End in Tears (18 page)

CHAPTER 19

T
he morning was dark, so dark as to need lights on—only there were no lights. He had forgotten about the power failure when he got out of bed and even then didn't connect it with the hot water. But there was no hot water either. He hadn't had a cold shower since a holiday in Spain and that had been years ago. The cold shower was welcome then but very different now. When the first jet struck his shoulders he thought it would kill him.

Dora was still asleep but stirring. He asked himself why he should make tea and bring it up to her when she treated him as if he had betrayed her. Because he refused to put on a solid front with her against their daughter? He wouldn't. Let her see what it was like to be cold-shouldered. Then he told himself not to be a fool. That was the way marriages started to break up. Those were the opening moves. He went downstairs, put a saucepan of water on the gas hob, two teabags in cups, and lit the gas. “I just hope there's enough bottled gas,” he said aloud.

The saucepan seemed to take ages to boil. He took the cup up to her. She was sitting up on the side of the bed and she had been crying.

“What is it?”

“The baby,” she said. “I can't bear it. I can't bear the thought of never seeing our grandchild. Not because it's died—that would be appalling, I know—and not because its mother can't afford to bring it up, but just through a stupid whim. One of the worst things ever thought up in the world we have to live in.”

He put his arms around her but she stiffened and pulled away.

“We'll never see it—him or her. Yet we'll know he's nearby, a few miles away. In time to come I could be out shopping and see him and not know it's him. I could keep looking for his features in the children I see. Why can't you see it my way? Why do you have to see her point of view?”

“Because I'm a different person, I dare say.”

“People who are married are supposed to be one.”

“I'm afraid that's too idealistic. We have to agree to differ. Can't we do that? I don't like it any more than you do, you know. I just don't see the point in doing anything now. We can't cut ourselves off from our child and think, well, we'll send her to Coventry for a while and then we'll all be close again. Because it's never going to go away. It's as you say, he or she will be living quite near us. Sylvia herself will be affected by it too, whatever she says. She'll need us because, if you come to think of it, she won't really have anyone else.”

 

The same type of brick, possibly even the same brick, had been used to kill Megan as had been the murder weapon in Amber's case. One, as the plinthologist said, of a million like it. None of them, as it happened, in the vicinity of Victoria Terrace because none would be used in its reconstruction and refurbishment. But they could be found, Wexford reflected bitterly, on almost every other building site in the county; in the country, come to that. William Fish or one of the two men working for him, or Ross Samphire or his brother or the assistant who had been at work with him at the Hillands' house, any of them could have picked up a brick probably within yards of their homes.

On the side of the hill behind the town, lights were coming on in houses where before all had been dark since the previous afternoon. Theirs would be on too and he'd be able to have a hot shower in the morning. He had called the Samphire link with this case threefold, but wouldn't it really be fourfold? Surrage-Samphire worked for Marshalsons' Studio. They had done decorating work for the Hillands. They were about to start work on the house where Megan's body had been found.
And
Ross Samphire had met Amber. He had done more than just seen her, for the last time she had come to the Hillands' home he had been in conversation with Vivien Hilland. He had been talking to her when Amber and Brand arrived. So four connections, though all of them tenuous.

He rang for Hannah and when she came said, “I'm getting over to Sandra Warner's and I want you with me.”

“Right, guv.”

“We'll walk.”

No doubt she would have much preferred Baljinder's company to his. That was natural. They walked in silence and he thought about his daughter and her sons. Like Dora, he was beginning to wonder if things could ever be right again in a family of which one member had been taken away, if the others, mother, grandparents, even sister and cousins, could ever quite forget, could ever forgive. For the first time he asked himself what it had been like in Sandra Warner's family when Megan had given her baby up for adoption. According to Lara, she spoke of it robustly, as if this relinquishment of the child was so obviously wise and prudent that there was barely any question about it. Did she really feel that way or was she merely putting a brave face on it? And what about Megan herself? How had she really been? How would his Sylvia really be when she had given birth and handed the baby into Naomi Wyndham's arms?

He didn't speak at all for nearly ten minutes and then it was Hannah who spoke first, asking him in a small voice unlike her usual tones what they were to see Mrs. Warner about.

“Samphire,” he said. “Does she know him? Megan's pregnancy. Can she throw any light on that? I'm doing it,” he added rather bitterly, “because, frankly, Sergeant, I don't know what else to do. We have nothing to go on except the fact that Ross Samphire was contracted to work on Victoria Terrace and Ross Samphire had once seen Amber. That's all.”

They went up the concrete staircase of the flats on the Muriel Campden Estate and took the walkway five doors along to Sandra Warner's. Lara had already left for her business college. Lee Warner was close in front of the television set, his shoulders hunched and his head thrust forward like a turtle's from its shell. Breakfast things, however, had been cleared away, and Sandra divested of her dressing gown and wearing a mauve tracksuit. Lee took no notice of the two officers. As far as he was concerned, they might not have come in, but, rather to Wexford's surprise, Sandra was pleased to see them and gratified by their visit, which she seemed to take as a kind of condolence call.

“It
is
good of you. We appreciate it, don't we, Lee?” No answer from the television watcher. “It's true like my Lara says about the police being more community-friendly.”

“Then perhaps you'll give us a few moments of your time, Mrs. Warner,” Wexford said. “I have some questions for you.”

“I don't mind,” said Sandra graciously. “What was you wanting to know?”

“Number four Victoria Terrace,” Hannah began. “I'm sorry to have to remind you of the place where your daughter was found.”

Sandra made her reply quite cheerfully. “That's all right.”

“Did she know the house? Did she ever talk of it? Say she'd been there?”

“She never did to me. It's funny you ask because my Lara said to me only yesterday, ‘Meg never mentioned that place, did she?' she said. ‘Whatever made her go there?'”

“At the time of her death,” Hannah said, “Megan was approximately fourteen weeks pregnant.”

“As long as that, was it?”

“About fourteen weeks, yes. That takes us back to conception having taken place about the last week of May.”

“Right,” said Sandra uncertainly.

Wexford said, “Megan was in Frankfurt in Germany from the twenty-second to the twenty-fifth of May. Have you any idea if she might have met the father of her child during that weekend?”

“Well, she never said. Mind you, she wouldn't. Not with her being with Keith. I mean, like being married really, isn't it?”

“Did she ever mention the name Samphire to you?”

Before Sandra could reply, Lee turned his head and said irritably, “Can't you go in the other room? It's not some film I'm watching, it's the Cup.”

“We'll go in the kitchen, love.” Sandra turned to Wexford. “I'll make you a cup of tea. I'm sure it's the least I can do.”

The kitchen was barely big enough to contain three people. Wexford was crammed up against a fridge whose door was stuck all over with postcards attached to it with magnets of teddy bears and ducks. Hannah had to sit on a stool and Sandra, waiting for her kettle to boil, propped herself up on one corner of a washing machine.

“Samphire,” Wexford said, trying to jog her memory.

“I've never heard that name.”

“Did she ever speak of someone called Ross?”

“Not to me she didn't.”

A teacup was passed to Wexford. Reaching to take it from Sandra's hand, he brushed his arm against the fridge door and dislodged one of the cards and its teddy bear magnet. Getting down on his hands and knees in that none-too-clean place wasn't much to his taste but he did it, picked up the fallen card and in doing so spotted another one a little way underneath the fridge. This had perhaps been dislodged in the same way weeks before.

At once he knew what it was. The card showed a house with steep red roofs, green shutters, a sign that said
HOTEL DIE VIER PFERDE
above a picture of four brown horses with blond manes pulling a carriage. The date on the postmark was May
22
. That was before Sandra's recent marriage and Megan had addressed it to Mrs. Sandra Lapper. In an unformed, rather shaky hand she had written,
Wish you were hear. The sunshine is nise. Luv Meg.

“This is the card Megan sent you from Germany, Mrs. Warner.”

“Ooh, let's have a look. So it is. I wondered where that had got to. Funny writing, innit?” She scrutinized the Gothic script in which the name of the hotel was lettered on the old-fashioned inn sign. “More like Chinese. However do they read that?”

“May I have it?”

“Ooh, I don't know. It's like the last thing of hers I've got. I'd best hang on to it. I'd feel funny if I let you have that.”

They left soon afterward. Wexford went up to his office and noting that the time in countries on the continent of Europe was eleven
A.M.
, one hour ahead of here, asked International Directory Inquiries for the number of the Hotel die Vier Pferde in Frankfurt.

 

The building in Kingsmarkham High Street which had once housed the Westminster Bank had been put up at the time when banks were grand edifices, red brick or white stucco with porticoes and double oak doors, long stately windows and, inside, high decorated ceilings, paneling made from tropical hardwoods, and marble floors. Like Victoria Terrace in Stowerton, it was to be transformed into luxury apartments and the work of conversion had already been done. Burden found Ross Samphire there on his own. He was putting the finishing touches to paneling in the hallway of the penthouse flat, much the same kind of design as that fitted into the Hillands' house.

Wexford had noticed when encountering him in the Hillands' house that he was a handsome man with blue eyes and classical features. Had he been there, it would have struck him now that this face was very like that of Michelangelo's David, only a David approaching middle age. Such comparisons were never apparent to Burden. Ross put down the tool he was holding, came over to him, and shook hands. They had met before at Ross's home and there was nothing wrong in this; no doubt he was merely being friendly and cooperative. But to Burden it nevertheless seemed as if the man wanted to put himself on the same level as a fairly high-ranking police officer, show himself as being on that police officer's side, rather, as Wexford might have said—Burden had often heard him say it—himself and Samphire
contra mundum.

“I honestly can't tell you if I ever met Amber Marshalson, Inspector Burden,” Ross said, using style and surname like an equal, almost like a friend. “I may have done. I simply don't remember.”

“She was a very good-looking girl.”

“Ah, now, Inspector, I'm a happily married man. An eye for the girls is something I haven't had since I married. Do you know what I say to myself? I say, what would my children think of me if they saw me looking at girls?”

Burden thought of the nude on the man's living-room wall. “Let me refresh your memory. I think you met Amber at Mrs. Hilland's in July. She came over with her little boy.”

The gesture Ross made was theatrical, a throwing back of his head, a striking of his forehead with his hand, and a punching of the air with that hand. “So I did, so I did,” he cried. “My God, I'd forgotten all about it.”

Quite a performance, Burden thought.

“Where do you live, Mr. Samphire?”

The question surprised him. “Pauceley Avenue. Why?”

“Perhaps you can also remember seeing Megan Bartlow. When she'd been to visit her father in Pauceley she was in the habit of walking back to the bus stop along Pauceley Avenue.”

Ross made no reply to this, merely shaking his head. Perhaps he thought he couldn't be responsible for everyone who walked past his house over the years. Burden asked him if Colin Fry was in the building, to be told he wasn't. He had other jobs apart from helping Ross out. Footsteps sounded on the stairs. It was the bank's grand staircase, of marble with wrought-iron banisters, which now served all the flats, and the footfalls sounded unmuffled on the stone. A strange expression showed on Ross's face. If Burden had had to define it—and Wexford would have been better at this—he would have called it “caring.” Perhaps “considerate” would have been better or even “protective.” But Ross didn't express his feelings in words. A man came into the room, carrying a large loose-leaf book.

Almost unbelievable as it was, this man was Ross's twin. This was Rick Samphire, precisely Ross's own age, to the same hour. Superficially, he wasn't at all like Ross, but he looked as Ross might have done if he had been confined for a couple of years in a brutal prison camp. He looked worn out, a shadow man, his hair thinning and gray-streaked, his face lined and hollow-cheeked, his eyes faded. Only the profile he turned to Burden when speaking to Ross was identical to his brother's.