16     

The rectangular white box set on green lawns, the screen of saplings, leafless and pathetic in December, and inside, the warm cellulose smell and the turbanned women painting dolls to the theme music from Doctor Zhivago. Mr Aveney conducted Wexford through the workshops to the office of the personnel manager, talking the while in a shocked and rather indignant way.

‘Cooking the books? We’ve never had anything like that here.’

‘I’m not saying you have, Mr Aveney. I’m working in the dark,’ said Wexford. ‘Have you ever heard of the old pay-roll fiddle?’

‘Well, yes, I have. It used to be done a lot in the forces. No one’d get away with it here.’

‘Let’s see, shall we?’

The personnel manager, a vague young man with fair bristly hair, was introduced as John Oldbury. His office was very untidy and he seemed somewhat distraught as if he had been caught in the middle of searching for something he knew he would never find. ‘Messing about with the wages, d’you mean?’ he said.

‘Suppose you tell me how you work with the accountant to manage the pay-roll.’

Oldbury looked distractedly at Aveney, and Aveney nodded, giving an infinitesimal shrug. The personnel manager sat down heavily and pushed his fingers through his unruly hair. ‘I’m not very good at explaining things,’ he began. ‘But I’ll try. It’s like this: when we get a new worker I sort of tell the accountant details about her and he works them out for her wages. No, I’ll have to be more explicit. Say we take on a—well, we’ll call her Joan Smith, Mrs Joan Smith.’ Oldbury, thought Wexford, was as unimaginative as he was inarticulate. ‘I tell the accountant her name and her address—say …’

Seeing his total defeat, Wexford said, ‘Twenty-four Gordon Road, Toxborough.’

‘Oh, fine!’ The personnel manager beamed his admiration. ‘I tell him Mrs Joan Smith, of whatever-it-is Gordon Road, Toxborough …’

‘Tell him by what means? Phone? A chit?’

‘Well, either. Of course I keep a record. I haven’t,’ said Oldbury unnecessarily, ‘got a very good memory. I tell him her name and her address and when she’s starting and her hours and whatever, and he feeds all that into the computer and Bob’s your uncle. And after that I do it every week for her overtime and—and whatever.’

‘And when she leaves you tell him that too?’

‘Oh, sure.’

‘They’re always leaving. Chop and change, it’s everlasting,’ said Aveney.

‘They’re all paid in weekly wage packets?’

‘Not all,’ said Oldbury. ‘You see, some of our ladies don’t use their wages for—well, housekeeping. Their husbands are the—what’s the word?’

‘Breadwinners?’

‘Ah, fine. Breadwinners. The ladies—some of them—keep their wages for holidays and sort of improving their homes and just saving up, I suppose.’

‘Yes, I see. But so what?’

‘Well,’ said Oldbury triumphantly, ‘they don’t get wage packets. Their wages are paid into a bank account—more likely the Post Office or a Trustee Savings Bank.’

‘And if they are, you tell that to the accountant and he feeds it into his computer?’

‘He does, yes.’ Oldbury smiled delightedly at the realization he had made himself so clear. ‘You’re absolutely right. Quick thinking, if I may say so.’

‘Not at all,’ said Wexford, slightly stupefied by the man’s zany charm. ‘So the accountant could simply invent a woman and feed a fictitious name and address into the computer? Her wages would go into a bank account which the accountant—or, rather, his female accomplice—could draw on when they chose?’

‘That,’ said Oldbury severely, ‘would be fraud.’

‘It would indeed. But, since you keep records, we can easily verify if such a fraud has ever been committed.’

‘Of course we can.’ The personnel manager beamed again and trotted over to a filing cabinet whose open drawers were stuffed with crumpled documents. ‘Nothing easier. We keep records for a whole year after one of our ladies has left us.’

A whole year … And Hathall had left them eighteen months before. Aveney took him back through the factory where the workers were now being lulled (or stimulated) by the voice of Tom Jones. ‘John Oldbury,’ he said defensively, ‘has got a very good psychology degree and he’s marvellous with people.’

‘I’m sure. You’ve both been very good. I apologize for taking up so much of your time.’

The interview had neither proved nor disproved Howard’s theory. But since there were no records, what could be done? If the enquiry wasn’t a clandestine one, if he had men at his disposal, he could send them round the local Trustee Savings Banks. But it was, and he hadn’t. Yet he could see so clearly now how such a thing could have been done; the idea coming in the first place from Angela; the female accomplice brought in to impersonate the women Hathall had invented, and to draw money from the accounts. And then—yes, Hathall growing too fond of his henchwoman so that Angela became jealous. If he was right, everything was explainable, the deliberately contrived solitude of the Hathalls, their cloistral life, the money that enabled them to dine out and Hathall to buy presents for his daughter. And they would all have been in it together—until Angela realized the woman was more than an accomplice to her husband, more than a useful collector of revenues … What had she done? Broken up the affair and threatened that if it started again, she’d shop them both? That would have meant the end of Hathall’s career. That would put paid to his job at Marcus Flower or any future accountancy job. So they had murdered her. They had killed Angela to be together, and knowing Kidd’s kept records for only one year, to be safe for ever from the risk of discovery …

Wexford drove slowly down the drive between the flat green lawns, and at the gateway to the main industrial estate road met another car coming in. Its driver was a uniformed police officer and its other occupant Chief Inspector Jack ‘Brock’ Lovat, a small snub-nosed man who wore small gold-rimmed glasses. The car slowed and Lovat wound his window down.

‘What are you doing here?’ Wexford asked.

‘My job,’ said Lovat simply.

His nickname derived from the fact that he kept three badgers, rescued from the diggers before badger-digging became an offence, in his back garden. And Wexford knew of old that it was useless questioning the head of Myringham CID about anything but this hobby of his. On that subject he was fulsome and enthusiastic. On all others—though he did his work in exemplary fashion—he was almost mute. You got a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ out of him unless you were prepared to talk about setts and plantigrade quadrupeds.

‘Since there are no badgers here,’ Wexford said sarcastically, ‘except possibly clockwork ones, I’ll just ask this. Is your visit connected in any way with a man called Robert Hathall?’

‘No,’ said Lovat. Smiling closely, he waved his hand and told the driver to move on.

But for its new industries, Toxborough would by now have dwindled to a semi-deserted village with an elderly population. Industry had brought life, commerce, roads, ugliness, a community centre, a sports ground and a council estate. This last was traversed by a broad thoroughfare called Maynnot Way, where the concrete stilts of street lamps replaced the trees, and which had been named after the only old house that remained in it, Maynnot Hall. Wexford, who hadn’t been this way for ten years when the concrete and the brick had first begun to spread across Toxborough’s green fields, knew that somewhere, not too far from here, was a Trustee Savings Bank. At the second junction he turned left into Queen Elizabeth Avenue, and there it was, sandwiched between a betting shop and a place that sold cash-and-carry carpets.

The manager was a stiff pompous man who reacted sharply to Wexford’s questions.

‘Let you look at our books? Not without a warrant.’

‘All right. But tell me this. If payments stop being made into an account and it’s left empty or nearly empty, do you write to the holder and ask him or her if they want it closed?’

‘We gave up the practice. If someone’s only got fifteen pence in an account he’s not going to waste money on a stamp saying he wants the account closed. Nor is he going to spend five pence on a bus fare to collect it. Right?’

‘Would you check for me if any accounts held by women have had no payments made into them or withdrawals made from them since—well, last April or May twelvemonth? And if there are any, would you communicate with the holders?’

‘Not,’ said the manager firmly, ‘unless this is an official police matter. I haven’t got the staff.’

Neither, thought Wexford as he left the bank, had he. No staff, no funds, no encouragement; and still nothing but his own ‘feelings’ with which to convince Griswold that this was worth pursuing. Kidd’s had a pay-roll, Hathall could have helped himself to money from it by the means of accounts held by fictitious women. Come to that, Kingsmarkham police station had a petty cash box and he, Wexford, could have helped himself out of it. There was about as much ground for suspicion in the latter case as in the former, and that was how the chief constable would see it.

‘Another dead end,’ he said to his nephew that night. ‘But I understand how it all happened now. The Hathalls and the other woman work their fraud for a couple of years. The share-out of the loot takes place at Bury Cottage. Then Hathall gets his new job and there’s no longer any need for the pay-roll fiddle. The other woman should fade out of the picture, but she doesn’t because Hathall has fallen for her and wants to go on seeing her. You can imagine Angela’s fury. It was her idea, she planned it, and it’s led to this. She tells Hathall to give her up or she’ll blow the whole thing, but Hathall can’t. He pretends he has and all seems well between him and Angela, to the extent of Angela asking her mother-in-law to stay and cleaning up the cottage to impress her. In the afternoon Angela fetches her rival, perhaps to wind up the whole thing finally. The other woman strangles her as arranged, but leaves that print on the bath.’

‘Admirable,’ said Howard. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

‘And much good it does me. I may as well go home tomorrow. You’re coming to us for Christmas?’

Howard patted his shoulder as he had done on the day he promised his vigilance. ‘Christmas is a fortnight off. I’ll keep on watching every free evening I get.’

At any rate, there was no summons from Griswold awaiting him. And nothing much had happened in Kingsmarkham during his absence. The home of the chairman of the rural council had been broken into. Six colour sets had been stolen from the television rental company in the High Street. Burden’s son had been accepted by Reading University, subject to satisfactory A Levels. And Nancy Lake’s house had been sold for a cool twenty-five thousand pounds. Some said she was moving to London, others that she was going abroad. Sergeant Martin had decorated the police station foyer with paper chains and mobiles of flying angels which the chief constable had ordered removed forthwith as they detracted from the dignity of Mid-Sussex.

‘Funny thing Hathall didn’t complain, wasn’t it?’

‘Lucky for you he didn’t.’ At ease now in his new glasses, Burden looked more severe and puritanical than ever. With a rather exasperated indrawing of breath, he said, ‘You must give that up, you know.’

‘Must? Little man, little man, must is not a word to be addressed to chief inspectors. Time was when you used to call me “sir”.’

‘And it was you asked me to stop. Remember?’

Wexford laughed. ‘Let’s go over to the Carousel and have a spot of lunch, and I’ll tell you all about what I must give up.’

Antonio was delighted to see him back and offered him the speciality of the day—moussaka.

‘I thought that was Greek.’

‘The Greeks,’ said Antonio, flinging out his hands, ‘got it from us.’

‘A reversal of the usual process. How interesting. I may as well have it, Antonio. And steak pie, which you got from us, for Mr Burden. Have I got thinner, Mike?’

‘You’re wasting away.’

‘I haven’t had a decent meal for a fortnight, what with chasing after that damned Hathall.’ Wexford told him about it while they ate. ‘Now do you believe?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s mostly in your head, isn’t it? My daughter was telling me something the other day she got from school. About Galileo, it was. They made him recant what he’d said about the earth moving round the sun but he wouldn’t give it up, and on his death-bed his last words were, “It does move”.’

‘I’ve heard it. What are you trying to prove? He was right. The earth does go round the sun. And on my death-bed I’ll say, “He did do it”.’ Wexford sighed. It was useless, may as well change the subject … ‘I saw old Brock last week. He was as close as ever. Did he find his missing girl?’

‘He’s digging up Myringham Old Town for her.’

‘As missing as that, is she?’

Burden gave Wexford’s moussaka a suspicious look and a suspicious sniff, and attacked his own steak pie. ‘He’s pretty sure she’s dead and he’s arrested her husband.’

‘What, for murder?’

‘No, not without the body. The bloke’s got a record and he’s holding him on a shop-breaking charge.’

‘Christ!’ Wexford exploded. ‘Some people have all the luck.’

His eyes met Burden’s, and the inspector gave him the kind of look we level at our friends when we begin to doubt their mental equilibrium. And Wexford said no more, breaking the silence only to ask after young John Burden’s successes and prospects. But when they rose to go and a beaming Antonio had been congratulated on the cooking, ‘When I retire or die, Antonio,’ Wexford said, ‘will you name a dish after me?’

The Italian crossed himself. ‘Not to speak of such things, but yes, sure I will. Lasagne Wexford?’

‘Lasagne Galileo.’ Wexford laughed at the other’s puzzlement. ‘It sounds more Latin,’ he said.

The High Street shops had their windows filled with glitter, and the great cedar outside the Dragon pub had orange and green and scarlet and blue light bulbs in its branches. In the toyshop window a papier mâché and cotton wool Santa Claus nodded and smiled and gyrated at an audience of small children who pressed their noses to the glass.

‘Twelve more shopping days to Christmas,’ said Burden.

‘Oh, shut up,’ Wexford snapped.