by Ruth Rendell
Dora felt much more strongly about it than he did. It seemed that she disapproved of her daughter and everyone associated with her daughter. When Wexford walked in she was telling Sylvia in a cold voice that she had better get back and relieve the woman who was sit ting with Ben and Robin. She could hardly understand, she said, why Sylvia had come over when it involved the trouble and expense of a sitter. With him she became scathing. ‘Naomi’s so involved with the infant already, Reg, that she’s keeping a proprietory eye on Sylvia. Checking she doesn’t drink any alcohol and takes all her vitamins, aren’t you?’
Sylvia looked displeased, almost stormy.
‘You see, I can’t help imagining it’s me carrying our baby,’ said Naomi. ‘I mean, I know it’s not but I kind of pretend it is. Sylvia’s felt it move - well, him or her move, she won’t find out its gender, I don’t know why not - and I imagine it’s me feeling it. Well, it’s more than imagination, actually. I really felt a flutter this morning. It was just like a little foot giving me a gentle kick.’
Sylvia said in an unpleasant tone, ‘Imagination is right. You can’t feel it. You don’t know what it’s like.’
‘I know that only too well, Sylvia, and that’s my tragedy. But I make up for it by trying to feel what you feel.When you go into labour I bet I’ll have the pains.’
‘Husbands in the South Seas do that,’ said Wexford. ‘They go off into a hut and simulate their wives’ pains. The couvade, it’s called.’
‘How lovely,’ gushed Naomi. ‘I shall do a couvade when the time comes.’
‘Why don’t we all have a drink,’ said Wexford hastily, expecting Sylvia to say no.
She surprised him with a mutinous, ‘I’ll have a large glass of white wine, please, Dad. Naomi will abstain for me, so she can drive me home.’
After they had gone, he lay back in his armchair by the wide-open french windows. A little breeze had risen, the first for weeks. ‘Perhaps the weather’s changing,’ he said. The ice-cold beer glass in his hand reminded him, oddly, of the pleasure of clutching a radiator on a snowy day in January ‘That girl would drive me mad if I were Sylvia.’
‘She’ll go about telling everyone she’s doing a couvade now you’ve put that into her head,’ said Dora.
‘Where was Neil?’
‘Keeping well out of it if he’s got any sense.’
Later he lay in bed beside her, covered by no more than a sheet, thinking of the girl who was dead and the girl who was probably dead and the money for which they had paid so much higher a price.
Early morning is a beautiful time when the weather is fine but the heat is still hours away. Hannah had been told at school why dew settles on grass on such mornings but she had forgotten what she had learnt. In such a long-drawn-out drought, it seemed strange to her that this abundant water should be there sprinkling the grass verges with gleaming drops and lying like rows of pearls along the crossbar of the Brookses’ gate.
John Brooks’s car was parked against the kerb and there was a mist of dew on its windscreen. It was not quite seven o’clock.
She had come alone, having a very unfeminist idea - a very incongruous idea for an ambitious detective sergeant - that she couldn’t fetch Bal out at this hour when he had bought her two Camparis and soda the evening before, abstained from alcohol himself to drive her home and, parting from her, given her a gentle kiss on the cheek. She could have phoned Brooks but, having done so several times in the past days, she was sure an answering machine would be on and no one would return calls made to it. She rang the doorbell but no one came. She rapped the knocker, rang again and this time a young man with wet dark curly hair and a boyish face came to the door.
He held a towel in his hand and was rubbing his hair with it as he spoke. ‘Who are you, at this hour?’
‘Detective Sergeant Goldsmith, Mr Brooks.’ Hannah produced her warrant card and set one foot over the threshold. ‘I’d like to speak to you and you’re a difficult man to catch.’
‘You want to speak to me now? I’m just leaving for work.’
‘I need to speak to you as a matter of urgency.’ She could hear her voice growing cold and sharp. ‘Preferably now but if that’s impossible I’d like to make an appointment to do so as soon as possible. I’ll leave you with one point to consider until we meet again. Information has reached us that you’re in the habit of going out in your car by night — in the middle of the night or before dawn, that is.’
‘It’s a lie.’
‘Very well, but we need to talk about it. I suggest this evening at seven thirty.’
He said nothing, nodded, then shrugged.
‘Mr Brooks?’
‘Oh, all right. It’s not really convenient, though.’
‘It’s convenient for me,’ said Hannah and went back to her car. She drove to the corner and waited, pretending to be reading her notebook. Within five minutes Brooks passed her in his car, heading for Kingsmarkham.
Her business skills course, at a breakaway department of the old Stowerton polytechnic, Lara Bartlow took very seriously. In the living room of the housing association flat she had shared with Sandra alone until Lee Warner moved in, she was putting folders and books into a new briefcase when Wexford and DS Goldsmith arrived. Warner was nowhere to be seen, was probably still in bed. A strong smell of frying bacon pervaded the place. Lara’s clothes were businesslike, a black trouser suit with white shirt and ‘sensible’ flat-heeled shoes. Instead of the voice he had anticipated came a sixth-form-waiting- for-A-levels accent. If it had been her Amber had gone on holiday with he would have been less surprised but it had been the sister, girlfriend of Keith Prinsip . .
Still, it hadn’t been a holiday, had it? More in the nature of a business trip.
‘I don’t want to be late,’ were her first words.
‘We’ll drive you to your college, Ms Bartlow,’ Hannah hastened to reassure her. ‘It’s not a police car.’
No strangers to the police, he was sure, the Bartlow - Lapper - Warner family would have lived on the fringes of petty crime for the girls’ lifetimes and more: a little shoplifting, a good deal of expert benefit fraud, driving without insurance, that sort of thing. Respectability for Lara probably consisted in not being seen anywhere in the vicinity of one of the Mid-Sussex Constabulary’s turquoise-blue and flamingo-red chequered vehicles. Yet perhaps he was being unfair. This girl was plainly, to use an old-fashioned term, pulling herself up by her bootstraps. He asked her how she came to know Amber Marshalson.
‘We were at school together.’
‘Ben Miller was there too?’
‘That’s right. They’re a bunch of snobs round here but Amber had no side to her. If it didn’t sound daft in this day and age, she’s what my nan calls a real lady. It broke my heart when I’d heard what happened to her.’
‘It was through you’, said Wexford, ‘that she met your sister Megan?’
‘Yeah, that’s right. She came to the Bling-Bling Club with me one night and Amber was there. Just her, not that Keith.’ She hesitated, said, ‘Look, Megan’d be OK once she got away from him.’
She’s got away from him now, Wexford thought sadly. ‘You don’t care for him?’
‘Layabout scumbag,’ said Lara savagely. ‘He’s dragged her down. He’s got her doing things she’d not have dreamt of when she was with Mum and me.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘You want to know, you ask her. I’m not telling on my sister. And I’ve got to get to college - like now.’
As they went down to the car, he reflected that asking her was the one thing he couldn’t do. Already the heat was beginning, the temperature palpably rising, the air calm and still, the leaves on the pavement trees hanging limp. The night hadn’t been long enough or damp enough to revive them.
It was Hannah who asked, ‘Why did she and Amber go to Frankfurt?’
‘Don’t ask me. Maybe there was a cut-price flight or something.’
‘Where do you think your sister i
s now, Lara?’
‘Gone off with someone she’s met and left that Keith, I hope.’
‘If you’re serious,’ said Wexford, ‘would she do that and not get in touch with you or your mother?’
‘We’re here. This is my college.’ Lara got out of the car, Wexford noticed, in a way women rarely do today, but the most elegant way. Her knees pressed together, she swung both legs off the seat, put her feet to the ground and stood up, all in one graceful movement. ‘Look, she just might. I mean, she’s not said anything to me about another bloke but that’s how she got together with Keith. She was seeing this really nice guy, and good-looking too, wow, like Jude Law, and then one day she just. . . well, disappeared. Turned up, oh, four or five days later with that Keith in tow. She’d got a week off work and she’d gone to Brighton on her own and she found him - in the gutter, I reckon - and brought him back. That was three years ago.’
They watched her walk into the building up a flight of steps, a tall assured sort of girl who knew where she was going and how she meant to get there.
‘Now we have to start the search for her sister,’ said Wexford.
Chapter 12
Bal was more than willing to come with her. Of course, strictly speaking, he had to come if she told him to, but she knew real enthusiasm when she saw it. He wasn’t accompanying her because it was his duty but because he liked her company and - she was pretty sure - found her sexually attractive. Well, she was, she had no difficulty in telling herself, as she went into the women officers’ washroom, combed her long hair, sprayed on a little Chanel Chance and applied lip gloss. As a large number of men had told her, she was extremely good- looking. Moreover, she belonged to a type Bal might be expected specially to admire. With her olive skin, dark- brown eyes and dark-chestnut hair, she could be taken for a woman of Indian origin - well, very far north Indian. Now, Hannah, she murmured to herself, that’s close to racist.
She passed on tiptoe through the conference room as Wexford was addressing the media. There was no other way out. His appeal was going out live on the six-thirty regional news. She heard him say, ‘Megan Bartlow has now been missing for more than forty-eight hours. We have serious fears for her safety. If anyone has. ..‘
Closing the door silently behind her, Hannah went out into the still brilliant, still dazzling light of another hot evening to find Baljinder Bhattacharya waiting for her at the wheel of his car. As soon as he saw her he was out of the driver’s seat and over on her side to open the passenger door. If we hadn’t got to do this, she thought, we could go somewhere nice to drink and eat, not bloody Brimhurst Prideaux, maybe sit out in the moon light - not that I’d need moonlight - and I bet we’d be in bed in my flat by ten. Oh, I do like a thin man with a concave belly and a profile like a hawk winging its way across the plains of the Punjab. .. . Come on, Hannah, get yourself together. She got into the car.
John Brooks’s red VW was nowhere to be seen but there was nothing surprising in that. It was still only ten to seven. Hannah rang the bell and Gwenda Brooks came to the door. She had a what-is-it-now look on her face.
‘It’s your husband we want to speak to.’
‘He’ll be a good half-hour yet.’
‘We’ll come in and wait,’ said Hannah in her sharp tone. ‘He expects us. I made an appointment with him’ - she looked at her watch - ‘twelve hours ago.’
It seemed to be the first Gwenda Brooks had heard of it but she stood back to let Hannah and Bat pass through and showed them into a living room they had been in before. Mrs Brooks was one of those women who dislike ornaments and pictures because they need dusting and was fond of beige as a furnishing colour. It was the shade of carpet, three-piece suite, woodwork and wallpaper, its tone slightly varying between short bread and caffe latte.
The windows were wide open on to a small garden, which had once had a lawn. This had been recently covered by a wooden deck, more suited to a Malibu beach house than a Sussex cottage. In the very narrow borders surrounding it grew a few dispirited, flowerless ever greens. Hannah, who was usually less aware of beautiful scenery than beautiful men, found herself thinking that, no matter what they had done to house and garden, the Brookses hadn’t been able to lay a chilling beige hand on the splendid landscape of wooded hills beyond their back fence.
Gwenda Brooks didn’t offer them anything. Somewhere a radio was playing very softly, not music but a male voice apparently giving a lecture. Perhaps Gwenda couldn’t bear silence. Any background noise was better than none. She had been reading, or looking at, a glossy magazine before they arrived and now returned to her perusal of a double-page spread of photographs of a house, rooms and garden.
Perhaps it struck her that this was impolite, for she suddenly thrust the magazine at Hannah, saying, ‘That’s Mr Arlen’s house in Pomfret. Isn’t it lovely?’
Having no idea who Mr Arlen was, Hannah took the magazine and had barely glanced at it when Bal, obviously deciding that being nice to Gwenda might be no bad thing, reached for it and cast the kind of appreciative gaze at the pictures she must have hoped for.
‘A beautiful house,’ he said. “Where exactly is it?’
‘Just outside Pomfret. I’ve been there.’ Gwenda sounded immensely proud. ‘It was such a surprise opening that book and finding those lovely pictures of those rooms and that beautiful garden.’
As a scream rose in Hannah’s throat that she fought successfully to control, the phone rang. Mrs Brooks went out of the room to answer it. Bal raised his eye brows and smiled at Hannah. Hannah smiled back. She looked at her watch and saw that it was twenty past seven. Gwenda Brooks came back, said, ‘That was my husband. He’s working late. He won’t be back till eleven, if then.’
It was at this point that Hannah thought of asking her about the night drives and she would have done so but for a glance from Bal. It wasn’t admonitory as the ‘shagging’ reproof had been, or even cautionary, but just a glance beyond interpretation. Still, it stopped her. ‘I must speak to your husband, Mrs Brooks. He works in Kingsmarkham, doesn’t he?’
‘You can’t go to the factory!’
‘I may have to. What does the factory... er, manufacture?’
‘They make electrical equipment. Pallant Smith Hussein, they’re called. And it’s not Kingsmarkhaxn, it’s Stowerton.’
The two towns were only about a mile apart and growing ever closer. ‘Will you tell him that I’ll see him here at eight thirty tomorrow morning or at Pallant Smith Hussein at ten? Get him to give me a call on this number.’ Mrs Brooks looked apprehensively at the mobile number on the card Hannah passed her. Any time between now and eight tomorrow morning. He can leave me a message.’
Outside, one house along, Lydia Burton in a green and white sundress was watering her parched front gar den from a can. She smiled and lifted her hand in a wave, the gesture of the innocent who have nothing to hide from the police. Now John Brooks was inaccessible until tomorrow, it occurred to Hannah that she and Bal had a free evening after all. There is nothing like a fine summer evening to put one in a mood for romantic sex. The air is warm and soft, punishing heat fading. The sky is still blue but the light is beginning to dim as the sun starts its progress to the dark horizon. (Well, it doesn’t, thought Hannah, but that’s how it seems). Day is past and a lassitude settles on the limbs. It’s the time for wine, for looking into another’s eyes, for flowers closing their petals, for hands meeting across a table, for the decision, mutually taken, to leave and go where two can be alone.
Bal opened the car door for her. Was she going to have to ask him? And ask him exactly what? He started the car, looked at the clock on the dashboard and said, ‘Good, I won’t have to miss my Hindi class after all.’
‘Hindi?’ she said faintly.
‘It was my first language till I was about three. We were living here - I mean, in Lancashire — but my parents were studying English and they decided it would be best always to speak it at home for my sake and my sisters’. They didn’t want us grow
ing up with that sing song accent.’
If she had said that it would have been the most politically incorrect thing .
‘So the result was that I’ve forgotten most of my Hindi but I really feel it would be sensible to get fluent in it again. With such a large Indian community in Britain, you see.’
‘Oh, yes, I see. Of course I do.’
Nothing more was said. He took her to where she lived, the flat in a block called Drayton Court in Orchard Road.
‘Well; goodnight,’ she said.
‘Sarge. I mean Hannah?’
'What?’
‘I don’t know if it’s OK for a DC to ask a DS this but will you have dinner with me? Friday or Saturday? Is it OK? I’m not sure about the what-d’you-call-it? -etiquette.’
‘It’s quite OK, Detective Constable,’ said Hannah, laughing, ‘and yes, I’d love to.’
After the briefing, the press conference and the news appeal, Wexford sat at the desk which had been provided for him and looked at the list DS Vine had given him of suspected users and dealers in Kingsmarkham and outlying districts. It was formidably long. Some of these people had been prosecuted, some charged but no crime found and some simply looked on with suspicion. He couldn’t help harking back to the past, when he was young, and in the whole of the British Isles there were something like 600 registered drug users. Two years ago that had been the number of dealers calculated to live in these three towns and the surrounding villages, and even after the concerted purge he and his team had carried out reasonably successfully, he was sure over a hundred remained and more were creeping back. Useless to think like that, useless to reflect that in his childhood a man or woman living in Pomfret or Myfleet thought heroin was a girl in a romantic novel and cocaine the anaesthetic given you by the dentist.