have to explore every possibility. We know this was Ruby’s playground; a place where she felt safe and free but she could’ve had an accident.’
‘So something could’ve happened to her here?’
‘We have to fear the worst but hope for the best.’
Hoare knew a snappy sound-bite when it came to him.
McCall kept the intriguing DI Benwick in sight. There was much to talk to him about. But that could wait. More urgent was McCall’s need to have a face to face with Etta. He took Hoare to one side after he’d done his TV interview.
‘Malky, old mate - where’s Mum?’
‘Bear with me. I think she must have slipped out of the flat for a minute.’
‘So she’s been at home all this time? I could’ve talked to her there.’
‘Someone’s looking for her right now. We’ll find her then she’s all yours. Honest.’
*
The first gusts of rain hit the reservoir like fistfuls of gravel. It did not trouble the frogmen but drove all the other hacks and photographers except back to their offices. McCall saw Benwick and Hoare in a huddle as if something was not going to plan. McCall went to shake hands with Benwick.
‘Sorry to barge in. I’m Francis McCall.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘OK, well, time’s getting on and I need to talk to Ruby’s mother for my feature piece.’
‘So do we.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘She’s gone walk-about.’
‘What, she’s missing?’
‘Uniform are looking for her. We’ll find her.’
They were interrupted by two identical ivy green Rovers pulling into the pumping station car park. The drivers got out and put up brollies for their passengers - four men and a woman - who hurried through the downpour to the security manager’s office.
‘That’ll be our pizzas,’ Benwick said.
‘Or your oysters and champagne.’
Benwick turned to McCall and asked what he meant.
‘The tall guy, you must recognise him - Guy Inglis, rising star of the Tories. Even his enemies have him down as a future prime minister.’
‘How do you know him, Mac?’ Hoare said.
‘I interviewed him on a defence story a while back.’
‘So what the hell’s he doing here?’ Benwick said.
Then one of the chauffeurs came out and beckoned Benwick inside the building. Waiting for him was a parliamentary subcommittee inquiring into operational police costs. They’d chosen the Ruby investigation for an unannounced inspection.
*
Rain clouds gave way to blue skies and sunshine which drew tiny wisps of vapour from the warm earth and beaten down weeds at the reservoir edge. Hoare suggested taking the MPs to the pumping station roof to get an overview of the search as Benwick briefed them on the case so far.
McCall saw Inglis looking at him, as if trying to remember why he knew his face. The female MP was all bosom and bluster. The creases in her fleshy pink neck looked damp. She struggled up the last narrow steps to the top with her briefcase and clipboard then leant heavily against the parapet.
‘You say this little girl… this Ruby… she’s handicapped in some way?’
‘Asperger’s syndrome,’ Benwick said. ‘It means she’s quite naïve and unworldly and any child who’s that vulnerable – ’
‘Yes, yes. I’ve heard of it. But tell me, what are the daily financial implications during a case like this – overtime, transport costs, specialist teams, that sort of thing.’
‘I’m sure these things are important but my priority is finding a missing child.’
‘Of course it is but to what extent do you consider costs during an investigation?’
‘That’s for the accountants. I repeat, my sole interest is in finding Ruby.’
‘So you would bring in this diving team for instance without a second thought?’
‘How else would you suggest I find out what’s at the bottom of a reservoir?’
‘No need to be defensive. I am trying to understand your decision-making processes.’
Before Benwick’s contempt became any more obvious, Inglis intervened with a chairman’s emollient tact.
‘I’m sure the inspector realises we know he’s got a job to do,’ he said. ‘But by the same token, our duty is to improve our police systems in the future. We have to make sure the public purse is wisely used at all times.’
These were not people who knew anything of Benwick’s world - or McCall’s. They were versed in double entry bookkeeping, profit, loss. Theirs was the language and logic of management, drier than dandruff and about as inspiring.
The MPs started to head back to their limos when Benwick’s eye caught something in the middle of the reservoir. He shouted to the frogmen, pointing to what he’d seen. The parliamentary delegation leaned over the battlements.
‘God almighty,’ Inglis said. ‘That’s not her, is it?’
McCall got focus and saw a pale, distorted shape through his viewfinder. It was like a starfish slowly floating towards the surface. Benwick was already clattering down five flights of metal stairs followed by Hoare and the unfit MPs trying to keep up.
Two of the divers began paddling a rubber dingy to the centre deeps. McCall fired off shot after shot. The body was recovered then rowed to where Benwick helped to lay it gently on a bank of marshy grass.
She’d not a mark on her, only a smear of mud here and there. It made no sense for her not to wake, to rub her eyes and rise up.
Instead, she gleamed in the sunshine like a flawless marble statue retrieved from a civilisation lost beneath the waves. A circle of onlookers gathered. No one moved, no one spoke.
Nothing disturbed this almost photographic composition - still life with figures. McCall put his camera away. This was less out of respect than the guilty realisation he could almost be back in the bush, taking pictures he could never use to satisfy a compulsion to stare into the face of unnatural death.
This much he knew as he gazed on the naked body…. not that of little Ruby Ross but of her mother, Etta.
Fifteen
Men make plans, God laughs - Jewish proverb.
Etta’s apparent suicide altered everything. It robbed Benwick of a prime suspect. The course of Lexie’s life would change forever if Ruby turned up alive as she would have to care for her. And McCall’s piece about a missing child’s rare talent now needed a radical re-think.
But his story might yet be blown away by the tabloids if Etta’s fascination with sex and Satanism leaked out. The manner of her death fed suspicion, not sympathy. Lexie was acutely aware of this as she tried to take in the enormity of what her sister had done - and all its implications.
‘Why in the name of all that’s holy would any mother kill herself while the police are still searching for her missing child?’
McCall hadn’t an answer, not when they were surrounded by the paraphernalia of the occult - and possibly prostitution, too. This had to be the story Hoare had hinted at. The old muckraker must have wished he still worked for a Fleet Street red top.
Lexie had caught the last train
from Bristol after McCall rang and told her to get to London quickly and bring her spare key to Etta’s flat. He didn’t tell her the full story till they met at Paddington Station. There were tears then but of anger, not grief.
‘Selfish, wicked, stupid bitch,’ she said. ‘Never a thought for anyone else. Self, self, self - that’s always been Etta’s way. What’s her poor kid to do now? How’s she going to understand what her mother’s done? I should’ve stayed with her when Ruby disappeared but she didn’t want me to, told me she needed to be on her own. I understand why, now. What’s she been hiding, McCall? What the hell’s been going on in her life?’
They drove to Etta’s flat and got some answers in her bedroom. Disbelief and alarm broke across Lexie’s face.
‘I’ve never been in here before,’ she said. ‘What was she getting into?’
‘Lots of people are interested in all this fortune telling stuff.’
‘Come on, I read tarot cards for fun but this magic’s much blacker, believe me.’
‘None of what’s happened is your fault. Your sister was an adult.’
‘On paper, maybe. No wonder Ruby didn’t have a chance.’
‘She wouldn’t have understood any of this, even if she’d seen it.’
‘This is all going to come out at the inquest, isn’t it?’
‘Depends on how relevant the cops think it is to her death.’
‘If this gets into the papers and Ruby’s still missing, they’re bound to think Etta was involved in some way.’
‘Let’s cross that bridge if we come to it.’
They saw the condoms in Etta’s bedside cabinet - and the nurse’s uniform and a shoe box stuffed with bank notes. It all served to prove what Lexie feared most.
‘So this is how she ended up… my baby sister… on the game.’
McCall bought a Chinese take-away in the parade of shops along Woodberry Street. They sat in Etta’s uncommonly clean kitchen, careful not to let any of the king prawns or fried rice spill from their plastic forks. Lexie became very quiet. Her fatigue seemed freighted with shame and guilt. She needed the refuge of sleep and left McCall rummaging through a small document box he’d found in Etta’s wardrobe.
It was ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl and held utility bills, cheap costume jewellery, Etta’s passport and a tenancy agreement.
But it was an invitation card with gold lettering within a border of church bells and confetti which brought back all the hurt McCall had felt when he’d received his.
*
It is Bea who answers the door when Evan arrives at Garth Hall on the off chance.
‘Mrs Wrenn, I’m so sorry for not ringing beforehand,’ he says. ‘But I’ve been giving a talk at Shrewsbury School and on the spur of the moment, I thought I’d drive on down here to see Mac - if he’s at home, that is.’
‘Are you a friend of his?’
‘Yes, I’m Evan Dunne… from Cambridge.’
‘I see,’ says Bea. ‘Cambridge.’
‘It’s all right; I know what’s happened. How is Mac at the moment?’
‘A worry to us all, to be truthful. He’s not the same boy who went up.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. Maybe there’s something I can do to help.’
‘He’s probably in the woods. He spends a lot of his time down there now.’
McCall had gone to Francis’s retreat, a corrugated iron dacha painted red oxide and half hidden amid the ash and cherry trees by a stream called the Pigs’ Brook.
‘Take the path through the woods,’ Bea says. ‘If you hear a record playing, just follow the music because that’s where he should be.’
But all is quiet save for the bleating of sheep in a distant field. The door of the empty dacha is open. A newspaper on the arm of a scuffed leather armchair reports the hunt for an escaped train robber called Ronnie Biggs.
Evan finds McCall sitting on a bench staring into the stream.
‘Mac? Hello… are you all right?’
McCall turns and stares at him.
‘What are you doing here? Are you on your own?’
‘Lexie isn’t with me, if that’s what you mean.’
Evan sits beside him. He’s not sure what to say. This isn’t the McCall he remembers. His spirit has gone, he looks hollowed out as if on the point of a breakdown.
‘Look, you can’t hide away like this forever. You’ve got talent, you can write. You’re young. There are things happening in this world that make you angry, that offend your sense of right and wrong. Don’t waste the gifts you’ve been given. There are other routes to go in life.’
‘Where’s all this leading, Evan?’
‘Wherever you want it to…. but I’ve a suggestion.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Someone I know has read those pieces you wrote for Varsity. He thinks they show considerable promise and he’d like to meet you.’
*
Bea is delighted when Evan agrees to stay the night. She’s taken to him and is clearly charmed. Without Lexie around, McCall sees a different Evan - no longer the cuckold but a raffishly entertaining guest from high table, clever, well read and attentive to an alluring and flirtatious hostess. Bea conducts him through the warren of fading apartments in Garth Hall with its antiques and portraits and legends of love and misfortune. Then it’s supper of rabbit and pigeon pie, served in the drawing room scented by wood smoke and candles and where ghosts from the days of the first Elizabeth might still appear to flit amid the shadows.
‘So, Mr Dunne… what are we to do with young Mac?’
‘Well, that’s for him to decide but I think he’s ideally suited for journalism.’
It is as if McCall isn’t there, allowed only to observe from the sidelines.
‘Journalism? Wouldn’t that be a rather tawdry business to follow?’
‘Possibly but he’s just the sort of subversive chap that editors like. Always wanting to show our masters for the fools and knaves they are.’
‘Do you see that as the purpose of newspapers?’
‘What else, Mrs Wrenn? Is it better to be led by a drunk like George Brown or a crook like Harold Wilson? How would we common folk know about either until a reporter such as Mac might become, ferrets out their secrets?’
Soon, the long case clock chimes ten from the hall. Bea leaves them sitting in the wingbacks either side of the inglenook.
‘Mrs Wrenn’s a marvellous tease, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, everyone falls in love with Bea eventually.’
McCall shows Evan to a spare bedroom and they say goodnight almost formally. Later, in the dark and where he has slept since childhood - and where Lexie lay with him only days before - McCall finds it impossible not to dwell on the nature of his duplicity and why Evan is showing him such concern.
It makes life more complicated. He cannot get a fix on Evan’s motives. They defy all male instincts, however base those generally are. But the effect on McCall is for him to think even less of himself, to believe he is wretchedly dishonourable.
*
By coincidence, Francis arrives back from Moscow next morning. He’s driven up from London and parks the Alvis in the stable yard. Bea takes his suitcase and is kissed on both cheeks. She introduces him to Evan. They have coffee together then Francis suggests they walk down to his dacha. He doesn’t change his travelling suit, bird’s eye in grey worsted made for him by Bodenhams of Ludlow.
The dacha is his place of safety where he can hear the wind move through the trees and the stream bubble over its pebbles. And thus for a while, the perils of his world become as nought.
McCall thinks he detected an ease between Francis and Evan, a familiarity almost. It contrasts with McCall’s own feeling of Francis being cool towards him since the great disappointment of Cambridge. What else did he expect, though?
He watches from an upstairs window as they head across the orchard lawn then pass through the wicket gate into Garth woods. Again, McCall feels excluded, as if the grow
n-ups are deciding important matters about him behind his back. Within an hour they return. Evan has to drive home to Cambridge. McCall sees him to his car.
‘So are you interested in what I mentioned earlier?’
‘What was that?’
‘Meeting the fellow who likes your writing. Mr Wrenn thinks you should.’
‘I suppose so. Who is he?’
‘He’s called Roly Vickers, an Oxford man but we shouldn’t hold that against him.’
‘What does he do?’
‘He publishes books on international affairs. Has great contacts who’ll help you.’
‘To become a journalist?’
‘That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
‘Do I have much say in the matter?’
‘We all have free will, Mac. It just depends how we choose to use it.’
Evan starts his car and winds down the window.
‘There’s a pub called the Ye Olde Mitre in Holborn,’ Evan says. ‘It’s down an alleyway - Ely Place, I think. Vickers has lunch there most days.’
‘How will I know him?’
‘You don’t have to. He knows what you look like.’
With this, Evan hands him an envelope and drives away. On the card inside are words printed in gold which McCall never wanted to read.
Mr Evan Dunne and Miss Alexandra Nadin cordially invite you to their wedding at noon on Saturday the 7th of August 1965 in the Cambridge Register Office to be followed by drinks in the RAF bar of The Eagle in Bene’t Street.
So she is going ahead with it. She will marry Evan as Evan always said she would. McCall’s pleading had only won him a consolation prize - a pint in a pub with a man who might get him a job.
‘Marriage is only a piece of paper, Mac,’ Lexie had said. ‘Nothing more.’
‘It’s not nothing. You’ll be legally together and for always.’
‘You’re a hoot – and so old fashioned.’
Lexie insists such things don’t matter. McCall cannot agree. For him to attend Lexie’s wedding, to walk the streets of Cambridge again and pass those ancient halls where he’d neither the wit nor wisdom to stay the course, would be to compound his sense of failure. Yet not to see her on such a day cedes all victory to Evan, albeit theirs was never a struggle between equals.
The Convenience of Lies Page 7