Dear Departed (12 page)

‘Did you ever meet any of them?’ Slider asked. ‘Did they come to the house?’

‘Oh, yes, sometimes. She had them to stay over sometimes. Well, she was a healthy girl with normal urges,’ Mrs Hammick defended her. ‘I met one once, when he was still in the kitchen when I arrived to do my cleaning. Very nice young man he seemed, but I didn’t linger, only to say hello, because he wasn’t dressed yet which made it awkward. But usually they were gone by the time I got there. Well, people go off to work so early these days, don’t they?’

‘Can you remember any of their names? Was there one she was seeing more of recently?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘She did talk to me about her menfriends, told me funny stories about them. But I can’t remember her mentioning anyone special, not lately.’

‘Did she seem unhappy recently?’

‘Oh, no, she was just like usual. But now you mention it, the last few days she might have been a bit more – I don’t know – thoughtful than before. I mean, she was always cheerful when she spoke to me, but I caught her now and then with a frown on her face, when she didn’t know I was looking.’

‘She was worried about something?’

‘I wouldn’t say worried, exactly. More as if she was thinking something out. Just – well, thoughtful.’ She came back to the word by default.

Slider took her contact details and thanked her for coming forward, and warned her that the house was now off limits and that she shouldn’t try to go in. ‘In fact, if you have the keys with you, it would be better to let me have them, for safety’s sake.’

‘They’re in my purse,’ Mrs Hammick said, rummaged it out of her bag and handed over the Yale and deadlock keys on an unmarked ring. At the last moment her hand lingered on them before she dropped them into Slider’s waiting palm. It seemed to have struck her all at once. ‘I suppose I shan’t ever need them again. I can’t believe she’s dead. I just can’t believe it.’ She shook her head slowly.

Like the man who fell off the Cairo ferry, Slider thought, she was in denial.

When he got back to his office, Atherton came in and said, ‘Mr Porson wants you urgently.’

‘Is there another way?’ Slider said wearily.

‘What did your witness want?’

‘She wasn’t a witness, just the victim’s cleaner.’ He gave him a brief outline of the interview. ‘Said Chattie was a really nice person, the sort who’d do anything for you.’

‘Helpful.’

‘Also that she had lots of boyfriends, but not one special one.’

‘We sort of deduced that from her diary and address book.’

‘Got any further with her Tuesday meetings?’

‘No, we’ve pretty well drawn a blank. DC 10, TFQ and JS remain mysteries. We can’t place her at all that day.’

‘I wonder if that’s significant?’

‘Anything could be, and hardly anything ever is,’ Atherton said. ‘I was thinking of going home now, if you don’t mind. See what a little R and R can do for the deductive powers. Or in my case, a lot of R and R.’

‘Going out tonight?’ Slider said, and then, hating himself for it, ‘Hart, is it?’

‘Hart?’

‘You seemed to be getting on rather well.’

‘She’s just a colleague,’ Atherton said. ‘No, I’m seeing Marion Davies again.’

‘Two nights running sounds serious. And boffing a witness? I’m surprised at you.’

‘Considering that’s how you met Joanna,’ Atherton said, and didn’t need to finish the sentence. Anyway, she’s not a witness. Just a friend, like your cleaner.’

‘You don’t know that.’

Atherton smiled delicately. ‘Then I’m going the best way about finding out.’

Slider got up from his desk and waved him away. ‘Go. I’ve got Mr Porson waiting for me.’

‘I won’t offer to swap,’ said Atherton.

Porson wasted no words. ‘Right, I hear from Hemel police they’ve informed the mother.’

‘What about the father?’

‘The mother says the victim had no contact with him, and she doesn’t know where he is. So we can go on air with the photo. They’ve sent us over a studio portrait the mother came up with, better quality than what we’ve got, so we’ll go with that.’

Slider looked at his watch. ‘It’s too late to get it on the
Six o’Clock News.’

‘Time you entered the twenty-first century,’ Porson admonished. ‘Hemel sent the photo electronically to the Beeb at the same time as us, and they’re going on with that, and a plain studio statement. “Police have named the victim” blah-de-blah. But they want a live body for the ten o’clock, so you’ve got to go and record something.’

Slider’s heart sank. ‘Me, sir?’ He hated being on screen.

‘The camera loves you, Slider,’ Porson said, straight-faced. ‘They’ll be filming it in the publicity suite. Get yourself over to Hammersmith quick as you like. You know what to say?’

‘We’re still sticking with the Park Killer?’

‘We’ll leave it run a bit longer,’ Porson said. ‘Don’t say it was him, just that first impressions point that way, you know the score. Noncommittal. The publicity woman, Amanda Odell, will run through it with you. Ask for witnesses to come forward. And for anyone who was in the park to get himself crossed off the list.’

‘Especially Bicycle Man and Running Man,’ Slider said.

‘Right.’

‘What about manning the phones tonight?’

‘I’ll see to that. You get yourself to Hammersmith. Go. They’re waiting for you.’

Get thee to a mummery, thought Slider, trudging away.

*  *  *

‘You’re early,’ Joanna said, when he let himself in.

‘It’s nearly nine o’clock,’ Slider said. ‘You call that early?’

‘I wasn’t really expecting you until later.’

‘Does that mean there’s nothing to eat?’

‘We can go out if you like,’ she said, and then, seeing from his face how well that went down, ‘or I could pop out and get some fish and chips.’

‘Now you’re talking,’ he said, brightening. ‘But what about you – haven’t you eaten?’

‘Only a snack. I could find space for fish and chips,’ she said. ‘Anyway, we’re celebrating.’

‘We are?’

‘I’ve got some good news. Really good news. I had a phone call today.’

‘Huh, that’s nothing. I get those every day.’

‘Stop clowning, this is important. I’ve been booked for some sessions.’

‘Oh. Good for you. What sessions?’

‘It’s the soundtrack for the new James Bond film. Nine sessions, at Watford, tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday.’

‘Tomorrow? That’s short notice.’

‘Well, obviously I wasn’t the first choice,’ she said. ‘I’m subbing for some poor sap who’s fallen ill and who’s going to miss out on all the goodies. She’ll be kicking herself, because film sessions pay top dollar, and it doesn’t end there. They’re going to make a CD of the music later, which will be more sessions; and Ronnie said there’s some talk of taking it on the road as a concert promotion.’

‘Ronnie?’

‘Ronnie Barrett, the fixer. The soundtrack and the CD will all be on the one contract, so it’ll be the same people for both, but he likes me so he says he’ll try and get me the concerts as well.’ She beamed. ‘Lots of lovely work and lots of lovely money. Aren’t you pleased?’

‘Of course I am. Delighted for you. But – three lots of three sessions? On consecutive days? Isn’t that too much for you, in—’

‘“In my delicate condition”? My dear Inspector, you can’t say things like that any more,’ she laughed. He saw that it was not so much the money she was so happy about as the work.
She had missed being in the loop, missed the company, the music and the sense of importance it gave her, the shape it gave to her life. How would she cope when the baby came? And if, after her maternity absence, she couldn’t get any more work at all, what then?

‘Borrowing trouble are your two middle names,’ as his mother would have said. Deal with that when and if it arose.

‘I just want you to take care of yourself,’ he said at last.

She stepped closer and put her arms round his waist. ‘I will. I’ll be sitting down all the time, remember.’ She kissed him. ‘I promise I’ll eat proper meals and rest in the breaks. And I won’t even have to drive. Pete Thomas lives in Hammersmith and he’s going to pick me up, and we’ll share petrol money.’

‘Okay.’ He felt the hardness of her belly pressing against him. ‘I love you,’ he said.

‘I love you, too.’ She kissed him again. ‘I’ll go and get the fish and chips now, shall I, while you change?’

‘All right. We can eat them in front of the telly and you can criticise my performance.’

‘You’re on the telly again? My dear, this house is just full of artistes!’

The day dawned sunny, but the sunshine and the blue sky both had a watery, unstable look. Slider shoved his mac into the car, returned to kiss Joanna again – she was practising, from a book of ‘studies’ that looked like black hairy caterpillars crawling up and down the staves – and set off for Hemel Hempstead. Before he was within striking distance, loose, wet grey clouds came up, and sharp rain began to hit the windscreeen.

Stella Smart’s address was Owl Cottage, The Dene, and it was just outside the town – he had got directions from the Hemel police. He imagined a country lane and a cob cottage with a crooked roof and small, deep windows burdened with creeper. And Stella Smart he thought would either be artistic-Bohemian with pre-Raphaelite dresses, gypsy hair and clashing bangles, or celebrity-glamorous with lots of makeup and gold costume jewellery.

He stopped in Hemel on his way to buy one of her books in Smith’s. He picked up
Long Summer Days,
which seemed to be the most recent paperback – there were lots of copies of it,
anyway –
and pulled into a lay-by to thumb through it. It seemed to be about a nice vicar’s wife of the jam-making, sensible-shoe kind, who thought her husband was being unfaithful to her. There was a lot of villagey stuff about WI meetings and cricket clubs, and a lot of drinking went on – people seemed to be always propping up the bar in the village pub, or downing G-and-Ts in each other’s kitchens. He was about to throw it aside and drive on when the word ‘nipple’ caught his eye and he found himself in the middle of a torrid love scene between Mrs Vicar and a young man, an artist and newcomer to the village. So, he thought, what would you call that, then? An Aga-bonker? A surplice-ripper? The Bohemian image of Stella Smart now seemed the more appropriate.

It was a surprise all ways up, therefore, when The Dene turned out to be a road on a dinky new estate of little Lego houses of yellow brick, with pink-tiled roofs that looked mysteriously as if they were made of Plasticine. To an eye used to London’s Victorian stock, they looked impossibly small, as if they had been built to house the garden gnomes that decorated so many of the front gardens. Owl Cottage was a corner house, just as new, boxy and Legoland as the rest, and the door was opened to him by a small, neat woman in a plain dark blue linen suit over a white blouse, with tidy hair and makeup, who might have been just off to work in a solicitor’s or estate agent’s office.

‘Mrs Smart?’ he asked, though he knew it was her from the blind look of grief that had settled into her face. Perhaps he ought to have said Miss Smart, if it was her writing name. He wasn’t sure of the etiquette. If she hadn’t remarried she was probably Mrs Cornfeld. ‘I’m Inspector Slider.’ He proffered his brief, but she didn’t look at it.

‘They said you were coming,’ she said; and then, with an air of pulling herself together, ‘You’d better come in. You’re getting wet.’

She backed off to let him into the hall – necessary because it was only as wide as the door and hardly any longer. She held out her hand for his mac. He struggled out of it, elbows bumping the walls, and she hung it on top of the others on the coat pegs. ‘Come in,’ she said, and led him through a glass-panelled door which gave directly onto a through-lounge-cum-dining room
ending in French windows onto the garden. The room was not, to begin with, spacious in this gnome-sized house; but the cramped effect was heightened by the fact that all the furniture in it had been made for a different class of house altogether. Old, fine and lovingly polished, it crowded the narrow space: a huge bookcase to the right, giving the impression of having to duck its head under the low ceiling, a lovely chiffonier on the left, a large brocade chesterfield and two Queen Anne armchairs beyond, lamps and wine tables forced in somehow, and in the dining room section a mahogany table with William IV chairs and a wonderful high Edwardian sideboard, which between them meant holding your breath and sidling if you wanted to get past to the garden. There were paintings on the wall, a mixture of watercolours and small oils, and on the surfaces delicate pieces of porcelain and two lovely clocks. Presumably some necessity had brought Stella Smart to this inappropriate setting.

‘You’d like some coffee,’ she said, and it was hardly a question, so he didn’t answer it. ‘Do sit down.’

She waved him to the chesterfield and went out through a door between the two sections of the room, which presumably led to the kitchen and stairs. The smell of fresh coffee sneaked in before the door closed again, relieving him of the fear that he might have to drink instant. Evidently she had everything ready for him, for before his look-round had had a chance to do more than note the similar-looking row of hardbacks in the bookcase, which were presumably her own, and no photographs anywhere (a family trait?) she came back in with a tray. She was keeping up standards: delicately embroidered tray-cloth, bone china decorated with tiny forget-me-nots, coffee in a china jug to match, and a plate of what looked like home-made shortcake.

She took an armchair catty-corner to him and put the tray down on the small table between them. ‘How do you take it?’

‘Black, please. No sugar.’

She poured, passed, handed him the shortcake, and he waited in silence while she did these things. She was marking her territory, giving herself the upper hand by these small rituals, which was as it should be. He studied her as she poured her own coffee. She was in her fifties, he thought, and well preserved rather than young for her age. Her hair was fair-going-grey; she
was small and slight – thin, almost – with a bony nose and sharp chin. He could not see much resemblance in her to Chattie. He would not have called her pretty or even handsome, though there was something in the direct look of her brown eyes when she lifted them at last that was attractive. They were pinkish now, and the lids still swollen from crying, but at other times he thought she would have been able to do things with them that would have fetched most men.