The Best Man To Die

Chapter 6

The child who opened the door to him was the one that had been out in the fields with his father. He was a boy of about seven, big for his age, aggressive looking and with food adhering to his face in greasy red and brown streaks.

'Who is it, Dominic?’ came a voice from the sleazy depths of this small and totally inadequate council house.

‘A man,’ said Dominic simply.

‘What does he want?’

To put an end to all this pointless colloquy, Wexford stepped into the hail, then the living room. Three more children were watching athletics on television. The remains of lunch were still on the stained crumb-scattered tablecloth and a woman sat at the table feeding a baby from a bottle. She might have been any age between thirty and sixty and Wexford set the lower limit so low only because of her young children. Her hair was thin and fair and long, caught back with an elastic band, and her face was thin and long too, wizened and pinched. A weariness that was as much chronic boredom as physical tiredness seemed the most dominant thing about her. It was the sordid exhaustion of poverty, of overwork, of perpetual near-incarceration, of eternal nagging demands, and to be left alone just to sit for perhaps only five minutes in unthinking apathy was her sole remaining desire. To this end she never wasted a word or a gesture and when she saw Wexford she neither greeted him nor even lifted her head, but said to one of her little girls:

‘Go and fetch your dad, Samantha.’

Samantha jerked a thick black cat off her lap and trailed listlessly via the kitchen to the back garden. A middle-class woman, a woman with more money and fewer children might have apologized for the squalor and the smell of a hundred stale meals. Mrs Cullam didn’t even look at him and when he asked her at what time her husband had come home on Friday night she said laconically, ‘Quarter past eleven.’

‘How can you be so sure of the time?’

‘It was a quarter past eleven.’ Mrs Cullam put the baby on the table among the crumbs, removing its napkin which she dropped on the floor, and said in the same low economical tone, ‘Get me another nappie, Georgina.’ A strong smell of ammonia fought with the cabbage. The baby, which was female, began to cry. Mrs Cullam lit a cigarette and stood against the table, her hands hanging by her sides, the cigarette dangling from her mouth. Georgina came back with a grey rag, sat down and watched her brother poke his fingers in the cat’s ears. ‘Leave the cat alone, Barnabas,’ said Mrs Cullam.

Her husband came in, drying his hands on a tea cloth, the black dog cowering at his heels. He nodded to Wexford and then he turned off the television.

‘Get up, Samantha, and let the gentleman sit down.’ The child took no notice and made no sound when her father slapped one arm and yanked her up by the other. He viewed the room helplessly, paying particular attention to the discarded napkin, but there was no disgust on his face, only a vaguely resentful acceptance.

Wexford didn’t take the vacant seat and something in his expression must have told Cullam he wanted privacy, for he said to his wife. ‘Can’t you get them kids out of here?’

Mrs Cullam shrugged and the ash from her cigarette fell into a plate of congealing gravy. She hoisted the baby on to her hip and dragging a chair close up to the television set, sat down and stared at the blank screen. ‘Leave the cat alone, I said,’ she remarked without heat.

‘What were you wanting?’ Cullam asked.

‘We’ll go into your kitchen, if you don’t mind, Mr Cullam.’

‘It’s in a right old mess.’

‘Never mind.’

Mrs Cullam made no comment. She switched on the television without looking up. Two of the children began to fight in the depths of their armchair. Wexford followed their father into the kitchen. There was nowhere to sit so, pushing aside the handles of four encrusted saucepans, he leant against the gas cooker.

‘I only want to know who McCloy is,’ he said mildly.

Cullam gave him a look of not altogether comfortable cunning. ‘How d’you know about McCloy, anyway?’

‘Come on now, you know I can’t tell you that.’ The children were screaming now above the sound of the racy athletics commentary. Wexford closed the door and he heard Mrs Cullam say, ‘Leave the bleeding cat alone, Barnabas.’ She had wasted a word. ‘You know who he is,’ Wexford said. ‘Now you can tell me.’

‘I don’t know. Honest I don’t.’

‘You don’t know who he is, but last night in the pub you asked Mr Hatton if he’d been seeing much of McCloy lately. You wouldn’t touch McCloy because you like to sleep quiet in your bed.’

‘I tell you, I don’t know who he is and I never saw him.’ Wexford removed his elbow from its dangerous proximity to a half-full plate of cold chips. ‘You didn’t like Mr Hatton very much, did you? You wouldn’t walk home with him, though he was going your way. So you went on ahead and maybe you hung about a bit under those trees.’ Pursuing the line, he watched Cullam’s big beefy face begin to lose colour. ‘I reckon you must have done, Cullam. A strong young fellow like you doesn’t take thirty-five minutes to get here from the Kingsbrook bridge.’

In a low, resentful voice, Cullam said, ‘I was sick. I was nearly home and I come over queer. I’m not used to scotch and I went into the gents down by the station to be sick.’

‘Let me congratulate you on your powers of recovery. You were fit enough to be out on a country walk at seven-thirty this morning. Or were you just popping back to see you’d left Hatton neat and tidy? I want to see the clothes you wore last night.’

‘They’re out on the line.’

Wexford looked at him, his eyebrows almost vanishing into the vestiges of his hair, and the implications in that look were unmistakable. Cullam fidgeted, he moved to the crock- filled sink, leaning on it compressing his lips.

‘I washed them’ he said. ‘Pullover and trousers and a shirt. They was – well, they were in a bit of a state.’ He shifted his feet.

‘Charming,’ Wexford said unkindly. ‘You washed them? What d’you have a wife for?’ For the first time he noticed the washing machine, a big gleaming automatic affair, and the only object in that kitchen that was not stained or chipped or coated with clotted food drips. He opened the back door and eyed the sagging clothesline from which the three garments Cullam had named hung between a row of napkins. ‘The blessings of modern mechanisation,’ he said. ‘Very nice too. I often remark these days how the roles of the sexes have been reversed.’ His voice became deceptively friendly and Cullam licked his thick lips. ‘A man can be dead tired after a week’s work but he can still give his wife a helping hand. One touch of a button and the family wash comes out whiter than white. In fact, a gadget like that turns chores into pleasure, you might say. Men are all little boys at heart, when all’s said and done, and it’s not only women that like to have these little playthings to make a break in the daily round. Besides, they cost so much, you might as well get some fun out of them. Don’t tell me that little toy cost you less than a hundred and twenty, Cullam.’

‘A hundred and twenty-five,’ said Cullam with modest pride. He was quite disarmed and, advancing upon the machine, he opened the gleaming porthole. ‘You set your programme…’ A last uneasy look at the chief inspector told him his visitor was genuinely interested, paying no more than a routine call. ‘Put in your powder,’ he said, ‘and Bob’s your uncle.’

‘I knew a fellow,’ Wexford lied ruminatively, ‘a lorry driver like yourself. Big family too and we all know what inroads a big family makes. He got in bad company, I’m sorry to say. His wife kept on at him, you see, wanting more gear about the house. He’d already turned a blind eye when a couple of his lorries got hi-jacked. Well, you can’t call it a crime, can you, looking the other way in a café when some body’s nicking your vehicle from a lay-by?’ Cullam, closed the porthole, keeping his head turned. ‘They paid well, this bad company. Mind you, this fellow jibbed a bit when they offered him two hundred to knock off a bloke who wouldn’t play along with them, but not for long. He reckoned he’d a right to nice things the same as this bad company he’d got in with. And why not? We’re all equal these days. Share and share alike, this fellow said. So he hung about in a lonely spot one night, just where the other fellow was due to pass by and – well, Bob’s your uncle, as you so succinctly put it. He’s doing twelve years, as a matter of fact.’

Cullam looked at him, truculently disillusioned.

‘I saved up my overtime for that washer,’ he said.

‘Sure it wasn’t McCloy’s little dropsy for services rendered? Isn’t a man’s life worth a hundred and twenty nicker, Cullam? There’s a sump on that machine of yours, you know. I can’t help asking myself if there’s blood and hair and brains in that sump, you know. Oh, you needn’t look like that. We could find it. We can take that machine apart this afternoon, and your drains. They’re a funny council, Sewingbury. I knew a family – six children in that case there were – they got evicted neck and crop just because they cracked a drain-pipe. Vandalism, the council called it. We’ll get your drains up. Cullam, but we’re busy right now. I don’t reckon we could find the labour to get them put back again.’

‘You bastard,’ said Cullam.

‘I didn’t hear that. My hearing’s not what it was, but I haven’t got one foot in the grave. I’d like to sit down, though. You can take that rubbish off that chair and wipe it, will you?’

Cullam sat on his washing machine, his long legs dangling. Behind the closed door the programme had changed from athletics to wrestling and once more the baby had begun to cry.

‘I told you,’ said its father, ‘I don’t know who McCloy is and I don’t. I just said that to Charlie to needle him. Always bragging and boasting, he got on my wick.’

Wexford didn’t have to absorb any more of the squalor to see what Cullam meant. This house was the very embodiment of sleazy noisy discomfort. It was a discomfort which would have brief pause only while its inhabitants slept and it extended from the top to the lowest level. The man and his wife were weighed down by almost every burden known to the philoprogenitive, ill-paid artisan; their children were miserable, badly brought up and perhaps ill-treated; their home overcrowded, even their animals wretchedly tormented. The parents had neither the character nor the love to make coping and organization tenable. He remembered Charlie Hatton’s brand-new flat, the pretty young wife with her smart clothes. These two men did the same sort of job. Or did they?

‘If I tell you how it was,’ Cullam said, ‘you won’t believe me.’

‘Maybe not, try me.'

Cullam put his elbows on his knees and leant forward.

‘It was in a café,’ he said. ‘One of them places where they have rooms for drivers to kip down for the night. Up on the A. 1 between Stamford and Grantham. I was coming up to my eleven hours – we’re not supposed to drive for more than eleven hours – and I went in and there was Charlie Hatton. I’d seen his lorry in the lay-by. We had a bite to eat and got talking.’

‘What load do you carry?’

‘Tires, rubber tires. While we was having our meal I looked out of the window and there was a fellow there – in the lay-by – sitting in a black car. I don’t know why, but I didn’t much like the look of him. I said so to Charlie, but all he said was I was like an old woman. He was always saying that to folks. Then he got me and two more drivers to go into his room for a hand of pontoon. He said it was quieter in there, but I couldn’t see the lay-by from his room and after a bit I went outside. The fellow in the car was still there.’

‘Did you take the number? Could you describe him?’

‘I don’t know.’ Cullam gave him a shifty look. ‘I never took the number. I sat in the cab for half an hour and then this fellow went off. Charlie’d said he wanted to phone Lilian and when I come back over the road he was in a phone box. I wanted a light for my fag – I’d run out of matches – so I opened the door of the box and just asked Charlie for a light. Well, I don’t reckon he’d heard me coming. “Tell Mr McCloy it’s no dice”, I heard him say and it was then I said had he got a match? He jumped out of his skin like he’d been stung. “What the hell are you up to”, he shouts at me, “interfering with my private phone calls?” He was as white as a sheet.’

‘You connected this call with the man in the car?’

‘I reckon I did,’ Cullam said, ‘I did afterwards when I thought about it. My mind went back a couple of months to when Charlie’d asked me if I’d like to make a bit on the side. I wasn’t interested and that was all there was. But I never forgot the name McCloy and when Charlie got so cocky in the pub I thought I’d needle him a bit. That’s all.’

'When was the café incident, Cullam?’

‘Come again?’

‘When did you overhear Hatton’s phone conversation?’

‘Way back in the winter. January, I reckon. Not long after Charlie had his lorry pinched and got hit on the head.’

‘All right. That’ll do for now, but I may want to talk to you again.’

Wexford went back through the Cullams’ living room. The children had disappeared. Mrs Cullam still sat in front of the television, the baby asleep now in her lap, the dog lying across her slippered feet. She moved her head as he crossed the room and for a moment he thought she was going to speak to him. Then he saw that the movement was a mere craning of the neck because for an instant he had obstructed her view of the screen.

Dominic, Barnabas, Samantha and Georgina were sitting on the kerb poking sticks through the drain cover. Wexford wasn’t inclined to be sentimental over the Cullams but he couldn’t help being touched that they who were poor in everything had been affluent, extravagant and imaginative in one respect. If they never gave their children another thing, they had at least endowed them with names usually reserved to the upper classes.

Dominic, whose face was still coated with food, looked up truculently as he passed and Wexford said, because he couldn’t resist it:

‘What’s the baby called?’

‘Jane,’ said Dominic simply and without surprise.

When Wexford got home for his tea Clytemnestra wagged her darning-wool tail at him but she didn’t get out of his chair. Wexford scowled at her.

'Where’s Sheila?’ he asked his wife.

‘Dentist’s.’

‘She never said anything about toothache.’

‘You don’t go to the dentist’s because you’ve got toothache any more. You go for a check-up. She’s having that molar of hers crowned.’

‘So I suppose she won’t feel up to taking that creature out in the morning. Well, she needn’t put it on to me. I’ve got enough on my plate.’

But Sheila danced in gaily at six o’clock and smiled at her father to show off the triumph of orthodontics.

‘There, isn’t that great?’ To satisfy her Wexford peered into the perfect mouth. ‘That filling was getting a bit of a drag,’ she said. ‘Very shy-making for close-ups. An actress has to think about these things.’

‘I bet Bernhardt never bothered about her teeth,’ said Wexford to annoy her.

Sheila opened her eyes wide and fixed her father with a precisely constructed look of wistful adoration. ‘Did you often see Bernhardt when you were a young man, Pop?’ she asked.

Wexford’s reply was an ill-tempered snort. He pushed a cup of tea to his daughter who rejected it in favour of cold milk. This she sipped slowly, very conscious of the picture she made in her cream linen dress, her pale hair slightly but attractively disordered, Roman sandal thongs binding her long legs to the knee. Wexford wondered what life held for her. Would she succeed and the future be a succession of triumphs, starring parts, world tours, fame, the increasing terror of growing old? Or would she marry some young idiot like this Sebastian and forget all her aspirations in the possession of two children and a semi? Because he was a father and no longer young he confessed to himself that he would prefer the latter. He wanted her to be safe. Nothing on earth would have made him tell her so.

No such thoughts troubled her, he fancied. Living in the moment, she drank her milk and began to prattle on about her visit to the dentist.

‘If I ever settle down…’ Sheila said this in much the same tone of incredulity as she might have said, ‘If I ever die’. ‘If I ever settle down, I wouldn’t mind a house like his. Not in Kingsmarkham of course. Stratford might be nice or the Cotswolds near Stratford.’

‘Within commuting distance,’ Wexford put in slyly.

His daughter ignored him. ‘One of those black and white houses it is. Terribly ancient and full of atmosphere. Of course, the surgery part’s all modern. New copies of Nova and Elle. I thought that progressive.’

‘Thoughtful too,’ said Wexford, ‘what with everyone in Kingsmarkham being bi-lingual.’

‘Your generation just wasn’t educated, Pop, but I can tell you I hardly know anyone who doesn’t read French. Anyway, the old fuddy-duddies can look at the antiques.’ Sheila put her glass down and tossed her head. ‘Georgeous painting on the walls, and some marvellous glass sculpture.’

Sounds like the police station, Wexford thought. ‘And where is this shrine of culture?’ he said aloud.

‘Ploughman’s Lane.’

‘He wouldn’t be called Vigo would he?’

‘Mm-hm, he would.’ Sheila sat on the sofa and began painting shiny black lines on her eyelids. ‘It’s about time you and Mummy stopped going to that dreary old Richardson in the High Street and switched to Mr Vigo.’ The most difficult feat of her artistry completed, she started to stroke her lashes with a mascara wand. ‘Mr Vigo is an absolute dream. One of those fair-haired characters with a craggy face. Madly sexy.’ Wexford winced and hoped she hadn’t seen. His daughters were still little girls to him. Who the hell did this craggy fair fellow think he was, projecting his dreamy sexiness at his little girl? ‘Of course he’s not young,’ said Sheila serenely.

‘All of thirty-five, I daresay. One foot in the grave and the other on a bar of soap.’

‘About thirty-five,’ said Sheila seriously. She held her eye lashes up with two fingers to curl them. ‘He’s got a baby of six months and – something rather tragic. His older child’s a mongol. Ghastly, isn’t it? It’s eight now and Mr Vigo hasn’t seen it for years. He and his wife tried and tried to have another one and they did, but it took them all those years. Of course he worships the baby.’

‘How do you know all this?’ Wexford asked. She was a detective’s daughter all right. ‘I thought you went to get your tooth done, not do a survey.’

‘Oh, we had a long talk,’ Sheila said airily. ‘I don’t suppose you can understand, but I’m interested in human nature. If I’m going to be a real actress I’ll have to know what makes people tick. I’m getting quite good at summing people up.’

‘Bully for you,’ said her father sourly. ‘I’ve been trying for forty years and the margin of error’s still about eighty percent.’

Sheila looked at herself in her handbag mirror. ‘Mr Vigo’s got a very smooth sophisticated manner. Cool, if you know what I mean. I sometimes think dentists have a very interesting relationship with their patients. They’ve got to be nice, have the right psychological approach, otherwise, you’d never go back to them again, would you? It’s such an intimate thing. I mean, can you think of any other situation, Pop, when a man gets so close to a woman except when he’s actually making love to her?’

‘I sincerely hope nothing like that happened.’

‘Oh, Pop… I was just saying what it was like. I was making a sort of comparison.’ Sheila giggled and twisted a strand of hair around one finger. ‘Although, when I was going he did give me a sort of squeeze and said I’d got the loveliest mouth he’d ever seen.’

‘My God!’ said Wexford, getting up. ‘If you don’t mind what you say to your father, you might remember he’s also a detective chief inspector.’ He paused and then said, not realizing the effect his words would have, ‘I may go along and see this Vigo.’

‘Oh, Pop!’ Sheila wailed.

‘Not because of your lovely mouth, my dear. In pursuance of an enquiry of my own.’

‘Well, don’t you dare…’

All this time Mrs Wexford had been placidly eating ginger biscuits, but now she looked up and said calmly:

'What a silly girl you are. I often think it’s a blessing intelligence isn’t necessary in the interpretive arts. If you’ve finished with your face you’d better take that dog out.’

At the word dog, Clytemnestra uncurled herself.

‘All right,’ said Sheila meekly.