The Babes in the Wood

by Ruth Rendell

  Stocking up for Christmas? said the bad pun on a winking neon sign spanning the Kingsbrook Bridge. Once it would have said Five ShoppingDays to Christmas, but all days were shopping days now. Had the sign been there earlier and he hadn’t noticed? Probably he hadn’t noticed the decorations in the High Street either, the customary symbols, angels, fir trees, bells, old men with beards in funny hats. This lot, executed in red, green, and white lights, seemed more than usually tasteless. What hadn’t been there earlier was the poster headed MISSING FROM HOME with two color photographs of Giles and Sophie under it. He didn’t recognize the phone number. It wasn’t a local one but probably belonged to a dedicated line opened by Search and Find Limited. For some reason it made him cross, exacerbating his anger with himself for so far failing to buy any presents. Would he and Dora be expected to buy something for Callum Chapman? The usual Christmas panic seized him. But, really, it was only for Dora he had to buy. All the rest she would have seen to, had probably bought them already and wrapped them as exquisitely as usual. He felt a pang of guilt, hoping she liked doing this, hadn’t been only pretending to like it all these years.

  The film showing at the cinema was too appropriate: What Women Want. They never seemed to want anything he bought them. He went into the Kingsbrook Center, walking slowly, catching sight of more “Missing from Home” posters, then staring bemusedly at displays of clothes, handbags, small ridiculous bric-a-brac “for the woman who has everything,” at bottles of perfume, tights, absurd, mind-boggling underwear. Into this boutique he went. Burden was standing at the counter, making what looked like a knowledgeable choice.

  “Snap,” said Wexford, but he felt better. Mike would know. He would probably know more than Wexford himself what other men’s wives liked or wore. He might even know what size other men’s wives were. With a sigh of relief he gave himself into the inspector’s keeping.

  Chapter 12

  PETER BUXTON’S IDEA OF MARRIAGE had never been that the two people in question should live in one another’s pockets. He had been married before. His first wife and he hadn’t exactly lived separate lives, but they had individually had their own interests and pursuits and often went out without the other. That was where the rot started, Sharonne said, that was what went wrong. Her beliefs were quite different.

  Her husband needed her support and counsel, an ever-present voice in his ear uttering words of wisdom and prudence. Without her he would be lost. She didn’t even care to have him sit next to someone else at a dinner party lest his indiscreet behavior and unwise words land him in trouble. It wasn’t that she was jealous or even particularly possessive. Her absolute confidence in her appearance, sexual attractions, and personality saw to that. In her own eyes, she was there to look after him every minute of the day except when he was in Trafalgar Square, and then she phoned frequently. Her power over him consisted in a need for her which she had largely manufactured herself. She had set out to mold him into the pattern of the man she wanted and all she had failed to do was stop him drinking.

  Almost all. Such is human nature that few people are willing prisoners for long. Peter didn’t want to escape from his marriage. He was pleased with his marriage and proud of his wife. When she had two or three babies she would transfer her bossiness and need to be needed to them. He didn’t want permanent escape, only the chance to get away for a few hours. To be by himself, an individual, not one of a pair, half of the entity that is marriage, and he only wanted it for a little while.

  Another weekend had gone by and another. Sharonne shopped for Christmas and he shopped for Sharonne. As well as her “big” present she liked him to prepare a stocking full of goodies: perfume, expensive little makeup gimmicks, an eighteen-carat gold key ring, pearl ear studs. She appeared to have forgotten all about the blue car in the quarry, what was inside it and the smell. They never discussed it, not a word had been said about it by either of them since they left Passingham Hall that Sunday afternoon. Sharonne no doubt believed he had taken her advice to heart and, as she had, decided to forget the car, let it remain where it was until branches and brambles and ferns grew over it, rust corroded its bodywork, and the things inside decayed and dissolved until bones only remained. Until time absorbed and neutralized that terrible smell.

  He hadn’t forgotten it. By now he was thinking about the car almost all the time. He thought about it at meetings, at conferences, while Christmas shopping, while viewing new productions, when he was on-line, and when he was signing contracts. The only way to rid himself of the monstrous fantasy that the car was the size of a bus, filling the quarry, and that the smell was wafting across the countryside like poison gas, was to go down there, see for himself, and maybe—maybe— do something about it. But how, without Sharonne knowing?

  He was, after all, the boss. If he didn’t want to go to the midweek conference, no one could reproach him. Certainly—unless the threatened takeover happened—no one could fire him. He had only to say he had another, more important, engagement. But Sharonne would phone. His assistant wouldn’t disturb him in conference unless the message was urgent but he wouldn’t be in conference, he’d be on the way to the M2. If Sharonne asked where the other engagement was, the assistant could say she didn’t know, she wouldn’t know because it didn’t exist, but Sharonne would play merry hell. In the event, things turned out quite differently from what he expected. They usually do. He told his wife he had a meeting with an important investor in Basingstoke and he’d be out of London most of the morning and over lunchtime. She didn’t even ask who it was or for a phone number. She was having her hair done at ten and afterward going to a fashion show.

  The company, or those he bothered to tell, got a different story. A funeral in Surrey. His driver got quite pushy and insistent when Peter said he wouldn’t be needing him or the Bentley but would drive himself. Such a thing was unheard-of. When Peter said his own car needed the run, it hadn’t been out of the garage for three weeks, Antonio offered to drive it down to Godalming. His employer, forced into a corner, was obliged to say weakly that he wanted to be alone to think.

  He hadn’t been alone in the Mercedes since he bought it eighteen months before. At first, being alone and at the wheel was quite pleasant, but after a time, when there were queues and hold-ups and road-works, he began to miss someone to talk to about the traffic, someone to tell him how much worse it was than last year and that she blamed the government. But at last he had a clear run ahead of him, he left the main road, entered the lane and just before midday the narrower one that was the approach to Passingham Hall. Although it was a chilly day, he lowered the car window and sniffed the air. No smell, nothing. Had he really thought there would be? Up here? Of course he had, his fears had troubled his days and horribly haunted his nights. Now, because there was no smell and none as he ascended the lane toward the house, hope seized him, a hope he knew was absurd and irrational, that the car had gone, had sunk into the wet ground or been towed away into the field. He even half convinced himself that he had imagined it all. After all, no one else had seen it, this whole terror depended on something that might be a hallucination . . .

  Although he could have parked at the point where the track turned off, he went on all the way down to the house. Now he was here he felt a craven need to put off investigating the quarry. For of course it hadn’t been a hallucination, nor had he imagined it. He got slowly out of the car, sniffed the air. If he didn’t do something about that car he would spend his time down here sniffing the air, it would become an indispensable part of life at Passingham Hall. Arrive, park, sniff. Get up in the morning, go outside, sniff . . . He changed his shoes for rubber boots and began to walk along the lane. And then a very awkward thing happened. He had forgotten all about the farmer’s shed in the field, but there the farmer was, standing on its roof, lopping off overhanging tree branches with a chainsaw. Avoiding him was impossible. Rick Mitchell saw Peter, raised one hand, and called out, “Long time no see. You okay, then?” Peter nodded, waved vaguel
y. At the turn-off to the track, out of the farmer’s sight, he once more lifted his head, breathed in through his nose, and again. Nothing. If it really wasn’t there he would have to see a psychiatrist, for this was serious stuff. Behind him, the chainsaw began to rattle and whine.

  Of course it was there. A small, dark blue car lying on its side, emitting through its open window that terrible stench. He could smell it here all right and he was twenty feet above it. Should he go down a bit, go nearer, take a look inside?

  The sides of the quarry were a cliff of small landslides, tree roots, brambles, dead bracken, and loose broken sticks. Treacherous sticks you might mistake for a root, step on and be sent flying. Peter began to climb down gingerly. The timber was slippery with wet, blackened moss. Once he made a mistake and grabbed on to what looked like a root but turned out to be a lopped-off branch. He slid, let out a sound halfway between a cry and a curse, but seized on to a growing root this time and came to a halt. From there he looked down once more. Inside the car he could see something blue, which might have been a denim garment, and he could see a hand, a pale, long-fingered hand.

  That was it. He wasn’t going any nearer. That was one of those children. He began to climb back. Going up was easier than getting down. He was more aware of the pitfalls and dangers now. At the top he tried to wipe his muddy hands on damp grass, withdrew them sharply when his finger came into contact with a three-inch-long slug. Standing up, looking up, he saw something that made him catch his breath. Rick Mitchell was coming toward him along the path from the lane.

  “You okay?” called Mitchell when he was within earshot. It was a favorite phrase of his. “I heard you shout out. You’re all over mud.”

  Peter cursed that involuntary cry. He knew it was all up now. He could no longer pretend there was nothing down there. Mitchell was sniffing now, approaching the quarry edge. “What’s that stink?”

  Coming clean at last, Peter said, “You see that car? There’s a body in it—well, two, I think.”

  “It’s those missing kids.” Mitchell was awe-stricken. He took a step backward, then two steps. “What made you look? You haven’t been down here for weeks, have you?” He answered his own question. “The smell, I suppose. Good thing you came down. Piece of luck.”

  Peter turned and began to walk back along the path. Mitchell beside him asked if he was okay and began offering helpful advice. Phone the police. Get on to them now. Did Peter have a mobile on him? If not, he did. He’d stay with him, give him some support. Peter said he’d prefer to make the phone call from the house. “Don’t let me keep you,” he said. “I can handle it. There’s no need for you to get involved.”

  Mitchell shook his head. “My pleasure. I wouldn’t leave you to handle this alone.” He was evidently dying to play a part in the unfolding drama. It would beat messing about with a chainsaw any day. Incredibly, as they came into the lane, he said chattily, “What you doing for Christmas? You and Mrs. Buxton coming down for a day or two or have you got plans for living it up in London?”

  Resisting the temptation to say that he felt like never setting foot in Passingham St. John again, Peter said they’d be in London. He stared at the house. It looked unkempt, untended, even neglected, the way a place will when no one goes near it for weeks on end but a cleaner longing to get the job done and go home. No Christmas tree in the drawing room window, no lights, though it was a gloomy day. Followed by Mitchell, he went up the shallow flight of steps on the right-hand side, unlocked the front door on its three locks, and let them in.

  Cold inside. Very cold. What had happened to the efficient central heating, set to come on daily at 9 A.M. and go off at 9 P.M.?

  “I’d have thought you’d keep the heating on,” said Mitchell.

  “We do. It must have gone wrong.”

  Ostentatiously, to set an example to Mitchell, he took off his boots on the doormat, but the farmer who wore sneakers by now caked with mud, kept them on. He tramped across the hall floor. Peter tried not to look at the footmarks. Trapped as he was, he knew the best thing was to do it and get it over. Sharonne’s Christmas would be ruined and therefore his. Why hadn’t he thought more carefully before coming down today? But he had thought, he had done nothing but think about that bloody car for weeks, he had thought to the exclusion of everything that should more usefully and profitably have occupied his mind. He picked up the phone receiver, realized he had no idea of the number of the local police, and he turned to his helper.

  “Zero-one-eight-nine-two . . .” Mitchell began. He knew it off by heart. He would.

  They came, two uniformed officers, both men, and they asked Peter to show them where the car was. The sergeant knew Rick Mitchell and was very matey with him, asking after his family and what he was going to do for Christmas. Neither officer seemed to find the farmer’s presence irksome. When the car had been pointed out to them they suggested that Peter go back to the house to “avoid a repetition of your unpleasant experience, sir.”

  Peter felt he had no choice. He sat at the table in the icy kitchen and asked himself what he would have done if Mitchell hadn’t turned up. Nothing, he thought now, nothing. He’d have left the car where it was and gone home. After a moment or two he got up, switched on the oven to its fullest heat and opened its door. This reminded him of his early days when he’d lived in a bedsitter with “kitchen area” and putting on the oven had sometimes been the only way to heat the place. Sitting down again, he tried to phone Pauline and then the central-heating engineer. Both had switched their phones on to an answering service. Conveniently forgetting his own roots, Peter thought things had come to a pretty pass in this country when cleaning women had cars and answering machines.

  Half an hour had passed before the police—and Mitchell—came back. All three commented on the cold and the fact that his oven was on, but neither officer seemed to see this as a reason for Peter not to hold himself in readiness indefinitely at Passingham Hall for phone calls and for more police to come.

  “I have to go back to London.”

  “I’m sure there’s no reason why you shouldn’t go back this evening, sir,” said the sergeant.

  His subordinate suggested it would give Peter the chance, “hopefully,” to get his heating seen to. “I want to go back now,” said Peter.

  “Afraid not. This is a case for the CID. Very likely the pathologist will want to see the, er, the site. Then equipment will have to be brought in to remove the vehicle.”

  “What’s in it?” Peter asked.

  “That I’m not at liberty to tell you at this stage,” said the sergeant.

  He asked Mitchell the same question when the police had gone. It struck him as ludicrous that this busybody of a neighbor might know more about a car with bodies in it on his land than he did. “Better leave that to the police, don’t you think?” said Mitchell officiously, a smug look on his face. “It’s down to them to tell you when they think fit.” This made Peter believe they hadn’t let Mitchell get near the car. “Perishing in here, isn’t it? I’ll get off home for my dinner. Now can I get the wife to bring you down something? Maybe a pizza or a slice of her quiche?”

  “I shall be fine.” Peter spoke through clenched teeth. Like cleaners with answering machines, the world was turned upside down when peasants like this one were eating pizza and quiche. “Please don’t bother.”

  “Thanks for all your help, Rick,” said Mitchell, taking his leave. “Have to say it yourself when no one else will, don’t you?”

  Muddy footprints were all over the kitchen floor. Like most householders today who employ a limited staff, Peter was always afraid of losing Pauline. She wouldn’t like cleaning up mud a few days before Christmas. He almost got down on his hands and knees to wipe it up. He would have done but for hearing a mechanical tune tinkling out. Such was his nervous state that for a moment he didn’t know why someone was playing “Sur le pont d’Avignon” in his kitchen at ten past noon. Then he realized and took the mobile out of his jacket pocket. I
t was Sharonne.

  “Where have you been, Peter? I’ve been trying all over, the office, some place where they thought you’d be. They said you’d gone to a funeral. Where are you?”

  He didn’t answer. “Is it important, er, darling?”

  “That depends on whether you want the pipes at Passingham to freeze if we get a cold snap. Pauline’s been on to say the heating’s gone off and she can’t start it. Where are you?”

  It was a let-out. He could say . . . Ideas for what he could say came thronging. “I’m in Guildford. Look, why don’t I get over to the Hall and see what I can do? I’ve got an hour or two to spare.” He’d say the smell was so bad he’d had to tell the police . . . “I may be able to fix the heating myself.”

  “Promise to call me back, Peter.”

  “Of course I will.”

  He had recourse to the drinks cupboard and, indulging in something he knew was a step down the road to ruin, gulped down quite a lot of neat whisky out of the bottle. Then he went upstairs and opened the cupboard where the boiler lived. The front cover lifted off, a switch pressed, a flame struck and maintained, and the heating was on again. This is the kind of thing that cheers one up, going a long way to show that one merits a degree in gas engineering. The radiators chugged and bubbled, and the place began to warm up. He wouldn’t phone Sharonne back yet. Better let her think he’d had to work on the system for an hour or two. The front doorbell and the phone rang simultaneously as he was coming downstairs. Phone first. It was a man called Vine from Kingsmarkham Crime Management.

  “Hold on a minute,” said Peter.

  At the front door were two uniformed police officers. In their car, on the forecourt, sat a silver-haired man in a camel coat.

  “Lord Tremlett is here, sir.”