Not in the Flesh Page 10

  Burden was drinking his usual lager, Wexford claret. He was uncomfortably aware of his wife's eyes on him as he fetched a second glass. She had already told him that whereas one glass of red wine was good for his heart, four or five were not, and when he said, “Can one have too much of a good thing?” scolded that his health was not, as far as she was concerned, a suitable subject for jokes. She herself was drinking what looked like red wine but was in fact cranberry juice. She and Jenny had pushed their chairs back from the table and were talking about KAAM, the newly formed group.

  Wexford had been interrupted and now he repeated what he had said about Myringham University and Douglas Chadwick. “Her name's Sarah Finlay and she's a lecturer there. But in psychology, not mechanical engineering. I don't know whether it's a coincidence, Mike. There are an enormous lot of students at Myringham and she says she didn't know him. I talked to her on the phone.”

  “What became of the T-shirt?”

  “She gave it to her brother, who didn't want it either. She broke up with Ben Mabledon soon after and she took it to the Oxfam secondhand shop.”

  “Which Oxfam shop?”

  “The one in Myringham. This was in '98. It's a long time ago and naturally there are different people in the Oxfam shop and no one would remember that far back, anyway. It's not as if they'd keep meticulous records of the old clothes they sold.”

  “You don't think it's Douglas Chadwick, do you?”

  “No, I don't,” said Wexford. “Why would old Grimble have killed his tenant? Come to that, why would young Grimble have killed him? The old man wanted to be rid of him and he wanted his money, which is exactly what he couldn't accomplish by killing him. As for the money, he had the piano to sell. Presumably that was the arrangement. I'll go, the lodger would have said, you keep as much of my stuff as you want to cover the debt, put the rest out in the front, and my pal will come and pick it up in his van. And that's exactly what old Grimble did. I don't think Chadwick comes into it. I think Chadwick's out there somewhere, in Wales or the north of Scotland or the Scilly Isles, playing the piano in a hotel lounge or working in a garage or taking another mechanical engineering course in a university in Northern Ireland.”

  “Did you say Douglas Chadwick?”

  Wexford turned slowly to smile at Jenny Burden. “I did,” he said. “Do say you know him, Jenny. Give us some much-needed revelation.”

  “Well, if it's the same one, I used to know a Douglas Chadwick whose sister was a teacher in the first school I ever taught at. He was a jazz pianist-amateur, I mean-in a club.”

  “It sounds like the same one. When was this?”

  “Let's see. My first job was at a school in Lewes. That was before I came to Kingsmarkham, so it'll be fifteen years ago. Helen Chadwick and I used to go to this club and hear Douglas play, and we all had a meal together once, and I think we met in a pub. And then I got my job at Kingsmarkham Comprehensive.”

  “Where is he now?” her husband asked.

  “Don't know. I know where she is. And so do you. She got married like me and she's Helen Carver now.”

  “You mean that woman who came on a visit and called to see us and brought those appalling kids who chopped the heads off all my dahlias?”

  “That's who I mean, yes.”

  Wexford laughed. “I'm a feminist,” he said. “I don't hold with women changing their names when they marry. It causes needless confusion. What happened to the brother, Jenny?”

  “She didn't mention him that time her kids decapitated Mike's dahlias. I could ask her. I could phone her-well, now.”

  “Don't issue any invitations,” said Burden.

  It was eight-thirty in the evening. Jenny took her mobile out of her handbag and went out into the damp darkness of the Olive's garden. In the snug Wexford, Burden, and Dora began speculating as to the present whereabouts of Douglas Chadwick, and Wexford, because one of his problems would be solved, half hoped Helen Carver would say she hadn't seen her brother since April 1996. He had disappeared from the face of the earth.

  Jenny came back, looking very different from the smiling, rather excited woman who had gone optimistically off into the garden. “I spoke to her. I said I'd heard Douglas was playing at some fringe theater at a festival next month and I thought we might go. God, I wish I hadn't. She was nearly in tears. She said he'd died in a road accident two years ago.”

  10

  If Helen Carver had wept for the loss of her brother, Dilys Hughes seemed indifferent to the negative result of the DNA comparison. She had been reading the Sunday Times when Barry Vine arrived and from the way it lay open on the seat of an armchair, had cast it aside reluctantly when he rang her doorbell. “I've not seen him for fifteen years,” she said, “and when I've heard from him it's always been him wanting something.” She didn't ask Barry to sit down. “To be honest with you, it wouldn't have broken my heart if it had been him in that ditch.”

  “You've no idea where he might be now?”

  “I told you. Last time I heard was when he wanted to come here and that was eleven years ago. He thought he could bring some woman with him, the cheek of him. He might as well be dead as far as I'm concerned.”

  Barry rather regretted coming to Cardiff, especially on a Sunday. A phone call would have done just as well, but he had thought the woman would need the sensitive approach. Wexford was very keen on understanding and empathy, though Barry suspected this was a directive from above rather than his own opinion. But now there seemed nothing more to be said. Peter Darracott's present whereabouts were of no importance if he wasn't the mystery man who had been buried eleven years before.

  “Ah, well, that's all then, Mrs. Hughes,” he said. It had taken all of three minutes after a two-and-a-half-hour journey.

  She had picked up the Sunday Times and had just enough courtesy to remain standing while she read it. “Bye-bye. Take care.”

  Of all meaningless tags that was the most banal, Barry thought as he let himself out. Were you more likely to look to right and left before you crossed a street or drive your car within the speed limit because someone told you to take care? There was a shopping center on the way to the station. He went in, found a music store with, as usual, a pitifully small classical section. Bellini was his favorite composer, though he sometimes made incursions into Donizetti. The kind of people who confused the two he despised. By a piece of luck the shop happened to have La Sonnambula in stock. He knew it well but was quite happy to have it to listen to on the long journey back to Paddington, interrupted though it would be by other passengers rustling crisp bags while their mobiles played pop music. Outside a newsagent's he saw the Sunday Times. On its front page it advertised, in the News Review section, the story Dilys Hughes had been so absorbed in: “Gone Without Trace: The Lost Father” by Selina Hexham. Barry felt tempted to see it for himself and he bought a copy of the paper, realizing as soon as he did so how heavy it was, all those sections, and he would have to carry them home.

  Once in the train he riffled through the main section, just to keep himself up to date with the news, discarded all the rest but the News Review, which he kept, folded small in the pocket of the raincoat he had brought with him. He'd read it at home in the evening. The rest of the journey he spent in blissful enjoyment of Bellini.

  “We now know that the remains in Grimble's bungalow aren't Douglas Chadwick,” said Wexford, “but whoever he was the scorpion T-shirt was his. It certainly did belong to the man in the cellar. His hairs were on it, traces of his DNA were on it. It was his all right. The same goes for the anorak, the jeans, and the sneakers. Did he buy it from the Myringham Oxfam shop, or did someone buy it for him? And why has no one else come forward to say they've recognized that T-shirt at a later date? Did he take his clothes off before going into the cellar, or did someone else take them off after he was dead? And why take them off?”

  “Maybe he was going to have a bath,” said Burden but whether he was serious or being facetious wasn't clear.

 
; “Then you'd have found him in the bathroom, not the cellar. Grimble said that cellar door was never shut. He'd never seen it shut. Why would he lie about that?”

  “He might if he killed the chap in the cellar.”

  “I don't see that,” said Wexford. “If he'd killed the chap in the cellar, why mention it at all?”

  The phone ringing put an end to this exchange of views. It was a Mrs. Tredown to see him, said the desk sergeant's voice, adding rather awkwardly that what he actually meant was that it was two Mrs. Tredowns.

  “Have someone bring them up here, will you?” said Wexford, and to Burden, “You stay, Mike.”

  Lyn Fancourt brought them in. Claudia Ricardo wore a long coat of asymmetrical patches in red, yellow, green, and black over a badly creased white linen dress that also came to her ankles. On her feet were sandals with high wedge heels and laces cross-gartered. Her hair in a wild dense bush was in marked contrast to Maeve Tredown's smooth blond “set,” lacquered into helmet shape and glossy as new paintwork. Maeve was in a calf-length check skirt and gray jacket, both rather shabby with a charity-shop look about them. But what struck Wexford about them when they began to speak was not the difference between them but the similarity of their speech and intonation. If you closed your eyes you couldn't have said whose voice it was, Claudia's or Maeve's. Only the content of what they said identified them. Although very unlike to look at, in certain ways they seemed to belong to the same type. Was that why Tredown had married first one and then the other? Or having lost or rid himself of Claudia, he had looked for her counterpart in Maeve?

  They had come to tell him something Maeve said they had “neglected” to mention before. “When I spoke to that girl who came to see to Mr. Borodin. The one that brought us up here just now.”

  “You mean when you asked if it was true we'd found a body in the cellar of Mr. Grimble's house? I believe you asked if it was a man or a woman.”

  “Did you really, Cee? You are so awful.” Maeve's tone was that of a teenager.

  “We can't always account for what we say,” Claudia said with a giggle. “Naturally, I wanted to know. Who wouldn't? All those bodies next door. I wondered if they might have partaken in some sexy ritual.”

  Burden said in the repressive tone Wexford knew signified his extreme displeasure, “What did you come here to tell us?”

  Maeve looked at him as if she had just realized a second man was in the room. “Oh, yes, I remember you now. You came to the house with him, didn't you? Is it all right for you to ask me questions?” She pointed one sharp finger at Wexford. “He's the head one, isn't he?”

  These inquiries-they resulted in Claudia dissolving into giggles-neither Wexford nor Burden replied to. “If you have something to tell us, please do so. Our time is limited.”

  “Oh, is it?” Claudia put on an expression of disbelief. “Well, if you say so. What was it you asked? Oh, yes, what did we come to tell you. Two things really. One is that Mr. Chadwick-I don't know his first name-he was very friendly with Louise Axall, always at her flat he was when her-well, he's not her husband, is he?-her paramour was away.”

  “Let me stop you there, Miss Ricardo,” said Wexford. “Miss Axall has only lived in the district for four years and Douglas Chadwick is no longer a subject of our investigations. He died two years ago.”

  Maeve Tredown assumed the look of someone granted a revelation of the magnitude sustained on the road to Damascus. “Douglas! That was his name. I'd entirely forgotten.”

  “The second piece of information, Miss Ricardo?”

  “Yes, now where was I? Where was I, Em?”

  “You were going to tell them about seeing that old bat Irene McNeil going into the house after old Grimble died.”

  “That's it. She and that retarded boy and Grimble's pals, they were always in and out. Irene must be the nosiest old woman in the United Kingdom. As soon as they'd had the funeral she was in there. She lived across the road then, of course. We used to see her go in there time after time, didn't we, Em?”

  “Absolutely, Cee, and bring stuff out with her. Her husband too. That man decimated the wildlife around here. If it moved he shot it. Shame, really.”

  In absolute calm, Wexford said, “Thank you very much, Mrs. Tredown, Miss Ricardo.” He picked up the phone, said into it, “Have DC Fancourt come up, will you?”

  The two “wives-in-law” began chatting to each other in low voices, punctuated by the occasional burst of laughter and little high-pitched screams. From what Wexford could hear of their conversation, he gathered Claudia was telling Maeve a joke involving fellatio and a banana. He sighed, said, “We should like to talk to Mr. Tredown. Will tomorrow morning be convenient? Nine o'clock?”

  “It's very early,” said Claudia, giggling as if he had made an improper suggestion. “Very early. I may still be in bed.”

  “Oh, we'd better say yes, Cee. He'll only keep on at us if we don't.”

  “Thank you,” Wexford said as Lyn Fancourt came in. “See Mrs. Tredown and Miss Ricardo out, will you?” he said.

  Both giggling now, they went. Burden said they were like two schoolgirls who have enjoyed themselves but not quite succeeded in goading their teacher into losing his cool.

  “I don't know. It's a bit more sinister than that. They're more like a couple of thoroughly nasty participants in a witches' sabbath.”

  “Most of it was done to annoy. No doubt, they don't have enough to do. Maybe Tredown sends them out of the house so that he can work in peace. But was it done to distract?”

  “Distract from what, Mike?”

  “Well, obviously something they don't want us to know about. One thing they did tell us, though. I know you noticed, I could tell by the way you suddenly looked disgusted.”

  Wexford nodded. “You mean her reference to ‘that retarded boy,’ as Claudia so charmingly called him? That's obviously Charlie Cummings. Mike, I think that should have occurred to us. Is the body in the cellar Charlie Cummings?”

  “He disappeared three years before the man in the cellar died.”

  “Even so it's possible,” said Wexford.

  Doris Lomax, who had lived next door to Charlie Cummings and his mother, was a very old woman by this time. In the eleven years and more which had passed she had gradually lost her sight and was now registered as blind. Hannah Goldsmith, who could be tough and unrelenting with men and particularly with the young vigorous sort, was understanding with her own sex, reserving a particular tenderness and sympathy for old women whom she judged victims of a hard life and male oppression. She spoke with extreme gentleness to Doris Lomax in a voice Wexford would barely have recognized.

  The little stuffy room in which they sat was insufferably hot, for, though the day was mild for the time of year, Mrs. Lomax had her gas fire full on. The windows looked as if they had never been opened and now had seized up through disuse. Hannah gave no sign of discomfort, in spite of the sweat starting in her armpits, a physical manifestation she most disliked.

  “Not cold, are you, dear?” were almost the first words Mrs. Lomax uttered.

  “Not a bit, Mrs. Lomax, thank you. Now I quite understand you're unable to read the newspaper. Let me say I really don't think you miss much. But it did mean you weren't able to see the picture of the clothes Charlie was wearing, didn't it?”

  “I do have a carer comes in a lot, dear, and she's ever so kind. She reads bits of the local paper to me, but she never read that bit. What did you say he was wearing?”

  “A T-shirt, Mrs. Lomax.” Hannah could tell she didn't know what this was. “A thing-a garment-something like a sweater, only cotton. It's white and it's got a scorpion printed on it.”

  “A what, dear?”

  Describing a scorpion is surprisingly difficult. “A black thing,” Hannah began. Was it a reptile? An insect? An arachnid? “A bit like a sort of spider with a long tail-”

  Doris Lomax cut her short. “Oh, no dear. I knitted a sweater for him but it was plain blue. Maybe he had a thin
g like that, but I don't know.” An unwelcome possibility occurred to her. “You don't mean, oh, you can't mean you've found-”

  “We're not sure yet, Mrs. Lomax. We really can't tell but it's possible.” She had to say that.

  “Oh, poor Charlie, poor Charlie. He wasn't quite right in his head, you know, but such a nice boy. A good boy.” Another unhappy idea occurred to her. “You don't want me to come and look at him, do you? I can see a bit-well, sort of shapes, but I wouldn't-I couldn't…”

  “No, of course not,” Hannah said. “Of course not.” She didn't add that there was nothing to see but the basic structure of a man, common to all men. “One more thing-can you tell me what color Charlie's hair was?”

  “His mother had fair hair, dear, but all the Cummingses was dark. Charlie was quite dark.” She looked gravely at Hannah. “Not quite as dark as you, dear, but getting on that way.”

  Hannah was finding she desperately didn't want the body in Grimble's cellar to be Charlie Cummings. It was very unlike her, she thought, but she didn't want this old woman to suffer further hurt. Inspiration came to her. “How tall was Charlie, Mrs. Lomax?”

  “Not very tall for a man, dear. Maybe five feet five or six.”

  Hannah's relieved expression wouldn't have been visible, but the little sigh she gave reached Mrs. Lomax. “Thank you, Mrs. Lomax. You've been very helpful. I think you can be sure this isn't Charlie Cummings.”