‘I can’t suppose you have anything to hide, Mrs Rokeby.’
Her hands had again begun to shake. ‘That’s not the point, that’s not what I …’
‘Sit down, Annie,’ her husband interrupted her. ‘It’s because we’ve nothing to hide that we can’t have any objection to talking about this.’ He turned to Wexford. ‘We moved into Orcadia Cottage in the spring of twenty-o-two and we had a builder in called Pinkson. I remember that because it was such a weird name. He was a sort of jack of all trades and we found him because he’d done some work for our predecessors, the Silvermans, cut down the creeper among other things. Then in the spring of twenty-o-six I applied for planning permission to build an underground room and I consulted three or four building firms.’
‘Pinkson being one of them?’
‘No. He’d gone, moved away or gone out of business.’ Something struck Rokeby. ‘You’re not saying one of those men put a fourth body down there, one of the ones who came to talk about building below ground?’
‘I’m not saying anything, Mr Rokeby. I’m hoping you’ll say something and give me some useful information.’
‘I can’t remember the names,’ Rokeby said. ‘Well, I can remember one. They were called Subearth Structures. I thought it was a stupid name and it stuck in my mind, but as for the others …’
Anne Rokeby’s tone was cold and curiously dreary. She spoke as if she hated her husband only a little less than she hated Wexford. ‘You got the names of the others out of the Yellow Pages. I said it would be better to act on personal recommendations but you wouldn’t.’
‘Do you remember the names of the firms you took from the Yellow Pages?’
Martin Rokeby shrugged, then shook his head slowly, but his wife again jumped to her feet. Wexford was making himself ready to restrain her if she did what she seemed about to do, fly at her husband with her hands up like a cat’s claws. ‘You want to come to the end of all this, don’t you?’ she shouted. ‘You want to solve it or whatever the term is, don’t you? I know I can’t stand much more of living in this dump. The more you tell him the sooner all this hell will be over …’
‘But, Annie, I don’t know …’
‘Yes, you do! You marked those firms in the Yellow Pages. I remember. You put a ring round them with a ballpoint pen. What’s the matter with you that I can remember and you can’t?’
Very calmly, not showing any of the excitement he felt, Wexford asked if they had that particular volume of the Yellow Pages with them in the flat.
‘Of course we don’t.’ Anne Rokeby was scornful now. ‘But no one ever throws those things away, not even when you get a new one. It’ll be in the hall cupboard at the cottage unless your people have disposed of it. It’ll be there with rings round all those builders’ names, of course it will.’
It was a relief to be away from those bad-tempered, unhappy people. Wexford walked a little way down the road towards Paddington Green, recalling the song about Pretty Polly Perkins and her lover the milkman.
I’m a broken-hearted milkman, in grief I’m arrayed
Through keeping of the company of a young serving maid,
Who lived on board and wages the house to keep clean
In a gentleman’s family near Paddington Green.
The gentleman’s family could have lived in one of the remaining Victorian houses sandwiched between the newer building on the eastern side of the green. St Mary’s Church was beautiful, the kind of place people called a ‘little gem’ and he remembered reading somewhere that in exchange for being allowed to build the Westway so close to it and across its land, the church had been given a donation sufficient to restore it to its former glory. Its clock struck noon with the kind of chimes that are usually called ‘silvery’ but sounded more golden to him, they were so rich and harmonious.
He sat down on a seat on the green and phoned Tom.
Lucy would go to Orcadia Cottage, Tom said, and meet Wexford there to explore the phone books. Was it too far to walk? All the way up the Edgware Road, turn in at Aberdeen Place, he calculated, but maybe a more interesting way would be to try the hinterland of Marylebone. Church Street with its antique shops detained him briefly, but after a minute or two of being amazed by Alfie’s windows, he walked through to Lisson Grove (where Eliza Doolittle lived, he recalled) and on up Grove End to Orcadia Place.
Two people, not police, were outside, looking at Lucy’s car. They moved away when they saw him and transferred their attention to the house itself. One of them was the fat young woman with the pushchair, though she was without it this morning and holding the hand of its usual occupant. He went up to the front door and having no key, rang the bell. Lucy answered it and he was about to step inside when, quick as a flash in spite of her size, the young woman was at his side.
‘If you’re going in, can we come?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ he said. ‘Sorry but no.’
Lucy said, ‘You shouldn’t even be in the garden. There’s nothing for you to see and I’d advise you to go home.’
Wexford thought the girl would retaliate – he dreaded a racist comment – but she said nothing, contenting herself with a glare at Lucy’s cornrows, and went reluctantly away, the child whose hand she was clutching, starting to grizzle. He closed the front door behind him and turned to survey the welter of phone directories lying on the hall floor. Lucy started to pick them up.
‘I’d have said that one of those Rokebys is the sort of person who never throws anything away, but they appear to have thrown away the crucial one. There are three copies of the Yellow Pages but not the marked copy. Mind you, I’ve only looked in the hall cupboard.’
‘It may be somewhere else in the house.’
They set about searching likely places and unlikely ones, a drawer at the base of a wardrobe, the drawers in a dressing table, bookshelves in case the missing directory had been placed among oversized books, the four cardboard crates packed with ornaments and crockery which the Rokebys had perhaps intended to take with them to St Mary’s Grove but in the event had left behind. On top of the fourth of these, the last one they searched, was the missing Yellow Pages. But when Wexford lifted it out he found that the pages in the first half of it had been torn out.
‘And that’s the bit with the “Builders” and “Contractors” in,’ he said.
‘It has to be the one, sir. But the pages are gone. It’s no use to us.’
‘I’m not so sure. Have a look at those crates. All the stuff that’s packed inside them is wrapped in newsprint. Not Yellow Pages, I know. But suppose they ran out of newsprint when they came to pack a fifth crate and used Yellow Pages for want of anything else.’
‘Except that they didn’t.’
‘Lucy, will you drive me back to St Mary’s Grove – do you know where that is? There’s just a chance …’
No sightseers remained outside Orcadia Cottage. It had begun to rain, a thin drizzle. ‘If it doesn’t work out the way I’m hoping,’ Wexford said when they were in the car, ‘at least we know about Subearth structure and it’s possible that may be all we need to know.’
‘What do you think we’re going to find, sir?’
Instead of replying Wexford said, ‘You’ve been to that flat the Rokebys are living in, haven’t you?’
‘Just the once, sir.’
‘Did you notice how few ornaments there were about?’
Lucy shook her head. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘Let’s hope that the ones they brought with them they never unpacked.’
This proved to be the case. The Rokebys were far from pleased to see Wexford again and positively hostile to Lucy. ‘Two of you?’ Anne Rokeby said. ‘What are you going to do? Arrest us?’
‘Did you bring a crate of china or crockery with you when you came to this flat?’