Part 12 (1/2)

Wexford shook his head. ”You know it's not as simple as that, Karen. On what grounds would we have her examined? We've no grounds except her older sister's opinion. Is she being ill-treated, abused? Absolutely not. It seems like a happy home, good attentive parents, happy children. There's a risk she will be very seriously ill-treated in the future but no threat has been made and we've no proof.”

”And when they bring her back and she's been-mutilated? I won't say 'circ.u.mcised.' It makes it sound like what's done to baby boys and it's not.”

”Karen,” he said, talking to her as if she were one of his own daughters, ”I'm very sorry to have to say this to you. Believe me, I hate this business as much as you do. But it's only if the child comes back here very obviously mutilated, if the parents have to take her to hospital because she's bleeding or she's got septicemia, it's only then that we can act.”

”And if she's not? If they get her done under hygienic conditions, then what?”

”Nothing. We won't know.”

”Matea will tell us,” said Karen.

”Will she? If telling us means one or both her parents go to jail for up to fourteen years? It was one thing to say what she said when it was only a threat, but it'll be very different when the child's been mutilated and nothing can change that. All we can do now is wait and see.”

The sister Vivien came too. They were so alike that they might have been twins, tallish slender young women, their faces bare of makeup, their fingernails trimmed closely, but Selina with her dark brown hair in a bob with bangs, Vivien's long and tightly coiled on the back of her head. Selina was in jeans and a s.h.i.+rt, Vivien in a long skirt and silk jacket. They sat down in the two chairs that had been placed to face him on the other side of his desk and he sent for tea.

”It's good of you to come,” he said.

”Oh, no, not good at all,” Selina said. Her voice was low and sweet. ”I can't tell you how wonderful it is to find our father.”

He was aghast but did his best not to show it. To make this a.s.sumption she had taken a great leap over a dozen obstacles and traps. ”Miss Hexham, you mustn't take it for granted this is your father. We have very little to go on as yet. All we have is that we have found the body of a man of your father's sort of age who seems to have died on or around the fifteenth or sixteenth of June, 1995. You're here to help us find the truth.”

”Please call me Selina,” she said, not at all downcast.

”Vivien,” said Vivien.

”We would like one of you to provide us with a DNA sample. That's a very simple procedure, involving taking a swab from the inside of your mouth. Only one of you need do it.”

”And you'll know at once?”

”I'm afraid not, Vivien. It will take a few days. We should also like to know the name of your father's dentist if you can tell us that. Eleven years is rather a long time and you may not know.”

”Yes, we do,” Selina said eagerly. ”She's still in Barnes. That's where we live, Barnes. I don't think I told you that. We still go to her.”

She wrote down the name and address of this dentist in a strong upright hand. The tea came, a pot and three cups, brought in by Bal Bhattacharya's replacement, a pink-faced young man called Adam Thayer. Though perfectly respectful, he eyed both girls with a kind of greedy hopefulness. As he poured the tea, Wexford reflected that he had better teach him about custody of the eyes. Neither Selina nor Vivien took milk, an almost universal departure from custom in the young, he had noticed, and Vivien looked at the liquid in her cup as if she intended to drink it for politeness' sake but would infinitely have preferred rooibos or mate.

”I've brought you a proof copy of my book,” Selina said. ”That is, if you'd like to read the rest of it. Those were very short extracts in the Sunday Times. Sunday Times. I was very glad to have it, of course-well, I was over the moon. It's marvelous advance publicity for my book.” I was very glad to have it, of course-well, I was over the moon. It's marvelous advance publicity for my book.”

She handed Wexford a proof copy of Gone Without Trace Gone Without Trace across the desk. He would have to make time to read it even if, he thought with an inner sigh, that meant sitting up to do so at night. ”There are one or two things I'd like to ask you before that,” he said. ”Do you feel up to that now?” across the desk. He would have to make time to read it even if, he thought with an inner sigh, that meant sitting up to do so at night. ”There are one or two things I'd like to ask you before that,” he said. ”Do you feel up to that now?”

”Of course,” Vivien said. ”Of course. We want to help all we can.”

”Then, to begin with, do you, over the lapse of years, have any more idea what it was your father occupied himself with in his study? You mention it quite briefly in the extracts, but you don't come to a conclusion. Perhaps there's more about it in the rest of your book?”

”No, there isn't,” said Selina. ”Not really. We tried to find him, that is we tried to find what had happened to him-that's what a large part of the rest of my book is about-we talked to everyone he'd known, all the teachers at his school, the ones who were willing to talk to us, I mean. Not all of them were. We even talked to some of the kids he'd taught. They were-well, contemporaries of ours. So they didn't mind talking to us as much as they might have done to older people. n.o.body could tell us much, only that they thought he was studying for a postgraduate degree. This is all in my book.”

”Yes, but in the part I haven't yet read.”

”Right. Sorry. If he was he'd have had to have been in a master's program at a university. We went into all that, but we couldn't find any record of that anywhere. It's possible he was doing it only by correspondence, but we found nothing to support that idea either. He hadn't access to the Internet at home, only at school, and it was what he was doing at home we wanted to know about. One of the students in his A-levels group suggested he might have been conducting-well, some sort of biological experiments, but he hadn't seen the size of the room. And, you know, experiments in biology would involve living things, only plants maybe, but they'd take up s.p.a.ce and they'd need water and-well, there was absolutely nothing like that. Dad was crazy about Darwin. He was utterly opposed to these fundamentalists who believe Genesis and G.o.d creating the world in six days and all that sh-all that rubbish.”

”Could he have been writing something?” Wexford watched their faces, but they showed nothing but their eagerness to know. ”Could he, for instance, have been writing a life of Darwin?”

”If he was,” said Vivien, ”he'd have had books about Darwin, lots of books, previous biographies, but he didn't. He just had Origin of Species. Origin of Species.”

”He had an electric typewriter. It was outdated even at the time of his-disappearance. I don't know why he didn't use a computer, but it can't be relevant, can it?”

Wexford was beginning to realize he was learning nothing new and very likely there was nothing new to learn. He sat thinking, said, ”Which of you would like to provide us with the DNA?”

”Me, please,” said Selina.

”DC Thayer will drive you to the Princess Diana Hospital to have the swab taken.”

When she had gone, escorted by Adam Thayer, who looked as if he couldn't believe his luck, Vivien said, ”I've brought Mum's wedding ring. They had identical rings, you know, both with the same message in them.”

It was in a small polythene resealable pack, a gold ring chased with a leaf pattern and ”Forever” engraved inside.

”Your father was wearing his, of course?”

”Oh, yes. I don't think they ever took them off, not even to have showers or wash their hands.”

The remains in the trench had worn no ring. It could have fallen off into the soil, he thought, as the flesh decayed from the bones of the third finger of his left hand, but the earth had been sifted very thoroughly when the body was removed. He remembered watching the masked white-coated men working on it with sieves. Vivien seemed to read his thoughts.

”We'd like to see the-the body. Can we?”

He nearly shuddered. ”I don't think so, Miss-er, Vivien. If you wish to I can't stop you, but I don't advise it. What remains”-he had to say this-”isn't much more than a skeleton.”

Her face had whitened. ”All right. I see.”

She didn't. Of course she didn't. ”I think that if you were to see it, the sight might remain with you always, and there would be no point, there would be nothing to help you identify your father. This DNA test will do that but you must remember it may not be him. Please don't go away from here in the belief that your father has been found.”

Vivien got up. ”Shall I wait here for my sister?”

”We can give you somewhere more comfortable to wait. At a later date I may need to borrow the ring. Would that be all right?”

”Of course.”

He would have many more questions if the identification was positive.

Chapter Seventeen.