No Man's Nightingale by Ruth Rendell Page B

basement and two officers got out, followed by a handcuffed man of about twenty-five. Wexford didn’t recognise him, noting only the preponderance of tattoos on exposed parts of his body, neck, upper chest, arms and the ankles revealed by short loose jeans. A plethora of metal was anchored to his nostrils, eyebrows, ears and lower lip. As he had often thought before, such ironmongery must be very uncomfortable and what would happen when you tried to kiss someone? Did you take it off first or was it perhaps sexually attractive? The two policemen hustled the man down the steps to the door at the foot. Behind that door were interview rooms and Kingsmarkham’s two cells, for one of which the detainee was no doubt destined. The local youth, particularly the Stowerton gangs, hinted darkly that it was behind this door that the torture of suspects was carried out.
    ‘Sometimes,’ he quoted to himself, ‘these cogitations still amaze the troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.’ Well, it should be the noon’s repose now, a pleasant after-lunch rest with Gibbon. He confessed to himself that he was quite interested in learning what Burden had found out or what Lynn and maybe Barry had found out for him.
    Burden was in his office that had once been Wexford’s own office, the room unchanged but for the absence of padded chairs and the rosewood desk which was his own and which he had removed on retirement. In its place was a horror (Wexford kept this description strictly to himself) of stainless steel and very expensive black plastic. More chairs than would ever be needed stood about the room and these, also of some slippery black substance, had narrow seats and high backs with cut-outs in the shape of dotless question marks. In one of these Lynn was sitting.
    ‘Now Mr Wexford is here,’ said Burden in a mildly scathing tone, ‘perhaps you’d like to start again, Lynn.’
    He wasn’t late. He knew he wasn’t. ‘She calls me Reg,’ he said.
    Burden said nothing. His expression said for him, ‘She’s not going to call me Mike.’
    ‘Right.’ Lynn looked from one to the other, as a patient mother might to her two little boys. ‘I didn’t record the conversation I had with Clarissa Hussain. I couldn’t, we were in a cafe. The first part of it is in my report, that’s the stuff about the rapist, the man who we think may be her father. The second part – Mr Burden said you’d like to hear it.’
    ‘Especially because you and Barry met the man, Reg.’ Burden seemed to have forgotten his previous irritability.
    ‘Yes, well, I asked her if she knew a man called Watson, Gerald Watson. Frankly, I expected her to say she’d never heard of him. But she actually knew him – well, she knew him by sight. She described him to me, said he had a sort of flat face and very small eyes. She said he was pompous. Is that right?’
    ‘Exactly right,’ Wexford said.
    ‘He’d been stalking her mother or something very like it. For about six months before she died. Clarissa said he never came to the Vicarage or as far as she knew he never did, though once he came into the garden through the back lane. She said he drove here. From Stevenage would be quite a long way. I asked her what her mother’s reaction was to these visits but she didn’t really know. Was she frightened? Clarissa said no. They had once been what she called “good friends”. Why had Sarah never invited him to the Vicarage? Clarissa didn’t know and apparently never asked. I suppose when you’re seventeen you’re not interested in the friendships or relationships of your parents. Perhaps she did invite him, perhaps he came and Clarissa never knew. She told me her mother didn’t seem in the least troubled by Watson’s turning up every couple of weeks, just walking past and waving to her or sitting in his car till she came out and calling to her, engaging her in conversation, and that was all. It didn’t worry Sarah and because it didn’t Clarissa