Read Online Wexford 4 - The Best Man To Die by Ruth Rendell - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Ruth Rendell
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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
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
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