Death Watch (The Bill Slider Novels)

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘It may come to that. Oh, that reminds me, Joe Doyle sends you his regards. Via Atherton, from the Shamrock Club,’ Slider elaborated, seeing the name drew a blank on Fergus’s face.

  ‘The Shamrock? I haven’t been in there in centuries. Sure God, the man’s a chancer. Wait a minute, though – that’d be a grand place to sell a few tickets, now! If they’re not breaking some law down there, the Pope’s a Jew.’

  ‘If you’ve got to resort to blackmail to sell tickets for this show, it must be bad.’

  ‘It is not!’ Fergus said indignantly. ‘It’s cultural and educational. And the sight of Leading Firewoman Tamworth dressed up as a nun is enough to make a good Catholic boy apostasise, just to be allowed the lustful thoughts.’

  ‘Pass.’

  ‘Ah, now, didn’t I just give you valuable information, darlin’?’ he wheedled. ‘Is that not worth two tickets to you? Sure, you could take your totty, make an impression, show her a good time.’

  ‘You must take me for an idiot,’ said Slider.

  ‘That sounds like a fair swap,’ Fergus agreed.

  The CID room at Uxbridge was wide and sunlit, and like every good CID room, deserted of personnel. Slider was met by DS Martin Brice, who led him into Inspector Lampard’s office and apologised for his absence.

  ‘He’s asked me to go through the file with you and answer any questions. I was Office Manager on the case, sir, so I’m pretty well up on it. And he said please to feel free to use his room.’

  ‘Right, thanks,’ said Slider. ‘I’ll want to read everything in detail, but perhaps you wouldn’t mind giving me the outline of the story to start with.’

  Brice settled himself, and obliged.

  ‘The victim’s name was David Arthur Webb. He was a double-glazing salesman, but he hadn’t been doing too well at it. The firm he’d been working for had laid him off about eighteen months before, and he’d had to take a job on commission only, for one of those fly-by-night, cowboy firms. Money had got tight, and things were bad at home – mortgage arrears, HP debts, and so on – and he and his wife had been quarrelling a lot.’

  ‘Over money?’

  ‘Bit of everything really, sir. Money was at the bottom of it, I suspect, but he was drinking too much as well, and she thought he was seeing another woman.’

  Slider nodded slightly. There were parallels already with Neal.

  ‘And was he?’ he asked Brice.

  ‘I don’t think we ever really established whether he was or not. But she believed it, which was good enough for her. Anyway, the climax came when he got done for drink-driving and lost his licence, which meant he couldn’t do his job any more. You know what the area around Harefield’s like, sir – practically open countryside. You have to have a car to get about.’

  ‘Yes. I’m always surprised anything so rural can exist so near London.’

  ‘Well, sir, one night he told his wife he was going out for a drink and he didn’t come back. Late that night a motorist driving up Breakspear Road North saw a flickering light in a barn beside the road, thought it looked like a fire, and went to investigate. He found Webb hanging from a cross-beam, and a pile of straw nearby already blazing. Luckily he was able to put it out – beat the flames out with Webb’s leather jacket as a matter of fact.’

  ‘How was Webb dressed?’

  ‘Fully dressed, sir, except for his jacket and shoes.’ Brice looked enquiringly, and seeing the answer had satisfied, went on. ‘Anyway, he managed to put the fire out, and rushed off to the nearest house to raise the alarm.’

  ‘He didn’t interfere with anything?’

  ‘No sir, except the fire, of course. We were lucky,’ he smiled. ‘The intelligent witness.’

  ‘A rare bird. So when you got there, you thought it was a suicide?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Webb was hanging there with a rope round his neck and all the signs of strangulation.’ ‘How high was he strung?’

  ‘Not dangling, sir. His toes were actually scraping the ground, though the doc said that was due to his neck and the rope stretching. He’d have been just clear of the ground before that. But there was a straw bale just behind him, looked as though it could have been kicked out of the way. We assumed he’d stood on that, sir.’

  ‘And what about the fire?’

  ‘That puzzled us at first. It was about two feet in front of him, a pile of loose straw, and a trail of straw leading to the main stack, as if it was meant to make the whole place go up. But straw doesn’t catch all that easily, as you know, sir, unless it’s very dry, and all the loose straw we found was pretty damp. We assumed he’d got the first heap going and then nipped back and hanged himself, though we couldn’t quite see why he’d want to do that; but we only found one used match, which we didn’t think would have been enough.’

  ‘Unless he was very lucky.’

  Brice shook his head. ‘He’d’ve needed to be more than lucky, sir. We found one used match, and nothing to strike it on.’

  ‘No match box?’

  ‘No, sir. And no lighter, either, though there was a pack of cigarettes.’

  ‘Ah. You think the murderer put the box in his pocket automatically, without thinking?’

  Brice smiled. ‘That’s what the Guv’nor decided in the end. Nobody can think of everything, that’s what he says.’

  ‘And how was the fire started?’

  ‘The forensic team worked it out that the straw was doused with brandy, and a candle stood up in it and lit. When it burned down far enough, it would have set the straw off.’

  ‘A candle,’ Slider said. A smile flitted across his face. Candlewax and brandy. Beautiful! Despair and die, Head.

  ‘They found quite a lot of wax in the ashes,’ Brice said, ‘and there was an empty brandy-bottle near where his coat had been lying. Of course, we were still thinking that Webb had done it himself, and it looked like quite a clever plan to destroy his own body and conceal the suicide – perhaps so that his wife could claim the insurance, sir. That was the way we were thinking.’

  Slider nodded.

  ‘But when the post mortem report came through, it turned out that the rope had been put round his neck after death. He had been strangled, but with electrical flex, not rope. The ligature marks were quite plain, but the flex wasn’t there, so that proved, of course, that someone had taken it off after death, and then rigged the scene to look like suicide.’

  ‘But why would they do that, if they intended to burn the barn down anyway?’

  ‘We couldn’t work that one out, sir – unless it was an extra precaution, in case the fire didn’t destroy all the evidence. Which it didn’t, of course.’

  Slider shook his head. ‘Ridiculously elaborate.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I’ve always felt,’ Brice said. ‘But all we’ve got is questions, no answers.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps it was just a pyromaniac’

  ‘You’ve never made an arrest, I understand?’ said Slider.

  ‘No sir. Not even a suspect.’

  ‘What about the wife?’

  ‘The Guv’nor did consider her, of course, sir. She was the only person with a motive, and it usually is the nearest and dearest. But she’s a little slip of a thing, about five feet two and slightly built. She’d never have managed to hoist him up like that, especially deadweight.’

  ‘Did she have an alibi?’

  ‘She was at home with the kids, sir, watching telly. There was no outside corroboration, but the Guv’nor decided she wasn’t the type to go out and leave the kids alone in the house – they were only toddlers. And she remembered the television programmes well enough. Actually, we never really suspected her, it was just that there wasn’t anyone else.’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ said Slider. ‘A nice little problem.

  Brice cocked his head a little. ‘May I ask sir – have you got something on it?’

  ‘We’ve had an incident on our ground which has similarities about it,’ Slider said. ‘But like you, we haven’t really got a suspect.�
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  Brice nodded sympathetically. ‘Whoever he is, he covers his tracks well.’

  Slider phoned Joanna late, and she answered at once.

  ‘Are you still up?’

  ‘You know what it’s like after a concert – I won’t come down for ages yet.’

  He smiled. ‘I didn’t mean that. Can I come round?’

  ‘What, not working all night?’

  ‘You can’t interview people in the middle of the night, and the troops are doing the boring bits. I can have a few hours with you.’

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘Starving,’ he discovered.

  ‘Wonderful. So am I. Hurry round, then.’

  By the time he got there, she had assembled a supper of pâté sandwiches, crisps, and a bottle of cold white Beaujolais on a tray, which she carried into the bedroom. She sat cross-legged on the bed while he leaned, Roman-style, on one elbow, and they ate while he talked.

  ‘So you think you’re onto something at last?’ she said.

  ‘I’m not sure. We don’t know if Webb and Neal knew each other, but they were both killed in similar unusual circumstances. And even if Neal could have killed himself, Webb certainly didn’t.

  ‘Maybe Neal killed Webb, and then committed suicide.’

  ‘Don’t even think it,’ he shuddered.

  ‘But what about Collins?’

  ‘We’ll probably have to let him go tomorrow. We’ve nothing really concrete against him, except for motive. Though his wife’s gone back to her first story, that she doesn’t know what time he came in, which buggers his alibi. She now says she took a sleeper around eleven when she realised he was spending all evening on the piss. That way, if he hit her when he got back drunk, she wouldn’t feel it.’

  ‘Oh brave new world,’ Joanna said.

  ‘But she woke up accidentally at seven o’clock the next morning – when he got up, according to his story – and they had a brief but violent row about his spending money for her birthday present on drink. He thumped her, took the housekeeping money out of her purse, packed his bag, and left.’

  ‘And do you believe that version?’

  ‘It has the ring of truth about it, as far as her side goes. Of course, it means we don’t know whether Collins really did get back innocent at midnight and go to sleep, or whether he got in in the early hours of the morning, having killed Neal, just to collect his bag. Collins can’t prove it one way, and we can’t prove it the other. Not much of a case.’

  ‘It sounds all right by me. A man who would hit a woman is capable of anything.’

  ‘You sound like Atherton.’

  ‘I love Atherton.’

  ‘Murdered Mistress’s Love-Nest Confession. But you can’t hang a man just for having no alibi.’

  ‘You’re not allowed to hang them any more.’

  ‘Damn. Why didn’t somebody tell me?’

  ‘Anyway, isn’t it always the most obvious suspect who turns out to be the right one?’

  ‘Not always, just usually.’ Slider sipped his wine. ‘Besides, the Collins solution leaves out the Webb killing.’

  ‘Maybe that’s just a coincidence.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. The methods and the background are too similar. I think whoever killed Webb killed Neal. We’ve got to find someone who knew them both, and that means starting all over again and putting in a lot of plain, hard work.’

  ‘If they were both womanisers, maybe they were both having the same woman. What about the mystery redhead?’ She leaned over to refill the glasses, and her robe fell open a little, distracting him. He felt a pleasant warmth start up below his belt that had nothing to do with the wine.

  ‘I wish to God we knew who she is,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I expect Dickson must be glad about this new development. At least now Head can hardly claim Neal was a suicide, can he?’

  ‘You never know with top brass. Logic isn’t their strong point,’ Slider drained his glass and put it down. ‘It’s very odd to see Dickson being such a pussy-cat over Head, though. He’s always been such a roaring lion. He never cared what anyone thought, he just did his own thing and to hell with the regiment.’

  ‘You like him, don’t you?’ she said, licking butter off her fingers.

  Slider smiled suddenly. ‘I’ll tell you a story about him that illustrates the measure of the man. It happened when he was a DS, so of course I can’t swear to the truthfulness of it, but it comes to me on good authority.’

  ‘A thing isn’t necessary a lie, even if it didn’t necessarily happen,’ she said.

  ‘Well, you know that the top detective in the whole of the Met is the Assistant Deputy Commissioner?’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  ‘Good. Now the ADC used to be a man called Maguffy, a ferocious disciplinarian, and totally out to lunch. Everyone went in fear and trembling of him. They used to call him Madarse Maguffy. His favourite trick was to mount little surprise raids on CID rooms to catch people out, and then throw the book at them.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘So one Monday, late morning, slack period, he turned up in Dickson’s CID room. There was one DC, dozing at the crime desk, and Dickson with his feet on the desk, glass of whisky in one hand, and The Sunday Times in the other.’

  ‘I thought you said it was Monday?’

  ‘He was a slow reader. Don’t interrupt.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Well, the DC jumps to his feet, so terrified he can’t so much as squeak, and by the time Dickson finally looks up, Madarse has gone deep purple, his eyes are bulging, and steam’s coming out of his ears. Dickson doesn’t move a muscle. Nothing left to do, you see, but brazen it out. He says casually, “Yes, can I help you?” like a lady shop assistant, and Madarse, totally beside himself, screams, “Do you know who I am?” Dickson can’t resist. He looks calmly across at the the DC and says, “Colin, there’s a stupid sod here doesn’t know who he is. Can you help him?” ’

  When they’d made love, Joanna fell instantly asleep with her nose pressed into the pillow and her short hair sticking up every whichway, like a bronze cactus dahlia. Slider lay back, his body deliciously tired and his mind slowed down to walking speed at last. It connected things up and took them apart again, at random but not frantically, like a child playing with a lego set. He couldn’t see his way through the maze of the case yet, but at least now he was sure he had a case. He could fight his corner with confidence against Head’s scepticism.

  All the same, they badly needed a result on this one. He thought of Dickson – a good copper, yet there was some bastard busily sawing half-way through his chair legs, for no better reason than mindless ambition. And what about his own chair legs? Maybe he should take the promotion after all. But there were others who had stayed put at the sharp end, for love of the job, and not been blamed for it. Look at Atherton, for instance – brain the size of a planet, and still only a DS. But everyone knew Atherton was harmless. Now there was an odd perception from a tired brain! He had managed to surprise himself. He tried to imagine Atherton as a Detective Inspector, and succeeded quite easily. He was perfectly capable of doing the job, of course – it was just that he’d hate it. A DS had the best of all worlds: independence of decision plus almost complete unaccountability.

  For himself – Slider knew, without necessarily liking it, that he was born for responsibility, that if he hadn’t been given it, he’d have found his own mine and dug some out. That’s the kind of dull dog he was. He was a good copper not because he was brilliant, but because he was painstaking. Good old reliable Bill. Why on earth did Joanna fancy him, as there was no delicious doubt she did? She must just be strange that way.

  But he was a good copper, and he didn’t want to take promotion if it meant moving from operations to administration. Still, there was no ignoring that the extra money would come in handy, and it would make Irene happy. Irene! Yes, he was conveniently forgetting he was supposed to be leaving Irene – and if he did, by God he
’d need the extra money! A divorce would cost you thousands, first and last. Why was life so complicated? he wondered resentfully, like so many men before him.

  He looked down at Joanna, and felt how large and simple the joy was of being with her. When you let a stable-kept horse out into a field, there was a first moment of grateful surprise in its eyes at the open expanse of grass in front of it. Joanna was his wide-open space – as unexpected as pleasurable. With her he didn’t feel like a dull dog, or, not to mix his metaphors, a harness-galled dray horse. She unhitched his cart, and he discovered a surprising turn of speed in himself.

  He looked down at her heavy, bronze hair, the tip of her naked ear revealed, the line of her jaw, the laughter lines at her eye-corner, and the curious rough mark on her neck from the pressure of the fiddle. One hand rested beside her sleeping head, a strong hand with long, beautiful fingers. Looking at them made a shiver run down his back. She had a talent he couldn’t begin to understand. She was separate from him, a discrete and beautiful thing, to be admired as you admired, say, a wild animal, knowing you could never possess it.

  You could never possess another person anyway. All you ever owned in life were your responsibilities, he thought, coming full circle. They were yours all right. They had all the reassurance of discomfort ; like piles or aching feet, they could be no-one else’s.

  She stirred and turned over, opened her eyes and looked up at him, as suddenly awake as she had fallen asleep. ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘I was thinking.’

  ‘I can see that. What about?’

  ‘Us. The situation.’

  She sat up, yawning, and stretched. ‘You do pick the time, don’t you? Well, what conclusions have you come to?’

  ‘No new ones. I was just thinking how much I love you.’

  ‘Well then,’ she said pointedly.

  ‘Yes, I know.’ He sighed. ‘It’s just doing it. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I have to wait for the right moment.’

  She seemed to find that amusing. ‘Oh, and what would the right moment look like? Is there a perfect sort of occasion for telling someone you’re leaving them?’

  ‘Don’t. I don’t know how to do it. I wish she’d just find out, and throw me out. Or go over the side herself, get herself a toyboy.’