Ruth Rendell: The Girl Next Door

She pounded on the knocker because Clara was deaf. She came to the door without her stick because she could hold on to the furniture. She said, ‘Hallo, Mrs Batchelor,’ and Maureen said, ‘How are you, Clara?’ and stepped over the threshold into the small, dark living room.

Norman was still staying with his brother and sister-in-law at Carisbrooke, York Hill, and running his bulbs and seedings mail order company on his smartphone while in constant communication with Eliane, whom he spoke of as his ‘lady partner’. George continued to sit on the sofa with his bad leg up, except when the physiotherapist came and put him through his paces. In the privacy of their bedroom he told Maureen that he was sure Norman stayed and stayed in order to have someone to complain to about the state of the country.

‘He hasn’t got a woman here, has he?’ Maureen asked.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised. He always liked two strings to his bow. Better ask Stan. Stan always knows things like that.’

‘I forgot to tell you. Stan’s got a new dog. And after him saying he wouldn’t have another in case he passed away and it pined. It’s a puppy, this one, coal black. Not a bit of white on it but it’s called Spot. All the rest have been Nipper, I reckon Spot was the only other doggy name Stan could think of.’

Initially quite keen on the job of finding out the provenance of the Warlock hands, as they were starting to be called, Detective Inspector Colin Quell lost interest when forensics discovered their age. If they had been two or three years in the ground, there would have been some challenging investigation to be done, but they turned out to be sixty or seventy years old. It was fairly obvious that they, this man and this woman, had been killed. No one, not even a crazy person – a crazy undertaker? – removes the hands from the bodies of those who have died naturally. No one buries those hands away from their mutilated bodies. Still, it was a case to which he had been assigned, and he had to do it, no matter that the perpetrator – the killer and dissector – must have been long dead himself.

Quell had received a number of phone calls from people he defined as nuts, psychopaths and lunatics, describing the find under Warlock as the result of witchcraft, a butcher practising his craft, and the remains of two visitants from outer space. He had received only one letter, because few people wrote letters any more. It was nearly as crazy as the phone call about the witchcraft but not quite.

‘A bunch of kids playing games in the foundations of a house,’ he said aloud to himself in his office. ‘What sort of games? And bombs falling all around? Do I believe this stuff?’ Nevertheless, he studied this rather fuzzy copy of the children poking their heads out of a muddy hole and decided he had better talk to some of these people, all of them as old as the hills now, of course.

He would shortly have to pay a second visit to Loughton, take a look at the workmen and the supervising archaeologist who were digging away in search of more remains under Warlock. A waste of time, he thought. Who cared after all these years? Pity this Maureen Batchelor didn’t give an email address, though she did offer a phone number. A landline, he noted, not a mobile. But what could you expect of someone her age?

He spoke to George Batchelor. Quell was a man always willing to admit he had been wrong, and he had certainly been wrong about this one-time builder and his wife. They sounded a lot younger than they must be. They gave him the names of some of the other people who had been children in the ‘tunnels’. Having an idea that you should never, if you could help it, speak of death or even ‘passing away’ in the presence of anyone over sixty, Quell didn’t ask how many of them were still alive. He didn’t have to. George Batchelor equally serenely told him of his dead brother Robert (the photographer), his dead sister Moira and the still living Alan Norris, Rosemary Norris, Michael Winwood, Daphne Furness, his brothers Norman and Stanley, and Bill Johnson.

‘I think I should see all of them.’

George was beginning to enjoy this. ‘If you’re coming to see me, shall I ask all the others round at the same time?’

‘If it’s not putting you out,’ said Quell.

‘The ones that are still in the land of the living,’ said George.

He had been bored out of his mind lazing about with his leg up. Now it looked as if he might have a part to play in this investigation, all these old friends round, the police taking a real interest. He would show them his photographs. It would be a tonic for him. Maybe he could find Michael Winwood, or Stanley would. Stanley always kept up with people over the years.

A small crowd had gathered round his car. Spot was sitting in the driving seat with his forepaws on the steering wheel. Sighs of ‘Aah’ and ‘Sweet’ came from the shoppers who had stopped to stare. Unwisely, Stanley had parked outside the police station on a yellow line, thinking he would only be a minute; as he approached the car, a uniformed PC preceded him, observed Spot without a hint of a smile and told Stanley to ‘get that dog down from there’ and move off. He was lucky, added the PC, that he would take no further steps. Stanley put Spot in the back, laid the flowers he had bought for Maureen on the passenger seat and drove off up to York Hill and Carisbrooke.

Stanley always brought women flowers. Like his brother Norman, he was known as a ladies’ man, though according to his friends and neighbours, there was nothing wrong. He bought more flowers for his wife than for any other woman. Stanley always talked to his dogs and he talked to this one, telling him as they got out of the car that he had better behave, as a policeman was coming and a more powerful one than the PC. Spot wagged his tail. Maureen might have had something to say about Spot’s presence but was mollified by the huge bunch of daffodils and narcissi with which Stanley presented her.

‘Daphne here yet?’

‘No one’s here but you and of course Norman,’ said Maureen. ‘George can put his foot to the ground now, so mind you tell him how well he’s doing.’

‘Will do.This is Spot.’

‘So I gathered. He won’t pee on the floor, will he?’

‘Certainly not. He’s already house-trained.’

They were still in the hallway when the doorbell rang. It was the Norrises and Detective Inspector Colin Quell, who had met on the front path. Alan and Rosemary had walked to York Hill. All the way Alan hadn’t said much, because he was anticipating meeting Daphne again after so long and resolving at the same time not to think about it. It would be a long way for her to come at her age. She was two or three years older than he. And how would she come? By tube, perhaps. The District Line and then the Central Line. Perhaps Stanley would drive down to Loughton station to meet her. He wouldn’t ask. They went into the living room, the French windows open to the garden, it was such a fine sunny day. Maureen brought in a large blue bowl full of spring flowers and set them on the table. Spot ran out into the garden, chasing a squirrel.

Because it was nearly lunchtime, George offered Pinot Grigio, which Quell refused. He was driving, he said. Most people think all police officers are traffic cops, and one by one (except for Norman), they also declined, feeling perhaps that Quell would see the drinking of alcohol as somehow offensive and in some way punishable. Food, however, was acceptable, and even Quell took a smoked salmon sandwich.

‘Well, shall we make a start?’ he said. ‘Don’t need to wait for the others, do we?’

George began talking about the tunnels, how he thought he and his brothers – ‘poor’ Robert and Stanley – had been the first to discover them. It wasn’t then but later, when he was in his late teens and went into the building trade, that he realised the tunnels had been the foundations of a house, the building of which was stopped by the war.