Talking to Strange Men

by Ruth Rendell

  Graham had packed his case before he went off to Ruxeter Road but not put his digital travelling clock in, Mungo noticed. They could do with that, he would remind him when he got back. Strains of Monteverdi filled the house, mixing oddly with the smell of dim sum and black bean sauce hanging on from their supper. Angus was sulking – or going about looking grim and stoical which was his way of sulking – because they couldn’t take his girlfriend Diana with them. He understood of course that this was only because the request to take her hadn’t been made till after their flight and hotel were booked but it was still hard to take when Gail was coming. Gail, in fact, would be staying the night because they were making such an early start in the morning.

  The Chinese takeaway meal having been eaten an hour and a half ago, Mungo went downstairs to find something in the fridge. His mother was making coffee and reading the Lancet while she waited for the kettle to boil. His father paced up and down.

  ‘If anyone had ever told me when I was a young man,’ Fergus was saying more in sorrow it sounded like than in anger, ‘that a request would be made to me for my son’s girlfriend to share a bed with him under my own roof, I would have laughed in derision.’

  ‘Not laughed, darling. Sneered in derision.’

  ‘Well, sneered then. What does it matter? Is this going to go on while we’re in Corfu? Are they to go in the same room? I find it bewildering, I find the assumption bewildering.’

  ‘Times have changed since you were young. I’m always telling you. Anyway, you’re not going to refuse, are you? If you do they’ll only creep about in the middle of the night and you’ll think it’s burglars, you know what you are.’

  ‘I find it so terribly worrying, Lucy. I mean, the assumptions and the possible consequences, the whole concept.’

  ‘Oh, darling, there won’t be a concept, I promise you.’

  Fergus made an impatient gesture. He realized for the first time that his youngest son was in the room. ‘Mungo, I didn’t know you were there. Have you heard what we’ve been saying?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mungo, eating the last slice of a mushroom quiche.

  ‘Well, you must try to put it out of your mind.’ Another awful revelation struck Fergus. ‘You booked, Lucy. You must have booked them a double room.’

  Lucy poured boiling water on to the coffee. ‘If Mungo’s to put it out of his mind you’d better not say any more till he’s gone.’

  Previously uninterested, Mungo began to find the issue intriguing. But the anxious misery on his father’s face swayed the balance. He reached for his mug of coffee. ‘I’m on my way.’

  Angus sat hunched over the computer, a bag of chocolate truffles beside him for comfort.

  ‘There’s coffee for you if you want it,’ Mungo said, adding, ‘Make a bit of noise before you go in though, fall down the stairs or something.’

  Up in his room he studied the latest of Stern’s codes. As always it began and ended with numbers, 9 followed by a row of letters, 1132 to end. The previous two he had read began with a 5 and a 17 respectively and ended with 931 and 1003; the first he had ever seen, the one which appeared after Moscow Centre realized the West was in possession of Guy Parker’s codebook, had begun with a 4 and ended with 817. What did they have in common, those numbers? Nothing much, as far as he could see. The initial numbers were all quite low, the ultimate numbers all quite high. He had never seen an ultimate number below 700, for instance, or come to that anything higher than 1258.

  Could those final digits be house numbers? Only in North America did house numbers come that high. Or phone numbers? That was more likely. But the difficulty with that was that here in the city after the four-digit code you always got a six-digit number, or a completely arbitrary three-digit number following a more or less fixed three-digit number. Well, 931 and 817 might be the last digits of in total ten-digit numbers . . . Mungo went to shut the round window under the eaves. Nights had been cold this past week but they wouldn’t be cold in Corfu. There wouldn’t be clouds there either, there wouldn’t be mountain ranges of vapour, scored with darkness and topped with gold, white foaming glaciers splitting them, green sky like marble appearing between . . . On the other side of the river scaffolding had gone up round the Shot Tower. Was there time for a quick message to Unicorn to find out why and how long for? Probably not. He hadn’t packed yet.

  Round the corner from Hill Street came Graham in the octopus tee shirt, wearing his crazy sunglasses even at this hour, black hair falling down over his forehead. Mungo raised his hand in a salute and Graham waved back. He dropped his cigarette and trod it out.

  6

  NEVER IN HIS life had he felt fear of the police. There had always been the feeling they were on his side and this had specially been true since Cherry’s death. Perhaps the only comfort his parents and he had had was the support of the police, the knowledge that they and the police were united against the man who had broken in and destroyed their happiness. Mark Simms, if only they had known it.

  A middle-aged ordinary-looking man and a young pretty woman. How had he known they were police? For he did know it from the moment they stepped out of that anonymous lamp-less unmarked car. Perhaps it was because the driver remained behind, impassive at the wheel, reminding John of police drivers from that time sixteen years before. But it was of his own intervention in the gang’s activities that he thought as he saw the man open the gate and come up the short path towards the front door. That also told him they were police. Almost anyone else would have opened the gate for the woman with him and let her go first.

  The doorbell rang. Though he knew it must ring, the sound of it still made him jump. He thought, what a fool I have been. They have come to me because of all the men in this city I am the one to have the biggest grudge against Peter Moran, I am his chief enemy. Somehow they have found the message and somehow discovered Peter Moran is unknown to the gang. Things will be worse for me if I tell lies . . .

  Almost the first thing the man said to him, after he had said good evening and that he was Detective Inspector Fordwych, was that there was nothing for him to worry about. His face must have looked worried. They probably said that to you just before they arrested you, it meant nothing. He said to come in and led them into the living room. It was then that he recognized the inspector, or had a vague sense of recognition which only crystallized into certainty when Fordwych said:

  ‘I’ve been in this house before. It was sixteen years ago. I was a DC then. I don’t suppose you remember.’

  ‘I think I do,’ John said.

  Probably he had changed as much as this man had. They were both forty now and if time hadn’t made them fat, it had thickened their muscles and their bones, put grey into their hair, blurred their features and dulled their eyes. By contrast, the girl who had been introduced as Detective Constable Aubrey looked wonderfully young, fair-haired, fresh-faced, buoyant with energy. John looked helplessly from one to the other. He could think of nothing to say and he was already convinced Fordwych would play with him, keeping him in suspense, for minutes before coming to the point.

  ‘May we sit down?’

  John nodded. He was remembering more about Fordwych now. He had been keen and lively in those days, probing whenever he got the chance into every detail of their domestic life, inquiring, intuiting, ambitious seemingly. His ambition had got him promotion but it had not advanced him very high and it hadn’t lifted him out of this backwater.

  ‘I don’t know if you have any idea why we’ve come, Mr Creevey?’

  ‘Should I have?’ It was the cautious reply of the guilty that the police often hear.

  ‘Not if I’ve calculated correctly and there’s been nothing yet in the media.’

  John felt himself close his eyes briefly. He thought, Peter Moran, something has happened to him. For the first time the girl spoke. She had a voice like her face, fresh, earnest, rather intense.

  ‘I expect it’s still painful even after so long.’

  So long? What di
d she mean? Even to someone of her age two days wasn’t very long.

  ‘I’ll explain why we’ve come, Mr Creevey. A man has been arrested in Bristol and charged with the murder of a young woman. The likelihood is that later on he will also be charged with the murder of a second girl and of your sister Cherry.’

  7

  MARK SIMMS, THEY had arrested Mark Simms. John stared at them. He tried to say something but all that happened was a trembling of his lips.

  ‘It’s a shock for you,’ the policewoman said.

  Fordwych was less tender with him. He said in the tone which had once been eager but had become characterless and automatic:

  ‘He’s a man who was living here up until about sixteen years ago. He’d no record, he’d even got a steady job in one of the factories up at Ruxeter. When he left here he spent several years as a voluntary patient in a mental hospital.’

  John said hoarsely, ‘What’s he called?’

  ‘I think I can tell you that. It’ll be in the papers tomorrow. He appeared in court this afternoon. His name is Maitland, Rodney George Maitland. He’s the son of the man who employed your sister.’

  They had charged the wrong man. Out of some reserves of strength John had managed to summon enough voice to ask for the name, but now it was lost again. If he spoke he knew it would come out as a croak. Fordwych was explaining the reason for their visit. To inform him, as Cherry’s only surviving relative, in advance. To warn him he might be asked for further information. To warn him also that he might have to appear as a witness at the Crown Court. John was aware that the girl was looking at him compassionately. Of course she must think he was so bowled over because the business of his sister’s murder was being revived. And he was, he was. But the chief reason for his feeling of total shock was his private knowledge that this Rodney Maitland – a man he thought he had once met, had at any rate seen – must be innocent, at least of Cherry’s murder, for Mark Simms was guilty. He managed to stammer out a question.

  ‘When did you say – when – he’s appearing in court today?’

  ‘In the magistrates’ court, yes. But as I said, it’s likely he’ll go back again to be charged with your sister’s murder.’

  ‘And someone will want to come and – talk to me?’

  ‘Just routine, Mr Creevey. Of course we have your original statement and your parents’ on file. I expect you’ll merely be asked to confirm one or two things.’

  How much did they know of Cherry’s true character? All of it, no doubt. This stolid unimaginative man must know all about her and this sweet-faced girl would know too. I must tell them the truth, John thought, I have no choice. But not yet perhaps, I can wait a day or two, I can think about what I know, weigh it all up. The man they have charged is, after all, probably guilty of the other murders, and he won’t be kept in a remand prison on account of a murder he didn’t commit.

  ‘I’m sorry we’ve given you such a shock, Mr Creevey,’ Fordwych was saying as he got up to go. The words were sympathetic but the expression on his face sardonic. He evidently felt John was a poor thing, not much of a man. These sentiments came out in his exit line. ‘You’ll come to see things differently, I expect, when you’ve pulled yourself together a bit and seen this as a matter of justice being done at last.’

  But Detective Aubrey gave him a sweet smile, wrinkling up her nose a bit as if to say, take no notice, or even, it’ll come all right, really it will.

  8

  THE DIMINUTIVE SIZE and babyish face of her son Charles were a source of pleasure to Gloria Mabledene who was less happy being seen about with her daughter Sarah, a tall well-developed girl. Charles was often taken for no more than eleven and the mother of an eleven-year-old might easily be under thirty. It was a pity he insisted on having his hair cut so short, though. The tips of golden locks, showing incipient curl, tumbled to the floor as Donna snipped away. Charles, seated between a blue-headed seventy-year-old having a perm and a middle-aged redhead undergoing lowlights, demanded coldly in the voice that only this week had disconcertingly begun to lose its treble note:

  ‘Shorter!’

  ‘Darling,’ Gloria wailed, ‘you’re not having a crew cut!’

  She put out one hand, the nails lacquered violet, to stay Donna’s scissors. Charles reached behind and drew from her flowing sleeve string after string of coloured beads, red, blue and yellow plastic, not at all Gloria’s style. She let out a nervous shriek.

  ‘I nearly nicked your ear,’ said Donna. ‘Now you keep still and I’ll be done in two ticks.’

  Charles got down from the chair, well-satisfied with his cropped head. He had come into town with his mother and would either return home with her at five or with his father at six-thirty. It was still quite early. He came out of the salon into Hillbury Place and looked up at the tower which told him the time was nine-twenty-two and the temperature eighteen degrees.

  Three buses an hour went out to Nunhouse. The next one was due at nine-thirty. Charles walked up to the bus stop in Hill Street and the bus, a few minutes early, arrived just as he got there. He sat in the front, on the right-hand side. This meant he would be able to see the flyover drop as the bus passed. There would be a split second during which, as the bus turned left into North Street and thence into the Nunhouse Road, if you knew where to look you could catch a glimpse of the inside of the central upright. It was unlikely anything would be there, for Mungo Cameron had gone away on holiday on Friday and would be away for two weeks, but there was a rare possibility a message might be left for him by Basilisk or Unicorn.

  As it happened the bus went rather fast and took the turn fast but Charles was on the look-out and saw enough to make sure there was nothing taped inside the pillar. He could just remember when the route the bus took was a country road, nine or ten years ago it must have been, but that was all changed now. It was built up with housing estates and shopping malls all the way to Nunhouse. The bus pulled up by the old village green which still remained and Charles got off, looking for Fen Street. He made inquiries of an old lady who called him dear and he feared was going to pat him.

  Number twenty-two was an old house, a cottage really and rather tumbledown. The front garden reminded him of the garden at the back of the safe house, though the nettles weren’t quite so tall. On a patch of relatively bare ground, scattered with gravel, stood a dusty Citroën Diane. Charles looked through a pane of glass in the shack which must serve as garage or wood shed but could see inside no evidence of the occupancy of some near-contemporary of his own. Still, not all teenagers had bicycles or toboggans or footballs or even wellington boots. There was nothing in the shack but a couple of oildrums. Charles went up to the front door, saw there was no bell and tapped on the door knocker. He knew he was being over-bold but he couldn’t think of any other way of entering the place and getting the information he wanted.

  A woman came to the door, dressed as if to go out in a blue leather jacket. She looked at him. She didn’t speak.

  Charles said, ‘Have you any jobs you want doing?’

  She came out on to the doorstep, looked at the car, the weeds, the front gate from which one of the hinges was missing. ‘Hundreds. What can you do and’ – she hesitated – ‘how much would you want?’

  Charles wasn’t anxious to over-exert himself. ‘I could clean the car,’ he said. ‘Two pounds to clean the car.’

  ‘That seems quite reasonable. My – er, there’s someone here who’ll pay you. I have to go to work. I’m late already.’ She retreated into the house, called out, ‘Peter! I’m off. There’s a boy here who’s going to clean the car. Two pounds – OK?’

  Charles couldn’t hear what reply was made. But she had told him what he wanted to know, that someone called Peter lived in the house. Her son presumably, a future Rossingham man, part of the new Lower Fourth intake. She came out, carrying a handbag this time, told him to find a bucket inside, in the kitchen, and went off hurrying down Fen Street.

  The house was better inside. There
was no one about, no teenage boy or father of teenage boy. Charles found the kitchen and a bucket with a wrung-out cloth folded over it. He looked out of the window into the back garden, a similar wilderness. If he could find the boy and have a preliminary word with him he wouldn’t have to clean the car, an activity of which he had no experience apart from seeing it done by the car wash at the works.

  Stairs led up out of a living–dining room. Carrying a bucketful of water, Charles stood at the foot of these stairs looking up and listening. He could hear someone moving about up there. At least he wasn’t alone. Sooner or later this Peter Moran would appear. He set about cleaning the car in a half-hearted sort of way, his thoughts elsewhere, concentrated in fact on magic, or what others called conjuring tricks. It was time he progressed from such simple sleights of hand as producing strings of beads or coloured paper from people’s sleeves. Learning to do card tricks was a good discipline, he had heard. He began swilling water about on the bodywork of the car. The sun had come out and the water dried rapidly in dusty streaks and patches. He thought he heard a window opened upstairs in the house but when he looked up there was nobody there.

  The water in the bucket was dirty now and he emptied it away down a drain. He returned to the house with the empty bucket and met a man coming out from the living room. The man was tallish and fair with lank yellow hair, a fringe of which fell across his forehead, a bony face and dark-framed glasses. His skin had a white unhealthy look. They contemplated each other for a moment and then the man said:

  ‘Is it you she said was cleaning the car?’