Gone Tomorrow (13 page)

‘That,’ Weedon said graciously, ‘I can do for you.’ Both hands were placed flat on the desk and he began heaving himself up. It was a terrifying process. The vast white-shirted torso melded into a vast black-trousered behind propped on short thick legs as big round the thigh as the average man was round the chest. The colour in the face deepened, the wheezing became a roar. Once up, Weedon clamped his cigar firmly in his teeth and waded round to a filing cabinet to pull out a drawer. At close quarters Atherton could hear a whole extra symphony of breathing sounds resonating within the clogged chest, as if he had a family of meercats living in there.

Weedon returned to his seat and wrote the address down on a slip of paper. Atherton pocketed it and thanked him, and rose to go. At the last minute, as if taking pity on him, Herbie Weedon said, ‘Dark deeds, Mr Atherton. It’s a jungle out there. Young Lenny thought he knew it all. He thought I was an old fool. But he’s dead and I’m alive.’

Only just, was Atherton’s uncharitable thought as he went out into the dark passage and shut the door behind him.

The search of Carol Ann’s house and of Eddie Cranston’s flat in Scotts Road revealed nothing of any interest as far as Lenny Baxter’s death was concerned. Cranston’s place was a tiny one-bedroom conversion, and looked as though he used it for little more than to get changed in, for it was chaotic and short on conveniences. The kitchen showed no sign of being used for food preparation, and, indeed, there was nothing in the fridge except for eight cans of Stella, a pint carton of milk gone solid, with a ‘best before’ date of two months ago, and a part-used tub of low-fat spread wearing an interesting blue fur cape under its lid.

The other thing Cranston evidently used his flat for was to store things. Just as it was deficient in home comforts, it was over-endowed in other areas: packs and packs of cigarettes, an unopened boxed dozen of vodka, several boxes of assorted used CDs, a large cardboard box containing about fifty shortie umbrellas, another of shocking-pink nylon fur soft toys with the sort of button eyes on pins that any self-respecting toddler would have out and swallow before you could say ‘peritonitis’, and three cases of imitation leather wallets from Slovakia. A right little Del Boy he seemed indeed.

It was going to be a whole separate investigation to find out what, if anything, was nicked and what was genuine stock in trade, especially as Cranston didn’t seem the sort of man who bothered much with paperwork. Fortunately the search team also found a lump of cannabis resin wrapped in kitchen foil in the bedside cabinet drawer, which was enough to keep Eddie under wraps should he feel like legging it.

All this, plus the result of Atherton’s interview with Weedon, Slider learnt when he returned in somewhat of a foul mood from Hammersmith, where he had done his statement and appeal for witnesses before both local TV channels, three local radio channels, four local newspapers and the
Standard.
It would add up, he reckoned, to about one and a half minutes of air time, and had used up nearly three hours of his day. And who knew if it would yield any results?

He stamped up to Porson’s room to report, and found it empty, to his surprise. Porson’s mac and briefcase were gone. He made his way down to the shop where Sergeant Nicholls was in charge, patiently filling in prisoner report forms. ‘Nutty’ Nicholls was a handsome Scot from the far north-west, where they speak a pure English, and the accent is soft with the wash of sea and rain. He had some surprising talents. Once at a police charity concert, got up by the egregious area commander Mr Wetherspoon, Nicholls had sung the ‘Queen of the Night’ aria in a fine, true falsetto and brought the house down.

‘Nutty, do you know where Porson is?’

‘He’s away home,’ Nicholls answered.

‘Porson?’
The old man never went home early. Slider wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he never went home at all.

‘Went through half an hour ago.’

‘I thought he’d have waited for me to do my bit on TV.’

‘I think his wife’s not very well,’ Nicholls said.

‘Oh. Hard to think of him having a wife, really.’

‘How did it go? Your piece.’

‘All right, I suppose. According to that press female over at Hammersmith, anyway.’

‘Amanda Odell. Aye, I know her.’ He eyed Slider cannily. ‘What’s eating you, Bill? I know you don’t like the press, but they’re a necessary evil.’

‘It’s that Odell female mostly. She’s supposed to be one of
us, but she has a completely different set of priorities. We’re trying to deal with a murder case, and all she cares about is how I place my hands and whether my tie is sympathetic enough.’

Nicholls shrugged. ‘It’s her job,’

‘There shouldn’t be a job like that,’ Slider said, the exasperation bursting through at last. ‘What kind of a people are we, for God’s sake? Everything’s judged by appearance. It doesn’t matter what people do any more, only what they look like.’

‘You’re upset, laddie,’ Nicholls said wisely. ‘You didn’t like being in front of the cameras.’

‘I hated it,’ Slider said. ‘I felt exposed and – invaded. I feel as if I need a very long bath.’

‘You need a very long drink,’ Nicholls corrected. ‘I bet you came across just fine, anyway.’

‘Well, I tell you, never again! Porson can do it. They don’t pay me enough to go through that.’

‘When’s Joanna coming over?’ Nicholls asked, cutting to the chase.

Slider looked at him. ‘You think that’s what’s wrong with me?’

‘If I was only seeing Mary once a month I’d be climbing the walls.’

‘It’s a bastard of a situation,’ Slider admitted.

‘Aye. Listen, I’m due a break. D’ye want to have a cup of tea and a chin? Two ears, no waiting?’

‘No. Thanks, Nutty, but I’ve got to go and do the search of Lenny Baxter’s drum, now we’ve got the address.’

‘No minions?’

‘No overtime. It has to be me, as the song says.’ He sighed. ‘Not that it’s likely to yield anything, after all this time.’

‘He was living with someone, wasn’t he?’

‘According to sources.’

‘Why didn’t she report him missing?’

‘Word is she was a tom, so I don’t expect “co-operation” and “police” ever come together in her vocabulary.’

‘A-huh. Who’re you taking with you?’

‘Swilley, in case the female’s there.’

‘Atherton’s gone home to the wife, eh?’ Nutty smiled.

‘I certainly hope so. If the present set-up doesn’t curb his wandering spirit we’ll have to think seriously about getting him neutered.’

‘Well,’ said Nutty, going back to his paperwork, ‘if you’re at a loose end later, I’ll have a drink with you when the relief’s over.’

‘Thanks,’ Slider said. ‘I might keep you to that.’

‘Friendship’s the next best thing to love,’ Nutty pronounced.

‘You’ve been at the
Reader’s Digests
again,’ said Slider.

Lenny Baxter’s flat was in Coningham Road, the basement floor of a large Victorian house. It had its own entrance via the area steps; the flats on the three floors above were reached by the stairs up to the front door.

‘Nice and private for coming and going,’ Swilley remarked.

There was no response at the door and no sound from within. It proved surprisingly easy to break in, however, for although there was a deadlock on the front door, it was not engaged.

‘I wonder why he didn’t lock up properly when he left?’ Slider said. ‘He was obviously careful – serious locks on the windows.’

‘I suppose the woman, whoever she is, was the last to leave and she didn’t bother,’ Swilley said.

The flat was not large. The passage from the front door ran straight to the back. Off it to the left were the sitting room with the window onto the area and a rather dark bedroom, with a tiny windowless bathroom between them. The passage ended in the kitchen, which had a window onto the rear area. There was no access to the garden, and the area had railing round the top of its wall to prevent – or at least discourage – access from the garden. All the window locks were engaged and there was no sign of a break-in.

The whole flat was a mess: the occupants plainly had not believed in tidying up. Clothes, papers, dirty crockery: whatever was used seemed to be left where it dropped. But gradually through the casual mess emerged something else: the disorder left by a hasty flight. In the bedroom, drawers had been emptied and most of their contents were missing. A pair of black, flimsy nylon panties lay on the floor halfway to the door and half a pair of sheer black stockings was tangled in the crumpled sheets of the unmade bed, mute witnesses to the hasty packing. The dressing table had marks in the dust to show where toiletries had been swept off it wholesale, and a bottle of eyeliner had fallen down into the limbo between it and the skirting-board.
The wardrobe stood open, and there was a suitcase-sized space on the high shelf; one end of the clothes rail was empty, wire hangers were scattered on the floor, and a strappy dress hung askew where it had resisted arrest.

A man’s – presumably Lenny’s – clothes were still present, on the rail and in drawers, and men’s toiletries and an electric razor were still in the bathroom. ‘His girlfriend’s done a runner,’ Swilley concluded.

‘And in some panic, by the look of it,’ Slider said. The air in the bedroom was strong with her scent.
Paris,
he thought. Yes, there was an atomiser, left behind with a bottle of body moisturiser on the dressing table.

The sitting room smelled of Lenny’s French cigarettes.

‘He wasn’t short of a bob or two,’ Swilley observed, noting the hi-fi gear, the very latest wide-screen TV, the new video recorder. ‘I suppose that’s why he had the window locks. Well, there’s nothing for us here by the look of it.’

‘That’s it,’ Slider said. ‘The look of it. Just stand still a minute, get an overall picture.’

She obeyed, but after a minute she said, ‘What, boss?’

‘Someone else has been here. There are things missing.’

‘We know that. She’s packed and run.’

‘Yes, and that’s disguising it to an extent. But apart from her frantic scrabbling about, someone else has been through the house. A professional.’

‘I don’t see it,’ Swilley said.

‘Remember the bedroom: her dresser drawers are on the floor, but his have been pulled out and left out. Why would she do that? She must know where things are kept. Someone searched his drawers, and a professional starts at the bottom to save wasting time pushing them back in. And in here, the stuff on the lower shelf of that table has been taken out and roughly stacked on the floor. Why? And look, there by the telephone, there’s a gap in the mess on the top. Smallish, square – an address book?’

‘Maybe,’ Swilley said unwillingly.

He looked at her. All right, a little bet. Try last number redial. I bet you a tenner it’s the speaking clock.’

She didn’t accept the bet, which was just as well, because he was right.

‘An amateur wouldn’t be likely to think of that. We’d better try 1471, but I’ll bet that’s been blocked too. It’ll probably be a public phone box number. These people know what they’re doing.’

‘But what were they after?’

Slider knew a rhetorical question when he heard one. ‘We’d better have a search team in to go over the place, but I doubt if it will yield anything. They’ll have taken anything incriminating, and they’ll have worn gloves. And we’ll have to interview the neighbours, and see if anyone knows who the girl is and where she’s likely to be.’

‘Boss, if this place was done over by an expert, could it really have been Eddie Cranston? I mean, he comes over as such a plonker.’

‘Yes, and if he’s only acting the idiot he should be up for an Oscar,’ Slider said.

‘Carol Ann’s no fool, though. Sharp as a packet of needles, that one.’

‘But she’s got no form.’

‘That we know about. Maybe we ought to look into her background. She did shield Eddie.’

Slider gave a tired smile. ‘Maybe she’s not that bright, after all, then.’

He went for the drink with Nutty. They walked round to the Crown and Sceptre in Melina Road where they served Fuller’s, which was worth the extra distance; and, since Nutty didn’t want to drink on an empty stomach and Slider didn’t know where his next meal was coming from, they ordered toasted cheese sandwiches as well. When they came, Slider noted without surprise that even pub sandwich garnish had succumbed to the cherry tomato mania. He had nothing against cherry tomatoes except that any attempt to cut them shot them off the plate with a velocity that could lay out a gemsbok at fifty paces, and putting them in the mouth whole and biting down was a not entirely pleasant experience that could result in doing the nose trick with tomato seeds.

‘It’s presentation again,’ he said to Nutty. ‘Trying to find a new way to make you buy something you’ve got used to.’

‘People like miniatures,’ Nutty said. ‘God knows why. It’s a
fad, like those selection boxes of tiny wee Bountys and Mars Bars. Mary’s got a friend who collects doll’s house furniture. She hasn’t a doll’s house, you understand. She just thrills to Welsh dressers and Regency chairs small enough to stand on the palm of her hand.’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘She seems normal enough otherwise. But everybody seems to collect something nowadays.’

‘I seem to be shedding rather than collecting,’ Slider said. ‘Wives, children, homes …’

‘So what’s going to happen with you and Joanna?’ Nutty asked, licking the foam from his upper lip. ‘I have to tell you, Bill, that’s one of the great relationships. Antony and Cleopatra, pork pie and mustard – you two just go together.’

‘It’s like that when she’s back,’ Slider smiled. ‘Last time – well, not to go into details, but it was like the first time we met. Couldn’t keep our hands off each other.’

‘Aye, a-huh,’ Nutty said wisely, ‘but a relationship’s not all damp hands, is it? Nice though that is.’

Slider agreed. ‘I want her there all the time. I want to do everything with her. Even the shopping – that’s how far gone I am! God knows we’ve got little enough time to be together anyway, with her job and my job.’

‘But this new job of hers – it is temporary?’