Shadow Play

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Just the same. You know Dad.’

  ‘And your mum? Gor, she was a smasher when she was young! Gold hair and blue eyes and a smile that made your knees go wobbly. You look just like her, some lights. Old Bob was a lucky bloke, I always said. She all right?’

  ‘She’s fine. Still beautiful – we all think.’

  ‘Well, give her my best.’

  Atherton went up to the canteen for a quick lunch, grabbed a salad, looked around for somewhere to sit, and saw Hart on her own in a corner. She looked up as he approached and waved him to the seat opposite.

  ‘You don’t mind?’ he said, sliding his plate and bottle of water off the tray.

  ‘Solidarity,’ she said. ‘All sergeants togevver.’

  ‘I see you’ve picked the salad, too,’ he said, just to make conversation.

  ‘Yeah, they was all out of ackee an’ saltfish,’ she said imperturbably, spearing a mini tomato and popping it in her mouth. ‘I hate these buggers,’ she remarked. ‘Bite too soon an’ they burst all down your front. So what’s on your mind?’

  ‘Why should there be anything on my mind?’

  ‘It’s not rocket science, is it? Pardon my pun. You didn’t single me out to discuss my dietary choices. What’s up?’

  Atherton hesitated. ‘Well – you’re a woman,’ he began.

  ‘Thanks for noticing.’ She grinned. ‘It’s going to be one of those conversations, is it?’

  ‘I just wanted some advice,’ he said huffily, ‘but if it’s a problem …’

  ‘Oh, get over yourself!’ she said with rough affection. ‘Spit it out – I gotta go make some calls.’

  He eyed her expression, but it didn’t seem more than usually derisive. ‘I just wondered,’ he said cautiously, ‘what it means when you catch a woman looking at the Mothercare website. Whether it’s an ominous thing.’

  ‘Nah. My mum does it all the time,’ Hart said cheerfully. ‘Mind you, she has got eight grandkids.’

  ‘You’re obviously not going to take this seriously,’ he said.

  ‘Women like looking at baby things,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Me? Nah. I hate that stuff. Bleedin’ goldfish mobiles and little romper suits. When I have a kid, I’m puttin’ it in a sack in a drawer till it can dress itself an’ hold a rational conversation.’

  Atherton felt his way through this. ‘But you do want to have kids?’

  ‘Some time. Maybe. Probably. If I find the right bloke. What about you?’

  ‘Me?’ he said, alarmed.

  Another eye roll. ‘Not to father my children, dorkus. I ain’t that keen on sergeants. I mean, d’you want kids?’

  He thought a moment – sign, Hart thought, that it was a serious problem. ‘I like the idea of, say, having a son, if he was about eight or nine, and I could take him to cricket matches and watch rugby with him and so on. It’s the bits before that that worry me. And the bits after. If you could keep them between, say, eight and thirteen …’

  ‘Yeah, but it don’t work that way. I reckon you’ve got a problem, Jim. Who’s freakin’ you out? You got a girl up the duff?’

  ‘No, but – I’m afraid that, if it’s serious, I may get an ultimatum.’

  ‘What, water my garden or piss off?’ She nodded sympathetically. ‘It could happen. And which way would you jump?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, staring at his plate.

  She watched him for a moment, then got up, loading her empties onto her tray. She came round the table, and paused beside him. ‘Comes a time,’ she said, not unkindly, ‘when pure bonking loses its charm, and you start to wonder if that’s all there is to life. Females tend to get there first.’ She patted his shoulder. ‘Comes a time when you can’t attract the females any more with nothing but your manly bod. Think about that.’

  ‘I’m not there yet,’ he said firmly.

  ‘Course you’re not.’ She took a step past him, then paused and said, ‘Here, you’re startin’ to go a bit thin on top, ain’t you? Little bald spot startin’ up here.’

  ‘What! Where?’ His hand flew up to his head, his startled face tilted up to her. ‘God, I can’t be! I’m not, am I?’

  She grinned. ‘Nah. I’m just messin’ wiv your head.’

  ‘You!’

  ‘Made you think, though, didn’t I?’ she concluded, and went off, whistling.

  LaSalle was pleased that his hunch about Kimmelman being in the army had turned out right.

  ‘And he was trained in electronics,’ Swilley said, ‘so that explains him knowing how to set up the camera and stuff on the boat.’

  ‘And seeing the house Rathkeale lives in,’ Hart added, ‘it looks as if he might have enough money to make him worth blackmailing.’

  ‘But it doesn’t get us any closer to who killed him,’ Slider said.

  ‘What about going through the pro boxing association – what’s that called? Seeing if he’s in their records?’ Loessop said.

  ‘British Boxing Board of Control,’ Gascoyne supplied. ‘But I don’t suppose they go back that far.’

  ‘Or the army,’ said LaSalle.

  ‘What could they tell you?’ Swilley said impatiently. ‘His address thirty-plus years ago? It’s last week we want to know about.’

  ‘Might get a next of kin out of it,’ LaSalle said, a little sulkily.

  ‘It might come to that,’ Slider intervened, ‘but I don’t think we’re that desperate yet. How are our other lines coming along?’

  ‘I’m still going through the camera tapes, Hammersmith Road,’ McLaren said. ‘It’s a slow business.’

  ‘I’m still waiting for the bank records. I’ll goose them up,’ said Swilley.

  ‘I’ve got Rathkeale’s phone log, I’m going through it,’ said Hart.

  Fathom had been out to the Cheyne Walk moorings. ‘There’s not a security camera there, guv,’ he said. ‘I talked to the girl in the office and she said the gates are always locked, and anything else is up to the owners, security-wise. But she did say there’s no way the key to the Rosita could have been stolen from the office. She says they’re kept in the back room, not on display, and the office is never left alone. I said,’ he looked slightly red, ‘what about when she went to the bog, and she said she’d lock the outside door, because they’ve got a cash box in there as well.’

  ‘Doesn’t prove she’d necessarily remember to do it every time,’ McLaren objected. ‘Women are always going off to the lav, every five minutes. Don’t tell me she never forgets, or doesn’t bother.’

  ‘Honestly, Maurice! Who ties your shoelaces for you?’ Swilley said impatiently. ‘How would Kimmelman know which occasion she didn’t lock the door, so as to be on hand just at that one moment?’

  ‘He could be hanging around watching,’ McLaren defended himself. ‘He’s only got to be in there long enough to take an impression. Slip in and out in seconds. And I bet it wasn’t one moment. I bet she left it open lots of time.’

  ‘We’re not here to bet,’ Slider said. ‘Evidence is what we want.’

  ‘Guv, there is a traffic camera on the corner of Blantyre Street that might cover it,’ Fathom went on. ‘Trouble is, there’s a lot of trees along there, and with the leaves still on, they may get in the way.’

  ‘Worth having a look, anyway,’ Slider said. ‘We’ve precious little else.’

  ‘What about this Davy Lane thing?’ Atherton asked. ‘It seems to have been a couple of years ago, but that’s better than thirty. May be able to find some contacts of his through that.’

  ‘Where is Davy Lane, anyway?’ Gascoyne asked. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘Must be local, if it’s in the Telegraph,’ Atherton said.

  ‘LaSalle, you’re the local boy,’ Slider prompted.

  ‘I don’t know any Davy Lane,’ LaSalle admitted. ‘I could ask my mum.’

  ‘You do that,’ Slider said. ‘And I’ll ask Penny Duckham to drag out anything she’s go
t on it. There must be a history: if it was “Davy Lane Hopes Crushed”, they must have been rising at some point.’

  ‘You could ask Jack Silverman,’ Atherton pointed out. ‘If he was at the meeting, he must know.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Slider neutrally. ‘But I think I’ll try Penny first. Jack Silverman made it clear he was a very busy man. And I’d like to encourage her. She could be useful to us one day.’

  ELEVEN

  The Name of the Roads

  LaSalle was back, just before home time. ‘My mum’s never heard of Davy Lane, either. And it’s not in the A to Z. Maybe it’s not local after all.’

  Swilley followed him in closely. ‘Boss, I think you’ll want to see this.’

  And Fathom nudged her out of the way. ‘Guv, I’ve had an idea.’

  Swilley looked at him without affection. ‘Careful, Jezza. You know they give you headaches.’

  Slider sorted it out. ‘All right, LaSalle. Penny Duckham’s looking into it for me. Yes, Fathom?’

  Fathom gave Swilley a look of triumph, not appreciating that Slider had judged her offering as worthy of the most attention. ‘Well, guv, that Blantyre Street camera, you can’t see the actual boats through the trees. You can see cars coming along, but not which ones stop. So I thought, we know Kimmelman had a car outside Ivanka’s to pick up the jolly-boys, and we know about what time, and there’s a shit-load of cameras all over Soho. So what if I—?’

  ‘Absolutely. Good thought,’ said Slider. ‘Go to it.’

  ‘Tonight, guv? Overtime?’ Fathom wheedled. ‘There’s never anybody there during the day.’

  ‘All right, but don’t push your luck. Now we’ve more or less cleared Rathkeale, Kimmelman’s gone back to being a nobody, so we can’t splash out on the budget.’ Fathom went away, and Slider said, ‘Now, Norma?’

  She came round his desk to lay some sheets before him, giving him a whiff of her perfume – light and floral. Better than Fathom’s mule-kick aftershave. ‘Kimmelman’s bank statements,’ she said. ‘The last twelve months.’

  ‘That was quick. Your goosing obviously worked.’

  ‘I know someone,’ she said modestly. ‘They ran it off for me. Anyway, look here – regular payment in, looks like salary from the amount. I’d have to go back further to be absolutely sure, and to see how long it’s been going on. But you see who the payment is from?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Slider. ‘Target. That is interesting.’

  ‘And Target owned Jacket’s Yard, so there’s a connection there.’

  ‘I wonder what they paid him for. You’re going to have to have a look at them.’

  ‘Yes, boss. There’s nothing much else here to get hold of. The ground rent to Wiley’s, and a regular sum into a savings account – he really was saving up for something, maybe his retirement – and a large withdrawal of cash every week. I suppose he paid cash for most things. Old habits die hard – some people just don’t like credit cards. There is a direct debit payment to a NatWest credit card, but it’s not very large. I can try and get hold of the statement and see what he spent on.’

  ‘Yes, all right, do that,’ Slider said, in a dissatisfied tone. ‘May not help much. It would be better to have his phone and email records.’

  He was just finishing up a couple of reports when his doorway darkened again, and Atherton’s voice said, ‘We have a visitor.’

  ‘We?’ he queried, looked up and saw Emily standing beside Atherton.

  ‘I’ve got to go off to Paris tomorrow to cover the run-up to the French primaries,’ she said, ‘so I thought I’d better report to you before I go about what I’ve been doing.’

  ‘As far as I’m aware you haven’t been doing anything,’ Slider said sternly, ‘and “report” suggests some kind of formal arrangement, which there is not one of.’

  Atherton grinned. ‘Relax. Everyone’s gone except for McLaren, and he’s eating cheese and onion crisps. You can’t earwig and crunch at the same time.’

  ‘I’m establishing a principle,’ Slider said with dignity. ‘So, you’ve dropped in to see Atherton, have you?’ he addressed Emily. ‘How nice.’

  ‘To pick him up. We’re going out to eat, and then some late jazz,’ she said. ‘And you’ll never guess what I’ve been doing, completely off my own bat and purely for my own interest. I’ve been looking into the background of a couple of chaps who, it turns out quite by chance, you might be interested in.’

  ‘I can’t guess who. Please go on,’ Slider said politely.

  She perched on the edge of his desk. She had gussied up her usual pleated cargo pants with a moss-green silk blouse and a chunky green necklace, and had her coarse black hair piled up messily on top of her head with combs, which softened the firm and characterful elements of her face, and allowed her warm brown eyes and sensationally sensual mouth to take the attention. You wouldn’t call her pretty, and she probably wouldn’t have wanted you to, but you could see why Atherton had fallen instantly in love with her and, being Atherton, had been fighting it ever since. Slider was married to a woman of purpose and character himself and was perfectly content with the situation, but Atherton seemed to think falling in love was the same as sinking into quicksand and had to be resisted de tout coeur. He had also been a bachelor for a long time and had got used to shooting from the hip, so to speak, when confronted with any sexually available woman, which a partner of purpose and character could not be happy with. But they seemed for the moment to have reached an accommodation – how long it would last, Slider couldn’t guess.

  ‘Leon or Leo Kimmelman or King I couldn’t get anywhere on,’ she confessed. ‘There are plenty of people who fly under the radar despite the computer age, and he seems to be one of them. Sorry about that.’

  ‘Don’t apologise to me,’ Slider said.

  ‘Of course not. So I had a look at Rathkeale. You probably know most of it – his career and various brushes with controversy are well documented. I’ve compiled a digest, in case it’s of interest to you.’ She handed over a slim manila file. ‘One thing you may like to know is that he’s not in any financial bother, as far as one can tell. Apart from his salary from the GLA, he does speaking engagements – not in the Tony Blair league, but adequately lucrative – and he owns two properties in Leeds which he rents out, as well as a pretty spiffy house in Regent’s Park. Despite living in Regent’s Park, he bought a house in Hackney when he was an MP, got it done up on Parliamentary expenses, and then “flipped” so as to sell it tax free – this is one canny operator. Before he got elected to the Assembly he had a couple of directorships, which he had to stand down from as a requirement of the job, but they’d have brought him in money. He has an ex-wife and two children on partial support, but his current wife is a well-paid solicitor and they have no children to drain the purse. On the negative side, you now know he has a drug and rent-boys habit which must cost him, but he seems to have kept that quiet so far – I couldn’t find any references to it in the media. I did manage to get hold of his agent, who happens to be someone who owes me a favour, and he put me on to a financial advisor who knows where Rathkeale’s money is invested. He wouldn’t tell me the details, but he reckons he’s got non-real-estate assets in the million to million and a half region, and that there have been no recent, sudden, unexpected draws on them.’

  ‘Which means,’ Atherton put in, ‘that he’s just about worth blackmailing, but hasn’t been yet.’

  Emily said, ‘A million surely isn’t worth murdering for?’

  And Slider said, ‘Depends on your point of view. People commit murders for the most deeply inadequate reasons. My first case was the murder of an old man by his neighbour for his Post Office Savings account, which contained seven pounds fifty-three. It was worth it to her. She called the police herself, claiming she’d found him dead, but the bloody poker was lying on her kitchen table for all to see, and she had the savings book in her pocket.’

  ‘Ah, life!’ said Atherton. ‘Hate it or ignore it, you can’t love i
t. Well …’ He straightened and stretched, preparatory to leaving.

  ‘I haven’t finished yet,’ Emily stopped him. ‘I got frustrated with not finding out anything interesting, so I had a go at your sinister boat owner, Charles Holdsworth.’

  ‘In what way sinister?’ Slider asked. ‘As far as we know, he’s got nothing to do with it. It’s not a crime to own a houseboat.’

  ‘It ought to be,’ Emily said firmly, ‘when you don’t live in it, and it sits empty in a city with an intractable housing shortage.’

  ‘Ah, there speaks my social conscience!’ Atherton said, patting her.

  ‘Remove that hand, or lose it,’ she said. ‘As I was saying, I was frustrated, and happened to remember the name from what Jim was wittering on about—’

  ‘I never witter!’

  ‘So I stuck him in. And that was quite interesting. Not that your Charles Holdsworth seems to be a criminal character, but there were a lot of references to a Charles Edward Holdsworth, who turns out to be his son, and he’s a bit of a live wire. Drugs – possession mostly, but with the change in the law a couple of dealing charges as well. Shoplifting. Breaking and entering. Breaking bail – that must have cost dad a bit, because he’d stood bail for him. His last drugs bust they changed tactics and spared him gaol if he went into rehab, and the court records show he was registered at the Bishop’s Palace centre in Hertfordshire, one of the most expensive and exclusive clinics there is. A lot of stars go there. I’m guessing C.E. Holdsworth didn’t pay for that himself. And in between the official legal tangles, who knows what private money had to be dished out to support the lad and get him out of trouble. Well,’ she stopped herself, ‘I say “lad”, but he’s well in his thirties. A hopeless case, one would guess.’

  ‘Hmm. Interesting,’ Slider said, ‘but I’m not sure how it affects our case.’