Wexford 18 - Harm Done by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online

“There’s two years between them, you said. That’s like centuries when you’re her age.”
       “But Lizzie does go to Kingsmarkham Comprehensive,” he persisted, “where Rachel went?”
       “Along with a couple of thousand others. Anyway, she’s in the Learning Difficulties stream.” Debbie Crowne eyed him with the same expression as her daughter’s. “That’s like the bottom of the pile.”
       Nevertheless, they must have been at the same school at the same time over a period of years, perhaps as many as four. Was that the link? Was there a link? Colin Crowne came into the room before any more was said. Wexford studied him while Mrs. Crowne talked about Lizzie, repeating her fears as to what might have happened to her during her absence from home and adverting in querulous tones to the possibility of her being pregnant. She kept glancing at her husband while she talked.
       Most people would have called Colin Crowne handsome. He was tall and slim, dark-haired and dark-eyed with firm, clear-cut features. But the length of his hair and the beard that might have been just a weeklong failure to shave, as well as the triple earring arrangement, gave him a sinister look. His wife’s faded appearance, her pinched face and dry, shaggy hair, contrasted almost ludicrously with the impression he gave of youth and sensuality. Wexford remembered them on television when Crowne had made an eloquent appeal for Lizzie’s return, staring into the camera and enunciating his words clearly and with what seemed like real emotion, while his wife had sat by, biting her lip and only just restraining her tears. If it wasn’t true, what that caller had said, that those who appeared on television to appeal for the return of a missing child were often themselves responsible for that child’s death, there was a grain of truth in it.
       There had been cases of a parent, later found guilty of child murder, whose outpourings of grief over that child’s disappearance moved viewers to tears. And such behaviour wasn’t necessarily hypocritical; these people felt genuine grief, real emotion, and’ sometimes bitter regret. What, after all, is likely to pain you more and stimulate more remorse than committing murder? But Lizzie wasn’t dead, Lizzie had come back. He had no reason at all to suppose Crowne responsible for her three-day absence or guilty of anything in connection with her.
       After a moment’s soul-searching, he decided to mention the derelict house in Myringham to Lizzie. Even supposing, she had spoken to Lynn Fancourt in confidence, no discretion had been asked for. Besides, the truth must be that she had never been in the place. Perhaps a girl such as she couldn’t be blamed for lying, but she had lied.
       He spoke to her gently. “Lizzie, you were never in that house by the bus stop, were you? You told” - he sought for words she would understand – “the woman police officer, you told her you had been three days in that house and wrapped yourself in blankets? You told her you took water from a tap, but that wasn’t really true, was it?”
       He saw at once from their reaction, or because there was no reaction, that Colin and Debbie Crowne had been told the same story. The likelihood was that Lizzie, rather than being afraid to tell this fantasy to her mother and stepfather, had only thought it up in the moments before she’d revealed it to Lynn. Probably she had gone through the whole tale again to Debbie Crowne once he and Lynn had left.
       Now she said, with the liar’s too vehement indignation, “Yes, it was! I did go there!”
       “There was no water in the taps, Lizzie. It was very cold. There was a blanket, but it was damp.”
       “I did go there!”
       Crowne said roughly, “There you are, you’ve got your answer. What more d’you want?”
       A great deal. But it would be useless, and perhaps pointless, to persist. And yet Wexford was suddenly sure that she had