Wexford 18 - Harm Done by Ruth Rendell Page B

and the television cameramen be more enthusiastic.
       And would all that bring Rachel back? No one could tell him.
       A car was sent for Rosemary Holmes at four-thirty, Wexford saw with approval that in spite of her terrible anxiety; she had dressed herself with care for this confrontation in a black suit and pink-and-white blouse. She had made up her face for the cameras. Her hair was newly washed and her nails painted pink pearl. St George’s reporter stared as if he had never seen a presentable woman before. The cameras closed in before she had taken her seat at the table between Wexford and Burden.
       “Look this way, Rosemary!”
       “Just turn your head a fraction, Rosemary!”
       “Thank you, that’s great. Just one more, Rosemary, and I’m done.”
       Wexford clenched his teeth. Why couldn’t they call her Mrs. Holmes? Did they think that using her first name would allay her anxiety; put her at her ease, make her happier? It was such crass impertinence.
       He listened while she made her appeal in that rich, modulated voice, her eyes downcast. “If you are holding my - my beloved daughter, please let her go, let her come back to me. Please have mercy on us, she’s all I’ve got and I - I’m all she’s got. Please. She’s a lovely, good, clever girl, she’s never done harm to anyone in the whole of her short life. Please send her back to me . . .”
       And here Rosemary Holmes could sustain the steadiness of her voice no longer. She broke into sobs, her throat heaving, her pretty hands flying to her face, her weeping eyes. Wexford helped her to her feet and took her out. He sent for tea and left her in his office with Lynn Fancourt. Burden would conduct the rest of the press conference, they didn’t really need him, but he made his way back downstairs all the same and was just in time to hear some one, not the Courier reporter, ask in strident tones if it was true that Thomas Orbe would be coming out next day and returning to his home in Oberon Road.
       “No questions will be answered not relevant to the Rachel Holmes disappearance,” Burden snapped.
       The reporter took no notice. “Will he be coming out tomorrow?”
       “No,” said Burden with perfect truth. Orbe’s release date was not Thursday but Friday. “That ends the conference. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.”
       Wexford went back upstairs. What must it be like to be a pedophile? To want to have sex with small children? Something told him that if you could imagine it, just as if you could imagine being a sadist or a necrophile, really live it yourself in imagination, then you would under stand. ‘To understand all is to forgive all’ ought to be changed to ‘to imagine is to understand’ and leave off the forgiving bit. In the Lord’s Prayer, which he hadn’t said in church or anywhere else for forty years, there was a bit about forgiving us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.
       Against us, not against other people. He couldn’t forgive those offences against others, and God, if there was a God, ought not to either. Maybe religious people would call that blasphemy.
       In his office he thought about going home, putting some of these papers in his expensive hide briefcase - another gift from Sheila. Did she ever let him and Dora buy things like that? - paperwork to do at home, worse luck The phone rang but he didn’t dare think of not answering it.
       A voice he didn’t recognize - they were always changing - said, “I have a Mrs. Holmes on the line for you, sir.”
       And then the beautiful tones he had heard no more than half an hour ago, appealing for her daughter’s return: “Rachel’s home. She was here at home when I got back. I’m so happy, I still can’t believe it, but it’s true, she’s home.”

Chapter 5

    She was twenty-four hours late but she had come back. He felt curiously gratified because he had been right, especially as