One Under

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Tyler Vance was a fourteen-year-old girl from Shepherd’s Bush whose body was found in the Thames,’ Slider explained. ‘When was it?’

  ‘January,’ said Swilley.

  ‘Oh, right,’ said Connolly. ‘But we didn’t investigate it, did we?’

  ‘It wasn’t our case,’ said Slider. ‘Don’t you remember, the body washed up much further downstream, and Westminster conducted the inquiry. It was determined that she’d probably gone into the water somewhere near Hammersmith Bridge, so there was some local interest from Borough Command, but nothing came out and the case went cold.’

  ‘Anyway, it seems Kaylee Adams and Vance were friends and went to the same school,’ said Swilley. ‘She was interviewed about it at the time.’

  ‘Was she raped?’ Connolly asked.

  ‘Vance? There’d been some rough sex,’ Swilley said, ‘but it might have been consensual – the evidence was she was sexually experienced.’

  ‘She was only fourteen,’ Slider said shortly. ‘Which means it was rape.’

  ‘Technically, yes,’ Swilley admitted.

  ‘So,’ said Connolly, looking from one to the other, ‘what does that mean for this other thing, the Kaylee Adams death?’

  ‘Probably nothing,’ said Slider. ‘Adams is probably just an RTA. Nothing really to suggest otherwise.’

  ‘And we’re short-handed anyway.’ Swilley concluded the reasoning for him.

  On cue, Porson appeared at Slider’s other door and beckoned. ‘A word,’ he said.

  In his office, Porson reclaimed his normal zone of restlessness – the strip of floor between his desk and the window – and prowled up and down it as he spoke.

  ‘I’ve had Detective Superintendent Fox on the blower, about this hit-and-run. He can’t account to himself for one of my DCIs tipping up at an RTA. He’s asking what our interest is.’

  Det Sup Cliff ‘Duggie’ Fox (he was a large, fleshy man with unexpectedly well-developed mammaries) was the head of Uxbridge CID, a man ferociously territorial, ambitious, and suspicious of any approach he could not immediately recognize as hostile to his interests. His unhelpfulness to fellow officers was legendary. Wouldn’t give a glass of water to a drowning man. Or, in the London vernacular, ‘he wouldn’t give you the drippings off his nose’.

  However, the recent cuts had forced a new perspective on the Foxes of the Met world, and if a case looked like being troublesome, it made more sense to try to shove it off onto some other borough, where it would hit their budget and be their problem.

  ‘He was fishing about, trying to fathom if it was more than leaving-the-scene-of-an-accident, in which case the imprecation was we could have it, with a cherry on top. I didn’t rightly know what to tell him. As far as I know, we haven’t got any interest. Have we?’

  He gave Slider as much of a look of puppy-dog appeal as a man with a heavy cold could manage. Slider hesitated, and Porson put a hand to his head and moaned. ‘Oh my good Gawd. Don’t tell me!’

  ‘It could be nothing, sir,’ Slider said, ‘but it turns out she was connected with Tyler Vance.’

  ‘Vance? What, that body that was fished out of the Thames?’

  Trust the old boy to remember the name, Slider thought. ‘Yes, sir. Adams was interviewed as Vance’s friend.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She said she didn’t know anything.’ A snort. ‘But of course she would say that. And there are some things about the hit-and-run I don’t like. No handbag. Her pants were on inside out. Her navel piercing had been pulled out. And there doesn’t seem to be any reason for her to be out there in the first place.’

  ‘All of which could have perfectly reasonable explications.’

  ‘I know, sir, but—’

  ‘But me no buts. We can’t waste time and manpower on every little trollop who has a row with her boyfriend and tries to walk home.’

  ‘She was only fifteen, sir.’

  ‘Thanks for reminding me.’ He glared at Slider. ‘She’s not even been reported missing. We can’t go making stuff up.’

  Slider looked back uncomfortably. After a moment he said, ‘We’ve got nothing major on hand at the moment, sir.’

  Porson did another couple of lengths, a walk violent enough to have set fire to the carpet. Then he stopped in the centre, leaned his fists on his desk, and said, ‘I suppose you want Cameron to do the PM?’

  It was capitulation. ‘I’d prefer it, sir.’

  ‘Duggie Fox’ll be grinning his tail off,’ Porson muttered. ‘All right, you can make some preliminary enquiries, but if nothing comes up by the end of the week that’s it, understand? And if the driver comes forward meantime, it goes straight back to an RTA.’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ said Slider. Having got permission to look into it, he was as unhappy as Porson could have wanted him to be. If there was anything in it, it was likely to be the sort of anything that gave him sleepless nights, worrying about the state of the nation. ‘Can I have extra manpower, sir? And overtime?’

  ‘Not until you find something to warrant it,’ Porson snapped.

  ‘What about a replacement for Hollis?’

  Porson had had enough. ‘And a couple of pints of my blood while you’re at it?’ he bellowed.

  Slider tiptoed out.

  Atherton had joined the group hanging round his doorway. It was going-home time for the department, but everyone wanted to know where they stood. Was there going to be an investigation, or wasn’t there?

  ‘Doc Cameron’s going to do the post-mortem,’ he told them.

  They exchanged looks. ‘And?’ Atherton asked for them all.

  ‘We’ll see what comes up,’ Slider said. ‘Then we’ll know.’

  ‘And if anything does?’

  ‘You’ll know when I know.’

  They drifted away to their desks to start packing up. Atherton lingered. ‘Want to go for a pint?’ he offered.

  ‘Haven’t you got a date?’

  ‘Yes, but not until later. She’s in court today. She’s going to ring when they adjourn.’

  Slider didn’t ask who ‘she’ was. At the last count Atherton was dating three solicitors. He seemed to have a thing for them. Swilley thought it was unhealthy. She said it was Atherton’s equivalent of snake-handling – the thrill of danger plus perversely embracing natural repulsion.

  ‘Thanks, but I’ll pass,’ Slider said. ‘I haven’t spent an evening with my wife for a while.’

  Joanna was practising when he got home, proof that George had been long enough in bed not to be disturbed by it. And there was, he was glad to note, a warm smell of cooking in the background.

  She stopped when he walked over and kissed her. ‘What was that?’ he asked.

  ‘Smetana’s Buttered Bread. Lots of tricky bits. And they’ve put it in a concert with Don Juan. What do they want – blood?’

  ‘Difficult?’

  ‘Well, it’s not a walk in the park,’ she said. ‘Want some supper?’

  ‘Please. I’m starving. Smells good – what is it?’

  ‘Neck of lamb stew. It’s all ready in the oven.’

  There were mashed potatoes and green beans too, and when he sat down at the kitchen table she brought the bottle of Lirac they had started the night before and sat down with him to drink a companionable glass.

  ‘Lovely,’ he said.

  ‘You look tired,’ she said.

  ‘It’s been a full, rough day,’ he said.

  ‘The funeral was a bit of a downer,’ she said mildly.

  Slider started. ‘Good Lord, I’d forgotten about that. So much seems to have happened since then.’

  ‘Oh dear, don’t tell me!’

  ‘It might be nothing. A fatal hit-and-run, but the victim may be connected to an old case, so it has to be looked into.’

  ‘Oh,’ Joanna said, but seemed reassured by his words. A traffic accident was nothing to bother her man.

  He roused himself. ‘I hope the funeral didn’t upset you too much. I couldn’t h
elp knowing – well, the date was significant.’

  She looked at him across the rim of the glass. ‘I didn’t think you’d remembered. I hoped you hadn’t.’

  ‘Of course I remembered. I’m so sorry, Jo. It must have hurt, thinking about it.’

  Her eyes moved away, proving it was still painful, though she said, ‘It’s all in the past now. Let’s not talk about it.’

  He chewed a mouthful, and then obliged by saying, ‘What’s it like being back at work?’

  ‘Hard,’ she said. ‘Though of course, being further back in the section you can hide a bit more.’ She had been Deputy Principal in the Royal London Philharmonic, but after having so much time off she had had to take a rearward desk when she went back. ‘And of course, it has to be remembered I’m older than I was. Getting back up to speed takes more out of you when you get past thirty.’

  ‘Oh, past thirty is a tremendous age,’ Slider scoffed.

  ‘It is when you’ve got kids coming out of the colleges these days who can do stuff only virtuosi could manage ten, twenty years ago,’ she said. ‘It’s all us oldies can do to hang on to a place. Dickie Strauss! And Bruckner, my God! Twenty-four minutes of non-stop tremolo!’

  ‘Aren’t the modern pieces worse?’

  ‘Well, they aren’t heaven. Dutilleux, for instance. Very fast string crossings, playing diminished fifths across three strings, staccato. But you’re more exposed in the classical repertoire.’ She grinned. ‘When the audience can actually tell if you play a wrong note.’

  ‘I thought they were all ignoramuses?’

  ‘Not all,’ she said generously. ‘Top you up?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Phil Redcliffe was telling a funny story about Don Juan today. Apparently a student of his said she was going to play it in her college orchestra and asked what it was like. He said it was hard and she ought to get the part out ahead and practise. She came back and said the music library had never heard of it. Turned out she’d been asking for “Don’s First Symphony”.’

  It took a moment. ‘Oh, Don One, I get it,’ he said.

  She shrugged. ‘Well, it was funny at the time. What’s this new case of yours?’

  ‘I don’t know if it is a case yet.’

  ‘Well, what’s the case it might be connected to?’

  ‘Tyler Vance,’ he admitted reluctantly.

  Joanna looked concerned. ‘Oh no. Not that one again. They never got anyone for it, did they?’ It was the sort of thing that bothered him most – helpless victims, especially females, who never received even post-mortem justice. She looked at him sternly across the table. ‘You’re not to let it get to you.’

  ‘No, ma’am.’ He had to deflect the attention from himself. ‘How’s my boy?’

  ‘We had a lovely afternoon finger painting,’ she said. ‘It’s nice to have a bit of time with him. Although the schedule will start heating up soon.’

  ‘You don’t have to take every gig that’s offered,’ he said.

  ‘I know, but if you turn down too many, you slide down the fixer’s list. They want someone they know they can rely on. And with all these young hotshots fresh out of college, all competing for the same work, it doesn’t do to get picky. You can bet your life they’ll be hustling for every date.’

  ‘They may have bionic arms and tungsten fingers,’ Slider said, ‘but they can’t replace experience.’ And to her sceptically raised eyebrow he said with a grin, ‘At least you’ve heard of “Don’s First Symphony”.’

  Freddie Cameron was doing the autopsy – or, as he always insisted was more correct, necropsy – the following morning. Slider went in to his office early to reacquaint himself with the Tyler Vance case. Not that there was much of a case to absorb. Tyler was a fourteen-year-old from Mayhew House, a care home in Scott’s Road. No one knew who her father was, and her mother had died of a drug overdose when she was twelve. She had been running wild ever since. However, in the last few months of her life she seemed to have calmed down. It was only after her death that other girls in the home admitted she had been getting out of the home at night, not returning until the early hours. No one knew where she had been going, though it was thought she was meeting a boyfriend.

  She was reported missing one day and washed up two days later on the beach of the Thames opposite the Southbank complex. She had not drowned: the post mortem said she had been dead when she went into the water, and the cause of death was eventually determined to be heart failure, probably brought on by the quantity of drink and drugs the tox screen discovered in her system. There had also been a previously unrevealed congenital heart defect. Her mother had had a similar weakness.

  No one knew where she had been or who she had been with: she had kept her secrets impressively well for a fourteen-year-old. There were, however, signs that she had engaged in a lot of sexual activity shortly before death, and from her physiology she had been far from a virgin. It was assumed that the boyfriend she had been slipping out to see had dumped her in the river in fright when she unexpectedly dropped dead in the middle of partying; but who the boyfriend was they had never been able to discover, and no witness to the disposing of the body had ever come forward.

  Kaylee Adams’s name had come up as being Tyler’s closest friend in the same class at Robert Towneley. Denise ‘Deenie’ O’Hare had also been named as being in the same circle, but denied she had ever been a friend of Vance. Kaylee admitted friendship, but said she knew nothing about Vance’s nocturnal adventures. Whether she really knew nothing, or rather wouldn’t tell, was, of course, impossible to know.

  With no leads and no witnesses, and – perhaps it was not too cynical to say – no family with an interest in discovering the truth, Westminster had let the case go cold. Slider had felt bad about it at the time. A fourteen-year-old girl ought to have her life before her, not be thrown out like a sack of rubbish.

  Apart from the photograph taken after death, there was one snap in the file with a note that it had been taken some time before, possibly as much as a year earlier. It was one from a photo-booth series, and showed Tyler’s face squashed in between two others. The one on her right was tagged as Kaylee; the one on her left as Shannon Bailey, who, it was noted, had been at the same school but had left six months before the incident, and had not been interviewed. She was a mixed-race girl with long corkscrews of gold-lighted brown hair, who was pulling an abominable face, eyes crossed, tongue stuck out and waggling. Kaylee was laughing hugely, her eyes squeezed shut and her mouth was wide open, so not much could be seen of her face.

  Tyler, in the middle, was a thin-faced, pixie-ish girl with dead straight, pale blonde hair, and she was staring wide-eyed and straight ahead, with an air of anticipation – though she was probably just waiting for the flash to go off. He’d have liked to see the rest of the series, but only the one snap was on file. Possibly the other girls had them.

  Slider stared a long time, and Tyler Vance stared back. She had delicate shadows under her eyes and her cheeks were hollow – attractive perhaps in a catwalk-model way, but possibly hinting at ill health. Or was it the strain of the last few months of her life showing through?

  And now her friend Kaylee was dead. Coincidence? Quite possible – but Slider didn’t like coincidences. Too often they were God’s way of telling you there was something that needed looking at.

  Freddie Cameron had enough connections with the Charing Cross Hospital to make use of their state-of-the-art facilities, which now included a remote viewing suite where the various hangers-on – what Freddie had always called ‘the football crowd’ – could watch without getting in the way. At the table beside him he had only his assistant, a favoured student, and Slider.

  ‘So, what’s your interest in this one?’ Cameron asked through a miasma of peppermint. He always sucked Trebor’s Extra Strong. Slider had besides taken the precaution of smearing Vicks ointment round his nostrils before putting on the mask. Death smells, even to someone without Slider’s hypersensitive nose.<
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  ‘I don’t know, really. Just curiosity at first – couldn’t think what a girl like this was doing out in carrot country. And then when I got there, it just didn’t sit right with me.’

  ‘Ah! Well, I shall do my best to salvage your position,’ said Cameron. ‘It interests me, just at a first glance, that all the injuries are to the back.’

  ‘That bothered me, too,’ said Slider, ‘because it suggested she was walking the wrong way, away from London, instead of towards home.’

  ‘Maybe she was running away,’ the student suggested.

  ‘But then she surely would have been carrying something,’ Slider said. ‘Does anyone run away without taking anything at all?’

  ‘Pay attention, Jason,’ Cameron said sternly, ‘while I educate you. Pedestrians struck by cars generally suffer a well-recognized pattern of injuries. The front bumper usually strikes first, hitting at or just below knee level. Then the thigh or hip may be struck by the radiator or bonnet. With a bigger vehicle, like, say, a Chelsea tractor or a lorry, primary injuries may be at chest level. Then, of course, the body is projected by the momentum and suffers secondary injuries on impact with – whatever it impacts. Such as?’

  ‘The road?’ Jason hazarded.

  ‘Yes, resulting in various fractures; and you’ll often see “brush abrasions” from skidding along the ground. Or the victim may be rotated up onto the bonnet.’

  ‘Scooping up, we call it,’ Slider put in.

  ‘Where he may strike the windscreen or pillars, causing head injuries,’ Cameron went on, ‘before falling off into the road to gather yet more. I may say that the secondary injuries, caused by hitting the road, are more often the fatal element.’

  ‘From the position of the body,’ Slider said, ‘it looks as though she flew forwards through the air and landed in a ditch.’

  ‘Soft landing?’ Jason asked.

  ‘Well, it was dry,’ Slider said, ‘but compared with landing on the road, yes.’

  ‘And there are no facial injuries,’ Jason said, ‘which fits with that.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Freddie, and continued with the external examination. The pale body lay prone, vulnerable, but less personal with the face hidden. ‘Now, you see, the primary impact seems to have been at the pelvis, shoulder and head. That’s not typical of collision with a motor vehicle.’