End in Tears (4 page)

“It didn't even seem to touch that Diana. It's enough to break your heart, yet it didn't even seem to touch her.” He looked at Wexford almost suspiciously. “What are you thinking now?”

Not often inclined to lie, Wexford saw no need to be truthful about his thoughts. “Just that I'd rather face the London papers anytime than that new guy on the
Courier.
”

He returned to what truly occupied his mind, his own daughter.

CHAPTER 5

T
he conference lasted only a short time. There was little for Wexford and Sergeant Vine to tell the press and for once Darren Lovelace, the new man on the
Courier,
failed to make a nuisance of himself. Wexford spoke for two minutes on BBC
1
's regional evening news and for three on Mid-Sussex Radio, and then it was over.

“Are you going to put Marshalson on to make an appeal?” Burden asked him.

“You know, I don't think I'm ever going to do that with anyone again. For one thing, it happens so often these days, it's so much routine, the public have got blasé about it. They probably switch off when the parent or lover or wife comes on, begging for the person who's killed their loved one—as we're supposed to call relatives—to come forward. Then there's the awkward fact that the bereaved one often turns out to be the killer.”

“You don't mean you suspect Marshalson?”

“At this point, Mike, I have no suspects.”

Resisting Burden's urging him to a drink in the Olive and Dove, Wexford went home, thinking how he had said earlier that their roles were reversed that day, for it was usually he who persuaded the inspector to after-hours meals and drinks and seldom the other way about. He wanted very much to hear what his wife had to say about Sylvia.

That she was pregnant and without husband or partner he already knew, and that there was something wrong. Dora had told him that, had told him what she knew, which wasn't much. Wrong with her or with the baby, neither knew, but Sylvia had promised to see her mother that day and tell her “the whole thing.”

“What does that mean?” he had asked.

“I don't know, Reg. I wish she hadn't told me that much. I keep thinking she's found out the baby's got one chromosome too many or not enough. I just wish we'd been left in ignorance.”

“So do I.”

Like all his neighbors', and almost every private house in Kingsmarkham except those in Ploughman's Lane, Wexford's house was without air-conditioning. All the windows were open, including the French windows in the living room, and since the garden outside had lain in shadow for some hours, the room was a lot less hot than it might have been. A breeze had risen and fluttered the heavy-hanging leaves of lilacs.

“I'm going to have a drink,” Wexford said.

His wife's reply he had never heard on her lips before. “Yes, I think you should. And get me one, would you? There's Sauvignon in the fridge and it should be icy cold by now.”

A fertile imagination is more trouble than it's worth. So he often thought and did now as he poured the wine into two large glasses, envisaging a handicapped child, more painfully beloved than its brothers, a beautiful brain-damaged child, a child doomed to die at birth but never to be forgotten…He shook his head as if to negate these thoughts. A handful of fattening calorie-filled cashew nuts went into a bowl. He loved cashew nuts with what he sometimes thought was an unhealthy fixation. Now was no time for what his old dad had called “banting.”

“There's nothing wrong with it,” Dora said as he went back into the room. “If that's what you've been thinking. I know I have. It's fine. Sylvia's four months pregnant and Neil's the father.”

“What?”

“Yes, you did hear me. That's what I said. Neil's the father. There's more to come, though. A lot more.”

Dora took an unladylike swig of her wine and sighed. “I hoped they'd get back together, she and Neil. I always hoped that, as you know. But that's not it. He's apparently very happy with his girlfriend—what's she called?”

“Naomi.”

“He and Naomi are happy but for one thing. She can't have children and it's not a simple case of trying and failing. She'll never be able to have any.”

“I see what's coming,” said Wexford. “I see it in all its horror. She's having this baby for them. She's going to give it to them.” Suddenly the room was hot, the shade outside made no difference. It was hot and close and oppressive, and he was sweating again, beads of sweat breaking out on his face. “She's got Neil on her conscience because she thinks, or both of them think, that she left him for no reason. Just because she got fed up or bored. So she's making it up to him by having his baby as a present for him and his girlfriend. I know her. I know the way her mind works. Why can't she confine her social-worker dogooding to her clients?”

“Every digit of your blood pressure is showing in your face,” said Dora. “You want to calm down. You're even worse than I am.”

 

Hannah Goldsmith was writing her report. Or her new computer measuring twenty centimeters by twelve was writing it while she did the thinking, remembering, and transcribing of her notes. Jewel Terrace, Brimhurst was her subject. She and Baljinder Bhattacharya had spent a large part of the day there and been back in the late afternoon. It was a piece of luck that of all the four occupants of the terrace, while two of them were in full-time employment, only one was out at work. Only John Brooks had left his house that morning, at the early hour of six-thirty, to drive to the Stowerton Industrial Estate where he was security officer at a large manufacturing complex.

The occupant of number one was a horror. Hannah knew she shouldn't be ageist, but really there were limits. She realized she had an irrational dislike of old men. Not old people, only men. This prejudice shouldn't be allowed to go on and perhaps she should think about having counseling for her problem. Briefly, she lifted her fingers from the computer, thinking about whether to go back to her old counselor or find one specializing in relations with the elderly. Still, for now she must get on with this report.

The horror's name was Henry Nash. His living room was hot and stuffy with a nasty chemical stench overlaying cooking smells, which Wexford would have known but which Hannah was too young to recognize as camphor. Henry himself wore a pair of striped trousers, evidently part of a suit, fraying blue braces, and a collarless striped shirt done up tightly at the neck. Hannah, who found stubble on a man's chin attractive, particularly on Bal Bhattacharya's, was repelled by the half-inch growth of white beard on Henry Nash's.

All this would have mattered little in comparison with Henry's attitude toward herself, the senior officer. He addressed all his replies to DC Bhattacharya, irrespective of who had made the inquiry. She could see quite clearly that he was torn between racism and male chauvinism but finally decided that talking to an Asian man was preferable to talking to a white woman. When she asked him what time he had gone to bed the previous night he treated her question as if it had sexual undertones, made a sour face, and spoke to Bal. “You want to know what time I went to bed?”

“That's right, Mr. Nash.”

“I don't know what it's got to do with you, but it was ten o'clock. I always go to bed at ten. On the dot.”

Bal said that the elderly were well known to be light sleepers (“Who are you calling elderly?”) and asked him if he had heard anything in the night. Though looking at least eighty, Mr. Nash said he wasn't old enough to have broken nights. His neighbor John Brooks sometimes disturbed him, slamming his car door and starting the engine at six-thirty, but not this morning. He had slept, had heard nothing and seen nothing until he looked out of the window just before eight and saw “a crowd of folks trampling down” the grass verge opposite. He didn't know Amber Marshalson to speak to or her parents and didn't want to.

“She's that little chit who had an illegitimate baby. She wouldn't have dared show her face outside in my young days. And is anyone saying that was worse than what we've got now?”

Hannah was but she knew better than to say it out loud. She, who could hear of any perversion—incest, bestiality, extreme sadism—with equanimity, was deeply shocked by hearing the word “illegitimate” on anyone's lips. Even more, perhaps, on these wrinkled lips, surrounded by white stubble. Illegitimate! It was unbelievable.

Bal's telling this appalling old man Amber had been murdered seemed to cause him no shame or embarrassment at what he had said. He merely nodded, as if the slaughter of a young girl was commonplace or only what should be expected by someone who sinned as she had done. Hannah put very little in her report about him and not much more about John and Gwenda Brooks at number two.

Gwenda was a young woman of about Hannah's own age but otherwise very different. Her mid-calf-length skirt was a brown and beige check and her blouse beige with a brooch at the neck. Hannah thought she had seen the last of permed hair when her grandmother died, but Gwenda Brooks had a perm and one that was “growing out.” In her rather querulous voice, she said how she had seen her husband off in his car at six-thirty. Apparently, she had no job herself and she had no children. It mystified Hannah what she did all day. But that was far from the matter in hand. Mrs. Brooks had slept all night until her alarm sounded at six
A.M
. She announced with pride that she was a very sound sleeper, nothing woke her. One piece of information interested Hannah because it was unexpected and would need further looking into.

“My husband was sleeping in the spare room,” Gwenda Brooks said. “It's—well, it's on account of his snoring. He's not yet thirty but he snores like a…” She was unable to find any animal whose vocal emissions were comparable to John Brooks's snoring. “Well, I don't know, but I can't sleep through it.”

“We'd like to speak to your husband,” Bal said. “When does he get home?”

Not till seven-thirty, it seemed. John Brooks's days were long. His wife knew the Marshalsons only “to pass the time of day.” She had once spoken to Amber when she was out with the baby because Brand was “so sweet, always smiling and happy.” She loved babies and longed to have one of her own. Her husband had once or twice been to Clifton to teach Amber something to do with a computer. Gwenda didn't quite know what. She had never been able to get the hang of computers herself.

“All butterfingers,” she said to Hannah's disgust. “I expect I'm dyslexic. That's always the excuse, isn't it?”

Hannah put it in her report. If the Marshalsons had a computer, why did Amber want to know how to use it? Couldn't her stepmother have taught her? Anyway, it was inconceivable that someone of eighteen had no computer skills. They all did, from the age of five at least. Maybe John Brooks was having a secret relationship with Amber. This would be worth looking into.

Lydia Burton at number three was altogether better and more rewarding, though when Hannah thought about it she realized she might only be thinking this way because Ms. Burton was her kind of woman, single, independent, and with a highly responsible job. Amber Marshalson had attended the school, of which she was head teacher, for several years after her father and by then seriously ill mother had moved to Mill Lane. The first Mrs. Marshalson had died when Amber was seven and her father had married a fellow director of his interior decorating company a year afterward.

“Poor Amber became very difficult. She never really became reconciled to her stepmother, and that's a shame because Diana is a very nice woman. She's been wonderful with the baby.”

A small West Highland dog came into the room and jumped into Ms. Burton's lap. Bal asked her again about walking her dog at half-past midnight and she repeated her story of seeing the man in the hooded jacket standing among the trees. No, she didn't think he was holding anything, though perhaps he had a backpack. Yes, she was sure he had a backpack. If she closed her eyes she could see the bulge on his back.

“It might have been a sack or a bag slung over his shoulder. I was a bit frightened, you see. It was getting on for one by then and I was out alone with my dog. He obviously isn't much of a guard dog, as you can see, poor little chap. I crossed the road and let myself in here as fast as I could. I should have called the police, shouldn't I? One always thinks of these things when it's too late…”

 

In the great heat that continued the next day they went on searching for the weapon, knowing only that they were looking for a brick, a lump of concrete, a breeze block, or even an iron bar. Though he knew not to expect it yet, Wexford grew impatient waiting for the plinthologist's verdict.

Leaving her report on his desk, Hannah told him why she thought they hadn't found the weapon. By then they knew that Carina Laxton had fixed the time of death as nearer to two
A.M.
than one.

“Because whatever it was was inside his backpack, guv. The guy Lydia Burton saw had a backpack. What else could he have had in it but the brick or concrete block he used to kill Amber?”

“Maybe. I'm not calling off the search until the brick man comes up with something definite. He has a specimen from the wound to examine—poor devil.”

Hannah thought it unbecoming in someone of Wexford's rank—or indeed any rank—to make remarks with such an undercurrent of emotion running through them. This was the brick person's
job.
She was used to it, for God's sake. It was her career. Hannah deplored Wexford's use of the word “man.” How did he know this expert wasn't a woman? The pathologist was, after all, as was the coroner who would open the inquest on Amber's body tomorrow.

“He brought the brick or whatever with him, guv,” she said, “and when he'd…used it, he took it away with him.”

“Or maybe ‘she,' Sergeant,” said Wexford in a neutral tone.