by Ruth Rendell
The journey was short, less than an hour. He had a book with him, a paperback Gissing novel, but only because it was habit to go nowhere without something to read. At the same time he thought it would be rude to read it in her presence and made an attempt at conversation, a few words on the early signs of spring which could be seen from the window. She interrupted him.
‘You won’t go, will you? You won’t leave me with him?’
‘He will expect me to go, I’m sure.’
‘If you get up to leave I’ll leave with you. I will. He’ll be glad if I do. He’ll just think of me as the girl who like screamed when he said who he was. This is a waste of time, isn’t it? It’s not going to work. Say we’ll leave if I say so?’
Helplessly, he said, ‘I will do whatever you say, Clarissa.’
The woman in the seat in front of them turned her head to stare but said nothing. All the other people in the coach were too busy on their mobile phones to take any notice. He knew enough about the London Underground system by now to escort her into a Circle Line train without having to check on the map. Clarissa had conjured it all up on her mobile anyway. Having enlarged the map, marked it with something that looked to Wexford like a lollipop, she moved away from it and called Robin. Reception was bad but not impossible. She told him where they were and repeated what she had said to Wexford.
‘It’s not going to work. I know it isn’t.’
When she saw the house, she stood still and stared. Her comments were exactly what he would have expected from an intelligent young woman of her age with a social conscience. ‘If the government had done what they said and brought in a sort of mansion tax the man who lives there would have had to pay millions. Instead of taking it from the poor like they do all the time.’
Wexford said, ‘Come along,’ and headed across the street. He clearly remembered Sylvia and Sheila saying the same sort of thing all those years ago when they were this girl’s age.
‘It’s that house?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
The red camellias were still in bloom. They walked up the steps and Wexford rang the bell. Another bell also rang, that of a church clock somewhere nearby. It was eleven thirty.
In the big bow window on the left-hand side he could see the figure of a man. As Crisp, in the account he gave Burden, had seen the figure of a man through the Vicarage French windows. Could it possibly be the same man? Dark, very tall, clean-shaven, middle-aged. For a moment he appeared sinister, moving about, frowning as if searching for something he couldn’t find. Then he looked up at the sound of the bell, and seeing them, smiled and raised his hand. The door was opened as if by someone who had run to it.
‘Hello. Come in. It’s pretty cold out there.’
They stepped over the threshold, Clarissa first, of course, though diffidently.
‘I’m Timon Arkwright. How do you do?’
Christian Steyner was in the enormous drawing room. He gave no sign that the last time he had seen Clarissa she had collapsed in screaming hysterics but stepped forward and took both her hands in his. Don’t kiss her, Wexford thought, not yet. ‘Tim,’ Christian said, ‘this is my daughter.’
After that everything became pleasant. Clarissa spoke politely to Timon and shook hands with him politely. At his invitation she sat next to her father and all screams and horror looked likely to be forgotten. She talked about school and her coming A levels and where she would like to go to university and then about Robin and how wonderful he was. To his relief, Wexford felt he wasn’t needed. He wanted to be on his own to think about Arkwright and what, fantastically, had crossed his mind. Both men thanked him quite effusively for bringing Clarissa. No, he wouldn’t stay to lunch. Would Clarissa be happy for him to go?
‘How shall I get home then?’
‘My driver will take you whenever you want to go.’ That was Timon Arkwright, very laid-back. ‘But we hope you won’t want to go too soon. I’ve taken the day off work to meet you.’
Wexford wondered what work meant and what he would fail to turn up to: a board meeting, a conference, a meeting with some other tycoon? He got up. Clarissa amazed him by holding up her face for a kiss – a first time, that one. Christian took him to the door.
‘I think Timon’s going to love her as much as I do,’ he said.
Wexford wasn’t so sure about that. Wasn’t this exactly how Arkwright would behave if he had killed Sarah Hussain? If he had killed her to prevent her telling Clarissa the truth about her parentage but now, finding that his action had failed, could only make the best of a bad job?
‘We’re going away to our country place for the weekend,’ Steyner said. ‘It’s in Cornwall and we’re hoping Clarissa will come with us. Do you think your grandson would come too?’
‘I can’t speak for them, not for either of them. You ask her.’
He sat in the train. He had no evidence for what he had half believed unless seeing a dark man through glass was evidence and the hearsay evidence of that man’s love for another man. If he was right wasn’t he wrong to have left that girl in Arkwright’s company? Wrong to have put up no objection to Clarissa spending the weekend with Christian and Timon? He couldn’t have stopped it, he thought. He had no power.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE LAST VOLUME of The Decline and Fall lay on his desk next to the pile of newspaper cuttings he still hadn’t looked at. Nor had he read a word of Gibbon since getting home. I shouldn’t have left her there, he kept saying to himself, and over and over, how long was I to stay, then? I shouldn’t have left her. Stop it, don’t do this. He opened Volume 6 at the place he had marked and began to read of the great khan of the Tartars.
It is the religion of Zingis that best deserves our wonder and applause. The Catholic inquisitors of Europe, who defended nonsense by cruelty, might have been confounded by the example of a barbarian, who anticipated the lessons of philosophy, and established by his laws a system of pure theism and perfect toleration. His first and only article of faith was the existence of one God, the Author of all good; who fills by his presence the heavens and earth, which he has created by his power. The Tartars and Moguls were addicted to the idols of their peculiar tribes; and many of them had been converted by the foreign missionaries to the religions of Moses, of Mahomet, and of Christ. These various systems in freedom and concord were taught and practised within the precincts of the same camp; and the Bonze, the Imam, the Rabbi, the Nestorian, and the Latin priest, enjoyed the same honourable exemption from service and tribute: in the mosque of Bochara, the insolent victor might trample the Koran under his horse’s feet, but the calm legislator respected the prophets and pontiffs of the most hostile sects. The reason of Zingis was not informed by books; the khan could neither read nor write . . .
He hadn’t been sure that Timon Arkwright was guilty but it still seemed to him that everything fitted. There was more to discover, of course. What was Arkwright’s connection with Marty Dennison? Wexford remembered what Nardelie Mukamba’s brother had said about those who visited the Anaconda nightclub, among them the rich and famous. He wouldn’t be surprised if Arkwright had been one of them. He might even have had a share in the club’s ownership. But find out, it shouldn’t be difficult.
Should he have left Clarissa alone with the man? Not alone exactly. Christian Steyner was there too. Her father was there. It was five past four. He called her mobile number, wondering what to do if she didn’t answer. She answered.
‘I’m in Timon’s car.’ They moved on to first names very fast these days. ‘I’m on my way home. What do you think about me like going away for the weekend with Christian and Timon?’ She left him no time to reply. ‘I’d sort of like to but I’m going to ask Robin. Ask his advice, I mean.’
‘Of course.’
The dryness in his voice went undetected. ‘I’d love him to come too but maybe it’s a bit soon for that.’
Wexford had no opinion to offer on this example of belated caution. He ended the call, still wonderin
g, though she was safe now, how safe she would be on further contact with Arkwright. If he had killed her mother to prevent the girl having any contact with Steyner, how much more of a menace to him was she herself? All that bonhomie and effusiveness could be a front. This place they had in Cornwall, was it by the sea, were there high cliffs, disused tin-mine shafts? An accident could be arranged that Steyner knew nothing about. Oh, nonsense, he told himself, people don’t do such things, as Ibsen had it. But they do. All the time.
He had better go through this pile of newsprint, cuttings he had made and now forgotten what for. Each separate column or half-page must have seemed worth saving at the time. Here, for instance, was one from the Evening Standard headed MURDER OF WOMAN VICAR with a picture of poor Sarah Hussain, another about rural housing and a third on some new model Audi. Why he had kept those two he couldn’t imagine. He had a house and he didn’t want a new car. All the papers went into the black plastic bag Dora had left for him. The face of Timon Arkwright came as a shock. It stared out from the group he was standing in front of so unexpectedly as to seem unreal, something he had imagined. He shut his eyes, opened them. The photograph of the man was still there, still in one of his beautiful suits, presenting an award to a woman in a trouser suit and hat and surrounded by half a dozen men. The caption read: ‘Arkwright Associates chairman Timon Arkwright presenting the City of London’s major Industry Award to CEO Jennifer Carpenter, the first time the award has gone to a woman.’ The hands on a clock on the wall between their heads pointed to three thirty.
A kind of coincidence but of no further interest to him. He had picked it off the pile and was about to drop it into the bag when the date on the top of the page caught his eye. Thursday 11 October 2012. He read the date again slowly. It provided a simple but perfect alibi for Timon Arkwright. If he was in a building in Finsbury Circus that afternoon there was no way he could have been in Kingsmarkham Vicarage. He had been libelling the man in his thoughts. Probably Arkwright had never set foot in the Anaconda, still less been associated with a villain like Martin Dennison.
It was a relief too. He didn’t want to be right and now thinking that he had been right, thinking that no more than ten minutes ago, seemed absurd. It was all very well to tell himself that people do such things. It still remained true that people like Arkwright don’t. In any case, Arkwright would not have killed Sarah from such a motive and he could have had no other. He, of all people, would have known that his lover was Sarah’s child’s father and that once Sarah was dead Christian Steyner would tell Clarissa the truth. He, of all people too, would have been told by Christian all the details of Sarah’s intention to tell Clarissa that truth on her eighteenth birthday. Timon Arkwright was nice and polite and pleasant to Clarissa because he loved Christian and wanted above all for him to be happy.
He, Wexford, had been fantasising and as a fabulist he wasn’t a patch on Thora Kilmartin. Reality was Martin Dennison and Arben Birjar. His phone was ringing. Burden. He was on his way home. Could he pop in for a chat? Wexford welcomed the prospect of a visit, all the more because he could no longer make a fool of himself proposing an eminent and respected company chairman as Sarah Hussain’s killer.
‘He hasn’t left the country,’ Burden said. ‘We know that. Border Control have kept a watch for him and there’s been no sign. A new development, if you can call it that, is that Janet Corbyn-Smith – remember her?’ Wexford nodded. ‘She called us, said she’d just remembered seeing Dennison’s passport. He left it in his room one day and she looked inside. Not that it’s been much use.’
‘What’s new about it then?’
‘He really is called Martin Dennison. As you know you don’t have an address in your passport or the names of your parents. His date of birth is 1981. All those interesting things that used to be in passports like hair colour and height aren’t there any more, haven’t been for ages.’
‘So all your new development has told you is his age and that he really is who he says he is.’
‘That’s right,’ said Burden. ‘He’s got two previous convictions which the passport of course didn’t tell Ms Corbyn-Smith but records did tell me. Actual bodily harm in 2007 and breaking and entering a year later. You know, people think that with all the technology we’ve got now it’s impossible to hide for long. A car can be traced in seconds, a mobile phone locates you, innumerable records list you. Your name is on various databases. But suppose you’re not what we’d call respectable. You’ve no fixed abode, any car you drive you’ve stolen. You can change your name when you like, there’s nothing to stop you, you’re free to call yourself what you choose. Pity we don’t have what they have in the US where it’s extremely difficult and time-consuming to change your name. You can’t even change the spelling of your Christian name without a lot of bother. Taking it that you’re a man, and you’re more likely to be, there’s always some woman somewhere who will give you house-room. You can get in your stolen car and drive off up some motorway until you come to a turn-off that goes to a place you’ve never been to but like the sound of. Find a Holiday Inn, for instance, dump the car and go off next day to find another place and another car to nick. It’s advisable to pay your hotel bill, of course . . .’
‘Yes, Mike, right, I get the picture.’ I’m not yet in my dotage, Wexford thought. Most of this has been true since I first got the job you’ve got now. ‘We do have one advantage,’ he said, hoping Burden wouldn’t object to that ‘we’. ‘We know what he looks like. We know about the tattoo on his hand, we know he’s a tall big man with dark hair. I don’t suppose Ms Corbyn-Smith thought of taking a photo of the passport on her phone, did she?’
‘It would be difficult with an ordinary mobile. Anyway, she didn’t.’
There were one or two things Burden had said which alerted Wexford but he said nothing about them. He had to think, maybe write those things down and give them some thought. They might mean nothing. He gave Burden another drink – he would be walking home – and they talked some more about hiding places for those seeking bolt-holes.
‘If you hid with an old girlfriend or a relative, all you’d have to fear would be recognition by a neighbour.’
‘And that’s no small thing, Mike,’ Wexford said. ‘Few people will give their support to a neighbour who has a suspicious friend staying with him or her, someone they’ve never seen at the house before but who’s now there all the time.’
‘And if that suspicious friend never goes out once he’s arrived? If he’s not been seen when he arrived? What then?’
This was what Wexford wanted to think about once he was alone. He called Burden again to ask if Janet Corbyn-Smith had been questioned in the past few days. Not since Dennison’s disappearance, he was told. What exactly had her relationship with Dennison been?
‘Just landlady and tenant,’ Burden said. ‘What are you suggesting?’
‘You know what I’m suggesting, Mike.’
‘There was nothing like that, any more than there was with Arben Birjar. Barry and Laura have been all over the house. She’s not sheltering him.’
Someone was. Wexford had always been interested in the reasons people have for choosing the names they do; choosing names for their children, for instance, and choosing names for an alias for themselves. These choices were seldom if ever arbitrary. In the case of Christian or given names, it was often that a celebrity was picked on, a television personality or a pop singer. The characters of novels and films provided names, think of ‘Emma’, ‘Shirley’ and ‘Alfie’. But what of surnames as aliases? People used the phone book when phone books were in constant general use. But all those who had no landline might never see a phone book. Where then would you get an assumed name from? The title of a book? The name of an author? Not if you lived an itinerant life and possessed no books anyway. He wrote down the name Dennison on a sheet of paper, then Martin Dennison, followed by Marty Dennison. This told him nothing. Then he began to make a list of all the people he and Burden’s team had spoke
n to in the course of the investigation, starting with Georgina and Trevor Bray.
A long list followed. He had made notes of each interview he had carried out, most of them made after the meeting was over, and from these he picked out names: the Kilmartins, Duncan Crisp, Daphne Morgan, Linda Green, Clarissa Hussain, Dennis Cuthbert, Nardelie Mukamba, Alan Conroy, the Sams family, Christian Steyner, Timon Arkwright. Watson and Mrs Steyner were dead, the women who had alibied Crisp seemed too long a shot, Janet Corbyn-Smith was no longer in the running. He ran his eye down the list but the names told him nothing. He didn’t even know what he expected them or one of them to tell him. Perhaps he meant, not what he or she would tell him but what he could deduce from what they said. And was that deduction that one of them was hiding Marty Dennison?
How long could you hide someone in an ordinary dwelling house? He thought of all those cases of men who had abducted women and kept them prisoner, often for years. This, of course, would be easier because whoever was sheltering Dennison had his cooperation. Whoever it might be must live in a big house. Hiding someone in a small flat would be impossible. He looked up from the list when Dora came into the room.
‘Just to remind you we’re having supper with Sylvia.’
‘Five minutes and I’ll be with you,’ Wexford said.
Ben was home from university and, rather to his surprise, Robin and Clarissa were both there. Less surprising was Clarissa’s announcement, before they sat down to eat, that she would be going to Cornwall with Christian and Timon for the coming weekend and Robin would be with her. That she had told Wexford only a few hours before that it was too soon, made him smile, but he suppressed his laughter. Perhaps Robin, in his role as adviser, had changed her mind. The list Wexford had made kept appearing word for word before his inner eye. Maybe what he really meant was that he knew it by heart. He resisted thinking about it, talked as his social duty required him, but wasn’t sorry when Dora suggested they leave just before ten. This, of course, was early evening to the three young ones but they were all too polite to comment on it. Once the grandparents had said goodnight they were off upstairs to Clarissa’s room where some new variety of music transmission was awaiting their attention.