The Vault Read Free

might have happened,
would
have happened, if Sheila hadn’t offered them this place.
    ‘Of course, we don’t want rent, Pop. You and Mother will be doing us a favour, taking on the coachhouse.’
    The real meaning of retirement had come to him the first day. When it didn’t matter what time he got up he could stay in bed all day. He didn’t, of course. Those first days all his interests seemed petty, not worth doing. It seemed to himthat he had read all the books he wanted to read, heard all the music he wanted to hear. He thought of closing his eyes and turning his face to the wall. That was on the first days and he put on a show of enjoying having nothing to do for Dora’s sake. He even said he was relishing this slack and idle time. She saw through that; she knew him too well. After about a week of it he said how much he wished they could live in London. Not all the time, he loved their Kingsmarkham house, neither of them would want to give that up.
    ‘You mean have somewhere in London as well?’
    ‘I suppose that’s what I do mean.’
    ‘Could we afford it?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    A studio flat, he had thought. That was an elegant term for a bedsitter with one corner cut off for a kitchen and a cupboard turned into a shower room. Gradually learning how to use the Internet, he found estate agents online and looked at what they had to offer. Dora asked her question again.
    ‘Could we afford it?’
    An unqualified ‘no’ this time.
    They said nothing about it to either of their daughters. Saying you can’t afford something to a rich child is tantamount to asking for financial aid. Their elder, Sylvia, was comfortable but not rich. Sheila, the successful actress on stage and TV, had an equally successful husband. Their large Victorian house on the edge of Hampstead Heath, if it were up for sale, would be one of those that estate agents’ websites offered as ‘in excess of eight million’. So they said nothing to Sheila, even pretended how happily their lives had been transformed by his retirement. But Sheila knew him almost as well as his wife did.
    ‘Have the coachhouse for a second home, Pop.’
    That was what it was called, a kind of garage for a broughamwhen people possessed such transport, with a stable for the horse and a flat over the top for the coachman. Carefully converted, it was now a small house with two bedrooms and – unheard-of luxury – two bathrooms.
    ‘I still can’t really believe it,’ Dora said on their first evening.
    ‘I can,’ said Wexford. ‘Don’t forget, I’ve lived in a world where the improbable happens all the time. What would you rather do tomorrow, go by train to Kew Gardens or have a boat up the river to the Thames Barrier?’
    ‘Couldn’t we do both?’
    During those months they had twice been back to Kingsmarkham for a week at a time and that, too, had been enjoyable, like coming home from a holiday while still wanting to resume that holiday later. But it was a mixed pleasure; this was his manor, this was where he had been the law incarnate for so long. It brought home to him how much he missed being that law.
    He walked such a lot in London that he was losing weight and was beginning to know his way around without the satnav of the London
Guide
. He had his car with him and he drove it, but not often. Driving and being driven he didn’t miss. Being a policeman was what he missed. Would he always?
    He picked up the Booker winner once more and as he opened it at the marked place, the phone rang. Pleasantries were exchanged, the ‘how are yous’ that no one really wanted an answer to, but seem to be requisite at every meeting. In spite of his fantasy, Wexford couldn’t quite believe it when, after replying that he was very well, Tom said it was help he wanted.
    ‘In what capacity?’
    ‘Well, I was thinking. I mean, you may not want to do this at all. You may not want anything to do with it. You’ve retired and no doubt thanking your stars you have