Jonathan Coe - Number 11

Clutching her heart, Rachel rushed upstairs to look at the nearest entryphone screen.

In her haste, she had omitted to do two things. She did not close the back door properly. And although, while standing in the doorway, she had looked all around her, she had not looked down. Had she done so she would have seen, a few inches from the ground, a thin length of silvery cord, sticky and glistening, stretched across the doorway like a tripwire, then twining itself around a drainpipe and disappearing back into the pit.

*

She did not recognize the two callers at the front door, but when she went down to speak to them they both produced identity cards proving them to be detectives. One of them looked to be in his early fifties; the other seemed much younger, about twenty years younger.

‘My name is Detective Constable Pilbeam,’ the younger one said. ‘And this is my colleague, Detective Chief Inspector Capes.’

‘Otherwise known as the Caped Crusader,’ said his companion, with a hopeful smile.

Rachel returned the smile, even though she found this rather an odd remark.

‘Come in,’ she said, and led them into the sitting room. Neither of them took off their coats, but they both sat down on the nearest sofa and seemed ready to make themselves comfortable.

‘I didn’t know they called you that,’ DC Pilbeam said to his colleague, in an undertone.

‘What?’

‘The Caped Crusader.’

‘Well, they do,’ he answered sharply.

Rachel wondered whether she should offer them a drink, then decided against it. It would have been a friendly thing to do, but they probably weren’t allowed to drink on duty.

‘Who does?’ said DC Pilbeam, apparently unwilling to drop the subject.

‘Mm?’

‘Who calls you that?’

‘Everybody.’

‘I’ve never heard them.’

‘I wonder,’ said Rachel, growing impatient, ‘if you’d mind telling me what this is about.’

‘Ah. Yes.’ DCI Capes sat up straight, and adopted a formal tone of voice. ‘We’re speaking to Ms Rachel Wells, I take it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you are employed as private tutor to the daughters of Sir Gilbert and Lady Gunn?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. We’re here to make some routine enquiries about a missing person. Would we be right in thinking that you’re acquainted with one Frederick Francis, Senior Partner in the firm of Bonanza Tax Management?’

‘I know Mr Francis, yes. Is he the person who’s gone missing?’

‘Mr Francis has not been home for several days, and nobody has seen him in that time. His friends are growing concerned. Does this come as a surprise to you?’

‘That he’s gone missing, or that he has friends who are concerned about him?’

DC Pilbeam smiled. DCI Capes didn’t.

‘Please, Ms Wells, this could be a very serious matter.’

‘What’s it got to do with me anyway?’

‘Last Thursday evening,’ said DC Pilbeam, consulting his notebook, ‘Mr Francis was having a drink at the Henry Root bar around the corner. He got into conversation with one of the ladies behind the bar, and told her that he was coming round to this house. To see you. She said that at this point in the evening, he was rather the worse for drink.’ He looked up. ‘Did he visit you that evening?’

‘Yes,’ said Rachel, ‘he did.’

‘At what time?’

‘About quarter to ten.’

‘Would you mind describing the encounter?’

‘Well, there was nothing very special about it,’ said Rachel, suddenly feeling nervous and evasive. ‘We … had a drink together. Talked about this and that.’

‘What was the purpose of his visit, in your view?’

‘He’d heard that I was here by myself, looking after the children, and he was — concerned about me, I suppose. Where did he go afterwards, do you know?’

‘What time did he leave?’

‘Probably about five to ten.’

‘I see. So it was a very short visit. Surprisingly short, one might say.’

‘Yes, I suppose it was.’

‘And did you see Mr Francis leave the premises?’

‘No. I heard him leave by the front door. But after that I took the girls back upstairs.’

‘The girls? So they were witnesses to his visit as well?’

‘Yes, they were.’

‘But if I understand you correctly, you can’t actually say for certain that Mr Francis left the premises at all.’

‘Well, I think I would have noticed if he’d been hiding here for the last week.’

‘This short conversation you had with him,’ said DCI Capes, ‘was it … friendly, amicable?’

Rachel nodded. ‘Yes, I’d say so.’

‘You didn’t argue, at all? There was no quarrel? No … lovers’ tiff?’

‘He was not my lover.’

To emphasize this point, Rachel had raised her voice, but at the same time it cracked and broke. She sank down into an armchair and put her head in her hands. DC Pilbeam immediately leaped up from the sofa. He crouched down beside her and put a comforting hand on her knee.

‘Ms Wells, are you all right? You seem rather distressed.’

‘Oh, I’m … Not really … I don’t know, I’m fine … It’s just … It’s this house,’ she said, fighting back tears. ‘I hate it here. At night it’s dark and lonely and I start to imagine all sorts of strange things. And I get worried about the girls. So worried about them. I worry that they’re not safe.’

‘Why would they not be safe?’

‘I don’t know. There’s some … danger here. I’m convinced of it.’

‘Is that what you thought when Mr Francis called?’ said DCI Capes, from across the room. ‘That he might pose a danger to those girls?’

DC Pilbeam shot him a warning glance: he did not seem to like the slightly aggressive tone of this question. His own voice was much smoother and more reassuring.

‘Ms Wells,’ he said, ‘I’m going to tell you a little bit more about this case, and why we consider it so important.’

Rachel wiped the tears away from her eyes, and nodded.

‘The fact is that Mr Francis is not the only person to have disappeared recently in this vicinity.’

‘Oh?’

‘DCI Capes and I suspect that his disappearance is linked to five others, which have all occurred in the last few weeks. First of all, Ms Josephine Winshaw-Eaves, the newspaper columnist. Then Mr Giles Trending, the CEO of Stercus Television. Then Philip Stanmore, a director of Sunbeam Foods. Then Helke Winshaw, CEO of Winshaw Clearance plc. And also Lord Lucrum, head of the Institute for Quality Valuation. Mr Francis is the sixth person to have disappeared. One thing that all these people have in common is that they either lived, or were last seen, within a few hundred yards of this street.’

DCI Capes added: ‘But that’s not all they have in common.’

‘Indeed not,’ said DC Pilbeam, rising to his feet and beginning to pace the room. ‘But this is where the theories of my colleague and myself diverge.’

‘My junior colleague,’ said DCI Capes, ‘is a remarkable young man. He believes that in order to solve a crime, you have to look at it from the political angle. Using the word in its broadest sense, that is. I have to say that in the past, his theories have produced impressive results. So that’s the approach we intend to take in this instance.’

‘All the same,’ said DC Pilbeam, ‘as we’ve learned from past experience, we must be careful not to jump to the first and most obvious conclusion, even if it looks as if —’

‘There is no mystery, Nathan, about what these six people have in common. Just because I was the one who found out the link —’

‘What is the link?’ Rachel asked, butting in before their argument spiralled out of control.