Necrocrip (9 page)

Garry shrugged. ‘We didn’t hear no-one else.’

‘When I took the dog out, about ten minutes later, just in the front garden, I saw his light on in his front room,’ Bet offered.

‘And what about Tuesday? Did you see him go out on Tuesday?’

‘Never saw him, but I heard him come down the stairs. Whisding, he was. And then he banged the door. You have to bang it – it sticks a bit.’

‘We never heard him come in from the pub, though,’ Garry said.

‘And when I took the dog out, there was no light up there,’ Bet added.

‘We haven’t heard any moving about up there, either, not since. And the gas man came yesterday morning to read the meters, and he didn’t answer his door, so he couldn’t have been in. I said to Bet, I reckon he’s done a bunk, didn’t I, Bet?’

But Bet’s eyes had slid back to the magic screen. A fair-haired young woman with her hands on her hips was plainly telling a firm-jawed young man what she thought of him, while the firm-jawed young man picked sulkily at the back of a sofa, waiting his chance to justify himself. In the kitchen the dog had reached a peak of hysteria and was scrabbling at the closed door with its nails. Garry was lighting a fresh cigarette from the butt of the current one, and the smoke was lying in strata from the ceiling down almost to the level of the washing.

‘Could I use your telephone, please?’ Slider asked.

*

The landlord of the Green Man was tall, thin, and sour. His hair was dyed black, and lay reluctantly in separate strands over his skull. His skin was grey, his nose mottled blue, and his eyes congested yellow, and he spoke without moving his lips, as though to open them would be to give away too much of his precious breath.

‘I never liked him from the start,’ he pronounced. ‘What’s he done?’

‘Nothing, as far as I know,’ Slider countered. ‘Why don’t you like him?’

‘Too clever-clever. College boy type. I knew he wouldn’t stay.’

‘He’s a college boy?’

‘I said “type”. Thinks he knows everything. Lahdidah accent. I said to myself, this one won’t stay. He won’t want to soil his hands. But he was so keen on the job I took him on against my judgement.’

‘Did he come to work on time on Tuesday?’

‘Came
on time. Then springs it on me that he wants to go off early. Says he’s got to meet his sister off some plane at Heathrow. Well, we were quiet, so I said he could go, though I had my doubts. Starting the old nonsense already, I thought – and I was right. He left here at half-past nine, and that’s the last I saw of him.’

‘He hasn’t been in to work since?’

‘He has not.’ The yellowed eyes met Slider’s reluctantly. ‘He’s got wages owing. Well, he can have them if he comes for them.’ He seemed to regret even this momentary lapse into kindness, and tightened his lips more grimly in compensation. ‘Too clever by half, that one. He mended my bar video that’s been on the blink for a fortnight –knows his way round a circuit board all right. What’s a bloke like that doing behind a bar, I ask you? I knew he wouldn’t stay.’

By the time Slider got back to the maisonette; Atherton had arrived.

‘Shall I break in, or you?’ he asked politely.

‘You do it so nicely, dear,’ Slider said.

‘You’re going to get me into trouble one of these days,’ Atherton grumbled, bending to examaine the lock.

Slider told Atherton what he had learned so far while they looked round. The upper flat was small and dingy, with all the muted horror of a furnished let: nasty wallpaper, nastier carpets, and furniture the nastiest of all. The bottom door let straight onto the stairs, which were narrow and steep. At the top was a tiny half-landing, dominated by a mess of meters and fuse-boxes which seemed in imminent danger of pulling the sagging plaster off the wall. A doorway without a door led to what had originally been the bathroom of the house, and was now a kitchen. It had been divided down its length with a partition wall, behind which a bath, hand-basin and lavatory were crammed into the smallest possible space. From the half-landing four steps led on up to two doors, the bedrooms of the original house, now a bedroom and sitting-room.

The rooms gave every sign of expecting their owner back. In the bedroom the bed was unmade, the duvet flung back from a wrinkled undersheet; wardrobe and drawers were full of clothes, and there were two suitcases, one on top of the wardrobe and one under the bed. He had not packed and gone, that was for sure.

On the kitchen table a coffee mug, a crumby plate and knife, a pat of butter and ajar of Marmite bore witness to a last meal – Tuesday’s tea? – and there was food in the fridge: milk, eggs, tomatoes, bacon, a pack of French beans, a packet of lamb cudets – Wednesday’s dinner?

In the sitting-room there were newspapers lying around – Monday’s
Evening Standard
folded to the jobs page and Tuesday’s
Guardian
– and a copy of a paperback Dick Francis was lying on the floor half under the sofa, face down and open at page thirty-six. On the small table there was a half bottle of whisky and a tumbler with a screwed-up crisp packet stuffed in it, and a brown apple core lay in a glass ashtray on the hearth. The television showed a red light, having been turned off from the remote control instead of at the switch.

Yet all the evidence the flat provided was negative. Peter
Leman seemed to receive no mail but junk mail. He kept no diary or address book. His books were few, paperback bestsellers. He kept no personal papers in the house, no letters, bills or anything of that sort. The flat gave the appearance of a temporary home.

‘It’s like a student’s term-time place,’ Atherton said. ‘You get the feeling that there are parents somewhere with a bedroom full of his personal gear. I mean, where’s all the normal silt of life?’

‘He hadn’t been here very long,’ Slider reminded him.

‘Why was he here at all?’ Atherton asked, dissatisfied. ‘Because it’s cheap, I suppose. Maybe he quarrelled with his parents.’

‘Over being homosexual?’

‘We don’t know that he was. There’s the possible girlfriend. And we don’t know that Leman was the corpse or that the corpse was the man Slaughter took to his room, or that the man Slaughter took to his room was Leman.’

‘We don’t know much, and that’s a fact,’ Slider agreed placidly, amused by his bagman’s growing irritation.

They were almost ready to give up when they found, inside a copy of the London
A to Z
, a snapshot of a slim, dark-haired young man in jeans and tee-shirt with his arm round a fair-haired, smiling young woman. Pencilled on the inside of the cover of the
A to Z
, there was also a telephone number. Slider tried it while Atherton took the photograph down to Garry and Bet. He returned a few minutes later.

‘It’s Peter Leman all right. And that’s his girlfriend stroke sister—’

‘Suzanne.’

‘La même. Any luck with the number?’

‘Yes and no,’ Slider said. ‘It’s the number of the payphone in the hall of the house where Slaughter lives.’

Atherton brightened. ‘But then, that proves—’

‘At ease,’ Slider said. ‘We already know he knows Slaughter. He works at the shop, remember?’

‘Curse! If there were any justice in this world, it would have been Suzanne’s number,’ Atherton grumbled. ‘And you realise there could be any number of reasons why he’s not come home?’

‘Patience, lad. One step at a time. At least we’ve got the photograph.’

‘It’s the littlest least you’ve ever asked me to be glad about,’ Atherton said.

‘God, this is good!’ Slider murmured. He was lying in post-coital bliss on Joanna’s saggy old Chesterfield, with Joanna curled up in his arms. Elgar’s Second Symphony, which had been on when he arrived, was coming to its close.

‘Mmm,’ she agreed. ‘Did you know that an interviewer once asked Barbirolli: if he could nominate the last notes of the last music he would ever conduct, what would he choose? And he chose this.’

‘I wasn’t talking about the music. But still – I can relate to that, as the Americans say.’

‘Oh God, that reminds me – there was a sort of stage manager person at the Carnegie Hall, and whenever something went wrong, he’d come mincing up and enquire politely, ‘Is there a concern here?’ It made Charlie foam—’

‘Charlie?’

‘My desk partner. He’s an irascible old scrote with a very low pain threshold when it comes to language.’

‘He seems to be cropping up in your conversation a good deal.’

She stretched up to kiss his chin. ‘You can’t be jealous of Charlie,’ she decreed. ‘Just not possibly.’

‘I can be as irrational as the next man when I put my mind to it.’

‘I work with him, that’s all.’

‘I work with Atherton.’

‘What makes you think I’m not jealous of Atherton? You spend a lot more time with him than with me.’

He hugged her. ‘Ah, but I mean to do something about that.’

‘Oh yeah?’ she said derisively, though without heat.

‘I mean it.’

‘Of course you do,’ she agreed. ‘But not just yet. What’s
the excuse this time? Irene isn’t involved in any school plays and the children haven’t got chickenpox or exams coming up.’ His own excuses, handed back to him out of context, sounded embarrassingly threadbare. Oh, I forgot, you’ve got a big case on, of course. That should be good for a few months.’

‘Sarcasm is an unlovely trait,’ he observed.

She kissed him again, contritely. ‘I know. I didn’t mean it. I’m just talking to hear myself talk.’

‘You’ve every right, though. I’ve kept you waiting far too long. It’s because—’

‘It’s because you’re a Libra, and see every side of every situation,’ she supplied for him.

‘All the same, I was thinking about us the other night, and I saw it all very clearly. Case or no case, I’m going to speak to Irene the very first opportunity.’

She still wasn’t taking him seriously. ‘What constitutes an opportunity?’

‘I mean just an opportunity. Both of us in the same room at the same time, alone together.’ She was silent. ‘Aren’t you pleased?’ he asked after a moment.

‘Yes, of course I am.’

‘You don’t sound it.’

She looked up at him, suddenly serious. ‘Bill, are you sure about this?’

His feet seemed to fill up with cold water. ‘Of course I am. God, we’ve talked about it often enough! What’s the matter – aren’t you?’

‘It isn’t me that has to do it,’ she said reasonably. ‘It’s a big step.’

‘Are you trying to put me off?’

‘No. I just want you to be sure it’s what you want.’

‘I knew it was what I wanted the first moment I met you. I’ve never felt like that about anyone else in my life. I know that sounds corny, but it’s the literal truth.’ He stared at her, puzzled. ‘Why am
I
having to convince
you,
all of a sudden?’

Her face cleared and the sun came out. ‘I just felt like a change,’ she lied. ‘Of course, if I didn’t love you so much, I could quite happily settle for an affair with you, just as I do with all the others—’

The phone rang.

‘What others?’ he demanded,

‘Sorry, your five minutes is up,’ she said, grinning evilly, and reached for the phone. ‘Hullo. Oh, hi! Yes, thanks, very nice. Well, when I say very nice – doing the choral symphony three times in a week is no joke. I reckon that Beethoven bloke must have been deaf. Yes, he’s here. No, no, we were just talking.’ She handed the receiver to Slider. ‘From the excitement in his voice,’ she said, ‘I think that’ll be it for the evening.’ She got up and left him with a cold space all down his front.

‘This had better be important,’ Slider said into the mouthpiece.

‘Would I disturb you otherwise?’ Atherton said, wounded. ‘I’ve been at Bent Bill’s, and I’ve met a dear old couple there who have definitely identified Peter Leman from the photograph.’

‘Tell me!’ Slider said, struggling up straight and looking for his trousers.

‘Well, they like to go there for a midweek drinkie because it’s quieter than at weekends. They were there on Tuesday night, and as they were leaving at about half past ten, they saw Leman come in with Slaughter and walk up to the bar to order a drink.’

‘How do they know it was Slaughter?’

‘They gave me the description, I gave them the photograph.’

‘How sure are they?’

‘Very. They walked right past them. Slaughter isn’t the least memorable man in the world, and they noticed Leman for his nice bum.’

‘It sounds good. Are they willing to swear a statement?’

‘Not willing, but they’ll do it. Oh, and one other thing, Guv. They say Leman was wearing a leather flying jacket with a sheepskin lining. And do you remember, the torn in Slaughter’s house—’

‘Mandy.’

‘Yes, Mandy – she said that the man Slaughter brought back with him had a leather jacket with a “sort of white collar”. He was coming upstairs in the shadow, remember.’

‘Yes,’ Slider said. ‘It sounds as though we’ve got him, then. I’ll come in. Where are you now?’

‘In their flat in Aubrey Road. They were a bit sensitive about talking to me in the pub. I’m getting the statement now, then I’ll go back to Bent Bill’s and lean on the barman.’

‘Be careful you don’t break something. I’ll see you back at the factory.’

Joanna was looking at him with interest as he put the phone down and stood up.

‘Result?’ she asked succinctly.

‘It could be. At least, it may be enough to persuade the suspect to tell us the rest. He’s been on the verge of breakdown anyway for some time.’

She stepped close. ‘Good. I’m pleased for you.’

He kissed her. ‘I’ll have to go now, though,’ he said apologetically.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry.’

He kissed her again. He was getting an erection. He hoped it was her, and not the excitement of the case. ‘If it’s not too late, shall I come back afterwards? Or will you be asleep?’

‘You can always wake me,’ she murmured, lip to lip and hip to hip. ‘Sleep I can have any time.’

‘All right, then,’ he said. Yes, it was definitely her.

SLAUGHTER WAS WEEPING, BUT STILL
coherent. Slider decided to carry on.