Vault

The cat appeared contented with nothing but their company. She sat with them until Wexford switched on the News at Ten and then, apparently having an aversion to television, took her departure, a slender slinky shape under her thick blue coat, streaking up through the dusk to the big house.

He wasn’t going to stay in on Thursday and wait for Tom’s call, but he took his mobile out with him. He walked by way of the Heath to Kenwood, intending to make it to Highgate, but that would have meant finding some sort of transport to bring him back. It was too far to walk both ways. Highgate could be saved for another day. St Michael’s Church where Coleridge had a memorial tablet could wait till next week and so could Highgate Hill where Dick Whittington and his cat turned to look down on London and its gold-paved streets. ‘I would bet you anything you like,’ Wexford said to no one in particular, ‘that he gave milk to his cat.’

Tom didn’t call. Nor was there a message from him on the landline when he got back. Never mind. He and Dora went to the cinema to see Slumdog Millionaire and next morning, in the absence of any phone call or message, he said to Dora, ‘Let’s go home for the weekend.’

‘We are at home.’

‘No we’re not. Not really. If we go before three we’ll avoid the get-away-from-London rush.’

CHAPTER SIX

IT WAS THE FIRST time he had sat in the bar of the Olive and Dove as an ordinary member of the public and not as a policeman. ‘Why don’t we go into the snug?’ he said to Mike Burden.

‘The snug’s gone. It’s been converted into a ladies-only bar.’

Wexford stared. ‘Can they do that? Isn’t it what we now have to call gender discrimination?’

‘Probably. There’s a big fight on about it. It’s been the lead story in the Courier for the past week. Red wine?’

‘That hasn’t changed.’

Wexford and Dora had reached home in the late afternoon of the day before. As it had been last time, it was a little like returning from a fortnight’s holiday, but knowing you could go back to that holiday as soon as you liked. Dora had phoned Sylvia within an hour and was with her now in her rambling house in the countryside. It rather gratified Wexford to see that both his daughters had bigger houses than he, though of course he now had two. He had joined the ranks of the second-homers. He had become one of those who battle through the nightmare of traffic congestion to reach a country house they will find cold and comfortless. Not in the spring, though, and now with windows open a little way, the stuffiness was past and the air breathable. It was very warm and he was sitting by one of those windows, looking at the lawn – you could almost see the grass growing longer and longer – when he phoned Burden. He had small hope of the new Detective Superintendent being free on a Saturday night, but Burden had said a quick yes, he’d love to meet.

As Burden walked back to their table carrying the two glasses of wine, Wexford found himself studying him. It was as if he expected his old friend and one-time subordinate to be changed in appearance, to be taller or heavier or more dignified. Absurd, of course. Only a few months had gone by. Burden was still slender, still perfectly dressed for whatever the occasion happened to be. A Saturday evening drink in a hotel bar? Burden wore grey flannel trousers with a grey nail-head tweed jacket over an open-necked dark green shirt. His hair, once caramel- colour, was now the grey of his jacket. But that, too, was unchanged from their last meeting.

Inevitably, he asked Wexford what he had been doing. The faint note of concern in his voice was slightly irritating. Wexford told him about Tom Ede, his unorthodox appointment as Ede’s adviser and about the contents of the vault. The four bodies, one of them half-inside a plastic bag of the sort used to cover a bicycle or motorbike. The jewellery. Most of this part had been in the newspapers, had for a week back in May dominated the national dailies. For a moment Wexford had hesitated, but none of this was secret, certainly not from a detective superintendent.

‘It’s an intriguing case.’ Even in no more than four words, Burden sounded relieved. What had he expected? That Wexford would be bored with his new life, frustrated, harking back to time past? ‘I suppose there’s no possibility of this Rokeby being the perpetrator?’

‘Ede thinks not. And it’s hard to imagine a man applying to the planning authority for an underground room when this would mean excavating the very place he least wanted to be discovered. He did apply and the reason his application was rejected appears to have been the neighbours objecting. And you have to remember that it was he who removed the manhole cover. Why would he do that? And if he did, knowing what was underneath, why tell the police?’

‘Where was he twelve years ago? You did say twelve years?’

‘He and his wife and their children had a house in West Hampstead. They sold it eight years ago and it fetched one and a half million, just enough to buy Orcadia Cottage. It’s hard to see how he could possibly have put three bodies into an underground tomb in a house he very likely didn’t know existed twelve years before.’

‘So are you saying,’ said Burden, ‘that whoever did the deed would have had to be living in the house?’

‘Not quite, Mike. The manhole is in a paved area or patio with access to a mews by means of a door in the wall. Now that door can be locked and bolted too, but my guess is that it was often left unlocked and unbolted. For instance, it was unlocked when Tom Ede and his sergeant and I went to have a look at the place. It’s quite possible that someone could have brought those bodies there in a car and there has been mention from a neighbour of a man being seen in a big old American car called an Edsel at about the right time.’

Burden, who liked cars, looked close to nostalgic. He gazed dreamily into the middle distance like one seeing visions. ‘An Edsel Corsair,’ he said. ‘Well, think of that. Fords made it. Dates from the late Fifties. Lovely, but it was never popular and it didn’t sell well.’

‘How do you come to know all that?’

‘My dad was mad about cars. He told me the Edsel was promoted on E-Day, September 4th, 1957. I’ve never forgotten it.’

‘Evidently,’ said Wexford in a dry voice.

Burden took no notice. ‘I wonder if it was a two-door or a four-door hard-top? Potential buyers are very stupid about this sort of thing. They didn’t like its grid, a pursed mouth instead of a wide grin, if you can believe it. And then the onset of the recession of 1957 was one of the external forces working against …’