‘That’s right, Watson. You’re catching on. My old mate,’ Wexford remarked to no one in particular, ‘albeit a saw- bones, is coming on.’ Suddenly his voice dropped and tapping the doctor’s arm, his face hardening, he said, ‘D’you see what I see? Over there by the Electricity Board?’
Crocker followed his gaze. From Tabard Road a woman wheeling a pram had emerged in Kingsmarkham High Street and stopped outside a plate-glass display window of the Southern Electricity Board. Presently two more children joined her, then a man holding a third child by the hand and another in his arms. They remained in a huddle on the pavement, staring at the dazzling array of kitchen equipment as if hypnotized.
‘Mr and Mrs Cullam and their quiverful,’ said Wexford.
The family were too far away for their conversation, an apparently heated and even acrimonious discussion, to be audible. But it was evident that an argument was taking place between the adults, possibly as to whether their need of a refrigerator was greater than their desire for a mammoth room heater. The children were taking sides vociferously. Cullam shook one of his daughters, cuffed his elder son on the head, and then they all plunged into the showroom.
‘Will you do something for me?’ Wexford asked the doctor. ‘Go in there and buy a light bulb or something. I want to know what that lot are up to.’
‘What, spy on them and report back, d’you mean?’
‘Charming way you put it. That’s what I spend my life doing. I’ll Sit in your car. Can I have the keys?’
‘It’s not locked,’ Crocker said awkwardly.
‘Is that so? Well, don’t come screaming to me next time one of the local hippies pinches a load of your acid off you. Go on. A forty watt bulb and we’ll reimburse you out of petty cash.’
The doctor went unwillingly. Wexford chuckled to himself in the car. Crocker’s cautious approach to the electricity showroom, his quick sidelong glances, called to mind days long gone by when Wexford, then a sixth-form boy, had witnessed this same man as a child of ten, scuttling up to front doors playing ‘Knocking Down Ginger’. In those days the infant Crocker had run up paths lightly and gleefully to bang on a knocker or ring a bell and, elated with an enormous naughtiness, hidden behind a hedge to see the angry householder erupt and curse. There was no hedge here and Crocker was fifty. But as he entered the showroom, had he too experienced a flash of memory, a stab of nostalgia?
Jesu, Jesu, thought Wexford, once more evoking Justice Shallow, the mad days that I have spent! And to see how many of my old acquaintance are dead… Enough of that. On the lighter side it reminded him of Stamford and he wondered how Burden had got on. Somehow a little business in Deptford didn’t quite match up with his own ideas of McCloy’s origins.
Samantha Cullam scuttled out on to the pavement. Her mother came next, lugging the pram. When the whole brood were assembled their father regimented them with a series of fortunately ill-aimed blows and they all trailed off the way they had come. Then Crocker appeared, duplicity incarnate.
‘Well?’
‘Don’t snap at me like that, you saucy devil,’ said the doctor, immensely pleased with himself. ‘I set traps, as the Psalmist says, I catch men.’
‘What did Cullam buy?’
‘He didn’t exactly buy anything, but he’s after a refrigerator.’
‘Getting it on the H.P. is he?’
‘Money wasn’t mentioned. They had a bit of a ding-dong, Mr and Mrs, and one of the kids knocked a Pyrex dish off a cooker. That brute Cullam fetched him a four-penny one, poor little devil. They’re all dead keen on getting this fridge, I can tell you.’
‘Well, what about these traps you laid?’
‘That was just a figure of speech,’ said the doctor. ‘Didn’t I do all right? I bought the bulb like you said. One and nine if you don’t mind. I’m not in this for my health.’
Chapter 10
‘They call themselves McCloy Ltd.,’ Burden said wearily, ‘but the last member of the firm of that name died twenty years ago. It’s an old established set-up, but I reckon it’s on its last legs now. In this so-called affluent society of ours folks buy new stuff, they don’t want this reconditioned rubbish.’
‘You can say that again,’ said Wexford, thinking of Cullam.
‘The Yard put me on to six other McCloys all more or less in the hardware business or on its fringes. Not a smell of anything fishy about one of them. Stamford have given me a list of local McCloys and there again not a sniff as far as they know. But I’ll be off to Stamford in the morning to have a scent round. The local force have promised me all the help I need.’
Wexford lounged back in his swivel chair and the dying sun played on his face. ‘Mike,’ he said, ‘I wonder if we haven’t been starting from the wrong end. We’ve been looking for McCloy to lead us to his hired assassin. We might do better to find the hired assassin and let him lead us to McCloy.’
‘Cullam?’
‘Maybe. I want Martin to be Cullam’s shadow and if he goes and pays cash for that refrigerator we’re really getting somewhere. Meanwhile I’m going to make Hatton’s log book and Mrs Hatton’s engagement book my homework for tonight. But first, how about a quick one at the Olive and Dove?’
‘Not for me thanks, sir. I haven’t had an evening in for a week now. Divorce is against my wife’s principles but she might get ideas as to a legal separation.’
Wexford laughed and they went down in the lift together. The evening was warm and clear, the light and the long soft shadows more flattering to this market town High Street than the noonday sun. The old houses were at their best in it, their shabbiness, the cracks in their fabric veiled, as an ageing face is veiled and smoothed by candlelight. By day the alleys that ran into a scruffy hinterland were rat-hole rubbish traps but now they seemed romantic lanes where lovers might meet under the bracket lamps and as the sun departed, watch the moon ride over a Grimms’ fairy tale huddle of pinnacled rooftops.
As yet it was only eight o’clock and the sun reluctant to leave without treating its worshippers to a pyrotechnic display of rose and gold flames that burnt up the whole western sky. Wexford stood on the south side of the bridge and listened to the river chuckling. Such an innocent river, for all that it knew a secret, for all that one of its stones had put a man out of sight of the sunset!
All the Street windows of the Olive and Dove were open, the curtains fanning out gently over window boxes and over fuchsias that dripped red flowers. On the forecourt a band of Morris dancers had assembled. They wore the motley coat of jesters and one of them was hopping around on a hobby horse. To his amusement Wexford picked out George Carter among the company.
‘Lovely night, Mr Carter,’ he said jovially. Rather shame facedly Carter waved at him a stick with ribbons and bells on. Wexford went into the saloon bar.
At a table in the alcove on the dining-room wall sat the girl Camb had brought to him earlier in the day, an elderly woman and a man. Wexford brought his beer and as he passed them the man got up as if to take his leave.
‘Good evening,’ Wexford said. ‘Have you decided to stay at the Olive?’
The girl was sparing with her smiles. She nodded sharply to him and said, naming his rank precisely, ‘I’d like you to meet my father’s solicitor, Mr Updike. Uncle John, this is Detective Chief Inspector Wexford.’
‘How do you do?’
‘And I don’t think you’ve met my aunt, Mrs Browne?’
Wexford looked from one to the other. Marvellous the way he always had to do Camb’s work for him! The aunt was looking pale but excited, the solicitor gratified. ‘I’m quite prepared to accept that you’re Miss Fanshawe now, Miss Fanshawe,’ Wexford said.
‘I’ve known Nora since she was so high,’ said Updike. ‘You need have no doubt that this is Nora.’ And he gave Wexford a card naming a London firm, Updike, Updike and Sanger of Ava Maria Lane. The chief inspector looked at it, then again at Mrs Browne who was Nora Fanshawe grown old. ‘I’m satisfied.’ He passed on to an empty table.