Vault

Perhaps because they were in a French restaurant, he followed up his last statement with, ‘Cherchez la femme.’

Sheila and her girls were with Dora when Wexford walked in. ‘Where The Bishop’s Avenue?’

‘It’s a street of big houses, the kind the media call “mansions”,’ said Sheila. ‘It’s Highgate and it turns out of the Hampstead Road. You’ve walked from the Spaniards Inn to Highgate, Pop. You must have passed it.’

Amy wanted to know what a bishop was and Wexford set about explaining to her. She said she would like to be one when she grew up, and was told that wouldn’t be possible as things were at present but that would certainly have changed by the time she was an adult.

‘I am going to be a banker,’ said Anoushka, which silenced everyone for a moment.

‘I find all this quite heartening,’ said Wexford. ‘It’s so different from what I read in the papers about girls wanting to be models and marry footballers.’

They had been gone five minutes and Dora was talking of going to the cinema when his phone rang. It was Sophie Baird.

‘I was about to call you, Ms Baird,’ he said. ‘I was hoping to come along with DC Blanch and talk to you.’

She was silent. He thought the connection had broken.

‘Ms Baird?’

Her sigh preceded a breathy, ‘I’ve just split up from John. He’s gone. I didn’t think he would, I thought he’d try to throw me out, though the house is mine. But I told him and he just went. I should have done it years ago.’ She gave a sudden hysterical laugh. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m high on adrenalin. I shouldn’t be telling you all this. I hardly know you.’

‘It will be quite safe with me,’ said Wexford.

‘I know that. Somehow I know. David called me. David Goldberg.’

‘Yes.’

‘He said he’d told you about me and Vladlena. There’s a lot he doesn’t know about what she told me. There was no point in telling him. I tried to tell John, but he just said not to get mixed up with filthy illegals. Those were his words, “filthy illegals”. I should have left him then or got him to leave me.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘I want to tell you.’

‘So when shall DC Blanch and I come?’

‘I don’t want her, whoever she is. I mean, she may be very nice, but I don’t want to tell anyone but you. I think you’ll understand. But not today, not this evening. I’ve called a locksmith to get the locks changed in case John tries to come back. He says he’ll never darken these doors again, if you’ve ever heard such crap, but he may if he changes his mind. So I’ll get the locks changed and then I’m going to cook David’s dinner and stay the night with him. He’s the only person I really want to see right now.’

‘Tomorrow, then, Ms Baird?’

‘I’m taking the rest of the week off work. I’ve got holiday owing to me. Would you like to come along around ten?’

He said he would, flattered by her trust in him, intrigued by her hints that what she had to tell him might be a breakthrough. She had been with Scott-McGregor for years, yet she had apparently shaken him off in a couple of hours, turned him out and sighed with relief. Of course, the euphoria would pass and soon and regret and recriminations set in. For the first time he put his fear – or was it hope? – that the young woman’s body in the tomb might be Vladlena’s. No, it was fear. He already felt too much pity for her, fugitive that she had been, to hope for such an end.

They would definitely go to the cinema, he told Dora. Was it Revolutionary Road she wanted to see or Bright Star? She wasn’t sure, she would tell him when he came back from wherever he was going. Mapesbury Road, Cricklewood, to take another look at the clothes the young woman’s corpse had worn.

Tom was out. Miles Crowhurst showed him once more the pathetic collection. Whore’s garments, he thought, and immediately castigated himself for his harshness. Many perfectly decent girls – ‘good girls’, as they were once called – wore tight T-shirts, biker’s jackets, tight mini-skirts, hold-up fishnet stockings and knee-high boots. But wore them without underwear?

He said to Miles, ‘Where are her bra and knickers?’

‘She wasn’t wearing any, sir.’

‘You’re young,’ he said. ‘You’re a heterosexual male. I don’t know about these things any more but you do. Would a normal, ordinary girl go about without underwear?’

‘Not in my experience,’ said Miles.

Wexford had seen those clothes before, seen them when he saw the men’s clothes and the La Punaise note and the jewellery from Teddy Brex’s pockets, but this point about the lack of underwear hadn’t struck him. It hadn’t struck Tom either. Would Sophie Baird be able to resolve several puzzles tomorrow morning?

CHAPTER TWENTY- FOUR

BRIGHT STAR MADE him want to go and see Keats’s house. It was no distance away. Grove End Road first, though, and what he learnt there might make him put everything else off till a later date. He was setting off when Sophie Baird phoned. Would he meet her at David Goldberg’s house instead? Wexford said he would. She volunteered answers to questions he hadn’t asked.

‘I’d feel better away from this house. Just for a while. It’s my house and John’s gone, but somehow I feel he’s still here and listening to what I say.’

‘That’s quite all right with me, Ms Baird.’