She spotted the car and came out just as he was preparing to cross the road. The first thing he noticed about her was that silver cross. It seemed to flash as it caught the morning sun. She had dressed up in a skirt suit and striped blouse, as if she were going to some significant engagement instead of helping him locate a brothel.
‘It is not good to deceive my husband,’ she said as she got into the car. ‘But whatever happen I will tell him of it after. I am not doing anything wrong, am I?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Wexford. ‘Rather the reverse. You are doing a good thing.’
Another long drive. ‘This house,’ he began, ‘is it old – say a hundred years old – or newly built?’ As he asked he realised she would hardly know. ‘Like that’ – he pointed out of the window – ‘or like that?’
She selected a late Victorian house that was detached, a fairly big house that had been converted into the offices of a dental practice. ‘Like that. A bit like that. There is more than one.’
‘More than one of what?’
‘More than one house like that. All together but not joined up. It is down a turning. The next one, now you turn left.’
So the house was not in West End Lane, a hilly winding street, but in a side turning. He turned left into Churchlands Road. All the way along here stood detached and semidetached Victorian and Edwardian houses, not the ice-cream beauties he so much admired, but solid brick buildings, many of them divided into flats. He had to drive on past the house Vladlena pointed out as he searched for somewhere to leave the car. Every possible space was filled, and passing West Hampstead Station he began to realise how much wiser he would have been to have come by tube. Down this side turning, up that one, back into West End Lane, he understood at last what he must do. You’re no longer a policeman – it was becoming a mantra – he told himself, parking the car on a yellow line. It went terribly against the grain but it was hardly a crime …
He and Vladlena walked back down the hill and into Churchlands Road. She was silent. He saw that she had clenched her hands – to keep them from trembling? There were three houses, not identical but differing only in that one had a pillared portico, another a bay window in the ground floor, the third a garage on its left-hand side, Numbers 6, 8 and 10.
‘That one,’ Vladlena said. ‘The middle one. Number 8. It is the window above the front door I see Alyona.’ She had turned pale, every vestige of colour gone from her face. ‘A blind is down now, but then the blind is up and I am seeing her face.’
‘Here, take my arm,’ he said. ‘We’ll find somewhere you can have coffee.’
She leant on him and he cursed himself for bringing her. She could have described the place to him, had indeed described it quite adequately. In the tiny cafe a latte brought the colour back into her face.
‘I am sorry. I am a fool.’
‘No. You won’t have to go there again. I am going to get you a taxi to take you home.’ Book it on the account Dora had opened in a fit of profligacy. He called her first, because he had forgotten the reference number.
Vladlena said, ‘I can go in the Tube.’
‘No, you can’t. I wouldn’t dream of it.’ The number turned out to be the day, month and year of Dora’s birth. ‘They’ll be here within fifteen minutes and they’ll take you home.’
‘I sat on a seat opposite those houses. You can just see it from here. People came out of the station and down the street and passed me and a man tried to – well, you know about that. I don’t know if Alyona could see me. Someone pull down the blind at the window. I should stay, but when another man come up to me I was afraid and I went away. I tell you I go back next day and the next, but I think they take her away and hide her somewhere.’
Wexford saw her into the cab. He gave a thought to his car, parked illegally, a sitting target for the first traffic warden to pass along the street, but it was a fleeting thought, soon gone. Without Vladlena he felt free and strong. Whatever awaited him, he at least wouldn’t have her to protect. A postman, pushing his scarlet trolley, was advancing very slowly up the hill on the opposite side. He went through the gate into the narrow front garden of Number 10, pulled the red elastic band off the handful of post he was carrying, dropped the band on to the paving and pushed an envelope through the letter box. Only it didn’t go through but stuck there halfway. The postman apparently had nothing for Number 8, but a small package for Number 6. This package also stuck halfway through the letterbox.
Wexford crossed the road. There was only one bell on Number 8. It appeared to be an entryphone, but when he pressed the bell the door made the groaning sound of unlocking and he easily pushed it open. Inside was a hallway, exactly the sort of thing you might expect in a doctor’s premises in Harley Street. No red plush and gilding, no chandelier, but white walls, dark green carpet and a long polished table on which lay a single copy of
Wexford knew him at once as Trevor Oswin, but the man seemed not to recognise him. Even from two yards’ distance, Trevor reeked of tobacco smoke. ‘It’s a bit early, sir,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if any of the young ladies is free. Had you anyone special in mind?’
‘Alyona,’ Wexford said.
‘Sorry about that, but it must be quite a while since your last visit. Alyona left us a long time ago.’
‘I can see if Tanya is free,’ said the woman.
‘Thanks, but I’ll come back later.’
Had Trevor known who he was? Wexford thought not as he made his way back into West End Lane. The package stuck in the letterbox of the house next door with the bay window, Number 6, indicated that no one was at home, as did the letter in a similar position in the letterbox of Number 10. The latter was very well kept, its yellow brickwork recently repointed, its window frames glossy white and its front door, through whose polished brass mouth the letter protruded like a tongue, painted a soft jade green.
Just because this place was next door to a brothel, there was no reason to suppose any connection between them. The house looked about as unlike what used to be called a house of ill fame as could be imagined. It, too, had just been painted, it, too, had a polished brass letterbox and a front door, though not green, a recently applied dark blue. But that was the connection, Wexford thought. Not necessarily but the chances were that Number 8 and Number 10 had the same owner. Now he could see by the number of bells by the front door, that the house on the
