Ruth Rendell - The Best Man To Die

That should have been the end of it. And then, just as the foyer was beginning to take on a shabby, comfortable look, the lift arrived, an elegant black and gilt box with a sliding door.

‘It isn’t working yet,’ Wexford said, a shade nervously.

‘That’s where you’re wrong. Been operating since this morning. Shall we try it?’

‘I should just like to know what’s wrong with the stairs,’ Wexford exploded. ‘It’s a downright disgrace wasting the ratepayers’ money like this.’ He stuck out his lower lip. ‘Besides, Crocker says walking upstairs is the best exercise in the world for me with my blood pressure.’

‘Just as you like,’ said Burden, turning his face away so that Wexford should not see him smile.

By the time they reached the third floor they were both out of breath. The flimsy yellow chair behind Wexford’s rosewood desk creaked as he lowered his heavy body into it.

‘For God’s sake open a window, Mike.’

Burden grumbled that opening windows upset the air conditioning but he complied, raising the yellow venetian blind and letting in a powerful shaft of noonday sunshine.

‘Well, sir,’ he said. ‘Shall we re-cap on what we know about Charlie Hatton?’

‘Thirty years old, born and bred in Kingsmarkham. Two years ago he got married to a Miss Lilian Bardsley, sister of the man he’s in business with. Bardsley’s got his own firm, transporting small electrical goods.’

‘Was Hatton a full partner?’

‘We’ll have to find out. Even if he was, I can’t see he could get that flush driving loads of irons and heaters up to Leeds and Scotland a couple of times a week. Carter says he had a hundred quid on him, Mike. Where did he get the money from?’

‘Maybe this McCloy.’

‘Do we know any McCloys?’

‘Not that I can recall, sir. We shall have to ask Maurice Cullam.’

Wexford wiped his brow with his handkerchief and, following Camb’s example, began to fan himself with the morning paper. ‘The philoprogenitive Cullam,’ he said. ‘He had one of his quiverful with him when I found Hatton this morning. He’s a lorry driver too, Mike. I wonder… Hatton had his lorry hi-jacked twice this year.’

Burden opened his pale-blue eyes. ‘Is that so?’

‘I remembered,’ said Wexford, ‘as soon as Cullam told me whose the body was. Both times were on the Great North Road and no one was ever done for it. Hatton got knocked on the head the first time but the second time he wasn’t hurt, only tied up.’

‘Once,’ said Burden thoughtfully, ‘is fair enough. Occupational hazard. Twice looks fishy. I want to hear what the doctor has to say. And if I’m not mistaken that’s him outside now.’

Dr Crocker and Wexford had been at school together. Like Jack Pertwee and Charlie Hatton, they were lifelong friends, but their friendship was a casual business and their manner to each other, dry, irreverent, often caustic. Crocker, some six years the chief inspector’s junior, was the only man Burden knew who could get the better of Wexford and match his acid tongue. A tall lean figure with deep lines carved vertically down his brown cheeks, he came into the office looking as cool as he did on a winter’s day.

‘I used your lift,’ said the doctor. ‘Very smart. Whatever will they think of next?’

‘Pictures are threatened,’ said Wexford. ‘The inspector here is to have a suitable flower piece and I a Constable landscape.’

‘I don’t know much about art,’ said Crocker, sitting down and crossing one elegant lean leg over the other, ‘but there’s one painting I would like to have. Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson. Lovely thing it is. There’s this poor devil, this corpse, you see, lying on the table with his guts laid open and all these students…’

‘Do you mind,’ said Wexford. ‘I’m just going to have my lunch. You doctors bring your revolting trade into every thing. We can hear your ideas on interior decoration another time. Now I want to know about Charlie Hatton.’

‘Perfectly healthy bloke,’ said the doctor, ‘bar the fact that he’s dead.’ He ignored Burden’s glance of reproof. ‘Someone bashed him on the back of the head with a heavy smooth object. I’d say he was dead by eleven but it’s impossible to be accurate about these things. What did you say he did for a living?’

‘He was a lorry driver,’ said Burden.

‘I thought that’s what you said. He’d got a marvellous set of teeth.’

‘So what?’ said Wexford. ‘He ought to have had good teeth.’ Rather ruefully he ran his tongue over the two stumps that held in place his upper plate. ‘He was only thirty.’

‘Sure,’ said Crocker, ‘he ought to have had his own being a war baby and a cog in the welfare state. The point is he didn’t. What I meant was he’d got just about the finest set of false teeth I’ve ever seen. Lovely ivory castles. Very nifty grinders Charlie, Hatton had, all cunningly contrived to look more real than the real thing. I’d be surprised if they cost less than two hundred quid.’

‘Rich man,’ said Wexford ruminatively. ‘A hundred pounds in his wallet and two hundred in his mouth. I wish I could believe he’d come by it honestly, driving his lorry up and down the Great North Road.’

‘That’s your problem,’ said the doctor. ‘Well, I’m away to my lunch. Tried the lift yet?’

‘In your capacity as my medical adviser, you advised me to walk upstairs. Physician, heal thyself. About all the exercise you get is pressing the button on your automatic gear change. You want to watch your blood pressure, too.’

‘I should worry,’ said Crocker. He went to the door where the sunshine showed off his elegant figure and absence of paunch to best advantage. ‘All a matter of metabolism,’ he said airily. ‘Some have it rapid.’ He looked back at Wexford. ‘Others slow. The luck of the draw.’

Wexford gave a snort. When the doctor had gone, he opened the top drawer of his desk and took from it the contents of Charlie Hatton’s pockets. The wallet was there, but it was empty of money. It was still soaking wet and now Wexford carefully removed from its leather partitions a photograph of Lilian Hatton, a driving licence and a darts club membership card and spread them in the sun to dry.

In the pocket there had also been a clean handkerchief with a small card caught between its folds. You couldn’t see the card until you unfolded the handkerchief and now Wexford looked at it for the first time. It too was wet and the ink writing on it indecipherable, but it was still recognizable as the pasteboard square dentists use to remind patients of their appointments. On the top was printed: Jolyon Vigo, B.D.S., L.D.S., R.C.S., Eng., Dent. Surg., 19 Ploughman’s Lane, Kingsmarkham, Sussex. Tel: Kingsmarkham 384.

Wexford held it up in the bright shaft of sunlight.

‘The source of the delectable dentures, d’you reckon?’

‘Maybe Vigo can tell us where the money came from if Cullam can’t,’ said Burden. ‘My wife goes to Vigo. He’s a good dentist.’

‘A fly one too, if you ask me, getting a sharp little customer like Charlie Hatton to part with two hundred for thirty-two teeth. No wonder he can afford to live in Ploughman’s Lane. We’re in the wrong job here, Mike, and no mistake. I’m going for my lunch now. Join me? And then we’ll go and root Cullam out of his domestic bliss.’

‘May as well use the lift,’ said Burden with a trace of self- consciousness.

It was more than Wexford’s life was worth to admit his craven fear of the lift. Although a notice inside clearly stated its capacity to carry three persons, he was secretly afraid that it would be inadequate to bear his vast bulk. But he hesitated for no more than a moment before stepping inside and when the door was closed he took refuge in clowning.