Cruel as the Grave

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Why is that?’ Slider asked.

  ‘He is very competitive. You cannot be friends with someone you are trying to beat, and he wished to beat everyone. Only me, he could not beat, so we were friends. Friends must be equals … hmm?’

  Slider didn’t answer that. He said, ‘He tried to beat everyone? Even the women he went out with?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘They must be completely under his spell, they must worship him, then when he knows they are his slaves, he throws them away. Because he can.’

  ‘That’s not very nice.’

  She shrugged. ‘Women are stupid. Anyone could see what Erik was, but they all think, “Me he will love, I am different, I am special”. They think they can tame him. Duraki!’

  She reached behind and freed her hair from its tail, and for a moment it fell round her face like a wild lion’s mane, before she gathered it up again in both hands, dragged it back and confined it. On the surface she was just making herself tidy again, but Slider thought it an impressive, even aggressive gesture: even if only subconsciously, she was demonstrating her power.

  ‘You sound almost as if you didn’t like him,’ he said.

  She shrugged. ‘I liked him all right. He was good company. He was good sex. He had beautiful body. Have you seen his flat? His bedroom? All those mirrors. He liked to watch while we were making love. I liked it too. We looked good together. We would turn this way and that way – good! I had what I want from him. What he did with other girls – not my business.’

  ‘Speaking of business,’ Slider said, ‘he was only working here two days a week. Do you know what he was doing the rest of the time?’

  ‘He talked to me about it. He wanted more private clients. Take them in the daytime as well as evenings. If you do the right things, they pay well.’

  ‘What would be the right things?’

  ‘Personal training. Very personal – tailored to them. Diet advice. Sports massage.’ She paused.

  Atherton said wryly, ‘Sex?’

  ‘If they want it, afterwards, maybe. Why not? He is good looking, has perfect body. They pay extra – a lot. And he wanted to make a lot of money quick, while he could.’

  ‘While he could?’ Slider queried.

  She looked at him pityingly. ‘You cannot do this job for ever. What do you think? The body does not last. Erik and me, we are both over thirty. When you get to forty – pff! All finished. Then you have to find other job. Bad job, maybe, stupid job. Erik, he wanted enough money so he did not have to do bad, stupid job. Money, money, money – then get out. So – private clients. Rich people.’

  ‘And where would he get these private clients?’

  ‘Not here,’ she said, with a contemptuous look round. ‘No rich people here. Shapes, in Kensington – rich people go there.’

  ‘That’s a gym, like this?’

  ‘Fitness club – all luxury, not like this. You choose your own hours, all self-employed, charge what you like. Make lots of money.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go there, then?’

  ‘Because here I get paid holiday, sickness, pension. Security. Maybe management job when I get too old.’ She shrugged again. ‘Maybe I not ambitious enough. Erik, he would fight hard for what he wanted. Fierce. Aggressive. He will succeed. It’s not for me. I am stuck here, I know it. Good luck to him.’

  She looked at them for a moment, clear-eyed, and then her composure wavered. ‘I forgot. He’s dead. My God, who did this to him? Do you know?’

  ‘We’ll find out,’ Slider said.

  Outside, it had turned colder, and the seamless grey cloud cover was lower. Tiny random fragments of snow were coming down, widely scattered and at present harmless. It was as if the sky had dandruff.

  Atherton said, ‘If he left a trail of broken hearts behind him, there’ll be plenty of women with a motive to kill him. Not to mention their boyfriends-stroke-fathers-stroke-brothers. The field is opening up.’

  ‘What did you think of Ivanka?’

  ‘She seemed pretty laid back about it all. Had the measure of the happy chappy all right. I can’t see her getting so worked up about the latest Kelly-Ann that she’d whack him.’

  Slider remembered that sleek, feral movement of freeing and retying her hair. The hard body, taut face and impassive eyes of a powerful person. Suppose Lingoss had promised something – a partnership of some kind – and then reneged on it, would she have taken it lying down? He shook himself. That was pure off-grid speculation, and they didn’t have time for that.

  ‘Still,’ he said, ‘we’d better check up on her, see if she has an alibi, at least.’

  Freddie Cameron was in Slider’s room when he got back, sitting in Slider’s chair and contemplating the continental drift of papers covering the desk. Freed of the coverall chrysalis of that morning, he had emerged in full splendour, his suit a grey whisper of perfection, his bow tie an exquisite confection of golden-yellow silk with cranberry spots. Atherton was elegant, but a scientific expert earned a great deal more than a lowly detective sergeant, and Cameron was wealthy enough to indulge his sartorial bent. Rumour had it that he even had his pocket fluff handmade in Savile Row.

  He raised his head as Slider came in. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen the surface of your desk,’ he said.

  ‘Come to that, neither have I,’ said Slider.

  ‘Some of that stuff must be pretty old. I’m wondering if Shakespeare’s Cardenio might be down at the bottom.’

  ‘I thought I heard voices coming from under there the other day, but it might have been my imagination. Did you have something in particular to say, or are you just having fun at my expense?’

  Freddie got up and came out from behind the desk. ‘My dear boy, where are my manners? Hogging your seat. I was passing the shop, so I thought I’d call in with my preliminary report, rather than phoning you.’ He went to put the document down on the desk, hesitated, and placed it in Slider’s hand instead.

  The bit of by-play was not lost on Slider. ‘Anything untoward in it?’

  ‘No, it’s pretty much as we saw at the scene. Deceased was exceptionally fit. Excellent muscle tone, very low body fat – and unusually smooth, supple skin, if that means anything.’

  ‘He had a lot of expensive bathroom products,’ Slider said.

  ‘Hmm. Well, he obviously took care of himself. No signs of any drug use, no alcohol in his system. There was no food in his stomach, in case that helps you to pinpoint the time of death – he hadn’t eaten anything in around four hours. I would say he had very recently bathed or showered – he was not only clean but smelled of soap or a similar product. He was circumcised. No scars, blemishes, bruises or tattoos. He’s about the healthiest specimen I’ve ever examined. And the most perfect. I suspect, judging by all those mirrors in his bedroom, that he knew it, too.’

  ‘All those fitness fanatics are narcissists, aren’t they? We’re just back from the gym, and they’re all watching themselves lifting weights and flexing their muscles.’

  ‘Ballet dancers watch themselves while they work,’ Freddie pointed out. ‘It’s the pursuit of perfection.’

  ‘Only a narcissist would think perfection was within their grasp,’ Slider said.

  ‘You’re tired and cranky,’ Cameron said kindly. ‘I prescribe one hundred and fifty millilitres of tea, taken internally.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll get that filled right away. What about the blows? Is the murder weapon the murder weapon?’

  ‘As certainly as anything is in this imperfect life. The first blow, to the left side of the forehead, has a slight upward trajectory, as you’d expect from someone picking up the barbell, or already holding it at the ready, lifting and swinging it at the victim’s head, probably two-handed, like this.’ He demonstrated. ‘Rather like a tennis shot.’

  ‘So the murderer would have to have been standing in front of him?’

  ‘Or just to the side. Given that he fell forward, I would judge the latter slightly more likely. The blow would
have incapacitated him – possibly he lost consciousness – so he probably crumpled from the knees rather than falling straight like a tree from the force of the blow. There was considerable bleeding from the gash. The other blows were delivered from directly above, with great force and determination – bone fragments were driven into the brain. I would judge from the amount of bleeding that they were delivered two or three minutes later.’

  ‘So the killer hit him, went off to do something – search for something perhaps – then came back to finish him off.’

  ‘Supposition’s your department, not mine,’ Freddie said. ‘Happily, I deal with scientific facts.’

  ‘Could he have been regaining consciousness? The killer thought he’d killed him the first time, then heard him groan or saw him move?’

  ‘That is possible.’

  ‘And the force of the blows? The killer would have had to be strong? And around the same height?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that definitively. The four-foot-ten little old lady is probably in the clear, but there could be a discrepancy in height of a few inches. And moderate strength would be needed, but it needn’t be another fitness fanatic. You know yourself that passion creates energy.’

  Slider nodded. ‘That’s very unhelpful, thank you.’

  ‘We aim to confuse. Well, I must be off. Give my love to Joanna. When she’s out of purdah, you must come over and have dinner. It’s been ages.’

  FIVE

  An Inspector Calls

  Shapes was a very different prospect from Gillespie’s: it shrieked exclusivity. It occupied a large corner plot in Kensington High Street, itself something of a premier shopping venue. And the full name, elegantly inscribed across the façade in grey and cream, was Elite Shapes of Kensington.

  ‘This used to be a bank, didn’t it?’ Slider mused as they parked down the side road.

  ‘Certainly looks like it,’ said Atherton. It had the tall windows and massive wooden door with brass furniture. The reception area had a bank’s high ceiling, and the walls were panelled floor to ceiling in alternate four-foot widths of mirror glass and polished black granite with gold flecks in it. To one side there were two leather sofas, one black, one white, and a glass coffee table of magazines. The high reception desk to the other side was curved, presumably because it could be, and was topped with the same granite. The floor was oak, but an inset runway of black carpet led from the entrance to a pair of further doors with small square mirror-glass panes, which presumably led to the inner sanctum. Inevitably, there were single orchids in pots on the desk and the coffee table. The finishing proof of luxury was that there was no piped music.

  Two exquisite young women were behind the desk, in smart black suits, with nothing so vulgar as a name-badge or corporate logo to sully their perfection. In the atmosphere of hush, they almost whispered their enquiry as to whether they could help. The manager, they informed Slider, was Mrs Lane-Adams, and they would ask if she could spare them a few minutes.

  Stephanie Lane-Adams seemed to be about fifty, but was so beautifully made-up and coiffed that at a quick glance she could have been thirty-five. She had large hair, a lot of costume jewellery, and a smile of radiant insincerity, with teeth so big and white you could have tiled a swimming pool with them. She came in person to collect them from reception, and led them through the mirrored doors into a corridor of twinkling downlighters above and heavy wooden doors to either side.

  ‘Treatment rooms,’ she explained to their enquiring glances. Slider continued to look interested, and she said with an air of resignation, ‘Would you like to see around?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Slider.

  At the end of the corridor was a cross passage with, straight ahead, the double doors into the main gym. It was smaller than Gillespie’s, and though there was work-out music, the volume was tolerable. It had mirrored walls on two sides, the usual machines, and there were about a dozen people working away quietly on their bodies, half of them with a trainer in attendance.

  Coming out of the gym, she gestured to the left and said, ‘Down there is the swimming pool and the sauna,’ but she turned them to the right. More closed doors, numbered in black on nice old-fashioned white oval enamel plates. ‘Exercise rooms, where clients can work with their trainers in privacy,’ said Mrs Lane-Adams. She did not offer to show them inside one. At the end of the passage were stairs which led up to: ‘Our Serenity Lounge’, a quiet place for clients to relax after exercise. It featured soft lighting, leather sofas and reclining chairs grouped around low tables, and tall kentia palms in pots. A woman and a man were occupying one sofa, sitting forward with their heads close together, talking in low voices. ‘We do not allow mobile phones or laptops in this area,’ the manager explained with a touch of pride. ‘They are not conducive to serenity.’

  Through more double doors into: ‘Our Wellness Refectory’. This was brightly lit, with a food service counter along one side, and square wooden tables and chairs with upholstered seats. Everything had a solid look about it, more John Lewis than Ikea, the sort of place that would never describe itself as GLicious. A dozen or so people were sitting at the tables, scrolling or tapping serenely on mobile phones – except for the young man in the corner, alone with an open laptop and the manic expression of a City trader finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Beyond that was: ‘Our Concord Bar’, very low-lit, a leather-fronted bar with tall stools, thick carpet, and a few small round tables and tub chairs lurking unoccupied in the gloom. Serenity, Wellness and Concord – it was a stiff ask, Slider thought, of the ordinary human being. But perhaps their clients weren’t: almost by definition, anyone who could afford the sort of membership fee needed to pay for this lot was not going to class themselves as ordinary.

  At the far side of Concord a heavy wooden door was labelled Private, and Mrs Lane-Adams led them through, saying, ‘The administration suite is through here.’

  Her office was all dark wood and plush carpet, windows onto the High Street covered with white voile daylight blinds, and the hushed air of a library. She gestured them to handsome upholstered chairs, took herself behind the desk, and asked them how she could help.

  Slider took a moment to assemble his thoughts. It was so far from the noise and brashness of Gillespie’s that he wondered how Lingoss had managed to adapt. He remembered the manic trainer bellowing like a rutting elephant seal. How did they motivate clients here in this cloistral hush? Beat them lightly with scented orchids?

  ‘I’d like to ask you for everything you know about Erik Lingoss.’

  The manager frowned – interesting first reaction. ‘He’s one of the personal trainers. What has he done?’

  She was appropriately surprised to hear he was dead by violence – after all, even in the modern urban setting it’s not a part of everyday life – but she did not seem moved by his loss. She looked thoughtful, as if she was wondering what paperwork the situation was going to generate. Slider had a certain sympathy for that reaction.

  ‘He hasn’t been with us very long,’ she said. ‘About a year, I think. But he is popular – particularly with our more mature ladies. He has the right manner with them to get results. Our members are demanding and discerning – training methods must be tailored to the individual.’

  ‘I understand the trainers are not directly employed by you,’ Slider said.

  ‘No, they’re all free-lances. We find the members prefer it that way.’

  Yes, Slider thought, and you can avoid National Insurance and other bothersome extras. ‘So how does that work?’

  ‘The members make their own arrangements, and pay them direct. The trainers pay a premium to us for insurance, and we charge them to rent the private rooms for their sessions.’

  Just enough to make them definitely self-employed and not employees.

  ‘Your members are all wealthy people, I take it?’

  She inclined her head rather than voice assent to such a coarse supposition. ‘We are an
exclusive club. Our facilities are superior. And our members are assured of discretion.’

  ‘You’re not worried, then,’ Atherton asked, ‘that you might be introducing them to predators.’

  She raised a frosty eyebrow. ‘Of course, we do background checks and take up references before we allow a trainer to use our facilities. We are very particular. But access to top trainers is a facility our members expect.’

  ‘What did you think of Erik Lingoss?’ Slider asked.

  She pursed her lips in thought. ‘He had good qualifications and references, he was well-spoken, personable, obviously very fit, and knew what he was doing. I had no doubts about him. As I said, he was popular.’

  ‘Was his popularity with the “more mature ladies”,’ Atherton said, putting audible quotation marks round it, ‘in any way due to his sexual attractiveness? Did he offer them more than just a training regime?’

  She coloured slightly with annoyance. ‘There is nothing of that sort going on here! Good God, do you think we’re running a brothel?’

  ‘Indeed not, but don’t the trainers do home visits as well?’ Atherton asked smoothly. ‘It was suggested to us that Mr Lingoss did.’

  ‘What they do outside these premises is their business, theirs and the members’.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t know if he had any, shall we say, special clients?’

  ‘I would not be so impertinent as to ask,’ she said angrily.

  Slider intervened. ‘Did he have any particular friends here, among the staff or other trainers? Someone we could talk to, who knew him personally?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say,’ she said, turning her head away.

  ‘Was he involved in any incidents – any trouble while he was here?’

  ‘I have never had any complaints about him from the members.’

  ‘Or the staff?’