Rokeby must be seen again, however distasteful the man found it. Trevor Oswin – why was his home address treated as a secret? Why did the woman who was probably his wife give him Trevor’s mobile number rather than tell him to call again when her husband was in? Perhaps it meant nothing. Would Rokeby remember him? Francine, he thought, Francine Hill … The taxi drew up behind his parked car.
It was only at three two mornings later that he thanked God he had taken the wrong turnings and thus – twice – passed that medical centre. Before that he had Dora to reassure, Dora who had now begun to see the disadvantages of handing over one’s principal residence to one’s daughter’s family and being obliged to live in one’s second home. He reminded her how hard it was to predict the future, how the best laid plans (but this one was too much like one of Tom’s maxims) could go wrong, how people changed their minds in the course of time. She could bring some of her favourite things here, that would be easy, favourite books, ornaments, photographs.
‘Yes, Reg, I know, but you feel the same as I do, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘If before they got married people had to go to classes where they learned about what children are like, how they go on being your responsibility until they’ve got grown-up children themselves and beyond, the world population would go down fast.’
‘They wouldn’t listen,’ said Wexford, ‘and anyway half the population doesn’t get married any more.’
For the first time ever that evening he phoned an Indian takeaway which sent the order round on a bicycle. The phone number was on one of the gaudy flyovers that came through the coachhouse letter box every day. ‘Now that’s something you couldn’t do in Kingsmarkham.’
‘If it doesn’t taste nice I wouldn’t want to do it.’
But it tasted very nice and they accompanied it with a bottle of Merlot. ‘Incorrect, I’m sure,’ said Wexford and he felt a real nostalgia for all those oriental restaurants he and Burden used to visit in what he thought of as ‘the old days’. But he said none of that aloud. He had to make London more attractive to Dora, more acceptable as perhaps a whole year’s domicile.
A sound sleeper, she went to bed early. She never minded light in their bedroom and slept through the bedlamp being switched on and off. He sat up for a while, reading Kinglake’s Eothen, a favourite book about the Middle East one hundred and fifty years ago, a different world, just as violent but more romantic. Dreaming about the awe-inspiring Hodja who preached in the Great Mosque with a sword in his hand, he awoke at three with the name Francine Hill on his lips.
Of course … That was why he had known she wasn’t just another woman with that Christian name. Hill was what mattered, Hill. The young man who parked his big American car in Orcadia Mews had given his name to Mildred Jones as Keith Hill. Francine was his wife or his sister, she had to be …
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SO MUCH OF what occurs to us as gospel in the small hours appears absurd in the light of day. That wasn’t true here. Dr Francine Hill, Wexford thought, who is a partner in a medical practice in Crouch End or Muswell Hill. He wasn’t sure which, but he knew he could find it again.
Tom was sceptical. ‘Yes, well, how d’you know it’s not par for the course? Just another Francine. She’ll either say no she’s not, or she’ll be like the last one, wasting our time.’
‘I don’t think so. She’s not just another Francine. She’s Francine Hill.’
‘I suppose it’ll do no harm to phone her.’
‘Will you see her if I can get her to come in?’
‘Well, I will or failing me, Lucy.’
Medical practitioners may not advertise but their names may appear in phone directories. After some searching Wexford found Hill, Dr F., The Group Practice, Hornsey Lane, N8. After he had held on while Eine kleine Nachtmusik played, a receptionist said that Dr Hill took calls only from private patients on this line. She became less curt when Wexford said this was the Metropolitan Police and to ask Dr Hill to call him on this number. It was the first time he had had to say, ‘The name is Wexford’ with his Christian name, but without his rank – the rank he no longer held.
He was sitting in the small office where Tom had put the false Francine and from which she had run away when things became uncomfortable. No doubt Dr Hill had a surgery – did they still call it that? – for much of the morning. It might be lunchtime before she phoned, if she phoned. Would she think this was about some driving offence? It was unlikely she would know it concerned a boyfriend she had or might have had twelve years ago. On the landline in the office, so as not to occupy his cellphone, he called Owen Clary at Chilvers Clary.
Clary was out but the receptionist put him through to Robyn Chilvers.
She greeted him enthusiastically as if he were an old friend whose call she had been waiting for. ‘I’m so glad to hear from you. I’ve lost your number – yes, do give it to me again.’ He did so. ‘Yes, you remember that builder, plumber, whatever he is, you were asking about? Well, by an extraordinary coincidence he rang up, wanted to know if we’d any work for him. Poor chap, he sounded desperate. Of course I took his name and phone number, but I’d lost yours – how stupid can one get?’
‘Had you any work for him, Ms Chilvers?’
‘We’ve barely any for ourselves. I said I’d keep him in mind.’
Wexford wrote down the name Rodney Horndon and a mobile number. ‘Thank you very much. Ms Chilvers, I don’t suppose you know anything about your husband’s visit to Orcadia Cottage? It was in the late summer of 2006. You may not even have been married then.’
She laughed. ‘No, we weren’t. We were together, though. We were engaged, but I broke it off in the spring and we got together again in ’97. But you don’t want to know that.’
Did he? Probably not. But it reminded him of someone else: Damian Keyworth, whose engagement was also broken off at much the same time. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’
The landline receiver was scarcely in its rest when his mobile rang. As soon as he heard his caller, he thought of Cordelia – ‘her voice was ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in a woman’.
‘My name is Francine Hill. You left a message for me to call you.’
‘Yes, Dr Hill. I wanted to ask you …’
‘Oh, I know what you want. I’ve been expecting you – I mean the police. I think I ought to have got in touch with you, but I kept asking myself what, in fact, I could tell you. I kept thinking I knew nothing of any importance, but then I don’t really know what is important. Shall I come and see you?’
For a moment he was taken aback. Her willingness! Her enthusiasm! ‘Yes, please. If you would. First tell me, you are the Francine Hill who was at Orcadia Cottage, St John’s Wood, during the late summer or early autumn of 1997?’
‘Oh, yes. Yes, I was.’
‘And with Keith Hill, who drove a big yellow American car?’
‘That was my then boyfriend’s car. His name was Teddy Brex.’
He wasn’t going to tell Tom how utterly unlike his conception of Francine – the Francine of the credit-card swindle, of La Punaise – she had sounded. That would be enough to make him doubt and for Wexford there was no doubt. She had agreed – indeed, had offered – to come to the police headquarters in Cricklewood in her free time at four in the afternoon. She would have no more patients until six.