by Ruth Rendell
"Caroline Strang phoned here at about twenty-five past eight. You weren’t here."
"Michael took me out to dinner. It’s ridiculous, I know, but I feel guilty about being out when—when whatever was happening to Rachel was happening."
"Did you know about this arrangement with Mrs. Strang?"
Rosemary Holmes said uneasily, "I knew someone was picking her up on the Kingsmarkham Road. She said. I thought it was a ... well, one of the boys she was meeting." Suddenly she burst out, "You can’t stop them doing things, you know. You can’t keep tabs on them all the time." Again she dropped her guard. "I don’t suppose it’s important, I just want to say that we have our problems, Rachel and I. She’s a lovely girl, a really marvelous person and I get on with her fine, but she doesn’t exactly get on with me. I expect that’s quite usual with people her age, isn’t it?"
"Quite usual, Mrs. Holmes," said Karen.
Back in the car Wexford suggested Karen speak to Michael Devonshire, perhaps catch him before his evening surgery. "Though he obviously has an alibi with Rachel’s mother. Do you think it worth taking a second look at that house in Myringham?"
"But Rachel never went near Myringham, sir." Karen sounded surprised.
"So far as we know."
"Surely it’s just coincidence that Lizzie Cromwell went missing the Saturday before last and Rachel Holmes disappeared last Saturday."
"But we don’t like coincidence, do we? We know that when events happen in sequence or according to a pattern, those events are most likely linked."
Karen looked dubious. As well she might, Wexford thought, as well she might. He must rid his mind of tying in one girl’s disappearance with the other’s. There was no point in returning to the derelict house, just as there was no real link between the girls—except for their having attended the same school. Except for their both being young and pretty and unattached and female. Except for their disappearing on successive Saturday nights ... Stop it, he said to himself, but when he encountered Burden at the end of the days work, it was to the Rat and Carrot instead of the Olive and Dove that he suggested they go for their evening drink, a twice weekly event when they could make it.
Burden gave him a sidelong look. "She never got there, you know. Rachel Holmes, I mean. Whatever happened to her happened in Stowerton. Waiting for a bus."
"Like Lizzie Cromwell," said Wexford.
"You’ve no reason to connect the two, none at all. Rachel shouldn’t have been waiting for a bus, we know that, she should have been waiting for a lift. But they’re so dozy, these young girls, they’re as forgetful as old people. Now if Lizzie Cromwell had been found dead and then Rachel Holmes had disappeared, I’d have said, now you’re talking. No, it’s just that you’ve got another one of your obsessions. I thought you’d given all that stuff up, but you haven’t, you’re as bad as ever."
"Can the leopard change his spots?" asked Wexford rhetorically. "Or the Ethiopian his skin?"
"If I’d said that, you’d have called me a racist."
The nearest bus stop to Kingsbrook Valley Drive was at the eastern end of the High Street. From there it was ten minutes’ walk to the Rat and Carrot, an ornate Victorian building on the corner of Kingsbrook Valley Drive and Savesbury Road. The area was mainly residential, but two shops were next to the pub, one of them a small supermarket and the other a jeweler, and opposite it was a pharmacist. All were closed by now and the jeweler had taken the valuable stock out of his window and pulled down a metal grille to cover it.
It was a district of hodgepodge housing, thirties bungalows neighboring on near-mansions and seventies blocks of flats alternating with gloomy houses dating from the late nineteenth century. The Rat and Carrot was the residents’ local. Not long ago the pub had been called the Duke of Albany, but that was considered by whoever rules in these matters to be outdated and meaningless to most people, so it had been given this new, and to those who rechristened it amusing, name. Unfortunately, within six months local people were dubbing it the Rotten Carrot, and this sobriquet stuck.
It evidently put itself out to supply everything patrons could want from a pub, as well as a good many things that probably wouldn’t have occurred to them. "Good" meals were served in the restaurant as well as the bar; snacks and sandwiches were available all day long; the pub ran its own lottery and gave away scratch cards as prizes in contests to guess the number of pints consumed there each day or how much money had been raised in the bar for charity since Christmas; and the Rats’ Hard Rock Club met every Tuesday and Thursday evening. Children were welcome in the King Rat Kids’ Room, where orange juice and Coke were on sale, or on fine days outside in the play area, furnished as it was by a large purple dinosaur, a giant Yogi Bear, two climbing frames, and a huge Looney Tunes character with a table and chairs in a cavity where its stomach should have been. As Wexford remarked, you could have been forgiven for entirely missing the point that the primary purpose of a public house was to sell alcoholic drinks to customers.
He and Burden went in through the main entrance, under a sign informing patrons that the licensee was one Andy Honeyman, edging their way between boards advertising bumper breakfasts, line dancing, and a talent contest (Be the Next Posh Spice).
"I wouldn’t much care to live down here," said Burden gloomily. "Summer evenings must be a nightmare."
"Ah, well," said Wexford, carrying their drinks to a table, "in the midst of life we are in karaoke. It could happen to you, you know. That pub down your road, it’s a free house. Get a change of licensee and you too could have a view of cartoon characters from your living-room windows and aspiring Spice Girls warbling away half the night."
Pretending not to hear, Burden surveyed the place, glass in hand. The bar was brightly decorated. Red and gold flock wallpaper shared the walls with mock linenfold paneling, there were a number of pictures of doe-eyed girls, gamboling kittens, wistful dogs, and mountainous panoramas, and all the chairs were black and gold with pale primrose upholstery. The girl who walked about wiping the already spotless tables wore skintight scarlet leggings and earrings that hung to her collarbones.
Apart from her and them, the only other person in the bar was a bearded man of about forty, whom she addressed as Andy and who was sitting on a high stool behind the counter reading Sporting Life.
Burden shook his head ponderously in the manner of one asking what the world was coming to. "Rachel Holmes, you can’t understand what a girl like her would be doing in a place like this."
"I dare say a good many men ask her that question," said Wexford gravely.
"You what? Oh, yes, I see. Right. But seriously, a good-looking girl from a nice background who’s got into a university—what would she find here?"
"Her friends, presumably. Anyway, she didn’t find anything, she didn’t come. Ah, more customers. I can’t say I’m sorry. I don’t much care for being the only people in a pub, do you?"
Two men had come in, closely followed by a man and a woman. "As a matter of fact, I prefer it," said Burden. "I like a bit of hush."
Wexford grinned because that was the response he had expected. "I’ve just thought of something. Mrs. Strang was late, she didn’t get to the pickup point—outside the Flag, was it?—until some minutes after eight, let’s say at least five past eight. Just suppose, though, that Rachel wasn’t late, that Rachel got there on the dot of eight or even a couple of minutes to. And someone else came along and offered her a lift and she took it."
"Why would she? She was waiting for Mrs. Strang."
"True. But I’ve got an idea about that ..."
Wexford broke off and edged his chair back to allow for the passage of a group of women who had just come into the Rat and Carrot by the swing doors. There were four of them, two young and two in early middle age, and Wexford was immediately struck by the air of wariness and timidity most of them had. But the one who led the way up to the bar, a thin and rather beautiful young woman in jeans and shabby sweater whose long black hair was tied ba
ck with a chiffon scarf, had a resolute manner as if before coming in here she had gritted her teeth and sworn to stick to her purpose. Screwed her courage to the sticking place, he thought.
The others followed her and stood in a line along the counter. The black-haired woman cleared her throat, but this had no effect on Honeyman, who kept his eyes on his Sporting Life.
There was a brief silence, then—and Wexford heard her draw in her breath—she said in a voice probably higher pitched than her normal tone, "We’d like a drink, please. Two glasses of white wine and two of lager and lime."
The licensee slammed the paper shut and looked up. "You come from that place up the road, don’t you?"
She took a step nearer the bar. "What?"
"That house that’s full of women who’ve walked out on their menfolk. You come from there."
An older woman, taking courage, said, "That’s a funny way of putting it, but what if we do?"
"I’ll tell you what. I’m not serving you, that’s what."
The black-haired woman had gone very pale. Wexford thought he saw the hand that rested on the counter begin to tremble. "You can’t do that," she said. "What reason have you got for doing that?"
"Don’t have to have a reason. You ask anyone if I’m not within my rights to refuse to serve anyone I don’t want to serve."
"He is too," Burden said softly.
Wexford nodded. He doubted if the women would put up a fight and they didn’t. They said no more but turned away and made for the door.
The licensee called after them, "You’d best go down the High Street where they don’t know where you’re from. They’ll serve you there till they find out who you are."
The black-haired woman turned around and said in ringing tones, "You bastard!"
"Charming," said Honeyman when the door swung to behind them. "I wonder if you gentlemen heard that? Ladylike, wouldn’t you say?"
Wexford got up, went to the counter, and having ordered two more halves of Adnams, said that he was a police officer and showed his warrant card.
Honeyman said rather too hastily, "I was right, wasn’t I? I don’t need a reason for not serving people."
"You were within your rights, but you must have had a reason and I’ve been wondering what it is."
The licensee filled the two tankards. "It’s on the house."
"No, it’s not, thanks all the same." Wexford produced a fiver and put it down with precision. "We came in here to ask you about the missing girl, Rachel Holmes, but just tell me about those women first, will you?"
"They live in a house in Kingsbrook Valley Drive, up the road here." Honeyman’s whole manner had changed, becoming obsequious and conciliatory. Even his voice was different, the South-of-England burr replaced by a refined drawl. "They’re what they call battered women, if you know what I mean. Or they say they are. Husbands gave them a little tap when they cut up rough, if the truth were known."
"All right, I get the picture. But what have they done to get up your nose?"
"Let me tell you. There was two of them in here a couple of weeks back, and some poor devil comes in and gets hold of one of them, asks her to come home, she’s left him with the kids, if you please. Well, of course, she’s not going to do as he asks, is she? Don’t suppose she ever has. So she struggles and gives him a push and he starts slapping her around, which he was driven to, and then the other one joins in, banging on his back with her fists, and then I had to intervene. Naturally, as I’m sure you’ll agree, out you go, I said, the lot of you, and don’t come back. Actually, I regret having to put him out, he seemed a decent fellow. You know something? Well, of course you do. When folks got married in the old days, the woman used to have to say she’d obey him. Pity that was ever changed, if you ask me."
"I don’t know that I do ask you, Mr. Honeyman," Wexford said blandly. "I’m rather inclined to think I wouldn’t want your advice on anything much." He watched Honeyman blink his eyes and slightly recoil. "But you could take some. You’d be well advised to call us next time a decent fellow slaps a woman around on your premises. And now perhaps you’d like to tell me if to your knowledge this girl has ever been in here."
A deep red flush had suffused Honeyman’s face. It was probably a relief to him to have something to look at and be distracted by. He stared at the photograph Wexford showed him, then muttered, "I don’t know, I don’t recall."
Burden, who had come up to the counter, said, "Does that mean you never saw her meet her friends in here on a Saturday night? She’s very good-looking, isn’t she? Not the sort of face you’d forget."
"I may have seen her." The burr was back and the sulkiness. "I reckon I did, maybe two or three months back. She was in here with some other kids—well, I don’t mean kids," he said quickly, remembering what the law said about selling alcohol to those underage, "they was all over eighteen—and they had a bar meal."
"But you didn’t see her on Saturday night?"
"Absolutely not," said Honeyman, shaking his head to give a kind of earnest vehemence to his denial.
"Sylvia’s working there," Wexford said when he and Burden were outside and approaching The Hide. "I can’t remember if I told you. Answering calls on the helpline among other things. Have you ever hit a woman?"
"Of course I haven’t," Burden said, shocked. "What a question."
"Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t either. D’you know what Barry said to me the other day? ’All men hit their wives sometime or other,’ that’s what he said. I was a bit taken aback."
"My God." Burden sounded horrified. "I hope and trust we haven’t got a wife-beater on the team. That would be a fine thing, just when Hurt-Watch has got going. And by the way, just how are we to go about distributing those pagers and mobiles? We may know that domestic violence is very prevalent in all societies, but how many prosecutions for assaults on wives and girlfriends have there been in our area? Precious few. Presumably that doesn’t mean male-female relationships are more idyllic here or men more easygoing. It’s just because in the past women haven’t called us and haven’t wanted our intervention."
"So how are we going to find the ones that are in danger? Is that what you mean? Maybe by consulting the people who run this place."
Wexford stopped outside The Hide and looked up at the windows. Those on the ground floor were almost entirely hidden by the tall evergreens that filled the front garden. From a top-floor window a white face framed in black hair looked back at him and he recognized its owner as the woman who had shouted at Andy Honeyman.
"There’ll have to be some such method. We can’t very well put an ad in the Courier offering free communication systems to anyone who applies. As Southby says, the entire female population would want one."
Burden obviously wasn’t much interested. "Talking of the female population, what was this idea of yours?"
"Idea?"
"You said you’d an idea about Rachel waiting for Mrs. Strang. Presumably you meant you’d found some sort of answer."
"Oh, right. Yes. But I wouldn’t go as far as that. I only wondered if Rachel and Mrs. Strang had ever met. I mean, would they recognize each other?"
Burden seemed mystified. He gave Wexford a dark look and said he had better be getting home, his mother-and father-in-law were visiting and he was inexcusably late already. And Wexford went home too, with Burden’s remarks to nag at him while he ate his dinner and afterward, when a television documentary on a European single currency failed to hold his attention. Operation Safeguard, and its subsidiary scheme Hurt-Watch, would only work if he and his team probed the whole domestic-violence situation.
A ludicrous picture presented itself to him of five hundred mobile phones and pagers landing in his office, perhaps even on his desk, and he without a clue as to which women were eligible to receive them and which would be affronted to be offered what amounted to a defense against the men who shared their lives. Once that hurdle had been got ever, how were they to react when a call on one of these mobiles was receiv
ed? Go to the caller’s home and arrest the perpetrator. Simple. Only most of the time it wouldn’t be as clear-cut as that. She’d say she didn’t want him charged, she didn’t want him taken from the house, he was the breadwinner, he’d promised not to do it again, he was sorry, he was ashamed, she shouldn’t have called the police, only she was frightened and hurt and at her wits’ end, but she didn’t want the family broken up ... He must talk to Sylvia. Meanwhile, there was this missing girl, Rachel Holmes.
Dora seemed quite keen on the boring television program, which meant he couldn’t turn it off. The evening would stay light till past eight, so he went out into the garden and walked about, finally sitting down in the little paved area, which was the centerpiece of Dora’s rose garden. His seat was one of a pair of French café chairs that Sheila had given them for Christmas, an elegant affair of pale gray metal scrolls and twists and curlicues, but not the most comfortable to sit on. Above him the sky was a deepening blue, and heading this way, probably by now passing over Pomfret, was a red and yellow balloon whose passengers he could see waving to him. Or waving to someone. Wexford waved back and in doing so nearly fell off his delicate and perilous seat.
Tomorrow would be Tuesday and in the afternoon Rachel Holmes would come back. Both girls had been to the same school, both were still in their teens, both were attractive, if in very different ways, each was the child of a divorced mother, both had been waiting for a lift, one returning from an evening out with friends, the other anticipating such an evening. Both had gone missing on a Saturday, and on successive Saturdays. In spite of all that, Burden would say it was a ridiculous assumption to make. Wexford was making it every time the girl entered his thoughts. It kept him from worrying about Rachel as he should have been worrying. Did it also prevent him from taking all possible steps and measures to find her?
Should he, for instance, have put Rosemary Holmes on television? Should he have instituted a search of the countryside between Stowerton and Kingsmarkham? Perhaps the question he should have been asking himself was, would he have done so if Lizzie Cromwell hadn’t gone missing exactly a week before and come home three nights and three days later?