She squeezed his arm and smiled at him in a way that in any other woman he would have thought was meant to be seductive.
‘If you’ve got your car, we don’t need to wait for Marilyn and David. We can go home when we like.’
‘I thought there was supposed to be a meal afterwards, a restaurant or something?’
‘We don’t have to go to that. There are other people going now, they won’t miss us. I can tell Marilyn you’re tired, and we can go straight home.’
She was being seductive. Slider shuddered, and she squeezed him again in response. ‘As soon as I can catch her attention,’ she murmured encouragingly, ‘I’ll make our excuses.’
Atherton lounged against the window, beyond which the day was white and blank, sunless and windless, neither hot nor cold, as though all weather had been cancelled out of respect for some national catastrophe. Slider felt that ozony sensation of internal hollowness which comes in the aftermath of a great shock, the sense that various functioning bits were missing and that his head had somehow come adrift from his body. He also felt slightly sick, but that might have been because of the residual smell of paint.
At the end of the recital, Atherton made a soundless whistle. ‘Christ, what a mess,’ he said. His face was screwed up with sympathy. ‘I just don’t know what to say.’
Slider hadn’t even told him the last and maybe worst bit, about making love to Irene last night. Or having sex, whatever was the proper name for what he had done. When it came to it, he hadn’t known how to reject her advances, so unexpectedly confident were they, and his body had let him down by apparently not being able to discriminate between the proper object of desire and the lawful.
It was the first time he had done it with Irene since he met Joanna, and he felt terrible afterwards for a whole range of reasons, not least among them that Irene had been glowingly happy this morning: it was many years since the kitchen had been so smiled in before eleven a.m. And he had no idea whether she was still taking the Pill. He rather doubted it, given that they had not done it for so long, but she hadn’t suggested any precautions on his part, even supposing he could have obliged if she had. Supposing she fell pregnant? Now there was a man-sized worry to get his teeth into!
Even to Atherton, the closest thing he had to a friend, he couldn’t tell that bit.
‘I rang her as soon as I got out of the house this morning,’ he said instead, ‘but she wouldn’t talk to me.’
‘What, did she slam the phone down?’
‘She said she was sorry but it was all over between us, and that she didn’t want to see me again. She said if I couldn’t see how farcical the situation had become she was sorry for me.’
‘Ouch!’ said Atherton, wincing.
‘I tried to argue, but she said she didn’t want to talk to me any more, and put the phone down. When I rang again a bit later her machine was on. I think she must have gone to work by now.’
‘It sounds bad. What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never been in a situation like this before. Do you think she means it?’
Atherton looked at him, and shook his head. ‘How can I know that?’
‘You’ve known so many more women than I have,’ Slider said desperately. He’d take any reassurance just at the moment; any rag that would stop the bleeding. ‘What should I do? How can I explain to her?’
Atherton thought. ‘It’s hard to be persuasive on the telephone. You could write her a note, perhaps. Send it with some flowers.’
‘Flowers?’ Slider frowned. ‘That’s a bit naff, isn’t it?’
‘Women are naff,’ Atherton said. ‘When it comes to their emotions, they’re like children – they have no taste.’ Slider looked disbelieving, and Atherton shrugged. ‘Well, you asked me. I speak as I find, as the man with the geiger-counter on the beach said.’
‘Should I go round there, perhaps?’ Slider mused. ‘Is that what she’d expect? Or does she really want me to stay away?’
Atherton came to his feet. ‘Don’t you think it would be an idea to sort things out with Irene first?’
Slider looked startled. ‘What – before I know how things stand with Joanna?’
‘If you really mean to leave home and move in with her—’
‘But then supposing I did that and Joanna didn’t want me?’
Atherton did not reply, only shrugged again – a gesture which said a great many things Slider didn’t want to hear.
‘I’ll ring again this afternoon,’ he said at last. ‘And if I don’t get her, I’ll try going round there this evening.’
It was a long time to wait to hear his fate. ‘What you need now,’ Atherton said, kindly, on his way out, ‘is something to occupy your mind.’
It came soon enough, in a telephone call from Tufty.
‘Bill!’ he boomed. ‘I’ve got the report on the material from that handkerchief you sent in! The genetic lab boys really pulled their fingers out on this one. It was semen, as I think you know. Unfortunately—’
‘Oh no. Don’t say it!’
‘I’m afraid the sample wasn’t terribly good,’ Tufty bellowed sadly, ‘but they managed to get a partial profile. The thing is, it doesn’t match up with the victim.’
‘You mean they couldn’t get a good enough match to swear to identity?’
‘No, no, quite the reverse! Well, to be fair, almost the reverse. What they’ve got is nothing like the profile of the chip shop body. The sample wasn’t good enough for them to be able to swear an identity with anybody, but they can tell you quite categorically that the material in the handkerchief didn’t come from the victim.’
‘Damn! Slider said in frustration. ‘What was Leman doing with a handkerchief full of someone else’s semen in his bed?’
‘I hate to think,’ Tufty shouted cheerfully. ‘Never been that way inclined myself.’
‘And I thought all our troubles would be over when we got that result,’ Slider said. ‘Oh well, back to the drawing board, I suppose.’
Every clue seemed to run away into the sand. Now it was going to have to be the dental report, and a long wait while it circulated the thousands of dentists in Hong Kong; and he was so disillusioned by now, he wasn’t even sure that would produce a result. The presence in Leman’s flat of another man did add weight to the theory that he was bisexual, but it introduced an unwelcome extra element of doubt: an unknown lover who might have had cause for jealousy, reason to commit murder. The defence – if this colander of a case ever came to court – were going to love that.
He took out a copy of Slaughter’s statement and read it again, though he knew it almost by heart now, hoping it might yield some new idea to him. But there was so little material there. Slaughter had a simple story, and weak though it was, he stuck to it manfully. Leman had come to the shop, suggested going for a drink with him, went home with him. They danced and flirted. They quarrelled. They made it up. He walked Leman to his car, walked around the streets for a while and then went home. He had never seen Leman outside of the shop before. He did not kill him. He had no idea how the body came to be in the black sacks. No-one else had access to the shop.
As a defence, it had the strength of lunacy. As for the case against Slaughter, he had motive, means, opportunity, and no alibi, and he himself swore no-one else could have done it. All Slider didn’t have was a confession, or any solid proof. It was all theory – and there was so much he didn’t know about the victim, too. Peter Leman had been up to something, that was for sure – probably smuggling, and even more probably drug-smuggling. Of course, that didn’t make any difference now he was dead, but Slider wished he knew all the same. Not knowing maddened him.
He was still staring at the wall deep in thought when the phone rang again.
‘Mr Slider?’ It was Suzanne Edrich, in a state of considerable excitement. ‘Mr Slider, I’ve just had a phone call from Peter!’
‘Peter?’
‘My Peter! Peter Leman! He isn’t dead after
all!’ She made a sound between a laugh and a sob. ‘Isn’t it wonderful? I can’t believe I really thought it was him who was murdered! I should have known he was still alive. I’m sure I did really, deep down. Oh, I’m so happy!’
Her voice clotted and she sobbed again into the receiver.
‘Where are you?’ Slider asked.
‘I’m at work,’ she managed to say through the strange noises she was making into the receiver. ‘He phoned me here. He wouldn’t ring me at home, because of my parents.’
‘Do you know where he is?’
‘He wouldn’t say. It has to be a secret, he says. Oh, but he’s alive, that’s all that matters!’
Not by a long chalk, Slider corrected inwardly. ‘All right, Miss Edrich, I’m going to come and see you right away. Stay where you are, don’t talk to anyone else, and if Peter rings you again, try to find out where he is, or get his number – or failing that, try to keep him talking until I come. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ she said, and added some more incoherent phrases of joy before ringing off. Slider slammed the phone down and was on his feet yelling for Atherton before it had stopped jangling. In the best detective stories, he remembered saying to Tufty, the suspect is never the suspect and the corpse is never the corpse. The thing was coming to pieces in his hands. If Peter Leman was alive, what price their case now?
Suzanne Edrich had let go and had a jolly good cry, and had enjoyed it so much that she threatened at any moment to spill over again. Slider had to question her very carefully to keep her juices confined, or they’d have got nothing out of her but salt water.
‘Are you sure it was him? Are you absolutely positive?’
‘Yes, of course. I couldn’t possibly mistake his voice. It was Peter all right,’ she said radiantly. ‘He said “Hullo, Suze,” – he always calls me Suze. And I said, “Oh God, Peter, I thought you were dead!” But I feel now that I didn’t, not really, not deep down,’ she said gravely. She was working up for a full-blown attack of mysticism, Slider could see. Her previous affection for Peter Leman had been given a tremendous boost by her brief and dramatic experience of widowhood, and now he was back from the dead he had been promoted to the One Great Love of her Life.
‘Was he surprised when you told him that you thought he was dead?’
‘Well, he must have been, mustn’t he? I told him all about it, anyway – about the body and that fish-shop man and your questions and everything.’
‘What did he say about himself? Did he tell you where he’s been?’
‘No, he only said that he was in hiding—’
‘In hiding?’ Slider said explosively. This was beginning to sound like a practical joke.
She looked a little surprised. ‘Yes. He’s hiding up. He says he’s doing a job for someone, and he has to keep out of the way for a while, and no-one must know where he is. But he said he had to call me because he didn’t want me to be worried,’ she said radiantly. ‘He really does care for me, you see.’
‘What sort of job is he doing? Do you mean something criminal?’
‘Of course not! Peter wouldn’t do anything like that,’ she said indignantly.
‘What else would necessitate his hiding up?’ Atherton interrupted in an appeal to logic.
‘Well I don’t know!’ she said rather crossly. ‘I told you, he said it was secret. It wouldn’t be secret if he could tell me, would it? And he said no-one must know I’m his girlfriend either. But I thought I’d better tell you he wasn’t dead so that you could call off your enquiries – only you must promise not to tell anyone else.’
‘Who are we not to tell? Who is he afraid of?’
‘He didn’t say. I keep telling you, he said it has to be a secret. But he promised to tell me everything when it’s all over.’
Slider and Atherton exchanged glances. This was straight out of the pages of a 1930s romance, and not a very well-written one at that.
‘Miss Edrich, just think about it logically. He must be involved with some sort of criminal activity. There isn’t anything else that would have to be kept secret, now is there?’
‘What about military secrets? Or the Secret Service? Or industrial secrets, for that matter?’ she said indignantly. ‘I think you’re horrible to jump to the conclusion that Peter’s a criminal – but I suppose that’s the way your minds work, if you’re policemen,’ she added with some contempt. ‘I wish I’d never told you, now. I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘Oh we are, of course we are,’ Atherton said hastily. ‘It’s wonderful, too, that he thought of phoning you first of all. He must really love you.’
She purred under the flattery like a tea-kettle. Slider could only watch in admiration. ‘Well, I think he does.’
‘And if he’s going to be in hiding for some time, he won’t be able to bear not to speak to you again, will he? I mean, how else will he be able to cope with being apart from you?’
‘Well, he did say he might call again,’ she admitted modestly.
‘And when he does, you know it’s terribly important that we should have a chance to speak to him. We don’t want to make any trouble for him, but there are one or two things we desperately need to know.’
She looked doubtful. ‘Well, I don’t know. I could ask him, but I don’t know if he’ll agree. I wouldn’t want to put him in danger.’
‘That’s the whole point,’ Atherton said. ‘He is in danger, and he needs our protection. But we can’t protect him if we don’t know where he is.’
‘Yes, that’s true,’ she said. A few minutes more of Atherton’s play-acting, and she was agreeing to any kind of telephone link they liked. It was a masterly performance.
‘Now all we’ve got to do is to convince Barrington the expense is necessary,’ Slider said as they drove back to the station.
‘How much of that load of cobblers do you believe?’ Atherton asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Slider said gloomily. ‘She’s so convinced she’s in a Humphrey Bogart movie, there’s no relying on anything she says.’
‘Except that Leman’s alive.’
‘Yes. That bit would have to be true.’
‘Slaughter always said he didn’t kill Leman.’
‘Yes. No wonder he stuck to his guns over that – he could tell the truth with perfect conviction. But then who did he kill? The corpse must be someone.’
‘Maybe he was a Chinaman after all? We know the victim had Asian blood. We just don’t know how much.’
‘But Leman’s got to be involved in it somehow. We’ve got to get hold of him.’ Slider sighed. ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do about Slaughter. We’ll have to drop the charge against him. The question is, do we make other charges in their place? We’re still left with the fact that the murder was done in the chip shop and that no-one but Slaughter had a key.’
‘Murder of a person unknown,’ Atherton said. ‘I’m glad I’m a lowly sergeant. I wouldn’t like to have to make difficult decisions all day long.’
‘Let him go,’ said Barrington decisively. ‘If the victim isn’t Leman, we’ve got nothing on him.’
‘Except physical evidence at the shop, sir,’ Slider said. ‘No sign of forcible entry. No-one else’s fingerprints.’
‘All the same, until we know who the victim is, we can’t connect him with Slaughter. And if we let him go, my guess is he’ll do something really silly and give himself away.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Barrington raised feral eyes to Slider’s face. ‘I’m very, very unhappy about this, Slider. You’ve wasted precious time following a false trail. Now we’ve got it all to do again. So get your finger out! I want no mistakes this time. I want to know who the victim is, and what Leman’s got to do with it. If he’s not the victim, maybe he’s the murderer. He could be in it with Slaughter, had you thought of that? Maybe Slaughter lent him the key, and now he’s shielding him. But first you’ve got to find him! Find Leman!’
Slider outlined his plans for putting a r
elay into Suzanne’s phone so that her calls could be monitored. Then as soon as Leman calls, we can put a trace on it.’
‘All right,’ Barrington said. ‘I’ll authorise it. And put somebody on to watch his flat. He might come back there.’
Slaughter took hold of the seat of the chair on which he was sitting with both hands, as if he thought they were going to pick him up bodily there and then and throw him out into the street. ‘I don’t want to go,’ he said. ‘I want to stay here.’
‘We’re releasing you, Ronnie,’ Atherton said patiently. ‘Don’t you understand? We’re dropping the charges against you. You’re a free man.’
Slaughter looked from Atherton to Nicholls with the eyes of a cornered rat. ‘Free?’ he said blankly.
‘That’s right. You’re free to go. You can go home.’
‘No!’ he said determinedly. ‘I’m not going.’
‘You can’t stay here, laddie,’ Nicholls said kindly. ‘We need your room.’
Opposition seemed to make Slaughter determined. ‘I won’t go,’ he said. ‘You’ve – you’ve made a mistake. I did kill him. All right? I killed Peter Leman. That’s what you’ve been wanting me to say, isn’t it? I hit him on the head like you said, and then I chopped him up and put him in the sack. I did it! I killed him!’
Atherton exchanged a glance with Nicholls, and said gently, ‘It wasn’t Peter Leman, Ronnie. The body in the sacks. It wasn’t him. Peter Leman’s alive.’
‘Peter? He’s—’ Slaughter’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Peter’s not dead?’
‘Not even a little bit. He’s alive and kicking. That’s why we’re letting you go.’
‘Peter’s alive,’ Slaughter said dazedly. ‘Peter.’
That’s right,’ Nicholls said breezily. ‘So up you get, laddie, and let’s have you out of there. It’s warm and sunny outside. We’ll give you a nice ride home in a car, eh? It’s a shame to walk on such a lovely day.’
Slaughter’s expression hardened, and he gripped his seat more tightly. ‘No, I’m not going. I did it. I killed the other bloke.’
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