Not in the Flesh

24

Something dull and subdued about Matea made him ask. Very young people have a glow about them that starts to fade in the mid-twenties. Jane Austen called it “bloom.” In Matea's case, the bloom had clouded, dulling her eyes and turning her hair lifeless and lank. Though she was as polite as ever, there was a lassitude about the way she served them.

“How are you, Matea? Are you all right?”

The tone in which she said “Fine” would have been funny if it hadn't sounded like misery. She came back with their naan and a jug of water in which she had forgotten to put any ice.

“I wonder what's going on in that family,” Wexford said. “Akande's alerted the Social Services, but there doesn't seem much to be done. According to Mrs. Dirir, Shamis was running around as normal the day after they got back. She couldn't be doing that if she'd just undergone mutilation.”

Burden made a face. “It's nasty, isn't it? It makes you wonder how feminists-all women in fact-can concentrate on any other aspect of persecution of women while female genital mutilation flourishes. Why isn't half the human race up in arms?”

“Is this my old friend Mike Burden talking?”

Burden didn't change color. Blushing was a reaction he had left in the past. “Well, those are Jenny's ideas. I can't say I don't agree, though.”

Matea brought their chicken tikka and Wexford poured them glasses of water. He said nothing about the lack of ice. “I'm going to see Tredown this afternoon.”

“Is that purely sick visiting or because you want a talk?”

“I hope he'll want to talk to me.”

“What, a deathbed confession?”

“It could be,” said Wexford. “Last time I saw him I had a feeling he might say a lot if he could be apart from those two women. Realistically, though, I think only he can tell me how he found Hexham to do his research for him. Was it through some sort of advertisement or by word of mouth? How many times had Hexham been to Athelstan House and how and where did he go when he left on that particular day? In a taxi to Kingsmarkham station? On foot? Surely not. It was pouring with rain. Or did he never leave the place alive? Those are the things I want to know, or rather, the things I'm likely to find out.”

“Do we know how long Tredown has got?”

“You mean till the end? Till death parts him from those two wives of his?”

“I suppose I do, yes.”

“Weeks rather than months, I think. Do you want some halva? Or some yogurt? What I like about this place is that it takes its name literally, it's a passage to India and it picks up national dishes all along the way.”

Afterward he wondered why he had chosen to go in his own car to Pomfret instead of letting Donaldson drive him. It had something to do with the awesome nature of this place, its function as death's waiting room, its humane and tender purpose. Officialdom should not come here and disrupt these last peaceful days where palliative care was all and hope was over.

When he came here before, just to have a look, he had noticed there was nowhere to park cars in the front of the building. He drove in through the gateway, past the pond with the ducks, the hostas and the bulrushes, and followed the paved path that led around the side of the hospice to the back. Here was another arrow pointing to the rather distant car park, an area screened off by trees and shrubs. Five cars were already there and one of them was Maeve Tredown's, the dark red Volvo. He experienced a slight sinking of the heart, a feeling composed of exasperation and a sense of the futility of his coming here at all. He had told her he would be visiting that day. Couldn't she have taken the hint? Or was it rather that she (and possibly Claudia Ricardo, too) had come because he was coming? He could see someone in the car, but it was too far off for him to be sure it was Maeve.

Reflecting on this, he began walking slowly along the drive-way toward an arrow marked “Reception.” When he reached the side of the building and was between its brick wall and a tall chain-link fence, wondering if there was any point in his staying, he heard a car behind him. It was going fast, too fast to negotiate this fairly narrow passage, and he leapt aside. As he did so, turning to face the oncoming vehicle, instead of stopping its driver accelerated. He shouted and threw up his arms, but the car drove straight at him, scooping him up onto its bonnet and swerving to scrape its bodywork along the wall.

It was a bizarre, unreal happening, something he'd seen in films, only heard of in life. He teetered there, sliding, kicking on the slippery surface, trying and failing to get a grip on something, anything. Slithering off, making frenzied sounds, calling for help, he crashed onto the paving stones up against the fence, his right hand out to break his fall. Pain shot up his arm. Afterward he said he knew he was alive because he heard a bone in his wrist crack. The dark red Volvo hesitated only for a moment before charging toward the gateway and out into Pomfret High Street with a roar and a gush of exhaust fumes.

Hannah had slipped the ring on, but it was too big for the third finger of her slender hand, fitting rather more tightly on the middle finger. It seemed an omen. She might wear the diamond Bal had given her for her engagement; no wedding band should ever replace it. If they wanted children she could have them without benefit of matrimony. She was too young to worry about inheritance tax, and the law would be changed by then, anyway. No, she'd never marry, she thought, as Damon came down the police station steps and got into the driving seat.

“She's on a week's holiday and she's staying with her mother,” Hannah said. “Godalming somewhere. Salterton Street. God knows where that is, you'll have to use the satnav.”

Fascinated by modern technology, Damon was delighted to get the chance. The satellite navigation voice, not unlike Hannah's own, directed him the opposite way to where he would have gone if left to himself. He sighed happily. “This woman, isn't there some nutcase boyfriend who's paranoid about her knowing other guys?”

“You're quite safe,” said Hannah, laughing. “It's only one particular guy. She's left him behind in my neck of the woods.”

The little house in a Godalming backstreet was found with ease but no more quickly, Damon insisted, than he could have done on his own. He was mildly disillusioned. Letting them into the house was a very old woman, small, shriveled, stick thin, in a short-sleeved sweater and leggings that would have fitted an undersized twelve-year-old. It was hard to believe she and tall brawny Bridget Cook could be mother and daughter.

“You're not wanting to take my ring off me?” were almost the first words Bridget said.

“We'd just like to compare it with this one, Miss Cook,” Hannah said. She held out the ring Selina Hexham had lent Wexford on the palm of her hand.

“I don't know if it'll come off.”

Bridget struggled with the ring, twisting and pulling it, failing to move it over the swollen joint.

“Come on, love,” said Mrs. Cook in her birdlike twitter, “let me have a go. I've got just the thing. Wait a minute.”

A jar of Vaseline was produced, the finger anointed, and at last the ring began to slide. Mrs. Cook gave it a final pull over her daughter's knuckle and the two rings lay side by side. Each had a chased design of leaves, as if a laurel wreath encircled them. Hannah looked closely, lifted each one in turn up to the light while the always obliging Mrs. Cook produced a magnifying glass. “Forever” was inside Bridget's, and “Forever” inside Selina Hexham's, identical promises engraved at the same time, in the same italics.

“Let me see.” Lily Cook brandished her magnifying glass. “I can't see that even with my glasses. Oh, look, fancy that. Who's that other one belong to, Bridge?”

“I don't know,” Bridget said sadly. It was as if some assumption she had made had been destroyed at a blow.

“May I borrow it, Miss Cook?”

“I knew you'd ask.” The sadness in Bridget's tone had deepened. “I have to say yes, don't I? Tell me one thing. Did he nick it?”

In a manner of speaking, Hannah thought. “I can't tell you that,” she said, but she was touched suddenly by unusual emotion, by fellow feeling for a sister-woman. “The important thing is he gave it to you. He wanted you to wear it.”

It is surprisingly difficult to crawl on two legs and an arm, easier (but more painful) when you bend the damaged limb at the elbow and swing it back and forth. He was afraid that if he stood he might find he'd broken more than his wrist, but he tried and made it to the wall of the building, where he hung on with his left hand to a drainpipe. Not an ache but an intense burning soreness shivered through his body. In the morning he'd be a mass of bruises, but he was alive and not, he thought, much harmed. They would ask him, he knew very well, if he had lost consciousness. He wasn't sure. Had he? How was it that he didn't know? There seemed to be some missing minutes in his recall of the past ten, a black curtain coming down like a brief dropping off to sleep. Well, he'd tell them that. His phone was all right. As he began to key in the numbers a car turned in from the road and he recognized it as Raymond Akande's. It stopped before it reached him. Dr. Akande jumped out.

“Someone tried to run me over in a car,” Wexford said.

“Tried to?”

“Failed, as you see. It was more a case of me running over them. I got tossed onto the top of the car and think I've broken my wrist. Look, I've got to make a phone call.”

“No, you haven't. I'll take you to the infirmary myself.”

“Thanks but this is something else.” Akande helped him into his car and there, when the sharp pains associated with movement had subsided, he spoke to Burden. “I want you to go to Athelstan House and arrest Maeve Tredown. What for? Attempted murder. That's right. Attempted murder of me. ”

His notion that she had tried to poison him hadn't been so fantastic after all.

“Of course you have to stay in overnight if they say so,” Dora said in the mildly scolding voice she used when he was recalcitrant. She sat by the bed he had rejected in favor of the armchair next to hers. “They've got to take X-rays and things. A scan, that doctor said. And they're going to put a plaster on your arm.”

“When Jenny Burden broke her wrist they put a pin in. She didn't have a plaster. Why can't I have a pin?”

“Don't be so childish, Reg. What were you doing at the hospice, anyway?”

“Visiting Tredown. Or trying to.”

“A corporal work of mercy, as the Catholics say?” She didn't wait for his answer. “I'm reading The First Heaven. Sheila kept on saying I have to, and I must say it's not a hardship. I'm loving it.” She hesitated, then said tentatively, “Would you think I was mad if I said the only thing is he didn't write it?”

“My sentiments entirely,” said Wexford. “Here, give me your hand. Two minds with but a single thought we are. I wish they'd let me go home.”

She shook her head. “Don't get run over again, will you?” To his dismay he saw a tear in her eye, but she said brightly, “Here's Mike. You'll want to talk to him.”

“Don't go,” he said, but she was halfway across the ward. Burden kissed her cheek, came to the bedside, and stood over him. “What happened?” Wexford asked.

“Court in the morning,” Burden said. “Of course she denies it, says you walked-well, ran-out in front of her. Are there any witnesses?”

“Of course not. If there'd been anyone around she'd have postponed it till another day.”

“Sure.”

“Like I've had to postpone seeing Tredown. But she must be seriously afraid of me, don't you think? Did you have a look at the car?”

“Both of us did. I took Barry with me. There are scratches on the bonnet and a couple of scrapes made by the heel of your shoe where I guess you tried to get a purchase and both sides are scraped to hell. There's a long dent all along the nearside. But so what, Reg? She doesn't deny hitting you, she just says it wasn't her fault. And she's got the nerve to say she's not a very good driver. I don't think we've a chance of making the charge stick, other than her leaving a scene of an accident.”

“I don't think so either,” said Wexford, “but that doesn't matter all that much, seeing that we'll very shortly have her back in court on an even more serious charge, she and her henchwoman, Ricardo.”

“And will we make that stick?”

“God knows, Mike. We can only try.”