Authors: Ruth Rendell
“Of course,” Wexford said. “Of course we can.”
Iman Dirir paused and her face gradually returned to its dark cream color. “It's not for herself that Matea has come to you. For her it's too late. It's for her sister's sake she has come.”
Matea's English had improved. She spoke with a strong accent but improved fluency. “It is for my sister Shamis. She is five years old but not yet in school. My mother and father go home to Somalia for vacation soon. They take with them my brother Adel and my sister.”
Wexford decided to help her. “You're afraid your parents intend to have your sister circumcised while they are in Somalia?”
“I know it,” Matea said.
“It's against the law,” he said, knowing this to be a useless remark. Taking a female out of the country for the purpose of having her genitally mutilated had been a crime punishable by up to fourteen years' imprisonment for four years now, but there had been no prosecutions. The reason for this Mrs. Dirir had already out-lined. A blanket of silence was maintained among these people on the subject. No one would “betray” a lawbreaker to the authorities, no one would go to the police or the medical profession. “You should tell your parents of the penalty—I mean, that they could go to prison for a long time.”
She shook her head. “Mrs. Dirir has done that. They say—they say on and on—we go only for vacation.”
“I will have someone speak to them,” he said, thinking of Karen Malahyde, the Child Protection Officer. “I'll do my best.”
“Thank you,” Matea said and he could see a leap of hope in her eyes.
He slept badly that night. In sleeping dreams and the waking kind, he kept seeing a five-year-old held down on the ground amid a ring of watching women, held by her spread legs and her struggling arms, while another cut into her flesh with a sharpened stone. He would do his best. Would it be enough to prevent an outrage being perpetrated on a helpless child, not yet at primary school?
Selina Hexham might have made the whole thing up. “Gone Without Trace” sounded factual, but perhaps it was a work of fiction. Thinking this way after his disturbed night, Wexford had Hannah check the weather on June 15, 1995, with the Weather Centre, formerly the Meteorological Office, and the trains on that day between London and Lewes and Lewes and Kingsmarkham. She found that, as Selina Hexham had said, it rained all that day. A train from London to Lewes had left Victoria at 9:25 a.m. and reached Lewes at 10:12, while in the afternoon the 2:20 from Lewes had arrived in Kingsmarkham at 2:42.
The third Carol Davidson Hannah tried was the right one. She was still a widow but she had moved from Lewes to Uckfield. Hannah had difficulties with her. She hadn't seen the Sunday Times, neither yesterday's nor the previous Sunday's, and the result of enlightening her was at first to arouse indignation. Hannah knew that this was the reaction of most people when they hear they have been mentioned in a newspaper without being asked for their permission. Carol Davidson assumed that something derogatory must have been written about her and her late husband. If this was paranoia it was very common and Hannah let her vent her anger for a full minute. At the end of it she assured her that Selina Hexham had written nothing but pleasant things about her parents' friendship with the Davidsons and gradually Carol Davidson grew calmer.
“What did you phone me for?” she asked in a sullen tone. “Apart from thoroughly upsetting me?”
“I'm very sorry about that, Mrs. Davidson.” Hannah particularly disliked addressing a woman by her wifely style and she disliked apologizing almost as much, but she gritted her teeth. “All I want is to confirm a few details with you.”
“Yes, well, he disappeared. I mean, Alan Hexham did. People said he went off with another woman, though it doesn't sound much like him. But you never can tell. I don't suppose Selina has anything to say about that.”
“She does, as a matter of fact. May I ask you for a few details?”
“I suppose so. Go ahead.”
“Mr. Hexham appears to have left your house at two p.m. Is that correct?”
“I can't tell you to the minute. It was something like that. It was the day of my husband's funeral—you want to remember that.”
Hannah controlled her rage. That husband had been dead eleven years and no doubt, like most if not absolutely all marriages, theirs hadn't been a bed of roses. “Can you tell me how far your house was from Lewes train station?”
“I really do resent the way we have to talk about train stations these days. ‘Railway station’ used to be the expression. How far was it? Not far. Ten minutes' walk?”
“Did Mr. Hexham walk?”
“I really don't remember. It's a long time ago. I do know he was going to the station.”
“There was a train at two-twenty.”
“Well, if you know, why ask me? He didn't tell me where he was going. Home, I imagine.”
Hannah had nothing more to ask. Consulting a street plan online, she found that the Davidsons' house was very near Lewes station. It would hardly have taken twenty minutes to get there but Hannah knew very well that some people like to be on the platform with plenty of time to spare before their train is due. Her mother was such a one, and as a child, Hannah had several times found herself and her parents waiting for three empty tedious hours in airport lounges. If Hexham's destination had been important to him, or rather what was to happen when he got there was important, he would have been very anxious not to miss that train.
Wexford phoned the Sunday Times himself. The literary editor referred him to Selina Hexham's publishers, Lawrence Busoni Hill, at an address in West London. He spoke to her editor, who hesitated when he asked her for Miss Hexham's address or phone number. It wasn't their policy to disclose addresses. Not even to the police? he asked. That would be all right, she said, if she could check and call him back. He hadn't much faith in her promise, but she did call him back, and he soon found himself in possession of a phone number and an e-mail address.
An answering machine responded. Selina—she gave no surname—wasn't available to speak to him now, but if it was important she could be called on her mobile. A number followed. He supposed she was at work, a lab somewhere. He hesitated about calling that number, but it was nearly one o'clock and perhaps she would be having lunch. Again she wasn't available, but on his third attempt she answered.
“Selina speaking. Will you hold please?” He held. Surnames were on the way out, he thought. Soon it would be like it had been in medieval times and people would be called John of London or Jane of the Green. And because it would be so hard to know whom you were referring to, in order to distinguish one person from another given names might become more and more outlandish and strange and . . . She came back on the line. “I'm sorry about that. What can I do for you?”
He explained who he was.
“You've found my dad?” She was quickly excited.
“No, no, Miss Hexham. Not that. I read the extracts from your book. I'd like to talk to you. I can't say more than that at the moment. Perhaps I could come and see you?”
“I'll come to you,” she said. “I can't believe it. They said if I wrote about what happened and it was in a newspaper it was a way of finding him, but I didn't believe it. When shall I come?”
That afternoon if possible, he said. Of course she would. She could take time off and she didn't want to wait. She wouldn't sleep if she left it overnight. All right, he said, any time you like, there are three trains an hour from Victoria. But he was appalled. In her book she had said she feared her father might be dead, her mother had known he was dead, yet here she was thrilled, jubilant, like a child looking forward to a promised treat.
Once upon a time, every town in Britain had among its streets one or perhaps two looked upon as the least desirable in which to live by those whose homes were in more salubrious parts. Just as they also had one or perhaps two which were the most desirable and vulgarly known as “millionaire's row.” This has changed now as housing estates have been built and new terraces and little detached boxes proliferate, but the worst and the best still remain tucked in among them and they are still the same best and worst. In Kingsmarkham the best had always been Ploughman's Lane—incongruous, Wexford sometimes said, that the most humble of rustic laborers should have given the name of his calling to an avenue of elegant and almost noble mansions, affordable only by the very rich—and the worst Glebe Road. Still, Glebe Road had been gentrified in parts and elevated, in more senses than one, by a couple of not very high tower blocks, cut off at ten floors, as if the architect had lost his nerve.
In the more attractive of these blocks lived Matea's parents, the Imrans, in one of a number of flats alloted five years before to successful asylum seekers. Karen almost felt her heart fail her as she and Lyn climbed the stairs, the Cremorne House lift being out of order. She had no problem with a rigid political correctness, but delicacy was a subtly different matter and was what would be needed here. Of that she hadn't much experience. The door was answered by a middle-aged woman wearing a long black gown and a hastily donned head scarf that she removed as soon as Karen and Lyn were inside. It had been worn, presumably, lest a man had been at the door. Mrs. Imran looked carefully at their identification, then indicated with a graceful gesture of her right hand that they should come into the living room.
On the tenth floor—Kingsmarkham Council dared to call it a penthouse, Karen had once noticed—a magnificent view of downs and meadows and Cheriton Forest presented itself beyond an in-adequate window. On a sofa with a boy of about ten beside him, Rashid Imran sat playing Monopoly with his son and a small girl who knelt on the floor.
As a general rule, Karen disliked children. She had been told this was because they frightened her, but Wexford believed this indifference was an advantage. It meant she could be detached and not become emotionally involved. Lyn, on the other hand, loved children, wanted to get married so that she could have half a dozen—well, three. She immediately squatted down beside the little girl and asked if she might play. It was apparent that Mrs. Imran had very little English, if any. But her husband spoke it well and his son had apparently learned it at school. The child Shamis had enough to say to Lyn, “Sit, please. You play.”
Adel Imran answered her in the same language and Karen saw that they had gate-crashed an English lesson. This was something of which she hardly knew whether she should approve or not. A past Home Secretary had said that it was necessary for all immigrants to speak English and at first she had agreed with this but then she had wondered. Would making this a requirement of residency be to endanger people's human rights? She looked at Lyn who was already getting on famously with the children and said to their father, “Do you think DC Fancourt could take the children into another room for a while? There's something I want to say to you and your wife.”
Immediately Mrs. Imran began hustling the little boy and girl. Lyn said, “We could take the Monopoly with us and I'll play instead of your dad. How about that?”
Karen, who sometimes prided herself on her stony heart, came close to being moved by the sight of Shamis looking up into Lyn's face and shyly taking her hand. Appreciative of beauty, she thought she had seldom seen a lovelier child, her golden skin a little darker than her brother's, her eyes black as basalt. When Mrs. Imran had closed the door after them, she began. It was about to be the hardest encounter with the public she had had for a long time and she heartily wished herself out of it, but she could see why she, a woman, had to do it and not Barry Vine or Damon.
“Mr. Imran, I am sure you and your wife would not wish to break the laws of this country now it's your home.” Was that racist? Surely not. Karen would have been happier and have thought herself more politically correct to address the man's wife, but what was the use of that when Mrs. Imran's English was so limited? “The trouble is, isn't it, that we don't always know what the law is. Now we have a law in Britain that makes it an offense, a very serious offense, to circumcise a woman or a girl. To cut her, I mean. Do you understand me?”
The woman turned to her a blank face, obviously uncomprehending. Her husband, who had cast down his eyes, began speaking to her in his own language, a language Karen was ashamed to confess she couldn't identify. Was there one actually called Somali? Mrs. Imran nodded, said nothing.
“Do you understand me, Mr. Imran?”
“Of course. But why come to us?”
“Mr. Imran, we have reason to believe you plan to go on holiday to Somalia and while you are there to have Shamis—er, cut.”
“Oh, no,” he said very quickly. Too quickly. “We go on vacation only.” Again he whispered to his wife and this time she shook her head.
“No, no. This is vacation.” She stumbled a little at the word. “Children to see aunties.”
Karen nearly shuddered, seeing old women with razors in their hands, or broken glass or stones. “You must believe I don't want to frighten you or distress you.” Was that patronizing? “But I have to tell you that the maximum penalty . . .” They wouldn't understand that, they wouldn't have the faintest idea. “The biggest punishment—do you understand?—is fourteen years in prison for a person who breaks this law.”
They were silent. From the next room came a sudden peal of child's laughter. Rashid Imran lifted his eyes, said, “We cannot speak of this. It is not right to speak of it. You must know that we take the children just on vacation, nothing else. You should go now.”
She had no choice. Shamis came to the door with her to see them out. Lyn bent down and kissed her. “Well?” she said when they were on the stairs. Karen shrugged.
“I don't know. They didn't say a word about being against female genital mutilation, but they didn't say they were for it either. I'll have to see what the guv says.”
She tried it on him when they got back. “We could have Shamis examined before they go and again when they come back.”