Road Rage (38 page)

Still clutching the Yorkshire terrier, Linda Dickson said shrilly, “You’re taking him to the police station?”

Wexford regarded her calmly. “Would that present a problem, Mrs. Dickson? But, no, I’m not. I thought we might talk here. In your office.”

Hennessy was unplugging the phone with gloved hands, dropping the instrument into a plastic bag.

“He can’t have my phone!”

“The property of Telecom, as a matter of fact, Mr. Dickson. We’ll clear it with them. You’ll soon have it
back.” Wexford sat down without waiting to be asked. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t be asked. “Now, you’d never seen these people before, I take it?”

“Never. Not one of them.”

“Do many of the locals use the Brigadier or do you depend on a passing-through trade, people on their way to the coast?”

Once it was plain to Dickson that Wexford’s questions were not to involve him directly, not aimed at jeopardizing his livelihood or discouraging his clientele, he began to enjoy himself. People usually did, Wexford had found. Everybody likes imparting information, and the ignorant and unobservant correspondingly enjoy it more.

“Well, it’s all the lot, isn’t it?” said Dickson. “We get a lot of the young. There’s not many senior citizens, on account of you need transport to get out here and that they don’t have a lot of. Mr. Canning from Framhurst, he’s in here a lot.”

“He means Ron Canning from Goland’s Farm,” said Linda Dickson, putting the Yorkshire terrier on the floor where it stood shivering. “You know, him as lets those tree people use his field for their cars. If,” she added, “you can call them cars.”

The dog sniffed Wexford’s shoes, gave his left toecap an exploratory lick. He shifted his feet, not easy in so confined a space. “What’s that tattoo on your arm, Mr. Dickson? Some sort of insect, is it, or a bird, or what?”

“A swallow, it’s supposed to be.” To Wexford’s surprise, Dickson flushed. “I’m going to have it removed, the wife’s not keen on it. Haven’t got round to it yet, that’s all.” He picked up the dog, pressed its face against his red cheek, and reverted quickly to the original subject. “Those Weir Theatre people come in. From Pomfret. They call themselves the Friends of the Weir Theatre and
the leading light in that’s a chap called Jeffrey Godwin. He’s like an actor.”

“Been in
Bramwell
,” said Linda. “No, I tell a lie, it was
Casualty
.”

“I don’t mind that, I can tell you,” said Dickson, holding the dog against his shoulder and rubbing its spine as if in an effort to bring up wind. “I mean, folks like him coming in. Attracts trade, that’s what it does. Lot of bettors come in just to get a look at him and I always point him out, the least I can do. I always say, ‘That’s Jeffrey Godwin, the actor.’ He’s very gracious, I must say.”

Dickson spoke as if he were the proprietor of a restaurant in midtown Manhattan where Paul Newman was frequently to be seen at a particular table. He smiled reminiscently, settled the dog on his lap, where it immediately fell asleep.

“Look at him,” said Linda fondly. “You can see he loves his daddy. Can I get you a drink, Mr. Wexford? I’m sure I don’t know what’s happened to my manners. Must be all this upheaval.”

Wexford refused.

“Little something for you, Bill?”

While Dickson was considering this offer, Wexford asked him if he’d noticed any newcomers recently who had become regulars. Did any of the protesters, for instance, use the Brigadier?

Dickson made no secret of his contempt for those involved in any kind of protest against, or even dissent from, totally orthodox convention. Wexford knew at once, from the expression on his face, from the curl of his lip, without his having to say a word, exactly what his attitude would be to those who attempt to save whales, ban foxhunting, prohibit chemical fertilizer, favor organic foods, be thrifty with water, use lead-free petrol, or recycle anything at all.

“Needless to say,” said Dickson, “I haven’t got a lot of time for those gentry. And don’t get me wrong, that’s not on account of they don’t
drink
, not to say ‘drink,’ because they’re the sort that imbibe a good deal in the way of your mineral waters and Britvics, and that’s where your licensee makes his profit, so no, it’s not that. It’s not that they’ve got no money for their Perriers and Cokes and whatever. I’ll tell you what it is, it’s like the way they’re interfering in life, our life, yours and mine, guv’nor. Life what has to go on, if you take my meaning.
What has to go on
. Right?”

He drew breath, reached for the tankard his wife had brought him. “Thank you, my sweetheart, that’s very kind of you. Now who else can I tell you about? Well now, there’s this lady Stan drives up here now and again. Don’t know her name—d’you know her name, Lin?”

“I don’t, Bill. Quite an elderly lady she is, from Kingsmarkham, and she comes up here regular Tuesdays and Thursdays to meet a gentleman. I said to Bill, that’s very sweet, I said, that’s touching, them being not a day under seventy. But I don’t know her name and I don’t know his. Stan would know.”

Wexford wondered what possible connection the Dicksons thought a pair of superannuated lovers who chose to meet in the Brigadier of all places—Was one of them married? Were both of them?—could have with Sacred Globe. “Stan?” he said.

“Stan Trotter,” said Linda. “Well, Stanley, to give him his full name. He drives her up here on account of her not driving herself, not having a license, I daresay. I say ‘drives her’ but it’s not been going on for more than—what would you say, Bill? A month.

“The first time, a Tuesday it was, Stan came into the lounge bar with her and that was the first time I’d seen
him since April, as a matter of fact since the night that German girl got herself killed.”

Wexford looked at her and watched the color flood her face.

F
or the second time in six months Stanley Trotter had been arrested but this time he would appear on the following morning at Kingsmarkham Magistrates’ Court, charged with the murder of Ulrike Ranke.

“I owe you an apology, Mike,” Wexford said. “You were right all along. I daresay I was rude to you—can’t remember what I said, but I expect it was nasty.”

“I didn’t
know
, you know. I was doing your intuitive thing. It was just a very powerful feeling. I didn’t know Trotter’s second wife was Linda Dickson’s sister, I didn’t go into his family tree, though maybe I should have.”

“He was only married to her for five minutes,” said Wexford. “The mystery is the woman feels she owes him some sort of loyalty. She came out with it quite involuntarily. ‘Well, he’s my brother-in-law, isn’t he?’ was what she said. She seems to subscribe to the curious notion that once a brother-in-law always a brother-in-law, irrespective of intervening divorces and remarriages. These days that must give some people very large extended families.”

“Dickson didn’t mention it, though?”

“Dickson didn’t know his wife saw Trotter. Or maybe he just didn’t want to know. When she was questioned she said she’d gone to bed and to sleep. Only in fact she was looking out of the window. They’re not exactly a compassionate couple, are they? Not what you’d call well
endowed with empathy? Can she actually have been
concerned
about Ulrike?”

Burden shook his head, but in the way someone does when he doubts rather than denies. “She’s a woman and Ulrike was a young girl. There’s always so much we don’t know in a case like this, so much we’ll never know.”

“Are you saying this was simple anxiety as to Ulrike’s ultimate welfare?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“Maybe I do. Suffice it to say for now that she did look out of the window, she sat in the window looking out and saw Trotter arrive at about eleven. Trotter didn’t ring the bell or knock on the door because he didn’t need to. Ulrike was waiting out there and he didn’t even have to drive across that gravel and thus announce his coming to Dickson, who was clearing up in the bar.”

“And when Dickson finally went upstairs Linda didn’t say a word about seeing Trotter come for the girl? Didn’t say a word then or when the girl went missing or when her body was found?”

“Look at it this way, Mike. Linda was relieved when Trotter came, a load had been taken from her mind, so she got into bed and fell asleep. Remember she’d had a heavy day. Next morning she’d no reason to feel anxious about Ulrike. Trotter had picked her up and driven her wherever she wanted to go. But when Ulrike was missing, when the papers were full of it, what did she think then?

“We’ve never gone any more deeply into why Dickson performed the callous act of sending Ulrike outside to wait for the taxi. He hasn’t given a reason, just said they were closed and it wasn’t a cold night. But suppose it was Linda who made him send her outside? Linda who even took her to the door, closed it, and locked and bolted it? Poor Ulrike isn’t alive to tell us.

“My idea is that Linda is a jealous woman, who’s been given reason in the past to be jealous. She wasn’t leaving Dickson alone with a young woman in the middle of the night, but for herself, she was exhausted, she was dying for her bed …”

“Yes, but, Reg, Ulrike was a personable young woman of nineteen and Dickson—well, he’s not exactly love’s young dream, is he?”

“Not to you or me or Ulrike maybe, but perhaps he is to Linda.” Wexford smiled. “When someone asked James Thurber why the women in his cartoons weren’t attractive he said, ‘They are attractive to my men.’ Dickson is attractive to Linda and therefore she thinks he must be to everyone else. So she sent Ulrike outside and watched from upstairs to see the taxi come. Because if it hadn’t come Ulrike might have come back inside, been
allowed back inside
by Dickson.”

Burden nodded. “And later?”

“After the body was found, d’you mean? By then she knew Dickson had nothing to do with it. But she had her loyalty to her ex-brother-in-law. To be fair to her, she was probably quite unable to confront the fact that a member of her family, however briefly and tenuously a member, could be a murderer. Few people can do that. He picked Ulrike up, he was driving the taxi, but someone else killed her.”

“I’ll never understand human beings.”

“You and me both,” said Wexford. ‘Trotter drove Ulrike to Framhurst Copses, raped and strangled her. Perhaps she’d offered him a large sum of money to drive her all the way to Aylesbury and he’d seen what money she’d got. He took it and the pearls. She may have offered him the money and the pearls as the price for her life, so he must have been disappointed when he couldn’t sell a necklace he thought worth over a thousand.” He shook
his head. “They fetched us there for fun. Sacred Globe, I mean. To amuse themselves.”

Ryan Barker’s last message, his demand, had not reached the media. A blanket of not so much silence as negativity had fallen over Sacred Globe and the inquiry, drawn down by Wexford, as if he had pulled a cord and released a heavy drapery. The newspapers carried stories of failure, of police ineptitude, of hostages’ lives at increased risk, but they held no
news
, no single new development. No word of Ryan Barker’s defection had been released to them.

It was as if Sacred Globe and its three captives—its two captives?—were passing into the realm of hostage-taking terrorists associated with a Middle Eastern political scene. The hostages were taken, there was international outcry, demands were made, all negotiation was repudiated, more demands were made with more threats, and then gradually the whole situation grew stale, to be replaced by new excitements. And meanwhile the hostages remained, languished, half-forgotten as the days passed, the weeks, the months, the years.

The new excitement in Kingsmarkham was Stanley Trotter’s court appearance. A brief appearance it would be, followed by an immediate remand to a higher court, but the press was on the scene in good time, the same faces, the same cameras, as on the morning the news of Sacred Globe broke.

It had been a big story, Ulrike Ranke’s disappearance and the discovery of her body. She was female, young, blond, good-looking. If that wasn’t enough, she had been wandering by night in what was to her a foreign country, carrying drugs, money, jewels, the stuff of sensation.

The aim would be to establish some link between her death and Sacred Globe, or her death and Roxane
Masood’s. Unfortunately for this pack of people, speculation as to Trotter’s links with Sacred Globe would now be sub judice and strictly to be kept out of print until a guilty verdict could be returned some months afterward. Unfortunately too, the cell in Kingsmarkham Police Station where Trotter had been held overnight was no more than fifty yards from the entrance to the Magistrates’ Court.

A coat was thrown over his head and he was bundled across the paving while the television cameramen got their shots for early evening news programs and
Newsroom South-East
. A small crowd of the public, none of whom had known Ulrike or Trotter or had any personal interest whatever in her murder, waited about in time to boo and yell imprecations while the hooded figure made his short journey. They too would be on television, which was perhaps what they most wanted.

Nicky Weaver said she couldn’t understand it. She never wanted to hear the word “sleeping” and the word “bag” coupled together again as long as she lived. But she knew as surely as it was possible to know anything of this nature that every Outdoors camouflage sleeping bag sold in the British Isles had now been traced.

There had been thirty-six, the green and purple version being more popular.

“It’s a blessing we weren’t trying to track down the colored ones,” she said to Wexford. “There were ninety-six of them. The thing is, of the camouflage type, Ted or I have seen every one of them. I mean, actually cast our eyes over them. Most hadn’t been sold, as I say they aren’t popular, people think they look like old army surplus. But we also tracked down a couple to people’s homes, one in Leicester and one in a village in Shropshire.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying it has to be the bag Frenchie Collins
bought in Brixton and says she abandoned at the airport in Zaire.”