‘I think it’s a little more serious than that,’ Slider said. ‘Isn’t it, Eddie?’
Eddie’s eyes flitted about, and he licked his lips. ‘I haven’t,’ he said faintly, ‘done nothing.’
‘Where were you on Monday night, Eddie? After you had the fight with Lenny, I mean?’
‘He was here,’ Carol Ann said quickly, before he could answer. ‘He came round here, and he’s been here ever since.’
‘Yes, I thought that might be the case,’ Slider said. ‘It’s the bit in between we’re interested in, though.’
Atherton took it up. ‘Between the fight and coming here. The bit where Lenny got stabbed to death. The Lenny you’d just had a fight with, I mean – just to make that quite clear.’
‘I never,’ Eddie said. ‘I never. It wasn’t me.’ He still tried to strike the defiant pose but his eyes – or eye, to be more precise – was conscious and afraid.
‘Why don’t you come down to the station with us and tell us all about it?’ Slider said.
Eddie pulled himself together. ‘Are you arresting me?’
‘Well, I could if you like, but don’t you think it would be nicer if we did it on a friendly basis?’
‘You got nothing on me,’ he said.
‘Then you’ve got nothing to worry about, have you?’ As Eddie still did not move, Slider added, ‘You broke the terms of your suspended. I can nick you for that, if you like, if it’ll make you feel happy.’
Eddie swallowed. ‘No,’ he said. All right, I’ll go and get my shoes on.’
As he started up the stairs, Slider looked at Atherton and flicked his head, and Atherton went up after him. Turning, Slider found Carol Ann’s eyes burning him. ‘Just a precaution, in case he tries anything silly,’ he explained.
‘He’s daft enough for that,’ she said bitterly. ‘Look, he never killed Lenny. He’s not the sort. If you knew him, you’d know he’s not got the balls to kill anyone.’
‘I would like you to come down to the station as well and make a statement,’ Slider said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not getting mixed up.’
‘I’m afraid you already are. Come on, love. Better get it over with.’
‘I told you,’ she said, working herself up and losing her refinement in the process, ‘I’m not going down no station to make no statement, so you can stick that where the sun don’t shine!’
‘Don’t make it hard for yourself,’ Slider advised.
‘If you want me down that station, you’re gonna have to arrest me,’ she said with supreme confidence.
He looked across her shoulder into the sitting room. ‘That’s a nice video you’ve got there,’ he said. ‘New, isn’t it? Have you got the receipt?’
‘No, it was a—’ The next word forming was ‘present’, but before it reached the air understanding came to her. A strong emotion crossed Miss Shotter’s face; her nostrils flared and her lips tucked themselves down tightly. A child within range of an expression like that would have known it was likely to be followed by a wallop. ‘Oh, my good Gawd,’ she said in soft fury. ‘The stupid bastard!’ She met Slider’s not unsympathetic eye and it burst from her. ‘I said he was daft: he’s a bloody dipstick!’ Slider was inclined to agree with her.
Eddie Cranston was sweating freely, and the interview room was filled with the miasma of his body, his cigarettes, and his chain coffee drinking. Interview room coffee came from the vending machine and to Slider’s mind smelled like dirty socks. He sometimes wondered if it could be banned under the United Nations protocol on torture.
‘Lenny Baxter,’ Cranston said, giving them so lightly the piece of information they had been yearning for from the beginning. The spectre of a television appearance retreated from Slider a pace or two.
‘Where does he live?’
‘I dunno,’ Eddie said. ‘Somewhere local. He lives with this tart, Tina. That’s all I know.’
‘How do you know him?’
‘Oh, I seen him around.’
‘At the Phoenix?’
Eddie shrugged. ‘Just around. Everybody knows Lenny.’
If only that were true, Slider thought. ‘So what was your beef with him?’
‘Look,’ Eddie said, ‘I never had no problem with him. I hardly knew him. Just seen him around. He was all right as far as I was concerned. I mean, we all got to live, right? But then he started messing with one of my women. I couldn’t have that, right? I mean, that was well out of order.’
‘Messing with one of your women?’
Eddie Cranston lit another cigarette and leaned back a little in his chair. ‘All right, Carol Ann’s not my only bird,’ he said, as if modesty almost forbade him admitting it. ‘I can’t help it if women throw themselves at me, can I?’
‘You could move out of the way,’ Atherton murmured, but only Slider heard him.
‘How many women have you got?’ Slider asked mildly.
He shrugged. As well ask a sultan for a tally on his harem. ‘Oh, quite a few. I get around a bit.’
‘You’re not married to any of them?’
‘Nah! What ju take me for?’
‘I wouldn’t take you for a king’s ransom,’ Slider said, but it went past Eddie. ‘But some of them have children by you?’
He shrugged. ‘Well, it keeps ’em happy. Women like kids.’
‘And you get more from the Social Security if they have children,’ Slider concluded. ‘So in what way was Lenny messing with one of your women? You mean he was having sex with her?’
‘Nah!’ Eddie said broadly. ‘A git like him? Leanne wouldn’t touch him with a bargepole. I tell you, my birds are all crazy about me. When you’ve had the best – forget the rest, right?’
‘And besides that,’ Slider said, ‘to quote a friend of yours, you’d knock their teeth in if they didn’t toe the line?’
He looked taken aback. ‘What friend? Who said that?’
‘Never mind. So if Lenny wasn’t poking your woman, what was he doing?’
‘He was taking money off her. Been round threatening her to pay up. She didn’t want to tell me, but I got it out of her. So, as I say, that was well out of order, wasn’t it? I had to give him a smacking, didn’t I?’
Eddie was leaning so far back now the two front chair legs were off the ground. His smirk was interrupted only by the need to put a cigarette between his lips. Atherton thought of the draggled Karen Peacock and her three children and his palm itched. He looked pointedly at Eddie’s black eye and said, ‘Except that it seems Lenny was the one did the smacking, right?’
The chair crashed back to earth, and Eddie scowled. ‘He got a lucky punch in, that’s all.’
‘And having come off worse in the first encounter,’ Slider said, ‘you followed him and got your revenge by stabbing him through the heart.’
Now he paled, seeing where he had been led. ‘I never! I went straight to Carol Ann’s.’
‘Why do I find that so hard to believe?’
‘I never killed him! I swear!’
‘What, a hard man like you, whose women have been bothered by a git like Lenny? You had to show him who was boss.’
‘Look—’
‘You’re a big name in the criminal world.’
‘No, I—’
‘You’d lose your cred if you didn’t off him, wouldn’t you? I can see that. People would say you’d bottled out. So you had to kill him.’
‘No, it’s not like that!’ Eddie’s bubble was well and truly burst. He was almost pleading now. ‘Look, it’s not me that’s the villain. I never done nothing wrong. It was Lenny upsetting my bird. I had to make him leave her alone, that’s all.’
‘You didn’t want him taking money from her, because that’s what you do.’
‘It’s different,’ he said, wiping sweat from his upper lip with his forearm. ‘Look, Lenny’s a runner for a loan shark. Golden Loans in Uxbridge Road. Old Herbie Weedon, he’s his boss. He got Leanne into it. Give her a loan against her benefit. Y
ou know what the interest is like on them sort of loans! She’s getting further and further into debt, and Lenny’s going round muscling her—’
‘Getting at her money before you can,’ Atherton suggested.
‘He was frightening her!’ Eddie protested. ‘You never saw it like I did. Leanne was crying her eyes out. She didn’t want to tell me at first, but I got it out of her. She was worried sick about it. So I went after him.’
‘How did you know he’d be in the Phoenix that evening?’
‘I didn’t, not for sure. But he often was. Anyway, he wasn’t there when I went in. I had a few pints and waited, and he come in just before closing. So he goes up and talks to Sonny Collins, and I wait till he’s finished, and then I goes up to him and says, “You’ve been messing about with my woman, and I’m not having it.” So he tries to pretend he don’t know what I’m talking about and we start having a shouting match and Sonny Collins says, “For Gawd’s sake take it outside, Lenny,” so Lenny legs it for the door and I follow him. And outside I grab him and I say, “You’re not getting away that easy,” and we start rowing again, and then I lose me rag and throw one at him, only he puts his arm up, and the next minute he’s hit me right in the eye.’ Eddie paused for breath and put an unconscious hand up to touch the bruise tenderly. ‘Gawdamighty, you’d never think it could hurt that much. Otherwise I’d have had him. As it was, I went kind of dizzy for a minute, and while I’m standing there swearing off a blue streak, waiting for me vision to clear, right, he legs it, the mouldy little coward.’
‘Which way?’
‘Down past the football ground. Time I could look around, he was out of sight. So I went straight to Carol Ann’s.’
‘Why did you go there?’
‘Well, I got me own place, but she was nearer.’ He drooped a bit further. ‘I didn’t want to walk about looking like that. You never know who might see. If it got out—! And I didn’t know how bad me eye was. I didn’t know if I ought to go up the Casualty. I thought she could have a look at it.’ He looked at them pathetically. And I been there ever since. That’s it and all about it.’
‘Why didn’t you go home on Tuesday morning?’
‘I told you, I didn’t want anyone to see me with an eye like that.’
‘Come on, Eddie. You were scared, weren’t you? You’d killed him and you were lying low.’
‘No, I never!’
‘What did you do with the knife, Eddie? A flick-knife, was it?’
‘I’ve never had no flick-knife.’
‘Did you make Carol Ann get rid of it for you? It wasn’t right to get her involved. That makes her an accessory, you know. She didn’t deserve that. But then you’re a bit of a bastard when it comes to women, aren’t you? You don’t care what happens to them as long as you can save your own miserable hide.’
‘It wasn’t like that! I never killed him! I haven’t got a knife!’
‘I’m sure you haven’t got one now,’ Slider said, and with a glance at Atherton, passed the ball over to him.
‘Tissue of lies?’ Atherton said when they left him.
‘Full box of Kleenex,’ Slider responded, but he sounded thoughtful.
Swilley, who had been having a go at Carol Ann, met them back in the office. The rest of the team gathered round hopefully. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘She’s got her story tight in her head and she’s sticking to it. She says he arrived on her doorstep about half past eleven Monday night with a black eye, saying he’d been in a fight, and he hasn’t left the house since. He was so upset she called in sick to stay home and look after him. She says he’s a real baby about hurting himself, like all men. Well, that bit rings true at least.’
‘Ta muchly,’ said Hollis on behalf of them all.
Swilley ignored him. ‘I found out how Karen Peacock knew about it, by the way. So much for Carol Ann phoning her – it was her phoned Carol Ann. She’d heard about the fight and wanted to know if Eddie was all right. Eddie had given her Carol Ann’s phone number, the dipstick. Any luck with yours, boss?’
Slider shared the result of the interview with them. ‘Trouble is, we haven’t got any exact times,’ he said. ‘The fight took place just about, or just after, closing time, which could mean anything from eleven to twenty past. And he got to Carol Ann’s house at about eleven-thirty.’
‘Which is five minutes’ walk from the Phoenix,’ Atherton put in.
‘But Lenny was stabbed – we assume – in the park,’ Swilley said, ‘which means they either went over the South Africa gate, or went round and through the Frithville gate, which has got to be ten minutes’ walk. And then another five, probably, back to Abdale Road.’
‘It doesn’t take long to stab somebody,’ Mackay said. ‘Even with fifteen minutes’ walking, it’s still enough time if the fight happened anything up to ten past.’
‘But why would they go all that way round?’ Slider complained. ‘If they wanted to go into the park it would make more sense to climb over the gate only yards from where they were standing.’
‘Because if they climbed over someone might see them,’ Anderson suggested.
‘And we know there were no fingermarks on the gate to match Lenny’s, so we can assume they didn’t go over,’ Swilley said.
‘The fingerprint evidence doesn’t help at all,’ Slider said. ‘There was nothing clear on either gate, but it doesn’t mean some of the smears weren’t one of them, or both. But why would they go into the park at all?’
‘As I see it, guv,’ McLaren said, ‘Lenny runs off, climbs the gate to get away, meaning to run through the park and out that way. Cranston follows him, catches him up by the playground, they have another tussle, and he knifes him.’
‘Your brain’s come unstuck again,’ Swilley said impatiently. ‘Why would Lenny run away from Eddie? He’s already won the fight.’
‘All right,’ McLaren said comfortably, ‘Eddie runs away from Lenny, bunks over the gate in a panic, Lenny follows him to finish him off, corners him, Eddie’s got his knife out and – bang.’
‘It makes more sense that way,’ Hollis agreed.
‘Right,’ said McLaren, encouraged. ‘Then Eddie goes back over the gate and round to Carol Ann’s. Five minutes the lot.’
‘Why not through the park and out through the Frithville gate?’ Atherton asked.
‘The way I see it, he wants to get under cover as soon as poss,’ McLaren said. ‘Why would he go the long way round?’
‘Sometimes,’ Atherton conceded, ‘you almost sound like an intelligent life form, Maurice.’
‘I’m still not happy about all this climbing over gates,’ Slider said. ‘For one thing, there’d be some sign, surely, on Lenny’s clothes? And for another, if this was closing time there ought to have been people on the street. Someone would have seen them.’
‘Maybe they did and just aren’t coming forward,’ Atherton shrugged.
‘And another thing,’ Slider said, ‘Eddie said he’d seen Lenny in the Phoenix. Why did Sonny Collins say he’d never seen him before?’
‘You want a reason for Sonny Collins to lie?’ Atherton said incredulously.
‘And,’ Slider went on, ‘Eddie said that Collins said “Take it outside, Lenny.”’
‘I refer the hon member to my previous answer.’
‘It looks straightforward enough to me, guv,’ Hollis said. And a right squalid little story it is. Nasty small-time lowlife preying off women. Benefit fraud, loan shark muscle-men. Two bits o’ scum squabbling over their miserable pickings like two dogs with a mouldy bone. And it ends like usual with one dead and one in the slammer where he belongs.’
‘What a poetic way you have of putting it,’ Atherton said.
‘The trouble is,’ Slider said, ‘that we haven’t got a shred of proof. Eddie doesn’t deny the fight, but that doesn’t prove he’s the murderer. We’ve no witness, no weapon, no timetable. All we’ve got is a motive.’
‘That’ll do it, nine times out of ten,’ Mackay said.
‘But it’s a start?’ McLaren pleaded.
‘It’s a start,’ Slider allowed kindly.
‘It’s more than that,’ Atherton said. ‘We started off this case with a sack of people who all had one eye, no surname and no address. I think we’ve worked wonders to get this far.’
‘Yes, well, now we’ve got to start finding some evidence,’ Slider reminded him.
‘What are we going to do with Carol Ann, boss?’ Swilley asked. ‘I think we’ll have to let her go pretty soon. She’s coming over all operatic. Dying duck in a thunderstorm.’
‘Ah yes, duck à l’orage,’ said Atherton.
‘She can go any time she likes,’ Slider said. ‘She’s here voluntarily. I’d like to search her house though.’
‘They’ve had two days to tidy up.’
‘But we might spot what he used as a weapon, or there might be a bloodstain on something. It’s surprising what they miss.’
‘I don’t think she’ll agree,’ Swilley said doubtfully.
‘She will. There’s that video recorder, remember.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Bra-Tangled Spanner
‘You’ll have to rewrite your TV statement,’ Porson said.
Slider’s heart sank. ‘I was hoping I could get out of that, now we know Eddie’s and Lenny’s surnames.’
‘You don’t know Lenny’s address.’
‘Yes, but we’ve got a lead on that. His employer’s bound to have it.’
‘Fair enough. But you said yourself there’s got to be witnesses. I agree with you. All this fighting and climbing over gates – someone saw something, that’s crystal, but no-one’s come forward. Got to shake ’em up. Once the community starts turning a blind ear to crime, you’re walking down a thin blue line. I’m not having any part of my ground turned into a no-show area. Nothing emerged from the door-to-door?’
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