End in Tears (27 page)

CHAPTER 28

Y
ou could have gone through those sheets with a fine-tooth comb, as Wexford put it, without reading a word to tell you that the aim of this tour was to acquire a baby and a passport for that baby, and bring him or her home to the United Kingdom. The words “baby” and “birth” appeared nowhere. An expert deciphering cryptic notes could have found nothing beyond the advertising of a trip to Africa, the only odd thing about it its high cost for what it appeared to be. The diet sheet that came with it, a small, brightly colored and glossy booklet, suggested no reason why readers might need to eat sweet potatoes, white radishes, peppers, and coconut, swallow multivitamins, gingko, and devil's claw. Why it recommended bush meat, available in some London markets—Hannah recoiled in horror from this—wasn't explained either.

“What strikes me,” said Wexford, “is that these foodstuffs all have their origins in Africa or are found in Africa. It's as if Arlen or whoever writes this stuff wants to give his gullible clients the idea that eating African vegetables will somehow make them more suitable as the mothers of African babies.”

Hannah turned to the brochure that set out the conditions and amenities of the tour. “It costs enough,” she said. “Ten thousand seems to be the basic minimum. A really downmarket hotel, no courtesy car available. A top-grade one can run you into over twenty thousand.”

“What I'm wondering is where these babies come from. Are they kidnapped? Or do their impoverished mothers sell them?” Wexford asked. “Either way it's grim to think of.”

“But we're there, aren't we?” said Burden. “We discredit Arlen and Rick's alibi for Midsummer Night falls. Ross's alibi for the night of August the tenth to eleventh falls.”

Wexford looked up from the brochure. “Aren't you being over-optimistic? Lawson still alibies Rick for the August date, but what of Ross who in the absence of Arlen has no alibi? Neither Rick nor Ross is really alibied for the first of September. Colin Fry genuinely believes he was in the old bank building with both of them, but they were on the ground floor and he on an upper floor. Either of them could have gone out for an hour without his knowing. And Megan recognized Ross as the man she'd seen in Yorstone Wood while he was in fact absent on holiday in Spain.”

“She made a mistake.”

“What, he let her blackmail him when he
knew
she couldn't have recognized him? He still silenced her? He got Rick to kill her when he could have proved he was absent in Spain? I don't think so. As for the night of the tenth to eleventh of August, we don't like Lawson and his offer of help. We're sure Lawson's whole story is a positive tapestry of lies. But a jury would believe him, particularly when Colin Fry says Rick's car did break down, he did have a flat battery, which Colin replaced himself the next day.
After
thoughtful brother Ross had had the car at his place with ample time to tinker with it.

“And you have to remember that, though strictly speaking we don't need to supply a motive, it would be a help to know what it was. We haven't a clue what it was. Rick kills young girls because he's a psychopath? We've no evidence he is. He's capable of violence, we know that. But beating up your wife and knocking a man unconscious outside a pub are not exactly precursors of killing girls you don't know, apparently at random. Rick hates women because of what he sees as the injury his wife has done him? Then why kill two girls who are not wives, two girls he's never seen before? Above all—and we've never yet asked ourselves this—what's in it for him?”

“What d'you mean, guv?”

“I rather think,” said Wexford, “that Rick would do anything for money. He's always moaning about his ex-wife taking his money. What else would he kill for? And he did kill. I'm sure of it. I could almost say I know it. As Sherlock Holmes says, ‘When all else is impossible that which remains must be so.' It's impossible that Rick killed out of simple hatred or for revenge or passion or fear, so what remains is money. He killed but someone else had the motive. He did these crimes for money, which someone else gave him and he was given it through Ross. It's just what Ross would do—do his brother a favor by giving him the job. Rick's being very careful not to spend the money yet. Not perhaps for a long while.”

“What's he done with it, then?” Burden asked.

“Shall I make a guess? Not put it in his own bank account. Not bought ISAs with it or National Savings bonds. He hasn't kept it in his house for fear we might come searching. No, he's handed it to Ross, to dear old lovable brother Ross, for safekeeping.”

“That doesn't explain why whoever paid for this wanted the girls killed,” said Hannah.

Studying the brochure and the diet sheet once more, she realized that there was little point in this scrutiny as she intended to phone Norman Arlen in any case. She intended, as soon as possible, to go and see him at Pomfret Hall. The only decision to be made was whether she dared record their conversation.

Three days had passed since her visit to Miracle Tours in Carlos Place and it seemed time to phone him. The woman who answered sounded very unlike Miss Tropical Beach. She said Mr. Arlen wasn't in but, when Hannah introduced herself as Mrs. Smithson, gave her the Pomfret Hall number. It wasn't Arlen who answered when she dialed it, yet she thought she recognized the voice. Sometime in the past month or so she had heard that voice, the east London suburban accent they called estuary English. He transferred the call to Arlen.

“You've made your mind up very quickly, Mrs. Smithson.”

“I told you I wanted to do it when I saw you in London.”

“Well, that's a fact,” he said. “Why don't you come and see me here—well, shall we say next Tuesday? Tuesday at three in the afternoon? You'll drive, I suppose?”

Hannah said she would, though she immediately realized this wouldn't be wise. She would have a taxi. But whose was that voice?

 

Summoned to the police station for a second interview, Stephen Lawson repeated almost word for word what he had said last time but with some embellishments. These almost uncannily matched the account given of his meeting with “the friends in the Cheriton Forest Hotel” by the woman he had picked up in the bar. This recalled to Wexford how the woman in her statement had said Lawson had talked about his fund-raising for a society giving aid to Africa and talked too about babies abandoned like so much rubbish.

Was there any connection between this and Miracle Tours? Asked, Lawson declared he had never heard of Arlen or his travel agency. Wexford took him back to his encounter with Rick and his broken-down car, and Lawson finished his account exactly as he had done on the previous occasion. It was then that Wexford realized he must be telling the truth about every aspect of his evening, from his dinner in the Cheriton Forest Hotel to his drive across the lonely country road to his final arrival at home. The only addition need be his meeting with Rick. But that the story was set up and every detail prearranged, probably by Ross Samphire, he was sure.

When Lawson left the police station to walk to his car, the first flakes of snow began to fall. Wexford watched the snow from his window, turning around to hear Burden say, “It won't settle. Not at this time of the year it won't.”

 

As the birth of her third child approached Sylvia was uneasily aware that her older children were rejecting her. That was perhaps putting it too strongly. Better say they had withdrawn that easy confident affection she usually received from them and both looked at her with puzzled resentful eyes. They simply failed to understand what she was doing or why she might want to do it. Young as they were, it was as if in some mysterious way they comprehended that this was not the way things should be. This was not the way things had traditionally and acceptably always been, had been taken for granted. This was an affront to society and custom and families. Did she recognize it herself, then?

No, she told herself, it was only that she realized that her sons, more conventional and conservative than she, the grownup, wanted the normal and the ordinary to endure. What she was doing was the right thing. Not even, probably, the new thing, for she had no doubt women had done this for other women and their men throughout history, only in more prudish times it had never been talked about. She was right but still their near-ostracism left her feeling very lonely. Her mother, to whom she had always been close, had been cold toward her for months now. It was a long time since they had been in the mutually reassuring habit of phoning each other every day. As for her father, he was fine with her, once, that is, he had got over the initial shock. But she knew he didn't really approve. He didn't like it.

The snow contributed to her feeling of isolation. It had been falling steadily since before lunchtime, not the kind of snow that is blown in on the wind in sharp showers, but straight-down feather-soft snow, a lace curtain of thick flakes. Where it fell on grass and leafless shrubs it lingered, wet and sparkling, but on stone it melted where it touched. Warmth and sunshine are company in themselves, but snow, like heavy rain, cuts you off from the world, imprisoning you in loneliness and walling you inside.

Once antagonistic toward her, she now longed for Mary's visits, for her cheerful presence, her brisk optimism. But Mary was on duty at the Princess Diana today, as she had been since Friday. If the snow fell heavily enough, if the roads were blocked, Mary might not be able to get to Stowerton tomorrow…

“Don't be ridiculous,” she said aloud. “It won't settle.”

 

Already in possession of her fur coat, Hannah borrowed her mother's car for the drive to Pomfret Hall. There were two reasons for this. She had never seriously considered using her own car, which was police property and could possibly be recognized as such. Hannah thought this unlikely, even paranoid on her part, but she wasn't taking any chances. A taxi had been her first choice. The snow was still falling but not settling when she went to bed on Monday and the weather forecast was for a rise in temperature during the night.

She woke up to a white world, heavy driving snow, and a high wind blowing. The two taxi firms she called were adamant their drivers refused to negotiate country lanes in this weather. That was when Hannah went over to Myringham and borrowed her mother's four-by-four, a big silver monster, high above the ground and snug inside. With no permit in its windscreen, the monster had no reserved place in the police station car park, so Hannah put it on one of the four-hourly meters in the High Street.

If she and Bal had been on the sort of terms that existed between them before that fateful trip to Taunton, she would have discussed all this with him, but these days they barely spoke. Besides, he was out with Wexford calling on Lydia Burton, whose school was closed due to bad weather. Burden was at the Princess Diana, where a “body-packer,” at death's door, was being operated on for injuries from the bag of cocaine that had burst in his stomach. She had already told him and Wexford she would be seeing Norman Arlen again today, but she told Damon Coleman before she went out, just to be on the safe side.

CHAPTER 29

D
riving the monster was so enjoyable, so blissfully high up above roadway and hedges, affording such views, that Hannah wished it weren't only a matter of seven miles she had to go. Even the lightly falling snow and the snow-covered fields added to the pleasure, giving her the illusion she was forging through Antarctic wastes, like some latter-day (and better equipped) Scott or Amundsen. She had to remind herself severely that vehicles such as this one had been censured as environmentally unfriendly. To join the fight against global warming and climate change one should have an electric car.

The turning out of Pomfret High Street was wide enough for two cars to pass without difficulty and its surface had been cleared and gritted, but a mile farther on she had to take a narrow lane, deep under virgin snow. The monster handled this with ease. She took it slowly, and farther on the high wind had blown a good deal of what weather forecasters call “precipitation” off the road onto the fields. Some minion of Norman Arlen had cleared his long drive and she drove up to the front door over no more than a thin scattering of flakes melting in the weak sunshine.

The place had impressed Burden. It slightly intimidated Hannah. Burden, after all, had seen houses of this grandeur and magnitude before, if only when visiting them on holiday or converted into country hotels. Hannah never had, except in pictures or in the distance, beyond wide rivers and against a background of blue hills. She had expected an aggrandized farmhouse. But she got out of the monster, mounted the left-hand set of steps, and after speculating for a moment or two as to what its purpose was, pulled the sugarstick doorbell.

A woman in black trousers and blouse let her in. She said nothing when Hannah gave the name “Mrs. Smithson” but nodded and led her across a huge hall and along a corridor wider than most normal-size rooms. Burden had said something about meeting Arlen in what he dubbed with irony “the yellow drawing room.” Therefore Hannah knew, when at last they reached their destination, a book-lined place rich with dark wood and leather upholstery, that Arlen had chosen a different venue for her appointment. “The library,” he probably called it. Had Gwenda Brooks come here? Had Sharon Lucas?

She sat down and waited. Norman Arlen came in after about five minutes, looking very different from his London image, a tweed jacket over his cashmere sweater and cord trousers. He shook hands with her and sat down behind a large mahogany desk. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I wouldn't have been surprised if you hadn't come, Mrs. Smithson. You drove here in this weather?”

“My car has four-wheel drive,” she said.

“Well, I congratulate you on managing these treacherous lanes.”

She told him she had thoroughly read every word of his brochure and prospectus and, yes, she was in no doubt she wanted to undertake the project. Not daring to equip herself with a recording device, she knew she must get him to come out with an open and unmistakable statement of what she would receive at the end of it. She must somehow make him say she would return from Africa with a baby and a passport for that baby. Instead, so far, he talked only about her starting on the diet regimen as soon as possible, her consultation with the Miracle Tours medical adviser, and the various non-diet treatments she must receive.

“I want to have a baby,” she said firmly, putting all the sincerity and intensity she could muster into her tone. “I'll do anything for that. There's no problem about me doing this diet and any treatment I have to have so long as I have a baby at the end of it.”

“There has to be some level of trust between us, Mrs. Smithson,” he said. He looked hard at her and she had to prevent herself from squirming under this scrutiny. She was confessing to herself that he was a formidable man. “Unless you can accept that what is stated in the brochure is true or will become true it won't be possible for us to do business. You've met Mrs. Brooks. Mr. Quickwood has told you what is guaranteed and what to expect.” He hadn't. Should she have gone to him first? “The fact is, Mrs. Smithson, that once you have paid your deposit and embarked on the various schemes, the promises made in the brochure will be carried out.”

She was starting to assure him that she did trust him, she did believe, it was only that it seemed too good to be true, when the door behind her opened and someone came into the room. Arlen looked up and nodded. He seemed to have expected whoever this was. The newcomer came up to the desk and, walking around it to Arlen's side and whispering something to him, looked up at her. With difficulty she restrained herself from gasping.

It was Stephen Lawson, the man who had supplied Rick Samphire with an alibi.

 

The gale, which seemed no more than a brisk wind in Kingsmarkham, blew in gusts of seventy miles an hour out in the remote villages. It blew the snow off the fields and into deep drifts in the narrow roads; it blew down a fifty-foot beech tree across the road between Myland and Thatto, blocking all ingress and egress to Hurst Thatto and its handful of houses.

At two in the afternoon, Sylvia felt the first pain of labor. “Thank God for that,” she said. The second one was so long in coming that she wondered if she'd been mistaken. But, no. She wouldn't phone Mary yet. No need to bring her out in this weather before she had to. Besides, this ridiculous unseasonable snow, which everyone had said wouldn't settle, might stop. Studying it critically from the dining-room window, she thought she could see it slackening. The flakes were smaller. Then it came to her that a car might have difficulty getting through.

Perhaps she should phone Mary now. Leave it half an hour. The friend who was bringing the boys home from school would keep them with her if she feared getting through. That was another phone call she must make, to this woman's mobile. She was about to give birth. Well, in a few hours, maybe seven or eight. An awesome venture—it always was. I shall go to the Princess Diana in labor, she thought, and no one there will know about Neil and Naomi or that the baby won't be mine to keep. They'll congratulate me. They'll say, “Congratulations, Mrs. Fairfax. You have a lovely baby girl or baby boy.” And I shan't dare even to hold it…

But they would clear the roads. They had been good about getting the snowplows out this year. I'd better phone Mother, tell her I shall go to the hospital in an hour or so. She lumbered into the living room and picked up the phone. It was as dead as a toy phone, dead as an unplugged instrument. Could she walk to Mary's? It was only about two hundred yards. In this snow? Not so much the snow that was falling as the snow that lay. She could imagine slipping over and not being able to get up again. As if to teach her a lesson, a pain took hold of her with an increasingly severe disabling thrust. She leaned over the table, holding on to it and breathing slowly. It grabbed her, squeezed, wrung her out and let her go. Nice when it stops, she thought, almost worth having it's so nice when it stops. It was getting dark. She tried to switch on a light, but there was no power. She stood in the half-dark, feeling fluid flow down her legs. Her waters had broken.

A key was turning in the lock. She drew a deep breath, went out into the hall to Mary.

“I've started.”

“So I see. Okay, darling, let's get this cleared up and I'll examine you in a minute. There's no way I'm going to be able to get you to the Princess Di. There's a tree down and the road's blocked.”

Sylvia's eyes grew very wide. “What shall we do?” Who is more helpless than a woman in labor? “What shall we do, Mary? The electricity won't work and the phone won't work.”

“No, but your mobile will, my love. Didn't think of that, did you? So there's two things we can do. I can phone the emergency services and see if they can get a helicopter out to you. Or you can have a nice quiet home delivery with a highly qualified midwife in attendance.”

 

“At least this time we haven't lost the electricity,” Dora said. “I just hope it doesn't freeze and then maybe I can get over to Thatto. Sylvia's started. She called me on her mobile. Her what-do-you-call-it phone's not working.”

“Landline.” Wexford sighed. “I can't take much interest in this baby, I'm afraid. I suppose I've schooled myself not to.” He looked out of the window. “I could take you to the Princess Diana if you like. I've got to go out again. They're gritting the roads.”

“She's not in the Princess Diana. They couldn't get there. A tree's come down across the road. Mary Beaumont's with her.”

“Maybe it's better if you're not there,” he said. “You don't want to witness the handover of your grandchild to Naomi Wyndham.”

“And you don't care, I suppose.”

He was so much taller and bigger that he towered over her. Standing above her, holding her by the shoulders so that for a moment she was his prisoner, he said, “Dora, the worst is to come. If we are against each other who will be for us? We must be united, truly together, not putting on a front. I'm going now. Give me a kiss.”

She kissed him. When he moved away from her he saw that she was crying.

Donaldson drove him to Brimhurst Prideaux. The snow had stopped two hours before, the temperature had begun to rise, and the four-inch-deep crust had reached the stage of a melting sorbet. Water ran into the gutters and a fine rain began to fall. But there were no longer any blocked roads or impassable lanes. November's freak blizzard had come to a sudden end.

Although Wexford wasn't much concerned about Ross Samphire's love affairs, he intended to call on Lydia Burton for any information she might be prepared to give him on the Samphire brothers. As had been the case at his earlier visit with DC Bhattacharya, no one was at home. Donaldson drove slowly down Mill Lane through ridges of half-melted snow and pools of water. The early dusk had come and he saw that number three Jewel Terrace was in total darkness. Perhaps she had gone to another assignation at Colin Fry's flat. He still had to decide, he reminded himself, what action to take over that. Bring him to court for keeping a disorderly house or simply tell him these activities of his must stop? Something came back to him quite suddenly. On the night Amber was killed, Lydia Burton had been out with a man, had been dining with him somewhere. He had brought her home in his car at midnight. Ross or someone else? Now that was something he must find out, for Ross claimed to have entertained Norman Arlen that evening…

 

Candles were lit in the hall and living room. The single oil lamp Sylvia and Mary could muster was in Sylvia's bedroom. Mary had lit two coal fires, but there was no means of cooking.

“What are you going to do about boiling water?”

That made Mary laugh. “Boiling water is only in books, my love.”

The woman who had fetched Sylvia's children from school had phoned her mobile to say she would bring them back if she could or keep them for the night. When the doorbell rang that was who Mary thought it was. It wasn't. It was Naomi.

“You've been very prompt. The baby's not here yet.”

Naomi looked ravaged. To Mary, who had never before seen her less than well-groomed, perfumed, and painted, she seemed ill, an unkempt distraught creature, her hair wild, tears on her face, her shoes and trousers soaked. Mary told her to come in and, following her, explained how it had been impossible for Sylvia to get to the maternity home.

“I don't want to see her,” Naomi said. “I never want to see her again.”

“Why did you come, then?”

“I was determined to come. I saw the tree was down and I left my car on the other side of it and walked. That's why I'm so wet. I had to come. Now you're here I don't have to see her. I can tell you.”

“Naomi,” Mary said, “you had better take your shoes and socks off. Sylvia can lend you shoes. She's about your size.”

Naomi kicked off her shoes and pulled off her socks. Her long narrow feet were white from the cold and so wet that when she lifted them up water dripped from her toes. The expression in the eyes she lifted to Mary was that of someone who has seen a dreadful sight, a sight so horrible and searing on the vision that it can never be forgotten. But before Mary could inquire, Sylvia's voice from upstairs came calling, “Mary, Mary…”

“I'll be back soon. Sit in front of the fire and warm yourself. I'll make you a hot drink when I come back.”

Mounting the stairs, Mary decided not to tell Sylvia who had come. If Sylvia had heard a voice she wouldn't have been able to tell who it was, this house was so big, so cavernous. Whatever had got Naomi into this state it was better for a woman in labor not to know about it. Mary went into the bedroom and examined Sylvia.

“That's fine, my darling,” she said. “Everything's going excellently, but you've a way to go. Yell if you want. No one minds.”

“Who's no one?” said Sylvia on a gasp. “I heard a woman's voice.”

“Only my next-door neighbor, who's collecting for Save the Children.”

“It sounded like Naomi.”

“Really?” said Mary. “I suppose some other people do sound like her, my love. I'll get rid of her and I'll be back.”

“I don't want a hot drink,” said Naomi. “I've come to tell you what's happened. I thought I'd have to tell Sylvia, but I'm glad I shan't have to. I never want to see her again.”

“So you said.”

Naomi held out her feet to the fire, leaned forward, staring at her knees. “Neil's gone,” she began. “I've thrown him out. I don't know where he'll go and I don't care. He told me, Mary. We were going to get married tomorrow and we were, well, sort of confessing our past. I mean, things we'd done and thought it was better for the other one to know.” She gave a racking sob and momentarily put her head in her hands. Mary waited in silence, thinking about the woman upstairs. “I hadn't much to tell him,” Naomi said in a broken voice. “I'd told him everything when we were first together.” She lifted her head and looked into Mary's face.