Not In The Flesh_ A Wexford Novel Part 6

"Don't be too sure," said Burden. "What's the betting he brings her along? Do you want another couple of units of that red plonk?"

Wexford sat in his office at the rosewood desk (which was his own and not the property of the Mid-Suss.e.x Police Force) contemplating the T-shirt that had been found in the kitchen of Grimble's bungalow. It had already been examined in the lab and put to rigorous testing.

On a white background was printed in black a scorpion, measuring twelve inches from head to curled-up forked tail. The lab gave its length in centimeters but Wexford refused to cope with that. Under the scorpion's tail was the name sam in block letters. The letters had been printed in red but had now faded to a dull pink. The only label inside the T-shirt was a tiny square of cotton bearing the letter "M" for medium.

He left it lying there when Grimble was announced. Burden would have won his bet if Wexford had done more than smile in response to the challenge, for Grimble had indeed brought his wife. She was without her knitting, and the devil finding no work for idle hands, hers wandered aimlessly about her lap, rubbed the surface of Wexford's desk, and occasionally scratched portions of her anatomy.

Grimble listened with apparent surprise and growing distaste to the story of the discovery, related by Burden, in his late father's house. His wife's mouth fell open and one of those fidgety hands came up to cover it as if the solecism of relating such a story had been hers, not Wexford's.

"What's that thing?" He pointed an accusing finger at the T-shirt. "What's that doing there?"

In a level voice, Wexford said, "It was in your late father's house. In the kitchen. Is it yours?"

"Of course it isn't b.l.o.o.d.y mine." Wexford had never seen Grimble so angry. "Would I wear a thing like that?" He c.o.c.ked his thumb in his wife's direction. "And it isn't hers. I told you time and again I never set foot in that place after they never gave me my permission."

"Now, John," said his wife, "you keep calm."

Grimble took a deep breath, closed his eyes briefly, and sighed. Unlikely as it seemed, it was apparent someone-probably Kathleen Grimble-had taught him a technique for dealing with rage. His face gradually lost the dark red color that had suffused it. He began shaking his head slowly.

"I don't get it," he said. "What was that door doing shut?"

"Which door is that, Mr. Grimble?"

"Door to the cellar. He said he found it shut. That door was never shut. My old dad kept that open all the years he lived there. I was a boy there, I grew up there, didn't I, Kath, and I never saw that door shut, didn't know it could shut."

Perhaps believing some response was required, Kathleen Grimble said, "There wasn't no need to shut that door."

Grimble nodded. "I reckon whoever it was went down there snooping about"-his eyes wandered malevolently to Burden-"they got it wrong. That door was never shut."

Unwilling to enter into an undignified argument, Burden nevertheless saw himself heading that way. "The door was shut," he said as shortly and crisply as he could. "That you have to accept. I found it shut and opened it myself. I had some trouble in getting it to open."

"It never was shut before, that's all I can say." As with many people who make this remark, it was far from all he could say, but as he launched into a week-by-week, month-by-month account of the number of times he had been down the cellar steps and found the door open, Wexford briskly cut him short.

"All right. Thank you. Tell me about your father's tenant-a Mr. Chapman, was it?"

Grimble's face distorted into a moue of disgust that anyone could mistake this man's real name for Chapman. "Chadwick, Chadwick. Who told you he was called Chapman? They want their head tested. Chadwick, he was called."

"Of course he was." Kathleen was rubbing her fingertips together like someone crumbling bread. "Never Chapman. Where did you get that from?"

Instead of answering her, Wexford said, "Was his first name Sam?"

Uttering this innocuous three-letter word caused a similar explosion to that brought about by their mistake in Chadwick's surname. "Sam? You lot haven't done your homework, have you? Douglas was his name. My poor old dad called him Doug."

"That's right," said Kathleen with an approving smile for her husband. "He did. Friendly to everyone, John's dad was. Kindness itself."

"But he evicted this Chadwick?"

"No, he never. He wanted his rent. Kept him waiting weeks for it, Chadwick did."

"Don't forget the piano, John."

"I won't. You can be sure of that. Chadwick played that piano at all hours. Midnight, six in the morning, it was all one to him. And that was only half of it. He left wet towels on the bathroom floor like he had a servant to pick them up for him. It was hard on my poor old dad, he was a sick man then, got the Big C, though he didn't know it, poor old devil. He wasn't going to evict him, was he? Not with all that rent owing. Chadwick did a moonlight flit, left his stuff behind. Dad was an honest man, he wasn't keeping nothing what wasn't his due, so he put all that junk outside the house and held on to the piano. It was his right, wasn't it? Chadwick's pal came back with a van and knocked at the door and asked for the piano and Dad said-"

Damon Coleman had come into the room and, speaking softly to Wexford, said, "Miss Laxton's sent a note over to you, sir. I've got it here. I think it's the DNA test result."

"Okay. Thanks, Damon." Wexford unfolded the sheet of paper and read the result. He looked up, said to Grimble, "No doubt, you'll be glad to hear the body in your trench isn't that of your second cousin Peter Darracott."

Grimble said in a contemptuous tone that he had never thought it was. "That his DNA you've got there?"

"It's the result of comparing the body in your trench with Mark Page's DNA, yes."

An electrifying change came over Grimble. It was as if he had literally seen the light and it had brought him not only revelation but huge pleasure and a kind of triumph. "You took a whatsit-a sample or whatever-from that little b.u.g.g.e.r Mark Page?" When neither Wexford nor Burden said a word, he went on, "My cousin Maureen Page's boy?"

"Yes, Mr. Grimble. What is all this?"

"I'll tell you what all this is. Mark Page is adopted, that's what."

They looked at him almost as bleakly as he had at them when he heard of the body in his father's house.

"Maureen couldn't have kids of her own. Her and her husband, George Page, they adopted a girl first and then this kid Mark."

"Mr. Page said nothing about this," said Burden.

"No, he wouldn't." Kathleen Grimble had begun to giggle. "He knows, of course he does. Known since he was four, he has. But he don't like it, he's like ashamed. He wouldn't tell you. Even if you asked he wouldn't."

After that, the interview came to an abrupt end. Wexford asked only one more question and that was concerning the possible whereabouts of Douglas Chadwick. Surprisingly, Kathleen Grimble had an address for him. It appeared that whatever secretarial work had been required by Grimble senior (or, come to that, by Grimble junior) had been performed by Kathleen, the established ways of things in a world where women carried out the despised functions of housework, child-rearing, and the exercise of the mind. She had written to him when he answered Grimble senior's original advertis.e.m.e.nt, which she also had drafted. That letter had been sent thirteen years before, so there wasn't much chance that whoever lived at the address now would have much idea of Chadwick's present whereabouts.

"If he has any whereabouts," said Wexford.

"I could wring that Mark Page's neck." Burden was still wrathful. "Why didn't he say? Didn't he realize?"

"Speaking of necks, he's thick from his upwards. We'll ask Maureen Page herself or the sister Peter Darracott didn't go to when he said he had. And when dealing with this family, make sure she really is his sister and not someone his dead brother married or lived with or happened to be brought up by his parents. Remember old Grimble was young Grimble's stepfather, not his own father. And let's hope she's not a Seventh Day Adventist or a Jehovah's Witness who objects to giving us a spot of saliva."

Chapter Nine.

It would have been hard for Wexford to get to Forby village hall by seven-thirty, or indeed any time before nine, but his attempts to cancel aroused wails of disappointment from his younger daughter.

Her "Oh, Pop, you promised!" sounded very much the sort of thing she used to say when she was five. It still went straight to his heart. Her follow-up remark was a little more mature. "Having a detective chief inspector there would mean so much to them."

He tried a ridiculous reproof in Hannah's style, political correctness gone mad, and said, "I question whether you ought to refer to an ethnic minority as 'them,' Sheila."

Her indignant reaction made him laugh. "You know I didn't mean-"

"I'll do my best to be there."

Barry Vine had gone to Cardiff, Lyn Fancourt driving him, to secure the DNA sample promised by Dilys Hughes, nee Darracott. Wexford's own attention had been turned to Douglas Chadwick, his forays into the Internet a.s.sisted by Hannah. He couldn't have done it without her. The address Kathleen Grimble had given him was in Nottingham, a street that sounded as if in a poor neighborhood. Hannah frowned when he used those words, fearing worse to come.

"Okay, did you ever hear of a Violet Grove in an upmarket residential area?"

"Well, if you put it like that . . ."

"Number fifteen Violet Grove. The family name is or was Dixon."

" 'Was' is right, guv. There's a Marilyn P. Williams and a Robert A. Greville there now."

Wexford sighed. "I suppose we'll have to go up there or get the Nottingham police in on this. Someone in the street may remember him. Do we know what he was doing in Flagford?"

Hannah had pursued the questioning of Kathleen Grimble with some difficulty. "He was a student at Myringham University, guv. I've been on to them and they said he'd attended the university from 1993 to 1996."

Wexford thought of the piano playing. "A music student?"

"Mechanical engineering. The degree is a BSc MEng."

"He'd have been a mature student, over forty. Is there some record somewhere, I mean some register, of people with degrees in that?"

"I can find out, guv."

While her fingers trawled through the Internet, he thought about the clothes that had been found in the house, the under-clothes on the body, the scorpion T-shirt, orange anorak, jeans and socks, the sneakers, which had been piled up on the kitchen counter. Why had this man, whoever he was, Chadwick or Darracott or Charlie c.u.mmings, taken off his clothes and his shoes in the kitchen and gone barefoot down to the cellar in his underwear? Because he was looking for something? In that case, why not go down there fully clothed?

Hannah said, "The Engineering Council is responsible for regulating the engineering profession." She was reading from the screen. "They run the National Register of Chartered Engineers. But wait a minute-once you've got your degree you have to go into something called the Monitored Professional Development Scheme and that's another four years. I'd no idea getting to be an engineer took so long, had you, guv?"

"I can't say I've ever thought about it."

"These MPDS people have got a membership Web page. Bear with me and I'm sure I'll find something."

"And meanwhile," said Wexford, "I've got a meeting with Carina Laxton."

She looked like a child with a prematurely lined face. Her pale hair was worn in two spa.r.s.e plaits, her face free of makeup, her round gla.s.ses the kind that a myopic eight-year-old might wear. The white coat she wore had greenish stains down the front that were somehow more repellent than blood would have been. Not usually particularly sensitive to the squeamishness of policemen, she had for once covered up the remains on the table.

"What did he die of?" Wexford asked.

Carina raised her almost invisible eyebrows. "How d'you know it was a man?"

"The size, the clothes in the kitchen. The body was wearing men's underwear."

"Okay. Jumping to conclusions a bit, weren't you? Still, it was a man. I don't know what he died of. It's difficult when someone's been dead so long. Quite possibly a natural death. Might have been his heart or a stroke. I can't tell because there's no heart and not much soft tissue in the skull. One thing I can tell you. He was a tall man, exceptionally tall. You're so out-of-date I know you don't care for the metric system, so say between six feet three and six feet five."

"How old was he?"

"Mid-forties. Maybe forty-five. No more than fifty. As for when he died, it was between seven and ten years ago."

"Not so long as the other one, then?"

"You said it, not me," said Carina. "Ask me again when I've done a more thorough job on him. I'll know more, I hope."

He faced the media, told them most of what he knew about the two bodies without mentioning the error they had made in taking a DNA sample from someone who could not in fact be related to the dead man. He told them about the clothes without producing them. A description, he felt, was enough: a white T-shirt with a black scorpion printed on it, blue jeans, black sneakers diagonally banded in gray, gray socks. He also said the purple sheet needed identifying, the one which had wrapped the body in the trench.

Hannah caught up with him as he was leaving the building at five past seven. He had just reached the automatic doors that had tentatively begun to open and closed again as he turned back.

"Chadwick's not registered as a chartered engineer, guv, and he's not on the MPDS register. But then I realized. We a.s.sumed it was a three-year degree course, but it's not, it's four years. He was only at the university till 1996, so it looks as if he dropped out."

"Or was killed," said Wexford.

"Or was killed, guv. It makes it more likely it's him, doesn't it?"

It took him a quarter of an hour to drive to Forby. He took the last remaining s.p.a.ce in the village hall car park and walked up the steps to the front doors where a notice told him this would be the inaugural meeting of the Kingsmarkham African Women's Health Action Group. He had hoped to slip in un.o.btrusively and listen to the proceedings from a seat at the back, but he was no sooner inside than he was caught by his daughter Sylvia, who seized him by the arm and hustled him up onto the stage.

A modic.u.m of presence of mind enabled him to say how seriously the police took the problem of female genital mutilation and how much they would rely on the Somali community helping them in their task of prevention rather than prosecution. As he repeated the plat.i.tudes, meaningless promises that he had said and heard said a dozen times, he realized how little he really knew about this kind of circ.u.mcision. The applause from the audience rang hollowly in his ears as he stepped down from the platform and took the empty seat next to his wife. He had described it to her because she asked him, seen her face grow pale and heard her say, "But, Reg, it can't be! Not millions of women," and he had to say it was so without knowing more than the bare physiological facts.

Sheila was on the platform now, speaking about the early migrations of young women from the Horn of Africa. When British doctors and midwives had to carry out antenatal examinations, they at first believed that what they saw was congenital malformation and so routinely performed cesarean sections. She then out-lined, to an audience who mostly knew what she was talking about at firsthand, how little girls, sometimes babies, had their l.a.b.i.a and c.l.i.toris cut away with razors or sharp stones and the skin st.i.tched up over the wound. Wexford had begun to feel slightly sick and looking around the room, wondered how many of these women had suffered in infancy or girlhood what had just been described.

Five or six seats away from him and a row behind sat the young waitress Matea whom Burden had so admired. It made him shudder to think that she might, in all probability, have suffered this. He knew that he shouldn't consider it a worse affront to a beautiful girl than to a plain one and he castigated himself. It was outrageous whoever might be the victim. There were more speakers, one talking about a conference on this subject she had attended in Kenya, another setting out what could be done to stop the practice here. Then the speeches ended and the audience was invited to ask questions. An elderly woman at the back put up her hand. Plainly she was more likely to have been from Sewingbury than Somalia, her hair was whitish-blond and her skin self-tanned. She asked if it wasn't wrong to interfere with a community's ancient traditions, and Wexford was pleased with Sheila's answer.

"Would you have said that about foot-binding in China? Interference with ancient traditions put an end to that. One day perhaps interference will stop the artificial lengthening of women's necks in northern Burma."

One of the few men in the audience asked what was men's att.i.tude to the practice and was given what sounded to Wexford like anecdotal evidence. After that the question of a t.i.tle for the new a.s.sociation was considered, and the name Kingsmarkham a.s.sociation Against Mutilation or KAAM, p.r.o.nounced "calm," was decided on. It was time for refreshments, gla.s.ses of red and white wine (ignored by the Somalis who were mostly Moslems), orange juice, and fizzy water. For some reason, he had supposed, if he thought about it at all, that all these women would speak English reasonably well, so he was surprised when his neighbor Iman Dirir introduced him to a woman she called "the interpreter."

"We have no terms in Somali or English for these parts of the body," she told him with a sad smile. "The people need someone to explain the British laws to them. Most people who come here from Africa don't know there is such a law. They don't know circ.u.mcision is forbidden."

She was tall and statuesque, far from young, but still beautiful in that G.o.ddesslike way more usually a.s.sociated with Native Americans, the aquiline nose, the prominent cheekbones, the long neck and long hands. But as he again looked around him and surveyed all the women present, he saw that without exception all were either good-looking or extremely beautiful, their looks matched by their grace of movement and, in the older ones, by their dignity. He sighed to himself because it sometimes seemed to him that man had only to see beauty in order to wish to ruin it.

He gave Mrs. Dirir a lift home. She wore a long gown and the scarf but no all-enveloping jilbab as some of the women had. Alone with him she was shy, but when he mentioned his daughters she began to talk freely about how much she admired Sheila, whom she had seen in a television serial rerun. They were nearly at her house when she said, in a breathless way as if she had been working up to this for some minutes, "I have two daughters. They are grown up now. I want you to know that we came here, my husband and I, when they were little to save them from mutilation. I was afraid because I thought we would be sent back, but my husband is a scientist from Cairo University, so we were allowed to stay."

"I'm glad," he said. "I'm very glad."

A European woman in a long dress would have gathered up her skirts but Iman Dirir let her gown hang untouched, held her head high, and glided up the path. When she reached the door, she turned once, raised her hand in a gesture that was more graceful than a wave, and let herself into the house.

Dental records are useful only if you have some idea as to whose body you are looking at. These were Carina Laxton's words to Wexford. She told him that she could come a little closer to the death date of the body in the cellar. Between eight and ten years, she now thought. In the case of the body in the trench, she was prepared to fix on eleven years. Wexford was far from taking Burden's and Hannah's view that this was the remains of Douglas Chadwick on the grounds of who else could it be. For one thing, there was no evidence that he had met a violent death at someone else's hands and, for another, no apparent motive for Grimble father or son to have murdered him. The clothes, he thought, were the only clue as to who this was, but so far, three days after a photograph of the T-shirt and the sneakers had appeared in national newspapers and the Kingsmarkham Courier, Kingsmarkham Courier, no one had come forward to acknowledge recognition. no one had come forward to acknowledge recognition.