No Man's Nightingale (13 page)

Back at home he told Fiona that he had carried out a successful showing-over of the house and by the end of the week the whole business would be off his hands. On the morning of the 20th the plan fell apart. Not an email but an old-fashioned letter, handwritten and altogether rather formal, arrived from Diane. It appeared that more plans had changed.

Dear Jeremy,

I doubt if it will affect you much if at all but I am coming back a few days early and I don’t want to have to go to a hotel. As I have a house in Kingsmarkham and you have been keeping an eye on it, it will be best for me to go straight there from Gatwick. My fiancé will be coming with me. I don’t suppose you will meet but if you do his name is Johann Heinemann, he is German and a property developer in Barcelona. My flight gets in at 15.25 on 23 November. Unless the lock has been changed on the front door I can let myself in as I have kept the key I took with me when I left.

Yours,

Diane

Fiona had picked up the letter from the doormat and brought it up to him in bed. Jeremy didn’t particularly want to tell her what it was about, but if she didn’t recognise the handwriting, she knew the Spanish postmark.

‘Fiancé,’ Jeremy muttered and handed her the letter.

‘He can’t be much of a property developer if she’s going to take him to live in Peck Road.’

‘I don’t suppose they’ll stop long,’ said Jeremy, too worried to care.

No phoning for him and not much thinking either. He got up and dressed, got into his car and took a sip of vodka on an empty stomach. It took immediate effect which was what, of course, he wanted, though he would have preferred it not to have felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. He drove more carefully than usual for the traffic was heavy on the little country lanes that variously led from the villages to the town centre, the big roundabout and Kingsmarkham station. What happened when he got to 11 Peck Road he could have done without. The front door was opened to him by Maxine Sams who greeted him with, ‘What brings you here?’

‘I’d like to see Mr Sams.’

‘Well, you can’t. He’s gone to business.’

This antediluvian phrase, dating from long before Maxine was born and previously unheard of by Jeremy, had been dredged up from her memory as used by her grandfather when she was a small child. Why she uttered it she couldn’t have said except as having something to do with the dignity and prestige of her son’s job.

‘Mrs Sams, then,’ he said. ‘Nicky, I should say. She hasn’t gone to business, has she?’

‘Don’t you be cheeky with me.’ Maxine turned her head and yelled at the top of her voice, ‘Nicky! Here’s that fellow Legg wants to see you.’

They didn’t ask him in. It was seldom that Nicky and Maxine were united but now they were. They listened in grim unison as Jeremy explained what had happened. Now able to walk with expertise, Isabella emerged from the room at the back and, immediately taking a dislike to their visitor, clutched at her mother’s jeans and screamed.

‘Well, I’m sure I don’t know,’ said Nicky. ‘You’d best take yourself like down to Questo and see him yourself. He won’t be pleased, that’s for sure.’

Both women began naming at the tops of their voices all the tasks they would have to do, packing all the furniture and ‘bits and pieces’ they would be taking with them, how long it would take, how it could never be done in time. Jeremy retreated, got back into his car and drove to the Questo on the outskirts of the town. Half a mile outside he stopped and had recourse to his flask.

As he moved into a vacant space in the car park the man he knew as Chief Inspector Wexford drew up alongside him. Jeremy watched Wexford get out and walk across the car park to the cash dispenser in the wall by the entrance. The chief inspector or whatever he now was turned round, looked without much interest in Jeremy’s direction and went into the store. Jeremy sneaked another sip and then another out of his flask. It gave him a surge of confidence, making him feel ready to face Jason Sams.

But when he got out of the car and stood between it and Wexford’s Audi he found himself shaky on his feet. He grabbed hold of the Audi’s driver’s door handle and immediately snatched it away lest Wexford should choose to return just at that moment and see him trying to break into his car. Taking a few deep breaths, he made his way slowly and carefully to the entrance. His heart was now beating rapidly.

But once inside the store he began to feel more confident, found a door marked Private: Store Manager, pushed it open and banged it shut behind him. None of the shoppers reacted to his appearance or departure into Jason’s office until the row erupted, shouts, abuse and the sound of one, then another, heavy metal object apparently hurled to the ground. A woman lifting a king-size bag of muesli from a top shelf was so startled that she let it fall to the floor where it burst and leaked grains and nuts all over the floor. Two babies in a twin-pram began to scream. Other shoppers stopped what they were doing and stood still, hoping for the trouble, whatever it was, to erupt beyond the confines of the office. Knowing he would no longer have to intervene, whatever happened, Wexford looked in the direction of the continuing noise with interest, then helped himself to the pack of Cumberland sausages Dora refused to buy him on health grounds but which he wanted to fry for his lunch, and took it to the checkout. The minute his back was turned Jeremy Legg issued from the office, not running but walking fast.

Wexford was leaving his car when Jason emerged, hailed him with a half-hearted wave and set off in pursuit of Jeremy who by now was edging his car out of its slot next to Wexford’s. By this time both men appeared to have calmed down a little. It seemed that Jeremy, his head stuck out of the car window, was making some sort of request of Jason and this was now being grudgingly granted. Wexford knew neither man to speak to but as he approached, Jeremy said to him ingratiatingly, ‘So sorry, not hemming you in, am I?’

His voice was thick and the words not clear so Wexford had to bend towards him to make sure he heard when Jeremy repeated them. ‘No, no, it’s fine,’ he said, and stepped back to escape the brandy fumes. Jason had also received a blast and Wexford could see he was one of those people who believe every policeman or ex-policeman, no matter how high-ranking in the CID, is also a traffic cop intent on breathalysing the public. But he said nothing on this subject, only terminating his altercation with Jeremy with, ‘OK, if I must. You take Nicky and Issy round there on Friday afternoon and I pick up the van with the bits and pieces after I finish here at six.’ He ended on a rougher note. ‘Give me the key then.’

Jeremy put a hand, curled into a fist, through the open car window. Wexford, intent on watching and on appearing indifferent as he lifted his boot lid, saw the fist pulled back teasingly. ‘It has to be Thursday, not Friday. Thursday evening. I’ll take your family in the afternoon and you move the furniture in the evening. That’s best.’

‘What’s the deal on Friday then?’ Jason said in a very aggressive way.

Jeremy didn’t even want to mention Diane’s name. An increasing nightmare was for Jason and Diane to meet. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the key to you later. I’ll bring it round. No worries. You go tomorrow and bill me for the removers taking the furniture in the evening. There’s an offer you can’t refuse.’

Jason had gone red in the face. ‘I’m not taking no man’s charity. I’ll do it myself Friday morning. You can take Nicky and Issy and I’ll follow. Never mind I lose a morning’s wages.’

Wexford drove home to decide how many fried sausages could be eaten for lunch without detriment to his figure.

Detective Superintendent Burden was holding yet another team conference. Wexford was not invited. He had criticised, and not very politely, Burden’s fondness for such gatherings, calling them a waste of time and, in a currently favoured phrase rather with his tongue in his cheek, a misuse of the hard-working taxpayers’ money. Why repeatedly collect the team together when they are in the building already, take statements and reports from them, and the whole group together examine yet again the evidence for this man or that man being the rapist who was Clarissa’s father, and look once more at the behaviour of a gardener and a churchwarden? Wexford had suggested that instead of holding any more such conferences Thora Kilmartin should be visited and questioned more comprehensively because she of all the people associated with Sarah Hussain had known her best at a crucial time in her life.

‘What, spare a couple of people from my team for that?’ had been his response, to be followed by a defence of the conference policy, and in due course to rather pointedly not inviting Wexford to attend ‘as an observer’ the newest gathering of police officers who saw each other every day anyway.

Wexford went to Reading. A journey by train would be too awkward, so he drove, having asked Thora Kilmartin if he could come and been invited to lunch. Before he left he found himself landed with Maxine’s company. Dora had gone out shopping, leaving the house with many whispered apologies for deserting him. Wexford told her not to worry as he would soon be leaving himself but he hadn’t allowed for Maxine’s being fresh and stimulated after the three days’ holiday she had taken for herself and bubbling over with things to talk about.

The house looked perfectly clean to him but Maxine announced that everywhere was ‘grubby’ and would need ‘turning out’. Because the Wexfords didn’t possess one, she had brought with her a hand-held vacuum cleaner which when applied to upholstery made a high-pitched whine rather like the cry of a seagull. She talked over the top of it.

‘My Jason’s moving tomorrow. I don’t know what’s come over that Jeremy Legg, taking that Nicky and Isabella to the new place himself, but that’s what he’s doing so Jason can pick up the bits and pieces I’m giving them from my place and collect the three-piece suite they’ve bought. Kelli with an i will be there to let him in. Mind you, he’s having to take the morning off work to do it. He told Legg he’d lose a morning’s salary but that was a bit of a porky, Jason’s in too high a position for that.

‘Legg offered to pay for removals but Jason wouldn’t have that. “I don’t take no man’s charity,” he said, and it’s true, he wouldn’t.’ The nozzle of the vacuum cleaner, appropriately beak-shaped, thrust down between sofa cushions, emitted a louder than usual squawk and Maxine screamed over the top of it, ‘They wasn’t supposed to move till the twenty-fifth, then tomorrow came out of the blue. I wonder what’s behind it. Must be something. That Legg never does nothing open and above-board . . .’

‘I’m going out,’ Wexford shouted. ‘See you later.’

This was a phrase he had for years been accustomed to use as meaning he would see whoever it was in the next few hours, but everyone now – his grandchildren and their parents and friends – used it to mean see you any time in the weeks, months or years to come. It is so easy to pick up these habits and, really, why not? That was how the language grew or, at any rate, changed.

She introduced him to her husband, a thin and weedy man, as spare as she was fat. His greeting to Wexford was cold, a limp handshake and a few muttered words. They had lunch, a much larger meal than Wexford had expected, soup, roasted ham with mashed potato and peas, a baked Alaska and cheese and biscuits. Thora Kilmartin wore a rather too tight green wool dress and the same sort of lacy stockings or tights she had had on last time he saw her. She ate well while Tony Kilmartin ate sparingly. They talked about the refurbishment they intended having done to their bungalow and the extension they planned, she enthusiastically, he in a more restrained way. Wexford had the impression, though nothing was said, that no reference was to be made to Sarah Hussain in Tony Kilmartin’s presence. Perhaps he was imagining it. But once the meal was over Thora got up and said to Wexford that she would like to show him round the neighbourhood a little. They could go out for ‘a bit of a walk’. It was as if he was a prospective house buyer.

Neither of them spoke for a few minutes once they were outside. It was mild for the time of year, the sun going down in a brilliant display of red and gold streaked with strips of black cloud. The walk they were to take led only as far as a garage on the other side of the street and Wexford was shown into the passenger seat of the car inside. They were almost at the end of Thora’s road before an explanation was forthcoming and then not much of one.

‘I want to show you where Sarah and I were living at the time.’ She left it to him to deduce at the time of what. ‘And where the man who raped her was living at the time. Quercum Court,’ she said. ‘It’s at the bottom of this street and we lived over there in the lower half of that house.’

It was one of a row of small Victorian houses called Jameson Villas. The flat must have been tiny, two small rooms, a shower room and a kitchen, Wexford guessed. The sun had gone and a late-autumn dusk come. Lights were coming on everywhere. Thora parked the car outside Quercum Court, a large block of flats with bay windows on the ground floor and balconies above. It looked from where they sat as if a single apartment would fill the lower half of the little house.

‘I begged her to go to the police or at least to see a doctor. It was the time when everyone was very anxious about Aids and drugs for it weren’t as effective as they are now. She did go to an Aids clinic and get herself tested. She was all right.’

‘So nothing more was done?’

‘Nothing more was done by Sarah so far as I know. There was something I did. I went round to Quercum Court a few weeks later, a month later maybe, and I looked at the mailboxes in the hallway. There was no one with an Asian name of any kind there. A porter came up to me and asked me if he could help me but when I asked he said he wasn’t allowed to divulge the names of residents.’

Asians don’t necessarily have Asian-sounding names, Wexford thought. And surely she would have known a porter wouldn’t make a guess of that kind. It would be more than his job was worth. But he let it pass. He wanted to ask her about her husband. Had he disliked Sarah Hussain or disbelieved her? He couldn’t. He was no longer a policeman.