One Under

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘What the bloody hell have you been up to?’

  The fact that he didn’t bellow somehow made it worse. Slider was suddenly glad to have the desk between them. ‘Sir?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t “sir” me! I’ve just had Mr Carpenter on the blower, our new borough commander that we’re all trying so hard to make friends with.’

  Ooh, satire, Slider thought. You could put someone’s eye out with that.

  ‘Mr Carpenter is not happy. He’s especially not happy to be rung up by an AC in a temper and put on the carpet for something he’s not done. And what does an unhappy borough commander do? Makes other peoples’ lives a bloody misery!’ Now he bellowed.

  ‘Sir,’ Slider began.

  ‘You went and bothered the chairman of the Police Select Committee! Twice!’

  ‘If I could explain—’

  ‘The man that holds all our fates in his clammy little paw – including the AC’s. Apparently, you accused him of lying and consorting with criminals.’

  ‘I certainly didn’t accuse him of consorting with criminals.’

  ‘Well, I’m very glad to hear it!’ Porson’s voice had risen, like the wind before the storm. ‘I’m glad there’s some groundless accusation you didn’t throw at him! What the blue, blistering blazes have you got against the man? The man, may I remind you, who is trying to stop our budgets being cut again in the next round and is probably the only person with any chance of doing it!’

  ‘He told me he’d never heard of George Peloponnos. But he’d met him, spoken to him on the telephone several times, had letters from him.’ He explained about the planning application, while Porson steamed gently.

  ‘You’re supposed to be looking into Adams,’ he burst out at the end. ‘In fact, you’re not supposed to be looking into Adams, but anyway. Then it was Ploppy-whosis, now you’re wandering off into rarefied pastures on the basis that someone can’t remember the name of the man who signed his bloody planning permit!’

  This was not the moment to bring up other bits of evidence, as far as they were evidence. It was all too tenuous – Porson’s resistance made him realize just how tenuous it was. And Porson was undergoing some industrial strength leaning from leaders in the field. He hadn’t mentioned which AC it was that had pressured Mr Carpenter, but wouldn’t it be interesting if it was Derek Millichip, who appeared on the same list as Gideon Marler, in Peloponnos’s handwriting? He waited for the right moment to ask the question, expecting more explosions.

  But Porson’s shoulders suddenly dropped, he swivelled on the spot and began pacing, his eyebrow writhing like two caterpillars in a headlock. At last he said, ‘You’re not thinking like a chief inspector, Slider. The game’s changed, you’ve got to realize that. It’s all very well running about being a boy scout, but there are bigger things at stake.’

  ‘Things like the budget, sir?’

  Porson fixed him with a gimlet eye. ‘If you know a way to run a police force without money, start talking. And the boys who hold the purse strings are our masters. They can cut us off without a thought. They all live in nice big safe houses with electronic gates, their own private copper on guard, and SO19 on fast-dial, so cuts don’t bother them. The rest of us have to live in the real world. And in the real world you do not piss off the chairman of the Police Select Committee!’

  ‘I understand, sir,’ said Slider.

  ‘Do you?’ Porson sounded frustrated. ‘I know you, Slider. You think playing politics is beneath you. You think the life of one pathetic schoolgirl is more important than all the MPs and ACs in the book.’

  ‘Sir, I can’t let—’

  ‘Let it go! You don’t even know what you think the crime was, or if there was a crime at all, or who was mixed up in it.’

  This was uncomfortably true. Slider dug in defensively. ‘If someone’s broken the law, no matter who he is, he has to be called to account.’

  ‘But it doesn’t have to be by you, and it doesn’t have to be now,’ Porson countered. ‘If he’s done something, it’ll come out in the wash. Sooner or later his chickens’ll come home to roast. When they do, it’d be nice if we still had enough personnel to do something about it.’

  ‘So are you telling me to stand down, sir?’

  Porson ran a hand over his bald head as if looking for hair to rake. ‘You don’t have any evidence of any connection with Adams.’

  ‘I can’t get the evidence if I’m not allowed to look for it,’ Slider said.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Porson cried in frustration. ‘It’s like talking to Jimmy Cricket.’ He did another few laps, and Slider remained silent, seeing the yeast at work. Porson stopped in the middle and turned. ‘I’ve said you can have until Monday on Adams. But leave Marler out of it. Don’t annoy him, don’t bother him, don’t ring his doorbell and run away. Don’t even think about him, got it? Concentrate on Adams, whatever it is you’re doing to follow that up. What are you doing, as a matter of fact?’

  ‘Trying to find out who she was with on Saturday night. We’ve got a partial index on the car that picked her up,’ he offered as a sop.

  Porson looked happier. ‘Well, follow that up. That’s a proper lead. Leave all this hairy-fairy speculative stuff out of it. I’m telling you, we’re facing a potential budget settlement that would set your hair on edge. We can’t afford to rock any boats.’

  ELEVEN

  The Micawber Approach

  ‘Let’s go through what we know,’ Slider said. The firm had made itself comfortable, behind their desks or perched on someone else’s, with tea and coffee mugs in hand. ‘Kaylee Adams died some time on Saturday night or Sunday morning as the result of a fall from height, and her body was subsequently dumped in a country lane to make it look as though she was the victim of a hit-and-run.’

  ‘But she may actually have been the victim of a hit-and-run,’ Atherton put in.

  ‘Leaving that aside for the moment,’ Slider said, glaring at him. ‘She told Deenie, Shannon and Dakota that she was going to a party on Saturday night, and she was actually picked up by a car at the time mentioned. She rang up George Peloponnos at lunchtime on Saturday to ask, according to Deenie, “Will you be there?” We also know that he rang her on Saturday morning, perhaps to invite her to the party.’

  ‘But in that case, why would she ask him if he’d be there?’ Swilley objected.

  ‘Immediately after ringing Kaylee, he rang Gideon Marler, though Marler claims it was a wrong number.’

  ‘And it could have been,’ said Atherton. ‘It was a very short call.’

  ‘Peloponnos committed suicide on Monday morning by throwing himself under a tube train when apparently on his way to work. His mother and his PA both say he had been worried or depressed for some time. And his doctor had been prescribing him sleeping tablets and anti-depressants since January.’

  ‘Boss,’ said Connolly tentatively. Slider turned to her. ‘You’ve not mentioned Tyler Vance yet.’

  ‘What’s the relevance of Tyler?’ Atherton objected. ‘Just that she and Kaylee were friends?’

  ‘Tyler also died and was dumped,’ Connolly said. ‘It goes to pattern. And I was just thinking – sure, maybe it’s nothing, but Tyler died on the 10th of Jan, and your man George goes to his quack depressed on the 15th.’

  ‘So you think Peloponnos killed and dumped them both,getting more and more depressed until he killed himself?’ said Atherton.

  Connolly shrugged. ‘I’m just sayin’ there could be a connection.’

  ‘Going back a step,’ Slider resumed. ‘We know the car that picked Kaylee up was a black Mercedes GL550 with tinted windows, with an index beginning with A followed by something that looked like an E or an F. Gideon Marler has a black Mercedes GL550 with tinted windows and an index beginning AH.’

  ‘But there’s a lot of other candidate cars in London – aren’t there, Maurice?’ Atherton asked.

  ‘I’m narrowing it down,’ McLaren said. ‘Prob’ly gonna be about half a dozen with A some
thing on the index.’

  ‘Scuse me, but I’m not getting any big picture here,’ Hart intervened. ‘If George took her to a party, done her and dumped her – wiv or wivout previous in the form of Tyler – what’s Gideon Marler got to do wiv anything? Apart from the motor – and we don’t even know it’s the same one – there’s nothing on him.’ She looked around and received no dissent.

  ‘I reckon Kaylee probably did get offed, and given nobody that knew her seems to care, we gotter. Georgie looks our best bet, but we’ve not got much on him. And even if he had something dodgy goin’ on wiv Marler – which we don’t know he did – it don’t mean Marler had anything to do with Kaylee.’

  ‘Thanks for the summary,’ Slider said. ‘Anyone else got a view?’

  ‘It’s hard to have a view when you’re not allowed to look into anything properly,’ said Swilley. ‘This trust, for instance. Anything with a lot of developers’ money swilling around it has got to be interesting. But I don’t know why you’re hung up on Mr Marler, boss. He’s supposed to be one of the good guys. I had a peek at his record in Hansard, and he argued just last week for our budget not to be cut. He’s on our side.’

  Connolly said, ‘I wouldn’t go that far. Nobody’s on our side. But even if Mr Marler’s as crooked as a pig’s hind leg, it doesn’t mean anything. I wouldn’t trust an MP as far as I could spit him, but I wouldn’t expect him to murder me.’

  There was a general murmur of agreement.

  ‘What about Georgie’s alibi?’ Hart said. ‘Didn’t we oughter check that? If he was at the opera, he didn’t kill Kaylee.’

  ‘Unless he met her later,’ Swilley said.

  ‘All right,’ Slider said to her. ‘We’d better do everything by the book. Find out who was in the surrounding seats and try them with a photo of Peloponnos, that’s probably the quickest way. Keep checking the cars. We’re still waiting for Peloponnos’s office phone records. Something will turn up.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Micawber,’ Atherton murmured.

  ‘Who?’ Fathom asked, but nobody bothered to enlighten him.

  Connolly came into his office a while later. ‘Nothing so far on Cope, boss,’ she said. ‘There’s an ethics committee that monitors medical publications, and a charity to do with prosthetic limbs, and a lot of individuals with the surname, but I can’t see any connection with any of our gals an’ fellers.’

  ‘All right,’ Slider said.

  ‘I’ll keep at it,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t waste time on it. You’ve your other work to do,’ Slider said. It sounded gloomier on the air than it had inside his head.

  Connolly hesitated, examining him. ‘Boss,’ she said, ‘I saw the home Tyler came from. And I saw Kaylee’s ma. These are throwaway girls. Nobody cares what happened to them. I think we should keep on trying to find out what happened. Whatever Upstairs says.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Slider said.

  ‘If it means anything,’ she went on, ‘I think there’s somethin’ goin’ on that we haven’t figured yet. But it’s just a feelin’ I got.’

  ‘I’ve got the same one,’ Slider said.

  He tried to convince himself that it was coincidence that the same afternoon he had a call from Pete Remington at Uxbridge to say that they were dropping the Kaylee Adams enquiry.

  ‘We’ve had no luck so far locating any witnesses to the girl or the accident,’ he said, ‘and Mr Fox is pulling the plug. It’s taking up too much time and manpower. You know how it is.’ He sounded apologetic. ‘Too few people chasing too much work.’

  ‘Yes, I know how it is.’

  ‘This sort of thing is very labour intensive, and for uncertain results. We have to be more efficient in our man-management these days. We have to account for effective use of all our resources.’

  Slider had read the same sort of thing on a recent circular from the new borough commander. The Job was turning into a business, with managers, HR, PR, spreadsheets, and all the blue-sky-thinking, stakeholder-involvement, Way Ahead Task Force jargon a company man could want.

  ‘Anyway,’ Remington concluded, ‘I thought I’d just let you know. Oh, one other thing.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Slider. Remington’s voice had changed. It sounded as though this last-minute, I-just-remembered clause was actually the whole purpose of the exercise.

  ‘That index you sent over. We haven’t looked into it. Won’t be doing so. If I were you, I’d forget about it. Really. No point flogging a dead dobbin, eh?’ He gave a nervous laugh.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Slider said. ‘Thanks for the warning.’

  ‘Warning? I just said—’

  ‘Yes, I know. Thanks anyway.’

  He had counted as far as ten before his internal phone rang and the summons to Porson’s office came.

  ‘What the dicky doodah are you playing at? Sending Marler’s index to Uxbridge and asking them to find out if anyone saw it on Saturday night? After I pacifically told you to leave him out of it?’

  ‘You said I could follow up the car,’ Slider pointed out.

  ‘Not Marler’s car! For crying out loud, I’m starting to wonder about your mental stabilitude!’ Porson’s eyes bulged. ‘What part of “leave him alone” do you need translated?’

  ‘Sir, she was picked up on the night by—’

  ‘Don’t you realize,’ Porson said, leaning heavily on his fists on the desk, ‘that he lives out that way? He’s a local resident. An eniment one, come to that. Even if anyone saw him, what the bloody hell good would that do you? He’s got every right to be there!’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Slider. No point in speaking when the gale was blowing in your face.

  ‘Oh, go away!’ Porson cried in exasperation. ‘Go and do something useful. I’ve already kissed goodbye to making chief super before I retire, thanks to you. I hope you can live with yourself.’

  Slider retreated, followed, as he reached the door, by the last injunction, ‘And leave Marler alone! We’re talking disciplinary measures from this point onwards.’

  Connolly seemed to be his natural ally out there. He called her in and gave her a task. Meanwhile, he called up Marler’s CV and studied it. It all seemed straightforward. Like most MPs he’d gone straight from university into party politics, as a party intern and then Parliamentary researcher. Did a stint as a PR officer for an MP and then got his own seat. Held several directorships. Married the daughter of a business mogul who was also an hereditary baron – rich and posh in one fell swoop. One daughter at university. Two large houses. The address of the London one was Holland Lodge, Abbotsbury Walk. He looked it up on Streetmap. Abbotsbury Walk was a short cul-de-sac off Abbotsbury Road. The house was at the end, backing onto Holland Park itself – a most desirable situation. It must have cost a bob or two. Abbotsbury Road led at the top end to Holland Park Road and thence to the A40, the fast route westwards out of London to leafy Herts and Bucks – where so many MPs lived, for the very reason that the transport links were good. Or perhaps the transport links were good because so many MPs lived out that way. Who knew?

  Gideon Marler had wanted work done on his house and had – possibly – leaned on or otherwise encouraged the chief planning officer to put the permission through. Why not? A lot of people did it. If you had either the money or the influence, or in ideal cases both, it would take a person of real integrity not to use the leverage for your advantage, especially when, after all, it probably didn’t do anyone any harm. So a Grade II house was altered? It wasn’t a war crime.

  And what, if anything, did it have to do with Kaylee Adams, the girl from the estate? Slider put his head in his hands and felt his thoughts grind together like boulders in a glacier, painful and about as slow.

  He was very far away when the hospital rang.

  Connolly volunteered to go out of concern for the kid. Mrs Adams had been pumped out and was now sleeping, she was told. Fortunately, a neighbour had called round and found her, otherwise it would probably have been Julienne, coming home from school, w
ho discovered her mother. The friend had knocked and, getting no reply, looked through the kitchen window and saw her lying on the kitchen floor. She’d called for an ambulance, and the paramedics had broken in.

  ‘Is it suicide or an accident?’ Connolly asked the doctor.

  He shrugged. ‘Who knows? There’s a fine line in any case, when you get to users like her. The friend who found her thought it was suicide. She said she’d been very depressed since her daughter died?’ He added a querying look to the question mark.

  ‘Yeah. She was killed in a road accident last Saturday. Hit-and-run, so it looks.’

  ‘Oh. That’s tough,’ said the doctor. He was young, tall, and glossily black, with the long features of an Ethiopian. ‘So she might have meant it, then.’

  ‘How serious was it?’ Connolly asked.

  ‘Touch and go. If she hadn’t been found when she was, she’d have been dead in another hour. As it is, we won’t know if she’s suffered any permanent damage until she wakes up.’

  ‘Brain damage, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, that first of all. But if she escapes that, there may still be organ failure later.’ He shook his head, to indicate the outlook wasn’t good.

  In either case, Connolly thought as she headed for the waiting room, they’d surely take the kid away now. Social services had been called in, of course, and Julienne would be going into care on a temporary basis, until the state of her mother was determined; but it’d be a long time before she’d be allowed to go back home.

  Connolly remembered the party atmosphere of the day after the Knock, how Mrs Adams had seemed to be putting on the show she thought was expected of her. There had been no real feeling there. But often such a deep shock takes its time arriving. Such a reversal of the normal way of things can be hard to recognize as reality at first, especially when you were accustomed to altering your perceptions on a regular basis anyway. But when the realisation finally kicks in … Even the most careless mother can have maternal feelings. Howling about ‘her baby’ had probably turned into a real discovery of loss.

  But if she’d tried to kill herself over Kaylee, what did that say about her care for Julienne? Connolly shrugged. Thinking ahead was rarely a drug user’s prime strength. Perhaps she’d banked subconsciously on being found in time. Perhaps it had only been a cry for help.