Authors: Ruth Rendell
‘Mick worked here for years. Mick Bestwood. He retired three years ago. But he knows all about Edsels. He’s even got a couple of them. He’s only just round the corner in Crowswood Road or I can give you a phone number. I’m sure he won’t mind.’
He would have found Mick Bestwood’s house without any directions. What had once been a front garden had been concreted over and become the parking place for an enormous car Wexford recognised from the Wikipedia pictures as an Edsel Citation convertible, probably of 1958. It was sky-blue, not a pale greenish-yellow and so large and long as to dwarf the already small house behind it and the garage joined on to it.
The front door was opened by a young woman in a pink tracksuit he took to be Bestwood’s daughter, but she turned out to be his wife. Bestwood was a small spry man, maybe sixty-five but because of his still dark hair looking much younger. The marriage appeared to be quite recent to judge by the way the woman he addressed as Cassandra kept flashing her wedding and engagement rings. Wexford wondered if marriage had assumed a special status it hadn’t had for thirty or forty years now that so many couples lived together without benefit of registrar.
Mick Bestwood showed not the least surprise that someone
had come to inquire about Edsels. The first thing he asked was if Wexford had noticed his own in the front garden. Wexford didn’t say he could hardly help noticing it and that a more appropriate question would be had he noticed the house, but simply answered that it was a nice car and in perfect condition.
‘It is,’ said Bestwood, ‘and only ten years younger than me. Wished I looked as good.’
‘Oh, Mick,’ said Cassandra. ‘You look lovely, you know you do.’
Bestwood took hold of her ring-flashing hand and smiled. ‘I’ve got another one in the garage – not mine. I’m looking after it for a customer.’ He said like a doctor, ‘So how can I help you?’
Wexford repeated what he had said to the Miracle Motors man. The hand was dropped and Bestwood got up.
‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’ They went outside the way Wexford had come. ‘The chap was called Gray or Greig, can’t remember which but something like that. He had this Edsel, used to bring it to us for service and repairs. He worshipped that car. We heard he’d left it behind with his nephew and gone to live in Liphook, but when I say we heard it that was from the nephew, there was never a word out of Gray.’
Bestwood lifted up the up-and-over door on the garage. Inside, filling it, so that the first thing that struck Wexford was what skilful driving it must have taken to wedge it in there unscathed, was an enormous greenish-yellow car, streamlined and finned and spotlessly clean.
‘Where are the number plates?’
‘Are you asking me? Someone had nicked them before I ever set eyes on it.’ Bestwood gave the car a little pat as he might a beloved pet which had suffered some small injury.
‘Miracle Motors know very well it’s here, but that new manager’s got a head like a sieve, he said. ‘What happened was this. The nephew tried to sell it to us but we weren’t having that, not without the owner there or at least notification from him, not without the registration document. It was me told him to get his uncle to come in himself, but he never did and we never heard another word from him. Then one day – it would have been ‘97 or ‘98 and winter or autumn – I was in Notting Hill, passing through, I mean, on my way from Shepherds Bush, when I spotted this vehicle parked on a yellow line and plastered all over the front with parking tickets and without its number plates. I couldn’t stop then, but I went back later and had a good look. I talked to the then manager. We didn’t have an address for the nephew and all we had for Mr Gray or Greig was Liphook. It was what you might call a dilemma. We decided in the end to fetch the car. Oh, we hadn’t got the keys, but there are ways as I daresay you know. We brought it back to Miracle Motors, paid the fine incidentally and set about trying to contact Mr Gray. Or Greig.’
‘You did all this for someone else’s car?’
Bestwood looked at Wexford the way one might look at a man who has just taken an ice cream from a child or kicked a dog. ‘I’m talking about
this car
. This is an amazing car, a dream of a car. Right?’
‘If you say so.’
‘Well, me and Mr Mackenzie – he was the manager then – we talked about it, thought what to do. I don’t know if you know Liphook? It’s a small place. We didn’t know where to start, though. We’d no contact details for the young guy. All he’d said was his relation had gone to Liphook. The young guy up in St John’s Wood – what did he look like?’
‘I don’t know.’ Wexford thought of the young man’s body in the tomb. He hadn’t seen it, but he could imagine. But he
had no reason, no reason at all, to connect that young man with one seen driving the Edsel. All he knew about the one in the tomb was that he had never been to a dentist and was in need of having one of his teeth filled, had been dressed in jeans and a jacket, whose pockets were full of jewellery worth £40,000 and a piece of paper with ‘Francine’ written on it and ‘La Punaise’. Oh, and a number, a four-figure number. None of that need be told to Bestwood. ‘What were you going to say about Liphook?’
‘Only that the young guy called him his “relation”. Funny that, wasn’t it? No one talks about his “relations”.’
‘You don’t remember the name?’
‘Only that it was the same name. Gray or Greig.’
‘It wasn’t Keith Hill?’
‘I told you. Gray or Greig. I tell you what, Wally Mackenzie might know. He knew all about it, said we should hang on to the vehicle, but he didn’t know where, there not being that much room at Miracle Motors, so I said let me hang on to it and he said why not. It was all above board. And I’ve had it ever since, taken good care of it, it’s been kept in perfect condition for Mr Gray or Greig if he ever comes back for it. Not likely now, though, is it?’
‘Do you know where Mr Mackenzie can be found?’
‘I know where he lives or used to live. Somewhere in Streatham.’
‘The registration document would help,’ Wexford said.
‘Sure it would, but where is it? I’ve never seen it.’ Bestwood went back to the open front door and called, ‘Cassandra, would you be a duck and fetch me the phone book, darling?’
Cassandra quickly became a duck and fetched it. ‘Here we are,’ said Bestwood. ‘W. P. H. Mackenzie, 27 Villiers Road, Streatham. It’s got to be the right one. No one else’d have three initials.’
Wexford said, ‘D’you mind if I have a look inside the boot?’
‘Be my guest. But you’ll find nothing in there. It’s all clean as a whistle.’
Wexford lifted the boot lid. The boot was empty. Of course. It was clean and odourless.
‘What are you looking for? Dead bodies?’
Bestwood laughed at his own joke.
W
alter Mackenzie still lived at the Streatham address. He had left Miracle Motors two years before and gone into partnership with a friend starting a dealership in vintage cars in Norbury, a business which he told Wexford, when he was scarcely in the door, was feeling the recession’s bite. He was a small thin man, much younger than Bestwood, a sharp-voiced man whose tone held a hint of bitterness. The homely, even cosy, atmosphere
chez
Bestwood was lacking here. The place was furnished with the bare essentials, but cluttered with stacks of paper, magazines and what looked like bills and invoices in need of filing.
‘I remember him,’ he began. ‘He’d pinched that car from his uncle. Not a doubt about it. Wanted to sell it to us but I could see through that. I wasn’t born yesterday.’
‘They were uncle and nephew? You’re sure of that?’
‘How can you be sure of something like that? He
said
he was his uncle. Why would he if he wasn’t?’
‘All right. What made you think he’d stolen the car?’
‘I knew the uncle. What was the name? Bray, I think. Or maybe Breck, something like that. His first name was Kenneth. Ken Gray. That guy loved that car, an Edsel Corsair it was. Wouldn’t even have let anyone have a lend of it or drive it round the block, let alone sell it.’
‘The uncle’s first name was Kenneth?’ But it couldn’t have been his uncle … ‘It wasn’t Kenneth or Keith Hill, was it?’
‘No, he wasn’t called Hill. He may have been Keith, not Ken. The nephew may have been called Hill, for all I know. I saw through that boy, whoever he was.’
‘No doubt you told the police?’
‘I what? You must be joking. It was a family affair, wasn’t it? The kid had nicked it while his uncle was away or whatever. Gone to Liphook, he said. On holiday, I reckon, and while the cat’s away the mice will play. That’s all it was, a try-on. I said to him, if he wants to sell his car, you get Ken or Keith to come in here and see me. Of course he never did.’
‘If you can’t be sure of the name,’ said Wexford, ‘have you got any idea where the young man lived or his uncle?’
‘Now that I can’t tell you.’ Mackenzie spoke as if he had already given Wexford valuable information. ‘I can make an intelligent guess.’ Wexford composed his face, to conceal the fact that he strongly doubted this boast. ‘I’d guess it was north London or north-west London. He didn’t seem to know his way round south of the river.’
U
sing the Internet to trace a Keith or Kenneth Hill didn’t occur to Wexford. It had occurred to Tom Ede. He set their DC Garrison on to electoral registers in those areas of London and then widened his search when no one was found of suitable age.
‘There’s a Keith Hill who’s a well-known Labour MP,’ said Tom. He and Wexford were sitting in his office. ‘I’ve heard of him, so he must be well known. There was a footballer, but he’s dead. There’s someone who makes musical instruments. There are hundreds of Keith Hills and Kenneth Hills. It’s a common combination of names.’
‘Our one,’ said Wexford, ‘if he’s the one, would be missing. Not dead but missing.’
‘Sure, but there was no register of misspers twelve years ago. The older man and the young man, were they both called Keith Hill or, come to that, Kenneth Hill? Was one Keith and the other one Kenneth?’
‘I don’t know, Tom. We don’t even know if the young man who gave Mildred Jones the name Keith Hill gave it because it was his own name or because it was his uncle’s name. He may have thought it up on the spur of the moment. And although we know that the young man who gave his name as Keith Hill was driving a car which we know belonged to a man called Ken or Keith something, who now lives in Liphook or did live there, we don’t know if this was the young man who tried to sell the car to Miracle Motors. He may have bought it from that man. He may have stolen it.’
Electoral registers are no good, Wexford thought, or they are only any good if these two men are alive and therefore not our two men. They are good only for elimination.
I
f a trace of bitterness had shown itself in Walter Mackenzie’s words, it was nothing to Martin Rokeby’s. He was plainly a man who saw his whole life as ruined by one small and innocent action he had taken two months before. Or, thought Wexford, he was a consummate actor, one who knew that pretending to a ruined existence, a family break-up and financial disaster as a result of one small move, would do a great deal to free him from suspicion.
No sooner had he sat down in Tom Ede’s state-of-the-art office, all laminate floor, tubular steel and black glass, than he began on his woes.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t say this to a policeman, but you don’t
know how many times I’ve wished I’d never lifted that manhole cover or put it back once I’d seen what was down there. What harm would that have done, I’d like to know? Nothing to the harm that’s been done to me. I’ve lost my home, I’m paying an exorbitant rent for a crummy flat more or less under the flyover, it’ll soon be their holidays but my children won’t come home – even supposing there was anywhere for them to come – they’re staying with friends. I ask you, could anybody have let himself in for more grief just by lifting up a manhole cover and looking inside?’
‘Well, Mr Rokeby,’ said Ede, ‘do you think you’d have slept comfortably in Orcadia Cottage, do you think you’d have had a moment’s peace, if you’d lifted it and just put it back? You could have kept what was underneath to yourself for years? I don’t think so.’
‘I didn’t and that’s all that matters now. What have you got me here for?’
It was said with the maximum ungraciousness, but if the man was innocent Wexford could easily understand his resentment. Ede introduced Wexford as his ‘violent crimes adviser’, which Rokeby acknowledged with a minuscule nod. Tall and straight, he was a good-looking man, with regular features and greyish-blond hair, but to Wexford his thinness seemed new as if he had lost weight in those two months. The small dewlap under his chin looked as if he had once had a thicker neck. But all this meant nothing relative to the man’s innocence or guilt.
It was virtually impossible that Rokeby could be responsible for placing the bodies of the older man and woman and the young man in the tomb, but the presence there of the young woman was a different matter altogether. Nothing would be easier than for the occupant of the house – say he had inadvertently killed this girl – to lift the manhole and cover
and drop her body down to join the others. This meant that he knew the others were there, but he might easily have done so. He might have examined the contents of that underground space in exactly the way he said he wished he had done. Why then had he disclosed the contents to the police a few years later?
Ede took his time answering Rokeby’s enquiry. ‘I’d like you to make a statement, Mr Rokeby. Nothing to be alarmed about. It won’t be about you or your family at all. I’d like you to list everyone you can remember coming to the backyard of Orcadia Cottage, that is the paved patio area, in the past, say, four years. This will be specially relevant to the people who came – surveyors, contractors, maybe people from the planning authority – who looked at the place in connection with your application to build an underground room.’
‘I can do that,’ Rokeby said, ‘providing you allow that I can’t remember every name.’
‘Just do your best.’
Wexford caught Ede’s eye and Ede gave an infinitesimal nod. ‘Are you aware, Mr Rokeby, that there’s a staircase in the cellar part of the underground area?’