by Ruth Rendell
Will remained silent, his face not so much inscrutable as empty. The last Inez saw of them as Becky drove off along Star Street was his head and shoulders in profile, expressionless, rigid and inanimate as the marble bust Freddy had tried to sell to Anwar Ghosh.
Quite properly at this hour, the shop was closed. Inez let herself in and found on the desk a note from Freddy, written in marker pen, smeary and fingermarked: Custermer that bawt grandad clock say does not work, pen-dullum funny, will bring back tomorer. Luv, Freddy.
Freddy himself was certainly responsible for damage to the clock. There was nothing she could do about it tonight. She checked that the front door was once more locked, left the note where it was and went out into the back hall. The wheelie-bin that lived in the backyard had to be out in the front for the rubbish collection before eight in the morning. Inez was weary but she knew she’d have to do it. The backdoor was locked and the key in the lock as usual. Only it wasn’t quite as usual. The key, with its asymmetrical head, could be turned once to lock it or one and a half times, in which case it would still be locked. From habit or some compulsion, she always turned it one and a half times. When that was done the hole in its uneven-sided head would be at the bottom; given one and a half turns, at the top. Freddy must have gone outside for something, that was all. That made two things to ask Freddy about tomorrow …
CHAPTER 15
Not anticipating the worst, Becky had done nothing to prepare her study for Will’s reception. It was as she had left it two days before, the laptop open, books and papers strewn about, waste paper basket half full. She told herself she must be optimistic. This trauma and its effects would pass, he would regain the power of speech and within a few days return home to Star Street. It surely wasn’t necessary to remove all her things from the room and refurnish it. Becky knew that however you guarded your privacy, if you lived in London you must have somewhere for a friend to sleep in an emergency, and the sofa already in there was designed to convert into a comfortable bed. Having led Will up the staircase and into the flat, providing him with tea and cakes, she set about converting the bed. It was a more difficult task, requiring greater physical strength, than she remembered, and when it was done she thought how it wasn’t something she would want to do often.
The desk and the workstation with computer and printer could remain where they were. And the photocopier, the dictionaries, the paper shredder and the large wicker basket. If she had to take the chairs and the table out she would have to find somewhere to put them. Where? There really wasn’t room in the rest of the flat.
Will was sitting in silence in the living room. He had eaten the meringue but left the piece of fruit cake—unheard of for him. He didn’t smile at her, he didn’t even look up. Roundly, but in her mind, she cursed the police officers who had done this to him. After a while, a despairing few minutes, she switched on the television to one of the noisy quizzes he usually so much enjoyed. This time he did raise his head. He fixed his eyes on the screen but it seemed to her that the loud voices and raucous singing of the group who diverted viewers from intellectual effort every few minutes, made him flinch a little, and she wondered painfully if for some reason these people reminded him of Crippen’s and Jones’s barked enquiries.
At least he was occupied. She got up to pour herself a drink—had she ever needed one so much?—and crossing to the cabinet noticed the light on the phone. In the horror of it she had forgotten her earlier stress and the message left for James. Now she was almost afraid of what might be waiting for her. But she lifted the receiver and listened to her messages. One was from Inez, another from Keith Beatty wanting to know where Will was. The third was from James.
‘Becky,’ he said, ‘it’s James. You asked me to call you, but I’ve tried your mobile and it’s always engaged.’ That would have been in the afternoon when she was making all those calls to the office from the police station. ‘I’m sorry I left that day. It’s been on my conscience and then when I decided to phone you I thought you’d be too angry to speak to me. I’ll call you at nine tonight, Thursday the twenty-fifth, and maybe we can meet.’
Absolutely plausible, quite reasonable. She ought to be elated, she would have been if he had called before lunchtime. With a second drink in her hand because she had gulped down the first one on hearing the message, she sat down beside Will once more. He put one hand up to his lips and she knew he was trying to tell her he couldn’t speak, he didn’t know why, the words wouldn’t come.
‘Never mind,’ she said cheerfully. ‘You’ll be able to talk again. Tomorrow, I expect. Don’t worry about it. Look, there’s that man on the TV you like.’
To her horror, she saw that his eyes had filled with tears. She took his hand, squeezed it, sat there thinking of his plight and, equally, of her own. James was forgotten. If Will’s speech didn’t come back, or didn’t come back for weeks, what was she going to do? She couldn’t go to work and leave him here alone. Could she even go out to the shops? A carer? But Will would hate a carer, would be made worse by anyone being here but herself.
She phoned Keith Beatty, told him Will was unwell, wouldn’t be in again before Monday. She heard Will go to the bathroom and shuffle back a few minutes later. Her drink on the kitchen counter, she stood in front of the fridge, looking for something to give him for dinner. Eggs, bacon, mushrooms, she supposed, and there were always chips she could defrost. A can of fruit, ice cream, more cake if he wanted it. Luckily, she had already got the cakes in for the visit he had been due to make next day. Not only James, but his nine o’clock phone call were forgotten. She piled food on the tray for Will. For herself she could fancy nothing but she sat with him while the worst television could offer that evening dribbled out of the screen.
At nine sharp the phone rang and getting up to answer it, she wondered before she heard his voice, who it could be.
No one returns to work after an illness on a Friday, but Zeinab did. As she was half an hour late as usual she wasn’t expected and Freddy was taking her place. An hour before Jeremy Quick had come in for his tea and when Inez handed it to him she asked if he had been out into the garden before she came home the previous evening.
‘I thought tenants weren’t permitted to use your garden, Inez.’
‘They’re not but people do strange things around here.’
‘I hope you don’t think I’m one of them,’ said Jeremy, looking genuinely shocked.
Inez didn’t quite like to say he was—what could be stranger than inventing a girl friend and her aged mother?—as quarrelling with a tenant wasn’t the happiest start to the day. Briefly, she wondered if he flinched from any woman’s touch or if it was just hers. ‘Someone did.’ She wasn’t going to tell him how she knew. A few secret weapons were always required by a woman in her position. ‘Someone went out there between three in the afternoon and six thirty when I got back.’
‘Is it important?’ He asked his question gently but still Inez didn’t like it. Of course it wasn’t important to him.
‘Perhaps not. Shall we change the subject?’
‘Gladly.’
‘I suppose you’ve heard that the police found Jacky Miller’s earrings in this shop?’
The change in his expression was tiny but, observant woman that she was, Inez noticed it, the minutest twitch to his lips, a point of light in each eye. ‘Jacky Miller?’ he said.
‘The missing girl, the one they’re searching for.’
‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘I must go. Thank you for the tea.’
Freddy came soon after he went. ‘Another glorious day, Inez.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘It makes you glad to be alive.’
‘Possibly. Did you go out into the garden yesterday afternoon, Freddy?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Freddy obsequiously. ‘Tenants aren’t allowed.’
‘But since you aren’t a tenant, perhaps the rules don’t apply to you?’
‘As you say, Inez.’ Freddy sat down on the arm of the grey velvet chair and wagged
one finger like the needle on a metronome. ‘As you say, I am not a tenant. Ludo is the tenant. I am domiciled in Walthamstow.’ Inez eyed him suspiciously, almost sure that last time it had been Hackney. ‘But still I regard myself as Ludo’s representative. Or perhaps her agent. In other words, if she had an urgent need to go out into the garden but no wish or ability to do so it is possible I might do so for her. I hope I make myself clear. On the other hand, yesterday I did not go out into the garden, nor would I …’
‘All right, Freddy, that’s fine. You ought to have been called to the bar. Unlock the door, would you, and turn round the sign?’
If Inez had asked Ludmila the question she had asked Freddy she might have been told about Anwar Ghosh. Ludmila hated Anwar for various reasons, his scorning of herself, as a possible rival in Freddy’s affections and his treating her as a shop minder. She would happily have made trouble for him. But Inez rather disliked Ludmila and never spoke to her unless it was essential. Not because of any diffidence but to avoid more long-winded speeches and explanation, she postponed asking Freddy about the pendulum on the grandfather clock but pondered instead whether she should take it back meekly or refuse to refund the money paid for it.
A few minutes after nine she phoned Becky to enquire after Will.
‘I never thanked you for coming with me yesterday, Inez. It was very kind and I am grateful.’
‘How is he today?’
‘Well, he’s up and he’s eaten his breakfast. He still doesn’t speak.’
‘Will you be able to manage?’
‘I hope so. I’m going to phone the office in a minute and say I’ll take a week of my leave. I’m hoping a week will be enough, Inez.’
She sounded a lot less despairing, Inez thought. Next she planned on phoning Mrs Sharif to enquire when Zeinab would be coming back, but instead she sat thinking about the oddities of the people she daily encountered and wondering particularly what Will had really been doing digging up a garden in Queens Park. It was impossible, even in his case, to imagine any law-abiding motive. Though you might be somewhat … well, intellectually handicapped, you surely didn’t go after dark to an empty house in a district you didn’t know and where no one knew you and dig a deep hole—three feet deep, one of the officers had told her—if you were an honest person. You didn’t, since you hadn’t money to spare, buy a spade for that sole purpose. And what had he hoped to dig out of the hole or, perhaps more to the point, put into it? She shivered a little and thoughts of Will’s activities brought her back to her own garden, the back door and the key.
Someone had gone out there and, whoever it was, it couldn’t have been Will. Was it possible that the last time she had been in the garden, probably a week ago, she had turned that key only once instead of one and a half times? She was asking herself this question, examining her memory, when the street door swept open and Zeinab came in, escorted by Morton Phibling.
‘Here is my beloved,’ declaimed Morton, ‘turned up like a bad penny, though it goes against the grain to call so much beauty a bad anything.’
Zeinab gave him a look which might have denoted disgust or merely resignation to an inevitable fate. She appeared to be very well, blooming with health in a new black suede skirt some ten inches above her knees and a new white silk shirt, her eyelids painted gold and the diamond nose stud in place. Her black hair, newly washed and smelling of tuberose, hung down her back like a satin cloak.
‘What do you think of my engagement gift?’ Morton laid a finger like a pork sausage on a diamond, roughly the size of the koh-i-noor, which hung from a gold chain round Zeinab’s neck. ‘Beautiful, eh?’
‘Very beautiful,’ said Inez. ‘I don’t want to put a dampener on things but I don’t think you should wear that out in the street around here.’
‘Oh, I shan’t. I was OK in Mort’s car. Mort took me for a fitting for my wedding dress yesterday, Inez.’
‘Really? I thought you had a virus.’
‘The worst was over by then.’ Zeinab floated a kiss on the air half an inch from Morton’s face. ‘Run along now, darling. I’ll see you tonight.’
‘That’s the first time I’ve seen you wear one of his presents,’ said Inez, ‘apart from your engagement ring. Tell me something. When I phoned your mother you didn’t seem to be there and she said she’d be going round to you later. What did she mean?’
But Zeinab had seen Freddy for the first time and noticed his brown duster coat. He was standing behind Inez’s desk, contemplating the expenditure book. ‘What’s he doing here?’
Freddy looked up and said with dignity but an unfortunate mixing of metaphors, ‘You going sick like that left Inez in a hole and I stepped in.’
Suppressing laughter with difficulty, Inez said, ‘Freddy has been helping me while you were away, that’s all.’
‘All! It looks to me as if some people have been plotting to take away other people’s jobs. I call that a low-down underhand trick.’
Freddy’s life was probably easier now than it had been at any time since he left Barbados when he was an adolescent. Since then he had been dogged by near penury, racist insults, loneliness, callous sackings and utter disrespect. It had done nothing to damage his basically sweet nature but it had taught him how to fight and give as good, or as bad, as he got. ‘And there’s some people,’ he said, ‘who’d sell their own grandfathers for a giro. The last thing they need is jobs when flogging the gifts of same grandfathers with more dosh than’s good for them is all in the day’s work.’
‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that!’
‘A tart is what you are and not even an honest one.’
‘Be quiet,’ said Inez in a voice not to be defied. ‘Be quiet, both of you. I will not have you quarrelling in here.’ They stared at her mutinously but they were silenced. ‘Thank you very much, Freddy, for your help but Zeinab is back now and you know you were only working here in her absence. I’m sure Ludmila will be pleased to have you back with her.’
Slowly Freddy took off his coat and folded it up. ‘First I shall go down the road and enjoy a restorative glass with my friend in the Ranoush Juice. I hope you won’t regret taking that one back, Inez. Me and Ludo wouldn’t like to see your business come to grief through a criminal assistant.’
‘You and that Russian cow would be out on the street if I had my way,’ Zeinab screamed as the door shut after him. ‘You’d know all about criminals, on the Benefit fraud like you are!’
Inez hadn’t sighed for weeks but she sighed now. Until the fracas over Freddy, she had been going to ask exactly where Zeinab lived and with whom, but she was daunted by the prospect of more lies and prevarications. ‘I had better remind you’—as if the girl needed reminding—‘that Monday is the Spring Holiday. Tomorrow, of course, we’ll be opening as usual. So,’ she added, unable to resist, ‘no taking time off for further wedding dress fittings, please.’
‘Oh, Inez, is that fair?’ Zeinab managed to look near to tears. ‘I’ve always done things like that in my free time, haven’t I, or when I was off sick?’
Inez gave up. She could see she had other things to argue about. The street door had opened and the clock complainant was coming in, he and two friends carrying his purchase, which they set down in front of the desk with a bump, causing it to chime resonantly. For form’s sake Inez argued with him a little but in the end it was easier to give him his money back. She’d have it out with Freddy next week.
Zeinab was in front of her favourite mirror, repainting her eyelids. ‘I promise I won’t be more than exactly one hour, Inez, but I did say I’d have lunch with Rowley. It’ll only be the Caffe Uno, I promise.’
‘You’d better not let him see you wearing Morton’s present.’
‘No, I won’t. Pity, though, I do just love it.’
They had a busy morning and the next time Inez looked at her, she had taken off the pendant.
Becky had told him something of her relationship with Will. Someone to talk to about him was all she wan
ted, someone to tell about Will and his childhood and her guilt, an ear to listen even if after five minutes it got bored. She might have imagined the touch of impatience in his voice after less than that.
‘He’s here with me,’ she ended, ‘and I don’t see any prospect of him going anywhere else. And I feel bad enough even thinking like that. I do love him, you see, and I’m so sorry for him and somehow I feel it’s all my fault. I know I shouldn’t drag you into it, so if you like, just say you won’t see me again and I’ll understand.’
‘I thought maybe I could come over tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Maybe in the afternoon around three?’
That had been the previous evening. It cheered her a lot. Even if being with Will frightened him off she would still have been comforted by his phoning and by what he’d said. Into her head came some lines she had once read: Two is not twice one, two is two thousand times one … It went on to say that was why the world would always return to monogamy. She didn’t want monogamy particularly and she certainly didn’t want marriage but the prospect of being two even for just one Saturday afternoon was so inviting that she slept that night without waking.
‘You and your lady friend going somewhere nice for the weekend?’ asked Anwar, perched lightly on a high stool at the counter.
Freddy, next to him and roughly twice his weight, was more precariously balanced. ‘We’ve got ourselves a weekend break at a five-star hotel in Torquay. Very relaxing, Torquay, I’m told.’
‘Depends what you mean by relaxing.’ Anwar put on a serious face and said virtuously, ‘I’m told it’s known as the cocaine capital of Western Europe. When you coming back?’
‘Monday night.’ Anwar hadn’t asked, he was too subtle for that, but Freddy told him just the same, ‘Inez is going to her sister for the day, the diamond geezer on the top floor’ll be at his mum’s and poor William’s at his auntie’s.’
‘Why “poor”?’
Freddy went through the outdated pantomime of tapping the side of his head with two fingers. ‘The Bill knocked him around so now he can’t speak.’