No Man's Nightingale (30 page)

So he didn’t know the facts of Clarissa’s provenance. Just as well if it could be kept that way throughout Kingsmarkham society. Wexford went off to get himself a drink from a tray being carried round by a boy who introduced himself as the vicar’s nephew. Conroy was probably gay, a thought which brought him back to Christian Steyner. Not a good idea to phone the man so soon after his mother’s death. He had better wait a day or two.

He was savouring the rather good burgundy the vicar had provided when Dr Crocker came up to him. ‘I hear your grandson’s got himself engaged to little Miss Hussain.’

‘They’re going about together. I doubt the engagement.’

‘Maxine tells us she’s the product of insemination by her mother’s husband’s twin brother. Can that be anything but fantasy?’

‘I wish it was,’ said Wexford. ‘Naive of me but I thought it was a secret. How does Maxine know?’

‘What a question. Maxine knows everything. In this case it’s through the boyfriend of her daughter Kelli with an i being a bootboy, dishwasher or some such at the Olive where your transactions apparently took place.’

‘Behind closed doors,’ said Wexford with a sigh.

‘If walls have ears, doors have keyholes.’

It was another four days before he phoned Christian Steyner, beginning by sympathising with him in his loss.

‘Yes, thanks,’ Steyner said. ‘It comes to us all, though. She was very old.’

It sounded callous. What do you say to that but agree or keep silent?

‘Clarissa wants me to bring her to your house.’

‘Oh, right. That’s fine with me.’

They arranged a day. Steyner sounded subdued, as perhaps was to be expected from a man who had just lost his mother. Wexford could think of nothing else to say but the conversation such as it had been left him feeling uneasy. He told Burden about it but it was greeted by his friend with very little interest and no enthusiasm. The calendar on Burden’s office wall had been turned to the month of March and a photograph of a disused police station, overgrown with ivy, in a Manchester suburb.

‘Dennison has disappeared,’ Burden said. ‘You’d think disappearing was impossible these days. No matter where anyone had got to he could be tracked down. But not so. We know all about Dennison. Where he’s lived, where he’s worked – when he has – his wives. He’s had two and two divorces. Both of them would like to shop him but they don’t know where he is. The same goes for girlfriends. If he’s left the country he must have done so immediately after he killed Crisp and well before the body was found. Arben Birjar is probably in Albania but how can we know? If he came in illegally he went out illegally. Probably the man or men who employed him are hiding him. Until we have him we don’t know who they are.’

‘One of them is the man Crisp saw through the window.’

‘I’ll need a good deal more evidence before I accept that,’ said Burden.

He thought of driving to London. It was something he did regularly when he and Dora were spending a weekend at the little house Sheila had put at their disposal. But it was one thing to come off the westbound M25 and dip down into Hampstead where he had a garage to put the car in, another to make his way through the park to Knightsbridge and there find somewhere to park, no longer needing small change to feed a meter but making phone calls to a local authority while the car sat guiltily on a double yellow line.

‘We’ll take the ten-o-eight to Victoria. I don’t suppose we need to book ahead.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Clarissa said. ‘I’ll book online.’

Robin, who knew his grandfather’s technological limitations better than she did, said they could pick up the tickets when they went for the train, instructing him how to do this and adding that it was simple. In fact, when they got there, it was.

Wexford had expected her to be dressed as usual: the torn jeans, the leather jacket, probably the woolly hat with the long knitted lappets. But something had impelled her to dress up: her realisation that this was an occasion, her first real meeting with her father, a meeting that might change her life? She wore a short black dress but not too short, black shoes with high heels but not too high, a red jacket inadequate for the time of year and the icy wind.

The journey was short, less than an hour. He had a book with him, a paperback Gissing novel, but only because it was habit to go nowhere without something to read. At the same time he thought it would be rude to read it in her presence and made an attempt at conversation, a few words on the early signs of spring which could be seen from the window. She interrupted him.

‘You won’t go, will you? You won’t leave me with him?’

‘He will expect me to go, I’m sure.’

‘If you get up to leave I’ll leave with you. I will. He’ll be glad if I do. He’ll just think of me as the girl who like screamed when he said who he was. This is a waste of time, isn’t it? It’s not going to work. Say we’ll leave if I say so?’

Helplessly, he said, ‘I will do whatever you say, Clarissa.’

The woman in the seat in front of them turned her head to stare but said nothing. All the other people in the coach were too busy on their mobile phones to take any notice. He knew enough about the London Underground system by now to escort her into a Circle Line train without having to check on the map. Clarissa had conjured it all up on her mobile anyway. Having enlarged the map, marked it with something that looked to Wexford like a lollipop, she moved away from it and called Robin. Reception was bad but not impossible. She told him where they were and repeated what she had said to Wexford.

‘It’s not going to work. I know it isn’t.’

When she saw the house, she stood still and stared. Her comments were exactly what he would have expected from an intelligent young woman of her age with a social conscience. ‘If the government had done what they said and brought in a sort of mansion tax the man who lives there would have had to pay millions. Instead of taking it from the poor like they do all the time.’

Wexford said, ‘Come along,’ and headed across the street. He clearly remembered Sylvia and Sheila saying the same sort of thing all those years ago when they were this girl’s age.

‘It’s that house?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

The red camellias were still in bloom. They walked up the steps and Wexford rang the bell. Another bell also rang, that of a church clock somewhere nearby. It was eleven thirty.

In the big bow window on the left-hand side he could see the figure of a man. As Crisp, in the account he gave Burden, had seen the figure of a man through the Vicarage French windows. Could it possibly be the same man? Dark, very tall, clean-shaven, middle-aged. For a moment he appeared sinister, moving about, frowning as if searching for something he couldn’t find. Then he looked up at the sound of the bell, and seeing them, smiled and raised his hand. The door was opened as if by someone who had run to it.

‘Hello. Come in. It’s pretty cold out there.’

They stepped over the threshold, Clarissa first, of course, though diffidently.

‘I’m Timon Arkwright. How do you do?’

Christian Steyner was in the enormous drawing room. He gave no sign that the last time he had seen Clarissa she had collapsed in screaming hysterics but stepped forward and took both her hands in his. Don’t kiss her, Wexford thought, not yet. ‘Tim,’ Christian said, ‘this is my daughter.’

After that everything became pleasant. Clarissa spoke politely to Timon and shook hands with him politely. At his invitation she sat next to her father and all screams and horror looked likely to be forgotten. She talked about school and her coming A levels and where she would like to go to university and then about Robin and how wonderful he was. To his relief, Wexford felt he wasn’t needed. He wanted to be on his own to think about Arkwright and what, fantastically, had crossed his mind. Both men thanked him quite effusively for bringing Clarissa. No, he wouldn’t stay to lunch. Would Clarissa be happy for him to go?

‘How shall I get home then?’

‘My driver will take you whenever you want to go.’ That was Timon Arkwright, very laid-back. ‘But we hope you won’t want to go too soon. I’ve taken the day off work to meet you.’

Wexford wondered what work meant and what he would fail to turn up to: a board meeting, a conference, a meeting with some other tycoon? He got up. Clarissa amazed him by holding up her face for a kiss – a first time, that one. Christian took him to the door.

‘I think Timon’s going to love her as much as I do,’ he said.

Wexford wasn’t so sure about that. Wasn’t this exactly how Arkwright would behave if he had killed Sarah Hussain? If he had killed her to prevent her telling Clarissa the truth about her parentage but now, finding that his action had failed, could only make the best of a bad job?

‘We’re going away to our country place for the weekend,’ Steyner said. ‘It’s in Cornwall and we’re hoping Clarissa will come with us. Do you think your grandson would come too?’

‘I can’t speak for them, not for either of them. You ask her.’

He sat in the train. He had no evidence for what he had half believed unless seeing a dark man through glass was evidence and the hearsay evidence of that man’s love for another man. If he was right wasn’t he wrong to have left that girl in Arkwright’s company? Wrong to have put up no objection to Clarissa spending the weekend with Christian and Timon? He couldn’t have stopped it, he thought. He had no power.

THE LAST VOLUME
of
The Decline and Fall
lay on his desk next to the pile of newspaper cuttings he still hadn’t looked at. Nor had he read a word of Gibbon since getting home. I shouldn’t have left her there, he kept saying to himself, and over and over, how long was I to stay, then? I shouldn’t have left her. Stop it, don’t do this. He opened Volume 6 at the place he had marked and began to read of the great khan of the Tartars.

It is the religion of Zingis that best deserves our wonder and applause. The Catholic inquisitors of Europe, who defended nonsense by cruelty, might have been confounded by the example of a barbarian, who anticipated the lessons of philosophy, and established by his laws a system of pure theism and perfect toleration. His first and only article of faith was the existence of one God, the Author of all good; who fills by his presence the heavens and earth, which he has created by his power. The Tartars and Moguls were addicted to the idols of their peculiar tribes; and many of them had been converted by the foreign missionaries to the religions of Moses, of Mahomet, and of Christ. These various systems in freedom and concord were taught and practised within the precincts of the same camp; and the Bonze, the Imam, the Rabbi, the Nestorian, and the Latin priest, enjoyed the same honourable exemption from service and tribute: in the mosque of Bochara, the insolent victor might trample the Koran under his horse’s feet, but the calm legislator respected the prophets and pontiffs of the most hostile sects. The reason of Zingis was not informed by books; the khan could neither read nor write . . .

He hadn’t been sure that Timon Arkwright was guilty but it still seemed to him that everything fitted. There was more to discover, of course. What was Arkwright’s connection with Marty Dennison? Wexford remembered what Nardelie Mukamba’s brother had said about those who visited the Anaconda nightclub, among them the rich and famous. He wouldn’t be surprised if Arkwright had been one of them. He might even have had a share in the club’s ownership. But find out, it shouldn’t be difficult.

Should he have left Clarissa alone with the man? Not alone exactly. Christian Steyner was there too. Her father was there. It was five past four. He called her mobile number, wondering what to do if she didn’t answer. She answered.

‘I’m in Timon’s car.’ They moved on to first names very fast these days. ‘I’m on my way home. What do you think about me like going away for the weekend with Christian and Timon?’ She left him no time to reply. ‘I’d sort of like to but I’m going to ask Robin. Ask his advice, I mean.’

‘Of course.’

The dryness in his voice went undetected. ‘I’d love him to come too but maybe it’s a bit soon for that.’

Wexford had no opinion to offer on this example of belated caution. He ended the call, still wondering, though she was safe now, how safe she would be on further contact with Arkwright. If he had killed her mother to prevent the girl having any contact with Steyner, how much more of a menace to him was she herself? All that bonhomie and effusiveness could be a front. This place they had in Cornwall, was it by the sea, were there high cliffs, disused tin-mine shafts? An accident could be arranged that Steyner knew nothing about. Oh, nonsense, he told himself, people don’t do such things, as Ibsen had it. But they do. All the time.

He had better go through this pile of newsprint, cuttings he had made and now forgotten what for. Each separate column or half-page must have seemed worth saving at the time. Here, for instance, was one from the
Evening Standard
headed
MURDER OF WOMAN VICAR
with a picture of poor Sarah Hussain, another about rural housing and a third on some new model Audi. Why he had kept those two he couldn’t imagine. He had a house and he didn’t want a new car. All the papers went into the black plastic bag Dora had left for him. The face of Timon Arkwright came as a shock. It stared out from the group he was standing in front of so unexpectedly as to seem unreal, something he
had
imagined. He shut his eyes, opened them. The photograph of the man was still there, still in one of his beautiful suits, presenting an award to a woman in a trouser suit and hat and surrounded by half a dozen men. The caption read: ‘Arkwright Associates chairman Timon Arkwright presenting the City of London’s major Industry Award to CEO Jennifer Carpenter, the first time the award has gone to a woman.’ The hands on a clock on the wall between their heads pointed to three thirty.

A kind of coincidence but of no further interest to him. He had picked it off the pile and was about to drop it into the bag when the date on the top of the page caught his eye. Thursday 11 October 2012. He read the date again slowly. It provided a simple but perfect alibi for Timon Arkwright. If he was in a building in Finsbury Circus that afternoon there was no way he could have been in Kingsmarkham Vicarage. He had been libelling the man in his thoughts. Probably Arkwright had never set foot in the Anaconda, still less been associated with a villain like Martin Dennison.