End in Tears (14 page)

“I couldn't have seen her on the Tuesday because I was all day till four at the hospital like Eileen says.”

 

“It's the wrong day,” Burden said as he and Wexford walked across to the mortuary. “But he insists he saw the girl on the Monday and not Tuesday when she was killed. A man was seen looking in at the windows of number four but not our perpetrator in a hood.”

“Our perpetrator without a hood, then? It was hot, as your Mrs. Lyall said.”

“It was hot on August the eleventh, but he was wearing a hood then. Is there any significance in the fact that both girls died on a Tuesday?”

“We don't know for sure if Megan did.”

But Carina Laxton confirmed the day. “She died on Tuesday the first,” she said an hour later. “She'd been dead four days when the body was found and I'd say early on that day, not after four in the afternoon. Certainly not. It would have been midmorning.”

“Can't you be a bit more precise?” Burden said, sounding querulous.

“Not with this heat, I can't, and the body shut up in a cupboard. I suppose you know she was pregnant?”

“
I
didn't,” said Wexford.

“She was well advanced in pregnancy. About fourteen weeks, I'd say.”

 

Wexford and Hannah found Prinsip at the home of Sandra and Lee Warner. In the absence of Lara, the place seemed strangely to take on an untidy, even squalid, look. It was as if, while the girl was there, her surroundings picked up something of her neatness and order but once she was gone it reverted to its normal state with a sigh of relief. This flat on the Muriel Campden Estate was a house of mourning, but grief hadn't extended to Lee Warner's appetite. He was sitting in front of the television on a sagging sofa eating a burger with a fried egg on top of it, a large portion of fries, and a thick slice of fried bread, the lot doused in tomato ketchup. His wife, who had let them in, wore a soiled whitish dressing gown hanging open over a T-shirt and sweat pants. She excused herself briefly and came back carrying a box of tissues with which she began wiping her dry eyes. Prinsip had a similar plate to Warner's on his lap, the food on it congealed as it lay there untouched. Laying a hand on his slumped shoulders, Sandra said, “Have you got the animal who did this, then?”

“You didn't tell us Megan was pregnant,” said Hannah.

“You what?”

“Megan was pregnant, Mrs. Warner. I assume you didn't know.”

“Too bloody right I didn't and nor did Keithie. What d'you mean, pregnant? There's got to be a mistake.”

“On account of I've had the chop.” Prinsip lifted his gray face to them, his mouth hanging open.

The plate would have slid off his lap if Sandra hadn't fielded it with considerable dexterity. “He means he's had his tubes tied,” she said.

“A vasectomy—oh, I see.” Hannah was quite unperturbed by this revelation, Wexford not surprised. “Nevertheless, she was pregnant.”

“Keithie,” said Sandra Warner, sitting down and lighting a cigarette, “has got six kids. Or is it seven, Keithie? No, six. From a”—she paused, racked her brains and came out with it—“a previous relationship. It stands to reason he didn't want no more. Megan's got a kid, of course. I mean, it's been adopted, best thing for it when all's said and done. Megan wanted it to have the best start in life, which she wasn't in no position to give it, though giving it up was a wrench.” She tapped the ash off her cigarette into the coagulated egg, burger, and chips on Prinsip's plate.

 

“It doesn't tie up,” Burden said as they sat in Wexford's office, eating the sandwiches brought in by Lynn Fancourt. “What was Megan doing in Victoria Terrace on the Monday? It was Tuesday she was there. And what was our perpetrator doing there on the previous Saturday evening?”

“You can make all those things fit,” said Wexford, “if you look at it this way. Our perpetrator, or OP, made a date with Megan and this meeting had some connection with the trade she and Amber were in and which he, presumably, was organizing. Number four Victoria Terrace would have been his choice for a venue. Why, we don't yet know. Possibly he'd once worked there or had even lived there. On the Saturday he went there to check up on it and find the easiest way to get in.

“He arranged with Megan to meet her there at, say, nine-thirty on the morning of Tuesday, the first of September. He would have told her the houses were empty, about to be converted, and with neglected gardens at the back. She was to come through those gardens from Pyramid Road, recognize number four by some sign, the color of the paint on the door or the stained glass in the French window, something like that. Go up the four steps and she would find the door unlocked at the top.”

“Yes, all right.” Burden lifted the top slice of bread from his sandwich and contemplated the salt beef, potato salad, and half-tomato underneath. “Margarine,” he said. “But what can you expect? All you've said is fine. I see all that. Only she was supposed to do that on the Tuesday, not the Monday.”

“No, but suppose she was a bit nervous about going there. OP may have been a frightening figure in her life—and with good reason, as we now know. What could be more natural than that she should try out his instructions and go over to Pyramid Road after she'd finished work on the Monday? Go into those gardens, have a look around, try the door—or just look at the door. If everything was the way he said it was she'd be reassured up to a point.

“She went back on the Tuesday morning. She left the note on the door at Gew-Gaws, got the bus to Stowerton, went into the gardens via Pyramid Road, and found the back door to number four unlocked. Your Jack Spear didn't see her because he was in the front of his house, waiting for the ambulance to take him to hospital for his physiotherapy. How's that?”

“Okay. It probably was like that. How's your sandwich?”

“It'd be all right without the mayonnaise, only the filling's nearly all mayonnaise and I hate the stuff. Hannah found the owners of Victoria Terrace, by the way. They're called Ian-noides PLC. There are two of them, cousins, living in Cyprus. As you might expect, they're totally uninterested in poor Megan except insofar as her being killed on their property may affect sales of the flats when they've been done.”

“Have they got builders on contract yet?”

“Fish and Son of Stowerton to do the major work and Surrage-Samphire for the decorating. Apparently, these flats or ‘apartments,' as the developers call them, I quote from their prospectus, are to be ‘recreated' in a very classy way. Victorian moldings on the ceilings, paneling, carved woodwork, antique doorknobs and fingerplates, all that sort of thing. Surrage-Samphire are specialists in wood and plasterwork, restoration techniques, and so forth.”

“Funny name, isn't it?” said Burden. “Not a name you'd forget. Have any of these people been into number four yet?”

“I imagine they all have. To take a look and give an estimate. Work's not due to start till the end of next month.”

 

As he walked home in the warm glowing dusk, Wexford thought about Megan Bartlow. She already had one child and had been pregnant again. What would have been that child's destiny? Children appeared to be treated in a very cavalier fashion by some of these people, easily conceived, no doubt, but easily disposed of once born, yet this in a time when “the family” was spoken of with more weight and reverence than had perhaps ever been accorded it before. Keith Prinsip had six children, abandoned to their mother or mothers, no doubt. Then there was Brand—his thoughts often returned to Brand.

The little boy had another grandmother. If Vivien Hilland hadn't seemed a very maternal sort of woman to him, Wexford, that impression he had of her had nothing to do with the way she might be with Brand or the way Brand might see her. He recalled his visit to the house on the gated estate, trying to remember any sign of tenderness or sensitivity in Mrs. Hilland, but finding none he did, at least, recover something else. That was where he had seen the name Samphire, on the sign in the Hillands' front garden:
SURRAGE-SAMPHIRE, SPECIALIST DECORATORS AND RESTORERS
. One of them, the man she called Ross, had put his head around the living-room door while they were questioning her and she had said Diana Marshalson had recommended him. Was this connection of any significance?

His daughter's car was parked at the curbside. He told himself he was always happy to see his children, but just at this moment, this evening, he would have preferred to be alone with his wife without Sylvia. Not that Dora had been her usual self recently. When they were alone together she never ceased to bemoan Sylvia's behavior and constantly took him to task for being “too lenient” with her.

Still, here was Sylvia now, inside and weathering her mother's scolding. He saw his grandsons first. Unaware of his arrival, they were at the bottom of the garden playing in the fountain made by the hose. Sylvia was sitting in an armchair she had turned around to face the wide-open French windows beside her mother, who was in another chair. This time it was his daughter who was holding forth, his footsteps unheard as he came into the room.

“It isn't that I mind Mary, she's a perfectly nice woman, but I do mind the fact that Naomi's set her to spy on me and she's happy to go along with it. She's taken to dropping in. She always wants to know how I'm feeling and if she can do any shopping for me or sit with the kids while I go out.”

“Some would call that very kind,” said Dora in her new scathing tones.

He made his presence known. “Just in case you think I'm spying on you.”

“Oh, Dad.”

He went up to her and kissed her. “Where does Naomi come into all this?”

“I was just telling Mother that Naomi's friendly with this woman who lives on the corner of my road and I
know
she's fixed up with her to sort of keep an eye on me. She's a midwife, you see.”

“Who, Naomi?”

“No, Dad, this Mary. Naomi doesn't trust me to look after myself properly while I'm pregnant. Oh, it's not me she cares about. It's the baby,
her
baby. Mary came in yesterday evening—without being asked of course—and said would I like her to check on the vitamins and supplements I'm taking to see if they're all right. And then she asked if I was eating properly. I'm not very big, was what she said, and she hoped I wasn't on a diet to keep my baby small. Mind you, she was laughing when she said it. She's always laughing even when things aren't in the least funny. And the awful thing is the boys adore her. She never gets cross, Ben says. Of course she doesn't, I said, she's not your mother. And then he said, and this really hurt, ‘I wish she was. I wish she was my mother.'”

“Children,” said Wexford, “do say that sort of thing. I don't suppose there's a child who hasn't said it some time or other to a mother or a father. You said it to me once when I wouldn't let you go swimming on an icy day in May. It was an outdoor pool and your best friend Louise Cole was going. ‘I wish Mr. Cole was my father,' you said and it was like a slap in the face. But I came to learn that while you meant it at the time you didn't mean it for long, and that's how it is with Ben. You'll see.”

Apparently touched by this story, Sylvia reached for his hand and held it. “Mary's the real problem. I don't want her interfering in this. It's not that I don't like her. Actually, I don't think anyone could help liking her. It's knowing she only comes around because Naomi's sent her.”

“As far as you know,” said Wexford. “Maybe she's been sent once and goes on coming of her own accord. If you like her you haven't a problem. Can't you just relax and enjoy her? And now I'm going down the garden to see my grandsons and after that I want a drink and my supper. I'm starving.”

Dora said nothing, watching him with cold eyes.

“I really hate that Naomi,” said Sylvia in the manner of a teenager. “Sometimes I think I'd like to kill her.”

Wexford laughed. “You're not supposed to say things like that to me. I'm a police officer—remember?”

CHAPTER 15

I
t was a Sunday. Thinking how pleasant it would have been to be meeting Bal for coffee or a drink and then how embarrassing and awful any encounter with him must now be, Hannah phoned Karen Malahyde and asked her if she was free.

They met at the Parasol Café recently opened by the Olive and Dove Hotel on the west bank of the Kingsbrook. Wooden tables and chairs were arranged under red and yellow striped umbrellas. The umbrellas were all unfurled this morning, as they had been every morning for months, keeping off the South of France–style sun.

“This is nice,” Karen said. “The Costa del Kingsmarkham. Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Not in the least. Make the most of it. I'm sure they'll soon ban it in public places.”

They ordered caffè lattes and, because it was close on midday and a Sunday, glasses of wine. The tables began to fill up, mostly with couples, as the Parasol Café offered a bistro lunch.

“Sundays are no good if you're single, are they?” Karen was expressing Hannah's own, highly unwelcome, thoughts. “I don't know why they should be so different from Saturdays. Most of the shops are open. No one goes to church anymore. The cinema's got the same program as it's had all week. They shouldn't be different from Saturdays, but they are.”

“Yes, you're right.” Hannah didn't want to agree with her. She wanted to be able to say it didn't apply to her, she had a boyfriend. Only she hadn't. And if she had Bal in mind, she never would have. “But…if, for instance, we were married we might be expected to be home now cooking roast beef for a spouse. Oh, don't look like that, we wouldn't, not you and me, but we'd probably give in when it came to watching rugby all the afternoon and having tea with his old mum. As it is, we're free and—” She broke off, her attention caught by two women who had come to sit at a table nearer to the riverbank.

“What's the matter?”

“I don't know. I think my eyes must be deceiving me. You see those two women at the table over by the tree, the copper beech? The one in the pink skirt and beads is Gwenda Brooks of Jewel Terrace and the other one is her husband's girlfriend.”

“You have to be joking.”

“I know, but I'm not. That is Gwenda Brooks and that is Paula Vincent. When I interviewed John Brooks he told me he was having an affair with that woman and sent me to her address in Pomfret to check out he'd spent the night with her.”

“And here she is about to have lunch with the wife. What d'you think it means?”

“I don't know, Karen, but I'm going to find out. No, wait…” Hannah clutched her friend's arm. “That's him. That's the husband!”

John Brooks was approaching the table by the copper beech tree. Instead of kisses, he gave both women a little pat on their shoulders and sat down.

“Finding somewhere to park the car,” Hannah whispered. She got up and walked over to the Brookses' table, Karen behind her. Afterward, she thought how with people more used to keeping cool heads, it might have been possible to bluff it out. Some kind of ménage à trois scenario might have been suggested by Brooks, and Gwenda might just have confirmed it to maintain the respectability she was so fond of. But their reactions to the sight of her were very different, or those of Brooks and Paula Vincent were. He went white and she crimson. He stood up so abruptly that he knocked over a glass, which fell and rolled across the grass. Gwenda plainly had no idea what was happening. She stared.

“Perhaps you'd like to explain, Mr. Brooks,” Hannah said, and suddenly she knew. She needed no explanation. Seeing John Brooks and Paula Vincent together she saw how marked was the resemblance. They might have been twins. Perhaps they were. “Ms. Vincent is your sister, isn't she?”

It was Gwenda who answered her. “Of course she is. Why shouldn't she be? What do you want?”

“At present, Mrs. Brooks, nothing from you.” Hannah turned to Paula Vincent, whose color had subsided and who was looking defiant. “Would you care to explain, Ms. Vincent?”

“There's nothing to explain. I did what John wanted, that's all.”

“I don't think so. You lied to the police.”

“What is all this?” Gwenda Brooks was shouting now. “What's going on? I want to know. I've a right to know.”

Ignoring her, Hannah said, “Lying to the police is an offense, Ms. Vincent. The same applies to you, Mr. Brooks. Whaever else may come of this I can't tell. For the present, however…”

Karen intervened at a nod from Hannah. “You'll both be charged with wasting police time.”

 

Back at her flat where Hannah set out smoked salmon and salad on the table on her little balcony, Karen pointed out drily that since Brooks had obviously not been committing incest in Pomfret, he must have been up to some other illicit, if not illegal, activity.

“Yes, but what?” Hannah poured orange juice into two ice-filled glasses.

“At the moment, without having given it much thought, I can't see why if he was visiting some woman he couldn't give you her name instead of the one he did. After all, until you spotted the sister with Gwenda, you and the DCI believed he was committing adultery. So what difference does it make who it was?”

“It does make a difference,” Hannah said. “Come and eat. Of course it makes a difference. For one thing, the real woman might not have been quite so willing to tell us he was with her. She may have a husband or live-in boyfriend. I realize that's unlikely seeing that Brooks visited her by night, but it's possible if, for instance, husband or boyfriend worked nights. Also, you've got to remember that if his sister's name got back to his wife all she's going to do is enjoy the joke. It's quite another thing if the real woman's name gets back to her.”

Karen laughed. “He was taking quite a risk having that little lunch party with both wife and sister.”

“Oh, I don't know. The public doesn't believe we have private lives. When we're not on duty or in uniform, as the case may be, they think we get into our boxes and pull down the lids till our next shift starts.”

“Then what about all those cop sitcoms they see on TV?”

“They know that's not real,” said Hannah, “and they're right.”

After Karen had gone Hannah found her sunglasses, rather a nice Armani pair, lying on the arm of her sofa, and when the phone rang an hour later she was so sure of who it was that as she lifted the receiver she said, “Hi, Karen. They're here.”

Bal's voice said, “Who are there? Are you having a party?”

Blushing when one is alone is so absurd as to make one blush again. This was what happened to Hannah as she struggled to find a voice, her cheeks burning and the sun pouring in at the open balcony doors. “I thought you were a pair of sunglasses. I mean I thought you'd lost a pair of sunglasses.”

“Never wear the things. If you're not having a party will you come out and have a drink with me?”

She was astounded. After the last time, what did he want of her? She couldn't ask. “All right,” she said.

“I've had more enthusiastic responses to my invitations. But no matter. Shall I come around in about an hour?”

 

Friday might never have happened. He was nice, warm, with plenty to talk about. Except that he obviously wasn't gay, he behaved rather like her gay friends did when she was out with them. She could be relaxed with them, free and easy, because she knew they would never make a pass. Yet, what was she thinking of? The other night Bal making a pass was what she had passionately wanted…

She hadn't dressed up like last time. If she changed the white trousers for a black pair it was only because on a hot day white doesn't look fresh after a few hours. They sat in the garden of the Olive and Dove and after a time, after they had talked about everything under the sun but their work and his private life, she started thinking, but he's not gay, he's not. The appreciative look he'd given her when they met confirmed that. On an impulse she said, “Bal, have you got a girlfriend? Is that what it is?”

He laughed. “Is that what what is?”

Usually so open, she couldn't put it into words and she fell back on the feeble, “Oh,
you
know. You know what I mean.”

His smile was that of a man who is going to let someone off the hook or just give up teasing. “Right, I suppose I do. No, I haven't got a girlfriend. If it's possible, I hope—no, I won't say that. Not yet.”

She laid her hand on his and he let it lie. It was a nice hand, she thought narcissistically, long and smooth and slender, the nails longish but unpolished. She hated nail varnish, and by the way he looked at her hand, so did he.

“If you mean,” she said, “what I think you mean—no, I can't ask. I'm not as uninhibited as I thought.”

“Hannah.” He leaned toward her across the table, said, “Come on, let's walk. It's a lovely night. I can't say what I have to say with all these people around.”

She was going to walk beside him but without touching him. As they went down the flight of stone steps that led to the footpath across the meadows, he took her hand and hooked it over his arm. The air was still and quite cool by now, and from a dark horizon a red harvest moon was rising.

“If I know my Kingsmarkham as well as I think I do, I can walk you home across these fields and call in at that little pub on the Kingsbrook on the way. Meanwhile, I'll try to explain.”

 

In the little pub on the Kingsbrook, once called the Anchor, now renamed the Gooseberry Bush, Wexford and Burden and their wives were having a last drink. Neither man would have dreamt of dividing the party into two groups, the men to talk shop and the women left to domestic issues, but Jenny had divided it herself, wanting only Dora's ears for her diatribe on the horrors of fitting twenty-first-century teenagers for their A levels. Snatches of the conversation reached Wexford, expressions such as “national curriculum,” “dysfunctional families,” and “parental responsibility,” but when he attempted a remark he was too forcibly squashed by Dora to try again.

“Why the Gooseberry Bush?” he said, changing the subject.

The barman didn't know.

“I suppose they just liked the sound of it,” said Burden. “No one eats gooseberries anymore, though.”

“I made gooseberry jam two years ago,” Jenny said, “but no one wanted to eat it.”

Wexford laughed. “A gooseberry bush is what you find babies under. That's what my grandmother told me. Even then it was an out-of-date version of the facts of life. When she was a child she'd been told it was the stork brought babies. That was the favorite explanation, which is odd when you consider there have never been storks in England.”

Dora cast up her eyes, he didn't know why, her scorn causing a break in the conversation. Burden rushed in to fill the gap with his continuing certainty that drug smuggling was at the bottom of the two girls' deaths. If only they could find a witness, if only there were a shred of evidence. But he, Burden, would find it, he would never give up.

“A kind of human Buster, are you?”

“If you like to put it like that,” Burden said rather stiffly.

“I think it's something else. The trouble is I don't know what else. It's a matter of finding what could have brought them that kind of money and I don't know.” He saw Dora move her chair and turn her back on him. Waiting for Burden to argue and realizing he wasn't going to, he said, “I've got two things on my mind that on the face of it don't seem important yet I feel they are. Very.”

“Oh, yes?” Burden was smarting a little from the comparison with Drusus, the drugs-busting dog. “Like what?”

“I'd very much like to know what the website was Amber tried to get access to but couldn't and wanted it so much she asked for John Brooks's help.”

“Probably some company putting out cheap pop CDs or the sort of things teenage girls want. You know, you've had two. Fancy face creams or stuff for waxing their legs.”

“I expect you're right. No doubt you'll dismiss the other thing with equal facility.”

“Try me.”

Wexford thought, Dora said when we first knew about this baby that Sylvia's behavior would wreck our family. Is it starting to wreck my marriage? Aloud he said, “The Hillands offered Amber their flat in mid June, to have possession in November. What they never said to us and we didn't ask about was the rent. Was it to be rent free?”

“Surely.”

“You really think that? I'd say surely not. Crenthorne Heath isn't a very upmarket suburb but it's nearer to London than Croydon and it's on a tube line. If they let the flat they could get two or three hundred pounds a week at present prices. Are they so well off they could afford to miss out on that for what might be years?”

“You're saying,” said Burden slowly, “that they offered the flat to Amber but probably at a reduced rent. Of course she accepted, but she knew she had to start making money. Old Marshalson wouldn't pay it.”

“No. He'd have wanted to avoid losing his daughter even if that also meant keeping Brand.” Wexford's eye caught his sergeant and one of his DCs entering the bar together. Well, it was as he had thought…“Tomorrow, we'll find out,” he said.

 

The giant in the “Riverbank” T-shirt was again on duty at the Hillands' gates but more affable this morning. He let their car in with a smile and a cheerful “Good morning, gentlemen.” Wexford was surprised to see Surrage-Samphire's board still up in the Hillands' front garden. The work seemed to be completed and very stylish it was, if somewhat over the top. The hallway of this house was just a little too small and its ceiling a little too low to carry such grand linenfold paneling, such ornately carved shields and elaborate Tudor roses. But Surrage-Samphire certainly knew their business.