Gone Tomorrow

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  A man’s – presumably Lenny’s – clothes were still present, on the rail and in drawers, and men’s toiletries and an electric razor were still in the bathroom. ‘His girlfriend’s done a runner,’ Swilley concluded.

  ‘And in some panic, by the look of it,’ Slider said. The air in the bedroom was strong with her scent. Paris, he thought. Yes, there was an atomiser, left behind with a bottle of body moisturiser on the dressing table.

  The sitting room smelled of Lenny’s French cigarettes.

  ‘He wasn’t short of a bob or two,’ Swilley observed, noting the hi-fi gear, the very latest wide-screen TV, the new video recorder. ‘I suppose that’s why he had the window locks. Well, there’s nothing for us here by the look of it.’

  ‘That’s it,’ Slider said. ‘The look of it. Just stand still a minute, get an overall picture.’

  She obeyed, but after a minute she said, ‘What, boss?’

  ‘Someone else has been here. There are things missing.’

  ‘We know that. She’s packed and run.’

  ‘Yes, and that’s disguising it to an extent. But apart from her frantic scrabbling about, someone else has been through the house. A professional.’

  ‘I don’t see it,’ Swilley said.

  ‘Remember the bedroom: her dresser drawers are on the floor, but his have been pulled out and left out. Why would she do that? She must know where things are kept. Someone searched his drawers, and a professional starts at the bottom to save wasting time pushing them back in. And in here, the stuff on the lower shelf of that table has been taken out and roughly stacked on the floor. Why? And look, there by the telephone, there’s a gap in the mess on the top. Smallish, square – an address book?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Swilley said unwillingly.

  He looked at her. All right, a little bet. Try last number redial. I bet you a tenner it’s the speaking clock.’

  She didn’t accept the bet, which was just as well, because he was right.

  ‘An amateur wouldn’t be likely to think of that. We’d better try 1471, but I’ll bet that’s been blocked too. It’ll probably be a public phone box number. These people know what they’re doing.’

  ‘But what were they after?’

  Slider knew a rhetorical question when he heard one. ‘We’d better have a search team in to go over the place, but I doubt if it will yield anything. They’ll have taken anything incriminating, and they’ll have worn gloves. And we’ll have to interview the neighbours, and see if anyone knows who the girl is and where she’s likely to be.’

  ‘Boss, if this place was done over by an expert, could it really have been Eddie Cranston? I mean, he comes over as such a plonker.’

  ‘Yes, and if he’s only acting the idiot he should be up for an Oscar,’ Slider said.

  ‘Carol Ann’s no fool, though. Sharp as a packet of needles, that one.’

  ‘But she’s got no form.’

  ‘That we know about. Maybe we ought to look into her background. She did shield Eddie.’

  Slider gave a tired smile. ‘Maybe she’s not that bright, after all, then.’

  He went for the drink with Nutty. They walked round to the Crown and Sceptre in Melina Road where they served Fuller’s, which was worth the extra distance; and, since Nutty didn’t want to drink on an empty stomach and Slider didn’t know where his next meal was coming from, they ordered toasted cheese sandwiches as well. When they came, Slider noted without surprise that even pub sandwich garnish had succumbed to the cherry tomato mania. He had nothing against cherry tomatoes except that any attempt to cut them shot them off the plate with a velocity that could lay out a gemsbok at fifty paces, and putting them in the mouth whole and biting down was a not entirely pleasant experience that could result in doing the nose trick with tomato seeds.

  ‘It’s presentation again,’ he said to Nutty. ‘Trying to find a new way to make you buy something you’ve got used to.’

  ‘People like miniatures,’ Nutty said. ‘God knows why. It’s a fad, like those selection boxes of tiny wee Bountys and Mars Bars. Mary’s got a friend who collects doll’s house furniture. She hasn’t a doll’s house, you understand. She just thrills to Welsh dressers and Regency chairs small enough to stand on the palm of her hand.’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘She seems normal enough otherwise. But everybody seems to collect something nowadays.’

  ‘I seem to be shedding rather than collecting,’ Slider said. ‘Wives, children, homes …’

  ‘So what’s going to happen with you and Joanna?’ Nutty asked, licking the foam from his upper lip. ‘I have to tell you, Bill, that’s one of the great relationships. Antony and Cleopatra, pork pie and mustard – you two just go together.’

  ‘It’s like that when she’s back,’ Slider smiled. ‘Last time – well, not to go into details, but it was like the first time we met. Couldn’t keep our hands off each other.’

  ‘Aye, a-huh,’ Nutty said wisely, ‘but a relationship’s not all damp hands, is it? Nice though that is.’

  Slider agreed. ‘I want her there all the time. I want to do everything with her. Even the shopping – that’s how far gone I am! God knows we’ve got little enough time to be together anyway, with her job and my job.’

  ‘But this new job of hers – it is temporary?’

  ‘She’s doing it on a trial basis, but it’s a permanent job.’ He turned his glass round and round on the bar top. ‘I keep thinking, if she stays away, maybe she’ll meet someone else.’ He looked up, met Nutty’s eyes, and shrugged. ‘It happens.’

  ‘Maybe you will,’ Nutty said.

  Slider shook his head. ‘I’m starting to think maybe I will have to chuck it in and go over there. I’ll have got my twenty-five in at the end of this year.’

  ‘That’s only half final salary. You can’t live on that.’

  ‘I might be able to find a job where the language isn’t a problem. Tourist guide or something. Of course, she’d be travelling, but I’d see more of her there than I will here.’

  Nicholls thought it all sounded hopeless. ‘You’d miss the Job,’ he said unemphatically.

  ‘Like the toothache,’ Slider said with a swift smile. ‘Still, it helps to pass the time.’

  ‘How did your search go?’ Nicholls asked, taking the offered exit from the tender subject. ‘Was Baxter’s lassie there? Did you find the murder weapon in her underwear drawer?’

  ‘Why should you think that?’ Slider asked, startled. He thought of the flimsy knickers, abandoned on the floor. Was Nutty psychic?

  ‘That’s where women always keep things. First place your professional burglar looks for the jewellery – you know that.’

  ‘But do you think she did it?’

  ‘Christ, man, don’t look at me!’ Nutty protested. ‘I’ve not been following yon soap opera. It’s just a lifetime’s conclusion that women are at the bottom of most things. Are you going off Cranston, then?’

  ‘Cranston leaves a lot of questions unanswered,’ Slider admitted. ‘It’s starting to look more like a professional job, and Cranston doesn’t come across as that organised.’

  ‘Well, I hope it is him,’ Nicholls said. ‘He’s a nasty little creep, and from what I’ve observed, a professional getter-away with things. I don’t like freeloaders. Another pint?’

  ‘That sounded like a very pointed juxtaposition,’ Slider said. ‘It’s my round – same again?’

  While he was waiting for them to be pulled, his mobile rang. He had to go outside to get the privacy and the quiet to answer it.

  ‘Hullo, Mr S.’ It was the husky tones of Tidy Barnet, one of his snouts – though nowadays they were supposed to call them CHIS: Covert Human Intelligence Sources. Some boy wonder destined for great things spent his days in his comfy office at the Yard thinking up things like that.

  ‘Hullo. You got something for me?’

  ‘Seen you on the telly,’ said Tidy. ‘You was good.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Manner born. The wife recko
ns you could be a pin-up.’

  ‘It can be my second career. I’ll need one if I don’t get a break soon.’

  ‘Got a bit of gen for you. That Lenny Baxter – lived down Coningham, right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘He was seen outside his house Mundy night, about half eleven, quart’ twelve, talking to a pair o’ right tasty bastards.’

  Slider’s pulse quickened. ‘Got any names?’

  ‘Nah. My bloke don’t know ’em, but he knows the type. Muscle-men for some big wheel. Top-price minders. Baseball caps, shades, leather jackets. Wearing gloves, and it was a warm night. Well nasty. Unlucky Lenny was in over ’is ’ead all right, right?’

  ‘You don’t know who killed him, I suppose?’

  ‘Nah. Nobody don’t seem to know.’ Tidy sounded slightly surprised at this. ‘I’ve ’ad me ear to the ground, but there’s nuffink going round.’

  ‘Well, thanks anyway. Keep listening, and thanks for the tip. Oh, by the way, this stuff about the minders – is it good?’

  ‘It’s A1, Mr S.’

  ‘You’re starting to sound like one of us,’ Slider said. Police graded intelligence using the four-by-four system, starting at A1 at the top, for reliable information from a proven source, down to X0 at the bottom, for something gleaned from an alien from outer space.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Bet your Bottom Deux Lards

  The main office was full of sunshine, the smell of McLaren’s fried egg sandwich and the murmur of voices. Atherton strolled in with a bag of doughnuts for everybody.

  ‘What are you so happy about?’ Swilley demanded suspiciously.

  ‘Can’t I just have a generous impulse?’ He opened the bag under her nose and shook it gently. ‘That one’s got cream in it. Go on, Norm, you know you want to.’

  ‘Oh, all right. Ta.’

  ‘The woman tempted I, and she fell.’

  ‘Where d’you get ’em?’ Anderson asked, edging up and pincering in.

  ‘The baker’s under the railway bridge,’ Atherton said. He held the bag out to Mackay. ‘There’s a Scottish girl serving in there. I said to her, “Is that a cream cake or a meringue?” and she said, “Ye’re no wrang, it is a cream cake.”’

  ‘Your Scotch accent’s bollocks,’ McLaren said as he was passed by. ‘Here, don’t I get one?’

  ‘For Chrissakes, you’re already eating a sandwich.’

  ‘Well, I can have it for later, can’t I?’

  ‘Surely an oeuf’s an oeuf ?’

  McLaren didn’t get it. ‘I can have it for afters,’ he said, finishing his sandwich in one goose-throttling swallow.

  ‘Maurice, I love you, and I want to have your babies,’ Atherton said. ‘Here, take one, then. And one for little moi, and that just leaves one for teacher.’

  ‘Where is he, anyway?’ Mackay complained.

  ‘He’s gone upstairs to see Mr Porson,’ Hollis said.

  ‘Porson’s not in,’ said McLaren through the sugar sticking to the egg yolk on his lips. ‘His old lady’s sick. I heard Sergeant Paxo on the dog about it when I come in.’

  ‘What is it, the flu?’

  ‘Dunno. I never heard. But she must be bad for the old Syrup to stop home.’

  Slider came in. ‘Are we ready to go? Did anyone get me any tea?’

  ‘Over here, guv.’

  ‘What’s up with Mr Porson’s old lady, guv?’

  ‘Word spreads in here like a virus in a hospital ward. I don’t know. I was only just told he hasn’t come in this morning. I expect we’ll hear later. Let’s get on, shall we? Any minute now the SCG will have sickies coming back on duty and they’ll want this case back.’

  ‘And we don’t want the sceptre of failure stalking us,’ Atherton said, quoting Porson. Norma glared at him. ‘What? It’s affectionate,’ he protested.

  ‘Some of you may know,’ Slider said loudly, ‘that we got a call last night after my TV appearance—’ He waited for the outbreak of whistles and catcalls to stop. ‘—from a lone community-minded member of the public who was passing the Phoenix on his way home on Monday night and saw the fight between Cranston and Baxter. That’s the good news. The bad news, from our point of view, is that his account largely agrees with Cranston’s. It was between ten and a quarter past eleven, our witness estimates. The men were standing outside arguing when he first noticed them. He was on the other side of the road, approaching from the Bloemfontein Road end, and kept an eye on them in case they came his way.’

  ‘Your nervous type,’ said Mackay.

  ‘Sensible,’ Swilley corrected.

  ‘Anyway,’ Slider continued, ‘as he drew nearer there was a scuffle and the taller, darker one reeled away, swearing and clutching his face, apparently hurt. The other one immediately made off, not running but walking fast, down South Africa Road past the football ground towards Bloemfontein Road – which I don’t need to tell you is the opposite direction from the park. Our man went past quickly, not wanting to appear too interested, but when he’d put a bit of distance in he looked back to make sure he was safe, and saw the taller one heading for the cut-through by Batman Close.’

  There were murmurs of comment, over which Hollis said, ‘We’re getting witness in today to look at mugshots just to be sure, but the descriptions fit all right. It seems like the goods.’

  ‘And I had a bit of information from one of my snouts last night,’ Slider went on, and repeated what Tidy Barnet had said.

  ‘Coningham Road’s more or less opposite the end of Bloemfontein Road,’ Mackay said, ‘so Baxter was probably heading home when he left Cranston.’

  ‘If he was seen alive at a quarter to twelve, that lets Cranston out anyway, doesn’t it?’ Anderson said. ‘His alibi’s from half past eleven.’

  ‘Only if you believe it,’ Swilley said.

  ‘They could have met again later, we don’t know,’ Mackay said.

  ‘Let’s go through things in order, shall we?’ Slider said. ‘Lenny Baxter was stabbed to death some time between eleven forty-five Tuesday night and eight o’clock Wednesday morning. That’s a fact. His body was found in the children’s playground in Hammersmith Park. That’s a fact. Eddie Cranston had a fight with him at about ten past eleven. That’s a fact.’

  ‘I think we could assume he was killed in the park,’ Atherton said. ‘The general public may be unobservant, but you can’t carry a dead body through the streets like a roll of lino.’

  ‘My own feeling is that he was killed where we found him,’ Slider said, ‘but we have always to bear the other possibility in mind. It’s possible he was taken in a van up to the Frithville gate, though I think someone would have noticed that. No-one’s come forward, but of course that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.’

  ‘You’re not your usual cautious self today, guv,’ Atherton complained.

  ‘If he was killed elsewhere, wouldn’t that let out Cranston?’ Anderson asked.

  ‘Not at all. As Swilley says, we don’t know that his alibi is true. And I’m afraid the new evidence that Baxter was seen alive at eleven forty-five doesn’t let him out either. We’ve got a wide leeway on the time of death. We don’t know exactly when Lenny was killed. It would be nice to be able to rule Cranston definitely out or definitely in, but life ain’t like that, ladies and germs.’

  ‘I just hate having anything Slob Eddie’s told us turn out to be true,’ Atherton complained.

  Slider continued. ‘Now, the case against Cranston, such as it is – and let me remind you we don’t have any evidence against him – has the merit of simplicity, but it leaves questions unanswered. What did he do with the weapon?’

  ‘No problem there,’ Swilley said. ‘Even if he really didn’t leave Shotter’s house between then and the time we found him, it still gave her two full days to get rid of it.’

  ‘Which would make her an accessory and an accomplished liar,’ Slider said.

  ‘I’ve put some enquiries in train about her,’ Swilley said. ‘Sh
e’s got no record, but DC Hughes at Acton owes me one. He’s going to sniff around the Elephant for me.’

  ‘You conjure up some dainty images,’ Atherton said.

  ‘The pub, dickbrain.’

  ‘Second question,’ Slider intervened, ‘if it was Cranston, why did he go through Lenny’s pockets, what did he take, where is it, and why didn’t he take the money?’

  No-one had any suggestions to offer. After a pause, McLaren said, ‘Well, it’s still Cranston for me.’

  ‘That’s the kiss of death to any theory,’ Atherton said.

  ‘You’re such a snot,’ Swilley snapped, and turned to McLaren. ‘Go on, why?’

  McLaren blinked in her sudden warmth. ‘Well, we’ve got nothing else. And he did have a fight with him.’

  The warmth switched off. ‘You’ve got to lay off those stupid pills, Maurice. Boss, if it wasn’t Cranston, what was Lenny doing in the park? Was he meeting somebody? If he was, maybe it was him that used the Frithville gate. We know he went home, and that would be the logical way for him to come back.’

  ‘But where are the bolt-cutters?’ Hollis asked. And where’s the padlock and chain?’

  ‘Most likely the park keeper just forgot it and it never was locked,’ Mackay offered.

  ‘To back up the Cranston Is Innocent theory,’ Slider went on, ‘we’ve got all these dark hints that Lenny Baxter was mixed up in something bigger than collecting loan repayments from women on benefit.’

  ‘Herbie Weedon got quite apocalyptic about it,’ Atherton said.

  ‘Yes, but he wanted to get you off his tail,’ said Swilley. ‘On the other hand, there’s the evidence that Baxter’s pad was searched by a professional. They didn’t take his goods and chattels so they must have been after something else. Something that would incriminate someone, maybe.’