Vault

I knew was David Goldberg was on the phone to me. He never goes out, he’s not quite all there.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘But pushy like all Jews. And he can use a phone. The rudest person I’ve ever spoken to. Well, I didn’t speak to him. He spoke to me. How dare I accost his cleaner – accost was the word he used – who did I think I was, poking my nose in where I wasn’t wanted, interfering – I won’t say the name he called me – et cetera, et cetera. Vladlena had gone, he said, she’d left that day because she was scared the police would come and get her and put her in a camp for illegals. And that was that. I don’t know how many of these girls I’ve had since then, seven or eight at least.’

‘And now you have to go, I think you said, Mrs Jones,’ said Wexford, looking at his watch.

‘Yes, I must. Imagine, I’ve got a date with a man! Who knows what will come of it? I’m really excited.’

‘I’ll see myself out,’ said Wexford. As he left he heard her screaming to Raisa to be sure and put the burglar alarm on and lock the front door on all three locks before she left.

It was twelve noon. He needed a little more time before speaking to David Goldberg, time to think. Slowly he walked up into Alma Square, admired some Japanese maple trees, their lacy leaves scarlet, looked at a towering Magnolia grandiflora and turned back towards Orcadia Place. A car was now parked outside Orcadia Cottage and a van had drawn up behind it. The van had a long scratch, deep, wavy and snakelike, along its nearside above the rear wheel. Wexford stood under a laburnum hung with black bean pods and watched. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to see John Scott-McGregor get out of the driver’s seat of the white van, walk round it and open the back. That was what he did, moved client’s property from one place to another. No doubt the neighbours round here all used his services. Scott-McGregor lifted a box full of books out of the van and on to a trolley and pushed it up the path. The front door was opened to him by Anne Rokeby, still in her outdoor clothes, as her husband came up the path from their car, carrying armfuls of clothes on hangers. More boxes and a large plastic bag full of something was fetched from the van and the front door closed.

The Rokebys had come home.

CHAPTER TWENTY- THREE

FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE sometimes deceptive. Wexford admitted this cliche to himself when he had been inside the house in Melina Place for no more than five minutes. David Goldberg might be reclusive, but he was far from the zombie-like paranoid creature Wexford had set him down as when he had questioned the man before. True, the television was on and it was ten o’clock in the morning, but it was showing a DVD of Shadowlands, one of Wexford’s favourite films. You are always inclined to warm to someone who turns out to share your own tastes.

‘In some people’s eyes,’ said Goldberg in his harsh, gravelly voice, ‘watching TV in the daytime is the Eighth Deadly Sin.’

‘Not mine,’ said Wexford. ‘I must tell you, Mr Goldberg, that I’ve no right to question you. I’m not a policeman, not any more. And I must also tell you that if you tell me anything that helps in this case I shall be obliged to pass it on to Detective Superintendent Ede.’

‘OK. But I haven’t got anything to tell you.’ David Goldberg picked up the remote and pressed the key that put the DVD on ‘pause’. ‘I told you before I know nothing about that manhole case. All I know is what I read in the papers.’ He spread out his hands and shrugged. ‘I don’t have drinks and snacks and things between meals, so I hope you don’t want anything.’

‘I don’t want anything.’

The room they were in was small but very light because the rear wall was almost entirely of glass with a glass door set in it on the right-hand side. Outside was a small garden, neat as a pin, beds full of michaelmas daisies and asters surrounding a tiny lawn with a statue of a girl standing on a plinth and holding up a pitcher.

‘Yes, in case you’re going to ask, I do it myself. I may be disabled but that doesn’t stop me weeding and planting. I use my hands.’

‘It’s lovely.’

‘What do you want to ask me about?’

‘A young woman from the Ukraine called Vladlena.’

Goldberg wasn’t as surprised as Wexford expected. He nodded reflectively. ‘Yes. Vladlena. No doubt you’ve been talking to that nosy old termagant Mrs Jones. Mildred. I call her Mildreadful.’

Wexford smiled. ‘I’d better tell you that I’m not here to get Vladlena into any sort of trouble. If she’s still here. If she hasn’t gone back to wherever she came from. I have nothing to do with Immigration. I’m not even a policeman any more. Nothing you say will do her any harm.’

‘OK. Right. Vladlena – it’s a great name, isn’t it? – she came to the door one morning and when I opened it she said she’d run away from a house in Orcadia Mews because she’d burnt a shirt. So I let her in and sat her down. It’s not the sort of thing I usually do, but it wasn’t a usual situation, was it? She’d burnt a shirt and she was afraid of the police. That’s what she said. Oh, and old Mrs Mildreadful was on her trail.’

This time Wexford did laugh. ‘What did you do?’

‘Well, basically I gave her a job. My cleaner had just left. I liked the look of Vladlena. I told her I’d want her to shop for me and do a few other jobs I can’t do and she was happy with that. She was thrilled, poor child. I told her she wouldn’t have to iron my shirts. Nothing gets ironed in this house.

‘I explained to her that I don’t go out. That means that anything I want from out there.’ – he waved a vague hand – ‘I’d have to ask her to do for me. I suppose I should explain to you.’ The harsh voice deepened. ‘A long time ago, twenty years ago and a bit more, I was attacked in the street. For being gay – what a word for me! Four thugs set about me. My left leg was broken in three places and my head was bashed in. That left me with epilepsy.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Wexford said.

‘You actually look as if you are. I live on incapacity benefit and what I earn from the odd bit of journalism. I got compensation, which enabled me to buy this house. But I don’t go out at all. Into the street, that is. Not ever. I’m scared, you see. I am simply terrified to go out. I watch DVDs, I write a column called Gaiety and I tend my garden.’

‘I see why you needed Vladlena.’

‘Yes. Well, she was great. She even cooked for me and that was a change from living on ready meals, I can tell