by Ruth Rendell
One of the few Muriel Campden residents who wasn’t sitting outside was Terry Fowler. He and his sons were watching a video he had made of the France-Brazil final in the World Cup. They had seen the match live, and since then they had looked at the video twice. This was the third time, but Terry, Kim, and Lee Fowler never tired of football, especially international matches of this caliber. France had just scored their first goal when a key was heard in the front door lock and Tasneem walked into the room with a strange woman.
She had only got up the courage to come because Tracy had egged her on and promised to go with her. On the way they were stopped by Lynn Fancourt and asked about Carl Meeks. Both found this quite exciting but, regretfully, had to say they didn’t know because they didn’t live here, they were just visiting. The idea of "just visiting" her own home brought tears into Tasneem’s eyes, and the marks of the tears were still there when she entered the house and confronted, after many months, her husband and her children.
"What are you doing here?" said Terry, ignoring Tasneem’s timid introduction of her friend. "You reckon you can go away when you want and stay away for a fucking year, do you, and then walk in here as bold as bloody brass like you’ve just been round the shops?"
Kim and Lee hadn’t even looked at her. They were watching France go on to score their second goal.
Tracy Miller glanced about her and said, "This place is filthy, I bet it wasn’t like this when Tas lived here."
Tracy crossed to the set and turned it off. A great wail went up from the boys. Terry leapt to his feet and there ensued what Tracy’s dad used to call a slanging match, beginning with Terry calling Tracy a slag and an interfering bitch, and her calling him an animal.
A string of name-calling ensued, Terry dubbing Tasneem with epithets of such richness and obscurity that Tracy had never heard of half of them. The boys both burst out crying and Tracy’s heart bled for them. She thought Terry was going to hit Tasneem and she was wondering whether to get between them—as if she hadn’t had enough of that in her own married life—when Tasneem said, "Okay, I’m going, and that’s it, I’ve had it up to my eyes.
They got out into the hallway and heard the television go on again. Terry and Lee sat down once more but Kim came running after them, got hold of Tasneem’s trousers—she was wearing the salwar kameez—and sobbed, "Don’t go. I don’t want you to go."
Tasneem set up a wail of grief but Tracy said quite firmly, "You stop crying now, love. You and your brother’s going to come and live with your mum and everything’ll be fine."
God knew whether it was true. Tracy got Tasneem out of the house and more or less dragged her down to Maria Michael’s. Maria was sitting on a chair in the front garden with an elegant little table in front of her, on which were a tray with glasses, a bottle of Scotch, a bottle of gi n, two cans of ginger ale, and two of orange crush. She said hi to Tracy, that she was pleased to meet her, and what was it to be, my darling, whiskey or mothers ruin? Tasneem, being a Moslem, asked for orange crush, but Maria insisted on something stronger to "put some lead in her pencil."
"Come on, that’s men," Tracy said, but Maria said, so what? And hadn’t Tracy ever heard of the equality of the sexes?
Both women put their arms around Tasneem, and Tracy held the whiskey to her lips like a nurse with a feeding cup. Then Maria said she’d something to tell them that would cheer them up, a real bundle of laughs. She’d thrown Monty Smith out, the lazy bugger, and—how about this?—she’d got somebody else. Maria was telling them how Miroslav Zlatic had been a freedom fighter in Sarajevo, had had to flee with a price on his head, and how great he was in the sack, when DC Kevin Cox opened the gate, came up the path, and asked her about Carl Meeks.
Maria was only too happy to help. She offered Cox a drink, but Cox, who had been looking longingly at the gin, was obliged to refuse. Carl Meeks, she said, was a regular out with his dog at eight in the morning. That is to say, she often saw him when she was on her way to work, and that dog was more the size of a horse, but not every day, my darling, not this morning, for instance. This morning she’d had the day off and she smiled dreamily, remembering.
"What about last Tuesday morning?" said Cox.
"Well, I saw him, but whether it was Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or what, I couldn’t say. As I say, I don’t see him every day. Some days he goes down the fields. He goes in the park."
"I’d like a dog," said Tasneem. "When I get my boys back, we’ll have a dog."
"Of course you will, my darling, and a cat and a rabbit and a bloody alligator too if you want."
Cox went off, drew a blank at the remaining houses in Titania Road where the occupants were out, and called on the Crownes and Sue Ridley, and the people next door and the people next door to them, but three sets of them didn’t know Carl Meeks, not even by sight, or they said they didn’t, and the Crownes got up too late to see him out with the Great Dane. At the Meekses’ house in Oberon Road, Lynn Fancourt was questioning Darren Meeks. Darren was still doing his paper round, so Lynn thought he of all people might know where his father had been that Tuesday morning, but Darren didn’t know, he left for his round three-quarters of an hour before eight. Still, he reckoned his dad must have taken Buster out. The dog made so much racket, whining and howling for his walk, that you took him out just to get a bit of peace.
"So what’s new up in millionaires’ row?" Maria wanted to know after Tasneem had told her Tracy worked for a lady in Ploughman’s Lane.
"That bastard as was murdered," said Tracy, "he was another of them, used to beat her up something disgusting. Nobody knew till she kidnapped her own kid to get her out of his clutches and then it all came out. The neighbors was warned to keep an eye on him. Talk about bloody useless when those great places up there are all about ten miles apart."
"Good riddance to bad rubbish, then," said Maria. "I suppose she did it."
"I don’t know. It doesn’t look like it, not with them asking us all that about what’s ’is name."
"Oh, I reckon she did it, my darling. I would have."
Lord Tremlett’s medical report showed that Stephen Devenish had received three stab wounds to his chest, and in Tremlett’s opinion, these wounds had been inflicted in a frenzy. The one that killed him had pierced the left ventricle of the heart. A woman could have inflicted them, but it was impossible to say whether the perpetrator was a man or a woman. He or she was probably shorter than Devenish, because the dead man had been so tall.
The murder had been committed between seven forty-five and eight-thirty, the original estimate. Tremlett was unable to narrow the time down further. The weapon used was a kitchen knife with a blade two inches wide at its widest point and between eight and ten inches long. Devenish, prior to his death, had been a healthy man in his midthirties, of an exceptionally powerful physique, a well-made man without bodily flaws or scars. The inquest was opened and adjourned.
Wexford, who had attended the brief proceedings, went to see the widow and told her the funeral could take place whenever she chose.
Jane Andrews was at Woodland Lodge, was apparently staying there, and Fay’s two sons were back home. It might have been Wexford’s imagination, but he felt that Sanchia was already a calmer, quieter, and perhaps happier child. For the first time he noticed that she was also pretty, looking, perhaps, as her mother had at her age, pink-cheeked with satiny skin and regular features, big, gray-blue eyes, and fine, shining hair. That hair was much longer than when the family group photograph was taken, and now there would be no confusing her with a boy. It was a feminine, delicate face. She looked up at him and smiled. And he thought how dreadful it was that anyone could die, and moreover die by violence, and leave behind him so much relief and thankfulness.
The whole family—for Jane Andrews fitted in like a family member—were in the big living room where the French windows were thrown open. The children ran in and out of the garden, bringing grass clippings from the lawn on their shoes and onto the white carpet. Th
ere was no one to stop them and no need to stop them now. But when she had shown him in, Jane Andrews suggested to Sanchia that she might like Jane to push her on her new swing, and the child took Jane’s hand and pulled her outside, leaving him alone with Fay.
Fay said in a cold, practical voice, "Am I allowed to cremate him?"
"Of course. The undertakers you use will see to the formalities. I think it’s only that you have to have two doctors sign the certificate instead of one."
He couldn’t read her expression. There’s no art, he thought, to find the mind’s construction in the face. Burn him, destroy him, scatter the ashes, be rid of him forever—was that what she was thinking? Or, more likely, I loved him once, he seemed different once, if only he could have been the way I believed him to be when we were young ...
"How do the boys seem?" he asked her.
"They’re fine."
"I’d like to talk to them again, especially to Edward, about the man who called here at eight last Tuesday morning. "
Fay nodded, apparently neither shocked nor gratified. "I’m going to sell this house. I shall put it on the market when all this"—she used an extraordinary phrase in the circumstances—"has blown over."
He could find nothing to say.
"He left everything he could to the children, you know. The house is in my name, I don’t know why he did that, some tax dodge, I expect. He always said I wasn’t fit to manage money. Shall I call Edward in now?"
"I think he’s coming of his own accord, Mrs. Devenish."
A little color came into her face. It was almost a blush. "Please don’t think I’m correcting you, you don’t have to remember it now, but I’m going to call myself by my maiden name. I’ll be Ms. Dodds in future."
Edward came in from the garden. Wexford could have sworn he had grown in the past few days. He was entering puberty and looked like a teenager.
"Sit down, will you, Edward?"
The boy glanced at his mother and at a nod from her sat down in the least comfortable chair nearby, sat upright, and looked straight at Wexford.
"The man you admitted to this house on the morning your father died, you described him as ’just a man.’ Can you be more specific?" Seeing that the boy was unsure of what he meant, he amended that. "Can you try to describe him to me? Close your eyes and try to get a picture."
Edward closed his eyes but opened them again almost immediately. Again he looked at his mother, said, "He was just an ordinary man. About Dad’s age, I told you that." He screwed up his face as if in an effort to remember. "I think he had jeans on and maybe a jacket. Oh, and he was carrying a case. "
"What kind of a case? A briefcase?"
"A big briefcase."
"Now, the doorbell rang while you and Robert were out in the hallway, heading for the front door. The door to your father’s study is on the right. Was that door closed?"
"I think so. It might have been just—well, pulled to."
"I see. Now you answered the door and saw the man with the briefcase there. What did he say? And what did you say?"
"I don’t think I said anything. He said, ’I’d like to see Mr. Devenish.’ "
"Deep voice, high voice, what kind of voice?"
"Quite deep. Just an ordinary man’s voice."
Fay Devenish had attempted to seem uninterested in all this, had turned her eyes toward the garden where Jane Andrews, Robert, and Sanchia were slowly strolling toward the house, but now she turned to Edward and watched him inscrutably.
As if on cue, he said, and said with the snobbery of which only the privately educated child of wealthy parents is capable, "He had the local accent. Like yours, only more so.
Wexford allowed himself to react to this not at all. Inwardly, he smiled. Impossible even to feel angry with this poor child. "Was he fat? Thin? Dark? Fair?"
"I don’t know. I didn’t notice."
"You’d have noticed if he’d been a big fat man, wouldn’t you?"
"He wasn’t like that. He was just normal size."
"Now, did your father come out of the study or did you open the door and show the man in?"
"I opened it. I just said to him ’in there,’ then Robert and I went.
We closed the front door after us like we always do. We had to go to Mrs. Daley’s and we’d have been in trouble if we’d been late."
"Did you close the study door after the man?"
Suddenly Edward looked bored, as if he had lost interest. "I don’t remember. Can I go now?"
"Yes. But I want to talk to your brother."
This was a hopeless task. Robert was as childish as Edward was—if not altogether pleasantly—mature.
"He looked like Batman."
"Can you remember what he said, Robert?"
"He said, ’Trick or treat,’ and I said, ’Where’s Godzilla?’ and he turned into a bear, black fur grew all on him, and he roared and showed all his big teeth. I said, ’You’re not Godzilla, you’re the Beast.’ "
Robert collapsed in helpless laughter. To Wexford’s astonishment he rolled on the floor, laughing and shrieking. Jane Andrews came in, prodded Robert with her toe, said in a teacher’s tone, "Get up. Come on, don’t be crazy."
It was effective, but only up to a point, for the boy’s laughter was succeeded by a storm of tears. Fay put her arms around him and he sobbed against her shoulder. Her eyes met Wexford’s above Robert’s head, but Wexford could see only blankness in them and dismal resignation.
Jane was in jeans and sweatshirt, but today her face was made up and she wore earrings, a long silver chain necklace, and a big watch with a black-and-silver face. She looked pleased with herself, glad to be busy and useful, the heroines friend, her mainstay and support. "I’ll be staying here for as long as Fay wants me," she said, "as long as I’m needed," and she bent down to pick up Sanchia.
But the little girl, seeing her brother in their mother’s arms, was immediately jealous, pushed Jane away, and climbed up beside Robert. The almost adolescent Edward, not hesitating for long but unable to find a corner in Fays chair for himself, stood behind it and leaned his cheek against her hair.
Wexford and Jane Andrews looked at each other and Jane smiled. "Love-bombing, as the psychologists put it," she said.
24
A needle in a haystack is not too different a concept from a knife in a hundred acres of woodland, interspersed with gardens, with shrubberies and hedgerows, and a drainage system branching underneath it. The drains had been investigated for that knife, and an unpleasant task been assigned to PC Peach and WPC Brodrick: that of sifting through the rubbish collected that Tuesday morning from Ploughman’s Lane by Kingsmarkham’s contracted refuse collectors, Agate PLC.
From only one household had a knife been put into the wheelie-bin. But it was just a knife, quite the wrong sort, short and serrated. All the knives taken from Woodland Lodge were returned to Fay Devenish, though before they went back, Wexford looked at them closely, probably for the twentieth time, at their long smooth or serrated blades and their horn handles, dark brown horn or, in two cases, a lighter bleached shade. He looked especially at the two, one with a dark handle, the other with a light, whose blades matched Stephen Devenish’s wounds.
"He must have brought the knife with him in that briefcase," Burden said. "Brought it with him and took it away. Young Edward says it was a big briefcase. How big, d’you reckon? Big enough to carry something to cover that jacket and those jeans? Say a raincoat?"
"Don’t talk to me about raincoats," said Wexford. "Dora’s taking me to London on Saturday to buy a new one. Another Burberry, she says. God knows what they cost now." He sighed. "What you’re saying, I presume, is that this guy brought a raincoat with him to cover up the bloodstains on his clothes. Maybe it was mine. It was at Muriel Campden it went missing."
"Be serious, will you? He would have had to conceal his clothes."
"Doesn’t seem to matter whether he did or not," Wexford grumbled. "No one saw him."
"No, but h
e couldn’t know that, could he?"
Wexford didn’t answer. "No one saw Carl Meeks either. Of course the trouble with checking up on someone who performs some regular task at the same time every day, like dog walking or even just going to work, is that people who see you can’t remember when they saw you. Everyone says they often do see Meeks and the enormous Buster, but not always, and they can’t remember which days they did see him. Darren Meeks was out delivering his papers, so he doesn’t know. Scott was in bed. The primary schools didn’t break up for the summer till that afternoon, but young Scott’s not a candidate for a perfect-attendance prize, always supposing they have them anymore. Linda Meeks says he always takes the dog out without fail, no exceptions."
"Reg," said Burden, "do you honestly believe Carl Meeks killed Devenish? It’s more than two years since Devenish threw him down those stairs—or whatever he actually did to him. If he was going to get revenge on Devenish, why did he wait so long?"
’’And if he did wait so long, what triggered off his doing it last Tuesday? I suppose it’s possible Meeks encountered Devenish somewhere, even went to one of Seaward’s offices, had another go, and was again manhandled."
"No, it isn’t," Burden said triumphantly. "I’ve had it checked out. No one among the staff at the Kingsmarkham, Brighton, and Gatwick offices of Seaward has had sight or sound of Meeks since the stairs-throwing incident. It’s just possible Devenish met him in the street and insulted him or some such thing... "
"But we’ve no reason to think he did."
"Now I’ll tell you something," said Burden. "I wonder if you’ve noticed."