‘Let’s hope that the ones they brought with them they never unpacked.’
This proved to be the case. The Rokebys were far from pleased to see Wexford again and positively hostile to Lucy. ‘Two of you?’ Anne Rokeby said. ‘What are you going to do? Arrest us?’
‘Did you bring a crate of china or crockery with you when you came to this flat?’
Rokeby said, ‘And if we did? Did you think it wasn’t china but another body?’
‘This isn’t a joking matter, Mr Rokeby,’ said Lucy. ‘Since you appear not to have unpacked it, we’ll see that crate, if you please.’
It was full of pieces of what might have been a dinner service and each piece was wrapped in a sheet from the Yellow Pages. Lucy began unwrapping them, doubtful until she reached the third layer from the top. The next piece she brought to light, a sauceboat, was wrapped in a page on which the name K, K and L Ltd had a ring round it in ballpoint.
‘We seem to have found what we’re looking for, Mr Rokeby,’ said Wexford. He smiled. ‘When we have unwrapped all twelve dinner plates and all twelve soup bowls we’ll leave you in peace.’ My God, he thought, I’m catching cliche-itis off Tom. I’ll be praying next …
‘Eighteen!’ said Anne Rokeby. ‘I used to wash them all with my own hands in soap made for delicate fabrics,’ and she burst into noisy tears.
From the sheets of yellow paper they noted eight separate firms of contractors, including Subearth. ‘Oh, yes, Subearth,’ said Rokeby. ‘I remember now. I mentioned them to Colin Jones and he knew all about them. Recommended them actually.’
Wexford asked the Rokebys’ permission to take the relevant pages away with them and this was grudgingly granted. Anne Rokeby had stopped crying and was muttering an explanation of her conduct, though no one had asked for it. Seeing her beautiful dinner service, which she never expected to use again, had set her off so that she lost all control. It was enough to break her heart.
‘Have you got a dinner service, sir?’ Lucy asked when they were heading for West Hampstead.
‘I don’t know. I expect we had one once. Certainly not the eighteen-piece kind.’
‘I shall never have one,’ said Lucy. ‘I shall never have anything you can’t put in a machine to wash it.’
Wexford laughed. It was Wednesday, a good day to start phoning up builders, well before they all started knocking off for the weekend. How many of those who came to size up the potentials of Orcadia Cottage, he wondered, had opened that manhole and looked inside. Ninety-nine out of a hundred people who had done that would have told Rokeby and then told the police. But one would not. One would have made use of what he had found.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SUBEARTH STRUCTURES OPERATED out of a Victorian house in the backwoods of Kilburn, round which lean-tos and sheds clustered. The house, when first built, must have been extensively encrusted with mouldings of fruit and flowers and leaves above its front door and all its windows. Most of this decoration had by now cracked or crumbled or fallen off and an attempt had been made to smarten up its appearance by painting the entire facade with a thick matt white paint. Recalling his ice-cream metaphor when he saw the houses of The Boltons, Wexford thought this place was like an ice that had half- melted.
As in all builders’ yards, piles of sand, shingle, bricks and tiles cluttered the place and a concrete mixer ground away monotonously. Lucy had already spoken on the phone to Brian George and it was he who came out of one of the sheds to meet them. Invited to come inside, she and Wexford followed him into the ice-cream house and into a kind of sitting room. Its walls were painted a bright turquoise. A cheap red hair-cord covered the floor and the chairs were upholstered in brown plastic. If this was where he brought potential clients, Wexford thought, it was a wonder any of them continued with their purpose of installing an underground room. On the turquoise wall hung framed photographs of various breeds of dog as might be in a vet’s waiting room.
‘Now I wasn’t actually working here when Mr Rokeby asked us to make a survey.’ Brian George said this as if he might have been half-working there or working perhaps, Wexford thought, only in spirit. ‘You’ll want to talk to someone who actually was working here.’ George nodded as if to confirm this careful assessment of the situation. ‘I think Kev would be your best bet, that is Kev Oswin. Kev actually went to Arcadia Cottage – funny name, that, isn’t it? Cottage, I mean. I’d call it a big house myself. But as I say, Kev went to Arcadia Cottage to size up the situation and your best bet would actually be to have a word with him. If you’ll excuse me I’ll go and root him out.’
Once he was out of the room, Wexford said to Lucy, ‘Was he like that on the phone?’
‘Exactly like that.’
She picked up a trade journal from a coffee table and Wexford retired into his thoughts. He had had a long talk on the phone with Dora the previous evening and an even longer one with Burden. Jason Wardle was still somewhere at large. Calls to all his known relatives and friends had achieved nothing. He might be abroad. He had had days in which to leave the country by air, or more probably, because simpler, by Eurostar. Sylvia’s car had not yet been found.
‘His parents seem to know no more as to his whereabouts than we do,’ Burden had said. ‘They’re rather old to be the parents of a twenty-one year old. James Wardle must be getting on for seventy. He’s been retired for years and they live in rather an isolated place on the outskirts of Stringfield. They claim not to have seen him for a month. Unless they’re very good liars, they genuinely don’t know where he’s been living in that time and they knew nothing about Sylvia. As far as they knew – this is what they say – he had a girlfriend he met at the University of Myringham that he later dropped out of. They had the girl’s name and we’ve seen her, but I’m as certain as can be in these circumstances that she hasn’t seen him for several months and has no idea where he is.’
Dora had more to say about Sylvia herself than the hunt for her assailant. ‘She seems pretty well, Reg. I’ve borrowed Mary’s car and I take her back to the hospital every day to have the wound dressed, but tomorrow will be the last time. Ben’s gone back to school for the last week till the end of term but Robin’s with her. She seems to like my being there and that’s maybe because I haven’t said a word about her having a – well, a love affair with a boy young enough to be her son. I’ve wanted to but I haven’t. I thought of you and what you’d want and I didn’t say a word.’
‘Thank you for that, darling,’ he had said and was pulled out of his reverie by Lucy saying, ‘What’s happened to him? We’ve been here ten minutes.’
