Chief Inspector Wexford - 09 - Shake Hands Forever by Ruth Rendell

Author:Ruth Rendell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780375704956
Publisher: Vintage Books
Published: 2000-07-11T07:28:34+00:00

The place he went to is called Sudamerica ‘Yours, Howard. Ginge didn’t dare follow him in, lily-livered idiot that he is.’

Howard’s voice sounded thin and dry. ‘You’re thinking what I’m thinking.’

‘Of course. Some place where we’ve no extradition treaty. He’s been reading about train robbers and that gave him the idea. Bloody newspapers do more harm than good.’

‘But, my God, Reg, he must be dead scared if he’s prepared to throw up his job and flit to Brazil or somewhere. What’s he going to do there? How will he live?’

‘As birds do, nephew. God knows. Look, Howard, could you do something for me? Could you get on to Marcus Flower and try and find out if they’re sending him abroad? I daren’t.’

‘Well, I dare,’ said Howard. ‘But if they were, wouldn’t they be arranging the whole thing and paying for it?’

‘They wouldn’t pay and arrange for his girl, would they?’

‘I’ll do my best and call you back this evening.’

Was that why Hathall had been living so economically? In order to save up his accomplice’s fare? He would have to have a job there waiting for him, Wexford thought, or else be very desperate to get to safety. In that case, the money for two air fares would have to be found. In the Kingsmarkham Courier, which had been placed on his desk that morning, he remembered seeing an advertisement for trips to Rio de Janeiro. He fished it out from under a pile of papers and looked at the back page. There it was, the return fare priced at just under two hundred and fifty pounds. Add a bit more for two single fares, and Hathall’s saving could be accounted for …

He was about to discard the newspaper when a name in the deaths column caught his eye. Somerset. On October 15th, at Church House, Old Myringham, Gwendolen Mary Somerset, beloved wife of Mark Somerset. Funeral St Luke’s Church October 22nd. No flowers, please, but donations to Stowerton Home for Incurables’ So the demanding and querulous wife had died at last. The beloved wife? Perhaps she had been, or perhaps this was the usual hypocrisy, so stale, hackneyed and automatic a formula as to be hardly hypocrisy any more. Wexford smiled drily and then forgot about it. He went home early—the town was quiet and crimeless—and waited for Howard’s telephone call.

The phone rang at seven, but it was his younger daughter, Sheila. She and her mother chatted for about twenty minutes, and after that the phone didn’t ring again. Wexford waited till about half past ten and then he dialled Howard’s number.

‘He’s bloody well out,’ he said crossly to his wife. ‘I call that the limit.’

‘Why shouldn’t he go out in the evening? I’m sure he works hard enough.’

‘Don’t I work? I don’t go gallivanting about in the evenings when I’ve promised to phone people.’

‘No, and if you did perhaps your blood pressure wouldn’t rage the way it’s doing at this moment,’ said Dora.

At eleven he tried to get Howard again, but again there was no reply and he went off to bed in a peevish frame of mind.

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