Wexford 22 - The Monster In The Box (17 page)

   Dora came out into the hall. He put his arms round her and kissed her with a little more than his usual fervor.

   'I suppose that's because you've been imagining me lying dead somewhere,' she said.

   'Don't.'

   'And don't you set Damon Coleman to watch this house without telling me. Poor chap, he looked so bored. I nearly went out and told him my lover wouldn't be round before two.'

   Wexford laughed. The laughter was a bit forced.

   'It was that white van,' Dora said, 'wasn't it?'

   'It seems to have stopped. That's something to celebrate, so let's have a drink.'

A second glass of red wine had been tempting but he had refused it. Not because he had some sort of premonition he would be called out – that hardly crossed his mind – but because it was early, he had only just sat down to his dinner, and if he had more claret now he would want another before bed. So he left the silver stopper his daughter Sheila had given him in the neck of the bottle and applied himself to the fussily allay coronary and croquette salad he didn't much like but which Dora deemed good for him. As you got older, he thought, your taste reverted to the food of your youth. In your middle years you had quite liked deep-fried melon flowers and file pastry and chorizo but now you wanted what you never got, sausages and steak-and-kidney pudding and stewed plums and custard. On the other hand, his preferred drink used to be beer but now he hardly touched it. He was musing on this, wondering if Dora felt the same but somehow feeling sure she didn't, was on the point of asking her, when the phone rang.

   She knew it would be for him. She passed it to him without answering it herself.

   'I have to go.' He got up, leaving half his fussily. 'Something serious,' he said. It was the phrase he always used to her when he was called out to an unexplained death or a lethal attack. So it had been when Billy Kenyon's body was found in the botanical gardens, so it was when Nicky Dusan was stabbed. It was this economy of explanation he was later glad he adhered to. Telling her the address he was called out to this evening, though at the time it meant nothing to him, would have shocked and horrified her so that he would have baulked at leaving her alone.

   She nodded, accepting. The days when she would have lamented his failing to finish his dinner were long gone. Now, his girth staying the same if not exactly increasing, she was pleased when he missed a meal or only ate half of it.

   Again glad his evening's drinking had been limited to one small glass of red wine, he drove himself to Pomfret. Two police cars, a police van and an ambulance – not to be needed – were already parked outside the row of white stucco cottages. He left his car fifty yards up Cambridge Road. A blue-and-white-striped canvas barrier with a doorway in it had already been erected to cover most of the front of number 6. Barry Vine lifted the flap over the doorway and came out as he approached.

   'Pathologist's just come, sir,' he said. 'He's with the deceased now.'

   'Who is it?'

   'Dr Mauritian,' Barry said.

   'I don't mean the pathologist,' said Wexford. 'Who cares, anyway? I mean who's what you call "the deceased"?'

   Barry knew very well Wexford's hatred of jargon and verbiage, so said, 'Sorry, sir. The dead man is called Andrew Norton. This is his home and a neighbour . . .' The look on Wexford's face stopped him. 'You know him?'

   'What did you say the name is?'

   'Andrew Norton.'

   Wexford felt his heart pound. He could almost hear it. 'He does – did – gardening for me.'

   'Someone put a rope round his neck and strangled him.'

   'I think we'll wait to hear what Dr Mauritian says before we make statements like that,' said Wexford. He was very taken aback. Thank God he hadn't mentioned that address to Dora. She had liked the man, they had had tea together when he took his break on Thursday afternoons. Damon Coleman had seen him come and go in his ancient Morris Minor. Wexford walked along to the living room where the body was lying on the floor between a sofa and the television set. Mauritian got up from his knees and gave Wexford one of his impassive stares. He was a tall, thin, humorless man of Armenian origin with lined white skin and blond, very nearly white, hair. The only time he had been seen to be even slightly moved was when the news had been brought to him that his wife had given birth to a daughter.

   In Wexford's estimation any faults he might have were compensated for by the swift (and accurate) assessment he made of the time of a victim's death and the cause of that death.

   'He's been dead since between seven and nine this morning, let's say twelve hours ago. Someone put a rope round his neck and pulled it tight. All the details to come in my report. Good evening.'

   As he was leaving Hannah Goldsmith arrived. 'He was my gardener, poor chap,' Wexford said to her.

   'My God, guv.'

   'He was at my house yesterday afternoon.'

   'Your partner may know something relevant then.'

   'She's my wife,' said Wexford, annoyed.

   Andy Norton had been a good-looking man, his regular features and still smooth skin bloated by what had been done to him. His head of white hair was as thick and glossy as a wig but it wasn't a wig. The scene-of-crimes officer was anxious to get on with his job so Wexford turned to Hannah and told her they would go next door to speak to the neighbour.

   'She's a Mrs Catherine Lister, sir,' said Barry Vine. 'She's a widow and she lives alone. Her and the dead chap, they seem to have been good friends.'

   'What does that mean?'

   'Oh, nothing. Only what I said, sir. She's very upset.'

   Mrs Lister's daughter opened the door. She was a woman of about forty, very thin, her dark hair drawn back into a ponytail.

   'I came over to Mum this afternoon,' she said, 'and I've been here ever since. I'd like to take her home with me tonight. Is that OK?'

   'Once we've had a word with her it will be quite OK,' said Wexford.

   He had a strong sensation of déjà vu. He had been here before yet he knew he never had. For almost his whole life, while he had lived in the Kingsmarkham neighborhood, he could never remember having even seen this terrace of cottages, tucked away in the hinterland of Pomfret. Yet the little hallway, the stairs going straight up opposite the front door, the single living room that had once been two, the garden with its door in the wall beyond . . . He forced himself back to speak to the older woman.

   She was rather like his own wife, the same type, the type that was his. Her figure was still shapely, her waist small and ankles fine. She had hair which had once been very dark and was now iron grey, large dark eyes and the clear skin and good colour of a woman who has known very little illness. If she had cried her eyes were dry now and there was no puffiness in her face. She suddenly spoke without waiting for questions.

   'We were very close, Andy and I,' she began. 'We were more or less living together but these cottages are a bit small for that. I have a key to his house and he had one to mine.' She looked down at the hands in her lap. 'I spent last night with Andy, as I did two or three times a week, but I came back here at about seven this morning.'

   Her voice was steady and cool. The daughter took one of her hands but Catherine Lister didn't press hers in return.

   'What time did you go back next door?' Hannah asked.

   'Not till afternoon. I did some housework, cleaned the place, put my washing and Andy's in the machine. He didn't have a washing machine. I was going shopping for both of us later on . . .' Her voice broke and she shook herself, steadied herself. 'It was about four. I went in to him to see if there was anything special he wanted.' Again her voice wavered but she kept on, 'I let myself in and I – I found him on the floor. Dead. I could see he was dead.'

   'Did you touch him, Mrs Lister?' Wexford asked.

   She turned her face away. 'I lifted up his head. I – I kissed him.'

   The crying began then. Her daughter put her arms round her and Catherine Lister sobbed into her shoulder. Wexford and Hannah exchanged glances. They were silent for perhaps a minute. The only sound was the sobs and gulps from the weeping woman.

   'I'm sorry, Mrs Lister,' Wexford said. 'I'm very sorry but I do have to ask you a few more questions.'

   'Surely you can leave Mum in peace for now!'

   'No, I'm afraid not. Did you hear anything from this house during the morning?'

   'Nothing,' she said, her voice hoarse from crying. 'I heard nothing and I didn't see anyone.'

   'Did Mr Norton have any enemies?' This was Hannah. 'I mean people he disliked or who disliked him?'

   'Everyone loved him,' said Catherine Lister.

   But she rubbed the tears from her eyes and gave them all the information about Andy Norton that they wanted. Wexford left her then. The clocks had gone back and it was dark but light from the French windows of number 6 showed him Andy Norton's garden, beautifully tended, with still a few chrysanthemums and Michaela's daisies remaining in bloom. The grass exemplified the phrase 'a manicured lawn'. He walked down the path past the shed in the right-hand corner to the green-painted door in the rear wall. It had no lock or bolts. He opened it and stepped out into the cobbled lane at the back. Now he knew what this house reminded him of, what this terrace of houses reminded him of.

   These cottages were the same as the row of houses in Jewel Road, Stowerton. This house had the same structure as the Carrolls' at number 16, from the narrow hallway to the shed in the garden and the door in the rear wall leading to a lane outside. Or they had once been the same when they were first built. When would that have been? 1870? 1880? Something like that. Probably there were other terraces in Kingsmarkham and Stowerton and Pomfret of the same vintage. Much had been done to these and no doubt by now to those in Jewel Road since he had first been in the Carrolls' house. A pair of single rooms had been turned into one double room, French windows had been put in, as had central heating and new kitchens and bathrooms. But if you had known one of these houses forty years before, if you had lived in one of these houses, you would know the configuration of all of them wherever they might be.

   He went back into Andy Norton's garden and shut the door in the wall. The moon was rising, a red ball, streaked with bands of dark cloud. With the coming of the moon the air seemed to grow colder. He closed his eyes momentarily and was back in Jewel Road where a man opened the door to him and showed, for a few brief seconds, a birthmark like a crimson crab climbing down his cheek and his neck, before he snatched up a woman's scarf and covered himself.

   There was no more for Wexford to do tonight. DS Vine and DC Coleman were busy interviewing the neighbours. The scene-of-crimes officer had finished. He walked out through the blue-and-white tent that covered most of the front of the house and opened the gate. A man was walking his dog in the direction of the cross street. He was an elderly man, well above medium height, not wearing a scarf and the dog he had on a lead was a boxer. But it made his spine tingle.

   He half expected cold blue eyes to stare into his. The man looked curiously at the tent and the police tape and passed on.

   Wexford went home to tell Dora before anyone else did or she saw it on the news, and when he turned into his garage drive and switched off the engine, saw an image of Targo opening that door in the wall in the dark and seeking a hiding place in the shed until the time was ripe. He was a man of such self-confidence that he would see no need to bring the instrument of death with him. The world was full of strips of cloth, rope cut-offs, pieces of cord, scarves, ties, straps and belts. Such a thing would be waiting in Andy Norton's house or garden for him to lay his hands on.

Andy Norton was a widower. He had three children from his marriage, only one of which, a daughter, was living in England. Of his sons, one was in the United States, the other in Italy. Prior to his retirement he had been an official – with one of those permanent or private secretary titles – in the Department of Social Security. His wife had died fifteen years before. He and she had lived in a south London suburb but he had sold the house when he retired and bought this Pomfret cottage. Mrs Lister, a widow, was already living next door.

   Mary Norton, a teacher whose home was in Leicester, arrived next morning. Talking to her in his office, Wexford found himself with a not uncommon dilemma, how to avoid asking her when had she last seen her father. He slightly changed it.

   'When did you last see your dad, Miss Norton?'

   She had a hard crisp voice, was a thin fair-haired woman. No one could be less like Mrs Lister. 'He came up to stay with me the weekend before last. That often happened. Or I came down to stay with him.' Her tone remained the same, steady, clear and calm, when she said, 'We were very close, father and daughter the way a father and daughter should be.

   'I don't know how much you know about him. He had been a civil servant – that is, an official in a government department. Dad retired eight years ago and came to live here. He had an excellent pension but he liked to keep himself busy and he went out gardening. He was a good gardener and he loved it. He enjoyed the chats he had with elderly housewives over a cup of tea.'

   Though he knew it was unreasonable, Wexford resented her patronizing words. When she had finished he kept silent for a while, moved a pen on his desk, straightened the blotter. 'And Mrs Lister,' he said quietly, 'how did you feel about her?'

   Mary Norton plainly resented the question. She had calculated, Wexford thought, that she would have everything her own way in this interview. She would fix the time of it, organize the structure of it, pass on the information she thought the police should have, deliver her planned speech and then terminate it. Though she wasn't in the least like him, the way she stared, her blue gaze steady and unblinking, reminded him of Eric Targo.