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  The light inside her head had gone out. He watched her go, leave the room, let an indignant Leyton back into it. She had lied a great deal, he thought, and he could pinpoint the moment at which the lying began: it was when he first uttered the word ‘key’. He looked beyond the greyness at Marks and Spencers loading bay, at a bright green carrier bag the summer wind was tossing to and fro. A woman was lifting carriers from a trolley into her car boot. She belonged to the same type as Annette, dark, stocky with an hourglass figure, a high colour, excellent legs. Why had Ingrid lied about the man who phoned? Why had she lied about the key? And in what respect had she lied? She had been dead while Ingrid was in the flat on Thursday evening. Ingrid had locked the door behind her. Who then had unlocked it during the night before Burden arrived?

  Chapter Six Those who had jobs and went to them every day were the lucky ones. Looking back a few years, Barry Vine wondered what he would have thought of such a sentiment then. It was true today, no denying it. He was surprised when he found that the occupants of Flat Three and Flat Four in Ladyhall Court all had work. The Greenalls, however, had not been at their jobs during the previous week; they had been away on holiday, returning home some five hours after the discovery of Annette’s body. The occupant of Flat Four, Jason Partridge, a solicitor just six months over the Law Society’s exams, had lived there for only a matter of weeks and could not remember ever having seen Annette. Vine, who knew all about how seeing policemen as younger and younger was a sign of middle age, wondered what it meant when solicitors looked like A Level candidates. On the opposite side of Ladyhall Gardens were an old house divided into three flats, three red brick bungalows and an empty site where six houses like the old one had been demolished. The new ones would be in nineties’ trend, a Portmeirion-like arrangement of a Gothic weatherboard house at angles to a brick house, joined to a plaster-rendered Georgian house, all the roofs at different levels, all the windows different shapes. So far only the foundations were there, the ‘infrastructure’ and walls built to a height of six feet. That limited those likely to have had a view of Ladyhall Court to the bungalows and the old house. It was Saturday, so the occupants of the bungalows were at home. Vine talked to a youngish couple, Matthew Ross and his partner Alison Brown, but neither of them had so much as looked out of their front windows on the night of 7 July. They knew nothing of Annette Bystock and could not remember ever having seen her. Next door was shared by two women, Diana Graddon in her mid-thirties, and Helen Ringstead twenty years older. Mrs Ringstead was lodger rather than friend. Diana Graddon couldn’t have afforded to live there without her contribution, she frankly said, though since she had lost her own job the Social Security paid her rent. She had once known Annette well. In fact, it was she who, about ten years before when herself a newcomer to Ladyhall Avenue, had told Annette of the flat for sale on the other side of the street. ‘We’d lost touch, though,’ said Diana Graddon. ‘She dropped me, as a matter of fact. I don’t know why. I mean, it was silly really, living opposite and all that, but she never seemed to want to know me after she came here.’ ‘When did you last see her?’ ‘It must have been Monday. Last Monday. I was going away for a few days. I saw her coming home from work as I was going to get the bus. We just said hallo, we didn’t really speak.’ She had been away from home until the previous morning, the Thursday morning. Helen Ringstead said she never noticed who came and went across the road.

  The wrinkled face that Burden had for a wild moment thought might be a mask or a cutout belonged to a man of eighty-seven called Percy Hammond. It was four years, not three, since he had come down the stairs from his first-floor flat, and most days he remained in the bedroom that overlooked Ladyhall Avenue. Meals-on-wheels were brought to him and twice a week a home help came in. For thirty years he had been a widower, his sons were dead, and his only friend was the tenant of the ground floor flat who, though eighty and blind, made her way upstairs to visit him every day. It was she who let Burden in. Having introduced herself as Gladys Prior, asked him for his name twice and then made him spell it, she walked up the stairs ahead of him, sure- footed on the treads, her hand touching the banister more from convention than for support. Percy Hammond was in a chair by the window, staring into an empty street. The face that was dinosaur-like in close-up was turned on Burden’s and its owner said, ‘I’ve seen you somewhere before.’ ‘No, you haven’t, Percy. You’ve made a mistake there. He’s a police detective that’s come to make enquiries. He’s called Burden, Inspector Burden, B,U,R,D,E,N.’ ‘All right. I don’t want to write to him. And I have seen him before. What do you know? You can’t see at all.’ This on the face of it cruel taunt seemed to amuse rather than distress Mrs Prior. She sat down, giggling. ‘Where have I seen you?’ said Percy Hammond. ‘Now when have I seen you?’ ‘Yesterday morning, over on the other . . .’ Burden began but was interrupted. ‘All right, don’t tell me. Don’t you know a rhetorical question when you hear one? I know who you are. You were trying to break into the house, or that’s what I thought. Yesterday morning. Ten, was it? Or a bit later – eleven-ish? I’m not as good on time as I used to be. I don’t suppose you were breaking in, looking in, more likely.’ ‘Of course he wasn’t breaking in, Percy. He’s a policeman.’ ‘You’re naive, Gladys, that’s what you are. I suppose Inspector B,U,R,D,E,N was looking through the curtains at our murder.’ That was one way of putting it, if somewhat cold-blooded. ‘That’s right, Mr Hammond. I really want to know, not if you saw me, but if you saw anyone else. I think you watch the street from your window quite a bit, don’t you?’ ‘Never leaves that window all blessed day long,’ said Mrs Prior. ‘And how about the night?’ said Burden. ‘It’s light at night this time of the year,’ Percy Hammond said, a gleam of pleasure in his hooded eyes. ‘Doesn’t get dark till ten and it starts getting light again at four. Generally, I get in my bed at ten and out of it at half-past three. That’s as long as I can sleep at my age. And when I’m not in my bed I’m at my window, I’m at my watching place. Do you know what Mizpah means?’ ‘I can’t say I do,’ said Burden. ‘The watching place that overlooked the Plain of Syria. You youngsters don’t know your Bible, more’s the pity. This window is my Mizpah.’ ‘And have you seen anything on the . . . er, Plain of Syria these past two nights, Mr Hammond?’ ‘Not last night but the night before . . .’ ‘Two tom cats came knocking at the door!’ crowed Mrs Prior, laughing. Percy Hammond ignored her. ‘A young chap came out of Ladyhall Court. I’d never seen him before, I knew he didn’t live there. I know them all by sight, the ones that live there.’

  ‘What time would that have been?’ ‘It was dawn,’ said Percy Hammond. ‘Four. Maybe a bit later. And I saw him again, I saw him come out carrying something, like a big wireless set.’ ‘Wireless set!’ said Gladys Prior. ‘I may not have my sight but I do move with the times. They call them tellies and radios.’ ‘He went in again and came out with something else in a box. I couldn’t see what he did with it. If he had a car it was parked round the corner. I thought to myself, he’s moving house for someone, getting it done early before the traffic gets bad.’ ‘Could you describe him, Mr Hammond?’ ‘He was young, about your age. About your height. Had quite a look of you. It was still darkish, you know, the sun wasn’t up. Everything looks black and grey at that hour. I couldn’t tell you the colour of his hair . . .’ ‘He gets confused,’ said Mrs Prior. ‘No, I don’t, Gladys. As I said, it was about four-thirty to five, and I saw him come out and go in again and come out, carrying these boxes, a young chap of maybe twenty-five or thirty, six feet tall, at least six feet.’ ‘Would you know him again?’ ‘Of course I would. I’m an observant man. It may have been dark but I’d know him anywhere.’ Percy Hammond turned on Burden the fierce scowl, downturned mouth and heavy dewlaps that was his normal expression, an intense gleam in his saurian eyes. ‘Women, learn to be streetwise,’ the programme text began. ‘Come and hear what the experts have to say about making yourselves aware. In your car, walking home alone after dark, in your home.
Do you know what to do if attacked in the street? Can you protect yourself if your car breaks down on the motorway? Can you defend yourself against rape?’ It listed the speakers: Chief Inspector R. Wexford, of Kingsmarkham CID, to talk on ‘Crime on the Streets and in Your Home’; PC Oliver Adams on ‘Driving Alone and Safe’; WPC Clare Scott, the Rape Adviser, on ‘Changed Attitudes to Reporting Rape’; Mr Ronald Pollen, Self-Defence Expert and Judo Black Belt, to show his enthralling and informative video and talk on ‘How to Fight Back’. Questions would be invited from the audience which the team of experts would answer. Organizer: Mrs Susan Riding, President, Kingsmarkham Women Rotarians; Chairperson, Mrs Anouk Khoori. ‘Have you ever heard of a woman called Anouk Khoori? Curious name, isn’t it? Sounds Arabic.’ Dora didn’t hesitate. ‘Oh, Reg, you never listen to me. I told you all about her coming to the Women’s Institute and talking about women’s lives in the United Arab Emirates.’ ‘There you are, I was right. She is an Arab.’ ‘Well, she doesn’t look like one. She’s a blonde. Very good looking in a showy sort of way. Very rich, I should think. Her husband owns a lot of shops, Tesco or Safeway or something. No, it’s not those, it’s Crescent. You know the ones, they’re springing up everywhere.’ ‘You mean those supermarkets you see from motorways that look like palaces from the Arabian nights? All pointed arches and moons on the roof? What’s she got to do with not getting raped or mugged? Is she going to tell the women to wear the veil?’ ‘Oh, she’s just there because she wants to get herself in the public eye. She and her husband have built a vast new house where Mynford Old Hall used to be. She’s standing

  for the Council in the by-election. They say she’d like to get into Parliament, but she can’t surely, she isn’t even English.’ Wexford shrugged. He didn’t know and cared less. The task ahead of him, the immediate task, he dreaded and would have avoided if he could. On the way he was going to meet Burden in the Olive and Dove for a drink, but after that – it could be postponed no longer – the Akandes. The Olive stayed open from and until all hours now. You could drink brandy at nine in the morning if you wanted to, and a surprising lot of European visitors did want to. Instead of being cleared out pell-mell at two-thirty you could drink on through the afternoon and evening till the Olive finally closed its bars at midnight. It was ten past eleven when Wexford got there and found Burden sitting outside at a table in the shade. There were almost too many tubs, barrels, vases and hanging baskets spilling out fuchsias and geraniums and other unnameable brilliant flowers. But all were scentless and the air smelt of petrol fumes and also of the river, its waters low from drought and scummed with algae. A few yellow leaves had fallen on to the table. In July they were too early for the autumnal shedding but their presence warned that autumn would come. Burden had a half of Adnams in a tankard that the Olive called a jug. ‘I’ll have the same,’ said Wexford. ‘No, I won’t, I’ll have a Heineken. I need some Dutch courage.’ Returning with it, Burden said, ‘The old man definitely saw someone. Those trees don’t block the view from up there. He saw the thief of the TV and the video.’ ‘But not Annette’s killer?’ ‘Not if it was four-thirty in the morning. Annette had been dead five hours by then. He says he’d know him again. On the other hand, he says the man he saw was about my age and then that he was between twenty-five and thirty.’ Burden looked down modestly. ‘Of course, it wasn’t very light.’ ‘I don’t suppose it was, Dorian.’ ‘Yes, well, you may laugh, but if this character looks like me we may be getting somewhere.’ ‘It’s a killer we want, Mike, not a burglar.’ The sun had moved round and Wexford shifted his chair into the shade. ‘So – Melanie Akande, where does she come into it?’ ‘We haven’t looked for her body.’ ‘Where would you start, Mike? In the High Street here? In the cellars of the Benefit Office? If it has a cellar, which I doubt. On British Rail’s inter-city line to Victoria?’ ‘I talked to those layabouts, you know, the ones who hang about outside the Benefit Office. They’re always there, always more or less the same ones. What attracts them to the place? They only have to sign on once a fortnight but they’re there every day. It would be different if they went inside asking about jobs.’ ‘Maybe they do.’ ‘I doubt it. I very much doubt it. I asked them if they’d ever seen the black girl. You know what they said?’ Wexford made a guess. ‘ “I don’t know, I might have.” ’ ‘Exactly right. That’s what they said. I tried to get them to cast their minds back to last Tuesday. Correction, what passes for minds with people like that. The way they went about it, I mean the process, it was like three very old men trying to recall something. It went something like this, “Well, yeah, man, that was the day I like, you know, I come here early on account of me mum was, you know, going to . . .” mumble, mumble, scratch scalp, and then the next one says, “no, man, no, you got it all wrong, that was Tuesday ’cos I said like . . .” ’

  ‘Spare me.’ ‘The black one, the one with the hair in sort of plaits, only not, sort of matted up, he’s the worst, he sounds brain-damaged. You know you can have senile and juvenile diabetes? Well, d’you reckon there’s such a thing as juvenile Alzheimer’s?’ ‘I suppose they knew nothing about her?’ ‘Not a thing. You could have a girl abducted on those steps by three characters from Jurassic Park and they wouldn’t notice. All I got was that the one with the ponytail says he thinks he saw a black girl on the other side of the street on Monday. I’ll tell you something, we aren’t going to find anyone who saw Melanie after she left the Benefit Office. We’d have done so by now if we were going to. All we’ve got is the connection between her and Annette Bystock.’ The sun had moved round. Wexford pushed his chair into the shade. ‘But what exactly is that connection, Mike?’ ‘ “Exactly” is what I don’t know. “Exactly” is what Annette was killed for, to stop her telling. It’s obvious, isn’t it? Melanie told her something before she left on Tuesday afternoon and whatever it was was overheard. Either that, or some meeting was arranged which the killer of both girls decided must not at all costs take place.’ ‘You must mean overheard by someone in the Benefit Office, an employee.’ ‘Or a client,’ said Burden. ‘But what was it that was overheard? What sort of thing?’ ‘I don’t know and for our purposes it basically doesn’t matter. The point is that whoever heard it was worried by it, more than that, felt that his or her life or liberty was endangered by it. Melanie had to die and, because she had passed this secret on, the woman to whom it was spoken had to die too.’ ‘D’you want another one? The other half for the road before we walk round and see them?’ ‘We?’ ‘You’re coming with me.’ Wexford fetched their drinks. When he came back with them he said, ‘When someone mentions terrible secrets to me I always need to be given some inkling of what they might be. I’d like an example. You know me, I always want examples.’ They were no longer alone. A number of the Olive’s clientele were finding it more pleasant out in the open air. A touring American with a camera posed the other members of his party at a table under a sunshade and began taking shots of them. Wexford moved his chair again. ‘Well, this man she was going to meet,’ Burden began. ‘I mean, she could have told Annette his name.’ ‘She was going to meet another man? That’s the first I’ve heard of it. What was he, a white slaver?’ Burden looked genuinely puzzled. ‘A what?’ ‘Before your time. You’ve really never heard the term?’ ‘I don’t think so.’ ‘It must have been used at the beginning of the century and maybe a bit later. A white slaver was a sort of pimp, specifically one who procured girls for prostitution abroad.’ ‘Why “white”?’ Wexford felt himself approaching dangerous ground. He lifted the ‘jug’ to his lips and as he did so blinked at the sudden flash. The photographer – not the same one – said something that might have been ‘thanks’ and dived back into the Olive.

  ‘Because slaves were always thought of as black. It wasn’t that long after emancipation in the United States. The girls were taken against their will, I suppose, like slaves, and forced into servitude abroad, again like slaves, only it was brothels for them. Buenos Aires was the favourite place in the popular imagination. Sha
ll we go? Akande’s surgery will be over by now.’ It was and he was back at home. The days gone by had aged him. Hair doesn’t turn grey in a matter of days from shock or anxiety, whatever the sensation merchants may say, and Akande’s was the same as it had been on Wednesday, black with a white sprinkling at the temples. It was his face that had become grey, drawn and gaunt, all the protrusions of the skull showing. ‘My wife is at work,’ he said as he showed them into the living room. ‘We’ve tried to carry on as usual. My son phoned us from Malaysia. We didn’t tell him, there seemed no point in spoiling his trip. He would have felt he had to come home.’ ‘I’m not sure that that was a good idea.’ Wexford noticed what he hadn’t noticed before, a framed photograph of the whole family. It stood on the bookcase and it was obviously a studio portrait, posed and rather formal, the children dressed in white, Laurette Akande in a low-cut blue silk dress and gold jewellery, looking beautiful and very unlike a ward sister. ‘He might have been able to help. His sister may have confided in him before he went away.’ ‘Confided what, Mr Wexford?’ ‘Possibly that there was a man in her life apart from Euan Sinclair.’ ‘But I’m sure there wasn’t.’ The doctor sat down and fixed Wexford with his eyes. He had a rather disconcerting way of doing this. Wexford had noticed it when their roles were reversed, when he so to speak was the client and the other man the omniscient adviser, and in his surgery, confronting each other across the doctor’s desk, Akande’s black penetrating eyes had stared deep into his own. ‘I’m sure she had never had any boyfriend but Euan. Apart, that is, from – I’m not quite sure how to say this . . .’ ‘Say what, Dr Akande?’ ‘My wife and I . . . well, we wouldn’t care for the idea of Melanie taking up with a . . . well, a white man. Oh, I know things are changing every day, they don’t even use words like “miscegenation” any more and, of course, there was no question of marriage but still . . .’. Wexford could imagine Sister Akande being as magisterial about this as any county gentlewoman whose daughter was attracted by a Rastafarian. ‘Melanie had a white boyfriend, doctor?’ ‘No, no, nothing like that. It was just that his sister was at the college too, that was how Melanie met him, and she told us they’d had a drink together – with the sister. I mention him because he’s the only other boy Melanie told us about apart from Euan. Laurette said at once that she hoped Melanie wouldn’t get to know him better and I’m sure Melanie never did.’ How much did he know, this parent, of his children’s lives? How much does any parent know? ‘Melanie didn’t meet Euan last Tuesday evening,’ Wexford said. ‘That’s been established beyond doubt.’ ‘I knew she didn’t. I knew it. I told my wife she’d too much sense to go back to that boy who had no respect for her.’ Akande seemed calm but his hands gripped the arms of his chair and the knucklebones showed white. ‘Do you . . .’ he began. ‘Do you have any news for me?’