Vault

remember more when I talk to her again.’

‘Better go with Lucy this time. As I said before, a woman to talk to a woman. That’s best. I’m not saying you haven’t done well, Reg, but you’re very hot on all this psychology and knowing human nature and all that, but I don’t think you’re allowing for the fact that this Sophie Baird may have been jealous of Vladlena. Much younger than her, wasn’t she? A pretty blonde and alone with this Goldberg day after day. It may be best to go back to Mrs Jones, see if she can put a different complexion on things. You and Lucy go back to Mrs Jones. Talk to the other neighbours, those Milsoms, for instance. They may have talked to her. Even the Rokebys. You didn’t think of them, did you? But they’re back living in Orcadia Cottage now.’

In his own kind of phraseology, Tom had got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Wexford was sure all these people would be useless, especially Mildred Jones who would have made a point of knowing nothing of her cleaner’s background. It might be that even now the burnt shirt still rankled with her.

‘Remember I like the idea of this Vladlena,’ were Tom’s parting words. ‘Tongue-twister of a name, isn’t it? I like it. She could be our girl in the patio-tomb. It’s more than likely.’

‘I’d like to bring Sophie Baird here to look at those clothes.’

‘Good idea. You do that small thing. Must go, I’ve a busy afternoon. And then the Harvest Supper at my church.’

Sophie Baird couldn’t be reached until the following day. He tried her at home in Hall Road, on a mobile that seemed permanently switched off and finally got her on David Goldberg’s landline. No, she wasn’t living there; she hadn’t moved in. She was going back home that day. Would she come with him to the Met Headquarters in Mapesbury Road, Cricklewood? They would send a car for her.

‘Can I ask what for?’

‘I want to show you some clothes that may have belonged to Vladlena.’

‘Belonged to a girl whose body has been found’ was what he should have said. But so far he hadn’t told Sophie why he was so interested in Vladlena and she hadn’t asked. Lucy went in the car to fetch Sophie Baird. Wexford was waiting for her when she arrived and showed her the clothes. Sophie herself was dressed much as she usually was in a tweed skirt and jumper with cream-coloured jacket and brown leather court shoes. The garments which had been on the young woman’s body in the vault had become pathetic in Wexford’s eyes; they so objectified their wearer and almost certainly had been worn not because she liked them or chose to wear them but as the uniform of her trade. Sophie Baird’s reaction was very different. She recoiled, she blushed. Wexford had been about to ask her not to touch anything, but any caution of that kind was unnecessary. She actually stepped back from the table on which the boots, the jacket and the fishnet tights lay.

‘I never saw Vladlena wear anything like that,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘How did you – the police – get hold of these?’ A possible solution occurred to her and she shuddered. ‘Were they – were they on a dead body?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘The three times I saw Vladlena she was wearing a summer dress – well, a cotton dress, quite faded and shabby, and once a thick winter coat over it. Her shoes looked very worn and she also wore flip-flops.’

‘But if she was going to do what she suggested to you she would do for the sake of a thousand pounds, she might have worn clothes such as these?’

‘I suppose she might have,’ said Sophie Baird.

‘One more question before I take you in to see Detective Superintendent Ede. Would Vladlena have worn underwear?’

‘Well – I don’t understand. What do you mean, worn underwear? Of course she would. Everyone does.’

‘So you believe she would have?’

‘I assume she would. I don’t know, though. I really don’t know.’

Tom Ede asked her if Vladlena had any jewellery. Sophie Baird said she couldn’t remember; perhaps a ring. The necklaces and rings and bracelets they had concluded had all belonged to Harriet Merton, were shown to her but she had scarcely glanced at them when she shook her head impatiently.

‘You don’t understand. She was poor. She was much poorer than the poor in this country are. She had nothing. She earned enough to pay her rent to Mrs Kataev and buy food and that was all.’

‘You mentioned the possibility of a ring,’ Tom said.

‘Yes, but I’m not sure I’m not imagining it. I seem to remember something silver she wore, a ring, a pendant. I seem to, but that’s all I can say.’

Getting ready to drive himself and Dora back to Kingsmarkham for the weekend, Wexford asked himself what steps Vladlena would have taken to carry out her plan. The driver called Grigor or Gregory seemed the most likely for her to have contacted. But where was he to be found? If the transaction had reached a stage of Vladlena prostituting herself, where would she have done it? Not in a room at Irina Kataev’s. In a hotel room booked for her? He didn’t think so. More likely in a brothel disguised as something else. He had little experience of such places. So far as he knew there had never been in Kingsmarkham what used to be called a disorderly house.

But there he was wrong, as Mike Burden told him on the Saturday evening. The drinks they enjoyed together after work in the old days had come to an end when Wexford retired and Burden was promoted but had been replaced by meeting – often in a new and previously unvisited pub – every weekend Wexford returned home. It was becoming a tradition with a ritualistic quality to it. Many pubs had closed in the surrounding villages, largely due to would-be visitors intimidated by the drink-driving laws, but in Kingsmarkham itself the Olive and Dove still ruled supreme and the Dragon did a brisk trade. This evening they were to meet in the Mermaid, a small snug pub in a narrow lane off York Street.

But before that Wexford and Dora had spent half a day, a night and more than half the next day in their own house. Both their grandsons were at home and Robin had brought a fellow-student home with him. When he was young, though he had not attended one himself, Wexford said universities used to discourage if not expressly forbid undergraduates to go home for the weekend. All that had changed. Ben was there, too, his school having closed for half-term. With a fairly good grace, Sylvia gave up the bedroom she shared with her daughter to her parents, but made them feel guilty by whining miserably about her and Mary having to share a single bed put up in the dining room.

‘How to make one feel one should have booked a room in a hotel,’ said Dora.