Ruth Rendell - Not in the Flesh

Barry came to the crucial question. “Do you know his other name, Mrs. Riley? Could it have been Sam?”

“Dusty, they called him. I don't know what else. I never heard it. I know he come from somewhere in London. Same with Bridget, somewhere in London.”

“That wasn't much help, Sarge,” Lyn said when they were outside.

“You've done a good job finding that Mrs. Riley, Lyn,” said Barry, “but that's where you're wrong. When they call a man Dusty it's usually because his surname's Miller. Like a man called Grey is Smoky and a man called White is Chalky or Snowy but someone called Miller is always Dusty. So now you know.”

“If you say so, Sarge. I thought it might be because he looked dirty like Mrs. Riley said.”

The Family Records Centre showed a large number of Millers but, because this man had been forty, it was possible to narrow it down to those born in the late fifties and early sixties.

“I suppose I can put each one of these into the Web,” Lyn said, “and get a search engine to track him down. But if he's who we think he is, our man's dead. He's been dead eight years and he won't be on an electoral register anymore. Maybe it would be better to find dead Millers.”

“Are we looking for a connection between these two men?” Burden asked. “I mean, are we working on the premise that the chap in the cellar wasn't the only one Ronald McNeil killed? That he also shot Alan Hexham?”

“That's why I'm going to see Irene McNeil again now that she's home,” said Wexford. “But I don't think so, do you? There's no question of Hexham trespassing anywhere.”

“Adam's talked to all the taxi firms who were here eleven years ago, he's been very thorough, I must say. But it was always a hopeless task. What kind of a miraculous memory would someone have to have to remember that far back?”

“I don't know. I don't see how there can be a connection, yet if there's not it's too much of a coincidence. But I'm sure Hexham came here and came to see Tredown. I think he came to do research for Tredown's book The First Heaven. I've left a message on Selina Hexham's voice mail”-Wexford was proud of himself for knowing the term and bringing it out with such ease-“but she hasn't called me back yet.”

Irene McNeil had spent two days in a private nursing home since what she called her “ordeal” at Kingsmarkham police station. Since her return home, showing she wasn't always the helpless creature she seemed to be, she had engaged a full-time carer. This was a young man of daunting efficiency who had transformed the soulless cupboard-lined house with bowls of flowers and jardinières of houseplants. The place smelled of lemon air freshener. A boy in jeans and T-shirt was the last kind of person Wexford supposed Mrs. McNeil would find to tend on her, but he began to see that his analysis of her character had been wide of the mark. She might be old-fashioned and prudish, a stickler for manners and a snob, but she was very much an upper-middle-class woman of her generation too, one who had always had a man about the house-first her father, then her husband-and who bitterly missed the masculine presence. No doubt, also, whatever she said, she would have liked a son. Greg the carer answered a deeply felt need. Wexford suspected it was he who had painted her fingernails a silvery rose-pink, and it amazed him that Mrs. McNeil let him call her “Reeny.”

She still had her feet up, but now she was reclining on a sofa, her legs discreetly covered with a blanket. Rather to his surprise she made no reference to their previous meetings but instead was fervent on the subject of Greg, his excellences and his charm.

“Of course, having him here wouldn't have done at all when I was young,” she said. “I may be older than he”-as if there was any doubt about it-“but that would have made no difference. If one was a woman alone, one simply could not have a man staying overnight and that was all there was to it. It would have caused talk. Oh, thank you so much, Greg.”

The carer had brought not tea but a glass of what looked like iced coffee and a plate of the kind of biscuits you can only buy in delicatessens. “And what can I get you, sir?”

Wexford thought it might have been the first time in his life-at any rate for a long time-that anyone but the members of his team had called him “sir,” and even they now mostly called him “guv,” thanks to Hannah. “A cup of tea would be good,” he said, thinking Greg would be more likely to understand “good” than “nice.”

“Isn't he perfect?” Like a woman in love, Mrs. McNeil watched Greg depart for the kitchen, closing the door quietly behind him. In more mundane accents she asked Wexford what she could do for him. “Can I update you?” wasn't the kind of question she would have asked before the advent of Greg.

“The man your husband shot-” he began but Irene McNeil interrupted him.

“In self-defense!”

“Yes, well-you must have got a good look at him.”

“After he was dead. I didn't look too closely, I can tell you. He wasn't a pretty sight.”

“Mrs. McNeil, what exactly do you mean by that? Do you mean he was dirty or injured in some other way?”

“I don't know. He wasn't old, I can tell you that. Not much older than Greg, probably, only Greg's always so spotlessly clean and neat.”

“If I told you this man's age was forty, would that be about right?”

Before she could reply, Greg came back with Wexford's tea. The biscuits provided were of a slightly lower standard than those on Mrs. McNeil's plate. Greg flashed his employer so dazzling a smile that Wexford found himself wondering in exactly what way he was on the make.

“About forty, Mrs. McNeil?”

“No, no, Greg is just forty-oh, you meant that creature who was trespassing in Mr. Grimble's house? I don't know. Possibly. I suppose he was about that.”

Next he asked her about the knife her husband had said was about to be used to attack him. This prompted Irene McNeil into an angry diatribe against Helen Parker, the young solicitor. He steered her back to the knife.

“There was no knife in the house, Mrs. McNeil, that's the difficulty.”

“John Grimble took things away, you know. You shouldn't believe him when he says he didn't take a thing, just left everything there.”

Wexford gently reminded her that whatever John Grimble had removed from his father's house, he had taken eleven years before, not eight. “Could your husband have brought the knife back home with him?”

A flash of alarm showed in her eyes. “Why would he do that?”

It was hardly for Wexford to find explanations for the behavior of a man like Ronald McNeil. “Your husband might have told you if he disposed of the knife.”

“Or I might have.” She spoke carefully. “I might have given it away. He might have brought it back home. I mean, when we lived at the Hall.”

“Is that what happened, Mrs. McNeil?”

“Will I get into trouble?” She spoke like a little girl who has been disobedient. “It wouldn't be very wrong, would it, to get rid of a knife? It wasn't mine, you see. Would it be stealing? It wasn't mine, it was that man's.”

Wexford was almost at a loss. He seemed to have strayed into the country of the mad. He was seeing what happens to people-women, mostly-who have been sheltered and protected all their lives and suddenly find themselves alone.

“Did you get rid of it, Mrs. McNeil?”

“It was stolen,” she said. “The cleaner I had stole it.” She stared at him. “I'm telling you the absolute truth.”

It was very nearly too much for him. He changed the subject.

“Had you ever seen this man before, Mrs. McNeil? Think carefully before you answer.”

“I know I'd never seen him before.”