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

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.’