No Man's Nightingale (12 page)

Wexford said, ‘Let me talk to her when you’re done.’

Dora handed him the phone. Rather angrily, Sylvia, who often had spats with her mother, launched into a tirade against Dora for her ‘interference’ and treating her ‘like a child’. But Sylvia’s intention remained.

‘Leave it to me, will you, before you advertise?’

Dora wanted to know what he was up to and said to him in a gloomy tone that he would land himself in a lot of trouble. Ignoring this advice, he wrote a note to Clarissa care of Georgina Bray giving her Sylvia’s phone number. ‘I have a mobile number for Clarissa,’ he said, and rather humbly, ‘You can send texts to mobile numbers, can’t you? Would you show me how to send a text?’

‘No, I don’t think I would, Reg. It would be teaching her to do a rude and underhand thing to a woman who’s shown her hospitality.’

‘But I’ve written her a letter. It comes to the same thing, only it takes a little longer.’

‘Yes, but that’s nothing to do with me.’

‘I think that’s why I’ve loved you all these years,’ said Wexford. ‘Your undiminished and sometimes absurd integrity.’

Next day an ecstatic phone call came from Clarissa, a satisfied phone call from Sylvia and a visit from a furious Georgina Bray. Dealing with all this, Wexford postponed reading his newspaper until the afternoon. He sat with Gibbon in the conservatory, but not reading, going over instead the events of the past few hours, two of them pleasant, the third anything but. It is always nice to know you have pleased your child and Sylvia sounded very pleased at the idea – if not yet the actual presence – of her new tenant. Because her father had recommended her, she thought she could waive a deposit on the room and the girl seemed quite willing to pay the rent Sylvia asked. Clarissa had phoned two hours later to tell him she had been interviewed by Sylvia and seen the room. It was a bit small and the rent, she thought, a bit high but she had liked Sylvia and she hoped Sylvia had liked her and it was all due to him, Wexford, so thank you very very much.

Georgina Bray’s visit was unexpected. Dora was out, Maxine had left and Wexford had just picked up Gibbon. The doorbell rang and the knocker banged but the bell was ringing as if a finger was held on it, kept on it and pressed hard while the knocker crashed simultaneously again and again. Whoever was on the doorstep must have been using both hands. The phone was also ringing but Wexford let it ring while he answered the door before the noise aroused the neighbours.

The woman looked as if she was about to spit in his face. He stepped back. This gave her the chance to burst in and kick the door shut behind her.

‘How dare you, how dare you, how dare you,’ she shouted. ‘I can have you charged with abduction. I can have you charged with false imprisonment.’ A string of imprecations followed, including expressions referred to in print by so-called family newspapers with a letter succeeded by a string of asterisks. Wexford was reminded of descriptions in novels he had read of sophisticated men being amazed by the language used by respectable and proper women in moments of extreme stress. ‘I wouldn’t have believed she knew such words,’ they were supposed to have said. He knew better than to have supposed that and waited patiently until she finished with a ‘You fucking bastard!’

‘Let’s not stand here,’ he said mildly as both his landline and mobile began to ring. ‘Come in here. It’s warmer.’

She had started to cry, a frequent consequence of outbursts such as hers, but followed him into the living room. Burden would have told her to pull herself together but Wexford’s reaction, after handing her that old-fashioned solace, a clean handkerchief, was to ask her if she’d like a drink. He would have one if she would, in spite of its being three o’clock in the afternoon. She nodded miserably, said if he had any whisky that was what she would like. When he came back with the two glasses, she launched into a diatribe against her husband. It was as if this onslaught was as much the purpose of her visit as to attack him for his interference.

It all came out, the man’s ill-tempered criticism, his sarcasm, his protracted silences, what she called his verbal abuse. Clarissa had been a companion for her, a comfort, and now she was going. Knowing he was being biased and judgemental, Wexford thought how unattractive she was, how grating her voice, how bitter her expression. He wanted to say that living with her and Mr Bray – if her name was his name – must have been an experience miserable enough to drive Clarissa away but of course he couldn’t. The poor woman was to be pitied.

She emptied her glass but he didn’t offer her any more. Her home was in easy walking distance but he saw that a second drink would lead to a third and then most probably to her falling asleep on his sofa.

‘I’ll walk you home,’ he said and thought up a reason for accompanying her. ‘I have to go to the corner shop.’

His mobile started up again as they were leaving the house. Instead of answering it Wexford turned it off. ‘I can never bring myself to let a phone ring,’ she said conversationally. It was as if there had been no outburst of rage, no stream of abuse.

He saw her to the end of Orchard Road. ‘Thank you for the drink,’ she said and trotted off rapidly up the street. Wexford went into Mr Mahmood’s shop and bought a small wholemeal loaf and a half-pint (or whatever you called it these days) of semi-skimmed milk.

There were three messages on his answerphone. Just as he marvelled at the behaviour of those people who contemplate a sealed envelope, speculating as to who the sender might be, so now he had no intention of doing the equivalent with a ‘sealed-up’ phone message. All three were from Burden and all were much the same, recommending that he read that morning’s newspaper.

He read it, a single paragraph under the heading:
DEATH OF LAWYER
. Why didn’t journalists accept that while ‘lawyer’ was correct American English, British English called them ‘solicitors’? Maybe it was a question of the number of letters.

Gerald Watson, 43, a partner in the law firm of Newman, Watson, Kerensky, was found dead in his home on Cleland Avenue, Stevenage, this morning. His body was found by Mrs Maureen Jones, a cleaner. Foul play is not suspected.

‘How about that?’ said Burden on the phone. ‘Where have you been, anyway?’

‘Having a row with Georgina Bray.’

‘I suppose Clarissa’s told her she’s moving in with Sylvia and Georgina took exception.’

‘Something like that. What are you going to do about poor old Watson?’

There was a pause. ‘I’ve got a meeting in about twenty minutes with a DI Stewart of Herts Constabulary. Shall I come in on my way back?’

The first thing Burden did when he walked in was hand Wexford a letter.

‘It’s for you. Left for you by Gerald Watson.’

‘I didn’t know him,’ Wexford said. ‘I only spoke to him once.’

‘You’d better read it.’

There was no ‘Dear’ nor that irritating ‘Hello’ or ‘Hi there’. Watson had begun with Wexford’s name, underlined.

You seem a decent man, which is more than I can say for most policemen I have known. If I wrote to you, I thought you might not scoff or mock me, though I do not expect sympathy. I was in love with Sarah Hussain and had been for more than twenty years but pride and vanity prevented me from getting in touch with her after her child was born. When I tried again years later I could not find her. That was before the days of easy discovery of a person’s whereabouts. By that time I was married. I had always been a solitary and, I suppose, inhibited repressed sort of man, and my wife was a companion if nothing else.

She died, and though I felt considerable guilt, I am disgusted with myself when I say there was relief too. Her death meant I could begin looking for Sarah once more. When I found her, and in such extraordinary circumstances, I began to feel happy for the first time since I deserted her when most she needed me. I was not stalking her, I want to make that finally clear. By coming to Kingsmarkham as often as I could, as often as I dared, I got to see her, to understand her life, observe her daughter (who might if things had been different have been mine) and she never rejected me. She was too kind for that. One day, I think, I truly believe, she would have really responded to me. She would have agreed to marry me. She had already asked me into the house, given me tea and talked to me about those past eighteen years. I could talk to her then about the real reason for my desertion of her, my mother’s opposition to the marriage we contemplated. Perhaps it is needless to say that she objected to Sarah’s race and I lacked the strength of will to defy her.

All that is past now and my mother has passed away. When I read in the newspaper about Sarah’s death I felt that my life was over. Everything I had hoped for was gone for the second time. I haven’t much experience of making someone else happy but I had thought I had found the secret. It was too late and that very day I decided to kill myself. Thank you for reading this.

Gerald Watson

‘Poor devil,’ said Wexford.

He said no more but maintained for a moment or two the minute’s silence requisite for an untimely death.

Fiona believed Jeremy to be a teetotaller. She never saw him drink. She was the drinker, though more abstemious now the baby was coming, and knew nothing of the brandy flask and the vodka flask from which he took fortifying sips while out of the house.

The purchase of 123 Ladysmith Road was to be completed in a week’s time and Jeremy felt all had gone well. He called at the house in Peck Road and asked Jason for a deposit of three months’ rent in advance. Confident and using a slightly bullying tone, he made a mistake there. Jason knew that whatever Jeremy might say, he, Jason, had the upper hand. He wanted somewhere to live, yes, but not at any price. Any threatening and two could play at that game, like an anonymous letter to the Housing Department.

‘You must be joking,’ said Jason.

‘You’ll get it back when you leave the place.’

‘I’m not planning on leaving.’

‘Not for about twenty years,’ said Nicky.

‘Why don’t I drive you round there,’ said Jeremy ingratiatingly, ‘show you over the place? I know you’re going to love it.’

‘We’ll go under our own steam, thanks. You can let me have a key.’

This went against the grain with Jeremy. He suggested they leave it ‘a day or two’ and reminded Jason he had asked for a deposit. Maxine was arriving as he departed. For some reason she had stopped speaking to him altogether and this unnerved him even further. She turned her head pointedly away. Jeremy got into his car, sat at the wheel without moving until she had gone into the house, and when the street was empty, took a small swig of vodka.

Maxine told Wexford all about it next day. ‘You ever heard of such a thing, and them paying him rent all these years. He’s too honest, my Jason, that’s his trouble, while that fellow Legg, he’d sell his grandmother for 50p.’

‘He couldn’t do that,’ said Wexford. ‘His grandmother’s been in Meadowbank for the past ten years.’

‘You know what I mean.’ She stamped on the vacuum-cleaner switch but talked all the same. Her strident voice rose above its roar. ‘He’s had the place painted white all the way through. A bunch of East Europeans did it. You know why white, don’t you? It’s cheaper than colours. I was passing and one of them Poles called me in to look. Looks bigger from outside than it does in, he said, and he never spoke a truer word. That fellow Legg, he told them only to put two coats of paint on, keep the cost down.’

‘I’m going down the road to post a letter,’ said Wexford.

‘Now you’re the first person I’ve heard say that for a good couple of years. Letters are all them emails these days, aren’t they? And texts. Emails and texts and there’s even some as has faxes still, though they’re sort of fading out. Got a stamp, have you? The price they are, I’d rather not write . . .’

But while her back was turned Wexford had slipped out. He had thought of little but Gerald Watson’s letter since Burden had put it into his hands and now, try as he would, he couldn’t get the man’s misery out of his head. Every line of that letter was pervaded by inhibition and distorted by repression. He felt too how much pain might have been avoided if Watson had been with Sarah that night rather than staying at home with his mother. For Sarah would never have been attacked if Watson had been with her, Clarissa would never have been born. All of Sarah’s life would have been different. Perhaps instead of eventually being ordained she would have become a headteacher, perhaps married Watson, had other children, gone to live in Hertfordshire, not been murdered and Watson not shot himself.

Jason and Nicky hadn’t much furniture. Most of the contents of 11 Peck Road belonged to Jeremy Legg and must be left behind. Maxine was giving them what she called ‘some bits and pieces’ from her own home and Nicky had bought some from Marks & Spencer in Kingsmarkham. All this amounted to more than could be squeezed into Jason’s ancient Land Rover. He decided to hire a van which he would pick up after work on 25 November, Nicky and Isabella having been taken to Glebe Road in Jason’s car earlier in the day.

Nothing seemed likely to go wrong with this plan. Jason and Nicky with Isabella in the pushchair had walked down to Ladysmith Road the previous Saturday where Jeremy was waiting for them with the key. He was still unwilling to surrender the key but promised to hand it over to Nicky on the day she and the baby were brought there. This peculiar behaviour put Jason in a bad temper. He said it still wasn’t too late for the Sams family to remain where they were and Jeremy need not think he didn’t know what game his landlord had been playing at.

Nicky was delighted with the house and ran about the rooms taking photographs with her mobile phone. Isabella got out of her pushchair and took her first real steps without anyone holding on to her. Nicky said it was an omen and meant they were bound to be happy in the house. But still Jeremy didn’t hand over the key. He gave no explanation for this refusal. In fact he didn’t really know why retaining it for a few days meant so much to him. Perhaps it was only that it gave some amount of power over Jason Sams and driving home to Stringfield he told himself several times that once given that key, the man would take over the house at once and very likely take half a dozen pals in as tenants. The thought of this was quite upsetting and he pulled into a lay-by after three or four miles and took a swig of brandy from his flask.