The Babes in the Wooda an Inspector WExford Novel

Book by Rendell Ruth

Chapter 1

The Kingsbrook was not usually visible from his window. Not its course, nor its twisty meanders, nor the willows which made a double fringe along its banks. But he could see it now, or rather see what it had become, a river as wide as the Thames but flat and still, a broad lake that filled its own valley, submerging its water meadows in a smooth silver sheet. Of the few houses that stood in that valley, along a lane which had disappeared leading from a bridge which had disappeared, only their roofs and upper storeys showed above the waters. He thought of his own house, on the other side of that gently rising lake, as yet clear of the floods, only the end of his garden lapped by an encroaching tide.

It was raining. But as he had remarked to Burden some four hours before, rain was no longer news, it was tedious to remark on it. The exciting thing worthy of comment was when it wasn't raining. He picked up the phone and called his wife.

'Much the same as when you went out,' she said. 'The end of the garden's under water but it hasn't reached the mulberry tree. I don't think it's moved. That's what I'm measuring by, the mulberry tree.'

'Good thing we don't breed silkworms,' said Wexford, leaving his wife to decipher this cryptic remark.

There hadn't been anything like it in this part of Sussex in living memory -- not, at least, in his memory. In spite of a double wall of sandbags the Kingsbrook had inundated the road at the High Street bridge, flooded the Job Centre and Sainsbury's but miraculously -- so far -- spared the Olive and Dove Hotel. It was a hilly place and most of the dwellings on higher ground had escaped. Not so the High Street, Glebe Road, Queen and York Streets with their ancient shopfronts and overhanging eaves. Here the water lay a foot, two feet, in places three feet, deep. In St Peter's churchyard the tops of tombstones pierced a grey, rain-punctured lake like rocks showing above the surface of the sea. And still it rained.

According to the Environment Agency, the land in the flood plains of England and Wales was saturated, was waterlogged, so that none of this latest onslaught could drain away. There were houses in Kingsmarkham, and even more in flatter low-lying Pomfret, which had been flooded in October and were flooded again now at the end of November. Newspapers helpfully informed their readers that such 'properties' would be unsaleable, worth nothing. Their owners had left them weeks ago, gone to stay with relatives or in temporarily rented flats. The local authority had used up all the ten thousand sandbags it had ordered, scoffing at the possibility of half of them being used. Now they were all under the waters and more had been sent for but not arrived.

Wexford tried not to think about what would happen if another inch of rain fell before nightfall and the water reached and passed Dora's gauge, the mulberry. On the house side of the tree, from that point, the land sloped very gradually downwards until it came to a low wall, quite useless as a flood defence, that separated lawn from terrace and french windows. He tried not to think about it but still he pictured the water reaching and then pouring over that wall . . . Once more he reached for the phone but this time he only touched the receiver and withdrew his hand as the door opened and Burden came in.

'Still raining,' he said.

Wexford just looked at him, the kind of look you'd give something you'd found at the back of the fridge with a sell-by date of three months before.

'I've just heard a crazy thing, thought it might amuse you. You look as if you need cheering up.' He seated himself on the corner of the desk, a favourite perch. Wexford thought he was thinner than ever and looked rather as if he'd just had a facelift, total body massage and three weeks at a health farm. 'Woman phoned to say she and her husband went to Paris for the weekend, leaving their children with a - well, a teen-sitter, I suppose, got back late last night to find the lot gone and naturally she assumes they've all drowned.'

'That's amusing?'

'It's pretty bizarre, isn't it? The teenagers are fifteen and thirteen, the sitter's in her thirties, they can all swim and the house is miles above the floods.'

'Where is it?'

'Lyndhurst Drive.'

'Not far from me then. But miles above the floods. The water's slowly creeping up my garden.'

Burden put one leg across the other and swung his elegantly shod foot in negligent fashion. 'Cheer up. It's worse in the Brede Valley. Not a single house has escaped.' Wexford had a vision of buildings growing legs and running, pursued by an angry tide. 'Jim Pemberton has gone up there. Lyndhurst Drive, I mean. And he's alerted the Subaqua Task Force.'

'The what?'

'You must have heard of it.' Burden just avoided saying 'even you'. 'It's the joint enterprise of Kingsmarkham Council and the Fire Brigade. Mostly volunteers in wetsuits.'

'If it's amusing,' said Wexford, 'that is to say, if we aren't taking it seriously, why such extreme measures?'

'No harm in being on the safe side,' said Burden comfortably.

'All right, let me get this straight. These children -- what are they, by the way? Boy and girl? And what's their name?'

'Dade. They're called Giles and Sophie Dade. I don't know the sitter's name. They can both swim. In fact, the boy's got some sort of silver medal for life-saving and the girl just missed getting into the county junior swimming team. God knows why the mother thinks they've drowned. They'd no reason to go near the floods as far as I know. Jim'll get it sorted.'

Wexford said no more. The rain had begun beating against the glass. He got up and went to the window but by the time he got there it was raining so hard that there was nothing to see, just a white fog and, near at hand, raindrops exploding on the sill. 'Where are you going to eat?' he said to Burden.

'Canteen, I suppose. I'm not going out in this.'

Pemberton came back at three to say that a couple of volunteer frogmen had begun searching for Giles and Sophie Dade but it was more a formality, an allaying of Mrs Dade's fears, than a genuine anxiety. None of the water lying in the Kingsmarkham area had reached a depth of four feet. It was over in the Brede Valley that things were more serious. A woman who couldn't swim had been drowned there a month before when she fell from the temporary walkway that had been built from one of her upper windows to the higher ground. She had tried to cling to the walkway struts but the floods came over her head and the rain and wind swept her away. Nothing like that could have happened to the Dade children, competent swimmers to whom twice the present depth of water would have presented no problems.

More a cause for concern in everyone's view was the looting currently going on from shops in the flooded High Street. A good many shopkeepers had removed their goods, clothes, books, magazines and stationery, china and glass, kitchen equipment to an upper floor and then removed themselves. Looters waded through the water by night -- some of them carrying ladders -- smashed upper windows and helped themselves to what they fancied. One thief, arrested by Detective Sergeant Vine, protested that the iron and microwave oven he had stolen were his by right. In his view, the goods were compensation for his ground-floor flat being inundated, he was sure he would get no other. Vine suspected that a bunch of teenagers, still at school, were responsible for stealing the entire CD and cassette stock from the York Audio Centre.

Wexford would have liked to check with his wife every half-hour but he controlled himself and didn't phone again until half past four. By then the heavy rain had given place to a thin relentless drizzle. The phone rang and rang, and he had almost decided she must be out when she picked up the receiver.

'I was outside. I heard it ringing but I had to get my boots off and try not to make too much mess. Rain and mud make the simplest outdoor tasks take twice as long.'

'How's the mulberry tree?'

'The water's reached it, Reg. It's sort of lapping against the trunk. Well, it was bound to, the way it's been raining. I was wondering if there was anything we could do to stop it, the water coming up, I mean, not the rain. They haven't found a way to stop that yet. I was thinking about sandbags, only the council haven't any, I phoned them and this woman said they're waiting for them to come in. Like a shop assistant, I thought.'

He laughed, though not very cheerfully. 'We can't stop the water but we can start thinking about moving our furniture upstairs.' Get Neil over to help, he nearly said, and then he remembered his son-in-law was gone out of their lives since he and Sylvia split up. Instead he told Dora he'd be home by six.

That morning he hadn't brought the car. Lately he'd been walking a lot more. The almost endless downpours stimulated his need to walk -- there was human nature for you! -- because the chance to do so in comfort and in the dry came so seldom. At first light no rain had been falling and the sky was a wet pearly blue. It was still dry at eight thirty and he'd begun to walk. Huge heavy clouds were gathering, covering up the blue and the pale, milky sun. By the time he reached the station the first drops were falling. Now he thought he would have to make it home through this wet mist that intermittently became drizzle, but when he came out of the newly installed automatic doors the rain had lifted and for the first time for a long while he felt a marked chill in the air. It smelt drier. It smelt like a change in the weather. Better not be too optimistic, he told himself.

It was dark. Already dark as midnight. From this level, on foot, he could see nothing of the floods, only that the pavements and roadways were wet and puddles lay deep in the gutters. He crossed the High Street and began the slightly uphill walk to home. The Dades he had forgotten and wouldn't have recalled them even then but for ...