"Excellent," said Wexford. "I may add obstructing the police to the charges she already faces just the same. I've lost patience with Mrs. M. She may be old, but she's old in sin too. I'm going to show that knife to Bridget Cook, though I'm not at all sure what's the point of it, no pun intended."

"So Miller did take the knife into the bathroom with him?"

"I don't think so. After McNeil shot Miller I think he searched the clothes in the kitchen, found the thousand pounds, which of course he was far too upright and honest to touch, but he also found the knife. He put it in the bathroom beside the body and later removed it to the cellar, maybe thinking it would help his cause with his wife if she could be made to believe he'd acted in self-defense." Wexford cast up his eyes. "He need not have bothered. She's quite as ruthless as he was."

Chapter Twenty-two.

He met Iman Dirir by chance in the High Street as she was coming out of Kingsmarkham's only Asian dress shop. She was carrying one of their black and gold bags.

"They're not supposed to be for Africans, but we wear much the same clothes," she told Wexford. "I've been buying a salwar kameez salwar kameez for my niece's wedding. She's marrying a very handsome Englishman at St. Peter's next Sat.u.r.day." for my niece's wedding. She's marrying a very handsome Englishman at St. Peter's next Sat.u.r.day."

Wexford looked his inquiries.

"She's a Christian, Mr. Wexford. You get all sorts in Somalia, animists too."

As far as he knew, the latter worshipped stones and trees but he might be wrong, so he left it. "Will the Imrans be there?"

"At the wedding? Oh, no, I doubt it. My sister and her husband hardly know them, and my niece doesn't at all."

"But they'll be back by then?"

"I think so. I think they're expected back on Thursday."

He walked back to the police station, pa.s.sing A Pa.s.sage to India, where, behind the gla.s.s, the shimmering curtains, and the artificial lilies, he glimpsed Matea setting tables. Bridget Cook was expected in his office at two. Williams, the partner apparently without a first name, put up no opposition to her traveling to Kingsmarkham, though Wexford doubted if she had told him the true reason for her journey. As he waited he thought about people who make prisons for themselves where none need exist. This woman had landed herself with a man who was a jealous jailer, simply to avoid being alone. Tredown, who evidently cared very little for either of his two wives, had been put under house arrest by them, who wanted him only as a slave to labor for their keep. Now that The First Heaven The First Heaven was to be a film, for which Tredown had no doubt been liberally paid and from which his widow and ex-wife would enjoy the royalties, they were indifferent to his life or death. was to be a film, for which Tredown had no doubt been liberally paid and from which his widow and ex-wife would enjoy the royalties, they were indifferent to his life or death.

Hannah brought Bridget into the office. An old-fashioned expression came into his mind when he saw her: "raw-boned." A description everyone understood but which seemed meaningless. She wasn't thin yet the bones seemed to protrude through her skin. Her hands were like a man's and the ring on the left one, with its delicate tracery of leaves, looked incongruous. She sat down heavily but flinched a little when Wexford showed her the knife.

"I don't know," she said. "I only saw it the once. It was the guys he hung out with, a rough lot, they were. He said he needed it for his own protection. He never used it, though. I'm sure he never did."

"You said he was a poet. He wrote poetry to you." Wexford was conscious of how absurd this would sound and look to an unseen observer, the human fly on the wall. This woman and poetry could hardly be set side by side without raising a raucous laugh. Yet love, he knew, is no respector of beauty or grace. Like the wind that blows where it lists, it can strike almost anyone for almost anyone else. People have no need of love potions in order to fall in love with the a.s.s's ears. He noted the serious nod she gave, the acceptance that she was worthy of verses dedicated to her. "Did he write anything else?" he asked. "A play? A piece of fiction?"

"I don't know. Maybe. He wasn't educated, but he told me he'd written a book once. Poems and a sort of diary, he said it was."

"When did you first meet Samuel Miller, Miss Cook?"

"Sometime in '98, it would have been. He moved in with me like in the winter. We was on a site near Southend then. He'd go away a bit, but he always came back. We went strawberry picking up near Hereford in the June, and he said they wanted pickers at Morella's in Flagford in the September. That was when he said we'd best get married. I said I was years older than him, but he said, So what? He'd always fancied older women."

Claudia Ricardo, Wexford thought. "He'd been to Flagford three years before?"

"That's right. Morella's had got a proper campsite, not like the field they had to camp on when he was there before and two guys went after them with guns."

"Guns?"

"That's what he said."

Adam Thayer brought in the tea. It was scalding hot, but Bridget Cook drank hers greedily. "Go on, Miss Cook."

"He wanted to look up old pals while he was there, he said. Them was his words, 'old pals.' There might be some money in it. They owed him. The day after he'd fixed up our wedding we went picking-it was Victorias-and when we got back he said he was off to see his pals and then have a bit of a wash in a house that was empty on account of our shower going wrong. I waited and waited for him, but when it got to midnight I just knew he wasn't coming back. I just knew, I don't know how. It was a funny thing because I thought he really liked me. Maybe it's just that men are a funny lot-sorry, I didn't mean you."

Wexford a.s.sured her he hadn't taken it personally. That made two women who waited for their men to come back and waited in vain, one eleven years before, the other three years after that. He still couldn't tell if there was any connection between the two men, but nor could he believe in so great a coincidence.

Sheila was with her mother on the following evening. She had left the children at home with their father and the nanny while she attended the second meeting of the African Women's Health Action Group. Wexford thought of telling her about the Imrans taking their five-year-old daughter home to Somalia and his questioning of their motives. He thought of it and dismissed it. She would launch into one of her impa.s.sioned speeches, a denunciation of injustice, wanton cruelty, child abuse, and, most telling for him, a catalog of instructions as to what violent action he ought to take, and take within the next couple of hours. Instead he asked her about the film. Had shooting started yet?

"It won't for ages, Pop. Months."

"I hope they're paying you well, though I don't suppose it's Hollywood sort of money."

"Well, no," she said, "but it's not bad. Did you know the author's very ill? He's not expected to live to see the film. Isn't that sad?"

"They must have paid him a lot for the rights."

"You're untypically interested in money today, Pop."

He laughed. "I've met him, you know. I could say I know him. I suppose it will all go to his wife."

"Who else?" said Sheila and she went off to get ready for her meeting.

Dora went with her in the black Mercedes with the handsome driver, but Wexford sat on, watching rain, then hailstones, lash the French windows, waiting for Burden to come and share his red-wine ration. No doubt the inspector would defer leaving his house until the rain, forecast as only a shower, pa.s.sed away over the horizon. He turned his thoughts toward Tredown in the Pomfret hospice. Lord, let me know mine end and the number of my days. Where did that come from? The funeral service, he thought. It was only those with a terminal illness who knew these things and then not accurately. Tredown could only say, I have sixty days at most and (for example) twenty days at least. Did he look back on his life and think it had been good? A wife he had divorced, a second wife whom it was hard to believe anyone could love, those dull Bible-based novels, that one good enduring book he had written . . . If he had written it.

The doorbell ringing made Wexford jump. He got up to let Burden in. The inspector was rather wet, his hair plastered down, raindrops on his face like tears except that he was smiling. "I got caught in it, stood under a tree till it stopped. Don't say I might have been struck by lightning, I know that already."

"There wasn't any lightning, was there?"

"According to my wife, there's always lightning when there are hailstones."

Wexford poured two large gla.s.ses of claret. "I was thinking about Tredown." He raised his gla.s.s, said, "Owen Tredown. May he have a peaceful end, and soon."

Burden raised his eyebrows. "Tredown by all means," he said, "but why now?"

"He can't live long. I suppose I pity him. I may be wrong, but I imagine him lying in that place-that very nice place, I'm sure-regretting what he's done, regretting that he stole Samuel Miller's ma.n.u.script. Because I think it was Miller's. I think Miller wrote The First Heaven, The First Heaven, or at any rate wrote an outline for it or a draft." or at any rate wrote an outline for it or a draft."

"That roughneck? That knife-carrying lowlife?" Wexford had never seen such a look of distaste mixed with incredulity on his friend's face. "Claudia Ricardo told you he was always getting ma.n.u.scripts sent him by people he'd taught in creative writing cla.s.ses. Why not one of them?"

"Look at the facts, Mike. Eleven years ago Tredown and the two women were sc.r.a.ping along on what Tredown was making out of those books of his. That and the little bit he got from teaching. And it would have been a little bit. There aren't that many creative writing courses in this country and the ones there are don't pay generously. Neither of the women worked, remember. Claudia boasted that she'd never worked in her life.

"Then along comes Samuel Miller. A roughneck, a lowlife, as you put it, but have we any reason to believe great artists-for the author of The First Heaven The First Heaven is or was a great popular artist-have we any reason to believe such people are all respectable middle-cla.s.s law-abiding citizens? Genet spent most of his life in prison, Marlowe died in a tavern brawl, Baudelaire was a syphilitic drug addict-no, that argument doesn't work." is or was a great popular artist-have we any reason to believe such people are all respectable middle-cla.s.s law-abiding citizens? Genet spent most of his life in prison, Marlowe died in a tavern brawl, Baudelaire was a syphilitic drug addict-no, that argument doesn't work."

"You're saying Miller brought this ma.n.u.script with him on a couple of weeks of fruit picking in Flagford? Would he have known Tredown lived here?"

"Why not? He may have attended one of Tredown's cla.s.ses. The fact that Bridget Cook doesn't know it means nothing. This would have been three years before Bridget met him. Even if he hadn't been Tredown's student, pupil, or whatever, the location of Tredown's home if not his actual address appears on the jackets of his books. Can't you imagine him finding out fruit-pickers were wanted in a Suss.e.x village called Flagford and that name resonating with him?" He could see he had awakened Burden's interest-more than that, his enthusiasm. Burden's face wore that narrow-eyed speculative look that commanded his features when he was on the verge of excitement. He had drawn his brows together. "Go on," Wexford said. "You take it from there."

Burden nodded. "Okay. So he's written this book or done this plan and draft or whatever they do and he takes it with him to Flagford in the hope he may find a way of seeing Tredown. Probably he doesn't know the field they set up camp on is next door to Tredown's house, but he soon finds out. They haven't been camped there that long when Grimble junior and his pal Bill Runge turn up and drive them off the land with sticks . . ."

"Or guns."

"Or guns. The fruit picking's done or at an end anyway, Miller makes his way into Tredown's garden, offers his services as gardener and handyman, and at some point while he's working there tells Tredown he has this ma.n.u.script with him and would Tredown take a look at it. How's that?"

"Much what I'd have said myself," said Wexford.

"It's not so easy after that, though, is it? I mean, does Tredown just say yes, fine, I'd love to, there's nothing I'd like better than wasting a week reading your rubbish? I don't think so."

Wexford laughed. "I don't think so, either. But remember, I've read The First Heaven. The First Heaven. I didn't much fancy reading it, I thought I might manage a chapter or two, but once I'd started I recognized it was good. I didn't enjoy it, it's not the kind of thing I like, but I could see others might, thousands of others might." I didn't much fancy reading it, I thought I might manage a chapter or two, but once I'd started I recognized it was good. I didn't enjoy it, it's not the kind of thing I like, but I could see others might, thousands of others might."

Burden was looking at him in a kind of wonder, with that look on his face a man might wear when he hears that an acquaintance has an obsession for some esoteric pursuit, learning Farsi, for instance, or studying sea anemones. But he tried. He concentrated. "You mean," he struggled, "Tredown might have sort of glanced at it not to be-well, not to be rude. He's a very courteous man, don't you think? And then he went on, rather like you, he had a job to put it down, and he sort of read to the end and . . ."

"And wondered how he could get hold of it for himself," Wexford said. "How he did I can't quite see, but somehow he did. Did he buy it from Miller? Or steal it? I could believe one or both of those women somehow cheated Miller out of it."

"Then Tredown needed to check accuracy and invited Hexham down. I don't like that much, Reg. Why didn't Hexham tell his wife he was going to call on Tredown after he'd been to that funeral?"

"Come to that," said Wexford, "why didn't he tell his wife anything about where he was going after the funeral, whether it was to visit Tredown or anything else? He didn't, that's all. But he went somewhere and ended up in that trench in Grimble's Field. Did he somehow find out that Tredown intended to pa.s.s off someone else's work as his own? He may have threatened to make what he knew public and was killed for it. We don't know what happened to Miller either, except that he left Tredown and went home, wherever his home was at that time. Three years later he came back."

"And blackmailed Tredown over that book. Maeve or Claudia gave him a thousand pounds to keep him quiet, not a hundred pounds for a wedding present. If he hadn't gone into Grimble's house and got himself shot by Ronald McNeil, I wonder how long it would have been before one of those women killed him."

"I think you're right, Mike," Wexford said as he heard his front door open and close again. Dora came into the room with Sheila and Sylvia behind her.

"Why are you two sitting in the dark?" she said after saying h.e.l.lo to Burden.

"I hadn't noticed we were. How was your meeting?"

Sheila put her arms around him and kissed him. "I can't stay, Pop. It'll take an hour for Clive to drive me home as it is. By the way, Matea Imran was there. She said her parents are back from Somalia and Shamis is all right. Syl will tell you all about it."

The Imrans had returned home the day before. Of the family, only Matea had been at the meeting. "She made a point of coming up to me," Sylvia said, "and telling me her sister hadn't been circ.u.mcised. She'd been mistaken about that."

"Really?" Wexford saw Burden out, given a lift home in Sheila's car. "I wouldn't believe a word that girl says," he said to Sylvia.

She was shocked. "Dad! I thought you liked her."

"Liking doesn't come into it. In the circ.u.mstances I don't trust her. This is her family, Sylvia. Whatever she may have said at first, coming here and telling me what she was afraid of. Now she knows a bit more about it."

Dora laid her hand on his arm. "I can understand," she said. "Even if they'd done that awful thing to her sister, she won't want her parents sent to prison. She won't do what she'd think of as betraying them."

"Quite," he said. "I couldn't have put it so well myself."

"Then what are you going to do, Dad?"

"I'm going to bed," said Wexford, "and tomorrow I shall have a word with Dr. Akande."

Chapter Twenty-three.

Raymond Akande was Nigerian and a doctor of medicine, his wife, Laurette, a sister tutor at the Princess Diana Hospital in Stowerton, from Sierra Leone. Soon after Dr. Akande became his GP, Wexford had identified a murder victim as their missing daughter Melanie-on the grounds only, as he had harshly put it to himself later, that both the living and the dead were black. Akande forgave him quickly; with Laurette it took a little longer but they were friends now.

"The family are on my list," Akande said when Wexford told him his suspicions about the Imrans, "but that doesn't mean I can march in there and demand to examine a little girl's v.u.l.v.a."

"You'd need a court order, I suppose."

"I'd have to apply to the court for an order. I'm not at all sure I'd get one. On what grounds? Your suspicion? Mine? As far as I know, the home is happy and stable. The children are healthy. The sister denies that anything has been done to the child. Social Services would have to be brought in. They'd have to have a medical review of the case."

Laurette had come in with coffee on a tray. "They'll never have had cause to visit the Imrans. I know Shamis. Her parents adore her and it shows. Not that that would stop them having her genitally mutilated. There are plenty of parents would think that a duty to their daughter, a kindness. Without that, how will she ever find a good husband? That's the way they think. I was lucky," she said, "not to be done myself. I would have been if my parents hadn't both been killed. I was brought up in an orphanage and somehow got overlooked."

"So there's nothing to be done?"

"I don't say that," Akande said quickly. "Social Services should certainly be alerted. I can do that-maybe we can both do it, Reg. Next time the Imrans come to the surgery or one of them comes I can ask them tactfully about their-well, their att.i.tude to female circ.u.mcision."

Laurette said bitterly, "They don't need to take her to Africa, you have to realize that. There are plenty of people here who are willing to do it."

An invitation to Athelstan House was unexpected and unprecedented. Without prior notice, the wife and ex-wife of Owen Tredown had visited Wexford in his own office but even then had shown no particular desire to tell him anything. Their purpose, then and on receiving him subsequently at Athelstan House, seemed to have been only to score off him and Burden and to-well, "tease" was the word, he thought. Tease, provoke, annoy, and show ill will.

Lacking Tredown, the house felt different, colder, busier, and in a way, brighter. Perhaps it was only that the long brown velvet curtains in the drawing room had been drawn back to their fullest extent and tied, not with cords or sashes but with ordinary house-hold string. The bright daylight, which formerly would have revealed dust and dirt and cobwebs, showed that cleaning had been done on a grand scale, an autumn spring-cleaning in fact. The chandelier, washed and polished, now looked more like a light fitting than copulating squids. Clouds of dust no longer puffed out of the sofa cushions when he seated himself. Tredown was gone and, as if he had been a dirty and troublesome pet, his owners had cleaned up after him.

At first neither tea nor coffee were offered Wexford. He sat down because he wanted to, not because he was asked. Claudia Ricardo sat close beside him, too close, and he was overwhelmed by the scent she wore, something he thought might be patchouli. She spread her long embroidered skirt over her own legs and an inch or two of it over his.

"Can I offer you some lemon curd, Chief Inspector?" she said. "I was making it when you were last here. I'm sure you remember. You said you liked it."

As she spoke, Maeve Tredown came in with tea and a plate of biscuits and a jar of the lemon curd on a tray. There was a spoon on the tray too, rather as if she were a nurse bringing his medicine. The whole thing might not have been so odd if the lid hadn't been removed from the jam pot. Maeve, in her uniform-style clothes, her gray suit and white blouse, her blond hair stiff and shiny as a yellow silk hat, stood over him, smiling, the nanny with her charge. Did they expect him to sit there and eat jam? He lifted Claudia's skirt off his legs and got up. He took the tray from Maeve and put it on the table. Then he turned around and spoke in the kind of voice no guest should ever use.

"Sit down, please," he said to Maeve.

She did so. Claudia giggled.

"I don't know why you asked me to come here," he said, "but no doubt you'll tell me in due course. Meanwhile, I want you to tell me about the ma.n.u.script Sam or Samuel Miller gave or lent or sold to Mr. Tredown in June 1995."

"We never interfered in Owen's business dealings," said Maeve.

Business dealings? As if Tredown had been an insurance broker instead of a world-famous author. Besides, it was a lie, Wexford thought. Any business there had been, he was pretty sure Maeve and Claudia had handled it. Claudia or Maeve or both had dealt with Tredown's agent, Tredown's publishers, accountants, financial advisers. In the matter of business, the author himself was a babe unborn, as the old phrase had it. "So you never saw or heard of any such ma.n.u.script?"

Claudia was looking up at him earnestly. "Dusty," she said, lingering almost sensuously over the name, "Dusty never saw much of Owen. Perhaps I should say Owen never saw much of him. You must remember Owen disliked being disturbed while he was writing-and he mostly was writing."

"We saw to that," was the unspoken sentence. Still standing over them, Wexford said, "Miller came to see you again at the end of September 1998."