you. I knew she hadn’t a right to be here, she hadn’t any sort of passport. I knew all that but I liked her, she suited me. I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anyone. Well, I never see anyone to tell. I thought, I’ll see if she’ll marry me. I’m gay, of course, if I’m anything any more. It’ll just be to get her citizenship, she won’t even have to live here if she doesn’t want to. I thought of all that and then Mildreadful accosted her in the street.’
‘I gather she was still harping on about the shirt.’
‘It was all of a year later. She told her she’d have to pay for a new shirt or the police would get her. Vladlena just ran away again. She came into the house with the shopping and said she was going away, she was going to hide. You can imagine I told her she wasn’t in any danger. It was all nonsense on old Mildreadful’s part, but she wasn’t having any. I should have told her then, I should have said I’d marry her and then she could have stayed, but I didn’t. I wasn’t sure, you see. When it came to it I suppose I got cold feet. I didn’t really think she’d go. But she did. She left and I never saw her again.’
‘You didn’t try to find her?’
‘Yes, of course I did. I had her address. She had a room in the house of an old Russian woman in Kilburn. I had Vladlena’s mobile number. Everyone has mobiles these days, don’t they? Everyone but me. I haven’t got one. I phoned, but her phone was never answered. I didn’t go up there. I told you, I don’t go out. It must sound wimpish but I can’t go out, I just can’t. I’m like someone with agoraphobia only I’m not agoraphobic.’
‘So that was the end?’
Goldberg sounded irritable. ‘No, it wasn’t. I asked a friend of mine to help. I do have friends, a few. Sophie, she’s called. I’ve known her since she was a child and I was young – and able-bodied.’ He made a rueful face. ‘I asked her if she’d go up there and inquire for Vladlena.’
Wexford remembered or made a wild guess that turned out not to be wild at all. ‘Not Sophie Baird who lives in Hall Road?’
‘That’s the one. Do you know her?’
‘I don’t exactly know her, Mr Goldberg. I talked to her and her partner in connection with this case.’
‘Yes, the partner. The arch homophobe. We don’t exactly get on. In fact, we’ve met just the once and that was enough.’
‘She said nothing to me about Vladlena.’
‘Could you call me David, please? “Mr Goldberg” sounds like a big fat banker, very rich and living in The Bishop’s Avenue.’
Laughing again, Wexford said he could, making a mental note to find out what and where The Bishop’s Avenue was. ‘And did Ms Baird have any luck?’
‘She went to the Kilburn address and saw Vladlena. But Vladlena wouldn’t talk to her. Not then. She seemed to be terrified to say anything while she was indoors. I mean inside a house. She and Sophie arranged to meet in a cafe in Kilburn next day, but when Sophie went there she had disappeared. Mrs Kataev said the same thing. She’d disappeared.’
‘When was this?’
‘Let me think. Two years ago or a bit more. It was summer. I remember Vladlena had a big thick coat, very shabby, and she wore it every day through the winter and spring. She wasn’t wearing it. When she came into the house that day with the shopping after old Mrs MD had accosted her she was wearing a dress, a cotton dress. Her arms were bare.’
Wexford thanked David Goldberg, took Mrs Kataev’s address and phone number from him and said he might want to see him again, but gave him no explanation for his questions and none was asked for. Leaving, he noticed that while Goldberg seemed happy to open the front door he stood back from it, a full yard from the daylight and the fresh air.
John Scott-McGregor, on the other hand, marched out of his house in Hall Road, forcing Wexford to take a step backwards.
‘You again,’ are not pleasant words to be greeted with, but Wexford was used to worse.
‘I was hoping to have a word with Ms Baird.’
‘You hope in vain. She’s not here. She’s at work.’
Wexford didn’t pursue it. Instead he walked back across Hamilton Terrace and Abercorn Place to the Edgware Road. There he got on the Number 16 bus for Kilburn and Brondesbury Villas where Mrs Kataev lived. The street surprised him. Kilburn High Road might be run down in some parts and blatantly gaudy in others, but Brondesbury Villas was staid and dignified. Two words seldom heard these days came to mind, ‘select’ and ‘respectable’. And Irina Kataev herself seemed both those things, a thin, upright, elderly woman who spoke precise English with a slight and attractive accent. The hallway of her house and the living room into which she took him, were hygienically clean and airy. Mrs Kataev herself wore a black dress with a red cardigan over it.
‘I wish I could help you,’ she said. ‘I have worried about her. She gave me no notice that she would be leaving. One day she came home as usual from Mr Goldberg and went up to her room. She was in her room alone all evening. She was a quiet girl. She kept herself to herself, as I believe you say. Next day she was in her room all day. I think now that she was afraid to go out – like that poor Mr Goldberg.’
‘When did she go?’
‘I heard her on her phone many times. I listened because I was worried about her. She was only just nineteen, you know. Next day, very early in the morning – it must have been early because it was before I got up at six – she left and had with her the one suitcase she came with. She owed me some rent and she left the correct sum for me in an envelope.’
‘How long had she lived with you, Mrs Kataev?’
‘For about two years. Before that she had had a room in a flat in Kensal, very dirty and nasty, she said. She came here from the Ukraine in two thousand and six and all this you are asking about is two years ago and more.’
‘
