Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods (22 page)

   The ‘anyone’ who might want liqueurs were Sylvia and Callum and Sheila and Paul. All would be accompanied by children - ‘Check the orange juice and Coke, would you, darling,’ said Dora - Sylvia’s Ben and Robin, and Sheila’s Amulet and the new one, Annoushka, Amy and Annie to most people.

   ‘Have you got a present for Chapman?’

   ‘Cal, Reg. You’ll have to get used to it. Yes, of course I have.’

Pauline Pearson had treated as ludicrous the suggestion that she should cook the Buxtons’ Christmas dinner. ‘You won’t find a soul who’ll do that, Mrs Buxton. Not on Christmas Day. They’ll all be cooking their own, won’t they? It was different in my grandma’s time but them days are gone when they put everything on the back burner to wait on the gentry. Not that there’s any gentry left, not in our classless society, and thank God for it. You want to get that bird you’ve bought thoroughly defrosted, at least twenty-four hours, and that you haven’t got. You leave a bit of ice inside there and you’ll get salmonella or worse. A lady my auntie knew went down with that stuff women stick in their faces - what’s it called? Bot-something - from a half-defrosted turkey.’

   It was something of a revelation to Peter that Sharonne couldn’t cook. He hadn’t left his roots as far behind as he thought and he still took it for granted that all women could cook a straightforward dinner, it was part of them, in their genes. Sharonne couldn’t. Hopelessly, she watched the frost slowly slipping off the turkey and asked Peter why they couldn’t go out to lunch.

   ‘Because every place you’d set foot in and a lot you wouldn’t have been booked up for Christmas dinner for months.’

   ‘Don’t say dinner when you mean lunch, Peter, it’s common.’

   ‘Everybody says Christmas dinner. Never mind what time of day it is, it’s dinner.’

   Peter cooked the turkey. He smothered it with butter, stuck it in the oven and left it for six hours. He could have done worse. There were tinned potatoes and frozen peas and Bisto gravy and he was rather proud of what he’d achieved. His cooking had been helped on by liberal tots of single malt and by the time the meal was ready he was unsteady on his feet and glad to sit down.

   Drink helped him forget about past police visits and, worse, possible future police visits. But along with the dry mouth, raging thirst and banging head which ensued during the evening came the suspicion that they knew he had found the car weeks before he said he had. Now he couldn’t understand his own behaviour. Why hadn’t he told the police then? Surely it wasn’t because if he had done so he would have had to cancel two local engagements that, in any case, held no particular charm for him. Surely it couldn’t have been that. No, it was Sharonne. She had stopped him.

   He looked at her through bleary eyes that intermittently afforded him double vision. She was curled up in an armchair, her shoes kicked off, her face calm, serene, unsmiling, watching a Christmas comedy show on television. The inevitable glass of sparkling water was beside her. Why had he let her stop him do what was manifestly his duty as a good citizen? The events of the first week end in December had become inexplicable. He, a sensible man who would be forty next birthday, had let his wife, twelve years his junior, a model but by no means a super-model, a woman who had never done a thing beyond walk up and down catwalks in that third-class designer Amerigo’s clothes, tell him what to do. And now God knew what would happen to him. He hadn’t liked that jibe about obstructing the police being an offence. If he appeared in court it would get into the papers.

   ‘Sharonne?’ he said.

   She didn’t turn her head. ‘What? I’m watching this.’

   ‘Is there a bed made up in one of the spare rooms?’

   ‘I suppose so. Why? Are you feeling ill?’ Now she did turn, perhaps remembering her role as his carer. ‘You’ve only yourself to blame, Peter. I’m sure I don’t know what’s the attraction of all that hard liquor. Stay where you are and I’ll get you a big glass of water and some Nurofen.’

   Why didn’t she know if a bed was made up? It was her job to know if not do it herself. He couldn’t see why she didn’t do it herself, she did nothing else. She hadn’t even supported him when he tried to explain why he’d come down here. Nobody asked her to intervene when that detective inspector was questioning him. She’d done it off her own bat, almost spitefully. There was no call for her to tell the whole truth. She could have kept quiet. As for that ridiculous Pauline, she wouldn’t have said all that about the heating if Sharonne hadn’t set her an example.

   He drank the water and swallowed the painkiller. Sharonne returned to her television programme and this time a smile disturbed her flawless features. Peter looked at her with something bordering on dislike. Then, without a word, he got up and went off to find himself a bed with blankets on it if not sheets as far from the master bedroom as possible.

Callum Chapman played with the two boys and the two-year-old girl, thus vindicating his reputation as a man who was ‘good with children’. He was rather rough with them, though, Wexford thought, disliking the manhandling of little Amy. It mattered less with the boys who were big and could take care of themselves. But it was for Amy’s parents to intervene, not a grandfather.

   A woman living with the lover of her choice ought to be serene and revitalised but Sylvia looked unhappy. Of course they were all on edge, all trying too hard to enjoy this ‘family’ Christmas, Sheila worn out with breast feeding and rehearsing for a new play, and Paul worried about her. Dora was piqued with him because he’d for gotten her injunction about the ice and he couldn’t relax, his thoughts turning to the missing Dade children, the discovery of Joanna Troy’s body and the inexplicable behaviour of Peter Buxton.

   Whoever had driven the blue VW into the Passingham Hall woods must have known the place, at least known the woods were there and there was a way in for a vehicle. But not known it well enough to avoid driving it over the edge of the quarry? Or known it well and driven the car into the quarry on purpose? No, not driven it. Got out of it and pushed it over. With Joanna passively agreeing to sit in the driving seat? That wasn’t possible. She must have been dead or at least unconscious before the car went over. Dead most probably. And what of the children? Were they dead at the time or hidden somewhere? If he, whoever he was, had killed the children and buried them why not kill and bury Joanna too? He saw no purpose in putting her body in the car. The blue VW could just as well have been pushed over the quarry edge empty; Whoever it was must have known the Hall and its grounds were seldom visited, so was he known to Peter Buxton? The perpetrator could have been Peter Buxton. Wexford was convinced he would never have reported finding that car if Rick Mitchell hadn’t come into the wood at that moment...

   ‘Reg,’ said Dora, ‘wake up. I’ve made tea.’

   Sylvia set cup and saucer in front of him. ‘Do you want anything to eat, Dad?’

   ‘Good God, no. Not after that dinner.’

   He looked up and as she drew back her arm saw a mark like a burn, a dark-red abrasion, encircling her wrist. Later on, he was to wonder why he had f to ask her what it was.

On Boxing Day they resumed the search. They weren’t looking for living people but for graves. Teaching him self the metric system, Wexford calculated there were now about 7.6 centimetres of snow on the ground. Whatever it was - and three inches meant much more to him and always would - it made searching pointless, confirming his opinion that snow was a nuisance, covering everything up. His thoughts returned to the day before, Callum Chapman throwing Amy up into the air and feigning not to catch her, Sheila falling asleep the moment she sat down in a chair, Dora edgy; and all the time the spectre at the feast, the one who wasn’t there and never would be again, Neil Fairfax, Sylvia’s ex-husband.

   Grandparents - who would be one? You couldn’t interfere, you couldn’t even advise. You had to shut up and smile, pretend that everything your daughters did and provided for their children was perfect parenting. Grandparents. . . Had he paid sufficient attention to the grandparents in the Dade case? To the Bruces and Matilda Carrish? It might perhaps be a good idea to call on these people in their own homes, make it all right with the Suffolk and the Gloucestershire police, and take a drive out there before the thaw. The roadways were clear and if no more snow fell...

   If they didn’t know more about their children’s children than the parents themselves, they sometimes had insights denied to the mothers and fathers. Look how he knew Amy didn’t like being thrown around by Chapman, he could tell from her stoical little face, her determination to be polite as she’d been taught, while Paul seemed to notice nothing. Sylvia was convincing herself her lover was good with children, but Wexford sometimes saw a look in Robin’s eyes expressive of contempt. He would follow through this idea of his to see the Dade grandparents in their own environment, make appointments for soon, maybe as soon as possible.

   But for now, the Dades themselves. He went alone. Theirs was the only house he was likely to enter at this time in which no decorations had been put up, yet he fancied the place would be shimmering with glitter and sylvan with green branches at a normal Christmas. Katrina opened the door to him, her face as the woman’s in The Scream must have been just before Munch started painting it.

   ‘No, Mrs Dade, no,’ he said quickly. ‘I’m not bringing you news, bad or otherwise. I only want to have a talk now the situation has changed.’

   ‘Changed?’

   ‘In that Ms Troy’s body has been found.’

   ‘Oh, yes. Yes. You’d better come in.’ It was ungracious but less so than Roger Dade’s behaviour who, when he saw Wexford, cast up his eyes in silence and retreated into the living room.

   ‘I thought maybe you’d found my children,’ Katrina said miserably, tears never far away. ‘I thought maybe you’d found them dead.’

   ‘Please sit down, Mrs Dade. I must tell you both that an extensive search is being carried out in the neighbourhood of Passingham Hall but so far nothing has been found.’

   'What’s the point of searching when the place is under snow?’ said Dade.

   'Apart from it’s being a more than usually unpleasant task for the searchers, the snow isn’t deep and the thaw has begun. Now I’d like you to tell me if either Giles or Sophie had ever been to Passingham St John? Did they ever mention the place?’

   ‘Never. Why would they? We don’t know anyone there.’

   Katrina was less brusque. ‘I’d never heard of Passingham St John till we were told they’d found - Joanna. And found her car. I’ve been to Toxborough but that was years ago and the children weren’t with me.’ At the emotive word she began to cry noisily.

   ‘The car was found in the woods at Passingham Hall. It’s the property of a man called Peter Buxton. Do you know him?’

   ‘Never heard of him,’ said Dade. ‘You heard my wife say we don’t know this Passingham place. What are you, deaf?’

   The hardest thing, Wexford sometimes thought, was to keep your cool when spoken to like this by a member of the public, especially when you were quick-tempered yourself. But it had to be. He had to remember - and remember all the time - that this man’s two children had disappeared, his only children, and were very likely dead.

   Katrina, through her tears, gave her husband the sharpest look he had ever seen from her but said, instead of something helpful, ‘Do you know when Joanna’s funeral will be?’

   ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

   ‘I’d like to go. She was my very dearest friend, poor Joanna.’

   After that, he thought another call on Peter Buxton might be helpful. He took Vine with him. This time they walked down the lane in the hope of seeing just how clear the entry to the woods was, the path the blue VW had taken, but the snow masked everything, all that could be observed in these conditions was that at the point where the path probably started and deep into the woods, the trees stood further apart, far enough apart to allow the passage of a car.

   Buxton opened the door himself Again it was too early in the morning for his wife. He looked like a sick man, destined for some coronary or arteriosclerosis crisis, his face the mottled grey and red of pink granite and as rough-surfaced. Blood-red veins made a lacework across his eyeballs. There was a faint tremor in his hands and his breath, which peppermint toothpaste hadn’t much disguised, was a mixture of stale whisky fumes and some indefinable digestive enzyme, enough to make Wexford step back He felt an unaccustomed urge to warn the man he was killing himself but of course he didn’t. Newspapers and magazines were stuffed with articles about what happened when you ate rubbish and overdid the booze. He’d had Moses and the prophets. Let him hear them.

   ‘Seems a good time to have a word, Mr Buxton,’ said Vine breezily.

   Buxton glowered. For him there had never been a worse time. He led them down passages to the kitchen, making Wexford think the drawing room, no doubt littered with yesterday’s plates and glasses, might be unfit for morning entertaining. But this can’t have been the case, for the kitchen was possibly worse, Christmas dinner cooking utensils, pots and pans and empty tins lying about. For some reason Buxton offered them a drink.

   ‘Water, orange juice, Coke or something stronger?’

   The reason was obviously so that he could have something stronger too. Wexford and Vine would have accepted tea if it had been available but it wasn’t.

   ‘Hair of the dog,’ said Buxton with a ghostly snigger, pouring Scotch. He gave the policemen fizzy water with a perceptible sneer. ‘What was the word it was a good time to have, then?’

   ‘Who knows this place apart from you and your wife?’ Wexford asked. ‘Who visits you here?’

   ‘Our friends. The people who work for us.’ Buxton uttered the first two words loftily, the second six with scarcely disguised contempt. ‘You can’t expect me to tell you the names of my friends.’

   Vine was looking incredulous. ‘Why not, sir? They’ve no reason to object if they’ve done nothing wrong.’

   ‘Of course they’ve done nothing wrong. Chris Warren is a County Councillor and his wife Marion, well she’s a . . .‘ Buxton seemed to have encountered some difficulty in defining exactly what Marion Warren was’. . . a very well-known lady in these parts.’