As he almost reached the turn into West End Lane he realised that no one knew he was here. More than that, no one except Vladlena knew the nature of the house with the pillars. And would Vladlena ever disclose it? He should have told Tom and, hesitating no longer, he pulled out his phone and called Tom’s number. Almost at once he was put on to Tom’s voicemail. At least he could leave a message. As for Dora, she was too accustomed to being a chief detective inspector’s wife to ask him where he was going or what he was doing. When he came to think of it, as he thought of it, now, his job had been a real adulterer’s charter, one which he may have considered once or twice of using to his own advantage, yet never had.
When he had passed Keyworth’s house in his quest to find a parking place, no lights had been on. Now the ground floor was brightly lit and a table lamp could be seen in a front bedroom. He rang the bell. In making his character sketch of Keyworth, he had drawn no picture of him. And yet he was surprised that the man was solidly built, broad-shouldered, rubicund and with a lot of fair hair.
‘What can I do for you?’
Wexford asked if he could talk to him. He had decided to be truthful, more or less, and said that, though no longer a policeman, he had a police connection. He was looking for a missing woman, the sister of Mrs Colin Jones, of Clapham. Even as he spoke he could tell that Keyworth knew. He knew Wexford had been to the house next door, he knew he had talked to Louise Fortescue both the day before and three months before.
‘You had better come in.’
Keyworth took Wexford into a hallway and then into what Louise had called the lounge, both rooms furnished in a so-called ‘French’ style with ornate chairs and pie-crust tables, the walls silk-panelled in crimson and every surface having a gilded rim. It was far more like Wexford’s idea of a brothel than the real brothel next door.
‘Sit.’
As if I were a dog, thought Wexford. Keyworth was one of those who think saying ‘Sit’ instead of ‘Sit down’ and ‘Come’ instead of ‘Come in’ is a sign of a masterful personality, of a man who is a leader of men. Instead of an exploiter of women and a trafficker of children.
‘What do you want to know that you don’t know already?’
In for a penny, in for a pound. It was an expression of his father’s, applicable here. ‘Alyona Krasnikova, why was she killed?’
If it was a shock tactic, it succeeded. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. You can’t expect me to admit to that. It’s preposterous. What do you take me for? I’m a chartered surveyor.’
‘You’re a ponce,’ said Wexford, but to himself.
‘That place next door, I know what it is, but it’s quiet, it’s well run. Mr and Mrs Oswin run it very discreetly.’ Keyworth, who had been standing over Wexford, suddenly sat down. ‘Brothels – actually it’s time they had a new name, something more contemporary – brothels, as I say, are becoming respectable. Men of all classes use them, don’t think twice about it. The sooner the police realise that the better.’ Wexford listened patiently. ‘Anyway, it’s nothing to do with me. If that girl came here to me – it was years ago, years – it was because I’d once been to her for sex. There, I’m being very frank.’
‘I know why she came, Mr Keyworth. She didn’t know you. If she had she’d have avoided you like the plague. She wouldn’t have gone into the lion’s den. She hoped you’d give her refuge.’
Keyworth swivelled round in his chair so that he was facing a white and gold desk. He pulled open a drawer, said, ‘I’d like to give you something for your trouble. You’re not police. I doubt if the police take much notice of you. I don’t suppose you get much of a pension, do you?’
Wexford said nothing. The man was too ridiculous to make him angry. He was simply interested to know what he was going to be offered. A cheque was passed across the desk, held out to Wexford. The sum was ten thousand pounds. He looked at it, at its pale blue surface, patterned like wallpaper, the writing an incomprehensible scrawl, except for the figures which were clear enough. He handed it back, said, ‘Use it to buy passports for those poor girls.’ And he an ex-policeman! Whatever next?
He went back the way he had come and let himself out of the front door, crossed the road and sat down on the seat where Vladlena had sat, wondering why it was there and who had put it there. Perhaps it was only to offer rest to those commuters exhausted after their struggles with Transport for London and before they began the walk home. While he was inside Keyworth’s house someone had parked a white van on a yellow line outside. Why should that alert him to something unsuspected? One unmarked white van was much like another and there must be thousands in London. It was time he went home himself. After he had watched an elderly man, eminently respectable to look at, lock his car, approach the brothel house and press the bell to be immediately admitted, he got up. His car was further away than he remembered. He passed the car the punter (if that was the word) had just left parked on a double yellow line, passed the white van, pausing for a moment to take in the snake-shaped scratch on its rear nearside, and walked along the silent street. Houses were brightly lit, but most behind hedges or tall shrubs and trees. Street lamps laid a skin of yellow light on the damp stone surfaces.
He heard footsteps behind him and stepped closer to the hedge to let whoever it was pass him, a young woman sprinting along in five-inch heels. At the bottom of this gradual incline he could see his car, always a comforting sight, signifying rest, safety, a refuge, the means of getting wherever you wanted to go in privacy. How awkward it must have been when you relied on a horse, a carriage or a cart. No protection from the weather, no means of safeguarding that transport unless you had a servant to leave with the horse and that would have its own problems. He was thinking along these lines, trying to put himself in the shoes of the poor man who must have relied on what his father had called ‘Shanks’s Pony’, when he saw someone move off from where he had been standing under the overhanging branches of a tree and walk round the corner. Sheltering from the rain? It hadn’t rained for hours. Never mind. He was gone.
Wexford unlocked the car with his remote and walked round to the offside front. His hand was on the driver’s door when a powerful whiff of tobacco smoke struck him. He spun round and took the knife in his shoulder instead of his back. It felt like a blow, not a cutting sensation but a blow, as if he had been struck with a heavy implement. This is what it must have been like for Sylvia, he thought, when she was stabbed as I’ve been stabbed. For that’s what it is, the man under the tree – the one that seemed to go away – has stabbed me. He kicked out and hit softness, fatness, his legs weakened and gave way and his last thought before he lapsed into unconsciousness was, how much they must care: ten thousand pounds or this. Then it was darkness and the damp hard ground underneath him.
CHAPTER THIRTY
AN ATTEMPT HAD been made to blow him up, a woman had tried to run him over and there had been other efforts to cause him grievous bodily harm, but until now he had never been the victim of a stabbing, Britain’s murder method of choice. It might have been much worse and would have been if he hadn’t swung round in the nick of time. There is nothing vital to be damaged in one’s shoulder. Apparently, the knife was very long. If he had taken its blade in his back, between his ribs, it might have pierced a lung or his heart. And his rescue was as much due to Tom as his own nose for the smell of tobacco.