other side, Number 6 with the pillared portico, was let off into single-room apartments, probably bedsits. The tenants, even if they knew, would be unlikely to object to being neighbours to a brothel. He went through the gate of Number 10 and at the front door, looked to his right and to his left. There was no one about, no one passing up the hill on this side and only a man pulling a suitcase on wheels on the other, intent on nothing but getting to the tube station.
Wexford tried to pull the envelope out. It stuck on something and tore. But not enough to obscure the name and address printed on it. Mr D. Keyworth, he read. Slowly he pushed the letter back into the letterbox. This time it passed through and he heard a light flop as it fell on to the mat.
Afterwards, when it was all over, he thought that he had done a few things wrong. He had put himself – ridiculously – in danger. He should have gone straight to Tom, asked for Lucy or Miles to come with him to Hendon (or for permission to accompany Lucy or Miles), but he was afraid of the humiliation of a refusal. Uppermost in his mind was old Mildreadful’s complaint about Lucy, and indirectly about him, to the IPCC.
So he went alone to see Louise Fortescue. First to fetch his car. By some miracle no parking ticket was attached to his windscreen. Nor had worse happened and the horrible yellow metal Denver Boot of the clampers disabled it. Up the Hendon Way and on to the Watford Way. Parking restrictions outside K, K and L Ltd, Below Surface Home Extensions, but the kind easily complied with. You could leave your car for an hour in the little lay-by outside the shops. It was nearly three months since he had seen Louise Fortescue, but he could recognise a changed woman. Her black trouser suit had been replaced by a pencil skirt, a tight white sweater and high-heeled shoes, but what he principally noticed was the engagement ring on the third finger of her left hand.
‘I was a bit of a misery when you were last here,’ she said.
‘Life treating you better, is it?’
‘Oh, yes. I’m getting married on Saturday.’
Wexford congratulated her. He explained that he was no longer a policeman and that she had no need to answer his questions unless she wanted to.
‘If it’s about Damian Keyworth,’ she said, ‘I only went on working for him because I needed the job. This is my last week here and I can’t wait to shake the dust of this place off my feet. Not that he’s often here. Could you tell me what he’s done?’
‘I don’t know, Ms Fortescue. Something serious, I think, but I can’t tell you any more than that at this stage.’
‘All right. It doesn’t matter. I don’t see him from one week’s end to the next, thank God.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Look, sit down, why don’t you? I’m going to.’
‘You said you moved in with Mr Keyworth, but after a week you broke off your engagement and left. Would you mind telling me about that?’
There were just two chairs in the tiny room. Louise Fortescue sat behind the desk and as she began to talk he noticed how her colour heightened. ‘I wouldn’t mind at all. I’d be glad to. I’ve nothing to hide. It was so – well, it was outrageous. We were getting on very well, or it seemed like that to me. I’d been living there and I’d taken two days off to settle in. It was a Friday and he’d just got home from work. It was maybe six in the evening. Someone rang the front doorbell and knocked as well and rang again as if they were desperate. I went to the door to answer it and Damian came behind me. There was a girl there, a very young girl, blonde, pretty, I suppose, wearing awful clothes – well, I won’t say what she was like, a very short miniskirt and a leather jacket and – well, you can imagine.’
‘Mr Keyworth saw her?’
‘Oh, yes. And he knew her all right. It was easy to see what had been going on. He didn’t say a word to me. He took her into the lounge and I went upstairs and left them to it. It was getting dark, but not so dark I couldn’t see the two of them leave the house and get into his car. A long time later he came back alone and tried to explain to me. He said she’d been his girlfriend and still was, but he meant to break with her and should have done before I came to live there. I still loved him, but that was more than I could stand and I packed my bags and phoned for a taxi and left. He really tried to make things all right between us, he went on and on, and when he saw it was no use he begged me not to stop working for him. So in the end I said I’d stay – I mean, I needed the job – but everything was over between us. Actually, we hardly ever meet these days. I’ve been running the business, such as it is, and I talk to him on the phone. That’s about it.’
‘Mr Keyworth hasn’t much work then?’
‘Virtually nothing. I don’t know why he keeps it going unless it’s a front for something else he’s up to. So far as I know – and I would know – he’s got no replacement for me.’ She gave a satisfied nod. ‘Oh, there’s one other thing,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if it’s important, maybe it’s nothing. But that day, it was August first, there was a girl hanging about outside the house next door and she’d been there the day before too. There’s a seat on the pavement opposite and she sat down on that. I watched her, wondering what was going on. She’d gone before that girl came to the door. I don’t suppose it was important, was it?’
‘It may have been,’ said Wexford. ‘Thank you very much, Ms Fortescue.’ He glanced at the ring. ‘I hope you’ll be very happy.’
CHAPTER TWENTY- NINE
IT WAS A foolhardy thing to do, to go back there. He had simply made several assumptions: that Tom Ede would prefer him to keep out of the way while the investigation went on into Mildred Jones’s complaint; that the men running the brothel in the house with the bay window were not dangerous; that Louise Fortescue would not tell Damian Keyworth about their interview. But why would she not? In a phone conversation, no doubt, she might have told him out of revenge. Wexford could almost hear her – ‘I don’t know what you’ve been up to but you’d better watch it. The police are interested in your activities, whatever they are.’
Before he left he talked to Dora about the offer made to Sylvia. She had almost decided to accept it, even though it was less than she had asked for.
‘I told her that was certain these days,’ Dora said. ‘And she’s inclined to accept it. I did wonder if I should have advised her not to and then she would have been bound to jump at it.’
Wexford laughed, but he was thinking about the offers of money that were made to youngish well-off middle- class women with British passports and the offers of money that were made to young poor women from the Caucasus with no passports, and the difference between them. ‘I think my business here will soon be over,’ he said. ‘While Sylvia’s moving out and in to her new place shall we go somewhere nice on holiday? Somewhere warm?
