Simisola

by Ruth Rendell

  actively seeking work, and she’d have said how once you’ve signed on your giro’ll be sent to you. That goes to your home address and you cash it at your post office or you can pay it into your bank if you want. Annette’d have explained all that. Then, I suppose, she’d have asked Melanie if she’d any questions. Melanie’d only have a maximum of twenty minutes with Annette, there wouldn’t have been time for much.’ ‘Suppose she’d had a job to offer Melanie? Could she have had? What would have been the procedure?’ Stanton yawned. He had left his second sandwich uneaten. He was now dividing his eye contact between the girl in the bandage skirt and a sandwich maker who had appeared from some nether region. This woman had waist length mahogany-coloured hair and appeared to be wearing nothing but a white chef’s cap and a white cotton coat whose hem reached to two inches below her crotch. At a cough from Burden he dragged his stare away, sighing softly. ‘There aren’t jobs, you know. They’re thin on the ground. I suppose Annette just might have had something suitable for this Melanie, client with a degree. Well, once in a blue moon she might have had something.’ ‘What, in a ledger? A file?’ Stanton gave him a pitying look. ‘She’d have run it up on the computer.’ ‘And if she’d had anything to offer Melanie, what then?’ ‘She’d have phoned the employer and made an appointment for Melanie for an interview. She didn’t, you know,’ Stanton said unexpectedly. ‘I can tell you that for a fact. Both the New Claims Advisers have the same stuff on their computers and there wasn’t anything remotely suitable for a girl of twenty-two with a performance arts degree. You can check it out if you want but I can tell you there wasn’t.’ ‘How did you know her degree was in performance arts?’ ‘She told me while I was raping and strangling her, of course.’ Stanton must have remembered that there is such an offence as wasting police time. He said sullenly, ‘Oh, come on. I read it in the paper.’ Burden fetched himself a cup of coffee. ‘And that would have been all?’ he said. ‘No advice? You’re advisers, aren’t you?’ ‘That is advising, telling her how to sign on, explaining about her giro. What more d’you want?’ Hope had sprung for a moment in Burden’s heart. A scenario had begun to take shape of Melanie leaving the Benefit Office on her way to a job interview, from which she had never returned. Only Annette knew where she had gone and why and, absolutely to the point, whom she had gone to see. But his carefully crafted playlet had quickly fallen apart and when he asked Stanton if he could imagine anything confidential, secret or sinister Melanie might have said to Annette, something that was a police matter, he wasn’t surprised that the man made a dismissive gesture and shook his head. ‘I ought to be getting back.’ ‘All right.’ Burden got up. ‘I’ve got a performance arts degree myself,’ Stanton suddenly remarked apropos of nothing. ‘No doubt that’s why I remember she had. All set to be a great actor, I was, a second Olivier and a bloody sight better looking. That was me fifteen years ago and to this favour have I come.’ Bored by this, unsympathetic, Burden said as they went out into the street, ‘Did anyone ever threaten her?’ ‘Annette? In the office? Bless your policeman’s helmet, if you had one, they threaten us all the time. All the time. It’s worse on the desks. Why d’you think we have a security

  Simisola

  officer? Ninety-nine per cent comes to nothing, it’s vague promises to “get us”. Some of them accuse us of keeping their giros for ourselves, losing their ES 461s on purpose, that sort of thing. And then they’re going to “get” us or “cut” us. ‘Then there’s fraud. They know they’ve been signing on in three or four different names and they think we’ve reported them to the DSS fraud inspectors, so they’re going to get us for that. . . .’ Now Burden recalled Karen Malahyde once being called out to an ‘incident’ at the Benefit Office, on another occasion Pemberton and Archbold had gone. It hadn’t meant much to him at the time. He said suddenly to Stanton, ‘You took her out once or twice?’ ‘Annette?’ Stanton became guarded, cautious. ‘Twice, to be precise. It was three years ago.’ ‘Why twice? Why no more? Did something happen?’ ‘I didn’t screw her, if that’s what you mean.’ Stanton, who had been slouching along, taking long strides, moving slowly, now stopped altogether. He stood indecisively in the middle of the pavement, then sat down on the low wall that bordered an estate agent’s courtyard and took a packet of cigarettes out of one of the baggy pockets. ‘Cyril the Squirrel called me into his office and said it had to stop. Relationships between staff members of opposite sexes were bad for the image. I asked him if he meant it would be all right for me to fuck Osman but he just said not to be filthy and that was that.’ Burden’s look was eloquent of heartfelt agreement with Leyton for once, but he said nothing. ‘Not that I was all that sorry.’ Stanton took a long draw on his cigarette and expelled the smoke in two blue columns out of his nostrils. ‘I wasn’t keen on being used as a – how shall I put it? – I don’t know, but what it amounts to is she only wanted me around to make this guy she’d got jealous so he’d leave his wife and marry her. Some hopes. She actually told me that, about how she’d tell this chap that I was keen on her and if he didn’t want to lose her he’d best get his act together. Charming, wasn’t it?’ ‘You went to her flat?’ ‘No, I never did. I went to the cinema with her, met her there and we had a coffee after. The next time it was just drinks in a pub and a pizza and we went for a drive in my car. We parked out in the country and there was a bit of how’s-your-father but nothing over the top and after that Cyril the doorman put his spoke in.’ They walked back to the Benefit Office together and Burden followed him in. He was talking to the security officer, asking if he could remember any specific threats being made to Annette, when a shrill scream from Wendy Stowlap’s counter made him jump and spring to his feet. ‘I told you I’d scream if you said that just once more,’ the woman shouted. ‘If you say that again I’ll lie on the floor and scream.’ ‘What else can I say? You can have dental treatment free if you’re on Income Support but you can’t get your osteopath’s bill paid.’ The woman, who was well dressed and spoke in a ringing actor’s voice, got down on the floor, lay on her back and began screaming. She was young and her lungs were strong. The screaming reminded Burden of the noise three-year-olds sometimes make in supermarket aisles. He walked over to her, the security man following. Wendy was leaning over the counter, waving a blue and yellow leaflet with the title ‘Help Us to Get It Right and How to Complain’. ‘Come along now,’ said the security officer. ‘Up you get. This won’t do, all this noise.’

  She screamed harder. ‘Stop that,’ said Burden. He stuck out his warrant card six inches from the screaming face. ‘Stop. You’re causing a breach of the peace.’ It was the card which did it. She was middle-class and therefore awed by the police and the suggestion she might break the law. The screaming dropped to a whimper. She got awkwardly to her feet, snatched the leaflet from Wendy’s hand and said bitterly to her, ‘There was no need to call the police.’ * Husband and wife sat side by side, but not too close to each other, in front of the desk in Wexford’s office. He didn’t want to frighten Carolyn Snow – not yet. Frightening, if needed, would come later. Meanwhile, though the room was hardly equipped as a recording studio, Detective Constable Pemberton was there with an efficient enough device if it was required. They had arrived separately two minutes apart. And Carolyn Snow quickly explained that they were apart, she retaining the house in Harrow Avenue – ‘It’s my children’s home’ – the husband she had thrown out resorting to an hotel room. Wexford noticed that Bruce Snow was wearing yesterday’s shirt. He looked as if he hadn’t shaved. Surely his wife hadn’t shaved him as well as laundering his clothes and running round at his beck and call? ‘We have to clear up this matter of what you were both doing last Wednesday evening, July the seventh. Mr Snow?’ ‘I’ve already told you what I was doing. I was at home with my wife. My son was at home too. He was upstairs.’ ‘Not according to Mrs Snow.’ ‘Look, this is rubbish, this is all nonsense. I got home at six and I was all evening at home with my wife. We had a meal at seven, the way we always do. My
son went upstairs after that, he had an essay to write for his history homework. The War of the Spanish Succession, it was.’ ‘You have a good memory, Mr Snow, considering you didn’t know you’d have to remember.’ ‘I have been racking my brains, haven’t I? I’ve thought of nothing else.’ ‘What did you do all evening? Watch television? Read something? Telephone anyone?’ ‘He didn’t have a chance,’ said Carolyn nastily. ‘He went out at ten to eight.’ ‘That is a damned lie!’ said Snow. ‘On the contrary, you know it’s true. It was your Wednesday, wasn’t it? The Wednesday evening every couple of weeks you spent bonking that prostitute on your office floor.’ ‘Nice language, thank you, that really becomes you, that terminology. A man can take real pride in hearing his wife talk like that, like someone off the streets.’ ‘Well, you’d know all about those, wouldn’t you? First-hand experience. And I’m not your wife, not any more. Two years, just two years, and you’ll have to say “my ex-wife”, you’ll have to explain you’re living in a bedsit because your “ex-wife” took you to the cleaners, took the house and the car and three-quarters of your income . . .’ Carolyn Snow’s normally quiet gentle voice was rising ominously, vibrating with anger, ‘just because you were hooked on poking that fat floozie through her red knickers!’ For God’s sake, thought Wexford, how much of it has he told her? Everything? Because he thought absolute total confession was his only chance? He gave an

  admonitory cough which nevertheless failed to stop Snow rounding on his wife and shouting, ‘You shut your mouth, you frigid cow!’ Slowly Carolyn Snow rose to her feet, her eyes fixed on her husband’s face. Wexford acted. ‘Stop this, please. At once. I can’t have a matrimonial fracas in here. Sit down, Mrs Snow.’ ‘Why should I? Why should I be made into some sort of guilty party? I’ve done nothing.’ ‘Ha!’ said Snow, and he repeated it, reinforced with bitterness, ‘Ha!’ ‘Very well,’ said Wexford. ‘I thought you might be more comfortable talking to me in here but I see I was wrong. We’ll go down to Interview Room Two, DC Pemberton, and with your permission – ’ he looked rather sourly at the Snows, making their permission sound like a formality ‘ – the rest of this interview will be recorded.’ It was rather different down there, some distant resemblance to a prison cell being achieved by white-painted walls of unrendered brick and a window set high up under the ceiling. The electronic devices lining the wall behind the metal table Wexford sometimes thought, and thought uneasily, suggested, if not a torture chamber, the kind of place where they kept you standing all night under bright lights. On the way down he asked Snow, in seemingly casual fashion and out of earshot of his wife, if it was a fact that a friend or relative of theirs lived in Ladyhall Avenue within sight of the flats. Snow denied it. It wasn’t true, he said, and he had never told anyone it was. In the interview room he placed the Snows opposite each other and seated himself at one end. Burden, back from the Benefit Office, took the other. The austerity of the room, its grimness, quietened Carolyn, as he had known it would. Once in the lift, she had kept up a continuous jibing and carping at her husband while he stood with his eyes shut. Down here she was silent. She smoothed the fair hair back from her forehead and pressed fingers to her temples as if her head ached. Snow sat with folded arms, his chin sagging against his chest. Wexford spoke into the device. ‘Mr Bruce Snow, Mrs Carolyn Snow. DCI Wexford and DI Burden present.’ He said to the woman, ‘I should like you to tell me exactly what did happen on the evening of July the seventh, Mrs Snow.’ She gave her husband a sidelong look, deliberate and calculating. ‘He came home at six and I said, not working late tonight? I’m going back to the office after I’ve eaten, he said . . .’ ‘A lie! Another filthy lie!’ ‘Please, Mr Snow.’ ‘Joel said he might want his father to give him some help with this essay he had to do and his father said, too bad because I’m going out . . .’ ‘I did not say that!’ ‘Because I’m going out, and he did go out. At ten to eight. I didn’t suspect anything, mind you, not a thing. Why should I? I trusted him. I do trust people. Anyway, I phoned the office. Joel did want help. I said, we’ll phone Dad and you can ask him on the phone. But there wasn’t any answer. Not that I had any suspicions even then. I thought he just wasn’t answering. I was in bed by the time he got home. It was after half-past ten, nearer eleven.’ ‘Oh, let her rave.’

  ‘I’m a truthful person, he knows that. Whereas we know the lies he tells. Working late! Did you know he screwed her in the office so that if I phoned he’d be there to answer? If she hadn’t got her just deserts, getting herself murdered, I could almost feel sorry for the poor fat bitch.’ ‘May I remind you,’ Wexford said wearily, ‘that, with your permission, this conversation is being recorded, Mrs Snow?’ ‘What do I care? Record it! Put it over the public address system all down the High Street! Let them all know, I’ll tell them anyway, I’ve told all my friends. I’ve told my children, I’ve let them know what a bastard their father is.’ After they had gone, Burden put on a grave face and shook his head. ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ he said to Wexford. ‘You’d call her a real lady if you met her socially, quiet, well- mannered, refined. Who’d have thought a woman like that would even know that sort of language?’ ‘You sound like a policeman in a detective novel circa 1935.’ ‘OK, maybe I do, but doesn’t it surprise you?’ ‘They get it out of modern fiction,’ said Wexford. ‘Nothing to do all day but read. Are we getting anywhere with Stephen Colegate?’ ‘Annette’s ex-husband? He lives in Australia, he’s married again, but his mother’s in Pomfret and she’s expecting him home for a visit on Sunday with his two kids.’ ‘Have someone check that he really was in Australia, will you? What happened to Zack Nelson?’ ‘Remanded in custody to the Crown Court. Why are you looking like that?’ ‘I’m thinking of Kimberley and the child.’ ‘You don’t want to worry about that Kimberley,’ said Burden, ‘She’ll know more about claiming benefit than Cyril Leyton does. She’s the kind that’s got an honours degree in Income Support.’ Wexford laughed. ‘I’m sure you’re right. That Snow woman’s worn me out.’ He hesitated, thought. ‘ “Oh, I am going a long way off, to the island valley of Avilion, where I will heal me of my grievous wound.” ’ ‘Blimey,’ said Burden. ‘And where might that be?’ ‘Home.’

  Chapter Eleven I told her we wouldn’t be buying any oriental rugs,’ Dora said, ‘and I was thinking, chance would be a fine thing, though I didn’t say that. Of course, she’s quite right, these things are evil and wrong, but it’s just that she always throws herself heart and soul into every new project.’ Sheila Wexford had become a life member of Anti-Slavery International. On the phone that evening, just before Wexford got in, she had urged her mother not to buy Middle Eastern or oriental rugs, for these, she said, might well have been woven by children of eleven or twelve or younger. Girls in Turkey went blind from the close work in ill-lit rooms. Children were obliged to work fourteen hours a day and because their parents had put them to this industry as payment of a debt, received no wages. ‘I suppose she’ll be off to Turkey to see for herself?’ said Wexford. ‘How did you know?’ ‘I know my daughter.’ ‘Why “international”, anyway?’ enquired Sylvia in a querulous tone. ‘International’s an adjective. What’s wrong with society or association?’ Wexford’s reference to Sheila as ‘my daughter’ instead of ‘my younger daughter’, thus implying in her estimation that he had only one, was what had set her off, he knew. Much she cared about adjectives. ‘Sheila wouldn’t notice but it’s as bad as “collective”,’ she said and glared at her father. He was swift to make amends, appending to his question a rare endearment. ‘Any sign of a job, darling?’ ‘Nothing. Neil’s got himself into a workshop that could lead to a retraining programme. That’s another awful word, “workshop”.’ ‘And “creditable” for “credible”,’ said her father. It was the kind of conversation he usually had only with Sheila. ‘And “gender-related” for male and female and “health problem” for “ill”.’ Sylvia was happy again. ‘Kanena provlima, which my son tells me is Greek for his favourite phrase. One good thing about being unemployed is I’ll
be home with them for the summer holidays. School breaks up next week.’ It was pouring with rain and Glebe End was awash. With no drainage or what there was long dysfunctional, Lincoln Cottages appeared as if floating on a swamp. A great sheet of water engulfed the brick path and came halfway up the tyres of an ancient van, the rear doors of which stood open. A black plastic dustbin bobbed lightly on a puddle by the front door. Barry Vine had a look inside the van at a damp-looking mattress and an armchair with no seat cushion while Karen Malahyde knocked on the door. It took Kimberley several minutes to come and open it. ‘What d’you want?’ ‘The stuff your boyfriend nicked,’ said Vine.

  She shrugged her thin shoulders but she opened the door wider and stood back. Clint was sitting in a high chair, covering his face and the upper part of his body with a glutinous brown mess from a bowl with a crack in it. The high chair, painted white with pictures of rabbits and squirrels, was quite a respectable piece of furniture, gift perhaps of a comparatively affluent grandparent. Cocking a thumb back the way he had come, Vine said, ‘Moving out?’ ‘What if I am?’ ‘You gave us to understand you hadn’t a hope of being rehoused.’ Kimberley picked up a dirty rag from the top of one of her cardboard boxes and began rubbing at Clint’s face with it. The child yelled and struggled. Vine went upstairs and fetched the television set. Karen carried the video out to the car. Lifting Clint on to the ground, Kimberley said, volunteering information for once, ‘My nan died.’ Not knowing what to make of this, Vine, who hadn’t an unpleasant nature, said, ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ and then, because he had cottoned on, ‘You mean you’ve come in for her place or what?’ ‘That’s it. Got it in one. My mum don’t want it. She says we can have it.’ ‘When did this happen then?’ ‘What, my nan dying or my mum saying we could have her place?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Mum come round Wednesday and I told her about Zack, so she said, you can’t stay here, and I said, too right we can’t, and that was when she said, you better move in your nan’s place. Satisfied?’ ‘It has to be a change for the better.’ ‘Clint,’ said Kimberley, ‘you leave them bottles alone or you’ll get a smack you won’t like.’ A father and a conscientious one, Vine disapproved of corporal punishment, he had what he called a ‘thing’ about it, and Clint was very young. ‘Is he OK?’ he said. ‘What d’you mean, OK? You mean he shouldn’t be living in this dump? Right, I couldn’t agree more. He’s moving out, in’t he? You a social worker now, are you?’ ‘I mean,’ said Vine, ‘is he quite recovered from that op he had?’ ‘For God’s sake, that was a year ago.’ She was suddenly furiously angry, her face bright red, her shoulders and arms trembling. ‘What the fuck’s it got to do with you? Of course he’s recovered – look at him. He’s bloody marvellous, he’s normal, he’s like he was born that way. Can’t you see?’ She shivered. ‘Why don’t you and her just take the stuff and fuck off?’ She slammed the door behind them. Vine put his foot in the puddle and cursed. ‘I’ve got another child to see,’ Karen said in the car. ‘But I’m questioning this one, God help me.’ Wexford found it odious, the whole thing, the idea of asking a young boy for information about his own father. It reminded him, by a roundabout route, of the question he had been handed at the Women, Aware! meeting. Having Karen, a nice-looking young woman with a no-nonsense manner, interview Joel seemed the best way. Presumably, her well- known abrasiveness when questioning men wouldn’t extend to boys of fourteen. He went with her and talked to the mother while she sat with Joel in the quaintly named playroom, a place where there was nothing to play with but plenty of equipment conducive to study. Joel had an impressive collection of textbooks and dictionaries, a