Necrocrip (21 page)

‘Yes, but by her own account she didn’t even hear the body hit the floor, and it must have done that whether it was suicide or murder. When you consider what she and Maureen were up to—’

‘Yes,’ Atherton frowned. He pulled out the grill pan and turned the sausages with a fork. The smell wafted out and Oedipus dug his nails into Slider’s knee in sensuous reaction. ‘And Mandy had the radio going, too, didn’t she? But look – if it was murder, the murderer must have gone down the stairs to get out. Someone must have heard him.’

‘Perhaps someone did. But hearing and registering aren’t the same thing, and in that house men are creeping in and out all the time. He only had to wait his moment for the coast to be clear—’

‘Could he have got out before Mandy came running upstairs?’

‘Why not?’ Slider shrugged. ‘The blood would take a little while to trickle through, and Mandy must have stood staring at it and the ceiling and making exclamations before she actually sprang into action.’

Atherton pondered. ‘How would the murderer get in? You can’t slip those electronic latches with a credit card.’

‘Either by ringing Slaughter’s bell, if he was known to him, or by waiting for someone going in or out and slipping in with them – though I don’t suppose he’d want to risk being recognised.’

‘But Mandy didn’t hear his bell, and she did when we rang it that day.’

‘But that day she was waiting for a customer. Last night she had one already in there, grunting in her ear and pounding the bedsprings. I don’t suppose she’d have noticed anything much less than a good-sized articulated lorry bursting in through her walls.’

‘Hmm.’ Atherton beat the eggs with black pepper and a fine, free, practised movement of the wrist. Slider watched admiringly, completely relaxed now. He had handed over responsibility to his sergeant for the time being. His mind coasted, viewing everything with the clear detachment of sleeplessness.

Atherton added a little grated nutmeg, and tipped the beaten eggs into the pan. ‘If it was murder, the murderer must have had blood at least on his hand and wrist, even doing it from behind. Someone will have seen him in the street.’

‘Large gauntlets,’ Slider said. ‘Motorcycle gauntlets, that’s what I’d use. The sort with the big cuffs that come half way up your forearm.’

‘Wouldn’t he have been a bit conspicuous, wearing those?’

‘Not if he had a motorcycle. Or he could have carried them in a bag of some sort, put them on for the murder and taken them off again.’

‘You’ve got an answer for everything,’ Atherton smiled unwillingly. ‘All the same, Mr Barrington’s quite happy for it to have been suicide—’

‘Well he would, wouldn’t he?’

‘—and there’s no real reason why it shouldn’t have been.’

‘Except the note,’ Slider said. ‘There’s something about that note that bothers me. Where did he get the leaflet, for instance?’

‘He picked it up in the hall when he came in. Those kind of things are put through every letterbox in the land every day of the week.’

‘The disco ones are more usually stuck under people’s windscreen wipers.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

‘And the pencil – where did he get that? He didn’t have a diary.’

‘He could have picked it up anywhere,’ Atherton said reasonably. ‘Someone dropped it on the street, in a bus, in his shop – on the stairs.’

‘Yes,’ said Slider, dissatisfied. ‘He could have.’

Atherton looked at him askance. ‘But you don’t think so?’

‘I don’t know why, but it bothers me. The letter, and the fact that he was so scared of being released. I think this was what he was frightened of.’

‘Well, if it was murder, who, and why?’

‘Leman, perhaps. Whatever this “job” is that he’s in hiding for must have involved Dave’s Fish Bar. Perhaps killing Slaughter is part of it.’

‘But then he must be doing it
for
someone,’ Atherton said, dissatisfied. ‘And that would mean we’re nowhere near a solution.’

‘Or perhaps it was a revenge killing for whoever it was
that Slaughter killed at the chip shop – the whole thing a tangle of homosexual jealousy. We’ve got to find some of his previous pick-ups, find out who he knew, and if any of them are missing.’

‘What a lovely job! Tracing nameless contacts through the gay bars of London could take the rest of our lives,’ Atherton said. Slider didn’t reply. Atherton looked at him for a moment, and then shrugged. ‘Breakfast is ready. Do you want some more coffee?’

The delicious food revived him, set his mind running at normal speed again, and woke from its numbness the pain of the Joanna-situation.

Lingering over his last piece of toast and marmalade, Atherton asked delicately, ‘Do you think she means it?’

‘Oh, she means it all right. She wouldn’t say things like that for effect.’

‘No, I don’t think she would,’ Atherton said slowly. ‘But what are you going to do, then?’

‘What can I do? Just – go on, I suppose.’ He played with his knife, swinging it round on his plate like the secondhand of a clock. ‘I don’t think I’ve really taken it in, yet. I can’t believe I’ll never see her again.’

‘Nor do I,’ Atherton said briskly. ‘There’s got to be a way to sort it out.’

‘It would be wrong. She’s right about that. But on the other hand—’ He paused, frowning in thought. ‘Five years ago I wouldn’t even have thought of it. The children were younger – Irene hardly ever went out – they all depended on me so much more. But now Irene has her own friends and her own interests, and the children – well, you know what kids are like these days.’

Atherton didn’t and said so.

‘They’re all the time doing things – friends’ parties, clubs, school visits, I don’t know what else. They practically need social secretaries. If ever the phone rings these days you can bet it’s for one of them. And when they are at home, they don’t want to talk to you or be with you. They shut themselves up in their rooms, demanding their privacy – you have to knock before entering these days.
They’re like hotel guests, really. I can’t believe they’d care one way or the other if I went.’

Atherton looked at him steadily. There was nothing for him to say in this argument. In the Central Criminal Court, it was Slider vs. Slider.

‘But is that really true? Or am I just rationalising what I want to believe? And in any case, does the fact that they don’t care about me – if it is a fact – justify me in abandoning my responsibilities?’

‘She was right about one thing – it is much too hard for you,’ Atherton said.

‘You mean, I shouldn’t leave them?’

Atherton slid away from the role being thrust upon him. ‘I can’t advise you. It’s not my place.’

‘But you have an opinion?’

‘Not even that. Only a philosophy of life.’

‘Well?’ Slider demanded.

Atherton shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t help you.’

‘Tell me anyway.’

‘All right. It’s this; “Live each day as though it were your last. One day you’re bound to be right.”’

Slider stared a moment’s incomprehension, and then an unwilling smile tugged at his lips. ‘You’re a fat lot of help!’

‘I did warn you,’ Atherton grinned.

They were suddenly both embarrassed by the feeling of warmth between them.

‘Thanks for letting me maunder on,’ Slider said gruffly.

‘Any time,’ Atherton replied lightly. ‘I think I offer a very reasonable maundry service.’

They both got up, and began to clear the plates. Oedipus, on his chair between them, teetered this way and that, trying to see where the bacon rinds were going.

‘And now I suppose it’s back to the real world,’ Atherton said. ‘There’s a thousand interviews waiting for us out there, and a whole new lot of house-to-house enquiries.’

‘Is that what you call the real world? It doesn’t look very believable from where I’m standing.’

‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ Atherton said kindly. ‘Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’

‘THE CHINESE CONNECTION’, SLIDER SAID
as they headed back to the station.

‘The tooth fairy didn’t say Chinese specifically, only Asian,’ Atherton pointed out.

‘But then there’s the fact that the eyes were missing, and the scalp. Why that, if the idea was only to prevent identification? Couldn’t it have been because the eyes and hair would give away the fact that the victim was Chinese, or part Chinese?’

Atherton grunted, concentrating on the gleaming, elderly Vauxhall Cresta in front. The driver was wearing a hat – always a danger signal in Atherton’s book – and had his left indicator flashing while hand-signalling right. ‘It’s a long shot,’ he said. The Cresta turned left, and Atherton shot past with a blast on his horn.

‘But then there’s the Chinese Restaurant practically next door – and so many chip shops these days are run by Chinese. I can’t help wondering, you see, what the chip shop had to do with it.’

‘Your conspiracy theory?’ Atherton said.

‘There’s still the fact that Leman took the part-time job for no obvious reason.’

‘Maybe it was just for pleasure. Some people like chip shops. If only we could speak to the bastard we might find out.’

‘We’ll get him when he phones Suzanne again. With that new equipment it only takes thirty seconds to trace back a call.’

‘If he phones again. But I must say the alternative theory sounds much more attractive – and I’d be willing to bet Mr Barrington will prefer it. If Leman really was bisexual—’

‘We don’t know that he was. There’s only his night with Slaughter to go by, and that may have been a set-up.’

‘What about the handkerchief in the bed?’

‘But that might have been Leman’s semen. We only know that it wasn’t the victim’s.’

‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten.’

‘Besides, I’ve remembered now where I heard the Chinese mentioned before: it was Mandy. Do you remember, she said that the room next to Slaughter’s was empty, but that—’

‘That there was a Chinese man staying there, yes,’ Atherton said.

‘And that they had a lot of them – presumably one after the other. It might all be a coincidence, but since we’re starting again from scratch, I don’t want to miss out anything.’

‘Fair enough, Guv. D’you want me to go back and talk to Mandy again?’

‘No, I’ll do that. I want you to go to the Hung Fat and try to get something out of them. I know it’s hard work, but—’

‘Actually,’ Atherton said thoughtfully, ‘I think I know a way to go about it.’

After redisposing his troops for the new fray, and before departing for Holland Park, Slider telephoned Irene.

‘It was an all-nighter. Our prime suspect and sole witness has been offed, and the case is wide open again. I’m sorry, but I don’t know when I’m likely to be back.’

‘It’s all right, I understand,’ she said kindly.

Who was this mild-mannered woman? Slider wondered internally. Did she wear a blue body-suit and red wellies under her neat floral dresses? Where was the Irene ‘Slugger’ Slider of yesteryear, veteran of a thousand light-heavy marital bouts – he light, she heavy?

‘There is just one thing,’ she said, almost diffidently.

‘Yes?’ Slider said cautiously, feeling his jaw.

‘Did you remember that we were supposed to be taking the children to Box Hill today?’

‘Oh, Lord, I’d forgotten!’

‘For a picnic’

‘I’m sorry—’

‘No, no, it’s all right. I was just wondering if you’d mind if Ernie Newman took us instead.’

‘Instead?’

‘Instead of you. You see, I don’t really want to risk going a long distance in my car – you know that trouble I’ve had with it overheating – and when I talked to Ernie he said he’d love to take us.’

‘When did you discuss it with him? I’ve only just told you I won’t be home,’ Slider said, perplexed.

‘Oh, he phoned up this morning and I happened to mention that you’d been called out and I doubted whether you’d be back in time, and he said he hadn’t been to Box Hill for years and he loved picnics and, well, I think he finds weekends a bit lonely since Nora died.’

Lame dogs, now, was it? ‘Of course I don’t mind. You fix it up just how you like.’

‘All right. Thanks.’

It sounded less than rapturous. ‘I’m sorry I can’t take you,’ he said ‘You’ll tell the kids I’m sorry, won’t you?’

‘Oh, they know what your job’s like,’ she said.

He thought she was a little subdued and remembered her appearance on the stairs this morning. ‘What was it you wanted to talk to me about? You said this morning—’

‘Oh! That. Yes. No, it doesn’t matter. Another time will do. I’ll expect you when I see you, then, shall I?’ And she said goodbye and rang off rather abruptly.

Mandy was swollen-eyed, voluble with a mixture of shock and indignation. Slider found her migrated to the larger bedsit of the midnight-haired Maureen: the two of them were sitting on the bed drinking endless cups of instant coffee and emitting Silk Cut smoke in a blue pall like the twin exhausts of an elderly Jaguar.

‘I just can’t stay in that room,’ Mandy explained with a violent shudder. ‘I keep thinking about it, seeing that blood dripping down from the ceiling, God it was awful!
And then when I went upstairs, and poor Ronnie was just lying there, just—’

‘Don’t think about it, Mand,’ Maureen said warmly, patting her hand.

‘I can’t help it! I just keep thinking about the poor sod, all alone up there, bleeding to death, and we never knew anything about it.’

‘He would have died very quickly,’ Slider said.

‘That’s what I said,’ Maureen said triumphantly. ‘I said he wouldn’t have had time to feel nothing, not with his throat cut right through like that – oh, sorry Mand! Well, but when I think of him being murdered up there, and the murderer creeping past our door and we never knew nothing about it, it gives me the willies. I mean, I don’t know as I want to stay here much longer, what about you, Mand?’

‘It won’t be the same,’ Mandy mourned. ‘And this was such a nice house.’

‘What makes you think it was murder?’ Slider asked, intrigued.

‘Well—’ The question seemed to puzzle Mandy. ‘I just thought it was. When I see him lying there covered in blood—’