Ruth Rendell: The Best Man To Die

In a low, resentful voice, Cullam said, ‘I was sick. I was nearly home and I come over queer. I’m not used to scotch and I went into the gents down by the station to be sick.’

‘Let me congratulate you on your powers of recovery. You were fit enough to be out on a country walk at seven-thirty this morning. Or were you just popping back to see you’d left Hatton neat and tidy? I want to see the clothes you wore last night.’

‘They’re out on the line.’

Wexford looked at him, his eyebrows almost vanishing into the vestiges of his hair, and the implications in that look were unmistakable. Cullam fidgeted, he moved to the crock- filled sink, leaning on it compressing his lips.

‘I washed them’ he said. ‘Pullover and trousers and a shirt. They was – well, they were in a bit of a state.’ He shifted his feet.

‘Charming,’ Wexford said unkindly. ‘You washed them? What d’you have a wife for?’ For the first time he noticed the washing machine, a big gleaming automatic affair, and the only object in that kitchen that was not stained or chipped or coated with clotted food drips. He opened the back door and eyed the sagging clothesline from which the three garments Cullam had named hung between a row of napkins. ‘The blessings of modern mechanisation,’ he said. ‘Very nice too. I often remark these days how the roles of the sexes have been reversed.’ His voice became deceptively friendly and Cullam licked his thick lips. ‘A man can be dead tired after a week’s work but he can still give his wife a helping hand. One touch of a button and the family wash comes out whiter than white. In fact, a gadget like that turns chores into pleasure, you might say. Men are all little boys at heart, when all’s said and done, and it’s not only women that like to have these little playthings to make a break in the daily round. Besides, they cost so much, you might as well get some fun out of them. Don’t tell me that little toy cost you less than a hundred and twenty, Cullam.’

‘A hundred and twenty-five,’ said Cullam with modest pride. He was quite disarmed and, advancing upon the machine, he opened the gleaming porthole. ‘You set your programme…’ A last uneasy look at the chief inspector told him his visitor was genuinely interested, paying no more than a routine call. ‘Put in your powder,’ he said, ‘and Bob’s your uncle.’

‘I knew a fellow,’ Wexford lied ruminatively, ‘a lorry driver like yourself. Big family too and we all know what inroads a big family makes. He got in bad company, I’m sorry to say. His wife kept on at him, you see, wanting more gear about the house. He’d already turned a blind eye when a couple of his lorries got hi-jacked. Well, you can’t call it a crime, can you, looking the other way in a café when some body’s nicking your vehicle from a lay-by?’ Cullam, closed the porthole, keeping his head turned. ‘They paid well, this bad company. Mind you, this fellow jibbed a bit when they offered him two hundred to knock off a bloke who wouldn’t play along with them, but not for long. He reckoned he’d a right to nice things the same as this bad company he’d got in with. And why not? We’re all equal these days. Share and share alike, this fellow said. So he hung about in a lonely spot one night, just where the other fellow was due to pass by and – well, Bob’s your uncle, as you so succinctly put it. He’s doing twelve years, as a matter of fact.’

Cullam looked at him, truculently disillusioned.

‘I saved up my overtime for that washer,’ he said.

‘Sure it wasn’t McCloy’s little dropsy for services rendered? Isn’t a man’s life worth a hundred and twenty nicker, Cullam? There’s a sump on that machine of yours, you know. I can’t help asking myself if there’s blood and hair and brains in that sump, you know. Oh, you needn’t look like that. We could find it. We can take that machine apart this afternoon, and your drains. They’re a funny council, Sewingbury. I knew a family – six children in that case there were – they got evicted neck and crop just because they cracked a drain-pipe. Vandalism, the council called it. We’ll get your drains up. Cullam, but we’re busy right now. I don’t reckon we could find the labour to get them put back again.’

‘You bastard,’ said Cullam.

‘I didn’t hear that. My hearing’s not what it was, but I haven’t got one foot in the grave. I’d like to sit down, though. You can take that rubbish off that chair and wipe it, will you?’

Cullam sat on his washing machine, his long legs dangling. Behind the closed door the programme had changed from athletics to wrestling and once more the baby had begun to cry.

‘I told you,’ said its father, ‘I don’t know who McCloy is and I don’t. I just said that to Charlie to needle him. Always bragging and boasting, he got on my wick.’

Wexford didn’t have to absorb any more of the squalor to see what Cullam meant. This house was the very embodiment of sleazy noisy discomfort. It was a discomfort which would have brief pause only while its inhabitants slept and it extended from the top to the lowest level. The man and his wife were weighed down by almost every burden known to the philoprogenitive, ill-paid artisan; their children were miserable, badly brought up and perhaps ill-treated; their home overcrowded, even their animals wretchedly tormented. The parents had neither the character nor the love to make coping and organization tenable. He remembered Charlie Hatton’s brand-new flat, the pretty young wife with her smart clothes. These two men did the same sort of job. Or did they?

‘If I tell you how it was,’ Cullam said, ‘you won’t believe me.’

‘Maybe not, try me.'

Cullam put his elbows on his knees and leant forward.

‘It was in a café,’ he said. ‘One of them places where they have rooms for drivers to kip down for the night. Up on the A. 1 between Stamford and Grantham. I was coming up to my eleven hours – we’re not supposed to drive for more than eleven hours – and I went in and there was Charlie Hatton. I’d seen his lorry in the lay-by. We had a bite to eat and got talking.’

‘What load do you carry?’

‘Tires, rubber tires. While we was having our meal I looked out of the window and there was a fellow there – in the lay-by – sitting in a black car. I don’t know why, but I didn’t much like the look of him. I said so to Charlie, but all he said was I was like an old woman. He was always saying that to folks. Then he got me and two more drivers to go into his room for a hand of pontoon. He said it was quieter in there, but I couldn’t see the lay-by from his room and after a bit I went outside. The fellow in the car was still there.’

‘Did you take the number? Could you describe him?’

‘I don’t know.’ Cullam gave him a shifty look. ‘I never took the number. I sat in the cab for half an hour and then this fellow went off. Charlie’d said he wanted to phone Lilian and when I come back over the road he was in a phone box. I wanted a light for my fag – I’d run out of matches – so I opened the door of the box and just asked Charlie for a light. Well, I don’t reckon he’d heard me coming. “Tell Mr McCloy it’s no dice”, I heard him say and it was then I said had he got a match? He jumped out of his skin like he’d been stung. “What the hell are you up to”, he shouts at me, “interfering with my private phone calls?” He was as white as a sheet.’

‘You connected this call with the man in the car?’

‘I reckon I did,’ Cullam said, ‘I did afterwards when I thought about it. My mind went back a couple of months to when Charlie’d asked me if I’d like to make a bit on the side. I wasn’t interested and that was all there was. But I never forgot the name McCloy and when Charlie got so cocky in the pub I thought I’d needle him a bit. That’s all.’