‘But they’d not long moved in, and they weren’t keen on the garden, they didn’t care about the fence. They said right away, if we wanted it done, we’d have to do it.’
‘Despite the fact it was falling down,’ she added.
‘Falling down?’ Slider asked.
‘Well, a lot of it was sagging, and two of the boards had fallen right out – rotted away,’ Mr Barnard said, ‘So there was actually a big gap. If they’d had a dog – the people over the back – it’d have been in and out of our garden all the time.’
‘Which we weren’t keen on, with two small children,’ Mrs Barnard put in.
‘Something had been going in and out that way,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if the people before them had a dog. Or maybe it was a fox. Or just cats. There was a gap under the laurel at that end, and a flattened place in the garden over the back—’
‘Which was a wilderness of weeds, by the way,’ she added disapprovingly. ‘Terribly overgrown.’
‘But once we replaced the missing boards, we never saw any foxes,’ he concluded, ‘so that put paid to that.’
‘And the extra space you’d created,’ Slider said, ‘what did you do with it?’
‘Turfed it. It made more room for the children to play.’
‘And the water butt in the corner,’ she reminded him. ‘There was a terrible drought round about that time, and everyone was going on about conserving water. Funny when you think of it now, with all these floods. But back then, the garden gurus were always going on about planting drought-resistant plants, and collecting rainwater.’
‘Yes, and the council was offering rainwater butts at a special price, so we took one and set it up to catch the rain off the shed roof.’
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘the council’s offer was back in the spring, but it was such a bargain we took one anyway, though we didn’t have anywhere to put it then.’
‘But when we had the hedge down, it all came together. There were even a couple of slabs there—’
‘Slabs?’
‘You know, like paving stones, but concrete. Someone had left them behind.’
‘They were in that area, behind the hedge?’
‘That’s right. So we put the butt there, and I got some plastic guttering—’
‘He doesn’t want to know all about that,’ she interrupted, with her own anxious look. Wittering On to a Police Office, another arrestable offence.
‘So you didn’t at any time do any digging in that corner?’ Atherton asked, seeing Slider had lapsed again into silence, and knowing where he was going now.
‘No,’ said Mr Barnard. He looked from one to the other. A light bulb went on. ‘Don’t tell me – is that where …? Oh my goodness!’
Slider distracted them. ‘So, the people in the house behind,’ he asked, ‘do you remember their name?’
They exchanged a glance. ‘I don’t think we ever knew it,’ she said.
‘But you say they hadn’t been there long?’
‘No, only about eighteen months more than us.’
‘We only had a few conversations with them, mainly over the hedge,’ he said, making it clear there was no abiding friendship.
Mrs Barnard took the ball back. ‘I think she was a foreigner of some sort – Iranian or something like that. But she spoke good English. He was Scottish – he had a Scottish accent, anyway. I think he was in oil or something. And they had two teenage children, boys. But they didn’t like gardening, and you did wonder why they’d bought the house, because that big garden would take a lot of looking after. And it was terribly overgrown. You’d think that alone would have put them off. There were plenty of modern houses with less garden they could have bought.’
She sniffed. Obviously their refusal to pay for the fence still rankled.
‘Did you know that, about laurel hedges?’ Atherton asked as they climbed the stairs back to his room.
‘Yes, of course. Anyone who’s ever had a laurel hedge …’ They pushed through the swing doors. ‘A laurel hedge is not for Christmas, it’s for life. It’s not something you want in a wee suburban garden. You end up with a big dry space behind it that can’t be used for anything.’
‘So you’re thinking …?’
‘We’ve always wondered how the body could have been buried without anyone’s seeing.’
‘But how does it help us? I don’t really think the Barnards killed anyone, do you? And if Ronnie Knight killed some unrelated teenage girl, why would he crawl behind the hedge to bury her? Even if he was a serial killer and murdered Amanda as well, there are so many places to dispose of a body, it never made sense that’d he’d bring her back to the garden. Wherever he dumped Amanda, he’d dump Miss X as well. But it was a good place, behind the hedge. Unlikely ever to be found back there, as the event proves.’
‘You ought to make a beeping noise when you reverse like that,’ Slider admonished. They had reached his door.
Atherton went on: ‘Maybe the body pre-dates the Knights. There’s a depressing thought. Just tracing the people who lived there … And, I forgot, we’ve only got until the end of the week.’ He followed Slider into his room. ‘What are you going to do now?’
Slider reached for his coat on the back of the door. ‘I’m going to see Kellington,’ he said.
TWENTY-ONE
Pedes Fictilis
Kellington’s daughter looked reproachful. ‘He’s not well,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you upsetting him.’
‘He asked me to come,’ Slider said. ‘He asked me to let him know what progress we made.’
‘In that old case? I don’t want him bothering about that. It was over years ago. He’d forgotten all about it till you came, now I can see it’s on his mind.’
‘Better to get it off his mind then, isn’t it?’ Slider said. Or off his chest. He didn’t say that, though. ‘Ask him if he’ll see me.’
‘He’ll say yes,’ she said, sticking her lip out. Slider stood his ground, trying to look both determined and unthreatening, until she crumpled. ‘Oh, all right,’ she said. ‘I suppose you won’t go away till you’ve seen him. You people have got no thought for others.’
A curious accusation, Slider considered as he followed her through. It was thinking about others that had brought him here.
Kellington appeared to be asleep, but when she roused him and he opened his eyes, he didn’t seem surprised to see Slider there. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said dully. ‘I thought you’d be back. Sit down.’
Slider sat. Kellington looked much worse than at the last visit. There had been a sort of vigour then under his frailness – or, if not exactly vigour, a tautness, like a steel frame under crumbling concrete. Now the supporting structure seemed to be failing. The bridge was coming down, and coming down soon. Slider felt guilty and sorry – and determined. It would be better for Kellington, too, he thought. That thorn had been festering in his flesh for a long time. Better to get it out, even if it was painful.
‘So,’ said Kellington, ‘you worked it all out?’
‘Not all. Some.’
‘It was Ronnie Knight, wasn’t it? Who else could have done it? It was Knight killed her. Had to be.’ It was a valiant last defence, but Slider could see the horrible doubts in Kellington’s eyes, and it braced him, even while it engaged his pity. It is hard to have your idol exposed, even if you had long suspected the size twelves housed feet of clay.
Slider began. ‘When I was here last time, and you said, “God damn him, he did it,” you weren’t talking about Ronnie Knight, were you?’ Kellington stared, warily. ‘You were talking about Vickery.’
Kellington took in a sharp breath, which started him coughing. He made Porson sound in the peak of health by comparison. This cough had its roots dug in somewhere important down inside. It was pulling at his actual life. The daughter appeared at his elbow with a glass of water and a pill, and he drank, washed down the pill, blew his nose and wiped his eyes. Slider waited implacably through all of this. It was not a per
formance, he could see that. But he would have his answers.
‘Talk to me about Vickery,’ he said, when equilibrium was restored. ‘Your superintendent. He was your hero, wasn’t he?’
Kellington looked sour. ‘Don’t talk bollocks. He was a good copper, and my boss, that’s all. We worked together on a lot of cases. He was … effective.’ The word was odd on his lips. It sounded like something he’d read somewhere.
‘You admired him,’ Slider urged.
‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Kellington said roughly. ‘Like I said, he was a good copper.’
‘And brilliant. Came from a brilliant family. His brother, for instance – David.’
Kellington drew in a breath at the name, but it wasn’t a gasp of alarm this time, merely a sigh of resignation. ‘So you know about him,’ he said flatly.
‘I know about him. The talented younger brother. The high achiever. When did you realize his house backed on to the Knights’ house?’
‘Straight away. Soon as I went out in the garden, on the Sunday.’
‘How did you know where he lived?’
‘I’d gone there one time to pick up the boss. He was having dinner there with his brother. Something’d come up, and I went to fetch him.’ He brooded. ‘He was always going on about his brother, Vickery was. David this and David that. Seemed to think he was in a different class from him. As far as brains went, Vickery could think rings round anyone, any time, my opinion. But still he thought he was nothing next to David. You could,’ he added with delicate distaste, ‘get tired of hearing about him.’
And jealous? Slider wondered. He thought of teenage girls who had a crush on a pop star or a film star, and how bitter they felt when he got married, how they hated the wife, wanted her to be ugly and mean, made her so in their minds when she wasn’t. Kellington had had a crush on Vickery – of a different sort, of course, based as much on real knowledge as fantasy; a grown-up crush – but perhaps as powerful.
‘So David lived in the rear-abutting house. But what made you think he was involved?’
‘I didn’t. Why should I? Far as we knew, the Knight girl had gone missing, done a runner or been snatched. David living there – that was just a coincidence. How could it be anything else?’
‘Then at what stage did you start thinking he was involved?’ Kellington was silent. ‘All right, at what stage did your Mr Vickery start taking an interest in the case?’
Kellington looked out of the window, sign of discomfort, but he had capitulated now. He was admitting the inadmissible. ‘I rung him the Sunday after I’d got back from the house. He liked to be kept updated. I mentioned that it was the house down the back of his brother’s, just as a matter of interest. He didn’t say anything at first. Then he says, “Are you sure?” Which is not like him. I mean, I wouldn’t say that if I wasn’t, would I? So I says, “Is there a problem?”, and he says no, of course not. But the Monday, when the kid hadn’t turned up, and we were going to search the house and garden, he says he’s coming with us, to have a look. Sounded quite casual about it.’
‘But?’
‘Eh?’
‘You sounded as if you were going to say, “but”.’
Kellington hesitated. ‘He seemed a bit bothered. Like he wanted me to think he wasn’t interested, but he was really. And …’
‘Yes?’
‘I said something about his brother – just mentioned him, not meaning anything – and he said, Mr Vickery said, quick as a flash, “He’s gone away on holiday”.’ Kellington brooded a moment. ‘It struck me as a queer thing to say. I mean, what was that about? Why mention it at all?’
‘Why indeed,’ Slider said. If Vickery was pre-empting any suspicion, it must have been because there was suspicion to be had. Even Kellington, the good dog, the loyal hound, was copper enough to have sniffed that particular kipper and found it ripe.
‘Go on. What did you do on the Monday?’
‘We went down there. In separate cars. Ready to do the full search. I sent my boys out to look at the van and the shed. I interviewed the parents again. And Mr Vickery …’
Slider saw he was coming to the really bad bit. He had already guessed what it was.
‘Go on.’
‘He said he wanted to look at the girl’s bedroom. Well, that’s SOP. I thought he’d have wanted to hear what the Knights had to say, but he went up alone. When I was done, I went up there as well. He – he sort of jumped when I came to the door.’
‘What was he doing? Was he reading something?’
Kellington raised mournful eyes. He was a bad dog. ‘You know, then?’
‘Tell me.’
‘It was a diary, one of those five-year things with a lock on it. Red leather. I recognized it – they were all the rage round about then with young girls, to write their secrets in. Daft! Anyone could break the lock with one finger, but I suppose the point was they’d know if anyone did. Like their mum or dad.’
‘What did Vickery do?’
‘He sort of dropped his hand down the side of his leg, hiding it from me. He said, “All done?” I said yes. I asked if he’d found anything, and he said no. I said I was going out to have a look at the garden. He said he’d come and help me. And he sort of waited for me to go first.’
Slider nodded kindly. ‘And he followed you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Straight away?’
‘More or less.’
‘And what did he do in the garden?’
‘He watched for a bit. Then he said there was nothing to see, you could see the whole garden from where he stood, and he called the boys off. He said the girl had obviously run away, and we were wasting our time here. We’d do better talking to the neighbours.’
‘What else did you do?’
‘I told you all this before. We knocked on every door up and down the street. Asked in local shops, showed her picture at the tube station and the bus depot. Her mum said she went to the lib’ry a lot so we asked there. Then Mr Vickery says to drop it.’
‘He told you to drop the case?’
Kellington looked briefly annoyed. ‘Things were different then. There wasn’t all this fuss. Girls run away all the time, there’s nothing you can do. Vickery was right about that. He said, there’s no reason to think anything bad’s happened to her. No sense in killing ourselves over it. We’d got better things to do. So we filed it.’
‘And the diary?’
‘I never saw it again. Why?’
‘It was missing from amongst her things. Her parents packed up the contents of her room when they moved. They kept them in a box, undisturbed. I’ve looked through that box, and the diary’s not there.’
‘Doesn’t mean anything. Maybe they got rid of it.’
‘Did you see the Knight file before it went to Missing Persons?’
‘Course I did. Had it in my hands many times.’
‘And was it thick?’
‘Just normal. You know what it’s like.’
‘Yes, I do. Who took it down there?’
‘How would I know?’ Kellington said roughly. ‘All that time ago? How would I remember?’
Slider studied him. ‘But you do remember. Because you’ve wondered. Since I told you we’d found the body, you’ve been wondering a lot. Who took the file?’
There was no further place to go. Kellington looked down at his big bony hands as they lay in his lap. ‘I took it into Mr Vickery’s room and said, “Have we finished with this, then?” And he said yes. He said to put it on his desk, he’d got to go to Records for something else and he’d take it down then. Save me a journey.’
‘That was nice of him. And when did you next see it?’
‘I never saw it again. Why would I? I’ve never looked at the case since. It was a misper and that was the end of it.’
‘Yes, quite.’ Slider relapsed into thought.
‘Look,’ Kellington roused him, ‘what exactly are you suspecting? I thought you said you’d worked it out.’
�
��I know many things now. Why she was buried in the garden. Why she was never seen outside in the street. Now I know why her diary was missing. Why the file was so thin.’
‘You don’t know what happened to the file. Stuff could have been lost any time. Good God, man, it’s been twenty-five years! And the diary – who’s to say it wasn’t the father got rid of it? What do you think was in it anyway?’
Slider didn’t answer that. ‘Vickery left the Job soon afterwards, didn’t he?’
‘End of September. He was burnt out. You could see it – they often go that way, your brilliant ones. Just suddenly had enough. Then he upped sticks and emigrated to Australia. Suppose he wanted a change of scene.’
‘Is that where he is now?’
Kellington looked bleak. ‘I heard he snuffed it not long after. Car crash. Up in the mountains. Car went through a safety barrier and down a ravine. It was in their papers, and some copper over there sent it to a copper mate over here who’s a friend of a friend of mine who knew I knew him and sent it to me.’ A pause, then he looked up. ‘You don’t think …?’
‘That he couldn’t live with himself any more?’
He was annoyed. ‘I wasn’t going to say that. Car crash was an accident. I was going to say, you can’t think he was involved in the murder.’
‘No, I don’t think he was.’
‘Or his brother, if that’s where you’re going. I don’t see it. This Amanda Knight girl, what was she to either of them?’
‘It wasn’t Amanda Knight,’ said Slider.
‘Eh?’
‘The bones. The DNA test came back. It wasn’t Amanda.’
‘So Vickery told them to cool off on the search?’ said Atherton. ‘He must have known, then.’
‘Known what?’
‘That there was funny business going on.’
‘Is that what I think?’
‘Look, it’s obvious. Vickery must have spoken to his brother to know he’s gone on holiday. And he wouldn’t have mentioned it at all if it wasn’t meant to be a sort of alibi. And then he left the Job more or less straight away. He must have given in his notice by the end of August to leave at the end of September. That’s only two weeks afterwards. So he must have known something.’
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