So he went alone to see Louise Fortescue. First to fetch his car. By some miracle no parking ticket was attached to his windscreen. Nor had worse happened and the horrible yellow metal Denver Boot of the clampers disabled it. Up the Hendon Way and on to the Watford Way. Parking restrictions outside K, K and L Ltd, Below Surface Home Extensions, but the kind easily complied with. You could leave your car for an hour in the little lay-by outside the shops. It was nearly three months since he had seen Louise Fortescue, but he could recognise a changed woman. Her black trouser suit had been replaced by a pencil skirt, a tight white sweater and high-heeled shoes, but what he principally noticed was the engagement ring on the third finger of her left hand.
‘I was a bit of a misery when you were last here,’ she said.
‘Life treating you better, is it?’
‘Oh, yes. I’m getting married on Saturday.’
Wexford congratulated her. He explained that he was no longer a policeman and that she had no need to answer his questions unless she wanted to.
‘If it’s about Damian Keyworth,’ she said, ‘I only went on working for him because I needed the job. This is my last week here and I can’t wait to shake the dust of this place off my feet. Not that he’s often here. Could you tell me what he’s done?’
‘I don’t know, Ms Fortescue. Something serious, I think, but I can’t tell you any more than that at this stage.’
‘All right. It doesn’t matter. I don’t see him from one week’s end to the next, thank God.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Look, sit down, why don’t you? I’m going to.’
‘You said you moved in with Mr Keyworth, but after a week you broke off your engagement and left. Would you mind telling me about that?’
There were just two chairs in the tiny room. Louise Fortescue sat behind the desk and as she began to talk he noticed how her colour heightened. ‘I wouldn’t mind at all. I’d be glad to. I’ve nothing to hide. It was so – well, it was outrageous. We were getting on very well, or it seemed like that to me. I’d been living there and I’d taken two days off to settle in. It was a Friday and he’d just got home from work. It was maybe six in the evening. Someone rang the front doorbell and knocked as well and rang again as if they were desperate. I went to the door to answer it and Damian came behind me. There was a girl there, a very young girl, blonde, pretty, I suppose, wearing awful clothes – well, I won’t say what she was like, a very short miniskirt and a leather jacket and – well, you can imagine.’
‘Mr Keyworth saw her?’
‘Oh, yes. And he knew her all right. It was easy to see what had been going on. He didn’t say a word to me. He took her into the lounge and I went upstairs and left them to it. It was getting dark, but not so dark I couldn’t see the two of them leave the house and get into his car. A long time later he came back alone and tried to explain to me. He said she’d been his girlfriend and still was, but he meant to break with her and should have done before I came to live there. I still loved him, but that was more than I could stand and I packed my bags and phoned for a taxi and left. He really tried to make things all right between us, he went on and on, and when he saw it was no use he begged me not to stop working for him. So in the end I said I’d stay – I mean, I needed the job – but everything was over between us. Actually, we hardly ever meet these days. I’ve been running the business, such as it is, and I talk to him on the phone. That’s about it.’
‘Mr Keyworth hasn’t much work then?’
‘Virtually nothing. I don’t know why he keeps it going unless it’s a front for something else he’s up to. So far as I know – and I would know – he’s got no replacement for me.’ She gave a satisfied nod. ‘Oh, there’s one other thing,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if it’s important, maybe it’s nothing. But that day, it was August first, there was a girl hanging about outside the house next door and she’d been there the day before too. There’s a seat on the pavement opposite and she sat down on that. I watched her, wondering what was going on. She’d gone before that girl came to the door. I don’t suppose it was important, was it?’
‘It may have been,’ said Wexford. ‘Thank you very much, Ms Fortescue.’ He glanced at the ring. ‘I hope you’ll be very happy.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
IT WAS A foolhardy thing to do, to go back there. He had simply made several assumptions: that Tom Ede would prefer him to keep out of the way while the investigation went on into Mildred Jones’s complaint; that the men running the brothel in the house with the bay window were not dangerous; that Louise Fortescue would not tell Damian Keyworth about their interview. But why would she not? In a phone conversation, no doubt, she might have told him out of revenge. Wexford could almost hear her – ‘I don’t know what you’ve been up to but you’d better watch it. The police are interested in your activities, whatever they are.’
Before he left he talked to Dora about the offer made to Sylvia. She had almost decided to accept it, even though it was less than she had asked for.
‘I told her that was certain these days,’ Dora said. ‘And she’s inclined to accept it. I did wonder if I should have advised her not to and then she would have been bound to jump at it.’
Wexford laughed, but he was thinking about the offers of money that were made to youngish well-off middle-class women with British passports and the offers of money that were made to young poor women from the Caucasus with no passports, and the difference between them. ‘I think my business here will soon be over,’ he said. ‘While Sylvia’s moving out and in to her new place shall we go somewhere nice on holiday? Somewhere warm? Think about it.’
He turned his thoughts to those holidays the Rokebys had taken. The Thailand–Vietnam–China one was the significant trip, he thought. That was when the door in the rear wall had been bolted for six weeks and then for two weeks more until the window cleaner came and couldn’t get in. This was in the summer of 2008. While the Rokebys were visiting her mother in Wales, Alyona’s body was put into the vault. Intending to do what Teddy Brex had failed to do or been prevented from doing, the perpetrator had come back, bringing with him the materials for paving over the manhole. But by then the door had been shut and bolted.
Probably he had returned. Maybe several times. But for eight weeks the door had been bolted and once the Rokebys were back and it was open, carrying out construction work even by night on someone else’s property was impossible.
It was Sunday evening and the weather had turned cold. St Luke’s Little Summer when summer seemed to return and which fell on St Luke’s Day, 16 October, and the days before and beyond, was past and a damp chill was in the air. Blue skies were coated in layers of cloud. Wexford put on the dark brown padded jacket which he admitted was warm, however much he disliked it, decided he had walked enough and took the car, anticipating no parking problems at the weekend when restrictions came off. But it was not as easy as he had thought. Although not much past eight and still British summertime, it was very dark. He was wary about parking on West End Lane itself and began the slog of driving from side street to side street to find a space. Winding hilly streets with shops along some of them, a yellow brick chapel lit-up and labelled The United Free Church, a petrol station, a café with deserted tables outside, every parking space taken. At last he found one, a very long way down a very long street that wound downhill towards Kilburn.
Though Wexford felt that he knew Damian Keyworth thoroughly, could have made a character sketch of him, the two of them had never met. Once he knew that Wexford was no longer a policeman, but had only the rather dubious status of an ‘expert adviser’, he might well shut the door in his face. On the other hand, he would know his caller had a strong connection with the police, could bring the police to his door at any time – could he? – and would likely know about the visit to the house next door and the encounter with Trevor Oswin.