Ruth Rendell - Not in the Flesh

“Try me,” said Damon.

“It was just the day after that man had finished filling in the trench. The first Mrs. Tredown-she calls herself Claudia Ricardo, but a person like that would call herself anything-she came across Grimble's Field with her dog. She had a little dog in those days, brought it with her. It's dead now and no one shed any tears about that. Well, she walked it across the field and when she came to where the trench was-there was a sort of line of bare earth if you see what I mean-she didn't walk over it, she walked around it, all the way down to the bungalow and up the other side as if she was avoiding that line of earth. I went over after she'd gone and I couldn't see any reason why a person would walk around it.”

“While you were living at Flagford Hall did you hear of anyone going missing? Disappearing?”

“Only that retarded man. What was he called? Cummings? He was simple, you know. Almost the village idiot.”

This phrase gave Damon a worse shock than would a stream of obscenities issuing from Mrs. McNeil's mouth. He even made an involuntary sound, a kind of “ouch” of protest. She spoke more gently than she had throughout the interview. “Are you feeling unwell?”

“No, no, I'm fine.” He tried a smile. “Thank you, Mrs. McNeil, you've been very helpful.”

Walking him to the front door, her legs barely performing their prime function, she turned, peered at him, and said, “You speak very good English. What part of the world do you come from?”

This was a question Damon was quite used to being asked. It still happened all the time. “Bermondsey,” he said.

Number 5 Oswald Road, home of John and Kathleen Grimble, was one of those houses-or its living room was-which are furnished with most of the necessities of life, things to sit on and sit at, things to look at and listen to, to supply warmth or keep out the cold, insulate the walls and cover the floors, but with nothing to refresh the spirit or gladden the heart, compel the eye or turn the soul's eye toward the light. The predominant color was beige. There was a calendar (Industry in Twenty-first Century UK) but no pictures on the walls, no books, not even a magazine, a small pale blue cactus in a beige pot but no flowers or other plants, no cushions on the bleak wooden-armed chairs and settee, a beige carpet but no rugs. The only clock was the digital kind with large, very bright green, quivering figures.

John Grimble was sitting in front of the screen when Wexford and Hannah were brought in by his wife. The film that was showing had reached a torrid love scene, enacted in silence as the sound was off. Kathleen Grimble took her place in the other orthopedic chair as if these positions and this contemplation of the picture had been ordained by some higher power. This time, though, she picked up the knitting that she had left lying on the seat of the chair, and, gazing in total impassivity at the writhing couple, began her mechanical and speedy work with needles and scarlet wool. Madame Defarge, Wexford thought. He could imagine her sitting on the steps of the guillotine, muttering “Oh, John, don't” each time a head rolled.

“I'd appreciate your attention, Mr. Grimble,” he said. “We've something very serious to ask you.”

Grimble turned an irritable face to him. “Give it five minutes, can't you, and I'll be with you.”

“Turn it off, please,” said Wexford, “or I'll do it myself.”

But at that moment the actor on the screen picked up a knife from the bedside table and thrust it into the outstretched neck of his companion, causing Mrs. Grimble to assert herself. “Right, that's enough,” she said calmly. “I'm not watching that sort of thing.” Grabbing the remote, she turned off the set.

Grimble began a low muttered complaining that Hannah interrupted. “Mr. Grimble, you didn't tell us a relative of yours went missing in May 1995. A bit before the time you applied for planning permission to build on your field. I'm talking about Mr. Peter Darracott of Pestle Lane, Kingsmarkham.”

“Is it all right for her to ask me questions?” Grimble said to Wexford. “I mean, has she got the proper qualifications?”

Wexford saw the blood rush to Hannah's cheeks, a sure sign of rage developing. He gave her a very small shake of the head. “Very proper, Mr. Grimble. Better than mine, in fact,” he said, thinking of Hannah's psychology degree.

“I suppose I have to take your word for it. What do you want to know for?” He was still addressing Wexford, but it was Hannah who replied, the color receding from her face.

“We already do know, Mr. Grimble. When we last spoke to you, you didn't mention Mr. Darracott.”

“Because I didn't know him, that's why.”

“But you knew he was your cousin.”

“My second cousin, if you don't mind. Oh, I can see what you're getting at. There was a body found in my field that's been dead eleven years. My second cousin went missing eleven years ago, so they've got to be one and the same. Now I'll tell you something. Everybody knows Peter Darracott had been carrying on with the woman as worked in the chemist on the corner of Pestle Lane, and that's who he went off with. And I for one don't blame him-married to that Christine what had a tongue on her like a razor. Nagged him from morn till night she did till he went spare.”

“Oh, John, don't,” said Kathleen.

“How well did you know him?” Wexford asked in a deceptively mild tone.

“About as well as most folks know their second cousins. Maybe we'd see each other at family funerals and that was about it. As matter of fact the last time I saw him was at my mum's funeral two years before he went missing.”

“It was good of him to come, John,” said Kathleen.

“Yes, well, my dad was his godfather and he thought he might be in the will, didn't he? He was unlucky there.”

“Some itinerant farmworkers camped on that land eleven years ago. Was that with your permission?”

Grimble flared again. The very word “permission” seemed enough to inflame him. “Are you joking? They counted on me living over here what was five miles away. Some busybody must have told them. But I was too many for them. Me and Bill Runge come over to see where we'd dig that trench and there they was, their vans and their muck and litter all over my field. I got them off there pretty damn quick, I can tell you. Me and Bill went in there and got them off. If folks tell you we had guns it's a lie. Sticks we had, and they put up no resistance. They was scared of us and no wonder.”

He must have got that bit about resistance off the TV, Wexford thought. “Can you remember exactly when that was, Mr. Grimble?”

“To the day, I can. It was May thirty-first and the next day me and Bill started digging. Them bloody planners refused me permission on June twelfth, and on the sixteenth Bill started filling up our trench. Nearly broke my heart it did. If you're thinking one of them might be them bones, you can think again. They was gone back to where they come from days before me and Bill ever stuck a spade in the sod.”

Sheila was just leaving when Wexford got home. He put his arms around her and kissed her, an embrace that also included the baby Anoushka in a sling on her mother's chest. “Grandad kiss,” said Amy as Wexford picked her up.

“You don't have to go the moment I get in, do you?”

“I do. I've got a car picking me up here in two minutes. You're late, anyway, Pop.”

“I always am. Unpunctuality is the impoliteness of policemen. Not a very good epigram, I'm afraid, but I'm too weary to do better. When are you coming down again?”

“Next week. I've got a project on. Ma will tell you.”

The car came, sleek and black. The white-haired driver had the face of the old Italian actor Rossano Brazzi. Wexford waved to his daughter and the children and they waved at him out of a rear window, and he went on watching until they were all out of sight. He turned away, noting that his front garden was still a mass of flowers, awaiting the frost that never came. Fuchsias in tubs, the last of the dahlias and Michaelmas daisies in the borders. Nothing to do with him, he seldom if ever pulled out a weed or planted a seed, but all Dora's work. If he sometimes neglected his wife, and he feared he did, he appreciated her when her work came into flower. There was a graceful yellow thing in a tub called a thunbergia that he'd forced himself to learn the name of, though he'd forget it again by the spring, and another yellow thing that was a shrub with flowers that smelled of oranges, but that was long over now.