Vault

was unlikely she would know it concerned a boyfriend she had or might have had twelve years ago. On the landline in the office, so as not to occupy his cellphone, he called Owen Clary at Chilvers Clary.

Clary was out but the receptionist put him through to Robyn Chilvers.

She greeted him enthusiastically as if he were an old friend whose call she had been waiting for. ‘I’m so glad to hear from you. I’ve lost your number – yes, do give it to me again.’ He did so. ‘Yes, you remember that builder, plumber, whatever he is, you were asking about? Well, by an extraordinary coincidence he rang up, wanted to know if we’d any work for him. Poor chap, he sounded desperate. Of course I took his name and phone number, but I’d lost yours – how stupid can one get?’

‘Had you any work for him, Ms Chilvers?’

‘We’ve barely any for ourselves. I said I’d keep him in mind.’

Wexford wrote down the name Rodney Horndon and a mobile number. ‘Thank you very much. Ms Chilvers, I don’t suppose you know anything about your husband’s visit to Orcadia Cottage? It was in the late summer of 2006. You may not even have been married then.’

She laughed. ‘No, we weren’t. We were together, though. We were engaged, but I broke it off in the spring and we got together again in ’97. But you don’t want to know that.’

Did he? Probably not. But it reminded him of someone else: Damian Keyworth, whose engagement was also broken off at much the same time. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

The landline receiver was scarcely in its rest when his mobile rang. As soon as he heard his caller, he thought of Cordelia – ‘her voice was ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in a woman’.

‘My name is Francine Hill. You left a message for me to call you.’

‘Yes, Dr Hill. I wanted to ask you …’

‘Oh, I know what you want. I’ve been expecting you – I mean the police. I think I ought to have got in touch with you, but I kept asking myself what, in fact, I could tell you. I kept thinking I knew nothing of any importance, but then I don’t really know what is important. Shall I come and see you?’

For a moment he was taken aback. Her willingness! Her enthusiasm! ‘Yes, please. If you would. First tell me, you are the Francine Hill who was at Orcadia Cottage, St John’s Wood, during the late summer or early autumn of 1997?’

‘Oh, yes. Yes, I was.’

‘And with Keith Hill, who drove a big yellow American car?’

‘That was my then boyfriend’s car. His name was Teddy Brex.’

He wasn’t going to tell Tom how utterly unlike his conception of Francine – the Francine of the credit-card swindle, of La Punaise – she had sounded. That would be enough to make him doubt and for Wexford there was no doubt. She had agreed – indeed, had offered – to come to the police headquarters in Cricklewood in her free time at four in the afternoon. She would have no more patients until six.

Wexford occupied the time by accompanying Lucy to Rokeby’s flat in Maida Vale. A thin drizzle was falling out of a leaden sky. The flyover looked leaden too, elephantine because of its weight and the heavy uprights which supported it. Someone had chained a bicycle to the railings outside the house where Rokeby’s flat was. Up against the broken steps someone else had parked a pram which looked unfit ever again to transport a baby. Once again, forewarned of their coming, Rokeby was outside his front door.

‘I can’t stop you coming,’ he said, ‘but I’ve nothing more to tell you. I can’t help that. There’s nothing more.’

‘Mr Rokeby,’ Wexford said when they were inside among the fluted columns, ‘people often say what you’ve just said, but the fact often is that they remember more events than they think they do, and those can be awakened if the right questions are asked.’ Wexford glanced around the big room, thinking to himself that no interior can be uglier than that which was designed to be grand and sumptuous but is rendered mean by cheap carpeting and chain-store chairs and tables. ‘Now the right question here my colleague Detective Sergeant Blanch would like to ask you.’

But her first question or inquiry was not that. ‘Do you think we could have a light on, Mr Rokeby? The rain is making it very dark in here.’

A central light, suspended too low down, suddenly blazed, making Wexford blink. ‘Thank you,’ Lucy said. ‘Now Mr Clary – you remember him?’

Rokeby nodded.

‘Mr Clary, the architect of Chilvers Clary, came to see you in the summer of 2006 and a while later he returned, bringing with him a plumber called Rodney Horndon? Is that right?’

‘He was a plumber and Clary said his name was Rod. I don’t know if he was Rodney Horndon.’

‘Apparently he was,’ Wexford said. ‘Now, he came to Orcadia Cottage when Mr Clary came the second time?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Now, it was summer. Did you and your wife’ – Wexford glanced at Anne Rokeby, who turned a stony face to him – ‘go on holiday that year? You did? And would that have been before or after the visit of Mr Clary and Mr Horndon?’

Anne Rokeby spoke in a voice as cold as her face. ‘Of course it must have been after. We could only go in the school holidays and they, as I suppose you know, start at the end of July.’

Undeterred by her manner, Lucy turned to her. ‘How easy would it have been to get into your patio from the mews while you were away?’

‘Very easy, as my husband never bothered to lock the door in the wall. I’d lock it and the very next time my husband went out that way he’d leave it unlocked. As far as I know,’ Anne Rokeby gave her husband a bitter look, ‘the key is lost.’