Harm Done

by Ruth Rendell

  Karen, none too pleased to have had to postpone her domestic-violence training owing to pressure here, spoke into the recording device: "Present are Victoria Mary Cadbury, Chief Inspector Wexford, and Sergeant Malahyde. Mr. James Beamish has just entered the room. The time is nine thirty-two."

  "Ms. Cadbury," Wexford began, "or is it Mrs.?"

  "Miss, Ms., or Vicky, I don’t care, call me what you like. But not Mrs. I’ve never been married."

  "At some time in April, did you abduct a young woman called Elizabeth Cromwell and take her to your home and keep her prisoner against her will? And did you a week later abduct Rachel Holmes and keep her a prisoner against her will?"

  Vicky shrugged her shoulders. They were heavy shoulders, such as people develop who have been on anabolic steroids. "So what? It wasn’t my home, I’ve done nothing wrong, I didn’t hurt them, I fed them, I saved them off the street. God knows what would have happened to them, out there on the street. I made them dress decently, in a skirt instead of those trousers." She shook her head. "It’s them that’s done wrong to us. That Rachel girl stuck a penknife in Jerry. She found a knife in a drawer—you never know what’s about when it’s not your house—and went up to Jerry, who’s harmless, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, and stuck it in his chest. I thought she’d got the lung, I thought he’d bleed to death. I drove her back after that, of course I did, once I’d dressed Jerry’s wound. I’d been a nurse and it’s just as well, isn’t it? Jerry might have died."

  So that was what had made Rachel Holmes lie, Wexford thought. She was afraid of the trouble that might ensue if it was known she stabbed Jerry Dover, so she invented a house with shingled walls and a big conifer in the front garden.

  "So you did abduct these two young women?"

  "My client has just said she did, Mr. Wexford," said Beamish.

  "Very well. For what purpose?"

  "You need not answer that," said Beamish.

  "I want to answer it. I want you all to know I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I was doing a kindness. I did it for my nephew." Vicky looked defiantly from Wexford to Karen and from Karen to James Beamish. She seemed not to understand that Beamish was on her side, although his function had been explained to her. "I love that boy. D’you understand that, any of you? D’you understand you can just love someone without sex and stuff being involved, and when they’re not your own kid? His mum and dad are dead. I’ve looked after him since all that started. You’ve seen him, you know what I mean."

  Beamish, who hadn’t seen Jerry Dover, looked puzzled. No one enlightened him.

  "He’s been in and out of those places, psychiatric wards, they’re worse than the old Bedlam was, so for the past ten years he’s been with me. He lives with me. I give him his drugs and his meals, he doesn’t eat much. I’m not saying he’s not a bit destructive, he is, but he’s harmless." Vicky said in a different, shriller tone, "I’ve got cancer."

  No one said anything. Wexford nodded.

  "I don’t say I’ve had cancer, I say I’ve got it. Because I have; once a cancer patient, always a cancer patient. I know, like I said, I’ve been a nurse. But it’s worse than that, I’m going to die. It’s breast cancer I’ve got; you always say you’ve got the cancer where it started, but it’s in my lungs now. They say they don’t know, but I know. I’ve got a year at best."

  "What has this got to do with the abductions, Ms. Cadbury?" Karen asked.

  "You were looking for someone to look after Jerry, weren’t you?" said Wexford. "A kind of wife for him, am I right? A young woman to cook and clean and mend his clothes? Someone to care for him?"

  "Not for sex," said Vicky sharply. "Jerry doesn’t know what sex is and he doesn’t want to know. But they’d have got married, to be on the safe side." She didn’t explain what she meant by the "safe side." "And there was plenty in it for the lucky girl. Her and Jerry, they’d come in for my house when I’m gone, nice modern house with a washer and a spin dryer, and all the linen and cutlery and whatever."

  "Did you explain that to these young women?" Wexford asked dryly.

  "I would’ve if I’d found a suitable one. I’d have taken her to my place in Guildford and shown her what she’d be getting. I couldn’t do that with the wrong sort, or the first one to complain; you’d have found us and then there’d be no more getting Jerry a wife. Like you have now, like you’ve knocked all that on the head."

  Her delusive state grew more and more apparent as she talked. Schizophrenia can be genetic, Wexford knew, perhaps always is. Back in the sixties and seventies those Victorian theories of inherited madness, of whole families afflicted, had been derided. Today it was seen that the nineteenth-century writers were not so far wrong.

  "But the girls didn’t suit," he said gently. "They weren’t quite what you were looking for, and you were afraid you’d die and leave your nephew alone without anyone to care for him?"

  "Really, Mr. Wexford," said Beamish, "I can’t have this."

  But Vicky said, looking calmly into Wexford’s eyes, "Yes. Yes, that’s exactly right."

  Burden came out, then Wexford. "Barking mad, that Jerry," Burden said, casting up his eyes. "He shouldn’t be allowed out alone."

  "He’s not."

  "False imprisonment," said Burden in a severe tone, "is a very serious offense."

  "I know. I’ve been telling you that for the past three weeks. And it’s no good saying no harm was done. They’ll appear in court tomorrow and both will be remanded for psychiatric reports." Wexford sighed. "Rachel Holmes stuck a knife in Dover’s chest."

  "Ah, so that’s the answer. I asked him what the plaster was doing there. He didn’t answer so I asked him a second time and then the poor devil did speak. He put his hands over it and said, ’Hurt, hurt.’ "

  It was all pathetic, Wexford thought, a sad, ridiculous story. When Vicky Cadbury was dead, who would look after Jerry Dover? The state? More likely was his release "into the community," only there was no community, just neighbors who would be afraid of him or regard him much as people in times past had regarded the village idiot, and he would end up, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, a crazy beggar on the street. "There’s nothing more I can do in there," Wexford said, "so I’m going to pay another visit to Miss Jane Andrews, and since there’s nothing more you can do in there, you may as well come with me."

  "My daddy said I wasn’t to tell."

  Sitting on her mother’s knee, playing with her mother’s long hair, Kaylee Flay smiled virtuously. She took hold of a lock of Jackie Flays hair and twisted it around and around her forefinger, while giving Vine a coy sideways glance.

  "You told Kim Fowler," said Vine.

  "That’s different. He’s a boy, he’s not a grown-up."

  He thought how intelligent she was, this four-year-old who had come out of the lowest stratum of society, almost the socially excluded. Somewhere he had read that, for all the claims that every child of today had an equal opportunity for education and betterment, those from her group were the least likely to avail themselves of it. It made him angry when he looked at her bright face and keen eyes and knew that she was using that intelligence, which should have been channeled into the right paths, to deceive authority. That was the real crime, to pervert a child like this one, to corrupt her into becoming a criminal’s aide and to make stealing a game, in which success was rewarded.

  Jackie Flay hadn’t said a word once she had told him she didn’t mind him questioning Kaylee. She sat there apathetically, her arms around the child’s waist, turning her head slowly around and around to make her hair more accessible to Kaylee. She seemed to enjoy this rough caressing and pulling. Vine asked her about the evening she had been in the Rat and Carrot. Had she been alone or with Patrick?

  "I don’t like you and my dad going out in the evening," said Kaylee.

  "Now you know Auntie Josie was only next door."

  "I don’t like Auntie Josie."

  "Yes, you do, Kaylee. You do like Auntie Josie. You’re a naughty gi
rl to say that."

  ’’And you’re naughty to go out and leave me on my own. I could get burnt up in a fire or that pedo could come and take me."

  "Mrs. Flay, I asked you if you and your partner were together in the Rat and Carrot that evening?"

  "What if we was? Leave off pulling, Kaylee, you’re hurting me."

  "Did you hear someone in that bar describe how to make a petrol bomb?"

  "I don’t know what you’re talking about," said Jackie.

  Kaylee got off her mother’s lap. She slid to the ground, climbed up onto another chair, and sat there with her legs dangling. "My daddy," she said conversationally, "got two bottles and he put this stuff in them and it smelt awful, pooh, and he stuffed up the tops with socks, they was my socks what I’ve grown out of, and he took some more stuff out of the heater that’s in my bedroom and put that on the socks, and he said they was petrol bombs and they was for killing the pedo, so there!"

  Jackie Flay let out a loud scream. She made a dash for Kaylee, one arm upraised, but the child dodged her hand, and Vine, wondering what he was letting himself in for, snatched her up in his arms and held her high in the air.

  Mrs. Probyn was seeing someone out when they arrived. The woman who was leaving was so like Jane Andrews, was a more feminine version of her, that there was no doubt this was her sister. Although it was a surprise visit, Mrs. Probyn seemed delighted to see them and introduced her daughter on the doorstep. "This is my daughter, Mrs. Sharpe. These are the policemen I was telling you about, Louise, the ones that had some important business with Jane which I, of course, was not permitted to hear."

  Mrs. Probyn smiled brightly to show the good child that this treatment was only to be expected from the troublesome child. Louise Sharpe was plumper than her sister and less stylish, only her expensive jewelry—a huge diamond in the engagement ring above her wedding band, diamond earrings, and a Cartier watch on her left wrist—giving any indication of her affluence. Apart from these, she wore a longish floral skirt and a cotton sweatshirt bearing the logo of a well-known sportswear manufacturer. Her dark hair was untidy and in need of a good cut, and her pale face was bare of makeup but for some smudged black stuff circling her eyes.

  She gave her mother a kiss that was just a peck in the air two inches from her cheek and remarked that she must get back as she didn’t care to leave "new staff" on their own for too long in the circumstances. Saying to Wexford and Burden, in the ludicrous expression often uttered when no words have been exchanged, that it was nice to have met them, she went down the path to her car, a new red Mercedes.

  "Your daughter has a big house?" Wexford asked as Mrs. Probyn ushered them into the living room she was discouraged from occupying.

  "Louise? Oh, yes, huge house, six bedrooms, three bathrooms—well, she’s very well—off, as I believe I told you." Mrs. Probyn laughed merrily. "Noblesse oblige, you know." Like most people, she seemed to have only a muddled idea of what the phrase meant, Wexford thought. "I think it’s important to keep up appearances, don’t you? I will say for poor Jane, she does make the best of herself. She used to have lovely long hair, you know, but she would have it cut off. Said it was too much trouble, if you please. Louise looks a ragbag most of the time, but her carelessness in that regard doesn’t extend to her home, I’m glad to say. She has a truly beautiful home, a real abode of bliss for a child—what a pity, as I always say, she had no children of her own."

  "She never thought of adoption?" Burden hazarded.

  "Well, yes, she did try to adopt a baby from one of those countries, Romania or Albania, one of those places in the Eastern Bloc, as the powers-that-be call it. She had all the papers, but something went wrong, don’t ask me what, and then of course poor James died, her husband that is." Mrs. Probyn giggled and put her hand over her mouth like a schoolgirl. "But I’m not supposed to talk about it. Jane says I gossip too much and not to talk about family things. But what I say in response to that is, what else can I talk about? What else do I know? I’m not exactly out in the great world, am I? I’m not in the corridors of power or the—the Weather Centre, am I?"

  They were saved from replying by the entry into the room of Jane Andrews, alerted no doubt by the sound of her mother’s giggle and raised voice. She was well dressed today in a short black dress and yellow jacket, the male image discarded, but she looked aghast. She turned white under the heavy makeup. Wexford had thought cosmetics would improve her looks, but now he changed his mind. Her face was a painted mask. This time she made no attempt to expel Mrs. Probyn from the room. "I was upstairs working. I didn’t hear the bell."

  "They didn’t ring the bell, Jane. They arrived just as Louise was going and the door was open."

  "Oh, was Louise here?" Jane Andrews looked as if she wanted to say more but bit back the words. "I didn’t hear her come," she said instead.

  "She came to see me." Mrs. Probyn’s unconcealed gratification made her seem senile. "Not everyone who comes to this house wants your company, you know, my dear, hard though that may be for you to grasp."

  Jane turned toward Wexford. "What did you want to see me about?"

  Burden answered her, saying quietly, "Miss Andrews, we know your relationship with Stephen Devenish isn’t a sexual one. But there is some kind of relationship with him, isn’t there?"

  The effect on her was startling. She burst out laughing. The laughter had no amusement in it, only incredulity and wonder at the folly of human assumptions. It held relief too. "I never would have expected that. Even from the police I wouldn’t. What can I do to make it plain to you how much I loathe and despise Stephen Devenish? How can I explain to you what a bastard he is?"

  "Language, Jane," said Mrs. Probyn.

  Wexford ignored her. "You’ve already done so, Miss Andrews. Or, rather, you’ve given a strong impression of doing so. Perhaps you’ll fill in the details."

  She hesitated. Her own vehemence seemed to put a check on her. "He is an absolute bastard," she said more quietly.

  "So you said. But is there a reason for your saying so? Or is it a case of Dr. Fell?"

  "Of what?"

  Unexpectedly, Mrs. Probyn intervened and recited:

  I do not love thee, Doctor Fell.

  The reason why I cannot tell;

  But this alone I know full well,

  I do not love thee, Doctor Fell.

  Wexford thought it would anger her daughter. To his astonishment, it made her laugh, it made her human. "I’ve never heard that before, Mother," she said, and to Wexford, "I certainly don’t love Stephen, I dislike him awfully, but of course I can tell you why. He’s a sexist tyrant, he makes Fay his slave, he rules that house like the despot he is and I loathe him."

  "And perhaps you’ve said as much, Miss Andrews, which is why your friendship with his wife was broken off? Perhaps she is a loyal wife who doesn’t care for criticisms of a husband she is obviously very attached to?"

  She shrugged. "Perhaps. I don’t suppose she did like it. They have no friends now, either of them. Well, he may have at work, cronies, business acquaintances, if you can call those people friends."

  "Or perhaps none of this is true. Perhaps his declared dislike of you and your unquestionable dislike of him are a blind to conceal a friendship and an alliance." She leaned forward, tried to speak. Wexford held up his hand. "No, one moment, let me finish, please. I am not suggesting, as I’ve already said, that there is or has ever been any sexual relationship. You might be useful to him and he to you. That’s all I’m saying. And that, if we had recorded this conversation and were able to play it back, even you might say that you protested your dislike of him too violently to be credible."

  "If you’re suggesting, and I think you are," said Jane Andrews, once more aggressive, "that I, or I and Stephen Devenish together, have abducted his daughter and are keeping her here, then you are mad."

  "Oh, Jane," said her mother.

  "Oh, Mother, yes. That’s what they mean."

  "But you don’t like Mr. D
evenish. That’s why we never see that nice Fay anymore, isn’t it? Because you and Mr. Devenish don’t get on."

  The wake of Ted Hennessy took place the following day. The chief constable and the assistant chief constable were there, as well as Wexford and his entire team, and the members of the Regional Crime Squad, a junior minister in the Home Office, and Hennessy’s cousin who happened to be a famous television comedian. Not on account of the minister but owing to the presence of the comedian, coverage of the whole thing was shown on the BBC’s evening news.

  As he was leaving, Mitchell came up to Wexford to say how sorry he was about Hennessy. "We’re having a whip-round at Muriel Campden, collecting for the poor guy’s widow Mitchell gave Carl Meeks a baleful look. "Well, some of us are."

  Returning to his car, Wexford remarked to Donaldson that it was the thought that counted, and did he know what had become of his raincoat.

  "A Mrs. Hebden came up to me in the car, sir, and said you were in her house and you wanted to walk back, it being such a nice day for a change, and to give her your raincoat to take in to you."

  "And you did?"

  "Yes, I did, sir. I hope I did right."

  Wexford didn’t answer. He went upstairs where he had been due to see Lynn Fancourt five minutes before. She was waiting for him in his office, tense, her shoulders hunched, picking at her nails. Allowing none of the amusement he felt and none of the underlying approbation to show in his face, he gave her a five-minutes-long lecture on the inadvisability of showing this kind of initiative, of taking matters into her own hands and pursuing secret personal goals as if she were some kind of private eye instead of part of a team. That was not the way to look to promotion. This was amateurish, not enterprising. Lynn squirmed at "private eye" and again at "amateurish," but she said nothing, though frequently nodding her head in an earnest fashion.

  Petrol bombs and nail bombs. Patrick Flay admitted that he had made both in his kitchen in Glebe Road. In an interview room at Kingsmarkham Police Station, when asked why by Barry Vine, he first said that it was just a matter of interest, to see if he could, but later confessed he made the bombs for sale.