“What’s this about a special court?” he demanded, bursting into Wexford’s office,
The chief inspector looked tired this morning. When he was tired his skin took on a grey matteness and his eyes looked smaller than ever, but still steel-bright, Under the puffy lids.
“Last night,” he said. “I found our letter-writer, a certain Arnold Charles Bishop.”
“But not the boy?” Burden said breathlessly.
“Of course not the boy.” Burden didn’t like it when Wexford sneered like that. His eyes seemed to be drilling two neat holes into the inspector’s already aching head. “He’s never even seen the boy. I found him at his home in Sparta Grove where he was occupied in writing another letter to me. His wife was out at her evening class, his children were in bed. Oh, yes, he has children, two boys. It was from the head of one of them that he cut the hair while the kid was asleep.”
“Oh God,” said Burden.
“He’s a fur fetishist, Want me to read his statement?”
Burden nodded.
“ ‘I have never seen John Lawrence or his mother. I did not take him away from the care of his mother, his legal guardian. On October 16, at about 6 p.m., I overheard my neighbour, Mrs. Foster, tell her husband that John Lawrence was missing and that search parties would probably be arranged. I went to Fontaine Road on my bicycle and joined one of these search parties.' ”
“ 'On three subsequent occasions in October and November I wrote three letters to Chief Inspector Wexford. I did not sign them. I made one telephone call to him. I do not know why I did these things. Something came over me and I had to do them. I am a happily married man with two children of my own. I would never harm a child and I do not own a car. When I wrote about the rabbits I did this because I like fur. I have three fur coats but my wife does not know this. She knows nothing of what I have done. When she goes out and the children are asleep I often put one of my coats on and feel the fur.' ”
“ 'I read in the paper that Mrs. Lawrence had red hair and John Lawrence fair hair. I cut a piece of hair from the head of my son Raymond and sent it to the police. I cannot explain why I did this or any of it except by saying that I had to do it.' ”
Burden said hoarsely, “The maximum he can get is six months for obstructing the police.”
“Well, what would you charge him with? Mental torture? The man’s sick. I was angry too last night, but not anymore. Unless you’re a brute or a moron you can’t be angry with a man who’s going through life with a sickness as grotesque as Bishop’s.”
Burden muttered something about it being all right for those who weren’t personally involved, but Wexford ignored it. “Coming over to the court in about half an hour?”
“To go through all that muck again?”
“A great deal of our work consists of muck, as you call it. Clearing muck, cleaning up, learning what muck is and where it lives.” Wexford rose and leaned heavily on his desk. “If you don’t come, what are you going to do? Sit here mooning all day? Delegating? Passing the buck? Mike, I have to say this. It’s time I said it. I’m tired. I’m trying to solve this case all on my own because I can’t count on you any more. I can’t talk to you. We used to thrash things out together, sift the muck, if you like. Talking to you now - well, it’s like trying to have a rational conversation with a zombie."
Burden looked up at him. For a moment Wexford thought he wasn’t going to answer or defend himself. He just stared, a dead empty stare, as if he had been interrogated for many days and many sleepless nights and could no longer sort out the painful twisted threads that contributed to his unhappiness. But he knew, for all that, that the time for fobbing Wexford off was long gone by, and he brought it all out in a series of clipped sentences.
“Grace is leaving me. I don’t know what to do about the kids. My personal life’s a mess. I can’t do my job.” A cry he hadn’t meant to utter broke out. “Why did she have to die?’ And then, because he couldn’t help himself, because tears which no one must see were burning his eyelids, he sank his head into his hands.
The room was very still. Soon I must lift my head, Burden thought, and take away my hands and see his derision. He didn’t move except to press his fingers harder against his eyes. Then he felt Wexford’s heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Mike, my dear old friend . . .”
An emotional scene between two normally unemotional men usually has its aftermath of deep miserable embarrassment. When Burden had recovered he felt very embarrassed, but Wexford neither blustered heartily nor made one of those maladroit efforts to change the subject.
“You’re due to be off this weekend, aren’t you, Mike?”
“How can I take time off now?”
“Don’t be a bloody fool. You’re worse than useless the state you’re in. Make it a long weekend, starting on Thursday.”
“Grace is taking the children down to Eastbourne . . .”
“Go with them. See if you can’t make her change her mind about leaving. There are ways, Mike, aren’t there? And now - my God, look at the time! - I’ll be late for the court if I don’t get cracking.”
Burden opened the window and stood by it, letting the thin morning mist cool his face. It seemed to him that with the arrest of Bishop their last hope - or his last fear? - of finding John Lawrence had gone. He wouldn’t disturb Gemma with it and she had never read the local papers. The mist, floating white and translucent, washed him gently and calmed him. He thought of the mist by the seaside and the long bare beaches, deserted in November. Once there, he would tell the children and Grace and his mother about Gemma, that he was to be married again.
He wondered why the idea of this chilled him more than the cold touch of the autumnal air. Because she was the strangest successor to Jean he could have picked in all his world? In the past he had marvelled at men who, in their selflessness or their temporary infatuation, marry crippled or blind women. Wasn’t he contemplating doing just that, marrying a woman who was crippled in her heart and her personality? And that was the only way he knew her. How would she be if her deformity were healed?
Ludicrously, monstrous, to think of Gemma as deformed. Tenderly and with an ache of longing, he recalled her beauty and their lovemaking. Then, closing the window sharply, he knew he wouldn’t be going down to Eastbourne with Grace.
Bishop was remanded for a medical report. The head shrinkers would get to work on him, Wexford thought. Maybe that would do some good, more likely it wouldn’t. If he had had any faith in psychiatrists he would have recommended Burden to attend one. Still, their recent confrontation had done something to clear the air. Wexford felt the better for it and he hoped Burden did too. Now, at any rate, he was out on his own. Single-handed he must find the children’s killer - or fall back on the Yard.
The events of the past twenty-four hours had distracted his mind from Mr. and Mrs. Rushworth. Now he considered them again. Rushworth was in the habit of wearing a duffel coat, Rushworth was suspected of molesting a child, but surely, if he had been the loiterer in the swings field, Mrs. Mitchell would have recognised him as one of her neighbours? Moreover, at the time of John’s disappearance, every man within a quarter-mile radius of Fontaine Road had been closely investigated, Rushworth included.
Wexford delved once more among the reports. On the afternoon of October 16th Rushworth claimed to have been in Sewingbury where he had a date to show a client over a house. The client, Wexford saw, hadn’t turned up. Back in February Rushworth hadn’t even been questioned. Why should he have been? Nothing pointed to a connection between him and Stella Rivers and no one knew then that he was the owner of the rented cottage in Mill Lane. At the time the ownership of that cottage had seemed irrelevant.