Ruth Rendell - Not in the Flesh

He gave a little groan. It sounded absurdly plaintive in his own ears. “It's Sunday, Sheila.” Why did he bother? That wasn't an excuse that carried any weight with her generation and those younger. Sunday was no longer a day of rest, no longer a day when shops were closed and entertainments shut, no longer a time when people stayed at home in peace and quiet.

“I think it's important, Pop. It's something to do with genital mutilation.”

“When is she coming?”

She smiled. She knew he had given in.

“About seven, she said.”

When Paul had come and taken her and his small daughters away, Wexford reread the extracts Barry Vine had sent him. It was possible, he thought. Perhaps more than that. The dates were right, Thursday, June 15, 1995, the day Hexham disappeared, two days before the trench in Grimble's Field was finally filled in. The man's age was right. Between forty and fifty, Carina Laxton had said, and Alan Hexham's age had been forty-four. Throughout the investigation into this murder, it had been suggested that this first unidentified man must have been a visitor to the place. If nothing in this account indicated that Hexham had ever gone near Kingsmarkham or visited Flagford, there was nothing to disprove it or even make it unlikely. He had been in Lewes until two o'clock and after that he seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth. He might have taken the train to Kingsmarkham just as he might have gone to Brighton or returned to London and taken another train or a bus elsewhere.

Of course it would have to be investigated. This young woman, Selina Hexham, must be interviewed and he would have to do it himself. One thing was certain, it couldn't just be put on the back burner. Thinking this way made him wonder about back burners-was the heat generated by them, whether its source was gas or electricity, necessarily less than that on the front ones? He thought not. In a moment he would go and check in his own kitchen, but as he pondered the question he fell asleep.

The girl who came with Iman Dirir was Matea. So this was why she had wanted to speak to him the last time he and Burden had been to A Passage to India. This was why she had come to his front door on Halloween.

She wore the kind of clothes that are equally Western and Eastern, loose cotton trousers and a long-sleeved tunic, embroidered and sequinned, as fashionable in London as in Amman or Mogadishu. Wexford thought she looked like a girl out of Omar Khayyám that any man would choose to sit with in the wilderness alongside a loaf of bread and a cup of wine. Her long black hair was a river flowing down her back. They sat in front of a log fire Dora had just lit, believing immigrants from warm places must be perpetually cold in their adopted country.

Outside, fallen leaves covered everything so that not a square inch of green grass showed in the light that fell on the lawn from the French windows. The only thing that moved was a squirrel nosing methodically through the yellow carpet. The wind had dropped. Matea sat as still as the air, her hands folded in her lap. Mrs. Dirir, who was so like Matea that she might have been her mother, said quietly to Wexford, “This is something we are brought up not to talk about in our community. It would be better if we talked about it, but no one does. The nearest we ever get is if one girl asks another, ‘Are you cut?’ ”

Wexford saw the girl tremble. It was a very slight movement, less than a shiver. The other woman went on, “They say you only become a woman after it is done. It is a-a sign of-what is the word I want?-of status.”

Dora said quickly, “Yes, I see.” She got up and drew the curtains as if to shut out ugly menacing things.

“You know that my husband and I brought our daughters here to save them from that,” Iman Dirir said to Wexford. She put out a hand to the girl in a graceful gesture. “Matea hasn't been saved. It has already happened to her. She was cut when she was very young.”

The girl blushed a painful red. “I was three years old.”

“It's hard for her to speak about it, Mr. Wexford. She has never before spoken about it except to me and to one or two others who are-are against it.”

“I know,” he said. “Or rather I can imagine.” He heard Dora beside him make a little sound of distress.

“She has told me it was not so bad for her as for some,” said Mrs. Dirir. Matea nodded vigorously. “She has not many problems. Not like many others who have cysts and fistulas and cannot-all right, Matea, I won't go on.”

“How about the men?” Dora asked. “What do they feel about it? The husbands and fathers, I mean.”

“They say it is woman's business. Not for them to interfere but there are some who say it is good because it keeps women-I think I am trying to say ‘pure.’ Would that be the right word?”

“Pure, chaste, something like that,” Wexford said.

“A woman who has been cut, they say, will not be unfaithful.” A dark red flush mounted in Iman Dirir's face. “I find this hard to say. I will try. Women who have been circumcised don't like what men and women do-can you understand what I mean?”

“Of course,” Wexford said. “Of course we can.”

Iman Dirir paused and her face gradually returned to its dark cream color. “It's not for herself that Matea has come to you. For her it's too late. It's for her sister's sake she has come.”

Matea's English had improved. She spoke with a strong accent but improved fluency. “It is for my sister Shamis. She is five years old but not yet in school. My mother and father go home to Somalia for vacation soon. They take with them my brother Adel and my sister.”

Wexford decided to help her. “You're afraid your parents intend to have your sister circumcised while they are in Somalia?”

“I know it,” Matea said.

“It's against the law,” he said, knowing this to be a useless remark. Taking a female out of the country for the purpose of having her genitally mutilated had been a crime punishable by up to fourteen years' imprisonment for four years now, but there had been no prosecutions. The reason for this Mrs. Dirir had already out-lined. A blanket of silence was maintained among these people on the subject. No one would “betray” a lawbreaker to the authorities, no one would go to the police or the medical profession. “You should tell your parents of the penalty-I mean, that they could go to prison for a long time.”

She shook her head. “Mrs. Dirir has done that. They say-they say on and on-we go only for vacation.”

“I will have someone speak to them,” he said, thinking of Karen Malahyde, the Child Protection Officer. “I'll do my best.”

“Thank you,” Matea said and he could see a leap of hope in her eyes.

He slept badly that night. In sleeping dreams and the waking kind, he kept seeing a five-year-old held down on the ground amid a ring of watching women, held by her spread legs and her struggling arms, while another cut into her flesh with a sharpened stone. He would do his best. Would it be enough to prevent an outrage being perpetrated on a helpless child, not yet at primary school?

Selina Hexham might have made the whole thing up. “Gone Without Trace” sounded factual, but perhaps it was a work of fiction. Thinking this way after his disturbed night, Wexford had Hannah check the weather on June 15, 1995, with the Weather Centre, formerly the Meteorological Office, and the trains on that day between London and Lewes and Lewes and Kingsmarkham. She found that, as Selina Hexham had said, it rained all that day. A train from London to Lewes had left Victoria at 9:25 a.m. and reached Lewes at 10:12, while in the afternoon the 2:20 from Lewes had arrived in Kingsmarkham at 2:42.