Death Watch (The Bill Slider Novels)

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘How about that cup of tea? I think we could all do with one.’

  ‘He really was shocked, then?’ Atherton asked.

  ‘It was two cups before he could go on. There was certainly strong emotion at work there.’

  ‘Which could be explained by a number of things. So then he told you about the last days of Pompeii, did he?’

  ‘They were all one big, happy family, it seems – one for all and all for one—’

  ‘Twice over, since there were eight of ’em.’

  ‘Within the group, of course, there were minor alliances. Simpson and Sears were best buddies. Richard Neal’s closest friend was Gilbert Forrester.’

  ‘Forrester? He wasn’t on our list.’

  ‘I’m coming to it. Neal apparently practically lived in Forrester’s house, and he, Forrester and Mrs Forrester were inseparables. Went out together, went on holiday together, everything. Neal wasn’t married then, of course, and already had a reputation for chasing women, but Forrester didn’t seem to have any fears about it.’

  ‘Was Simpson suggesting—?’

  ‘No, rather the opposite. He seemed to think it was a miracle Neal wasn’t; but he was quite young at the time, and probably not very interested in the doings of his elders. Anyway, to the story: about a month before the Shaftesbury Avenue station closed down, Red Watch was called out to a fire. It was a Saturday night, traffic was terrible, and by the time they got there, the fire had taken a good hold. It was one of those flats in Ridgemount Gardens, you know?’

  ‘Near the University?’

  ‘Yes. And apparently there was an old woman still inside. Neal and Forrester went in to get her out. Neal came out with the old girl over his shoulder, got her down safely, and then realised Forrester hadn’t followed him out. Before they could stop him, he went back in, although conditions had deteriorated by then. Sears followed him.’ Slider paused. ‘The trouble is that it’s double hearsay. Simpson wasn’t on duty that night – he was off sick – so he was telling me what Sears told him.’

  ‘And there’s now no-one to confirm or deny the story,’ Atherton observed. ‘Neat.’

  ‘It seems that part of the ceiling had come down, and Forrester had got tangled up in the electrical flex which had come down with it. Sears found Neal trying to release him, but the flex was round his neck and he was apparently already dead – accidental hanging. Then the rest of the ceiling came down, and the floor looked about to go too, and Sears dragged Neal out. That was when Neal got that burn on the back of his hand, by the way – the one that left the scar we identified him by.’

  Atherton nodded.

  ‘Anyway, it wasn’t until the fire was out that they managed to recover Forrester’s body. It was pretty charred, but the post mortem showed that he died by hanging, which vindicated Sears and Neal for saving themselves, and the inquest cleared them of any blame. All the same, Forrester’s death seemed to take the heart out of Red Watch. The station closed down soon afterwards, but Simpson says they probably would all have left the service if it hadn’t, or at least have transferred away from each other.’

  ‘Who blamed who, and for what?’

  ‘They all felt guilty, according to Simpson, for not realising sooner that Forrester hadn’t come out. Seconds can make all the difference in a situation like that. And they felt bad about not getting the body out before it got burnt.’

  ‘Group guilt?’

  ‘There was an unpleasant little incident to help them along – Mrs Forrester came round to the station a few days later. She made quite a scene, called them all murderers, accused them of negligence and I don’t know what – generally threw grand hysterics centre stage.’

  ‘Embarrassing.’

  ‘Exactly. So it isn’t too surprising that afterwards – after the station closed – they didn’t keep in touch with each other. In fact, only Sears continued as a full-time fireman. All the others left the service, so it was presumably a pretty traumatic experience.’

  ‘And we know that Neal didn’t talk about it at all, to anyone. Not even his wife. But who was Paul Godwin?’

  ‘He was transferred onto their watch for the last month, to replace Forrester. So he wasn’t really a part of it.’

  ‘And he hasn’t been murdered. Suggestive, isn’t it?’

  ‘Nor Simpson, who wasn’t on duty that night.’

  ‘So he says. It would bear checking, don’t you think?’

  Slider smiled. ‘You fancy him for the murderer?’

  ‘He’s the only survivor. Neal and Lister snuff it immediately after Lister tells Simpson his suspicions, and, presumably, tells him that he’s also warned Neal. You say he’s a big, strong man, with strong hands, and as an ex-fireman he’d be accustomed to handling bodies. Rigging up Webb as a hanging wouldn’t present him with any problems. He’s an electrician, with plenty of electrical flex on hand. He knows about fires, so he’d presumably have an idea of how much evidence would be concealed by the appropriate blaze. And you’ve only his word for it that he didn’t keep in touch with his former mates. As one of them, he’d be in an ideal position to do so, if he wanted to.’

  ‘Very nice. And what’s his motive?’

  Atherton shrugged. ‘We’ll think of something. I can’t do everything at once. Maybe Forrester’s death was really his fault, and he was getting rid of everyone who could point the finger at him.’

  ‘It looks as though Catriona Young was right, at any rate,’ Slider said thoughtfully. ‘Neal did have a great tragedy in his life.’

  ‘Has Simpson got an alibi?’ Atherton asked, pursuing his own line.

  ‘Not one we can check. He says he was at home, which is what you’d expect on a Sunday night, and his wife confirms—’

  ‘Which is what you’d expect of a loyal wife.’

  ‘There is another tempting suspect, of course,’ Slider said. ‘The hysterical wife. Mrs Forrester. A revenge killing.’

  ‘Of the whole watch?’

  ‘Why not? Group responsibility. Or blind grief. You didn’t mind it being the whole lot when it was Simpson, and that was without a motive at all.’

  ‘True. But listen,’ Atherton said, doing a right-about-face, ‘we don’t really know that the deaths were linked at all. Sixteen years is a long time, and apart from Webb, we can’t even be sure they were murdered. Sears mugged, Handsworth killed in a car crash, Hulfa OD’d, Neal just possibly accidental death while pursuing sexual gratification—’

  ‘Yes, I’d thought of that, too,’ said Slider. ‘And the simplest solution is often the right one.’

  ‘In that case, maybe Webb was murdered by a person or persons unknown, and Collins really did kill Neal after all.’

  ‘Oh thanks!’

  ‘But then the Webb and Neal cases do have similarities,’ Atherton went on perversely. ‘Maybe they were connected, and all the other deaths were just coincidence.’

  ‘Thanks again.’ Slider eyed him sidelong. ‘No offers on Catriona Young? The Boston Strangler? Edward VII?’

  Atherton looked dignified. ‘Give me time. I’ll get around to them.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Dear Dead Days of Long Ago

  MRS LISTER, DESPITE HER RECENT bereavement, was perfectly willing to talk. She was a strong woman in her sixties, whose thick-skinned, coarse-pored face had blurred into hermaphroditic ugliness, while her voice had deepened and hoarsened like a man’s, as if Nature had realised that in old age there was no more need for sexual differentiation.

  She welcomed Norma, disconcertingly, like an equal, dismissed the neighbour who was hovering about her, and put the kettle on. Norma had long since learned that tea was always on the go in the house of the dead.

  ‘That’s better,’ Mrs Lister said when they were alone together. They do treat you like a child, don’t they, when someone’s died? Fussing round, practically tying your shoelaces for you. Oh, Mavis means well, but I’m glad you came, dear, to give me an excuse to get rid of her. She’s been driving me
barmy all morning.’

  The tea was made, the tray was laid, the cigarettes were lit, and in the tiny parlour, with the heavy lorries thundering past through Dorking High Street only a few feet away beyond the window and the narrow pavement, the story unfolded.

  ‘Yes, Dad told me about his theory that everyone was being murdered. I just let him get on with it – silly old fool,’ she said, not without affection. ‘You know what men are like, dear. Once they retire, they feel left out of things. They need something to occupy them, make them feel important again. I told him there wasn’t a scrap of proof, but it didn’t make any difference. Milk and sugar, dear?’

  ‘Milk please, no sugar. Thanks. Do you think he really believed it, though?’

  ‘Well, now, funny you should ask that. Have a biscuit, love – help yourself. There’s Bourbons under the Rich Tea. Well, I’d have said no, because after all, if he believed it, he’d have been worried for his own skin, wouldn’t he? Which he wasn’t really. It was more like, well, a puzzle, sort of, like a crossword puzzle, something he was trying to work out. Until after he’d been to see Dick Neal, anyway. When he came back from London on Saturday evening, he was a bit funny.’

  ‘How d’you mean, funny?’

  ‘Quiet, thoughtful, you know. I thought he’d overdone it, and made himself tired. He had this heart condition, dear, and he wasn’t supposed to overdo. Of course, it may well’ve been that. But on the other hand, he might have got worried all of a sudden. Dick may have said something to him, I don’t know, to make him think.’

  ‘Did he tell you who he thought was the murderer?’

  ‘No. I don’t think he’d thought that far himself – unless Dick Neal gave him some ideas. That might be what made him so quiet the last few days.’

  ‘So when did he first get the idea there was something going on?’

  ‘It was after Ben died, Ben Hulfa. When he heard about that, he said to me, “Winnie,” he said, “there’s not many of us left off the old Red Watch. You’d almost think someone had it in for us.” And after that he started thinking about it, and putting two and two together and making ten. I got fed up with it in the end. I told him he shouldn’t dwell on that kind of thing – unhealthy, I called it – but I don’t think it stopped him.’ She sighed. ‘He just kept it to himself after that.’

  ‘And what suddenly made him decide to warn Mr Neal and Mr Simpson?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine, love. I don’t know. I don’t suppose he did, either. This last year, since he retired, he’s been getting very strange. I didn’t want him to give up his work, but he got the bee in his bonnet, and that was that. I said to him, I said, I know you’ve got a heart condition, but you can’t let it rule your life. What are you going to do with yourself, sitting about the house all day? Getting under my feet and driving me mad. I said better you go on doing a bit, part-time at least, just to give you an interest, keep you occupied. He was a builder and decorator, dear, and there’s always little odd jobs that people want doing. Begging for it, really, because there’s no trusting these fly-by-night firms. People want someone they can trust to do the job properly. But no. Dad wouldn’t have it. He said sixty-five was enough for any man, and that was that. There’s no shifting them once they’ve made their mind up. And then when Ben Hulfa died he started thinking about who was left, and, well, one thing led to another, and he came up with this silly idea. I reckon it’s that that killed him in the end.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, it was Thursday he heard Dick Neal was dead. He came back in and he said, “Dick Neal’s been murdered, Winnie,” just like that. So I said, what d’you mean, murdered? And he said Dick’d been killed in a hotel fire. “But I bet you anything it was murder,” he said. I told him not to be silly, and he never said anything more about it. The telly was on, you see, and I was watching. I thought he was, too, but when the adverts came on I said, “D’you want a cup of tea, Dad?” and he never answered. And I looked across at him, and he was dead.’

  Her eyes filled suddenly with tears. She picked up her cup and bent her head over it to hide them, and her lips trembled as she sipped. When she put the cup down, she was in control again, but there was a lost and lonely look about her.

  Here was the end of forty years of taking care of the silly old fool, Norma thought: the rough endearments, the shirts ironed and the cups of tea brought. The chair opposite was empty. Winnie would watch telly alone from now on.

  And the last word Barry John Lister ever spoke, it suddenly occurred to Norma, was murder. How very odd!

  ‘What did you mean when you said he came back in?’ she asked. ‘Came back in from where?’

  ‘From the kitchen, where the phone is. That’s how he knew Dick was dead.’

  ‘Oh, he had a phone call, did he? Do you know who it was from?’

  ‘Marsha. Marsha Forrester. That’s what he said when he came back. “That was Marsha,” he said. “Dick Neal’s been murdered,” he said.’

  ‘And who,’ Norma asked, ‘is Marsha Forrester?’

  Two cups of tea later, Norma had had the whole story of Gilbert Forrester’s death, plus sundry details of his home life, and his friendship with Richard Neal.

  ‘I always thought it was a bit queer, the way Dick hung around their house all the time,’ Mrs Lister told her. ‘To see the three of them together, well, you’d’ve had a hard job knowing who was married to who.’

  ‘Do you think Neal was having an affair with Mrs Forrester?’ Norma hazarded.

  Mrs Lister didn’t answer directly, but her lips pursed as though someone had pulled a drawstring round her mouth. ‘I never liked her. There was something hard about her. Well, to my mind a married woman had no business going out and doing a job anyway, leaving her husband to fend for himself, to say nothing of her daughter. Of course, with the shifts, he was home quite a lot looking after the kiddie himself, but that’s no excuse. There was always something mannish about that Marsha,’ she brooded. ‘The three of them were more like three men going out together. And the language! Well, I suppose any woman who’d do a man’s job would have to be unwomanly, wouldn’t she?’

  Norma passed this tactless question by. ‘What job did she do?’

  ‘She worked in a hospital — not a nurse, which wouldn’t have been so bad. She was a – I can’t think of the word. One of those people that cuts up dead bodies.’

  ‘A pathologist?’

  ‘That’s right. Makes me shudder to think of it. And her a qualified doctor! You’d think she’d want to do something better with her life. Not that she’d any business being a doctor in the first place, when she had a husband and child of her own. But there – people are all different, I suppose.’ And she looked sharply at Norma, to see if she disagreed. ‘Gil thought the sun shone out of her eyes, at all events. Are you married, dear?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m still hoping to meet Mr Right,’ Norma said unblushingly. ‘So had your husband kept in touch with Mrs Forrester since the station closed?’

  ‘Well, he was the union representative at the time of the accident, so of course he had to see that Marsha was all right. There was the death benefit from the widows and orphans fund, and the pension and everything. But I think he felt sorry for her anyway, so he kept a sort of eye on her for the first few months. He didn’t have all that much to do with her once he left the service – just a Christmas card every year, and a phone call now and then.’

  ‘Did he keep in touch with any of the others?’

  ‘No, not that I knew of. I dare say Marsha might have told him the news now and then when he phoned, but you’d have to ask her that.’

  ‘Did you think it was strange that the men didn’t keep in touch with each other afterwards? I mean, they were a very tightly-knit unit, weren’t they?’

  ‘What, all one happy family, you mean? You don’t want to believe all you hear about that. You know what men are like when they get together. It was like that with the National Service – all boys tog
ether, horseplay and getting drunk every night and singing, but once they were demobbed, off they went to their homes and never gave each other a second thought.’

  ‘But it seems that Richard Neal didn’t even tell his wife he had ever been a fireman. He never spoke about it at all, to anyone. Don’t you think that was strange?’

  ‘He was strange,’ Mrs Lister said emphatically. ‘The way he ran after women, I think there was something wrong with him. It’s a pity you can’t have men like that doctored. He even made a pass at me once, you know, at the Christmas dance.’

  Now that is strange, Norma thought, but with a noble effort managed not to say it.

  Joanna phoned to say goodbye.

  ‘I wish you weren’t going,’ Slider said plaintively.

  ‘I wish you were coming with me,’ she returned.

  ‘Still, I expect you’ll have a lovely time,’ he said, trying to be gracious about it. ‘They’ll probably give you wonderful parties and receptions and things, and you won’t miss me at all.’

  ‘Stop fishing. Besides, you know receptions are always ghastly.’

  ‘I know you always say they are, but maybe German ones will be different.’

  ‘They won’t. They’re all the same: a glass of cheap white wine, and an hour being ballsachingly nice to the sponsors, which is awful, and their wives, which is worse.’

  ‘Why worse?’

  ‘Oh – I find it depressing that we’ve got to the last decade of the twentieth century and still define women according to the man they’re attached to. And worse still, that women allow it.’ She chuckled suddenly. ‘It reminds me – did I ever tell you about Gary Potts?’

  ‘That’s a made-up name if ever I heard one. Who’s Gary Potts?’