Wexford 18 - Harm Done (16 page)

   Superintendent Rogers of the uniformed branch had told him that Orbe, on leaving prison, had made a private appeal for protection. He wouldn’t guarantee, he said, that he was no longer a danger. He couldn’t say what would happen if he had access to children. At any rate, if nothing worse than that, he liked looking at them. It gave him great pleasure to watch them, and he couldn’t rightly see why he should relinquish that pleasure. It did no harm. Apart from the boy who died - and that, he averred, was a tragic accident - Thomas Orbe maintained that he had never done any harm. He was one of those pedophiles - “Pedos,” said Wexford scathingly. “A new word enters the English language” - who insisted that children, even very small ones, desire, enjoy, and need sexual relations. “He asked for it, pestered me for it” was his principal defense.

   And if Wexford had been inclined to pity Orbe, it was this attitude more than anything that made him harden his heart. Evil was a word freely bandied about these days and he looked on it with suspicion, but Orbe and what he did were evil, that he knew. And when he heard how Orbe justified his actions, even at this late stage, when he heard that the old man still made excuses for himself on such grounds, Wexford felt much the same kind of fury as that displayed by the Muriel Campden residents. If his own grandsons lived anywhere near Orbe’s home, wouldn’t he at any rate want to react as they reacted?

   Still, if in no more than the interests of public order and civilized behavior, the pedophile must be protected from his neighbours, just as little boys must be protected from him. Superintendent Rogers was in favour of removing him to Myringham, either to the police station or to the Mid-Sussex Constabulary Headquarters. Both had accommodations that could temporarily be adapted to house him. For, as Rogers said, obnoxious as the whole idea of the man and his activities might be, he had (in the superintendent’s own words) “paid his debt to society” and was technically an innocent person, who could not legitimately be lodged in a police cell without some adaptations being made to it.

   The assistant chief constable designate wanted him left where he was, at home, in his own house. For the present. His theory was that once the ringleaders, in this case John Keenan, Miroslav Zlatic, and Brenda Bosworth, had appeared in court, been dealt with, and severely warned, there would be no more problems. This was a community of country folk whose recent forebears had lived in cottages in villages and hamlets, who had kept their sheep and looked after the landowner’s game. Such people were naturally law-abiding, peace-loving, and tolerant.

   “Besides,” he said, “they’ll get used to it. They will accept. They’ll see no harm comes to their children and every thing will simmer down.”

Detective Constable Lynn Fancourt had established a pleasant relationship with Lizzie Cromwell, albeit one that was sympathetic on her part and sycophantic on Lizzie’s. Lizzie called her by her first name and felt herself privileged, even daring, to do so. On Monday afternoon Lynn had managed, in a friendly talk, to extract from Lizzie an admission that she had in fact accepted a lift from the woman called Vicky and been told that Vicky drove a white car, registration number and make unknown. It was a triumph for Lynn and she decided to leave it there and revert to the subject of Lizzie’s pregnancy, of which she deeply disapproved. A termination was what he advocated and as soon as possible.

   Debbie said it was a funny thing but Lynn had just missed the social worker who had been around to see Lizzie and asked her to take part in their new project. Lizzie was proud to have been one of the girls selected. No, Debbie said, she hadn’t said anything about Lizzie’s pregnancy and Lizzie hadn’t, it didn’t seem necessary; and anyway, it wasn’t the social worker’s business.

   By now Lynn had guessed that the project was Kingsmarkham Social Services’ initiative to discourage teenage pregnancies, a campaign called Project Infant Simulator, and when she went into the living room where Lizzie was, she found her with a life-size baby doll on her lap. The doll wore a Babygro over a disposable napkin and little white socks.

   “I’m to keep him for the week,” said Lizzie. “His name’s Jodi.”

   She seemed bemused. As well she might be, thought Lynn. She asked, “Is he a sort of robot?” And then she realized Lizzie wouldn’t know what that was, so she said, “Does he cry and pee and need feeding and all that?”

   “He’s done some crying. I changed him. I’m learning how to look after him.”

   Lynn saw that Lizzie, and perhaps Debbie too, had missed the point. The provision of Jodi to selected candidates or volunteers was to demonstrate to adolescent girls the hard work, lack of sleep, and overall responsibility caring for a baby entailed. Thus, they might think twice before engaging in unprotected sexual activity. Lizzie, on the other hand, saw it as training for her future.

   “Well, I’m afraid you’re in for some sleepless nights,” said Lynn. “How many weeks pregnant do you think you are?” She asked it conversationally, in a friendly instead of hectoring tone, and Lizzie, preoccupied with staring into Jodi’s fathomless blue eyes, answered her just as casually, “I reckon fourteen weeks, that’s what Mum says. I haven’t seen since January.”

   Interpreting this last statement with some difficulty but pretty sure she had got it right, Lynn said, “Jerry had nothing to do with it, did he?”

   Lizzie’s muttered answer was lost in a sudden sob from Jodi, who began to cry without prior warning, as indeed real babies do. Saying she had to get his bottle, she handed the robot to Lynn and went outside. DC Fancourt was left in the ridiculous situation of being landed with a weeping baby doll, down whose plastic cheeks water trick led and who mouthed piteous whimpers.

   She got up and walked it up and down, the way she remembered her mother doing with her infant brother. Jodi continued to sob and weep and thrash his arms about. His crying had reached a crescendo by the time Lizzie came back. She took him tenderly into her arms, murmured to him, and slid the nipple into his mouth. A sweet smile came to her lips as the robot sucked, and she turned to Lynn with such a naked look of love and pride that DC Fancourt almost flinched. To question her now seemed like interrupting with practicalities the celebration of some holy rite. Lizzie, with a lump of plastic on her lap, was earth mother, priestess, and the essence of sacred maternity all at once.

   So Lynn waited, rather uneasily, until the bottle had been emptied, deciding to speak when Lizzie began removing Jodi’s napkin and fastening on another. After all, no one, however moved by the girl’s devotion - curiously it brought to Lynn’s mind those orphaned ducklings who, imprinted early, attach themselves to a mother dog as surrogate - could become sentimental over these hygienic measures. “You were going to tell me about Jerry, Lizzie,” she said.

   “He never touched me. Never touched me and never said a word.” Lizzie realized she had betrayed herself and put one hand over her mouth.

   Lynn said casually, “Was it a nice house?”

   Jodi replaced in his carrying cot, Lizzie turned on Lynn a resentful look. “I’m not to say, you know that. They’ll get to me and punish me. They’ll drill holes in my knees, they said, they’ll break my fingers. If they hurt me, I could lose my baby, Mum says.”

   “So you’ve told your mum?”

   “No, I haven’t,” Lizzie shouted. “I just said, I’d like a nice bungalow like that, modern like and out in the real country; and not joined on to next door.”

   “And Jerry never spoke to you, is that right?”

   Lizzie said with bitterness, “Never spoke a word, but they never do. He never did. Just ‘Leezee, Leezee.’”

   About to ask her to explain, Lynn was interrupted by the entry of Debbie, fetched in by the sound of Lizzie’s raised voice. “What’s the matter? What have you been saying to her now?”

   “I’m just leaving, Mrs. Crowne. Lizzie has been very helpful.”

   “Oh, has she? Well, wonders will never cease. To change the subject, I thought you lot might like to know that old pedo’s gone. There you are, you didn’t know, did you?” Debbie smiled complacently. “It’s funny how the police never know what the rest of the world does. He’s gone, left last night. There’s dozens of people saw him. He had a suitcase, one of them on wheels, and he was running like all the devils in hell was after him and pulling that case behind him. It’s not likely any folks here’d stop him going, is it? Good riddance to bad rubbish is what I say. It’s no good asking me,” she went on, as if Lynn had asked, “where he went, because I haven’t a clue. Chucked himself under a train, hopefully, only if he’d done that, there’d be a body. What amazes me is he’s the criminal, he’s the one ought to be hung, but it’s poor John and Brenda and that Miro-what’s-he-called that’s up in court.”

   When this conversation was relayed to him, Wexford said, “If they believe he’s gone, so much the better. That way we’ll have a bit of hush. Sooner or later they’re going to find out he’s still there, but unless he goes out, and I doubt if he will, there’ll be no trouble.”

   “I thought you subscribed to Southby’s view,” Burden said.

   “I do in a way. But I know that crowds are the same the world over, in city centers and rustic paradises alike, and all subject to mob psychology. Shall we go out and have another look for a bungalow?”

They knew it was a bungalow now. Both girls wouldn’t be lying, not in that particular way. Lizzie had called this one “modern,” which meant forgetting about the shingles. To Orbe, as Lynn said, modern might mean anything put up in his lifetime, but to Lizzie it would be no more than ten years old. And this one stood alone, without neighbours. They had asked her to come with them and try to point it out, but Lizzie refused. She felt ill, she said, and she was frightened, she might have that much dreaded miscarriage. Her mum had once “brought it on” by going for a ride in a truck on a bumpy road.

   They drove to the villages along the abandoned bypass route, as far north as Myfleet, then south to Flagford, Pickvale, and Sayle. Three bungalows were possibilities, and one of these was soon dismissed. No one, not even Lizzie Cromwell, would call a converted train carriage, even though the conversion was recent and the house stood alone at the end of a lane, “modern” or “lovely.” But the bungalow on the outskirts of Pickvale was another matter. Planning restrictions forbade new building there except on a site where a previous house had been. This one probably had the vestiges of the original cottage incorporated somewhere inside it, but its outside was pristine ivory rendering, white paint and black weatherboard. No other house was in sight. Its garden was young, bleak, and labor-saving, more paving than lawn, and the trees and bushes of a kind that would never grow big.

   Burden rang the doorbell and they waited. A young woman answered it, a young man standing behind her. Somehow, as soon as he saw them, Wexford knew this wasn’t the place. They showed their warrant cards and the young couple studied them earnestly. Unless they were consummate actors, they weren’t lying when they said they knew no one called Vicky, had never heard of Jerry, and owned a black BMW presently in their garage, but which Wexford and Burden were welcome to look at.

   On the way through Pickvale, taking the lane for Sayle, Burden said he thought the whole thing was a waste of time. No one had been harmed, both Rachel and Lizzie were home safely, and the girls themselves were obviously anxious that no further steps should be taken.

   “And that makes it all right, does it?” Wexford had been looking out of the window across the meadows to the start of the downs, but now he turned around. “The law has been broken, and broken twice, in a very serious way. Two young women have been forcibly taken from their homes and families and falsely imprisoned for three days. Two police investigations have, been mounted at enormous cost to the taxpayer, and you say no harm has been done.”

   Burden would have liked to tell him not to go on so and would have done but for the presence of Donaldson, the driver, whose tongue might be discreet but whose ears were not. Instead he said, “Prolonging that investigation is just costing the taxpayer more. And for what? What kind of - ”

   Wexford interrupted him. “Look at that! That’s it!”

   Donaldson pulled onto the shoulder. They had stopped outside a house previously seen but dismissed because it had no shingles on its front. The bungalow, called Sunnybank, stood indeed upon a bank, planted with alpines and small junipers, which would have been sunny if the sky were not heavily overcast. In the middle of its front lawn grew, not a conifer as Rachel had said, but a deciduous tree with foliage the like of which Wexford had never seen before, pale yellow-green leaves shaped like a square joined to a triangle. Those leaves would, of course, have been only in bud when she was there. If she had been there, if this was the house.

   “We’ve seen it before,” said Burden. “We didn’t give it a second glance.”

   “Because the tree was wrong and there were no shingles. But we know Rachel has lied and Lizzie didn’t mention shingles or a tree. This place is just what would appeal to a girl like Lizzie.”

   It was dazzling white with a pink front door, unsuitable Georgian pillared portico, and roof of jade-green pantiles. The separate garage was a little house in itself, also with pantiled roof and two small diamond-patted windows. In describing the house where she had been as two-storied, shingled, and with a gravel drive, Rachel could hardly have diverged more’ from the truth. Had that been her purpose? To outline its opposite?

   But again they were disappointed, though this time they went in, sat down, and talked to Mrs. Pauline Chorley for half an hour. She was in her fifties, a tall, thin woman with dyed ash-blonde hair, married to a businessman who commuted daily to London. He was there now and wouldn’t be home till seven-thirty Mrs. Chorley was a keen gardener, gardening occupied most of her time, that and the maintenance of her home in exquisite condition. She had painted the exterior herself last year and really thought it already needed doing again. White wasn’t suitable for this country, the rain discoloured it so, but she did love white, she was crazy about it, couldn’t have enough of it. And this preference showed in her furnishings of the large open-plan living-dining room, the bright white net curtains, white carpets and cushions and fluffy rugs, and in her own clothes, the frosty white lace-trimmed blouse and glossy white pumps.