‘I think I know what you’re talking about,’ Wexford said. ‘Sophie Baird told me.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, but I never did do it. I had gone from Mrs Kataev and I had that room I told you about. I had the money I save, but it was nearly gone and I thought I have to do what Gregory ask me.’
‘You had a phone number for him?’
‘I call him and he say to me to come to a house. He will meet me at this house. It is in West Hampstead. You understand?’
The massage parlour, Wexford thought. The place ridiculously called Elfland, up the road from Chilvers Clary. ‘The Finchley Road?’
‘Oh, no. This place was in a house near West Hampstead Station. I come in the Tube from Baker Street to West Hampstead and the house is just down the street.’ Vladlena hesitated, looked away and up at the packets of various types of muesli on a top shelf. ‘I never told my husband. I never did do it, but he must not think I even think to do it.’
‘Lena,’ he said. ‘I doubt if I shall ever see your husband again. If I do I shall tell him nothing of what you tell me.’
She smiled, showing beautiful white teeth. ‘You look at my teeth. My husband pay for dentist, he is so good to me. My sister and me, our teeth were bad and hurt a lot when we come here.’
‘Your sister’ – he had to think – ‘Alyona?’
She seemed surprised. ‘You know about her?’
‘Only what Irina Kataev told me. That the last you saw of her was in a trailer at Dover – what? Three years ago? Four?’
‘I see her again maybe two years ago. A bit more than that, in the summer.’ The smile had entirely died and her face sank into sadness. ‘I see her when I go to that house. I tell you. I stand outside for a bit because I am – scared. I am a bit scared. And I look up at the windows and I think which one is the one I must go to? And then I see her. I see Alyona.’
‘At the window of a house in West Hampstead?’
Vladlena nodded. ‘Let us move a little.’ She pushed the trolley down the aisle, turned to the left and right again along coffees, teas and sugars.
‘I am always a bit scared of people watch me.’
‘What happened when you saw your sister?’
‘First I think I must go up there and find her and then I think what this place must be. Sophie and David tell me where they would take Alyona and take me if I let them. Gregory tell me also. So I look at her and I make signs to her. Like this.’ Vladlena beckoned with her right hand, then with both hands in a gesture that seemed to indicate imploring. ‘I do this and I make with my mouth like this but make no sound.’ In dumb show she mouthed, ‘Come to me, come to me.’
Speaking aloud to Wexford, she said, ‘I do not ring the bell, I do not go in. I find a seat nearby and I sit and wait for Alyona to come. I sit for a long, long time. I wait. I look up at the window again, but she is gone. I stay down there until ten at night, until eleven, and I watch. Men come and ring the bell and some person lets them in, so I know for sure what the place is. And then a man comes along and talks to me, asks me you know what, and I say no and another comes and then I am scared and I go back in the train to my room.’
‘Did you ever go back?’
‘Yes, I did. I look again up at the window and I wait, but I never see Alyona again. One day I ring the bell, because I think maybe she will come to the door. But it is a man come and say what do I want, and I am too afraid to say and I go away. You understand I am scared to ask for Alyona and I am scared to go to police, always scared of that.’
‘You never saw her again?’
‘No, never. I worry, I think about her all the time, but I know it is no use, I can do nothing. And one day I am walking back from Baker Street Station to Lisson Grove and I meet Colin and he is so kind to me and – well, you know what happens then.’
Wexford said, ‘Would you take me to this house? I mean where you last saw your sister.’
She began pushing her trolley in the direction of the checkouts. ‘I don’t want Colin to know. He could ask why I went there and then he would know what I meant to do.’ She was silent for a moment as she began unloading items from her trolley on to the belt. ‘Tomorrow he will be at work all day.’ She turned to look Wexford straight in the eye. ‘I love my husband,’ she said. ‘He has been like an angel to me. But if it is that we find what happen to Alyona …’
‘That’s what I hope too.’ Wexford sighed inwardly. ‘I will pick you up at nine tomorrow – is that all right?’ She nodded, but a little reluctantly. ‘Till then,’ he said and left her.
The silver cross that hung against her grey sweater … He half-wished he hadn’t noticed it. He half-wished he was less observant, had a poorer memory. But at any rate he wouldn’t have to take her to a place that would frighten her, where she might in fact refuse to go – a police station. She need not look at those demeaning garments, the stuff of pornography. Even a DNA comparison was hardly necessary, though he knew it would have to take place, for as soon as he had seen that silver cross he had known the girl in the vault was her sister Alyona.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
DONALDSON HAD DRIVEN him everywhere he needed to go. Occasionally he had driven himself. What he had never needed to do was walk or take public transport. No wonder he had gained so much weight, so that even the relentless cutting out of cashew nuts and other delights had made little difference. Now, therefore, he was confronted with a choice he had never before encountered. Should he pick up Vladlena in his own car after a doubtless dreadful battle through south London traffic or go to Clapham on the Northern Line, of which he had no experience but of which he had heard hair-raising tales? All tube users had their individual horrific Northern Line anecdotes. One of Tom’s digressions had concerned his being stuck in a train between Mornington Crescent and Camden Town for three-quarters of an hour, surrounded by panicking passengers.
Perhaps it was this story which prompted his decision to go by car. That and because he was a man and choosing a car was what men almost always did. Women might not or might choose a taxi if they could afford it. Could that be another of Wexford’s laws, must be the seventeenth or eighteenth by now? One of the difficulties was that he had not much idea of when he should start out, but he was ready to leave at a few minutes after seven-thirty when the landline phone rang. It was Sylvia to say she had had an offer on her house.
‘Your mother is still asleep.’
‘Yes, maybe, but she’ll want to know about this, Dad. I promise you she will. Couldn’t you wake her up?’
‘I could, but I’m not going to. You can phone again in an hour. Congratulations, though. I’m very pleased for you.’ Not as pleased as I am that my own house will soon be my own again, he thought.
It took him less than the hour and a half he had allowed. He parked on the other side of the road outside her house like the driver of a hire car who makes a point of arriving early. But he was on a yellow line and had to move off when a traffic warden bore down on the car. Round the block then, hooted at by other impatient drivers, back to his chosen spot to see the warden or the back of him just turning the corner into the main road. He parked again, realising that eluding traffic wardens, defying parking rules, was something that had never happened to him before. Donaldson had had to handle these stings and arrows of fortune, or his sergeant had if she was driving him.
He had forgotten all about Colin Jones and it gave him a small shock to see Vladlena’s husband come out of their house at ten to nine, carrying a briefcase and turn in the direction of Clapham North Station. If he had rung their bell when he first arrived … But he hadn’t and all was well.
She spotted the car and came out just as he was preparing to cross the road. The first thing he noticed about her was that silver cross. It seemed to flash as it caught the morning sun. She had dressed up in a skirt suit and striped blouse, as if she were going to some significant engagement instead of helping him locate a brothel.