Wexford 18 - Harm Done (31 page)

   “Exciting life,” said Vicky

   She had changed entirely in the short space often minutes. From friendly geniality she had passed through brusqueness to barely concealed sneers. And now, as they entered another lane and turned almost at once into the front drive of a large, well-lit, newish house, she said, rather in the tone an ill-disposed prison officer might use to a recalcitrant inmate, “All right then, get out. Don’t get any silly ideas, I’m right behind you.”

   Lynn wasn’t much of an actress and didn’t know how the girl she was pretending to be might react in these circumstances. So she did nothing at all but obey. Like a bemused sheep she scuttled out of the car and up to the front door, which at the moment of their arrival was opened from the inside. Vicky gave her an unexpected push and she stumbled over the doormat and nearly fell. Nearly but not quite. It was a funny thing to recall at that moment, but she remembered Wexford saying a miss was as good as a mile and adding that he was quoting the Duke of Wellington when someone took a potshot at him in Hyde Park.

   She only stumbled. She looked up and found her eyes meeting a pair of stony, flat, gray eyes in a curiously blank face. At first she thought the face was lopsided, heavier about one cheek than the other, but it wasn’t, it was an illusion. The man was a little taller than she was, thin, with receding dark hair and wearing a rather shabby pin-striped suit. He looked sad and as if he never smiled, never could, didn’t know how to make the requisite muscles work. Lynn looked over her shoulder at Vicky, who was just standing there, then back at the man who must be Jerry, and said what the nice little veterinary assistant would surely have said: “What am I doing here? What is this place?”

   “It’s useless asking,” said Vicky, “because I’m not saying. Why should I? You don’t have a choice. You’re here and here you stay until I decide if you’ll do.”

   “Do?”

   “Do for my purposes. Say hello to Jerry. Haven’t those parents of yours taught you any manners?”

   Lynn said hello to Jerry who gave her a blank, silent stare in return.

Among the hardware stores that sold paraffin none opened before nine-thirty in the morning. Vine had to revise his ideas about one of the troublemakers buying his paraffin on the morning the bomb was thrown. He began to think he was on the wrong track altogether, for petrol and paraffin were such common and generally used commodities that certainly 50 percent of households would have either or both accessible. But he had spent the day calling at ironmongers and hardware shops just the same in the hope, which turned out to be vain, that an assistant might tell him of a regular customer and frequent purchaser of paraffin.

   By the evening he was back in the Rat and Carrot, talking once more with Andy Honeyman. Vine found it hard to understand how someone could remember what another man said and recollect the circumstances in which he had said it without being able to describe that man. Honeyman must either be lying or totally unobservant, or forgetful to the point of amnesia, for he steadily denied any knowledge of the customer in the Rat and Carrot who had told Colin Crowne how to make a petrol bomb. Nor could he remember who else had been present, apart from Colin and Joe Hebden and Terry Fowler. Heavily pressed by Vine, he finally said that there had been a woman there he knew by sight. She lived in Glebe Road and he thought her first name was Jackie. None of this was of much help to Vine, who went back to the Muriel Campden Estate and began questioning Colin Crowne and Joe Hebden and Terry Fowler once more.

   Colin had taken to his bed before the bomb throwing and the death of Ted Hennessy What with the pain from his shingles and Miroslav Zlatic’s refusal to listen to him or even give any sign that he understood when Colin asked what the Serb intended to do to provide for Lizzie’s child, the stress had been too much for him, contributing to his malaise. On the following day he had been told by Kingsmarkham Social Services that their virtual babies were valued at £1254.80 apiece, that Jodi must be replaced, and they intended to recover that sum from him by whatever means were in their power. Colin knew that meant the County Court and maybe the bailiffs in. He didn’t want to get up when Vine arrived, but Debbie said he had better, so he came down in tracksuit pants and a T-shirt.

   Vine made him go through it all again, how he had only asked about making a petrol bomb out of natural curiosity He was personally too law-abiding to have any inkling of these things, but he’d seen this bit on telly, throwing bottles that blew up and set fire to cars, and naturally he’d wanted to know how it was done. Putting in a good word for his neighbour, he said that Joe Hebden was of the same way of thinking.

   “But your natural curiosity didn’t take you so far as to find out the name of your instructor?”

   “My what?”

   “The guy who told you how to do it?”

   “I never asked him, did I? He put his spoke in. I never said to him, how d’you do it. I said it to my mate. He come along and put his spoke in.”

   “What did he look like?” said Vine, who had asked this question before.

   Colin Crowne gave the same answer. “Just a bloke. Twenty-something, maybe a bit more, I don’t know. I wasn’t to know I’d have to remember, was I?”

   One of Terry Fowler’s Sons opened the front door. The other was sitting with his father on a sofa, watching Crimewatch and eating taco chips. The Crowne home was far from immaculate, but this place was among the dirtiest and least cared-for Vine had ever seen. No one had cleaned it since Terry’s wife left him. Something was on the floor behind the television set that Vine, quickly looking away, hoped was dog turds but feared might be from a human source.

   But Terry was able, this time, to offer a scrap of help. He knew this Jackie woman through her sister, whose son went to school with his two. The sisters lived next door to each other in Glebe Road, but more than that he couldn’t say. The little Fowler boys then began talking without a trace of diffidence or shyness about another school friend, cousin of someone or other, a boy of six who had his own computer and who had been to Florida on holiday and visited Disney World. Vine thought this a long way from the point - they seemed to be traveling through the ramifications of a whole cluster of Kingsmarkham families - and tried to get back to the subject of Jackie. Terry said that he had once seen her in the company of Charlene Hebden, but beyond that he couldn’t help.

   The six-year-old Kim Fowler accompanied Vine to the door. He was what Vine’s grandmother called an old-fashioned child and he apologized for the dirty floor and the dust that covered everything. “Mum used to do it,” he said, “but she’s gone away and left us so there’s no one done it. Dad says cleaning is for ladies, not guys.”

   “Well,” said Vine, “there are some guys called New Men and they do cleaning.”

   “We haven’t got none of them round here.” Kim stretched upward to open the door and just made it.

   “That Jackie’s got a girl called Kaylee, and do you know what her dad did? He put her through a cat flap so she could steal things. Only he didn’t go to jail because they couldn’t prove it.”

Tasneem came into the helpline room just as Sylvia was putting the phone down after her fifth call of the evening. It was half past ten, a pitch-dark night and raining hard. Sylvia hadn’t pulled down the blind and the rain hung on the window like a shifting, glittering veil of silver. By this time, and after all those disquieting or upsetting calls - one had been from a man with a fanatical manner and an Irish accent who had threatened to come and get her and do to her “what they did to the blessed martyred Saint Agatha” - she was always glad of a visitor, Tasneem or Tracy or the black woman with a name she hadn’t learned to pronounce correctly, or the newcomer, Vivienne.

   Tasneem stood at the window and gazed out through the water-drop veil at the wet, black night. Tonight, especially, there was nothing to be seen, but Tasneem often stared out there, looking, Sylvia knew, in the vague direction of York Street and the Muriel Campden Estate where Kim and Lee were.

   “You don’t happen to know anything about, Saint Agatha, I suppose?” Sylvia said.

   “Moslems don’t have saints, Sylvia.”

   “No, I suppose you don’t. It’s prophets you have.”

   The phone rang. Sylvia said, “The Hide helpline. How may I help you?”

   “It’s my boyfriend,” a voice said breathlessly; “we moved in together last week - well, I moved in with him. He’s always been so lovely, he’s a really nice guy, everyone says so, and he’s always been so gentle. Well, last night I was half an hour late home from work, the bus never came, and I didn’t phone him - are you there? Can you hear me?”

   “I’m here,” Sylvia said. “I’m listening. Go on.”

   “Like I said, I was half an hour late, and when I came in, he acted like I’d done something terrible, committed a crime or something, and he grabbed hold of me and said where had I been and who had I been with - it was only six-thirty in the evening, for God’s sake - and then he slapped me hard on both cheeks, wham, wham. I was so shocked, I could hardly believe what had happened except that I’ve got a really bad bruise on the left side. He said he was sorry; but then he said I ought to understand he did it because he’d been so worried.”

   “Where are you now?”

   “At home, at my own place. I’d kept it on, thank God I did. He’s gone out for the evening, so I found this number on a card in a call box and came in here and phoned you. Look, I can understand he was worried about me - well, up to a point I can - but you don’t hit people because you’re worried about them, do you?”

   “Some do, as I’m afraid you now know. You said it all when you told me thank God you’d kept your own place on.”

   “You mean I ought to stay here and not go back to him?”

   “You know it without my telling you.”

   “If that’s what happens after I’ve lived with him for one week, what’s it going to be like after six months, is that what you mean?”

   Sylvia said that was what she meant and repeated that the caller knew the answers already, she just very naturally wanted reassurance and support. Putting down the phone, Sylvia told Tasneem what she had just heard.

   “Terry was like that, a really nice guy and gentle and all that. From a distance, that is. It’s when you get together it starts, when you’re all shut up inside alone with them. I’d like to do your job, Sylvia, it’d be doing something I really know about. Terry used to call me stupid he said I was ignorant about everything but cooking and cleaning, but if there’s one thing I’m an expert in, it’s domestic violence.”

   Sylvia took Tasneem’s hand and squeezed it. “You could train to go on the helpline, Tas, but it’s not paid and you’ve got your degree to do. Besides, once you’ve got your flat you won’t want to come near The Hide again.”

   “And I’ll get my boys back, won’t I?”

   “I’m sure you will,” Sylvia said, though she wasn’t all that sure, but she couldn’t say any more because the phone was ringing again.

   The threatening Irishman once more. She cut him off before he had got more than three words out, but they were three offensive words and her hand on the phone was shaking. “Silly, I ought to be used to it.”

   “There are some things you never get used to,” said Tasneem with feeling.

   “No. I think I’ll tell my dad about this one, see if we can track him down.”

   Griselda Cooper put her head around the door and said the roof was leaking in the northwest corner of the house with rain coming in through the ceiling. She’d had to move Vivienne into Tasneem’s room, it was only temporary, and she hoped that was okay with Tasneem. Tasneem said she’d like the company, and Sylvia asked Griselda what it was they did to Saint Agatha.

   “Don’t ask me. Put her on a grill or tied her to a wheel, I expect, something disgusting, anyway. Why? Does one of our charming callers want to do it to you?” 

It was because she had made a bargain with her captor, Lynn thought, that she was spared the Rohypnol-doctored drink that had been given to Lizzie Cromwell and Rachel Holmes on their arrival. Lynn didn’t struggle or even protest much, she said her parents would be anxious and she became a little tearful, but if Vicky would promise to let her go in the morning, she would agree to spend one night there. Could she phone her parents?

   That made. Vicky laugh. She didn’t even bother to answer but, looking Lynn up and down, said, “Those trousers you’re wearing won’t do. We’ll have to get you into something else tomorrow.”

   But Vicky didn’t search her or even look in her bag where the mobile was. Vicky seemed to accept Lynn’s meekness and acquiescence as behaviour only to be expected from an independent girl of nineteen, for Vicky, as Lynn soon saw, was an egomaniac of gigantic proportions She didn’t observe or question or even have suspicions because she saw only herself, and saw herself as a figure of strength and power and rectitude. And, of course, she saw Jerry.

   Set down in a chair opposite him - literally set down by Vicky, a hand on each shoulder pushing her into a sit ting position - Lynn felt she owed herself congratulations on not being afraid of him. She just made it, just managed to resist and turn back the finger of fear that crept up her spine. It was his eyes as much as anything, his eyes that seemed to have more white around the irises than most people’s, and his silence, so that he made her doubt if he was able to speak. If he made a sound, what kind would it be?

   Ever since she had come into the house, she had been thinking of the missing little girl, listening for child noises and looking around the room for child signs. But there had been no sounds. Whoever had furnished this room had no interest in their surroundings beyond requiring them to be comfortable and insulated. Beige was the predominant color, and those people had no interest in toys, either for children or grown-ups. Sanchia wasn’t here, unless Vicky was cleverer than Lynn thought.

   After staring at her, those eyes apparently unblinking, for ten minutes, Jerry got up and began walking about the room; picking things up and putting them down again, a book, an ashtray, a brass ornament in the shape of a tortoise. From an arrangement of flowers in a basket he took a blue iris, brought it to his nose, sniffed it, dropped it on the floor, and trod on it. Not a simple treading underfoot but a concentrated, manic stamping and crushing. Then he passed on to the window and stood there with his back to the room, although the curtains were drawn.