Free Wexford 18 - Harm Done by Ruth Rendell Page B

sort of porkies Kaylee tells.”
       “So you didn’t make her wear gloves and put her through a fanlight into the householder’s cloakroom and then through a cat flap into the householder’s basement?”
       Wexford was aware of how ridiculous it all sounded. Any outsider would almost have thought Flay’s mirth justified. He was looking at Beamish now, grinning and shaking his head.
       “You didn’t teach her how to open the window and put the property out from the inside.”
       “Zilch. Are you kidding?”
       “Kaylee wasn’t taught to enter that house and steal the property?”
       Beamish raised his eyes languidly. “My client has already told you no, Mr. Wexford.”
       Wexford was thinking how to rephrase his questions when a note was brought to him by Lynn Fancourt. He didn’t even glance at it he was so sure it was to tell him Rachel Holmes had come back, but he spoke into the recorder to announce he was leaving the room and that Lynn had taken his place. Outside, he unfolded the paper. Not a word about Rachel but a message from the assistant chief constable designate asking him to call him as a matter of urgency. Of course, it was a bit early for Rachel’s return. If she came back at the same time as Lizzie Cromwell had returned, she wouldn’t be in Stowerton before six. The moment he was back in his office he phoned Southby.
       “Orbe,” said the voice that always barked out its clipped sentences. “Henry Thomas Orbe. Mean anything to you?”
       Would he have known if he hadn’t had St. George’s letter? Wexford would never have thought he had reason to be grateful to the editor of the Kingsmarkham Courier. “Pedophile, sir,” he said promptly. “He’s been inside for nine years, coming out and home here next Friday.”
       “Right.” Southby sounded faintly disappointed. “I just thought you should know that the local rag’s going to run an in-the-public-interest story about it on Friday. I dare say it will pass off without incident.”
       So Southby too had had a letter from St. George. I wonder if that one began Dear Malcolm, thought Wexford. He started up the computer and after several false moves resulting in rather frightening admonitions on the screen, managed to access - hateful computer language but nevertheless a source of pride when you got it right - Henry Thomas Orbe.
       “Born South Woodford, London E18,” he read, “20 February 1928, the third son of George and Annie Orbe, of Churchflelds, South Woodford. Educated Buckhurst Hill County High School until age sixteen. Convicted of gross indecency 1949 and again in 1952, sent to prison on the first offence for two months and on the second for eighteen months. Convicted of gross indecency with a minor in 1958 and sent to prison for eight years.”
       Sickened by the dreary repetition almost as much as by the squalid nature of the offences, Wexford pressed the page-down key and was gratified to find that it worked. It actually did the job it claimed to do, which was far from being the case, in his opinion, with most computer moves. Up onto the screen came the last page of Orbe’s sorry catalog. Wexford drew in his breath. The man had gone to prison for manslaughter nine years before, having been sentenced originally to fifteen years for his part in the rape and death, of a twelve-year-old boy.
       Two other men had been involved, of whom one had received the same sentence as Orbe and the other eight years. There was no mention in the dossier of Orbe’s marriage or marriages and nothing about a daughter. Wexford noted that Orbe must be an old man now, more than seventy Would he still be a danger to children? You would have to know the man and know a lot more about pedophilia than Wexford did to answer that. But of one thing he was sure: something was wrong with a society that set free such a monster, even a worn-out, aged, broken monster, into a community with a bigger population of small