Necrocrip

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘And where will you be doing your slogging?’ Atherton asked as they began to disperse.

  ‘I’m going to start from the other end,’ Slider said.

  *

  Slider’s vigil in a small and obviously unused office was finally broken by the entry of an endlessly tall, bony young man in the uniform of the US Air Force who introduced himself in an accessible sort of way as Captain Phil Bannister and how-can-I-help-you?

  Too tall for a pilot, Slider thought. Must be bright in some department to have got promoted so young. He only looked about twenty-two, but that might have been the ears. Or the ears might have been the clinically short haircut. He had the appearance, which Slider had noticed before in young officers in the American forces, of being somehow extra clean over and above perfectly spotless. He made Slider feel like Columbo.

  ‘I’m Detective Inspector Slider of the Shepherd’s Bush CID,’ Slider said, showing his brief. Bannister took it and inspected it gravely, and handed it back with a touch of uncertainty. Slider didn’t blame him. He didn’t find them very convincing either. Technology was having a hard time catching up with the life of an ID card in a hip pocket. Why did so many policemen have big bottoms? It was one of Life’s insoluble little mysteries.

  ‘Okay,’ said Bannister, as though prepared to overlook its shortcomings, ‘what can I tell you?’

  ‘I’m interested in a man called Lee Chang, who I believe worked here until quite recently.’

  ‘Yeah, they said you were asking about Lee, but they didn’t say why. Is he in trouble?’

  ‘I hope not. What I’m hoping to do is to eliminate him from an enquiry. You worked with him, did you?’

  ‘He was in my section, which I guess you’d loosely call operational computers, but as a civilian he wasn’t directly under my command. But, yes, I guess you could say I worked with him. He seemed a nice guy. What did you want to know?’

  ‘Could we start with when he came here, and where he came from?’

  ‘That’s easy. He was here for six weeks from April seven through May eighteen. He was loaned out to us by his company, Megatrends Warmerica Inc – have you heard of them?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Oh, big, big software house in Santa Clara. But megabig in the products development field! Lee’s been with ‘em for a couple of years now, very highly rated by his people, so I understand. Real whizz kid. He started off as an electronics engineer, went into the micro side – used to work for Intel at one time – and then went over to software, so he knew the business from an all-round angle. That’s why they sent him to us. He was here to install a new strategic planning program for us and get it running, sort out any glitches and so on. Well, he did his job and he went, and that’s all. I’m kinda sorry to lose him. He was a great guy – full of laughs.’

  ‘When exactly did he leave?’

  ‘Like I said, May eighteen – that was the Monday. He finished up around three-thirty and we all said goodbye and – away he went!’ He flattened his right hand and made it take off into the big blue yonder.

  ‘Do you know where he was going when he left here?’

  ‘I guess he went home,’ Bannister said, puzzled.

  ‘Home to the States? That very day?’

  ‘Oh, I get you! Well, as far as I recall, he said he was gonna take a couple of days out shopping in London, and then head back to San Francisco on Wednesday or Thursday.’

  ‘And then he would report back to his company, I suppose?’

  ‘I guess so. No, wait, I remember now he said he had some leave coming that he was gonna take right after he got back. I don’t know if he’d have to let them know how the job here went off first, but after that he was heading off on vacation.’

  ‘You suggested he was a very friendly man. Did he have any particular friends? Anyone he spent time with outside working hours?’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ Bannister said, shaking his head. ‘He was friendly in and around the base, but I don’t know if he met anyone outside. I could ask around for you.’

  ‘Please, if you wouldn’t mind. And also if anyone has a photograph of him.’

  ‘Oh, I can give you a photograph. He had to have one taken for his security card.’

  ‘You run a security check on everyone who works here, I imagine?’

  ‘Certainly. But the people at Mega would have checked him out before they sent him anyway. They wouldn’t have put him on a new product installation like this if there was anything funny about him.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Has he done something wrong?’ Bannister asked with a concerned frown. ‘He didn’t have access here to any sensitive material, of course, but if there is any question of a security problem we ought to know about it.’

  ‘It isn’t anything like that,’ Slider said with a reassuring smile. ‘A man in the same house where Chang was staying committed suicide in rather peculiar circumstances, and I’m obliged to check on everyone who may have come into contact with him. It’s purely a domestic police matter, you see.’

  ‘I see. Okay. Well, if anything develops that we ought to know about—’

  ‘Of course. I’ll make sure you’re informed at once.’

  ‘Meanwhile I’ll get you that photograph – do you want to wait for it?’

  ‘Yes please. If it’s no trouble.’

  ‘Not at all. And I’ll ask around the guys if anyone saw anything of him out of hours.’

  ‘Thank you. Oh, there is one other thing.’ Bannister paused and looked enquiring. ‘Chang was staying in a bedsitter in Notting Hill Gate—’

  Bannister beamed. ‘Yeah, I gave him a lift home once on my way to Grosvenor Square. Quite a way to travel every day!’

  So that was the man in the dark blue overcoat, Slider thought with minor relief. One less thing to check up on.

  ‘The room he rented belonged to a man called Colin Cate, who you may have heard of?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, everyone here knows him. Well, he kinda liaises on security, so he gets round all the departments one way and another.’

  ‘I see. I just wondered how Chang got to know him. Did someone here suggest to Chang that he contact Mr Cate for accommodation?’

  ‘I’d have to ask around about that, too.’

  ‘I suppose he must have been staying in a hotel to begin with?’

  ‘That would be on his personal record. Do you want me to look it up for you?’

  ‘If you would I’d be grateful. Also his home address in America, and his next-of-kin.’

  ‘Sure. I can let you have those. I didn’t know Colin let out rooms,’ he added with a puzzled smile. ‘He seems to be into all kinds of things, doesn’t he?’

  ‘He’s an all-round businessman,’ Slider said warmly, and Bannister relaxed.

  ‘Yeah. Well I wouldn’t trust a man who didn’t respect money, myself – would you? But I didn’t get the impression that Lee and Colin were particularly friendly. I mean, I’ve been there when Colin’s come into the department, and there was no kind of—’ he hesitated, not quite knowing how to phrase it.

  ‘Special relationship?’ Slider offered.

  ‘Right! I mean, you’d expect him to say, “Hi, Lee, how’s the room? Comfortable? Anything you need?” Something like that. But I never heard him say anything to Lee at all. Or the other way around.’

  ‘Well, maybe Cate didn’t like people to know he let out rooms. May have thought it sounded a bit downbeat for such a successful man.’

  ‘Maybe so. Yeah, that would explain it all right,’ Bannister said, comforted. ‘Okay, well I’ll go get that photograph for you.’

  While he was gone, Slider sat very still, his eyes fixed on the skirting board, his mind working furiously. Computers again. Cate had a chain of outlets called Compucate. And there had been one other mention somewhere of computers, but he couldn’t bring it to mind. Some other connection … No, it was no good. It would come to him if he left it alone. The Chinese connection and
the computer connection. He must find out whether Chang had reported back to his company, or indeed anywhere.

  What was it all about? He was willing to bet Cate was in it right up to his eyeballs, though, whatever it was. If only he could investigate Cate properly, instead of pussyfooting around the periphery. But he’d get there, he’d get there. A man who didn’t like Bob Dickson couldn’t be all good.

  Bannister came back at last with a neat manilla folder – military efficiency allied with personal cleanliness. ‘Everything you want’s in here – photo, addresses and all.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Slider. ‘I’m very grateful.’

  ‘Also I’ve asked in the department whether anyone saw anything of Lee outside the base, but they all say no. He used to head right off home when he finished his shift. Jimmy Demarco says he invited Lee to Sunday lunch once at his place – thought the guy must be lonely all on his own – but he wouldn’t come. Just said he had things to do. That seems to be how it was.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘As to your other question, about how he knew to ask Colin Cate about accommodation, I can’t give an answer. No-one in the department knows. But it does seem that he went straight to the bedsit, not to an hotel first. Is it important to know? Would you like me to ask around the other departments?’

  ‘No, no, please don’t bother. It doesn’t matter at all,’ Slider said hastily. General enquiries about Colin Cate would almost certainly go straight back to Colin Cate, and Slider would find himself swiftly promoted to Permanent Latrine Orderly.

  ‘Okay. You’re the boss. Anything else you want any time, just let me know.’

  ‘You’ve been most helpful. I really am grateful.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ Bannister beamed. ‘I’ll see you off the base. I hope you find out that there’s nothing wrong with Lee, though,’ he added, ushering Slider out into the corridor. ‘He really seemed like a nice guy.’

  He didn’t say the same about Colin Cate, Slider thought, as he got into his car.

  His enquiries of the Chinese Embassy were less fruitful. Any questions about personnel would have to be put through the correct diplomatic channels. But he only wanted to know whether a certain person had actually been officially in England at a certain time. No information whatever could be given about employees past or present. Very sorry. The Great Stonewall of China in full working order again.

  He decided to go back to Mrs Sullivan and put a little pressure on her. He wished he could confront Cate and threaten him with living off immoral earnings or running a disorderly house or something if he didn’t answer a few questions, but he didn’t think Barrington would be too frightfully keen on that idea. All he got out of Kathleen Sullivan, however, was that Lee Chang had come to the house straight from the airport, and that she had been told the day before by ‘the owner’ – whom she still coyly refused to name – to expect him, and how long he would be staying. That did not, however, necessarily give the lie to Cate’s own account, for the ‘friend at the base’ could have asked him about accommodation before Chang arrived. But then the friend would have had to know Chang, and know that he would want accommodation. And, as Bannister had said, it was a long way to travel each day. Surely Harrow or even Watford would have provided better, cheaper, more convenient rooms than that top-floor bedsit in Notting Hill?

  As to Peter Ling, she remembered that he had left the house about two years ago because he was leaving Compucate to open a shop of his own in the same line of business. She didn’t know where the shop was, except that she thought it was somewhere in Fulham, or what had become of him. Why did he have to leave the house? Because the accommodation was dependent on the job. Had Ling been resentful about that? Well, towards the end he and his boss hadn’t seen eye to eye about things, so he’d pretty well had to go anyway, new business or no new business. What things were those? Mrs Sullivan couldn’t say.

  Wouldn’t say, more likely, Slider thought. He also doubted that if it ever came to a court of law he could bring her to swear to anything very much. She seemed to be a very loyal employee. She also had a healthy fear of Cate’s disapproval, which said a lot both for her common sense and for Slider’s case.

  He went back to his car, and after a moment’s thought, drove round to the offices of the Hammersmith Gazette. He looked up his little friend in the photographic department, and she obligingly looked up Cate in the morgue and found a good deal on him, including a decent Gazette photograph of him arriving at the Town Hall for the Mayor’s New Year Ball. While she was making him a couple of prints of it, he went across the road to a, telephone box and rang the factory.

  He got Jablowski. ‘I want you to do something for me.’

  ‘Yes, Guv?’

  ‘Ring Pauline Smithers at Fulham Road nick – she’s the DCI – and ask her, as a favour to me, to find out about a Peter Ling who opened a computer supply shop somewhere in Fulham about two years ago. I need to get in touch with him. And ask her not to tell anyone I’ve been asking. Tell her I’ll ring her later and see if she’s got anything.’

  ‘Righto. Anything else?’

  ‘Did you find out who owns those two flats?’

  ‘It’s a property company called Shax—’

  ‘Shacks? Hovels would be more appropriate.’

  She spelt it. ‘Address in Northfields. Do you want it?’

  ‘Yes please.’ He wrote it down. ‘Any more news?’

  ‘Norma’s drawn a blank with Suzanne Edrich. Leman didn’t tell her anything about his trip, wouldn’t even let her see him off. The only interesting thing she said was that when Leman phoned her from hiding, he said that when the job he was involved in was over, he’d be so rich he’d never have to work again.’

  ‘That big, eh? Anything else happened?’

  ‘Only that you’ve been asked for – but I take it I don’t know where you are?’

  ‘You don’t. I haven’t told you.’

  ‘Oh – no more you have.’

  ‘I haven’t rung you, either,’ he warned.

  ‘Are you kidding? I value my skin.’

  ‘Good girl. I’ll be in later.’

  He collected his prints and, on the principle of clear as you go, headed down King Street, Chiswick High Road, along the A4 and up South Ealing Road. He missed Lawrence Road the first time because it was so narrow and almost entirely obscured with motorcycles which had spilled over from the display window of the dealership on the corner. He went round the block and found that there was nowhere to park in Lawrence Road, went round again, left the wheels on Junction Road and walked down, and discovered that the registered office of Shax appeared to be the upstairs portion of a Victorian two-pony stable across a yard from the motorcycle shop, the lower half of which was dragging out a dishonourable existence as a shelter for bits of rusty bike nobody wanted any more. Whoever had named the company Shax had a sense of humour.

  To Slider’s entire and unconcealed surprise, he found the office open, and manned. It contained a battered but once handsome desk supporting a white sea of paper which he guessed, like a glacier, probably only moved at the rate of an inch a year; a green filing cabinet with a telephone on top of it; a rickety enamel-topped table containing tea-making equipment and two chipped mugs liberally smeared with heavy-duty oil. It also contained a tall, well-built young man in spectacularly dirty overalls. His hands were black to the wrist, his face smudged and smeared with grease, his hair long, straight, blond, and tied in a pony-tail at the back, and his left ear pierced and dangling a cute single earring in the shape of a skull.

  He was holding in his hands an oily cylindrical piece of metal of unimaginable but evidently motor-mechanical purpose, and he turned when Slider entered and fixed him with a pair of china-blue eyes.

  ‘Help you?’ he said shortly.

  ‘This is the office of Shax Limited, isn’t it?’ Slider asked with his most boyish smile.

  The young man didn’t answer, but as if the question had necessitated the action he turn
ed away and rummaged in the overflowing waste-paper basket, pulled out a sheet of crumpled paper, spread it over one part of the lava flow on the desk, and placed the cylindrical object tenderly on top of it.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked without noticeable friendliness.

  ‘You own two properties I’m interested in.’ He gave the Acton Lane and Hanwell addresses.

  ‘They’re not for thale,’ the young man said. A spot of pink appeared over each cheekbone, which was really not unbecoming.

  ‘But you do own them?’ The man didn’t answer. Slider thought he probably didn’t much like saying the word yes. It must be a hard cross to bear in the land of the bikers, to have both a lisp and heavenly blue eyes. ‘I wasn’t thinking of buying them, anyway,’ he went on. ‘What I’m really interested in is who lets them out.’

  ‘What do you want to know for?’ the man asked after a short internal struggle.

  Slider got out his ID card, and the young man, after a glance at it, raised his eyes apprehensively to Slider’s. ‘What’s your name, son?’ Slider asked gently.

  ‘Peter,’ he said. Then, ‘Peter Davey.’ He seemed frozen with apprehension, and in spite of his size made Slider feel quite fatherly towards him.

  ‘All right Peter. I’m not here to make any trouble for you, I just want you to answer a few questions.’

  ‘I don’t have to. I haven’t done anything,’ he said defensively.

  ‘I know you haven’t. Just tell me who lets out those two houses I’m interested in. Who has the say-so on who goes into them?’

  ‘I do. It’th my job. They’re my houtheth. Thith ith my company.’

  ‘Come on, now. I know that isn’t true. I know that you are working for someone, and that he wants you to keep his name secret. He’s told you never to tell anyone about him, hasn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Davey said, turning his head away like a naughty child. Slider noticed that his right ear looked very sore, with a ragged tear right down the lobe which, from the surrounding swelling, must have been done within the last couple of days.