Road Rage (40 page)

Wexford had been uneasy about this annex or conversion ever since he had heard it described as a shower room, since Dora had been emphatic the room she had used had contained only a lavatory and basin. Of course it was possible the shower had been removed or walled-in before the hostages were brought there—possible but unlikely.

And they saw now that this was another dead end. The room the Murray sisters had converted was large, its walls tiled, its shower cabinet of generous size. Its window was of frosted glass and curtained. From the main room quite a big picture window had a view of Tancred woods.

“It must have something to do with those hostages,”

Mrs. Holgate said wonderingly. “The Kingsmarkham Kidnap.”

They neither confirmed nor denied. Wexford nodded enigmatically. He stepped out once more into the afternoon sunshine and a young woman who had come running out of the main house almost cannoned into him.

She said breathlessly, “Are you Chief Inspector Wexford?”

“I am.”

“There’s a phone call for you.”

“For me? Are you sure?”

But he had his own phone. Who would know he was here? No one knew.

He followed her into the main house. The phone receiver lay off the hook on a small hall table. He lifted it, said, “Wexford.”

“This is Sacred Globe.”

“Ryan Barker,” said Wexford.

“We haven’t heard from you. You haven’t complied with our request. If there is no announcement on the evening news bulletins of a complete revision on the plan for the Kingsmarkham Bypass, Mrs. Struther dies.”

Someone had written it for him. He was plainly reading it and reading it nervously, his voice growing squeaky. Under his breath Wexford cursed this group of people who could so exploit a child.

He said, “What do you mean by evening bulletins, Ryan?”

“Wait a minute, please.”

Wexford could hear him conferring with a companion. Then, “By seven. If it’s not, Mrs. Struther dies and we will deliver her body to Kingsmarkham tonight.”

“Ryan, wait. Stay where you are. Are you at the Brigadier on the old bypass?”

No reply, only an indrawn breath.

“What you ask,” Wexford said, “isn’t possible. You know that.”

“You have to make it possible,” Ryan Barker’s voice said, growing cold now, growing remote. “You have to tell the press and tell the government. Tell them she’s going to die. We’re ready to kill her.”

He added stiffly, obviously prompted, “We are Sacred Globe, saving the world.”

W
hen he had phoned the Chief Constable and told him of Sacred Globe’s latest message, he walked out of the Holgates’ house and drove out of the Holgates’ drive and stood on the road, looking through binoculars across the valley.

Somewhere, in a house, a big house, one of those houses out there among the hills and woods … There were hundreds such. And if he couldn’t find which one in the next four hours a woman would die. The second woman. Only this one would be deliberate murder. But it would happen because government would never, not in any circumstances, these or similar, not under any threat, announce the cancellation of the bypass. Therefore it would happen unless, in the next four hours, he found which house among so many held the two hostages.

“Nothing to the media,” Montague Ryder said when Wexford walked into the suite at the Constabulary Headquarters. “We must keep it dark from them as long as we can.”

“As long as we can” had a sinister ring. It meant, until Kitty Struther’s body is found.

“I know they aren’t far from here, sir,” Wexford said. He glanced at the map on the wall. It was a blown-up sheet from the Ordnance Survey, the central part of the Mid-Sussex area. Ryder nodded to him and he drew with his right forefinger an oval shape that encompassed Kings-markham,
Stowerton, Pomfret, and Sewingbury, the villages of Framhurst, Savesbury, Stringfield, Cambery Ashes, and Pomfret Monachorum. Places south of the town were excluded. None of them would be menaced by the new bypass. No house in their vicinity would have a view of it.

“And that’s your criterion?”

“One of them,” Wexford said. “Maybe the most important one.”

Did she know they intended to kill her? He didn’t ask Montague Ryder that because Ryder could only guess, as he could. She had been, and no doubt still was, the most fearful of the hostages, the most vulnerable, the least self-contained, and with the fewest inner resources. Was she with her husband, or had they too been separated?

And now he found himself in the dreadful position at this juncture of having nothing to do. For ten days they had all worked so hard, had worked to the utmost of their capacity, and the result had been only to narrow down the place they were looking for into something like fifty square miles. Nothing remained but to pick out the needle in the haystack or wait for the discovery of another sleeping bag containing another woman’s body.

“We’ll keep Contemporary Cars’ grounds under surveillance,” he said to Burden. “I doubt if they’d come to the same place twice, but I daren’t take the risk.”

“The police station’s another possibility. So is Ms. Cox’s and Mrs. Peabody’s. The Concreation building. The Brigadier.”

“Your house. My house.”

They were there now, sitting in Burden’s living room. Or, rather, Burden was sitting. Wexford was pacing.

“The
Courier
offices,” he said. “The Stowerton end of the bypass site. The Pomfret end.”

“You said that kid said Kingsmarkham.”

“That’s true. He did. We can’t police all these places, anyway. We haven’t got the backup.”

“Has anyone thought of using a helicopter? To find where they are, I mean. We know they’re in our fifty square miles.”

“What could you see from a helicopter, Mike? A house with outbuildings? There are hundreds. The hostages aren’t going to be up on the roof, waving distress flags.”

Burden shrugged. “Sacred Globe will watch the BBC’s early-evening news, which is at five or five-fifteen on a Saturday, and ITN’s half an hour later. If there is no announcement, and of course there can’t be, they proceed to kill Kitty Struther. Is that what will happen?”

“I don’t know about ‘will,’ Mike,” Wexford said bitterly. “It’s twenty to six now. It may be happening now, and we can’t do a thing to stop it.”

Upriver from Watersmeet, where the stream that ran under Kingsmarkham High Street met the larger waterway, the Brede flows among wide meadows and winds between groves of alders and stands of willows. At one point the stones of the riverbed are large enough and regular enough to form a dam over which the determined water gushes and spouts into the deep pool below. This is Stringfield Weir and it is overlooked by Stringfield Mill, built long ago when some of the farming was arable and the means needed for grinding corn.

The waterwheel was long gone. Sails there had never been. The building of white weatherboard and red brick, a huge graceful structure, had been converted some ten years before into a theater and become the regular venue of repertory companies. The lane that led down to it from Pomfret Monachorum was of reasonable width and serviceable surface. Once there the theatergoer had everything the civilized in pursuit of culture could wish for:
a large car park concealed by tall trees, a restaurant with river frontage, a splendid view across Stringfield Bridge to the woods, meadows and downs beyond, and, of course, the auditorium that was big enough to hold four hundred people.

One of its disadvantages was that actors onstage were bedeviled by flying insects, drawn in by the light, moths and lacewings and daddy longlegs. Legend had it that a bat had tangled itself in an actress’s hair while she was playing Juliet. Wexford, who had never been there before, thought there might be mosquitoes and he counseled Dora and Jenny to avoid the river terrace and stay inside for their preperformance glass of wine.

“I’ll come back for you,” he said. “Will ten forty-five suit?”

“Reg, we can call for a taxi,” Jenny said. “I should have brought my own car, I don’t know why I didn’t. It’s not as if we intend to go boozing.”

“Well, now you can. A bit. I’ll come back for you, so you needn’t worry.”

Extinction
with Christine Colville and Richard Paton ran for three hours, not including the two intervals. He read that on the program up on the foyer wall. This play, by Jeffrey Godwin himself, alternated its performances with a modern-dress version of
Twelfth Night
and with Strindberg’s
The Ghost Sonata
. An ambitious company, who set their sights high. A voice behind him said, “How’s Sheila?”

He turned and saw standing at his shoulder a tall genial-looking man with brown curly hair and beard.

“You must be Jeffrey Godwin,” he said. “Wexford—but you know that. Sheila’s fine, got a baby daughter.”

“I saw it in the paper,” said Godwin. “Lovely. I hope to see mother and child in the not too far distant future. Are you coming to tonight’s performance?”

Wexford said he wouldn’t be and explained that he was particularly busy at the moment. But his wife was here and her friend. He said good-bye to Godwin and made his way back to the car park, skirting the mill’s still sunlit gardens from which came a heavy scent of late-flowering roses.

Back in Kingsmarkham he went to the police station and into the old gym. Damon Slesar was there with Karen Malahyde and three staff working at computers. Wexford said to the two detective sergeants that the witching hour was past, it was after seven-thirty now. Give Sacred Globe a couple of hours and the time would come for the returning of Kitty Struther’s body.

“It may be an empty threat,” Damon said.

Karen looked at him, shaking her head. “I don’t think so. Why would they start being merciful and civilized at this stage? They’re more likely to be made cruel by desperation.”

“Merciful” was an interesting word for her to have used, Wexford thought. He asked her what duties had been arranged for her and Slesar that evening.

“I’m doing Contemporary Cars, sir, and Damon will be at Mrs. Peabody’s.”

A pity they couldn’t be together, he thought. It was obviously what they would have liked. But he hadn’t got the personnel, the backup. They needed everyone, even himself, for surveillance duties. On the watch, there was a good chance of catching Sacred Globe, he thought optimistically. But what a price to pay for catching them! Kitty Struther’s death. He imagined Monday morning’s papers. Tomorrow’s television, come to that. He switched the image off, because thinking like that was negative and pointless, and saw Slesar’s hand just close quickly over Karen’s before leaving the old gym.

After Karen too had gone he sat at the window, eyeing
the precincts of the police station and its car parks, front and back, the entrances to both of which could be seen from this point. If they caught someone tonight and followed him—or her—back to where they had come from, what would he need in the way of assistance?

He thought of the gun that Rubber Face had had with him in the car when Dora was taken. Rubber Face again had a gun when bringing food to the hostages in the basement room, and on that occasion he had fired it, probably only to frighten, but could they be sure of that?

Very likely, since Rubber Face had it both times, there was only one gun. Possibly Rubber Face was the only shot. Possibly, very possibly, the gun was a replica or a child’s toy from a toy shop. If Kitty Struther was shot they would know, he thought grimly, that would be a way of knowing for certain.

And when they knew, when they had followed the driver of the car that brought Kitty Struther’s body, would he need arms himself?

Armed response vehicles patrolled the roads for sixteen hours each day. In Mid-Sussex there were two such on patrol and carrying arms. Authority to utilize and deploy firearms officers could be given only by an officer of the rank of superintendent or above except in special circumstances. These would certainly be such circumstances, but armed officers could never be interspersed with unarmed in any operation. If the severity of risk was great, all officers involved in the attack would be fully armed and work in teams of four at a minimum, or more likely eight.

Wexford and his own would be a hundred yards away, watching through binoculars. And the price of all this was Kitty Struther’s life.

At eight-thirty he left his watch for Lynn Fancourt to take over and drove to Pomfret and Clare Cox’s house. Ted
Hennessy was outside, in his car on the opposite side of the road, but Wexford ignored him, went up to the front door, and knocked.

She came to the door after he had knocked again and rung as well. Hassy Masood had gone back to London with his second family—what interest had he now in any of this, now his daughter was dead? She was alone. Her bereavement had aged her twenty years and she had a madwoman-in-the-attic look, her face gaunt and gray, her hair a shaggy fleece with the color and texture of dried grasses. Deep down in dark sockets her eyes stared wildly at him. Impossible for him to say now that he wanted to talk to her about the remaining two hostages, that he held the strong belief—he hardly knew why—that a woman’s body would be delivered here within the next few hours.

“I came to see how you are.”

She stepped aside to let him enter. “As you see,” and then she said, “Not good.”

There are some situations in which there is nothing to say. He sat down and she sat down.

“I do nothing all day,” she said. “I’m alone and I do nothing. The neighbors get my shopping.”

“Your painting?” he hazarded, thinking of what they all said, that work was the remedy for sorrow.

“I can’t paint.” She smiled, a ghastly shadowy smile. “I shall never paint again.” Tears in her eyes began to flow down her face. “When I think at all I think of her in that room being afraid. Being so afraid that she lost her life trying to escape from it.” She put up her hand and wiped the back of it across her eyes. It induced a little shiver, the way she read his thoughts. “That other woman they’ve got, they’ll kill her, won’t they? Do you think they’d take me instead if I offered? If I got it in the papers somehow, that they could have me? I’d like them to kill me.”