Necrocrip (19 page)

‘Are you sure it was him? Are you absolutely positive?’

‘Yes, of course. I couldn’t possibly mistake his voice. It was Peter all right,’ she said radiantly. ‘He said “Hullo, Suze,” – he always calls me Suze. And I said, “Oh God, Peter, I thought you were dead!” But I feel now that I didn’t, not really, not deep down,’ she said gravely. She was working up for a full-blown attack of mysticism, Slider could see. Her previous affection for Peter Leman had been given a tremendous boost by her brief and dramatic
experience of widowhood, and now he was back from the dead he had been promoted to the One Great Love of her Life.

‘Was he surprised when you told him that you thought he was dead?’

‘Well, he must have been, mustn’t he? I told him all about it, anyway – about the body and that fish-shop man and your questions and everything.’

‘What did he say about himself? Did he tell you where he’s been?’

‘No, he only said that he was in hiding—’

‘In hiding?’ Slider said explosively. This was beginning to sound like a practical joke.

She looked a little surprised. ‘Yes. He’s hiding up. He says he’s doing a job for someone, and he has to keep out of the way for a while, and no-one must know where he is. But he said he had to call me because he didn’t want me to be worried,’ she said radiantly. ‘He really does care for me, you see.’

‘What sort of job is he doing? Do you mean something criminal?’

‘Of course not! Peter wouldn’t do anything like that,’ she said indignantly.

‘What else would necessitate his hiding up?’ Atherton interrupted in an appeal to logic.

‘Well I don’t know!’ she said rather crossly. ‘I told you, he said it was secret. It wouldn’t be secret if he could tell me, would it? And he said no-one must know I’m his girlfriend either. But I thought I’d better tell
you
he wasn’t dead so that you could call off your enquiries – only you must promise not to tell anyone else.’

‘Who are we not to tell? Who is he afraid of?’

‘He didn’t say. I keep telling you, he said it has to be a secret. But he promised to tell me everything when it’s all over.’

Slider and Atherton exchanged glances. This was straight out of the pages of a 1930s romance, and not a very well-written one at that.

‘Miss Edrich, just think about it logically. He must be involved with some sort of criminal activity. There isn’t
anything else that would have to be kept secret, now is there?’

‘What about military secrets? Or the Secret Service? Or industrial secrets, for that matter?’ she said indignantly. ‘I think you’re horrible to jump to the conclusion that Peter’s a criminal – but I suppose that’s the way your minds work, if you’re policemen,’ she added with some contempt. ‘I wish I’d never told you, now. I thought you’d be pleased.’

‘Oh we are, of course we are,’ Atherton said hastily. ‘It’s wonderful, too, that he thought of phoning you first of all. He must really love you.’

She purred under the flattery like a tea-kettle. Slider could only watch in admiration. ‘Well, I think he does.’

‘And if he’s going to be in hiding for some time, he won’t be able to bear not to speak to you again, will he? I mean, how else will he be able to cope with being apart from you?’

‘Well, he did say he might call again,’ she admitted modestly.

‘And when he does, you know it’s terribly important that we should have a chance to speak to him. We don’t want to make any trouble for him, but there are one or two things we desperately need to know.’

She looked doubtful. ‘Well, I don’t know. I could ask him, but I don’t know if he’ll agree. I wouldn’t want to put him in danger.’

‘That’s the whole point,’ Atherton said. ‘He is in danger, and he needs our protection. But we can’t protect him if we don’t know where he is.’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ she said. A few minutes more of Atherton’s play-acting, and she was agreeing to any kind of telephone link they liked. It was a masterly performance.

‘Now all we’ve got to do is to convince Barrington the expense is necessary,’ Slider said as they drove back to the station.

‘How much of that load of cobblers do you believe?’ Atherton asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Slider said gloomily. ‘She’s so convinced she’s in a Humphrey Bogart movie, there’s no relying on anything she says.’

‘Except that Leman’s alive.’

‘Yes. That bit would have to be true.’

‘Slaughter always said he didn’t kill Leman.’

‘Yes. No wonder he stuck to his guns over that – he could tell the truth with perfect conviction. But then who did he kill? The corpse must be someone.’

‘Maybe he was a Chinaman after all? We know the victim had Asian blood. We just don’t know how much.’

‘But Leman’s got to be involved in it somehow. We’ve got to get hold of him.’ Slider sighed. ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do about Slaughter. We’ll have to drop the charge against him. The question is, do we make other charges in their place? We’re still left with the fact that the murder was done in the chip shop and that no-one but Slaughter had a key.’

‘Murder of a person unknown,’ Atherton said. ‘I’m glad I’m a lowly sergeant. I wouldn’t like to have to make difficult decisions all day long.’

‘Let him go,’ said Barrington decisively. ‘If the victim isn’t Leman, we’ve got nothing on him.’

‘Except physical evidence at the shop, sir,’ Slider said. ‘No sign of forcible entry. No-one else’s fingerprints.’

‘All the same, until we know who the victim is, we can’t connect him with Slaughter. And if we let him go, my guess is he’ll do something really silly and give himself away.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Barrington raised feral eyes to Slider’s face. ‘I’m very, very unhappy about this, Slider. You’ve wasted precious time following a false trail. Now we’ve got it all to do again. So get your finger out! I want no mistakes this time. I want to know who the victim is, and what Leman’s got to do with it. If he’s not the victim, maybe he’s the murderer. He could be in it with Slaughter, had you thought of that? Maybe Slaughter lent him the key, and now he’s shielding him. But first you’ve got to find him! Find Leman!’

Slider outlined his plans for putting a relay into Suzanne’s phone so that her calls could be monitored. Then as soon as Leman calls, we can put a trace on it.’

‘All right,’ Barrington said. ‘I’ll authorise it. And put somebody on to watch his flat. He might come back there.’

Slaughter took hold of the seat of the chair on which he was sitting with both hands, as if he thought they were going to pick him up bodily there and then and throw him out into the street. ‘I don’t want to go,’ he said. ‘I want to stay here.’

‘We’re releasing you, Ronnie,’ Atherton said patiently. ‘Don’t you understand? We’re dropping the charges against you. You’re a free man.’

Slaughter looked from Atherton to Nicholls with the eyes of a cornered rat. ‘Free?’ he said blankly.

‘That’s right. You’re free to go. You can go home.’

‘No!’ he said determinedly. ‘I’m not going.’

‘You can’t stay here, laddie,’ Nicholls said kindly. ‘We need your room.’

Opposition seemed to make Slaughter determined. ‘I won’t go,’ he said. ‘You’ve – you’ve made a mistake. I did kill him. All right? I killed Peter Leman. That’s what you’ve been wanting me to say, isn’t it? I hit him on the head like you said, and then I chopped him up and put him in the sack. I did it! I killed him!’

Atherton exchanged a glance with Nicholls, and said gently, ‘It wasn’t Peter Leman, Ronnie. The body in the sacks. It wasn’t him. Peter Leman’s alive.’

‘Peter? He’s—’ Slaughter’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Peter’s not dead?’

‘Not even a little bit. He’s alive and kicking. That’s why we’re letting you go.’

‘Peter’s alive,’ Slaughter said dazedly. ‘Peter.’

That’s right,’ Nicholls said breezily. ‘So up you get, laddie, and let’s have you out of there. It’s warm and sunny outside. We’ll give you a nice ride home in a car, eh? It’s a shame to walk on such a lovely day.’

Slaughter’s expression hardened, and he gripped his
seat more tightly. ‘No, I’m not going. I did it. I killed the other bloke.’

‘What other bloke?’ Atherton asked with diminishing patience.

‘The dead bloke. The one in the sacks. I killed him.’

‘All right – who is he, then?’

‘I don’t know,’ Slaughter muttered.

‘You don’t know. So how can you say you killed him if you don’t even know who he is?’ Atherton said kindly. ‘Come on, now Ronnie, let’s have you out of there.’

He grew hysterical. ‘I killed him, I tell you! I did it! Gimme a statement, I’ll sign it! Anything you like, only don’t make me go out there again!’ And he burst into noisy tears.

It was some time before they got him quietened down again, mopped him up, and detached him from his seat. Nicholls talked to him kindly, and at last he seemed resigned, and was even vaguely comforted by the prospect of a car ride right to his own front door.

‘What will I do now?’ he asked quietly as he shuffled docilely towards the back yard where the cars were parked, accompanied by Atherton to see him off the premises and the PC who had been detailed to drive him home. ‘Will I go back to the shop?’

‘Not for the moment. You can’t open the shop yet, I’m afraid. Not until we’re sure we’ve got all the information we need out of it.’

‘Like, clues, you mean?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘So I just stay at home, right? And, like, wait?’

‘Yes, I should do that,’ Atherton said. He had been threatened by released arrestees before now, but never asked for advice. ‘We’ll let you know when you can open the shop again.’

Slaughter shook his head. ‘No, Mr Cate will do that,’ he said. ‘Mr Cate will decide. He’ll tell me what to do. I’ll just go home and wait, then.’

WHAT WITH ONE THING AND
another, it was late before Slider got home, his mind aching with the events of the day, and raw with the fresh sting of his last, unhappy interview with Joanna. When she had opened the door to him, he had thought that she would refuse to talk. But after looking at him for a long moment, she sighed and said, ‘All right, come in. I suppose it all has to be said once.’

He followed her in, and she led him into the sitting-room, where they had eaten and drunk and made love and talked so many times, done everything except as now to have a formal conversation, sitting too far apart to touch each other. He felt at a disadvantage like that. His mind, in any case, was still partly occupied by the case, and a large part of the rest of it was simply consumed with longing to take hold of her and sink his face into her neck. To sit here unlicensed to touch her, and have her look at him with that unsmiling, frozen face, made him want to throw back his head and howl like a dog.

‘Jo, why?’ he said at last. ‘Nothing’s changed.’

‘Yes it has,’ she said.

‘Not for me.’ She seemed unwilling – or perhaps unable – to amplify. ‘What, then?’ he urged at last.

‘I hadn’t seen
her
before. She wasn’t real.’

‘She was just as real to me. I love you, I want to live with you. That hasn’t changed. I’m ready to do it. Don’t stop now, just when everything’s on the brink of being all right.’

She looked at him clearly. ‘Not tonight, now – it’s too
late. Not tomorrow – you’ll be working late. Not at the weekend – the children will be around.’

His own words delivered back to him were like smacks in the face.

‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘That’s not fair.’

‘I’m not being unkind. I just want you to see it as it is, the truth. I know you weren’t just making excuses. If you had been, everything would be quite different.’

‘They weren’t excuses, they were reasons.’

‘I
know,
’ she said quickly. ‘That’s the point. And the reason you haven’t been able to do it all this time is that you know it’s wrong. You made promises, you took on responsibilities, and you can’t just shrug them off. And I,’ she finished sadly, ‘should never have asked you to.’

‘I have a responsibility to you, too,’ he pointed out.

She shook her head. ‘Not the same. Not really.’

‘It’s real to me.’

‘Well,’ she said. She began to speak, changed her mind, lifted her hands from her lap and tucked them under her arms, a defensive gesture, hugging to comfort herself. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s why it has to be me who decides. And I’ve decided I can’t ask you to do something that’s so hard for you, something that you believe is wrong.’

‘You’re not asking me. I am capable of making my own decisions about my own life.’

‘You decided last night.’

‘I didn’t. I couldn’t help that.’

She sighed. ‘If it’s that hard for you to do, maybe you shouldn’t do it. If you could have come to me gladly – but not like this. Not—’ She seemed to search for words, and then said again flatly, ‘Not like this.’

He could not move her. In the end she asked him to go, and seeing what it cost her to ask, he got up obediently. But at the door he found himself overwhelmed with disbelief. This couldn’t be all. He turned again and said, ‘You’ll change your mind.’ Half statement, half question. Half plea.

‘No.’ She met his eyes, and almost managed to smile. ‘But thank you for not suggesting that we just go on as we are. That takes real greatness. You are a great man, Bill.’

He felt as though he had a tennis ball stuck in his throat. ‘I love you,’ he managed to say despite it.

‘I love you, too,’ she said. She stepped back, like someone who had just cast off a boat, and he thought it was so that he should not try to kiss her. There was nothing to do but go. ‘Good luck,’ she said when he was half way down the path. He would have liked to say something but the tennis ball prevented, so he lifted his hand in a futile sort of gesture and concentrated on not stumbling or walking into the gatepost in the fog which enveloped him.

By the time he got home, everyone was in bed, and he thanked God for the small mercy, because he didn’t think he could bear to speak to anyone. He couldn’t go to bed – he’d never sleep. Besides, he didn’t want to get in beside Irene. He didn’t want to sleep beside her ever again. He couldn’t think why it hadn’t bothered him before. He would move into the spare bedroom, sleep alone from now on. Why hadn’t he done it before? It would be a modicum, the smallest modicum possible, of honesty. Irene wouldn’t mind. Barring the aberration last night (was it really only last night?) his company in bed had meant nothing to her for years, and she often complained that he woke her up with his comings and goings and late phone calls. He would use work as the excuse, so as to save her face – and for the children’s sake.