Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods (3 page)

BOOK: Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods
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   Dora was watching the news. It ended as he came in and the weather forecast began with its typical irritating preamble: a kind of improbably glamorous creature in the guise of a water sprite and a silver lame designer gown, sitting on top of a fountain while a concealed fan blew her hair and draperies about. The meteorologist, an altogether more normal sort of woman, pointing with a ferrule at her map, told them of flood warnings out on four new rivers and an area of low pressure rushing across the Atlantic in pursuit of the one presently affecting the United Kingdom. By morning, she said, as if this wasn’t true already, heavy rain would be falling across southern England.

   Wexford turned it off. He and Dora stood at the french windows looking at the water which now, as in the front garden, filled the paved area immediately out side. The rain made little waves on its surface where a twig bobbed about like a boat on a choppy sea. The trunk of the mulberry tree was half submerged and it was now a lilac bush which had become the criterion. The rising water lapped its roots. A few yards of dry land remained before the incoming tide would reach the wall. As he watched, the light at the end of the garden next door went out and the whole scene was plunged into darkness.

   He went up the stairs to bed. The possibility of two young proficient swimmers being drowned no longer seemed to him so absurd. You didn’t need too much imagination to fancy the whole country sinking and vanishing under this vast superfluity of water. Everyone overcome by it like shipwrecked men, their raft inadequate, their strength gone, the young and the old alike, the strong and the weak.

Chapter 2

So much for not getting involved. He was on his way there now, heading up Kingston Gardens towards Lyndhurst Drive, with Vine who was driving. Vine seemed to think drowning in the Brede Valley, particularly in the very deep water now filling Savesbury Deeps, where the frogmen had begun searching again, a real possibility The night before he had thought so himself. Now, with the sun shining on wet pavements and glittering dripping branches, he wasn’t so sure.

   Three hours earlier, when he got up, the rain had apparently just stopped. It was still dark but light enough to see what had happened during the night. He didn’t look out of the window. Not then. He was afraid of what he might see, and even more afraid, when he went down to make Dora’s tea, of the water waiting for him at the foot of the stairs or lying, still and placid, across the kitchen floor. But the house was dry and when he had put the kettle on and at last made himself pull back the curtains and look out of the french windows, he saw that the silvery grey lake still stopped some ten feet from the little wall that divided lawn from paving.

   Since then there had been no more rain. The weather forecast had been right as far as the coming of a further downpour but wrong in its timing. There was still the second approaching area of low pressure to look for ward to. As he got out of the car at the point where Kingston Gardens met Lyndhurst Drive, a large drop of water fell on to his head, on to his bald spot, from a hollybush by the gate.

   The house on the corner was called ‘Antrim’, a name neither pretentious nor apparently appropriate. Unlike any other in Lyndhurst Drive, where neo Georgian sat side by side with nineteen thirties art deco, nineteen sixties functional, eighteen nineties Gothic and late-twentieth-century ‘Victorian’, the Dades’ house was Tudor, so well done that the undiscerning might have mistaken it for the real thing. Beams of stripped oak criss-crossed slightly darker plaster, the windows were diamond-paned and the front door heavily studded. The knocker was the ubiquitous lion’s head and the bellpull a twisty wrought-iron rod. Wexford pulled it.

   The woman who came to the door was very obviously the anxious mother, her face tear-stained. She was thin, wispy and breathless. Early forties, he thought. Rather pretty her face unpainted, her hair a mass of untidy brown curls. But it was one of those faces on which years of stress and yielding to that stress show in its lines and tensions. As she led them into a living room a man came out. He was very tall, a couple of inches taller than Wexford, which would make him six feet five, his head too small for his body.

   ‘Roger Dade,’ he said brusquely and in a public school accent which sounded as if he purposely exaggerated it. ‘My wife.’

   Wexford introduced himself and Vine. The Tudor style was sustained inside the house where there was a great deal of carved woodwork, gargoyles on the stone fireplace (containing a modern, unlit gas fire), paisley pattern wallpaper and lamps of wrought iron and parchment painted with indecipherable ancient glyphs.

   The top of the coffee table round which they sat held, under glass, a map of the world as it was known in, say, fifteen fifty with dragons and tossing galleons. Its choppy seas reminded Wexford of his back garden. He asked the Dades to tell him about the weekend and to begin at the beginning.

   The children’s mother began, making much use of her hands. ‘We hadn’t been away on our own, my husband and I, since our honeymoon. Can you believe that? We were desperate just to get away without the children. When I think of that now, I feel just so guilty I can’t tell you. A hundred times since then I’ve bitterly regretted even thinking like that.’

   Her husband, looking as if going away with her was the last thing he had been desperate to do, sighed and cast up his eyes.’ ‘You’ve nothing to be guilty about, Katrina. Give it a rest, for God’s sake.’

   At this the tears had come into her eyes and she made no effort to restrain them. Like the water outside, they welled and burst their banks, trickling down her cheeks as she gulped and swallowed. As if it were a gesture which he was more than accustomed to perform, as automatic as turning off a tap or closing a door, Roger Dade pulled a handful of tissues from a box on the table and passed them to her. The box was contained in another of polished wood with brass fittings, evidently as essential a part of the furnishings as a magazine or CD rack might be in another household. Katrina Dade wore a blue crossover garment. A skimpy dressing gown or something a fashionable woman would wear in the daytime? To his amusement, he could see Vine doing his best to avert his eyes from the bare expanse of thigh she showed when the front of the blue thing parted.

   ‘But what’s the use?’ The tears roughened her voice and half choked it. ‘We can’t put the clock back, can we? What time did we leave on Friday, Roger? You know how hopeless I am about things like that.’

   Roger Dade indeed looked as if, with varying degrees of impatience and exasperation, he had borne years of unpunctuality; forgetfulness and a sublime indifference to time. ‘About half past two,’ he said. ‘Our flight was four thirty from Gatwick.’

   ‘You went by car?’ Vine asked.

   ‘Oh, yes, I drove.’

   ‘Where were the children at this time?’ Wexford had directed his eyes on to Dade and hoped he would answer but he was to be disappointed.

   ‘At school, of course. Where else? They’re quite used to letting themselves into the house. They wouldn’t have to be on their own for long. Joanna was coming over at five.’

   ‘Yes. Joanna. Who exactly is she?’

   ‘My absolutely dearest closest friend. That’s what makes all this so awful, that she’s missing too. And I don’t even know if she can swim. I’ve never had any reason to know. Perhaps she never learned. Suppose she couldn’t and she fell into the water, and Giles and Sophie plunged into the water to save her and they all...’

   ‘Don’t get in a state,’ said Dade as the tears bubbled up afresh. ‘You’re not, helping with all this blubbing.’ Wexford had never actually heard the word used before, only seen it in print years before in boys’ school stories, old-fashioned even when he read them. Dade looked from one police officer to the other. ‘I’ll take over,’ he said. ‘I’d better if we’re to get anywhere.’

   She shouted at him, ‘I want to do the talking! I can’t help crying. Isn’t it natural for a woman whose children have drowned to be crying? What do you expect?’

   ‘Your children haven’t drowned, Katrina. You’re being hysterical as usual. If you want to tell them what happened, just do it. Get on with it.’

   ‘Where was I? Oh, yes, in Paris.’ Her voice had steadied a little. She pulled down the blue garment and sat up straight. ‘We phoned them from Paris, from the hotel. It was eight thirty. I mean, it was eight thirty French time, seven thirty for them. I just don’t under stand why Europe has to be a whole hour ahead of us. Why do they have to be different?’ No one supplied her with an answer. ‘I mean we’re all in the Common Market or the Union or whatever they call it, the name’s always changing. We’re supposed to be all the same.’ She caught her husband’s eye. ‘Yes, all right, all right. We phoned them, like I said, and Giles answered. He said everything was fine, he and Sophie had been doing their homework. Joanna was there and they were going to have their supper and watch TV. I wasn’t worried - why should I be?’

   This too was obviously a rhetorical question. To Wexford, although he had been in her company only half an hour, it seemed inconceivable that she would ever be free from worry. She was one of those people who manufacture anxieties if none naturally occur. Her face puckered once more and he was afraid she was going to begin crying but she went on with her account.

   ‘I phoned again next day at the same sort of time but nobody answered. I mean not a real person. The answering machine did. I thought maybe they were all watching something on television or that Giles had gone out and Joanna and Sophie weren’t expecting me to call. I hadn’t said I’d call. I left the number of the hotel - not that they didn’t have that already - and I thought they might have called me back but they never did.’

   Vine intervened. ‘You said you thought your son might have gone out, Mrs Dade. Where would he go? Somewhere with his mates? Cinema? Too young for clubbing, I expect.’

   A glance passed between husband and wife. Wexford couldn’t interpret it. Katrina Dade said, as if she were skirting round the subject, avoiding a direct reply, ‘He wouldn’t go to the cinema or a club. He isn’t that sort of boy. Besides, my husband wouldn’t allow it. Absolutely not.’

   Dade put in swiftly, ‘Children have too much freedom these days. They’ve had too much for years now. I did myself and I know it had an adverse effect on me for a long time. Until I dealt with it, that is, until I disciplined myself. If Giles went out he’d have gone to church. They sometimes have a service on Saturday evening. But in fact, last weekend it was on the Sunday morning. I checked before we left.’

   Most parents in these degenerate times, thought Wexford, who was an atheist, would be gratified to know that their fifteen-year-old son had been to a church service rather than to some kind of popular entertainment. Never mind the religious aspect. No drugs in church, no AIDS, no predatory girls. But Dade was looking unhappy, his expression at best resigned.

   ‘What church would that be?’ Wexford asked. ‘St Peter’s? The Roman Catholics?’

   ‘They call themselves the Church of the Good Gospel,’ said Dade. ‘They use the old hall in York Street, the one the Catholics used to have before their new church was built. God knows, I’d rather he went to the C of E but any church is better than none.’ He hesitated, said almost aggressively, ‘Why do you want to know?’

   Vine spoke in an equable calming tone. ‘It might be a good idea to find out if Giles did actually go there on Sunday, don’t you think?’

   ‘Oh, possibly.’ Dade was a man who liked to provide ideas, not receive them from some other source. He glanced at his watch, frowning. All this is making me late,’ he said.

   ‘Shall we hear about the rest of the weekend?’ Wexford glanced from Dade to his wife and back again.

   This time, Katrina Dade was silent, making only a petulant gesture and sniffing. Roger said, ‘We didn’t phone on the Sunday because we were going back in the evening.’

   ‘That night, rather,’ said Vine. ‘You were very late.’ He probably didn’t mean to sound severe.

   ‘Are you trying to insinuate something? Because if you are I’d like to know what it is. May I remind you that you’re to find my missing children, not find fault with my conduct.’

   Soothingly, Wexford said, ‘No one is insinuating anything, Mr Dade. Will you go on, please?’

   Dade looked at him, curling his lip. ‘The flight was delayed nearly three hours. Something to do with water on the runways at Gatwick. And then they took half an hour getting the bags off. It was just after midnight when we got home.’

   ‘And you took it for granted everyone was in bed and asleep?’

   ‘Not everyone,’ said Katrina. ‘Joanna wasn’t staying that night. She was due to go home on Sunday evening. They could be alone for a little while. Giles is nearly sixteen. We all thought - everyone thought - we’d be home by nine.’

   ‘But you didn’t phone home from the airport?’

   ‘I’d have told you if we had,’ snapped Dade. ‘It would have been after ten thirty and I like my children to be in bed at a reasonable hour. They need their sleep if they’re to do their school work.’

   ‘What difference would it have made if we had phoned?’ This was Katrina, sniffling. ‘The answerphone was still on. Roger checked yesterday morning.’

   ‘You went straight to bed?’

   ‘We were exhausted. The children’s bedroom doors were shut. We didn’t look inside if that’s what you mean. They’re not babies to be checked up on every moment. In the morning I had a lie-in. My husband went off to the office at the crack of dawn, of course. I woke up and it was gone nine. It was unbelievable, I haven’t overslept like that for years, not since I was a teenager myself, it was incredible.’ Katrina’s speech quickened in pace, the words tumbling over one another. ‘Of course, my first thought was that the children had to go to school. I hadn’t heard them, I’d been so deeply asleep. I thought, they’ll have got up, they’ll have gone, but as soon as I got up myself I knew they hadn’t. You could tell no one had used the bathroom, their beds were made, something they never do, and it looked as if someone who knew what she was doing had made them. Joanna, obviously. There was no mess, everything was tidy - I mean, it was unknown.’

BOOK: Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods
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