The Rokebys had come home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE sometimes deceptive. Wexford admitted this cliché to himself when he had been inside the house in Melina Place for no more than five minutes. David Goldberg might be reclusive, but he was far from the zombie-like paranoid creature Wexford had set him down as when he had questioned the man before. True, the television was on and it was ten o’clock in the morning, but it was showing a DVD of Shadowlands, one of Wexford’s favourite films. You are always inclined to warm to someone who turns out to share your own tastes.
‘In some people’s eyes,’ said Goldberg in his harsh, gravelly voice, ‘watching TV in the daytime is the Eighth Deadly Sin.’
‘Not mine,’ said Wexford. ‘I must tell you, Mr Goldberg, that I’ve no right to question you. I’m not a policeman, not any more. And I must also tell you that if you tell me anything that helps in this case I shall be obliged to pass it on to Detective Superintendent Ede.’
‘OK. But I haven’t got anything to tell you.’ David Goldberg picked up the remote and pressed the key that put the DVD on ‘pause’. ‘I told you before I know nothing about that manhole case. All I know is what I read in the papers.’ He spread out his hands and shrugged. ‘I don’t have drinks and snacks and things between meals, so I hope you don’t want anything.’
‘I don’t want anything.’
The room they were in was small but very light because the rear wall was almost entirely of glass with a glass door set in it on the right-hand side. Outside was a small garden, neat as a pin, beds full of michaelmas daisies and asters surrounding a tiny lawn with a statue of a girl standing on a plinth and holding up a pitcher.
‘Yes, in case you’re going to ask, I do it myself. I may be disabled but that doesn’t stop me weeding and planting. I use my hands.’
‘It’s lovely.’
‘What do you want to ask me about?’
‘A young woman from the Ukraine called Vladlena.’
Goldberg wasn’t as surprised as Wexford expected. He nodded reflectively. ‘Yes. Vladlena. No doubt you’ve been talking to that nosy old termagant Mrs Jones. Mildred. I call her Mildreadful.’
Wexford smiled. ‘I’d better tell you that I’m not here to get Vladlena into any sort of trouble. If she’s still here. If she hasn’t gone back to wherever she came from. I have nothing to do with Immigration. I’m not even a policeman any more. Nothing you say will do her any harm.’
‘OK. Right. Vladlena – it’s a great name, isn’t it? – she came to the door one morning and when I opened it she said she’d run away from a house in Orcadia Mews because she’d burnt a shirt. So I let her in and sat her down. It’s not the sort of thing I usually do, but it wasn’t a usual situation, was it? She’d burnt a shirt and she was afraid of the police. That’s what she said. Oh, and old Mrs Mildreadful was on her trail.’
This time Wexford did laugh. ‘What did you do?’
‘Well, basically I gave her a job. My cleaner had just left. I liked the look of Vladlena. I told her I’d want her to shop for me and do a few other jobs I can’t do and she was happy with that. She was thrilled, poor child. I told her she wouldn’t have to iron my shirts. Nothing gets ironed in this house.
‘I explained to her that I don’t go out. That means that anything I want from out there.’ – he waved a vague hand – ‘I’d have to ask her to do for me. I suppose I should explain to you.’ The harsh voice deepened. ‘A long time ago, twenty years ago and a bit more, I was attacked in the street. For being gay – what a word for me! Four thugs set about me. My left leg was broken in three places and my head was bashed in. That left me with epilepsy.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Wexford said.
‘You actually look as if you are. I live on incapacity benefit and what I earn from the odd bit of journalism. I got compensation, which enabled me to buy this house. But I don’t go out at all. Into the street, that is. Not ever. I’m scared, you see. I am simply terrified to go out. I watch DVDs, I write a column called Gaiety and I tend my garden.’
‘I see why you needed Vladlena.’
‘Yes. Well, she was great. She even cooked for me and that was a change from living on ready meals, I can tell you. I knew she hadn’t a right to be here, she hadn’t any sort of passport. I knew all that but I liked her, she suited me. I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anyone. Well, I never see anyone to tell. I thought, I’ll see if she’ll marry me. I’m gay, of course, if I’m anything any more. It’ll just be to get her citizenship, she won’t even have to live here if she doesn’t want to. I thought of all that and then Mildreadful accosted her in the street.’
‘I gather she was still harping on about the shirt.’
‘It was all of a year later. She told her she’d have to pay for a new shirt or the police would get her. Vladlena just ran away again. She came into the house with the shopping and said she was going away, she was going to hide. You can imagine I told her she wasn’t in any danger. It was all nonsense on old Mildreadful’s part, but she wasn’t having any. I should have told her then, I should have said I’d marry her and then she could have stayed, but I didn’t. I wasn’t sure, you see. When it came to it I suppose I got cold feet. I didn’t really think she’d go. But she did. She left and I never saw her again.’
‘You didn’t try to find her?’
‘Yes, of course I did. I had her address. She had a room in the house of an old Russian woman in Kilburn. I had Vladlena’s mobile number. Everyone has mobiles these days, don’t they? Everyone but me. I haven’t got one. I phoned, but her phone was never answered. I didn’t go up there. I told you, I don’t go out. It must sound wimpish but I can’t go out, I just can’t. I’m like someone with agoraphobia only I’m not agoraphobic.’
‘So that was the end?’
Goldberg sounded irritable. ‘No, it wasn’t. I asked a friend of mine to help. I do have friends, a few. Sophie, she’s called. I’ve known her since she was a child and I was young – and able-bodied.’ He made a rueful face. ‘I asked her if she’d go up there and inquire for Vladlena.’
Wexford remembered or made a wild guess that turned out not to be wild at all. ‘Not Sophie Baird who lives in Hall Road?’
‘That’s the one. Do you know her?’
‘I don’t exactly know her, Mr Goldberg. I talked to her and her partner in connection with this case.’
‘Yes, the partner. The arch homophobe. We don’t exactly get on. In fact, we’ve met just the once and that was enough.’
‘She said nothing to me about Vladlena.’
‘Could you call me David, please? “Mr Goldberg” sounds like a big fat banker, very rich and living in The Bishop’s Avenue.’