Necrocrip (7 page)

He had to get out. The fact was that they didn’t need him or want him any more. He would take the first opportunity to talk to Irene – calmly and sensibly – tell her everything, tell her he was leaving. She wouldn’t really care, not any more.

Not tonight. And not until Joanna was back. But the first chance he had after that.

They came back all together when he was watching the late news on ITV. The children went straight upstairs, as was their wont, to the privacy of their own rooms into which –as guaranteed by Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Convention
et passim
– no adult might penetrate without express invitation. Irene came in still untying the silk scarf from around her neck. Her face was lightly flushed and her eyes were bright. She looked almost pretty.

‘Hullo. Did you have your supper?’

‘Yes thanks. Have you been somewhere nice?’

‘Just to Marilyn’s, for bridge.’

He smiled inwardly at the casualness. Six months ago it would have been ‘To MARILYN’S for BRIDGE!’ But he would make an effort to be sociable, even though playing bridge seemed to him an extraordinary way for intelligent adults to behave.

‘Good game?’

‘Yes, not bad. I had a couple of really good hands for a change.’

‘Who did you play with?’

‘Ernie Newman.’

‘Oh, bad luck.’

Irene frowned. ‘Look, I don’t make fun of your friends. Ernie’s a very nice person, and he’s got lovely manners, and he’s very fond of me.
And
he’s a good bridge-player.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Ernie Newman had been coming up in conversation a good deal lately, partnering Irene to all the things Slider couldn’t make, and he probably had been jocular too often at the boring old fart’s expense. He changed the subject hastily. ‘Where were the kids?’

‘I didn’t know what time you’d be back, so I left them at Jeanette ‘s and picked them up on the way home.’

‘Just as well. I was a bit late. We’ve got a murder case.’

‘Oh,’ she said, and seemed to be hesitating between sympathy and disappointment. ‘I suppose that means you’ll be working all hours again?’

‘I suppose so,’ he said, thinking of Joanna and how the case would provide all the excuses he needed. But no, he was forgetting, he was going to sort things out; he wouldn’t need excuses any more.

‘You’ve been home so much the last couple of weeks, I began to think we might have a proper social life at last,’ she said diffidently, folding and refolding her scarf, her eyes on the television screen. He looked at it too, but watched her warily out of the corner of his eye. Was it going to be a row? He didn’t want a row tonight. But in the brief silence the moment passed. ‘Did you call Mr Styles?’ she asked instead.

‘Yes, but it was engaged,’ he lied.

‘All right, I’ll ring tomorrow,’ she said peaceably. ‘That is, if you’re not going to fix that tap yourself?’

‘I don’t think I’m going to have time, what with the case and everything,’ he said. The adverts came on, and he shifted his gaze to look at her, unfortunately just at the moment when she looked at him. It made him realise how rarely their eyes ever met these days. She seemed to be studying him thoughtfully, and for a moment he felt completely exposed, as though all his unworthy, craven thoughts were laid out in the open for her to see. Could she possibly know about Joanna already? No, she couldn’t possibly. Not possibly.
Nothing in writing

The searchlight moved on past his hiding place: she turned away towards the door. ‘I think I’ll go and have a quick bath,’ she said.

Was that all? In the old days she would have asked him
about the case. Even in times of maximum irritation with him, she had always made a point of asking: she believed it was her wifely duty to express an interest in his job. Her slender, retreating back made him feel suddenly lonely, cut off from humanity. He had a contrasting mental flash of Atherton and Jablowski sharing their intimate, candlelit dinner and talking comfortable shop together. Now he felt like the Little Match Girl.

‘By the way, the new man’s come,’ he said desperately as she was about to disappear.

She stopped and half turned. ‘Oh? What’s he like?’

‘Smart. All spit and polish.’

‘That’ll be an improvement. That Bob Dickson was such a slob.’

He felt wounded by her lack of understanding. She must know by now how he had felt about his late boss. ‘He doesn’t like me,’ he said plaintively.

‘The new man?’ Now she looked at him again, that same, thoughtful look. ‘I wonder why?’

‘He didn’t like Dickson either.’

‘Well that probably explains it,’ she said. ‘Everyone in the Job must know you were Dickson’s man.’

It was an incisive, even an intelligent comment, but he didn’t know whether or not it was also derisive. He couldn’t think of anything to say, and she went, leaving him surprised for the first time in God knew how many years of their marriage.

Dickson’s office was Dickson’s no more. Fug, filth and fag ash had been swept away by the new broom. The clean windows stood wide open to the traffic roar, there was nothing on top of the filing cabinets but a red Busy Lizzie in a pot, while the only bare bit of the wall was now adorned with a framed print of Annigoni’s portrait of the Queen. The desk gleamed with furniture polish and was disconcertingly clear, containing only an in-tray, an out-tray, and between them one of those burgundy leather desk sets for holding your pens and pencils, from the Executive Gift Collection at Marks and Spencer.

The chair was different, too, a black leather, tilt-and-swivel, high-backed, managing director type Menace-the-Minions Special – two hundred and fifty quid if it was a penny. Barrington must have brought it with him, Slider thought as he presented himself in response to summons. You’d have to be a pretty important, influential kind of bloke to take your own chair with you wherever you went. The kind of bloke who’d have a car phone and a Psion organiser too.

‘You sent for me, sir?’

‘What’s the situation with Slaughter?’ Barrington asked without preamble. His ruined face and impossible hair had the irresistible magnetism of incongruity amid all that determined neat-and-tidiness.

‘He’s still sticking to his story, that he went home alone, even though we’ve told him he was seen going to his room with another man. And he still says he knows nothing about the body.’

‘Has he asked for a solicitor?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Have you told him he can have one on Legal Aid?’

‘More than once. He just shakes his head.’

Barrington stirred restively. ‘I don’t like that. It won’t look good in court if he hasn’t had access to a brief. If he still refuses one tomorrow, send for one anyway. You’ve got the name of a good local man, someone we can trust?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Slider said. ‘But—’

‘Don’t argue. Just do it,’ Barrington said shortly. ‘I don’t know what sort of ship Mr Dickson ran,’ he went on with faint derision, ‘but when I give an order I expect it to be obeyed without question. And I expect
you
to expect the same thing from your subordinates.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Slider said faintly. He was experiencing the same insane desire to giggle as when he had been called up before the headmaster of his school for bringing a hedgehog into Prayers. How had this man managed to get so far without being murdered by his subordinates?

‘Right. So what have you got on Slaughter?’

‘No form, sir. He’s not known anywhere. We’re still looking for witnesses but so far we can’t place him at the
scene at the right time.’

‘That’s all negative. I asked what you’d got, not what you hadn’t got. What did he say about the bloodstains on his clothing?’

‘He says he had a nosebleed while he was getting dressed, so he took the jeans off and washed them out before it set.’

‘It’s a pity about that grouping. Still, no-one can prove it isn’t the victim’s. And there’s no sign of forcible entry to the premises, and Slaughter’s prints are all over everything and on the knives.’

‘About those knives, sir—’

‘Yes?’

‘It strikes me as odd that all but two of them were absolutely clean – no prints at all – and the other two had just single prints of Slaughter’s.’

‘What’s odd about that? He wiped them clean after the murder, and then used two of them in the morning. He’d have to have done that if he wanted it to look innocent.’

‘But the prints on the two knives were of his fingers and thumb only – no palm print. He must have washed and dried the knives and then left the prints putting them back in the rack.’

‘Well?’

‘But why only those two? There ought to have been similar prints on the others if he wanted it to look natural. And after all, since he works there, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with having his fingerprints on anything, so why go to so much trouble? It makes me uneasy. It’s either too clever or too stupid, I don’t know which.’

‘You want logic from a man like that?’ Barrington said impatiently.

‘No, sir, only consistency.’

‘We’re policemen, not psychiatrists. Your business is to collect evidence, and let someone else worry about the implications. Have we got enough to charge him?’

‘You’re asking my opinion?’ Slider asked cautiously.

‘I’m not whistling Yankee Doodle.’

‘Then – no, sir. Not until we can ID the body, at any rate.’

Barrington frowned, but did not pursue the line. ‘What courses of action are you following?’

‘House to house is still going on. There’s the rest of the residents in Slaughter’s house to question. There’s the pub he said he visited. Also all the other known gay pubs within reasonable distance. And we’re trying to trace all the casuals who’ve worked at the fish bar in the last six months – there were a couple of other prints in the back shop clear enough to identify and we want to eliminate them.’

‘Got enough men?’

‘For the moment. Unless we have to start looking for another suspect.’

‘I want Slaughter kept under wraps,’ Barrington said sharply. ‘That’s why I asked you about charging him.’

‘He’s co-operating with everything at the moment, sir. He hasn’t asked to leave.’

‘If he does, let me know immediately,’ Barrington said abruptly, and took a file from his in-tray and opened it, to signify that the interview was terminated. ‘All right, carry on.’

Slider left, quelling the desire to salute facetiously. Atherton was having a bad effect on his character, he decided.

Beevers had drawn a blank at Bent Bill’s.

‘In spite of the moustache and chubbiness,’ Atherton mourned. ‘I thought you’d be very much up their street.’

Beevers shrugged. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t get any offers, only that no-one I spoke to would admit knowing Slaughter.’

‘What about the barmen?’ Slider asked.

‘Same thing, Guv. They all went glassy-eyed when they looked at the photo.’

‘There’ll be other nights and other customers,’ Slider said philosophically. ‘At least we’ve got time on this one: Slaughter’s going nowhere. Someone else can have a crack at it tonight.’

‘Alec looks too much like a policeman. Why not send Norma?’ Anderson suggested. ‘They might think she’s a bloke in drag.’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Norma, splendidly unconcerned.
‘Polish can come with me. The older ones might fancy a young boy.’

‘A catamite look a queen,’ Atherton offered.

‘Come again?’ Polish said blankly.

‘I wish you’d said that last night,’ Atherton complained. Slider saw Jablowski blush uncomfortably and hastened to intervene.

‘Let’s get on. What have we got from the house-to-house?’

‘One of the Ali Rebabas confirms that the chip shop was shut before eleven,’ Anderson said. ‘He went out to his car for something at about ten-to, and noticed that it was dark.’

‘That’s helpful corroboration anyway. What else?’

‘And a woman living across the road – a Mrs Kostantiou – saw a car parked at the end of the alley at about one a.m., which wasn’t there when she got up in the morning, about six o’clock. She thinks it was dark red or dark blue or brown. She doesn’t know what make and she couldn’t see the registration number.’

‘Terrific!’ Atherton groaned.

‘Slaughter hasn’t got a car,’ McLaren pointed out.

‘Might be the victim’s,’ Norma said.

‘Might not,’ said Atherton.

‘Never mind,’ Slider said. ‘Bring her in and let her look at the book, see if she can pick out the model. It could be something. See if any of the other residents saw it arrive or leave. Anything else?’

‘We’ve still got some of the people in the other side-street to do,’ said Mackay, ‘though given it’s their gardens that back onto the alley, it seems unlikely they’ll have seen anything in the middle of the night.’

‘There is one thing, Guv,’ Norma said hesitantly. ‘I’ve been checking into the other helpers at the fish bar, and I haven’t been able to get hold of one of the ones who’s been doing Friday and Saturday nights.’ She looked down at her notebook. ‘He’s a Peter Leman, lives in a maisonette in Acton Lane. I’ve called and I’ve telephoned, but no luck. It might be nothing, of course, but I’ve got a sort of feeling about it—’

‘You think it’s worth looking into?’ Slider asked.

‘She can fillet in her bones,’ Atherton said.

‘For that,’ Slider said, ‘you can do Bent Bill’s tonight.’

‘I’m back,’ said Joanna.

‘I can tell,’ said Slider.

‘How?’

‘The receiver’s gone all damp and my trousers are too tight.’

‘It’s just the other way round with me.’

‘Where are you?’

‘At the airport, waiting for the baggage. I just thought I’d phone you,’ she said with a casualness which didn’t, thank heaven, fool him.

‘How was the tour?’

‘Terrible. Three people got food poisoning in a fish restaurant in San Francisco, and one of our cellos fell down some steps in Washington and broke his arm. But New York was heaven. We couldn’t get all the desks of first fiddles on the platform at the Carnegie, so Charlie and I got a day off and did the tourist bit. How’s the sleuthing business?’

‘We’ve got a murder.’

‘What, another one? Shepherd’s Bush gets more like Chicago every day.’