Shadow Play

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  She shrugged. ‘Only that people who are badly short of money can teeter on the edge of criminality. The house in Luxemburg Place is worth a good bit, but it’s mortgaged up to the hilt – a second mortgage was taken out to cover the increase in value just fourteen months ago. And even the boat’s got a loan against it, which means he couldn’t sell it if he wanted to. So big Chaz is up against it, financially. A good fat blackmail could look like a tempting prospect to a man with a grown-up son to put through finishing-school – and he does own the boat where the naughty film was taken.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. It is interesting,’ said Slider, thinking hard. ‘But we haven’t yet got any evidence of a connection between Holdsworth and Kimmelman. I suppose you’re suggesting Kimmelman was doing the blackmail on Holdsworth’s behalf?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ Emily said blandly.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ said Atherton. ‘But don’t forget, if Kimmelman was doing the deed for Holdsworth, Holdsworth would be unlikely to kill him. And it’s the killer we’re after. And that keeps bringing us back to Rathkeale, who’s the only one with a motive.’

  ‘But as far as we know, he didn’t know he’d been filmed, hasn’t accessed any big money, and has an alibi for the Sunday in question,’ Slider said with dissatisfaction.

  ‘On which note,’ Atherton said, ‘we’ll bid you adieu. Top nosh and hot jazz awaits.’

  ‘Want to come with?’ Emily asked, hitching herself off the desk.

  ‘Tempting,’ Slider said, ‘but I’ve got supper in the oven and a whole box of Mad Men I haven’t watched yet.’

  ‘Which means you’ll spend the evening going over the case,’ Atherton said. ‘But you can stare at your notes until your eyebrows hurt, without getting any further forward. Much better come out and refresh yourself.’

  ‘Joanna’s working,’ Slider said. ‘I’m babysitting. Thanks all the same.’

  ‘Well, if you change your mind, we’ll be at Ronnie’s. Bring George with you – it’ll do him good to start him early on the good stuff.’

  Atherton was right, of course, that not much of Mad Men got watched. Slider couldn’t follow it, anyway. There was always too much of a hiatus between his watchings, so he could never remember who anyone was. And Atherton was right that reading and re-reading his notes didn’t make any conclusions leap, salmon-like, up the falls of his consciousness. Joanna – or more likely Dad, since she’d had a double session, two-till-five and six-till-nine – had left him shepherd’s pie in the oven, and there were vegetables ready to cook, but he was too lazy, and just ate the pie on its own with a spoon out of the dish. He felt guilty about it afterwards, but knowing that he would had not been enough to make him do the thing properly, which of course was always the trouble with guilt – by its nature it operated ex post facto.

  Joanna got home at a quarter to ten, bubbling with her afternoon and evening. Session work was always fun because you got to play with the best, most professional – and often the most irreverent – musicians on the circuit. There was always a great atmosphere. But she took one look at her husband’s aspect, grey and brooding as a large heron on a cold lake, and sat down meekly with him to watch the ten o’clock news and then go to bed. Once in bed, the proximity of her warm and pliant body dragged him back from his thoughts, so the evening ended well for them both.

  In the morning, he had to face a meeting with Mr Porson, who was facing a meeting at Hammersmith and of the two was the more to be pitied.

  ‘Ten days now,’ he reminded Slider, ‘and you seem to be going nowhere. You ought to be seeing the light for the trees by now.’

  ‘We have pretty much eliminated Rathkeale from our enquiries,’ Slider said, as it was the part that had most exercised his boss.

  Porson was not deflected. ‘What do you mean, pretty much?’ He glared. ‘Either he is or he isn’t.’

  ‘I mean, we don’t think he could have been responsible for the murder. But I still feel there has to be a connection there, though I can’t put my finger on it yet.’

  ‘What can you put your finger on?’

  Slider stared away over Porson’s shoulder, working his jaw. It didn’t help. ‘I can’t say,’ he admitted at last. ‘There’s something going on, a link between Kimmelman’s blackmail activities and the bigger picture, but I can’t see it yet.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Slider,’ Porson exploded, though fairly mildly all things considered, ‘don’t tell me you’ve got a hunch! What am I supposed to tell ’em upstairs? We’ve got budget decisions coming up that’d set your hair on edge, more reorganisations in the pipeline, and you’ve got a hunch?’

  ‘I didn’t say that, sir,’ Slider objected mildly. ‘But you know how it is. All the information doesn’t come to light at the same time, but you know it’s there.’

  ‘I know how it is,’ Porson said. ‘The buggers who pay our wages don’t. You may have got Rathkeale out of it, but that just leaves us with Kimmelman, who’s nobody.’

  ‘Murder is always a priority,’ Slider reminded him, daringly.

  But Porson only muttered, ‘Tell your grandmother.’ He did a couple of brisk turns to settle his mind, and said, ‘All right, I’ll think of something to tell them. But if this does turn out to be nothing, Gawd help us all. You’ve got our entire Department on it, and everything else piling up behind like a blocked lav.’

  Graphic, Slider thought, as he went away.

  He met Nutty Nicholls, one of the relief sergeants, coming along the corridor. Nicholls, a handsome, polyphiloprogenitive Scot from the far north west, had an accent as soft as sea mist and eyes as blue as hyssop flower. He was a star of the Hammersmith police am-dram society, and much in demand when they did musicals as he not only had a fine tenor but could also sing in a true falsetto, and sopranos were scarce in the Met. When they’d done The Sound of Music, he’d played Maria. When he sang ‘The Hills Are Alive’, there wasn’t a dry seat in the house.

  Slider paused in front of him. ‘You’ve lived round here a long time, Nutty. Ever heard of a place called Davy Lane?’

  He considered. ‘It rings a bell, but I can’t remember why.’

  ‘It’s not in the A to Z.’

  ‘Roads have their names changed sometimes. I tell you what, now: one of our volunteer ladies at the Dramatics is president of the local history society. Ada Forster is her name. She’s lived here all her life. Knows every inch. Would you like me to ask her to give you a ring?’

  ‘Thanks, Nutty. That’ll help.’

  ‘Well, I’ll just be doing that, then,’ he said, at his most lyrically Gaelic. He sounded like Duncan Macrae as Pipe Major Maclean in Tunes of Glory. ‘As a favour to you.’

  ‘Uh-oh,’ said Slider. ‘Favour?’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘What were you doing up here, anyway?’

  Nutty smiled caressingly. ‘Just selling the tickets for our next endeavour. An operetta based on the works of Beatrix Potter. A delight for the whole family. Some children from the Barbara Speake will be dancing in it, in animal costumes. And all for a good cause, Bill, as you know fine well.’

  Nutty was too good at this, Slider reflected. He seemed to bypass your mind and go straight to your inside top pocket. He’d bought two tickets before he knew what he was doing. Well, he could always make Dad and Lydia go. Although it could often be worth the pain, to see Nutty in a dress and bonnet.

  ‘So what part are you doing in it?’ he asked, as they were parting.

  Nicholls paused. ‘I shall be playing a certain Mrs Puddleduck.’

  ‘Jemima?’

  ‘No, I’m doing the voice as well,’ said Nutty.

  Slider couldn’t help feeling he’d been manoeuvred into that.

  But Nicholls was as good as his word, and only ten minutes later his phone rang, and a very fruity voice asked for Chief Inspector Slider.

  She introduced herself as Ada Forster.

  ‘Our most talented Mr Nicholls said that you’d be interested in learning something about Davy Lane. Is
now a good time?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Please go ahead. I couldn’t find Davy Lane on the A to Z.’

  ‘Ah, well, you wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘The name was changed in the nineteenth century, when the railways came. It’s called Coal Sidings Road now.’

  Enlightenment. ‘Oh, yes, I know where that is. Round the back of the station.’

  ‘Quite so. Not such a pretty name, is it? It’s no wonder the residents want to change it back.’

  Having placed Coal Sidings Road in his mental geography, he was trying for some context. He didn’t think he’d ever been down it, but had he heard anything about it? Had there been trouble there, or a recent case, or an historic murder?

  While he was thinking, she had taken the pause as an invitation to continue. ‘The road didn’t exist at all until the 1780s,’ she explained. ‘At that time, Shepherd’s Bush was little more than a village, though it was on an old droving route. But London was expanding, and there were new houses springing up as far west as Kensington and Notting Hill. So a speculative builder called Horace Davy decided to buy a piece of land at the edge of the village and put up some houses.’

  ‘Hence the name,’ Slider said intelligently.

  ‘Just so. It was called variously Davy’s Lane and Davy Lane on old maps. But an apostrophe “s” often gets lost, and by the 1820s it was always written as Davy Lane. He built ten rather handsome terraced houses, five on either side, of three storeys plus semi-basement. Meant for the aspirant middle classes. That is to say, people with two or three servants, who did not keep their own carriage but hired one when required. Prosperous people, but not upper class.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘It must have been rather a pleasant lane, just off the Green. The Green was already there, of course, and regarded as a valuable local resource, making Shepherd’s Bush an attractive place to live.’

  ‘And then the railways came?’

  ‘Indeed. In the mid-nineteenth century. It was a brutal time, architecturally. The whole of the east side of the road was demolished for sidings and railway sheds. By then, of course, Shepherd’s Bush had changed, expanded, and the aspirant middle classes had moved elsewhere. The road began to be referred to as Coal Sidings Road, and when the Local Government Act of 1899 put such things into the control of the borough, the name was changed permanently.’

  ‘What a shame,’ he said politely.

  ‘I believe it has become rather rundown now,’ Mrs Forster went on. ‘There was a move to change the name back to Davy Lane – oh – about ten years ago, if I remember, but nothing came of it.’

  ‘“Davy Lane Hopes Crushed”,’ Slider murmured.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Nothing – just something I heard recently. Well, thank you very much for your help, Mrs Forster.’

  ‘Not at all. Our little society, Friends of Hammersmith Local History, has produced a series of pamphlets, rather attractive and informative if I may say so. I could send you a copy of the one on Shepherd’s Bush.’

  ‘That’s very kind. Thank you. I’m sorry, I must go – my other phone’s ringing.’

  He actually didn’t have another phone, but Gascoyne was standing enquiringly in his doorway making the telephone gesture with his little finger and thumb. And it got him away from someone with more detail than he needed at the moment.

  ‘I’ve got one on hold for you, sir,’ Gascoyne said as he put the phone down. ‘I’ll switch it through.’

  Wednesday was steak and kidney pie in the canteen, one of the few things they did well. They did a proper pie, not just meat with a circle of industrial heat-expanded puff pastry laid on top of it at the point of serving. It came with mashed potatoes, carrots and cabbage. ‘I give you extra steakankidney, love,’ said Marge, the canteen cook, with a motherly look, as she handed over his plate, her thumb planted firmly in the gravy. He found an empty table and ingested slowly, letting his mind float. Things sometimes joined up if you didn’t strain after them. The glorious juices had soaked into the underside of the shortcrust pastry lid, so it was crisp on one side and decadent on the other. Davy Lane till the railways came … Leo the Lion, King of King Street … Jacket’s Yard and the Anna Rosita … Jemima Puddleduck …

  He jerked back from the brink of sleep. That was the trouble with eating when you were hungry, your blood all decamped to your stomach on detached duty. He had the feeling he’d been on the brink of a breakthrough, but it was probably just the beginning of a dream. He finished up and headed back to the office where he wouldn’t be left alone for long enough to fall asleep.

  Penny Duckham rang him shortly after his return. ‘I know where Davy Lane is now,’ she began triumphantly.

  ‘So do I,’ Slider said. ‘I had a chat with a local historian this morning.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, disappointed. Then, hopeful that he might have got it wrong, ‘It’s Coal Sidings Road, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘So you know all about it?’

  ‘Only up to the mid-nineteenth century. It’s the last few weeks or months I want to know about.’

  She cheered up. ‘Oh, right! Well, in that case – I’ve got hold of the chair of the Davy Lane Residents Action Committee.’

  ‘Only one chair? The rest of them stand up at meetings, do they?’

  ‘Ha ha,’ she said sourly. ‘You know what I mean. Anyway, she knows all about what’s been going on. I’ve told her about you, and she said she’s happy to talk to you, and either she’ll come in, or you can go and see her, whichever you like. She said she’d meet you at Coal Sidings Road if you prefer. I’ve got her mobile number – you got a pencil?’

  He wrote it down, thinking that perhaps he would go and meet her, for the chance of seeing the road. He was interested in architecture, and there weren’t many eighteenth-century terraces left in Shepherd’s Bush. Also there weren’t many roads on the patch that he hadn’t walked down at least once, and this was one of them.

  ‘So – what’s this got to do with the murder?’ Penny asked in a hungry voice.

  ‘I don’t know. Probably nothing. But if Kimmelman went to a meeting about it, maybe this committee will know something about him, and give us a lead.’

  ‘Gosh, that’s tenuous,’ she said.

  ‘Welcome to my world,’ said Slider.

  TWELVE

  Winsome, Lose Some

  Slider must have driven past the end of Coal Sidings Road hundreds of times, but had never noticed it one way or the other. Approaching on foot, he saw why. It was a narrow road, and on its right side, the eastern side, was defined by the long blank wall of the rebuilt and enlarged underground station. On the left, western side, the corner plot was occupied by the Victorian building which was the end of the terrace fronting the Green: red brick with white copings, and a sort of decorative turret on the upper floor where the building went round the corner. There had been a shop on the ground floor, but it was boarded up – the whole ground floor was boarded up – and the upper floors appeared to be empty, another reason one wouldn’t notice it in passing. It gave the place a forlorn look, as unused buildings always do.

  He turned into the street, and saw that it ended in the blank grey wall of the vast shopping centre that reared a hundred feet up into the sky, dwarfing everything around it and blighting the view. He thought, as he always did when contemplating the massive retail footage of the Westfield centre, Who could need that many more shops? The whole of the centre of Shepherd’s Bush, all round the Green, was lined with shops, they extended seamlessly for miles all down Uxbridge Road and Goldhawk Road out to Acton and Ealing, and all the way down Shepherd’s Bush Road to Hammersmith Broadway and thence on to Fulham, Chiswick and into central London … You could walk non-stop from shop to shop without a break, except to cross a side street, for years and not come to the end of them. But apparently no one’s life had been complete without the 1.6 million square feet of new retail opportunities – the size, he thought he had read somewhe
re, of thirty football pitches. No wonder there were boarded-up shops out here in the real world, where you could get rained on, and you couldn’t park.

  And now, beyond the dead shop, he could see the remains of the original terrace. Five houses either side, Mrs Forster had said. The eastern side had been sacrificed for the railway, and of the western side, there were four viable houses left – the fifth, furthest down the road, had boarded-up windows and high hoardings all the way round at street level to keep vandals out. In between, bracketed by the desolation, the flat greyish-yellow brick Georgian façade with the handsome tall windows stared patiently at eternity. Two storeys, plus attic, plus semi-basement, steps going up to the front door. They were occupied, as was evident from the curtains in windows and the cars along the kerb in residents’ parking bays, but they looked neglected and shabby, with peeling paint and chipped steps and slipped slates on the roof. It was a tragedy, he thought, to let something so venerable and fine deteriorate like this.

  ‘Sad, isn’t it?’ said a voice behind him.

  He turned. ‘I was just thinking that,’ he said. It was a small elderly woman in an expensive grey coat, red muffler around her throat, leather gloves, polished court shoes. Her silver hair was drawn straight back to a bun at the nape of the neck like a ballet dancer’s, a style only those with ‘good bones’ could carry off. Her face was sculpted and elegant, with dark eyes. She must have been beautiful when she was young, he thought. ‘Mrs Fontaine?’

  ‘Isobel Fontaine,’ she said, offering her hand. ‘Like the ballerina, but with an a-i-n-e. How did you guess?’

  ‘I was expecting to meet you here. Chief Inspector Slider.’ They turned together to look up at the terrace again. ‘1780s. George III,’ he said.

  ‘You know?’

  ‘Architecture is a hobby of mine.’

  She smiled. It was a lovely smile. ‘I didn’t think policemen nowadays had time for hobbies. It would have been better for it if it had been some other period,’ she went on. ‘Late Georgian is too austere for most people’s taste. Too unornamented.’