Vault

‘That’s what I call it,’ she said. ‘An underground desert. The nearest tube is Finsbury Park, if you can believe it.’

Wexford could easily believe it, as she seemed knowledgeable and he hadn’t the faintest idea where Finsbury Park might be. He asked her how he could find Shepherds Hill and she gave him complicated directions through Crouch End. He set off to walk, looking for street names he thought he might have a chance of recognising. One of these, a street called Hornsey Lane, had its nameplate on the brick wall of a medical centre. The doctors practising there were listed on a sheet of whiteboard instead of the old-time brass plate and one of them caught his eye as this particular name always attracted his attention: Dr James Azziz FRCP, Dr Francine Hill PhD, FRCS, Dr William V. Johns FRCP.

Ah, well, another Francine. He had once thought it an uncommon name but they were everywhere. The chances against her being the one they were looking for were huge. It was a tack they had better give up on but concentrate instead on the architect, the plumber and the builder’s labourer. He walked along Hornsey Lane, getting more lost than ever, turned to the left and left again and found himself, maddeningly, back at the medical centre. Again he looked at the whiteboard, he looked at the plate-glass window, through which he could see patients sitting in a waiting room with the usual warning posters plastered all over the walls. What is chlamydia? Has your child had the triple vaccine? Are you drinking more than two units of alcohol per day? Stroke disables and kills! He turned away, took a side street and then a broad avenue he hoped might be Shepherds Hill.

Why couldn’t he forget this new Francine? Something about her name stuck in his memory and wouldn’t go away, though he had no idea what it was. One thing was sure, this wasn’t Shepherds Hill. Suddenly, out of another side street, a taxi with its orange light on, appeared to save him. Francine, he thought, settling into his seat and dutifully putting on his seat belt, Francine Hill. What’s different about that? It’s just another woman with that Christian name. They are legion.

Rokeby must be seen again, however distasteful the man found it. Trevor Oswin – why was his home address treated as a secret? Why did the woman who was probably his wife give him Trevor’s mobile number rather than tell him to call again when her husband was in? Perhaps it meant nothing. Would Rokeby remember him? Francine, he thought, Francine Hill … The taxi drew up behind his parked car.

It was only at three two mornings later that he thanked God he had taken the wrong turnings and thus – twice – passed that medical centre. Before that he had Dora to reassure, Dora who had now begun to see the disadvantages of handing over one’s principal residence to one’s daughter’s family and being obliged to live in one’s second home. He reminded her how hard it was to predict the future, how the best laid plans (but this one was too much like one of Tom’s maxims) could go wrong, how people changed their minds in the course of time. She could bring some of her favourite things here, that would be easy, favourite books, ornaments, photographs.

‘Yes, Reg, I know, but you feel the same as I do, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘If before they got married people had to go to classes where they learned about what children are like, how they go on being your responsibility until they’ve got grown-up children themselves and beyond, the world population would go down fast.’

‘They wouldn’t listen,’ said Wexford, ‘and anyway half the population doesn’t get married any more.’

For the first time ever that evening he phoned an Indian takeaway which sent the order round on a bicycle. The phone number was on one of the gaudy flyovers that came through the coachhouse letter box every day. ‘Now that’s something you couldn’t do in Kingsmarkham.’

‘If it doesn’t taste nice I wouldn’t want to do it.’

But it tasted very nice and they accompanied it with a bottle of Merlot. ‘Incorrect, I’m sure,’ said Wexford and he felt a real nostalgia for all those oriental restaurants he and Burden used to visit in what he thought of as ‘the old days’. But he said none of that aloud. He had to make London more attractive to Dora, more acceptable as perhaps a whole year’s domicile.

A sound sleeper, she went to bed early. She never minded light in their bedroom and slept through the bedlamp being switched on and off. He sat up for a while, reading Kinglake’s Eothen, a favourite book about the Middle East one hundred and fifty years ago, a different world, just as violent but more romantic. Dreaming about the awe-inspiring Hodja who preached in the Great Mosque with a sword in his hand, he awoke at three with the name Francine Hill on his lips.

Of course … That was why he had known she wasn’t just another woman with that Christian name. Hill was what mattered, Hill. The young man who parked his big American car in Orcadia Mews had given his name to Mildred Jones as Keith Hill. Francine was his wife or his sister, she had to be …

CHAPTER NINETEEN

SO MUCH OF what occurs to us as gospel in the small hours appears absurd in the light of day. That wasn’t true here. Dr Francine Hill, Wexford thought, who is a partner in a medical practice in Crouch End or Muswell Hill. He wasn’t sure which, but he knew he could find it again.

Tom was sceptical. ‘Yes, well, how d’you know it’s not par for the course? Just another Francine. She’ll either say no she’s not, or she’ll be like the last one, wasting our time.’

‘I don’t think so. She’s not just another Francine. She’s Francine Hill.’

‘I suppose it’ll do no harm to phone her.’

‘Will you see her if I can get her to come in?’

‘Well, I will or failing me, Lucy.’

Medical practitioners may not advertise but their names may appear in phone directories. After some searching Wexford found Hill, Dr F., The Group Practice, Hornsey Lane, N8. After he had held on while Eine kleine Nachtmusik played, a receptionist said that Dr Hill took calls only from private patients on this line. She became less curt when Wexford said this was the Metropolitan Police and to ask Dr Hill to call him on this number. It was the first time he had had to say, ‘The name is Wexford’ with his Christian name, but without his rank – the rank he no longer held.

He was sitting in the small office where Tom had put the false Francine and from which she had run away when things became uncomfortable. No doubt Dr Hill had a surgery – did they still call it that? – for much of the morning. It might be lunchtime before she phoned, if she phoned. Would she think this was about some driving offence? It