Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods (6 page)

   ‘Hardly, Mr Troy. The children should have gone to school yesterday morning. And wouldn’t your daughter have to go to work? What does she do for a living?’

   Possibly fearing a ten-minute-long disquisition from her husband on work, jobs, retirement and employment in general, Effie Dade said in her practised way, ‘Joanna used to be a teacher. She trained as a teacher and taught at Haldon Finch School. But now she’s self-employed and works as a translator and editor. She has a degree in modern languages and a Master’s Degree, and she teaches a French course on the Internet? She glanced at Burden. ‘I don’t know if it’s relevant –‘ irrelevance was something she must know plenty about, he thought ‘- but that’s how she and Katrina met. She taught at the school and Katrina was the head teacher’s secretary I’ll find the car number for you.’

   ‘My wife is a marvel,’ said Troy while she was away. ‘I’m a bit of a dreamer myself a bit vague they tell me, find it hard to stick to the point. But she - well, she has such grasp, she has such ability to manage things, organise, you know, get everything straight - well, shipshape and Bristol fashion. She’ll find that number,’ he said, as if his wife would be obliged to use differential calculus to do so, ‘nothing’s beyond her. Don’t know why she married me, never have understood, thank God every day of my life, of course, but the “why” of it’s a mystery. She says I’m a nice man, how about that? She says I’m kind. Funny old reason for marrying someone, eh? Funny old thing to...’

   ‘The number’s LCO2 YMY,’ said Effie Troy as she came back into the room. ‘The car is a VW Golf, dark- blue with four doors.’

   Only a couple of years old then, Burden thought, with a L registration. What had happened to George Troy just after buying a new car to make him decide to give up driving? At the moment it wasn’t important. ‘I would like to enter your daughter’s house, Mr Troy. Do you by any chance have a key?’

   He addressed the father but hoped the reply would come from the stepmother. It did but only after Troy had bumbled on for a couple of minutes about types of keys, Yale and Banham locks, the danger of losing keys and the paramount need to lock all one’s doors at night.

   ‘We have a key,’ said Effie Troy. Suspicion returned. ‘I’m not at all sure she’d like the idea of your having it.’

   ‘That’s all right, my darling. That’s quite OK. They’re police officers, they’re OK. They won’t do any thing they shouldn’t. Let them have it, it’ll be all right.’

   ‘Very well.’ The wife had evidently decided long ago that, notwithstanding her superior intellect and grasp, her husband must make the decisions. She fetched the key but not before Troy had told them what a marvel she was and how there was no doubt she would run that key to earth.

   ‘In Ms Troy’s absence you personally would have no objection to our taking a look inside the house?’

   The fact that his daughter had disappeared and had been gone for two days, and possibly more, at last seemed to penetrate the father’s cheerful bonhomie. Repetition, apparently for the sake of it, was abruptly forgotten. He said with slow deliberation, ‘Joanna is actually missing, then? No one knows where she is?’

   ‘We’ve only just begun our enquiries, sir. We’ve no reason to think any harm has come to her.’

   Hadn’t they? The very fact that she had vanished without leaving a note or a message for the Dades was close to a reason. But his reply seemed to have gone some way to allaying Troy’s fears.

   ‘One more question, Mrs Troy. Did your step daughter have a good relationship with Giles and Sophie Dade? Did they get on?’ God, he was doing it himself now...

   ‘Oh, yes. She was a great favourite with both of them. She’d known them since they were nine and seven, that was when Katrina started working at the school.’

   ‘Anything you want to ask, Barry?’ he said to Vine.

   ‘Just one thing. Can she swim?’

   ‘Joanna?’ For the first time Effie Troy smiled. The smile transformed her almost into a beauty ‘She’s a top- class swimmer. When the woman who taught PE was off sick for a whole term Joanna took the students to swimming and gave lessons to the first and second years. That was a year before she gave up.’ She hesitated, then said, ‘If you’re thinking of the floods - that is, that there could have been an accident, don’t. Joanna was always saying how terrible the last lot we had were, the damage they’d do, she wished she could hibernate till all this was over. She had quite a thing about it. And the upshot was that in October she never went out except in the car. When she talked to us on Friday she said to me that once she got to the Dades she wasn’t going to set foot outside till she drove home on Sunday evening.’

   No outings then, no trips. And the rain had come down more heavily on Friday night and most of Saturday than it had on any single two days in the October floods. Joanna Troy wouldn’t have gone near Savesbury Deeps. She wouldn’t have taken Giles and Sophie for a nice Sunday afternoon walk in macs and wellies to see the water rising over the top of the Kingsbrook Bridge. When she went out, as she must have done, she went by car and the children with her. Because, Burden thought suddenly, she had to. Some thing happened to make it paramount for them all to leave the house at some time during the weekend...

   ‘You mentioned a course she teaches on the Internet. Would you happen to know. . .?‘ He was certain she wouldn’t. Neither of them would.

   George Troy didn’t but that didn’t stop him beginning a lecture on the intricacies and obscurity of cyber space, his own total inability to understand any of it and his position as an ‘absolute fool when it comes to things like that’. Effie waited for him to finish his sentence before saying quietly, ‘www.langlearn.com.’

‘By the way, the media have been told,’ Wexford said. At the look on Burden’s face he added, ‘Yes, I know. But it was a directive from Freeborn.’ Mention of the Assistant Chief Constable’s name evoked a groan. ‘He says it’s the best way to find them and maybe he’s right.’

   ‘The best way to get calls and no doubt e-mails from all the nuts.’

   ‘I quite agree. We know in advance they’ll have been seen in Rio and Jakarta, and going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. But they may be in a hotel somewhere. She may be renting a flat for the three of them.’

   ‘Why would she?’

   ‘I’m not saying she is, Mike. It’s a possibility. We know so little about her. For instance, you say she has a good relationship with the Dade kids. Suppose it’s more than that, suppose she’s so fond of them she wants them for herself.’

   ‘Adopt them, you mean? They’re not exactly the babes in the wood. The boy’s fifteen. She’d have to be mad.’

   ‘So? The very fact that she’s disappeared and with two children makes her a bit out of the ordinary, doesn’t it? Did you get to see the shepherd of the gospel flock?’

   Burden had. He and Barry Vine had walked up the road a hundred yards or so to a house very different from the Troys’, a semi-detached bungalow, plain and unprepossessing. The Rev Mr Wright had been a surprise. Burden had a preconceived idea of what he would be like, an image which derived from television drama and newspaper stories of American fundamentalists. He would be a fanatic with burning eyes, a fixed stare and an orator’s voice, a tall, thin ascetic in a shabby suit and constricting collar. The reality was different. Jashub Wright was thin certainly but rather small, no more than thirty quiet voiced and with a pleasant manner. He invited the two officers in without hesitation and introduced them to a fair-haired young girl with a baby in her arms. ‘My wife, Thekla.’

   Seated in an armchair and given a cup of strong hot tea, Burden had asked the most important question. ‘Did Giles Dade attend church last Sunday morning?’

   ‘No, he didn’t,’ the pastor answered promptly. No beating about the bush, no wanting to know why Burden wanted to know. ‘Nor the service in the afternoon. We have a young people’s service on a Sunday afternoon once a month. I remarked to my wife that his not coming was odd and I hoped he wasn’t unwell.’

   ‘That’s right.’ Thekla Wright was now holding the baby in the crook of her left arm while passing the sugar basin to Vine with her right hand. Vine helped himself freely. ‘It was so unusual that I rang up to ask if he was all right,’ she said. ‘We were both anxious.’

   Burden leant forward in his chair. ‘Would you tell me what time you phoned, Mrs Wright?’

   She sat down, placing the baby, now fast asleep, on her lap. ‘It was after afternoon service. I didn’t go in the morning, I can’t go to every service because of the baby, but I did go in the afternoon and when I got home - it was about five - I phoned the Dades’ house.’

   ‘Did you get a reply?’

   ‘Only the answerphone. It just said no one was available, the usual thing.’ Thekla Wright said very politely, ‘Would you mind telling us why you want to know all this?’

   Vine explained. Both Wrights looked deeply concerned. ‘I am sorry,’ Jashub Wright said. ‘That must be deeply distressing for Mr and Mrs Dade. Is there any thing we can do?’

   ‘I doubt if there’s anything you could do for them personally, sir, but it would help if you’d answer one more question.’

   ‘Of course.’

   Burden had found himself in a fix. These people were so nice, so helpful, so unlike what he had expected. And now he had to ask a question which, unless he phrased it with the greatest care, must sound insulting. He made the attempt. ‘I’ve been wondering, Mr Wright, what attracts a teenager to your church. Forgive me if that sounds rude, I don’t mean it to. But your, er, slogan, “The Lord loves purity of life” sounds - again, forgive me - sounds something more likely to arouse - well, derision in a boy of fifteen than a desire to belong to it.’

   In spite of his apologies, Wright looked rather offended. His voice had stiffened. ‘We practise a simple faith, Inspector. Love your neighbour, be kind, tell the truth and keep your sexual activities for within marriage. I won’t go into our ritual and liturgy, you don’t want that and anyway it too is simple. Giles was a con firmed member of the Church of England, he’d sung in the choir at St Peter’s. Apparently, he decided one day that it was all too complicated and confused for him. All these different prayer books in use, all these Bibles. You couldn’t be sure if you were getting the RC mass or matins of 1928 or happy-clappy or the Alternative Service Book. It might be smells and bells or it might be tambourines and soul. So he came over to us.’

   ‘His parents aren’t members of your church? Are any of his friends or relatives?’

   ‘Not so far as I know.’

   Thekla Wright cut in, ‘We’re simple, you see. That’s what people like. We’re direct and we don’t compromise. That’s the - well, the essence of us. The rules don’t change and the principles don’t, they haven’t changed much in a hundred and forty years.’

   This intervention provoked a glance from her husband. Burden couldn’t interpret it until she said, rather humbly, ‘I’m sorry, dear. I know it’s not for me to talk about matters of doctrine.’

   A smile from Wright brought a little flush to her pretty face. ‘What did it mean? That she mustn’t intervene because she was a woman? ‘We welcome new people, Inspector, though we don’t make a song and dance about it. Youngsters, as I’m sure you know, often have much more enthusiasm than older people. They put their hearts and souls into worship.’

   To this neither Burden nor Vine had any response to make.

   Thekla Wright nodded. ‘Would you like another cup of tea?’

   The experience he had related to Wexford. ‘He wasn’t particularly fanatical. Seems quite a decent chap and his church is simple and straightforward, nothing suspicious about it.’

   ‘Sounds as if you’ll be their next convert,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘You’ll be popping along there next Sunday morning.’

   ‘Of course I won’t. For one thing, I don’t like their attitude to women. They’re as bad as the Taliban.’

   'Anyway, the main thing is that Giles Dade didn’t go to church on Sunday morning and. it seems that if he was at home he would have gone, come what might. Nor did he go in the afternoon. On Friday evening when Mrs Dade phoned from Paris the answerphone was not on but it was on Saturday evening and again on Sunday evening. All this makes it look as if the three of them left the house some time on Saturday. On the other hand, the answerphone may have been on on Saturday evening for no better reason than that they all wanted to watch something on television without being disturbed.'

   ‘Now on Saturday evening, as the whole country knows, the last ever episode of Jacob’s Ladder, in which Inspector Martin Jacob dies, was shown on ITV. It’s said to have had twelve million viewers and it may well be that Giles and Sophie Dade and Joanna Troy were among them. To put the answerphone on would be the obvious way of assuring peace and quiet. Giles’s failure to go to church next day is much more indicative of when they left the house.’

   ‘Early on Sunday morning,’ said Burden, ‘or possibly around lunchtime. But why did they leave? What for?’

The water had advanced during the morning and was now within inches of the wall. Dora had been taking photographs of it, first when it was approaching but not touching the mulberry tree, later of the point it had reached by four o’clock. Dusk had come and now dark ness, a merciful veiling of that sight. The camera had been put away until the morning.

   ‘I couldn’t do it,’ said Wexford, half horrified, half admiring.

   ‘No, Reg, but you’ve never been much of a photographer, have you?’

   ‘You know I don’t mean that. We’re about to be engulfed and you’re taking pictures.’

   ‘Like Nero fiddling while Rome burned?’

   ‘More like Sheridan sitting in a coffee house opposite the burning Drury Lane Theatre and saying that surely a man could have a drink by his own fireside.’

   That made Sylvia laugh. Not so her new man whom she had brought round for a drink. It wasn’t the first time Wexford had met him and he was no more impressed than on the last occasion. Callum Chapman was good-looking but neither clever nor a conversationalist. Did good looks in a man really mean so much to a woman? He had always supposed not but unless his daughter was the exception he must be wrong. Charm too was lacking. The man seldom smiled. Wexford had never heard him laugh. Perhaps he was like Diane de Poitiers whose good looks meant so much to her that she never smiled lest the movement wrinkle her face.