The Vault (16 page)

‘Well, as I say, you do that small thing. I’ll get Lucy to go along to Clary’s home and you go with her if you want.’ It was a subtly different form of words from what had been said to him before. This time he was accompanying her, not she him. But that was the way it was bound to be, Wexford told himself.

‘I said at the time that I didn’t believe a word of what Clary
said,’ Lucy said when they set off for the tall block of Maida Vale flats where Clary and his wife lived. It was she, Robyn Chilvers, who had told them on the phone that she would be glad to see them. Her husband would be there too, of course. It so happened that both would be working from home that day while the heating was being serviced in their Finchley Road offices.

Handsome men don’t always marry good-looking women. Indeed, it is a phenomenon Wexford had often noticed that tall, elegant men with hawk’s profiles like Clary commonly pair up with dumpy women with fat cheeks and small eyes and ‘difficult’ hair like Robyn Chilvers. It was even stranger that while he seemed a subtle and devious person, she immediately gave the impression of frank and open straightforwardness.

Their home was a black and chrome and ivory-white minimalist penthouse, a huge picture window affording a view across north London to the distant Harrow-on-the-Hill. Wexford and Lucy sat down on a very uncomfortable armless black sofa. Clary stood looking at them while his wife bustled in with double espressos in black cups on a white tray.

‘I’ve told you everything I remember about that visit to whatever that so-called cottage is called,’ Clary was saying rather sourly. ‘You should be asking Underland for the name of their plumber, not me.’

‘Except that they have gone out of business,’ said Lucy, trying not to make a face at the first taste of the coffee. She said to Wexford afterwards that she thought it was taking the roof of her mouth off. ‘They know nothing about a plumber called Rod who worked for them three years ago.’

‘Well, I’m sorry but I can’t help you.’

‘But you can, darling,’ said Robyn Chilvers. ‘Rod, you said? He didn’t just work for Underland, he did a job for us. Don’t
you remember when the dishwasher leaked? It can’t have been more than a year ago. He’d done a job for us before and I had his phone number and I called him and he came within the hour. He was very efficient.’

‘You mean that’s the same man? I suppose I do remember, Robyn. I just didn’t connect the two.’

‘Do you still have that number, Ms Chilvers?’

‘I’m sure I do. I’ll get it.’

She was rather a long time. While she was away Clary paced up and down the room. Like a panther, Wexford said to Lucy afterwards. They sat there on the rock-hard seat, staring out at London’s houses and church spires and blocks and trees and green spaces while Clary walked up and down in silence. Robyn Chilvers returned at last with a yellow Post-it on which she had written
Rod Horndon
and a mobile number. Clary turned round and instead of looking displeased, which was what Wexford expected, bestowed on his wife a smile of approval and patted her affectionately on the shoulder. Once they had said they were leaving, he became warmer and more expansive, apologising for not being able to give any more help.

‘I am beginning to think,’ Wexford said later, ‘that whatever happened the first time, the second visit Clary with Rod paid to Orcadia Cottage was quite different from the way Clary says it was. Why were there two visits anyway? Clary must have had some idea of what he was going to be looking at. Why not take a plumber with him the first time? The second time Rokeby and his wife were out. I’m wondering if this was very much to Clary’s advantage. If maybe Rokeby named several days on which Clary could come, but said that on one of them he and his wife would have to go out – and that was the one Clary picked. Will you call that number, Lucy? It’s a bit dodgy for me to do it.’

‘Why? Oh, I see. Yes, of course I will. You mean he can’t very well refuse to see me but he could you?’

‘Something like that,’ Wexford said.

P
eople change their mobile numbers and this was what Rod Horndon had done. Lucy wasn’t going to be defeated by a little difficulty like that. She explored phone books, electoral registers and finally found Horndon where she hadn’t really expected him, on his own website. He and a friend, it appeared, had started their own building company – ‘Small but Specialist’ being their way of describing themselves – which had weathered the recession. To his amusement and some admiration, Wexford saw that they traded and relied on the slogan, ‘We Keep our Promises’ and boasted that they never failed to come on the day and at the time they said they would.

‘I can see that would be a useful gimmick,’ Wexford said. ‘Original if not unique.’

‘I might even use them myself,’ Miles Crowhurst said. ‘Not to have to wait in all day for builders and then have them not come, that would be something. I could get them to put in my new bathroom.’

‘Never mind your bathroom,’ said Tom. ‘Just phone this Horndon. You’ve got three or four possible numbers there.’

But Rod Horndon, according to his teenage daughter, had gone on holiday with her mother to the Caribbean and wasn’t expected back for another two weeks.

‘I wish I could take my wife to the Caribbean,’ said Tom in a gloomy tone. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing. Plumbers are always rolling in money. If I had my time over again I’d go in for the pipework. The Met wouldn’t see me for dust.’

M
ary made a scene when Sylvia told her they were going home. She wanted to stay with her cousins and behaved uncharacteristically (according to her mother) when told they would be leaving on Friday afternoon with Grandma and Grandad. There was some crying and stamping of feet.

‘Why not leave her here?’

Sylvia hugged her sister. ‘Would that be all right? Wouldn’t you mind?’

‘Ask Gudrun. If she’s happy about it I shall be.’

So Mary was left behind with Amy and Anoushka in the care of their nanny who told them that it would be a pleasure as Mary was much less naughty than the other two. ‘Grandad,’ said Amy, ‘do you think she’ll learn to be as naughty as us in just one week?’

Wexford said he wouldn’t be surprised. He drove Sylvia back to Great Thatto, reaching there at about five in the afternoon, and he and Dora went into the house with her. Dora was trying, and had been trying during the last part of the journey, to persuade her to come home with them and stay for the three nights before they returned to London.

‘I really do want to be on my own for a while,’ Sylvia insisted. ‘Ben’s coming home just for Sunday, and on Monday I mean
to start back at work. I’m perfectly well. I shouldn’t skive off any longer.’

Dora said rather petulantly, ‘You never told me social services expect you back so soon.’

‘They don’t. I hope they’ll be pleasantly surprised.’

Wexford was to remember those words. No Mary, no other Mary, no pre-school class head, no workplace chasing her. It would add up …

He dropped Dora at their own house and went to return the rented car to the car hire place in the High Street. Next morning Sylvia phoned to say all was well and she was fine. Wexford took the call and he thought she sounded very tired and rather nervous, but wasn’t that normal? She had been through a lot. He was due to meet Burden for a drink in the Olive and Dove at six and Dora was determined to spend the evening at the Old Rectory with Sylvia. She would cook their dinner and had suggested that her daughter should invite more people and make a small homecoming party of it. She had even named two or three old friends of Sylvia’s and had suggested – Wexford warned her not to – that Neil Fairfax, Sylvia’s ex-husband, might be among them. Wexford expected Sylvia to explode but her reaction was uncharacteristic. No, that wasn’t a good idea. No, thanks, no dinner would be needed, she wasn’t eating much, and really it would be better if her mother didn’t come at all. She meant to go to bed early and watch television.

Wexford left for the Olive and Dove, promising to get home early. He suspected that Dora would make a fresh onslaught on Sylvia once he was out of the way, and he understood. He could tell how worried she was and that perhaps she had reason to worry. She had always been a deeply concerned mother if rather too prone to interfere in her daughters’ lives. But he could understand that too.

Even though he had never been away from Kingsmarkham
for long since his retirement, those five or sometimes twelve days in London at a stretch, he noticed each time he went home the small changes which had taken place in his absences. Last time, for instance, a big old house in York Street, not protected by listing, had been pulled down, leaving a desolate building site behind. This time a whole row of new trees, sturdy hornbeam saplings, had been planted along Orchard Road. He noticed these things particularly because of his new walking regimen. It scarcely occurred to him to use any other means of getting from his house to the Olive and Dove, whereas, once and not long ago, he would have had to make a determined effort not to take the car and to tell himself that he was only walking so that he need not avoid alcohol.

Burden was already there. Wexford sometimes thought how awkward it was for Englishmen to greet each other, even in the case of close friends. Continental Europeans would have shaken hands or even embraced. Arabs and many Asians would have embraced and kissed, even to that extraordinary fashion he had only seen on the screen, of kissing on one cheek, then the other and then the first one again. Secretly, in those wakeful, vaguely mad times of the night, he thought that he would quite like to embrace Burden when they met after an absence, though he drew the line at that triple kissing. Thinking of telling Burden this and his reaction – a kind of incredulous but well-veiled horror – made Wexford laugh out loud.

‘What’s funny?’ Burden brought their two red wines to the table.

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘My grandma who lived until I was about eight used to tell me about some comedian on the music halls when she was about eight herself. His name was Ernie Lotinga – isn’t it strange I can remember that, all those years ago? Anyway, his
catchphrase when he’d cracked a joke was to put on this deadpan face and say, “I don’t see anything funny to laugh at.” Apparently it rocked them in the aisles.’

‘I’ve heard of him,’ Wexford said. ‘He was T. S. Eliot’s favourite comedian.’

Burden wasn’t interested in that, as Wexford had known he wouldn’t be. ‘How are you getting on with the bodies in the coal hole?’

‘Not very well. We can still only identify one of them and she was pretty obvious from the first. How would you find a woman who is probably about thirty, not particularly honest unless she’s changed a lot, most likely a Londoner, speaks French or is French, of the name of Francine?’

Burden suggested all the methods Tom Ede had used. ‘But I suppose there are a lot of them?’

‘Too many. You see, I’ve said she’s probably about thirty and she won’t be much younger, but she may be a lot older.’ He told Burden about
La Punaise
and the woman’s name written on the slip of paper. ‘Although the assumption is that he intended to ask this woman for a translation, there’s nothing to tell us that she was his sort of age. She might be his former teacher or a friend of his mother’s or a neighbour.’

‘She might be a murderer.’

‘It has crossed my mind.’

‘You could advertise for her. If she killed them she won’t reply, but you’ve no reason to think she did, have you?’

‘None. Advertise for her how? She would have to be – well, distinguished by her association with Orcadia Cottage on the lines of “Will Francine who had a connection with Orcadia Cottage, Orcadia Place, London NW8 twelve years ago, please get in touch with the Metropolitan Police …”? You can see what that could lead to, the real Francine not replying because although she was asked to translate something twelve years
ago, she had never heard of Orcadia Cottage until the bodies were discovered in the vault and she read about it in the papers. And hundreds of false Francines making all sorts of crazy claims.’

‘You could mention the translation, but you don’t really know why her name was on the same piece of paper with that French word? You don’t really know that, do you? He, whoever he is or was, might have written
La Punaise
on the paper because he thought it was a restaurant and the number could be Francine’s phone number without the area code because he already knew those three digits.’

‘I’ve told you, Mike, we don’t really know. I can go and see this woman in Highgate, but she’s no more likely to be
the
Francine than any of those Tom has checked on.’

Burden helped himself to an olive, speared on the end of a cocktail stick. ‘So what are you doing? What will you be doing when you go back?’

‘What we’ve been doing all along,’ Wexford said. ‘Dodging between a bunch of architects, builders and plumbers and possible Francines. Paying yet another visit to Martin Rokeby and another to Anthea Gardner and Mildred Jones, though as far as I can see they have nothing else to tell us.’

‘Your Francine may be the young woman in – what do you call it? – the vault. Have you thought of that?’

‘She would have had to be about twelve when the other bodies were put in there.’

‘Why not?’

It had been a less rewarding encounter than he had expected. This was hardly Burden’s fault, Wexford reflected on the way home. There was so little to go on, nothing that he and Tom and Lucy with a whole team of investigators hadn’t already thrashed through. He had started with such high hopes and he believed Tom had had high hopes for him.
Or perhaps that was something he imagined and Tom had never seen him as any more than someone to talk to about the case, to act as a kind of sounding board on which to bounce off ideas. All he had done was find a car and all Forensics could do was find that that car had transported the body of Keith or Kenneth Bray, Gray or Greig.

Rain had begun to fall, thin as a mist at first but gradually increasing, so that he asked himself why he hadn’t brought a raincoat or an umbrella. By the time he reached home he was soaked and he went straight upstairs to change before finding Dora.