Ruth Rendell - Not in the Flesh

“I don't know what it is you want.” She glanced in the direction of the other woman, seemed to be considering whether there was any point in introducing her, and finally decided that there was no help for it. “Claudia,” she said, “I suppose these men are as likely to want to talk to you as to me.”

In turning round, the black-haired woman caused something of a shock. From the back she might have been twenty-five. When she faced them, even in the shadow that fell across her face, she at once became close on sixty. She was extravagantly thin, with the thinness that is natural and unaffected by dieting or overeating, and her face was deeply lined. She came up to them, held out a long-fingered, rope-veined hand, smiled, and was immediately transformed into a ravaged beauty.

“How do you do? I'm Claudia Ricardo. Well, I was Tredown when I was married to Owen, but I reverted when we were divorced. Ricardo was my maiden name, though I wasn't actually a maiden for very long.”

Burden was less able to deal with this sort of thing than Wexford. He resorted to ignoring it and speaking in the stolid gloomy tone of a copper on the beat. They had, he said, some questions they would like to ask. Wexford would probably have enjoyed himself at Mrs. Tredown's expense and engaged in repartee with Claudia Ricardo, but Burden's technique may have been more effective. “We'd like to speak to Mr. Tredown as well.”

“No can do,” said Maeve in a phrase Wexford hadn't heard for years.

“Yes, I understand he's ill,” Wexford said. “We'll disturb him as little as possible.”

“It's not that he's ill. He is, but that's not the point. He's working.”

Claudia Ricardo gave another of her smiles, a less charming one this time. “My wife-in-law-that's what we call each other-likes to keep his nose to the grindstone. I mean, his books are our bread and butter. She cracks the whip, don't you, Em darling?”

It was Maeve Tredown who smiled this time. She appeared not to be the least offended but fixed Claudia with a conspiratorial smile, accompanied by a companionable wrinkling of the nose, a kind of what-a-one-you-are expression.

Wexford thought he preferred her when she was taciturn. “Very well. It's not necessary to see him today,” he said. “Perhaps you can answer a few questions. No doubt you know a body was discovered in Grimble's Field. We're having some difficulty of identification. Are you aware of anyone going missing in the area about eleven years ago?”

“How would we?” This was Maeve who had seated herself on a slippery black leather sofa with Claudia beside her. “What has that dump to do with us?”

“Probably nothing, but do you know of anyone being missing around here? It would be eleven years ago last May or June.”

Few people are able to utter an unadorned no but Maeve Tredown managed it. “No.”

Claudia aimed at being more helpful. “That would have been soon after I came to live here,” she said. “I married again after the divorce, but that didn't work out either. Maeve asked me if I'd like to come here and live with them. Nice of her, wasn't it? A bit odd, you might say-well, you would say, but very nice. We'd always got on, far better than I did with Owen, though that was a lot better when I wasn't married to him.”

Why tell them all this? Wexford had no idea. Because it amused her? Because she had decided they were both dense plodders? “You must have seen Mr. Grimble and his friend digging a trench across the field.”

“We saw that,” said Maeve, becoming more expansive. “I was delighted when they refused him planning permission.”

“Me too.” Claudia bounced up and down on the leather seat, like a child offered an unexpected treat. “I had a little holiday in my heart. Don't you think that's a nice expression? I almost had an orgasm when I heard.”

Maeve said suddenly, “There was that cousin or brother-in-law or some relative of Grimble's who went missing around then. I've just remembered,” as if someone had asked. “I can't tell you who it was, but everybody knew. I expect that's who it is.”

“That's exactly right,” said Claudia with a merry laugh. “Yes, I expect Grimble killed him and put him in the trench. I'm so sorry you can't see Owen now. Could you come back another time? Actually it's lovely to have some male company, isn't it, Em?”

“How did they know the body was in the trench?” said Burden on the way back.

“We told them.”

“Well, not exactly. You just said Grimble and his friend were digging a trench.”

“Oh, come on, Mike. Whatever you think of them, they're not stupid. Anyone would pick that up. Besides, it said a body was in a trench on the local TV news. I'm more interested in this missing relative Grimble didn't mention.”

“Maybe he's on Peach's list,” said Burden.

He was. He was one of the two men who had gone missing at the relevant time, Peter Darracott and Charlie Cummings. Hannah Goldsmith and Lyn Fancourt had spent the morning tracking down their families and discovered that Peter Darracott, who had disappeared from home in May 1995, was John Grimble's second cousin, his natural father's cousin's son.

His wife had gone away on holiday with her next-door neighbor to Tenerife, a ten-day package. If she wanted foreign holidays, Christine Darracott told Hannah, she'd always had to go with a friend. Her husband was afraid of flying.

“I used to tell people he got airsick,” she said and her face became vindictive. “I used to, but if anyone asks me now I tell the truth. I'm done with shielding him from everything. He was scared shitless, if you want the truth.”

“You came home and found him gone, Mrs. Darracott?” Home was a terraced house in Pestle Lane, parallel to Kingsmarkham High Street. “Hadn't he even left you a note?”

“Nothing. Not a sausage. Mind you, he left me the bed he hadn't made and his dirty dishes and full ashtrays everywhere. But that was normal.”

“He'd taken a lot of his clothes,” Hannah told Wexford, “and things they owned in common, a radio, a little portable TV-oh, and a hair dryer. What does a man want with a hair dryer?”

“Much the same as what a woman does, I suppose. Maybe he'd had long hair. You mustn't be sexist, DS Goldsmith.”

Hannah had the grace to laugh. “The truth is he took it out of spite. Why women get married I never will know.”

“Well, you're going to,” said Burden, “unless that ring's purely for ornament.”

“We shall see,” said Hannah, unfazed. “She told me Peter was Grimble's second cousin, whatever that means. Apparently, there's a huge family, spread out everywhere. She reported Peter as missing but doesn't appear to have taken steps herself to find him. She more or less said it was good riddance. ‘One thing, he wouldn't have left the country,’ she said. ‘Too scared to get on a plane.’ ”

“Did they know each other?” Wexford asked. “I mean, Grimble and this Peter Darracott?” He turned to Burden. “Do you know your second cousins? Do you, Lyn?”

“I wouldn't even know what makes someone your second cousin,” said Burden.

Lyn smiled. “You'd know them if you were like me and hadn't got many relations. Apart from my mum and dad, my second cousin is the only relative I've got.”

“According to Peach's list and comments,” said Wexford, “Christine Darracott never heard from him again. It's always hard to imagine how this can happen, someone disappearing and being gone for good, but it does, all the time. Of course it helps when their nearest and dearest would just as soon they never turned up. How about Charlie Cummings, Lyn?”

He had gone missing from the house in which he lived with his mother in December 1994. Both lived on the benefit, Charlie having some kind of disability, what would now be called, Lyn said, “learning difficulties.” Apparently, both he and his mother were unable to read or write. The details Lyn had came from Mrs. Cummings's neighbor, Mrs. Cummings herself having died in 2000.