She lifted her head and faced him. “We sat here and we waited for you. When you hadn’t come by eight we had our meal, though it was ruined. I said, ‘Let’s go just the same,’ and John said ‘We can’t go without Dad. We can’t let him come home and find us gone.’ ”
“I said I’m sorry,” said Burden.
“You could have phoned!” Grace said passionately. “I wouldn’t say a word if you’d phoned. Don’t you realise, if you go on like this, you’ll - you’ll destroy those children!”
She went out and the door closed behind her, leaving Burden to thoughts that were neither of her nor his children.
Chapter 5
Burden looked at the sheet of paper Wexford had handed him. Written on it in a bold, large but child like hand were the names of every man, woman and child Gemma Lawrence had known during the past ten years.
“When did she write all that out?”
Wexford eyed him briefly and narrowly. “This morning with Loring’s help. You aren’t her exclusive private eye, you know.”
Burden flushed. What hundreds of people she knew and what extraordinary names they had! Artists and models and theatre folk, he supposed, suddenly bad-tempered. “Have we got to interview all this lot?”
“The Met are going to help us there. I asked Mrs. Lawrence to write down every name because I want to show the list to the Swans.”
“You are connecting the two cases, then?”
Wexford didn’t answer directly. He took the list from Burden, gave him another piece of paper and said, “This came. It’s been gone over for fingerprints, so you needn’t worry about touching it. Of course there weren’t any prints.”
“John Lawrence is safe and, well with me,” Burden read. “He is happy playing with my rabbits on the farm. To show you this is not a hoax, I am enclosing a lock of his hair.” The note, written in block capitals on a sheet of lined paper, was correctly spelt and punctuated. “His mother can have him back on Monday. I will bring him to the southern end of Myfleet Ride in Cheriton Forest at 9 a.m. If anyone tries to collect him before nine-thirty, I will know and I will shoot John dead. This is a serious warning. I will not break my promise if you co-operate.”
Burden dropped it in disgust. Used as he was to such things, he could still not read them without a shudder. “Was there a lock of hair?” he asked.
“Here.”
It had been twisted into a smooth neat circle like a woman’s pin curl. Burden lifted it in tweezers, noting the delicacy of each red-gold strand, the absence of those kinks and ridges which occur in adult hair.
“It’s human,” said Wexford. “I got Crocker on to it at once. He says it’s the child’s hair, but, of course, we shall have to have more expert tests.”
“Has Mrs. Lawrence been told?”
“Thank God he’s safe,” she said when she had read the first lines. She held the letter momentarily to her breast but she didn’t cry. “He’s safe and well on a farm somewhere. Oh my God, and what agonies I’ve been through! Imagine, all that for nothing and he’ll be back with me on Monday.”
Burden was appalled. He had already told her not to bank on the letter at all, that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred such letters are cruel hoaxes. For all the notice she took, he might not have spoken.
“Let me see the hair,” she said.
Reluctantly he took the envelope which contained it from his briefcase. She gasped when she saw the small golden curl. So far it had been handled carefully with tweezers, but she took it, stroked it and pressed it to her mouth. “Come upstairs.”
He followed her into John’s bedroom, noticing that the child’s bed hadn’t been made since his disappearance. It was a nice bedroom, though, full of toys and with a beautiful expensive wallpaper of Dürer animals reproduced in line and wash. However much she might neglect the rest of the house, she had cared for this room and probably done the papering herself. Burden’s opinion of her as a mother rose.
She went over to a small blue-painted chest of drawers and picked up John’s hairbrush. A few fine blond hairs were caught in its bristles and, with an earnest concentrated expression, she compared them with the lock in her hand. Then she turned and smiled radiantly.
Burden had never seen her really smile before. Until then her smiles had been brief and watery, reminding him, he thought suddenly, of a faint sun coming out after rain. Such metaphors were very unusual with him, fanciful and not in his line. But he thought it now as he received the full force of her brilliant happy smile and saw again how beautiful she was.
“It is the same, isn’t it?” she said, the smile fading as she almost pleaded, “isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.” There was certainly a strong similarity, but Burden didn’t know whether he wanted the hairs to be the same or not. If this man really had John and if he had really cut that lock from John’s head, was it likely that he would let the boy go otherwise unharmed? Would he risk the boy’s identifying him? On the other hand, he had demanded no money . . . “You’re his mother,” he murmured. “I wouldn’t like to say.”
“I know he’s safe,” she said. “I feel it. I’ve only got to get through two more days.”
He hadn’t the heart to say any more then. Only a brute, he thought, would destroy such shining happiness. So that she shouldn’t read the last lines he wanted to take the letter from her, but she read it to the end.
“I’ve heard about cases like this,” she said, a little fear returning to her voice as she gazed at him, “and what the police do. You wouldn’t - you wouldn’t do - do what he says you’re not to do? You wouldn’t try to trap him? Because then John . . .”
“I promise you,” he said, “that we shall do nothing which might in any way endanger John’s life.” She had said nothing vindictive about the writer of the letter, he noticed. Other women in her position would have raged and screamed for revenge. She had merely been filled with joy. “We shall go there on Monday morning, at nine-thirty, and if he is there we shall bring him back to you.”
“He’ll be there,” she said. “I trust this man. I’ve got a feeling he’s genuine. Really, I have, Mike.” Her use of his Christian name brought colour into his face. He felt his cheeks burn. “He’s probably dreadfully lonely,” she said gently. “I know what it is to be lonely. If John has given him a few days’ respite from his loneliness I don’t grudge John to him.”
It was incredible and Burden couldn’t understand. If it had been his child, his John, he would have wanted to kill the man, to see him die a lingering death. As it was, his feelings towards the letter-writer were so violent that they frightened him. Let me get at him, he thought, give me five minutes alone in the cell with him and, by God, if I lose my job for it . . . He pulled himself up with a jerk and saw that her eyes were on him, kind, sweet and compassionate.
In his haste to see Gemma, Burden had forgotten the Swans, but now he remembered Wexford saying the note helped to establish a connection between the two cases. The chief inspector was still in his office.
“Swan lives on a farm,” he said. “I phoned but he’s out till three.”
“Does he keep rabbits?”
“Don’t mention rabbits to me. I’ve only just got over an hour with the secretary of the local rabbit club. Rabbits! The place is crawling with them, Old English, Blue Beverens, you name ‘em, we got ‘em. I tell you, Mike, it’s like the Apocrypha says, ‘The coneys are a feeble folk, but they make their houses in the rocks!’”