Simisola

by Ruth Rendell

  Since it wasn’t in the nature of things that she should be attracted to him – he wasn’t rich like Alexander Dix, young like Jeremy or handsome like Peter Stanton – and nymphomania was a myth, only one possibility remained. She was a flirt. A flirt with the world’s bluest glance. ‘An hundred years should go to praise thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze . . .’ He would not offer her a lift. ‘Maybe he can be a boy after all,’ said Ingrid. ‘I know – your first name’s Reg, isn’t it?’ Wexford laughed. He said goodbye again, and over his shoulder, ‘It’s not available for christening teddy bears.’ A second possibility remained. He thought of it now. She was a liar, he knew that: was she also a murderer? Was she nice to him, or what she thought of as being nice, to get him on her side? They were coming into the field that was a car park, before Dora said anything. The first drops of rain had begun to fall. The breeze had become a serious wind and a woman in front of them in cartwheel hat and diaphanous dress was having to hold her skirts down. ‘She was all over you, that girl,’ said Dora. ‘Yes.’ ‘Who is she, anyway?’ ‘A suspect in a murder.’ He never told her more than that about his cases. She looked at him quite cheerfully. ‘Really?’ ‘Really. Let’s get in the car, shall we? Your hat’ll get wet.’ There was a queue to get out but not a long one. The line of cars had to pass through a farm gateway and since Rollses, Bentleys and Jaguars predominated, progress was slow. Only two cars remained ahead of him to squeeze between the gate-posts, when his phone started ringing. He picked up the receiver and it was Karen’s voice he heard. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes,’ and, ‘I see.’ Dora could hear Karen’s voice but not distinguish words. The car slipped and bumped through the narrow gap. Wexford said, ‘Where did you say?’ And then he said, ‘I’ll take my wife home and come straight there.’ ‘What is it, Reg? Oh, Reg, it’s not Melanie Akande?’ ‘Sounds like it. I’m afraid it is.’ ‘Is she dead?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘she’s dead.’

  Chapter Thirteen Kingsmarkham lies in that part of Sussex that was once the land of a Celtic tribe the Romans called the Regnenses. To its colonists it was simply a desirable place to live, pleasant to look at and not too cold, the indigenous population regarded only as a source of slave labour. Numerous remains of female infants unearthed by archaeologists near Pomfret Monachorum suggest that the Romans practised infanticide among the Regnenses with a view to maintaining a male work force. As well as this grisly discovery, treasure was found. No one knew how this huge cache of gold coins, figurines and jewellery came to be buried on farmland a mile or two from Cheriton but there was evidence that a Roman villa had once stood there. A rather romantic suggestion was made that early in the fifth century the family who lived there, being forced to flee, had buried their valuables in the hope of coming back one day to retrieve them. But the Romans had never come back and the Dark Ages began. This treasure was found by the farmer himself, digging up a small piece of land, hitherto part of fields on which sheep grazed, with the intention of growing maize on it for fattening pheasants. It was valued at something over two million pounds, most of which he received. He gave up farming and went to live in Florida. The gold statuette he found of a suckling lioness and twin cubs and the two gold bracelets, one chased with a design of a boar hunt, the other of a stag at bay, can now be seen in the British Museum, where they are known as the Framhurst Hoard. The result was to encourage prospectors. Looking from a distance as if slowly scouring the heathland and the green valley with vacuum cleaners, they came with their metal detectors and worked patiently and in silence for long hours at a time. Farmers had no objection – there was little arable farming in the area – and so long as they damaged nothing and did not frighten the sheep, they were not only harmless but might possibly be a source of untold wealth. Any successful prospector would be obliged to render up half his loot to the landowner. So far there had been no more. The cache of which the lioness and the bracelets had been part appeared to have been a one-off. But the treasure-seekers went on coming and it was one of these wandering somewhat outside the favoured area, passing and re- passing his detector across an area of chalky scree, who had come upon firstly a coin, then the body of a girl. It was where the downland began, between Cheriton and Myfleet. A narrow white road, without fence, wall or hedge, ran between the foothills, and it was some twenty yards to the left of it, where the woodland began, on the edge of a wood, that she had been buried. While Colin Broadley was plying his metal detector the weather had been fine, the soil fairly damp from recent rains but not wet. The conditions had been ideal for digging and Broadley, once he had found the coin which had so excited his detector, went on with his excavations.

  ‘When you realized what you’d found,’ Wexford said to him, ‘why didn’t you stop digging?’ Broadley, in his forties, a heavy man with a beer gut, shrugged and looked shifty. He was no archaeologist but an unemployed plumber actuated by greed and hope. It was not he that had called the police but a passer-by who, seeing the extensive excavation in progress and thinking it suspicious, had parked his car and gone to look. This public- spirited citizen, James Ranger of Myringham, was paying for his social conscience by being kept at the scene, seated in his car, where he had been for the past two hours. ‘It was a strange thing to do, wasn’t it?’ Wexford persisted. ‘She had to be dug up,’ Broadley said at last. ‘Someone was going to have to do it.’ ‘That was a job for the police,’ Wexford said, and it was true that the police had finished the job. Of course he knew very well what Broadley had been up to. Having found the coin and not being a sensitive or squeamish man, he had dug down, hoping for more money and perhaps for jewellery on what lay beneath. There had been none. The body was naked. Nor was it possible to say, at this stage, whether or not there was any connection between it and the coin. In the eyes of Broadley, this coin had been the first sample of a Roman treasure, but a closer look told Wexford it was a Victorian halfpenny, bearing the head of the young queen. The hair was done in a style vaguely suggestive of actresses taking part in Ancient Rome movies. Wexford sent Broadley off with Pemberton to sit in one of the police cars. It was raining steadily. They had put a tarpaulin up over the grave and the trees provided some shelter. Under here the pathologist was currently examining the body. Not Sir Hilary Tremlett nor Wexford’s bête noire Dr Basil Sumner-Quist, both of whom were away on their holiday, but an assistant or surrogate who had introduced himself as Mr Mavrikiev. Wexford, under an umbrella – there were ten umbrellas at the scene, under the dripping trees – held the coin inside a plastic bag. Not that there was likely to be such a thing as a fingerprint on it after its interment in that fine, chalky, abrasive soil, grains of which clogged the indentations on its surface. Once Mavrikiev was out of there and they had taken the photographs, he was going to have to do what he dreaded: make his way to Ollerton Avenue and tell the Akandes. He must do it himself, he knew that. He couldn’t send Vine or even Burden to do the job for him. Since Melanie had been reported missing he had gone daily to see the doctor and his wife, had missed only the day he had met Akande by chance in the street. He had turned himself into their friend and he knew he had done this because they were black. Their race and their colour merited his special attention, yet this was not as it should be. Ideally, if he truly practised what being unprejudiced was all about, he would have treated them the same as any other parents of a missing child. Later that day the reckoning was coming for him. Mavrikiev lifted a flap of the tarpaulin and came out. There was some assistant of his at hand to hold an umbrella over him. It was incredible, Wexford could hardly believe his eyes, but the pathologist was going to say nothing to him, was making straight for his waiting Jaguar. ‘Dr Mavrikiev!’ he said. The man was quite young, fair, with a washed-out Nordic look. Forbears from the Ukraine probably, Wexford guessed, as he turned round and said, ‘Mister. Mister Mavrikiev.’ Wexford swallowed his wrath. Why were they always so rude? This one was the worst of the lot. ‘Can you give me an idea when she died?’

  Mavrikiev looked as if he might ask for Wexford
’s credentials. He pushed out his lips and scowled. ‘Ten days. Maybe more. I’m not a magician.’ No, you’re a real bastard . . . ‘And the cause of death?’ ‘Nobody shot her. She wasn’t strangled. She wasn’t buried alive.’ He ducked into his car and slammed the door. Didn’t like being called out on a wet Saturday night, no doubt. Who did? Wouldn’t like doing a postmortem on a Sunday either, but that was too bad. Burden came stumbling across the slippery wet scrub, his coat collar turned up, his hair dripping, no umbrella for him. ‘Have you seen her?’ Wexford shook his head. He didn’t feel anything any more about looking on the dead who have met their death by violence, not even on the decomposing dead. He was used to it and you can get used to anything. In some ways fortunately, his sense of smell wasn’t what it had once been. He ducked under the tarpaulin and looked at her. No one had covered her, she wasn’t even decently covered with a sheet, but lay sprawled on her back, still in a reasonable state of preservation. The face, particularly, was very nearly intact. Even in death, after days of death and interment, she looked very young. The black patches on her dark skin, notably the sticky black mass on the side of her hair, might have been decay or they might have been bruises. He didn’t know but Mavrikiev would. One of her arms lay at an odd angle and he wondered if it could have been broken before death. Out in the rain again he drew a long breath. ‘He said ten days or more,’ said Burden. ‘That would be about right.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Back to Tuesday week’s eleven days. If whoever brought her here came in a car they didn’t bring the car in here off the road. Of course she may have been alive when she got here. He may have killed her here. Want me to attend the postmortem? He says nine in the morning. I will if you like. I just shan’t speak to Mavri-whatsit unless he speaks to me.’ ‘Thanks, Mike,’ said Wexford. ‘I’d rather go to the PM than do what I’ve got to do tonight.’ Ten minutes to nine and still light in that grim hopeless way only a wet summer evening in England can be. It was hard to tell whether it was rain falling or just water dripping from the trees. The air was still and heavy and the humidity hung as a cold whitish vapour. No lights were on in the house but that meant nothing. Dusk had barely come. Wexford rang the bell and almost immediately a light came on in the hall and another in the porch above his head. The boy who opened the door he recognized at once as the Akandes’ son who had been in the photograph with Melanie. Wexford introduced himself. The boy being there made things worse, he thought, but better perhaps for the parents. One child was left to comfort them. ‘I’m Patrick. My mother and father are in the back, we’re finishing supper as a matter of fact. I only got home today and I’ve been sleeping. I didn’t wake up till an hour ago.’ To forewarn him or not? ‘I’m afraid the news is bad.’ ‘Oh.’ Patrick looked at him, then away. ‘Yes, well, you must see my parents.’ At the sound of their voices Raymond Akande had risen from the table and was standing there, looking towards the door, but Laurette remained where she was, sitting very upright, both hands lying on the cloth on either side of a plate with orange segments on it. Neither of them said anything. ‘I have bad news for you, Dr Akande, Mrs Akande.’

  The doctor drew in his breath. His wife silently turned her head in Wexford’s direction. ‘Will you sit down, please, doctor? I expect you can guess what I’ve come to tell you.’ The tiny tremor of Akande’s head signified a nod. ‘Melanie’s body has been found,’ Wexford said. ‘That is, we are as certain as we can be without a positive identification that this is Melanie.’ Laurette beckoned her son. ‘Come and sit down again, Patrick.’ Her voice was quite steady. She said to Wexford, ‘Where was she found?’ How much he had hoped they wouldn’t ask! ‘In Framhurst Woods.’ Leave it there, don’t ask any more. ‘Was her body buried?’ Laurette asked relentlessly. ‘How did they know where to dig?’ Patrick put his hand on his mother’s arm. ‘Mum, don’t.’ ‘How did they know where to dig?’ ‘People go up there with metal detectors looking for treasure like the Framhurst Hoard. One of them found her.’ He thought of the bruises and the broken arm, the matted blackness on the skull, but she didn’t ask the question so he had had no need to lie. Instead, ‘We knew she must be dead,’ she said. ‘Now we really know. What’s the difference?’ There was a difference and it lay in the presence of hope and its absence. Everyone in the room knew that. Wexford pulled out the fourth chair from the table and sat down on it. He said, ‘It is probably no more than a formality but I must ask you to come and make an identification of the body. You’d be the best person, doctor.’ Akande nodded. He spoke for the first time and his voice was unrecognizable. ‘Yes. All right.’ He went over to his wife and stood by her chair but he didn’t touch her. ‘Where?’ he said, ‘And what time?’ Now? Let them try to get a night’s sleep first. Mavrikiev would want to do the postmortem early but it might take a long time. ‘We’ll send a car for you. Say one- thirty?’ ‘I should like to see her,’ said Laurette. You would no more say to this woman that it was better not, that it was an anguish no mother should be put through, than you’d say it to Medea or Lady Macbeth. ‘Just as you wish.’ She said nothing more to him but turned her face towards Patrick, who must have read there some rare sign of weakness or sensed an early warning that her control would break. He put his arms round his mother and held her tightly. Wexford left the room and let himself out of the house. If those stripped raw features had been less unmistakeable, he would have failed to recognize the pathologist. And this had nothing to do with the grisly disguise supplied by a green rubber gown and cap. Mavrikiev was a changed man. Such violent mood swings are rare in normal people and Wexford wondered what cataclysmic event had so soured him the evening before or piece of good fortune recently cheered him up. One of the oddest things was that he behaved at first as if he had never encountered either policeman before. ‘Good morning, good morning. Andy Mavrikiev. How d’you do? I’m not anticipating this being a long job.’ He got to work. Wexford wasn’t inclined to watch closely. The sound of the saw on a skull, the sight of the removal of organs, though not sickening to him, were not particularly interesting. Burden watched everything, as he had watched Sir Hilary

  Tremlett’s operations on Annette Bystock, and asked a stream of questions, all of which Mavrikiev seemed happy to answer. Mavrikiev talked all the time and not only about the remains on the table. Although he scarcely offered it as an explanation of his contrast in mood, it was an explanation. At five on the previous morning his wife had gone into labour with their first child. A difficult delivery was expected and Mavrikiev had hoped to be with her throughout, but the call to Framhurst Heath had come just as the question was being debated: continue to wait and hope for a normal delivery or perform a caesarean? ‘I wasn’t best pleased, as you can imagine. Still, I was back in time to see Harriet made comfortable with an epidural and a healthy baby delivered.’ ‘Congratulations,’ said Wexford. ‘What was it?’ ‘A nice little girl. Well, a nice big girl, nearly ten pounds. You see this? Know what it is? It’s a ruptured spleen, that’s what it is.’ When he had finished, the body on the slab – or rather the face, for the poor empty body was now entirely concealed under plastic sheeting – looked a good deal better than when first unearthed. It even appeared as if decomposition was less advanced, for Mavrikiev had done an undertaker’s job as well as a pathologist’s. The dreadful confrontation awaiting the Akandes would be less harrowing. He pulled off his gloves. ‘I’ll revise what I said last night. I said ten days or a bit more, didn’t I? I can do better than that. Twelve days at least.’ Wexford nodded, not surprised. ‘What did she die of?’ ‘I told you her spleen was ruptured. There’s a fracture of the ulna and a fracture of the radius on the left side – that’s the arm, the left arm. She didn’t die of that. She was very thin. Could have been a bulimic. Contusions all over her body. And a massive cerebral embolism – bloodclot in the brain to you. I’d say the chap beat her to death. I don’t think an instrument was used, just his fists and maybe his feet.’ ‘You can kill someone with your fists?’ said Burden. ‘Sure. If you’re a big strong guy. Think
of boxers. And then think of a boxer doing to a woman what he does to an opponent, only without gloves. See what I mean?’ ‘Oh, yes.’ ‘She was just a kid,’ said Mavrikiev. ‘Late teens?’ ‘Older than that,’ said Wexford. ‘Twenty-two.’ ‘Really? You surprise me. Well, I must get out of this gear and be on my way as I’ve a luncheon date with Harriet and Zenobia Helena. It was nice meeting you gentlemen. You’ll get my report pronto and soonest.’ Burden said when he had gone, ‘Zenobia Helena Mavrikiev. What does it sound like?’ The question was rhetorical but Wexford answered it. ‘A maidservant in one of Tolstoy’s stories.’ He cast up his eyes. ‘Bit better than last night, wasn’t he, but what an insensitive bugger! My God, it got up my nose a bit, him on about his daughter and the Akandes’ daughter’s ruptured spleen all in the same breath.’ ‘At least he doesn’t make sick jokes like Sumner-Quist.’ Wexford found himself incapable of eating any lunch. This departure of appetite, rare for him, seemed to please Dora who was always trying by subtle or direct means to make him eat less. But it excited wondering comment from Sylvia and her family who had invited themselves to lunch, as was increasingly their habit on a Sunday. Today he could have done without their company. Now that the novelty of being, so to speak, the family’s breadwinner was starting to wear off, Sylvia had fallen into the irritating habit of pointing out one thing after another