Simisola

by Ruth Rendell

  * He was still smarting, though less painfully, when he came into his office very early next morning. His team’s reports were already on his desk and no one was going to say a word about that photograph. Burden had seen it. That particular newspaper wasn’t his choice but Jenny’s. ‘Funny how you get used to it,’ Wexford said. ‘I mean the way the passage of time eases things. I don’t feel as bad about it today as I did yesterday, and tomorrow I won’t feel as bad as I do today. If only we could live by that instead of just coming to the knowledge afresh each time, if we could be aware at the time that it’s not going to matter a lot after a couple of days, life’d be a lot easier, wouldn’t it?’ ‘Hm. You are what you are and that’s about it. You can’t change your nature.’ ‘What a depressing philosophy.’ Wexford began going through the reports. ‘Jane Winster, the cousin, identified the body. Not that there was much doubt. We should get something from old Tremlett today or maybe tomorrow morning. Vine interviewed Mrs Winster at her home in Pomfret but he doesn’t seem to have learned much. They weren’t close. So far as she knows, Annette had no boyfriends and, oddly, no close woman friend. It sounds a very lonely life. Ingrid Pamber seems to have been the only person she was friendly with.’ ‘Yes, but would the Winster woman know? She hadn’t seen Annette since April. That would be understandable if she lived in Scotland, say, but she lives in Pomfret and that’s all of three miles. They can’t have liked each other much.’ ‘Mrs Winster says, I quote, “I had my own family to think about”. They spoke to each other on the phone. Annette always went to them on Christmas Day and was apparently with them when they celebrated a twentieth wedding anniversary. Still, as you say, it’s a bit distant.’ He worked through the pages, pausing occasionally to read something twice. ‘He also saw that Mrs Harris we talked to – remember? Edwina Harris, the woman upstairs? She heard nothing at night, but she admits she and her husband are heavy sleepers. Another thing she insists on is that she never saw any friend call on Annette or Annette leave the building or come into it with someone accompanying her. ‘Neither of the supervisors at the Benefit Office, that’s Niall Clarke and Valerie Parker, seems to know anything about Annette, her private life, that is. Peter Stanton – he’s the other new claims adviser, the one who looks like the young Sean Connery – he seems to have been very open with Pemberton, told him he took Annette out a couple of times. And then Cyril Leyton told him it wouldn’t do. He didn’t want staff getting into “intimate relationships”.’ ‘And Stanton accepted that?’ ‘It doesn’t sound as if he was bothered. He told Pemberton they hadn’t much in common, whatever that means. Hayley Gordon, she’s the young admin officer, the fair one, she hardly knew Annette, she’s only been on the staff a month. Karen saw Osman Messaoud and Wendy Stowlap. Messaoud was very nervous. He was born and brought up in this country but he’s uneasy around women. He told Karen he didn’t want to be interviewed by a woman, he wanted, again I quote, “a policeman” and he said if Karen questioned him about a woman, Annette that is, his wife would be suspicious. However, he seems to know less than nothing about Annette’s life outside the Benefit Office. ‘Apart from Ingrid Pamber, Wendy Stowlap appears to be the only member of staff to have been to Annette’s flat. She herself lives fairly near, in Queens Gardens. It was a Sunday and she wanted someone to witness a document – doesn’t say what kind of document – something she apparently didn’t want the neighbours to know about, so she

  took it round to Annette. Annette was watching a video and told Wendy she’d just bought a new video recorder, some special kind that you punch a code into. That was six or seven months ago. All this circumlocution seems just to prove she did in fact have a video. Now let’s have a look at what Barry has to say about Ingrid Pamber . . .’ But at that moment Detective Sergeant Vine came into the room. Vine wasn’t really a short man but he looked short beside Wexford, and Burden too towered above him. He had the extraordinary combination of red hair on his head and dark hair on his upper lip. If he was in Barry Vine’s shoes, Wexford had often thought, he’d shave off that moustache. But Vine – though this was unexpressed – seemed to enjoy the bicoloured effect, appearing to believe it gave him distinction. He was sharp and watchful and clever, a man with a prodigious memory that he crammed with all kinds of information, useful and otherwise. ‘Have you looked at my report yet, sir?’ ‘I’m reading it now, Barry. This Ingrid really was Annette’s only friend, wasn’t she?’ ‘Not exactly. How about this married man?’ ‘What married man? Ah . . . wait a minute. Ingrid Pamber told you Annette had confided in her she’d been having an affair for the past nine years with a married man?’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘Why didn’t she tell me this on Friday?’ Vine sat down on the edge of the desk. ‘She said she’d lain awake all night, wondering what was the right thing to do. She’d promised Annette faithfully, you see, that she’d never tell.’ The man who had phoned the Benefit Office, Wexford thought, the man Ingrid had said was a neighbour. ‘All right. Yes, I can imagine. Spare us the schoolgirl heart- searching, will you?’ Vine grinned. ‘I gave her the usual stuff, sir. Annette’s dead, promises to a dead person weren’t valid, didn’t she want to help find whoever killed her, all that. She told me a bit and then she said she’d tell you. I mean, she’d only tell you.’ ‘Really? What have I got that you haven’t, Barry? Must be age.’ Wexford concealed the mild embarrassment he felt by pretending to read from the report. ‘We’ll gratify her, shall we?’ ‘I thought you’d say that, so I asked her if she’d be at the Benefit Office, but no, she won’t be. She starts two weeks’ leave today and she and her boyfriend can’t afford to go away. She’ll be at home.’ Burden stepped over the yellow scene-of-crime tape, unlocked the door of the flat and went inside. Starting at the living room, he walked from room to room, slowly studying every object, looking out of the window into reddish-brown foliage, the concrete drive, the red brick side of the house next door. He took down what few books there were and shook their pages in case there were sheets enclosed, but with no particular purpose in mind. In the living room he looked carefully at Annette Bystock’s music on a shelf of the bookcase, the compact discs for the missing CD player, the cassettes for the missing cassette player which was also a radio. Her taste seemed to have been for popular classics and country. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Bach’s Mass in B Minor – Burden had heard that this was among the top sellers in classical music – highlights from Porgy and Bess, a complete Carmen Jones, Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, Natalie Cole’s album Unforgettable, Michelle Wright, k.d. lang, Patsy Cline. . . . Without Wexford breathing reproof over his shoulder, Burden

  was quick to notice that Natalie Cole was a black woman and Porgy and Bess and Carmen Jones operas about black people. Was that significant? He was trying to find points of connection between Annette and Melanie Akande. There was no desk in the flat. The dressing table up against the bedroom window had served as a desk. Her passport had been taken away. Burden looked at the other papers in the drawer. They were contained in one of those folders made of clear plastic: certificates showing Annette’s O and A Level results, a certificate or diploma showing that she had gained a Bachelor of Arts pass degree in Business Studies at Myringham Polytechnic. That was where Melanie Akande had completed her education, only they called it Myringham University now. Burden looked at the date – 1976. Melanie was only three in 1976. Yet there might be a link there. . . . Edwina Harris had told them she thought Annette had once been married. There was no marriage certificate in the top drawer. Burden tried the bottom one and found a decree of divorce, dissolving the marriage of Annette Rosemary Colegate née Bystock, and Stephen Henry Colegate, the divorce having been made absolute on 29 June, 1985. No letters. He had hoped for letters. A brown envelope, eight inches by five, contained a photograph of a man with a high forehead and dark curly hair. Under it was a stack of pamphlets instructing purchasers how to operate a Panasonic video recorder and an Akai CD player. The middle drawer held underclothes. He had already had a good look at the clothes in the wardrobe when
he and Wexford came here on Friday. They were safe, dull clothes, the sort bought by a woman who can afford few and must put warmth and comfort before style. Therefore the underclothes surprised him. They weren’t quite what Burden would have called indecent. There were no bras with cut-outs, no crotchless pants. But all the – lingerie, he supposed, was the word – all of it was black or red and most of it transparent. There were two suspender belts, one black, one red, ordinary black bras and black platform bras, one strapless; a thing he called a corselet but Jenny said was a ‘bustier’ in red satin and lace, several pairs of black stockings, plain, fishnet and lacy, red and black knickers the size of the bottom part of a bikini and a kind of body stocking of black lace. Had she worn that stuff under those jeans and sweaters, that beige raincoat? Instead of clearing, as the meteorologists had said it would, the summery mist thinned and turned to rain. A grey drizzle began to fall and cool things down. Vine, driving the car, began speculating as to why rain in England is always cold while in other parts of the world it is warm and why, which he said was more to the point, it doesn’t warm up again here afterwards as it does abroad. ‘Something to do with being an island, I expect,’ said Wexford abstractedly. ‘Malta’s an island. When I was there on holiday last year it rained but the sun came out afterwards and we were dry in five minutes. Did you see that picture of yourself in the paper yesterday?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I cut it out to show you but I seem to have mislaid it somewhere.’ ‘Good.’ Vine said no more. They drove in silence to Glebe Lane where Ingrid Pamber lived in two rooms over a pair of lock-up garages with her boyfriend Jeremy Lang. Vine gave it as his opinion that as it was the first day of her holiday and only ten to ten in the morning she would still be in bed.

  The neighbourhood was one of the charmless areas of Kingsmarkham. All you could say for it was that beyond the shabbiness, the waste ground and squat buildings, green hills rose skywards, topped with tree rings and behind them the sweep of downs. The district was vaguely commercial or industrial, some of the little houses converted to business premises, a good many buildings of the small factory or workshop kind. Gardens had become yards filled with used cars, scrap iron, oil drums, unidentifiable metal parts. The garages had one door painted black, the other green. At the side, approached by a narrow passage between chain link fencing, was the front door to the flat. There was no shelter from the rain. Vine rang the bell. After rather a long time, during which there was some banging about and creaking from the upper floor, feet drummed on the stairs and the door was opened by a young man with wild black hair wearing nothing but black-framed glasses and a bath towel round his waist. ‘Oh, sorry,’ he said when he saw them. ‘I thought you were the post. I’m expecting a parcel.’ ‘Kingsmarkham CID,’ said Wexford, who wasn’t usually so brusque. ‘To see Miss Pamber.’ ‘Oh, sure. Come up.’ He was a small man, no more than five feet six, and fine-boned with it. The girl was no doubt, as Vine had predicted, still in bed. He closed the door behind them with perfect trust. ‘You’re Mr Lang?’ ‘That’s me, though I’m mostly known as Jerry.’ ‘Mr Lang, are you in the habit of letting strangers into your home without question?’ Jeremy Lang peered at Wexford and pushed his right ear at him as if he had been addressed inaudibly or in a foreign language. ‘You’re police, you said.’ Neither Wexford nor Vine said anything. Each produced his warrant card and held it under Lang’s nose. He grinned and nodded. He began to go upstairs, gestured to them to follow him, suddenly yelling at the top of his voice: ‘Hey, Ing, you going to get up? It’s the cops.’ Upstairs was a surprise. Wexford hardly knew what he had expected, but not this pleasantly furnished clean room with a big yellow sofa, blue and yellow floor cushions on a big brightly coloured woven mat, the walls entirely concealed under draped lengths of cloth, posters, and a huge faded tapestry bedspread. Everything had obviously been perks from a parent or else bought very cheaply but it made a harmonious and comfortable place to be. Houseplants in a yellow-painted wooden trough filled the floorspace between the windows. The door to the bedroom opened and Ingrid Pamber came out. She too wasn’t yet dressed but there was nothing frowsty about her, nothing to suggest she had just risen from a long lie-in. She wore a dressing gown or robe of white broderie anglaise that came to her knees. Her small shapely feet were bare. The satiny dark hair, which had been confined by a barrette when Wexford had talked to her on Friday evening, was now held back by a red Alice band. Without make-up her face was even prettier, the skin glowing, the blueness of her eyes startling. ‘Oh, hallo, it’s you,’ she said to Wexford, sounding delighted to see him. On Vine she bestowed a friendly smile. ‘Would you like some coffee? If I ask him very nicely, I’m sure Jerry will make us some coffee.’ ‘Ask me nicely then,’ said Jeremy Lang.

  She gave him a kiss. A highly sexual kiss, Wexford thought, in spite of being planted in the middle of his cheek and with closed lips. The kiss lingered, she withdrew her mouth an inch, whispered, ‘Make us some coffee, my love, please, please. And I’m going to have a huge breakfast, two eggs and bacon and sausages if we’ve got any and – yes, fried potatoes. You’ll cook it for me, won’t you, angel? Please, please, mmm?’ Vine coughed. He was exasperated rather than embarrassed. Ingrid sat down on a floor cushion and gazed up at them. She was, Wexford thought, immeasurably more confident and in control here, on her home ground. ‘I’ve already told him a bit of it,’ she said, glancing at Vine. ‘I’ve saved the important part for you. It’s an amazing story.’ ‘All right,’ Wexford said, and in the manner of Cocteau to Diaghilev, ‘Astound me.’ ‘I never told anyone before, you know. Not even Jerry. I think people should keep their promises, don’t you?’ ‘Certainly they should,’ Wexford said. ‘But not beyond the grave.’ Ingrid Pamber evidently enjoyed this kind of conversation. ‘Yes, but if you’d promised somebody something and they died it wouldn’t be right to break your promise and tell their children, would it? Not if it affected their children? I mean, it might be something about them that would ruin their lives.’ ‘Let’s not get on to moral philosophy now, Miss Pamber. Annette Bystock hadn’t any children. She had no relatives apart from a cousin. I’d like to hear what she told you about this love affair she was having.’ ‘He might be affected though, mightn’t he?’ ‘Who do you mean?’ ‘Well, Bruce. The man. The man I told him about.’ She pointed a forefinger at Vine. ‘Leave that to me,’ said Wexford. ‘I’ll worry about that.’ Jeremy Lang came back with coffee in three cups and on a plate, like a waiter in certain kinds of restaurant displaying to clients the raw materials of their meal, two eggs still in their shells, two rashers of bacon, three pork sausages and a potato. ‘Thank you.’ Ingrid looked into his eyes and said it again, ‘Thank you, thank you, that will be lovely,’ the words apparently having some special or secret meaning for the two of them, for the effect on him was to make him roll his eyes while she began to giggle. Wexford coughed. He could manage to get a good deal of reproach into a cough. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she said, and she stopped laughing. ‘I must be good. I shouldn’t laugh. I’m really very very sad about poor Annette.’ ‘How long had you known her, Miss Pamber?’ Vine asked. ‘Since I started working for the ES three years ago. I’ve told you all this. I was a teacher before that, only I wasn’t much good. I couldn’t get on with the kids and they hated me.’ ‘You didn’t tell me that,’ said Vine. ‘Well, it’s not exactly relevant, is it? I had a place quite near where Annette lived. That was before I met Jerry.’ She cast Jeremy Lang a loving look and pursed up her lips in a kissing shape. ‘We used to walk home together, Annette and I, and sometimes we’d have a meal somewhere. You know, if we didn’t feel like cooking or getting anything in. I went to her flat once or twice but she came to mine much more and I just had a room. I got the feeling she didn’t like asking people to her place. ‘Then . . . well, I met someone and we started – ’ A rueful look this time for Jeremy, who returned it with a pantomime frown. ‘We started going about. I didn’t live with him or anything,’ she added, not making clear what ‘anything’ might signify. ‘That was wh
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