Tree of Hands

by Ruth Rendell

  When Mopsa had come home in the late afternoon of that first day Benet left the hospital, she had seen her tuck a long buff-coloured envelope into one of the pigeonholes of the desk. They had not talked about it but she knew what was inside. She took out the certificate, and, without looking at it, handed it to Edward. He read it and looked up at her with haggard eyes.

  ‘How did you let that happen to him? How could you allow him to – to asphyxiate?’

  So that was what it said. She didn’t want to see. She felt a cold, contemptuous anger against Edward. What did he know? What did he care? He put his head into his hands and covered his face. Jason leaned against her, then climbed into her lap. She hoped and prayed Edward would go now, that he would have his little show of a grief he couldn’t possibly feel for a child he had never known and then – doubtless uttering threats, abusing and accusing her – he would go. He took away his hands and looked at her, red-eyed.

  ‘You offered me a drink about half an hour ago. I should have thought the least you could have done was fetch it when you went upstairs just now. After what you’ve told me, I rather need a drink.’

  She knew who he reminded her of. Of Mopsa. Had it always been so? Was there something in her own personality that needed a Mopsa, a parasite creature to batten on her and insult her and amaze her with its own gross selfishness? It made her laugh, hot ironically but with pure amusement.

  ‘Three years ago,’ he said, ‘I thought you couldn’t be harder but I was wrong. I hoped you’d changed. Don’t you want to know why I came here? I thought we might get together again. I even thought we might marry.’

  ‘But now you’re disillusioned?’ Jason had fallen asleep. She took the bottle gently from him. ‘If you want that drink, Edward, you’ll have to fetch it yourself. Room above this one, cupboard by the window. I have to put this boy to bed.’

  Barry went down the hill towards Hampstead tube station. He felt shaken. There had been very little warning of what had happened. All evening the house had been in darkness and then, just as he was giving up hope of seeing Terence Wand that evening, a faint light had come on, not in one of the front rooms but a light somewhere in the back of the house seen from where he stood through an arch or an open doorway. Terence Wand had come in the back way. It hadn’t occurred to Barry that there was a back way, but after he moved away from the arch and before he left for the station, he had investigated and found the garages, the one numbered five with the small blue Volvo tucked inside.

  But after that light came on, he had for a while been given new hope of seeing and identifying Terence Wand. He counted on him showing himself at a window and this was what had eventually happened but in a shocking and almost horrible way. Barry wondered how long Terence Wand had known he was there and, come to that, known who he was and where he stood in relation to Carol. For that Terence Wand must have known this, his subsequent behaviour clearly showed.

  If Barry had had any doubts about Terence Wand, they were gone now. About who Wand was to Jason and had been to Carol and would be again if he could. Wand had mocked him with it in a single moment’s macho display. The house had been dark but for that glimmer of light in the back regions. Somehow its darkness seemed permanent, still, enduring. He had let his attention wander and watched a white cat jump one of the low walls and stroll towards the tree in the centre of the courtyard. What had made him look up again towards the blank, black, shiny windows? Certainly not any change in the unchanging aspect of the house. A sixth sense perhaps, a spark of electricity transmitted from this man to him with whom he had something strong in common.

  He lifted his head and looked up. The light came on in an explosive flood and a naked man stood there for an instant of mocking exposure. The light made a gold gleam on his hair, he looked tall as a statue. Then the blind went down in a black cascade and shut him out.

  Barry came home over the Chinese bridge. He counted the houses from where the footpath met Summerskill Road but there were no lights on in Carol’s. It was only just gone eleven, the winebar didn’t close till eleven.

  Winterside Down seemed unusually empty. Even the motorbike boys weren’t about. Lila Kupar, who never drew her curtains, whose curtains were perhaps not ample enough to draw, could be seen in her scarcely furnished front room ironing a white sari. A naked light bulb, rather too powerful, hung just above her head. Barry let himself into the house. The Spicers had their television on loudly and you could hear the meaningless prompted laughter in Carol’s hall. In the dark, Barry saw Terence Wand’s face. In reality he had glimpsed it for no more than five seconds but he was sure it had imprinted itself on his mind. It was Jason’s face thirty years on that he conjured up.

  Barry didn’t possess a pair of gloves. He put Carol’s rubber ones on that hung over the rim of the kitchen sink. Wearing the gloves, he found himself the ballpoint pen he and Carol used for writing messages to each other and the milkman and the notebook Tanya had for school and had once left behind in the house. He would have to buy an envelope tomorrow. He began to write his letter, carefully printing the words.

  16

  THE ANONYMOUS LETTER came into the hands of Detective Inspector Tony Leatham by way of Chief Superintendent Treddick and those forensics experts who had examined it in vain for fingerprints and other possible giveaways. By this time the lined paper, exercise book paper, was crumpled and rather limp. Leatham already knew what it said. A conference had been held solely for the purpose of discussing this letter.

  Jason Stratford’s father is Terence Wand, 5 Spring Close, Hampstead.

  The writer evidently wanted them to believe this Wand had snatched his son and was keeping him hidden somewhere. The aim was probably no more than the vindictive one of wanting to cause trouble for Wand. Treddick, of course, believed Jason was dead and had been dead since the day he disappeared, had almost certainly been dead even before his disappearance was reported. He had been murdered and buried somewhere like the African child in Finchley, and one day, like that child’s, his body would be unearthed.

  For his part, Leatham wasn’t so sure. He still thought it possible Jason had been abducted. Tough, hard, with little faith left in human nature, he nevertheless hoped for Jason. He was fond of children. Since Jason had gone, he sometimes found himself looking at his own sons with fiercely protective paternal feelings, something he hadn’t consciously experienced before.

  Treddick was gunning for Barry Mahon. He thought it was only a matter of time before he got him. One day Barry would betray himself, probably lead them to Jason’s grave, and Treddick was patient, he could wait. Tony Leatham couldn’t see they had a scrap of real evidence against Barry. The only offence he had committed, Leatham thought, was to write this letter. He was nearly sure Barry had written it. Treddick was too. He said it was an attempt on Barry’s part to turn the heat off himself.

  Leatham didn’t care much, he was losing interest in all of it. What he would have liked was to find Jason alive and in good shape – preferably for him to find him – and then let bygones be bygones. Another case he had been involved in back in the summer affected him more. The man in question, a bank robber, had broken prison while on remand, escaped and made his way halfway across the world. They had recaptured Monty Driscoll in Melbourne, and when the Australian government agreed to give him up, Leatham hoped to be the officer sent out to bring him back. It would be the kind of excitement that seldom came his way. He was pulling strings to get himself to Melbourne.

  In the meantime this Terence Wand business had to be attended to. They couldn’t just leave it.

  Mrs Goldschmidt rang up early in the morning. Could she come and have another look at the house, take a few measurements? Terence didn’t want her there but he didn’t know how to refuse. There were all sorts of risks attached to having anyone in the house except his own personal invitees. He took two Valium.

  She arrived at ten-thirty, dressed this time in a pink leather coat with a fur collar. Each time Terence had seen her, she h
ad been wearing animal skins. Today her short blond hair was swept forward in wispy curls round her face, her make-up mauvish with damson lips. She had the manner of someone on depressant drugs, downers, and her first remark therefore sounded sarcastic.

  ‘I’m thrilled we’re going to have your house.’

  She spoke in the grey monotone of someone commenting on continual bad weather or chronic illness. Terence walked about the house with her. In the bedroom where the futon was, she took off her coat and dropped it over one of the low Japanese tables. Under it she wore a very short, pink, knitted dress with a bulky polo collar.

  ‘That’s better.’

  She stood on a stool to measure the window for curtains.

  ‘Blinds are so cold on their own, don’t you think?’

  She put out a hand for Terence to help her down, even though the stool stood no more than a foot off the floor. Now in stockinged feet, she climbed on to the ottoman which filled the window embrasure in the master bedroom. She stretched up with her tape measure, lost her balance and would have fallen had Terence not caught and steadied her. He caught her round the waist and, instead of a stiff nervous body, found himself clasping a relaxed, even yielding, one. He asked himself what was going on. Something certainly was. Terence knew he was attractive to women – it had made a living for him as having a flair for design or management might – but he didn’t know why. He was a little below medium height, nothing to much to look at and with the sort of colouring that in a woman is called ‘mousy’. Carol Stratford had once asked him if he was a man or a mouse and it was true he often felt mouselike, smallish and brown and nervous. Perhaps that was what the women liked.

  He took his hands away from Mrs Goldschmidt’s waist, giving her a light pat on the flank. He was wondering what to do, what response to make if things hotted up – would refusal jeopardize the sale of the house or, on the other hand, would acquiescence? – when, glancing out of the window, he saw two men come into the court from under the arch and stand just this side of it, looking at the five houses.

  Terence had not been able to make up his mind about the watcher of a few nights ago but he knew these two were policemen. He was one of those people who have a nose for policemen. No one else had quite those tired bleary eyes, rubber-mask faces, clothes that looked as if their wearers had lost weight, black shoes that needed polishing. They stood there looking at the five houses. Then they began to move across the courtyard towards number one. Terence let out his held breath. Mrs Goldschmidt put out her hand to him to be helped down as if she expected him to kiss it first.

  As they were on their way down, he took a look out of one of the slit windows that lit the staircase. The policemen had gone inside number one but the front door still stood open. Terence didn’t like it. He wanted Mrs Goldschmidt to go. She moved slowly and languidly ahead of him, trailing her hand down the banisters, once looking back over her shoulder to give him a vague wistful smile. In the hall, by the statue with a hole for a head, she stood making notes on a pad in large backward-sloping writing.

  ‘Oh, I forgot my coat. I left it upstairs.’

  She would go up to fetch it, he thought, and then call him and then . . .

  ‘I’ll get it for you.’

  He leaped for the stairs. The bedroom window showed him the two policemen on the narrow stone terrace outside the front door of number three in conversation with the woman who lived there. He grabbed the pink leather coat. Downstairs again, he held the coat for her, actually took hold of her right arm and pushed it into the sleeve opening. It took all the meagre courage he had to open the front door. The policemen were outside, about three yards away, staring at the door and now at him.

  His throat closed up and his heart took a painful leap towards the middle of his chest. Somehow they had got on to him. Someone, one of those neighbours perhaps, had seen the house was up for sale, was a friend of Sawyer’s, had had a letter from Freda . . . Mrs Goldschmidt went slowly out of the door, down the steps, extending her swan neck, vaguely smiling. He realized the police weren’t going to move or speak until she was out of the way. That was their brand of tact. As if he cared! It could have been her who put them on to him for all he knew.

  She turned back once. ‘Well, goodbye for now and thank you so much.’

  Don’t call me Phipps, he screamed silently, don’t call me Phipps!

  ‘I may be in touch. I may want to come back.’

  It sounded inexorable, it sounded like a dour threat. He had nothing to say and couldn’t have spoken if he had wanted to. His voice would have been a reedy pipe. She walked past the policemen as if they weren’t there or were mere furnishings of the courtyard, additional trees or urns, and backed with tiny slow steps across the paving to gaze at the house she had just left. It was only when she turned away once more, smiling with unparted lips in Terence’s direction, began on her measured stroll towards the arch, that the policemen moved. They walked up the steps and the older one, ruddy and fair-haired in a flapping raincoat with dangling belt, said in a low conversational tone to Terence: ‘Mr Wand? Mr Terence Wand?’

  Terence nodded. He felt as limp as a leaf. The front door closed with a soft dainty little click. They were looking round Freda’s hall, at the statues, the Modigliani copy, the black spaniel carpet, the way policemen always do look as if they themselves were condemned by an ungrateful society forever to live in pre-war council houses. Terence opened the double glass doors into the living room. He wished he hadn’t eaten those cornflakes, that boiled egg and that croissant for breakfast because he was sure that any moment now he was going to have to make an excuse and go away to be sick.

  They walked in. They stood looking curiously about them as if they too had come with a view to buying the house. Just as Terence was trying to frame the words that would get him out of there and into the bathroom, the younger one said, ‘Jason Stratford, Mr Wand. Young Jason Stratford. That’s why we’ve come to see you.’

  For a moment the name meant nothing to Terence. It was shock only insofar as it was utterly distant from what he had expected.

  ‘May we sit down?’

  Again Terence nodded. He didn’t sit down. He was holding himself still and tense because he was afraid he might retch if he moved.

  ‘You’ll be aware of course that young Jason is missing. I don’t reckon there’s many people unaware of that now. Am I right in thinking you’re a personal friend of his mother, Mrs Carol Stratford?’

  Relief hit Terence like a soft warm pillow pushed into his face. He could hardly breathe for it. Whatever this might be about it was nothing to do with fraudulent schemes to sell Freda Phipps’s house. He wondered if he could speak but was still afraid to try.

  ‘According to our information there’s a possibility you’re Jason Stratford’s father.’

  If anything could have fetched a voice out of Terence it was this. It came very shrilly.

  ‘Me?’

  They didn’t say anything. They went on looking at him, though not in an unfriendly way.

  ‘Did she tell you that?’ said Terence, articulate again and gruff-voiced with indignation.

  ‘Well, no, Mr Wand. We’re not able to divulge our source of information but I think I can tell you who it wasn’t and it wasn’t Mrs Stratford.’

  Terence didn’t believe him. It would be just like Carol to tell them that. No doubt she was shielding Jason’s true father because the guy was up to something shady or really had got the boy. It could be almost anything with Carol, she was very devious. He could see what they were up to. They’d called on the neighbours to find out if any of them had seen a strange child about.

  ‘I didn’t know the kid existed,’ he said. ‘That is, not until I saw on TV about him being missing.’

  They continued to look polite, impassive. Terence could tell that the bigger fair one was wondering why he had been so nervous if he had nothing to hide.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d object if we had a look over the house, would you?�
�

  What a way to put it! The younger one said it was a nice place he’d got here. Terence didn’t object, he knew that would be very unwise, but he went upstairs behind them. In the bathroom off the master bedroom they found Teresa’s eyeliner pencil lying on the glass top of the vanitory unit.

  ‘Married, now, are you, Mr Wand?’

  Terence shook his head. He didn’t explain. The younger one’s eyes shifted as if this only confirmed the likelihood of Terence’s having bastards he didn’t know about all over the place. Terence felt an increasing grievance against Carol Stratford. He’d make it his business to have a word with Carol over this.

  The policemen didn’t exactly search. They just looked into all the rooms. They asked to see his passport which gave him a dreadful pang for a moment in case they had powers to confiscate it. But they handed it back without a word and soon after that they went. Terence took two Valium and poured himself a very stiff whisky. He sat down with his drink and asked himself seriously if he was going to have the stamina to carry things through. Not was it worth it. He knew very well it was worth almost anything to get his hands on £130,000. Not was it worth it, but could he stand the pace?

  Terence knew himself. He had the rare quality of knowing himself quite well. The agony of the morning had brought him fresh self-knowledge. His fear had been so great and also so prolonged that he wondered now why he hadn’t had a heart attack or fallen down in a fit. If he reacted like that because two policemen called on him, how would his body and his nerves behave when he had to sign that contract, receive that huge sum of money, draw it from the bank and escape with it? How would he stand up to things while, with the money in a bag in his hand, he had to get to an airport and board a plane?

  Suppose he dropped dead of fear?

  Might it not be wiser, after all, to opt for the thirteen thousand odd of the deposit money and call it a day? Take Goldschmidt’s cheque and vanish? Goldschmidt’s cheque . . . A chilly tremor ran through Terence. He set his glass down.