guess it was north London or north-west London. He didn’t seem to know his way round south of the river.’
Using the Internet to trace a Keith or Kenneth Hill didn’t occur to Wexford. It had occurred to Tom Ede. He set their DC Garrison on to electoral registers in those areas of London and then widened his search when no one was found of suitable age.
‘There’s a Keith Hill who’s a well-known Labour MP,’ said Tom. He and Wexford were sitting in his office. ‘I’ve heard of him, so he must be well known. There was a footballer, but he’s dead. There’s someone who makes musical instruments. There are hundreds of Keith Hills and Kenneth Hills. It’s a common combination of names.’
‘Our one,’ said Wexford, ‘if he’s the one, would be missing. Not dead but missing.’
‘Sure, but there was no register of misspers twelve years ago. The older man and the young man, were they both called Keith Hill or, come to that, Kenneth Hill? Was one Keith and the other one Kenneth?’
‘I don’t know, Tom. We don’t even know if the young man who gave Mildred Jones the name Keith Hill gave it because it was his own name or because it was his uncle’s name. He may have thought it up on the spur of the moment. And although we know that the young man who gave his name as Keith Hill was driving a car which we know belonged to a man called Ken or Keith something, who now lives in Liphook or did live there, we don’t know if this was the young man who tried to sell the car to Miracle Motors. He may have bought it from that man. He may have stolen it.’
Electoral registers are no good, Wexford thought, or they are only any good if these two men are alive and therefore not our two men. They are good only for elimination.
If a trace of bitterness had shown itself in Walter Mackenzie’s words, it was nothing to Martin Rokeby’s. He was plainly a man who saw his whole life as ruined by one small and innocent action he had taken two months before. Or, thought Wexford, he was a consummate actor, one who knew that pretending to a ruined existence, a family break-up and financial disaster as a result of one small move, would do a great deal to free him from suspicion.
No sooner had he sat down in Tom Ede’s state-of-the-art office, all laminate floor, tubular steel and black glass, than he began on his woes.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t say this to a policeman, but you don’t know how many times I’ve wished I’d never lifted that manhole cover or put it back once I’d seen what was down there. What harm would that have done, I’d like to know? Nothing to the harm that’s been done to me. I’ve lost my home, I’m paying an exorbitant rent for a crummy flat more or less under the flyover, it’ll soon be their holidays but my children won’t come home – even supposing there was anywhere for them to come – they’re staying with friends. I ask you, could anybody have let himself in for more grief just by lifting up a manhole cover and looking inside?’
‘Well, Mr Rokeby,’ said Ede, ‘do you think you’d have slept comfortably in Orcadia Cottage, do you think you’d have had a moment’s peace, if you’d lifted it and just put it back? You could have kept what was underneath to yourself for years? I don’t think so.’
‘I didn’t and that’s all that matters now. What have you got me here for?’
It was said with the maximum ungraciousness, but if the man was innocent Wexford could easily understand his resentment. Ede introduced Wexford as his ‘violent crimes adviser’, which Rokeby acknowledged with a minuscule nod. Tall and straight, he was a good-looking man, with regular features and greyish-blond hair, but to Wexford his thinness seemed new as if he had lost weight in those two months. The small dewlap under his chin looked as if he had once had a thicker neck. But all this meant nothing relative to the man’s innocence or guilt.
It was virtually impossible that Rokeby could be responsible for placing the bodies of the older man and woman and the young man in the tomb, but the presence there of the young woman was a different matter altogether. Nothing would be easier than for the occupant of the house – say he had inadvertently killed this girl – to lift the manhole and cover and drop her body down to join the others. This meant that he knew the others were there, but he might easily have done so. He might have examined the contents of that underground space in exactly the way he said he wished he had done. Why then had he disclosed the contents to the police a few years later?
Ede took his time answering Rokeby’s enquiry. ‘I’d like you to make a statement, Mr Rokeby. Nothing to be alarmed about. It won’t be about you or your family at all. I’d like you to list everyone you can remember coming to the backyard of Orcadia Cottage, that is the paved patio area, in the past, say, four years. This will be specially relevant to the people who came – surveyors, contractors, maybe people from the planning authority – who looked at the place in connection with your application to build an underground room.’
‘I can do that,’ Rokeby said, ‘providing you allow that I can’t remember every name.’
‘Just do your best.’
Wexford caught Ede’s eye and Ede gave an infinitesimal nod. ‘Are you aware, Mr Rokeby, that there’s a staircase in the cellar part of the underground area?’
Rokeby shrugged. ‘I’ve never seen it. I’ve been told there is.’
‘There is. And because these stairs mount upwards towards the ground floor, there must have been a door at the top. This door would have been at the end of the hallway, probably next to the kitchen door. It’s not there now. The doorway has been filled in, bricked up and plastered over. Do you know anything about this?’
‘There was no door there when I bought the place.’
Rokeby compressed his lips and looked away, plainly indicating his intention to say no more about the staircase or the missing door. But he promised to list the people who had surveyed the place or simply looked at it four years before. There was also the building firm which had converted the largest bedroom into two smaller bedrooms eight years before.
Once the door closed after him, Ede heaved a sigh and said, ‘Liphook is going to be a hard nut to crack.’
‘The Internet?’ Wexford was on shaky ground here. He never quite knew what the Internet or a search engine could or could not do.
‘We have the name Keith or Kenneth Hill. Whatever the nephew called himself we’re pretty sure the owner of the Edsel was called Ken or Kenneth, possibly Hill, possibly Gray. If this uncle character had the Edsel with him it would help. According to the young man who tried to sell the Edsel, his Uncle Ken or Kenneth went to live in Liphook twelve years ago. We don’t have the name of a street in Liphook, we don’t even have the man’s name, only probabilities. You’ve not found the car, I suppose?’
Wexford told him. ‘The Edsel is in Balham, in a garage, being looked after by an Edsel fanatic called Mick
