When they were alone again, she said, ‘So, what did you want to talk to me about?’
‘I think you know that,’ Atherton said. ‘Trevor Bates, of course.’
She looked round with an instinctive, guilty movement to see that no-one was listening. ‘I told you, I don’t know him.’
Atherton smiled. ‘Yes, you told me. But I know that isn’t true. And if you didn’t want to tell me the truth, why are you here? Have a prawn ball.’
‘Look,’ she said, leaning forward a little, ‘I do want to tell you, but I don’t want to get into trouble. Do you promise me no-one will know I’ve been talking to you?’
‘Scout’s honour,’ said Atherton.
She frowned. ‘I’m serious.’
‘So am I. This is a very serious matter. Two people have been murdered.’
Now her eyes widened. ‘Murdered?’ she gasped. ‘I didn’t know that. I thought it was about—’
‘About what?’
She shook her head. ‘That’s awful. You think he did it? Oh God, that’s awful! I kind of guessed he was a bad guy, but I never thought … Were they women?’ she asked suddenly. ‘The people he killed?’
‘We don’t know that he killed them. And, no, they weren’t women. But we have our reasons for suspecting he’s involved and we need to know everything we can find out about him. So, tell me, how do you know him?’
‘I don’t really know him,’ she said. She seemed shocked. The prawn ball between her chopsticks slipped out and fell back into her bowl without her noticing. ‘I’ve seen him coming and going, and I know his name. I mean, I know the man I’ve seen is Trevor Bates because he was signing in one day when I was passing through reception and I heard the security guy call him by his name.’
‘So he comes to the legation? Often?’
‘I’ve seen him around a few times. I don’t know how often.’
‘What is his business there?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘Can’t, or won’t?’ She hesitated, looking down unhappily at her lunch. ‘What does a cultural legation do, anyway?’
‘Oh, all sorts of stuff,’ she said automatically. ‘Promoting United States goods and cultural exports, protecting our intellectual property, liaising between artists and governments, dealing with the media and British Government agencies—’
‘I see,’ said Atherton ironically. And what has Trevor Bates to do with all this?’
‘He – he provides some kind of goods and services. I can’t say what,’ she said. Still her eyes were down.
Atherton waited for more, and eventually broke the silence by saying, ‘Well, if that’s all you’ve got to tell me, it was a bit of a waste of time meeting, wasn’t it? Or was it just an excuse to date me?’
She looked up. ‘I said he was a bad man. I don’t mean in his business – though he may be a crook for all I know – but I mean in his private activities.’
‘Which are?’
‘He – he has strange sexual tastes.’ It seemed an effort for her to get it out, and Atherton’s interest quickened.
‘Tell me about it,’ he said more gently. ‘How do you know? Has he done anything to you? Or said anything?’
‘Oh, no! Not me. But there was this girl – she’s gone back now. She worked in another department but she and I got friendly. We used to lunch and go to the movies together, that sort of thing.’ Atherton nodded, to encourage her, and she went on, with gathering fluency. ‘Well, sometimes we talked girl talk, you know the way it goes. And one evening when we went out Mr Bates had been in the building and, I don’t remember how it came up, but I said I thought he was good-looking, in a weird kind of way. Kind of charismatic, you know, with all that auburn hair and that pale skin. And a great body. And terrific clothes. Well, Katy – this girl – she looked at me kind of sideways, and said I had to be joking, and she asked if I’d spoken to him. I said no I hadn’t, and she said I should keep it that way. “If he comes on to you,” she said, “you run a mile. He’s bad news,” she said.’
‘Bad news in what way?’ Atherton asked.
She shivered a little, unconsciously. ‘Katy said he likes hurting women. She said that’s how he gets his kicks. She said he’s got this house not far from our place, built like a fortress, with all kinds of creepy security guards and stuff to keep people out. She said he takes women there and does stuff to them and takes movies of it so he can watch it all again later on his own.’
‘Had Katy been to his house?’
‘I don’t know. I guess not.’
‘Had he done anything to her?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘So how did she know about his strange tastes?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask. She just said what I’ve told you, but she sounded like she knew what she was talking about.’ Karen looked apologetic. ‘I guess it doesn’t sound like so much now I tell it. But I believed her, and if ever I saw him round the building I made sure to stay away from him and not catch his eye, you know? I still believe it. I mean, there must be something wrong about him, or why are you here asking me questions?’
Atherton didn’t follow that by-way. ‘You said this Katy had gone back? You mean to the States?’
‘Yes, about a year ago. Her tour was over – or, wait! No, it wasn’t. She went early, now I come to think of it.’
‘Do you know why she went early?’
‘I never knew anything about it beforehand. One day she just wasn’t there and when I asked someone from her office they said she’d gone back. But it does happen. People get moved for all sorts of reasons. Only, later, someone said she’d been sent home under discipline for talking too much.’ She looked an appeal at Atherton. ‘So you see how important it is that you don’t split on me? That’s why I didn’t say anything when you first asked me. If you get disciplined it ruins your whole career.’
‘Well, that was just a waste of time,’ Atherton reported, swinging through the door.
‘It took you a good long lunch to find that out,’ Slider commented.
‘I couldn’t rush away. She was so worried about anyone guessing she was talking to me, I had to make it look as though we were lunching for pleasure. I had to cover her back.’
‘As long as that’s all you were covering.’
‘Wot, me? I’m not on the pull any more. I’ve got my hands full with Sue.’
‘And Sandra Whitty?’
Atherton eyed him defensively. ‘If it’s about saying I was working late—’
‘My own excuse on many occasions, I know,’ said Slider. ‘Who am I to complain? It’s none of my business anyway.’
‘But?’
‘I thought you were settled with Sue, that’s all.’
‘I am. Look, it was just a one-off. I’m not seeing her again. Apart from anything else, she smells faintly of formaldehyde. Very off-putting.’
‘So why did you do it?’
Atherton tried for an insouciant smile and almost made it. ‘Sheer force of habit. I couldn’t help myself.’
‘I think we’d better book you in at the vet’s,’ Slider said gravely.
‘I know, I know,’ Atherton sighed. ‘It takes time to alter the customs of a lifetime, that’s all. I’m getting there slowly.’
‘But with all that rampant totty out there practically gagging for it—?’
‘I have never expressed myself so vulgarly,’ Atherton said with dignity. ‘Do you want to know what Karen Phillips had to say or not?’
‘It’ll be charged to expenses, I suppose, so I might as well,’ Slider said.
Atherton told him. ‘But it’s all pure hearsay,’ he concluded. ‘Even the unknown Katy didn’t give a source.’
‘Yes,’ said Slider. ‘It sounds like one of those “everyone knows” rumours. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true, in some form. But of course we can’t use it.’
‘I’m glad you acknowledge that much.’
‘There’s been a development here while yo
u’ve been hard at it, lunching your socks off.’
‘Purely in the line of duty.’
‘That goes without saying. Well, my news is that Swilley’s been pulling together the various morgue pieces on Bates and there’s precious little of it. But one interesting fact did emerge. It seems his background is in electronics.’
Atherton perked up. ‘So all that gear in his house wasn’t just rich men’s toys?’
‘He did an electrical engineering degree, then a postgrad in his special area of audio-electronic systems, and then he joined a company called Shenyang.’ He looked hopefully at Atherton, but Atherton shook his head. ‘No, I hadn’t heard of them either,’ Slider said, ‘but apparently they’re a very big name in microelectronics – they’re the Sanyo of surveillance devices.’
‘Bugs.’
‘Not to put too fine a point on it. Much of their work, naturally, is both funded and consumed by the Chinese Government.’
Atherton nodded. ‘We all know governments are the biggest buggers of them all. Well, that’s a nice pointer, given the bug in Herbie Weedon’s office. And the masts on top of Bates’s house.’
‘That’s not all. The capitalist face of Shenyang,’ Slider went on, ‘is their prestige Shenyang Tower building in Hong Kong. Which was where Trevor Bates worked in the research and development department in those far-off days when he was young – and when, by coincidence, an ex-tar called Colin Collins was running a little tattoo and we-know-not-what-else parlour in Kowloon. Interesting, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Provocative,’ Atherton agreed. ‘But did they know each other?’
‘That’s what we’re trying to find out. Hollis is tracking down some of Sonny’s old service pals, while Swilley is trying to work it from the other end and find someone who knew Bates in those days. That bit’s harder. Now that we don’t own Hong Kong any more, Shenyang is effectively behind the Great Wall, and getting anything out of the Chinese is like trying to lift paving slabs with a nail file.’
‘Still,’ said Atherton hopefully.
‘Yes,’ Slider agreed.
‘Well,’ Atherton acknowledged generously, ‘it looks as if you might have been right about Bates after all. It all begins to add up against him.’
‘Even if we prove he knew Collins, it doesn’t prove he’s the boss we’re looking for,’ Slider said.
‘Now you’re just being perverse,’ said Atherton.
There was a repeat appeal on the six-thirty regional news programme, for witnesses who saw anyone entering or leaving the park or walking along Frithville Gardens late on the Monday night or early on the Tuesday morning. It was done by the news team themselves, with an OB shot of the street and the park gates to jog sluggish memories, so Slider was not obliged to expose himself again. He watched it on the television in Porson’s room, without too much hope that it would yield results. They had pretty well come to the end of the crop from the previous appeal, and nothing had turned up. In a place like Shepherd’s Bush, people didn’t notice each other much, unless someone was trying to draw attention to himself; and whoever killed Lenny Baxter was too professional to do that.
He was back in his own room, thinking about going home, when the phone rang. Blimey, that’s quick, he thought, picking up. ‘Slider,’ he said.
‘It’s DI Priestfield here, Harrow Road. You put out an all units on a male IC3, name of Everet Boston? Well, I think we’ve found him. We’ve got someone who fits the description and the e-fit you sent out, but there’s nothing on him to ID him.’
‘Thanks very much for letting me know,’ said Slider. ‘Keep hold of him, will you, until I get someone over there? I don’t want him to go walkabout again.’
‘You can take your time. He’s not going anywhere,’ said Priestfield laconically. ‘We fished him out of the Grand Union Canal. He’s in the morgue at St Mary’s now. He’s well dead.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A L’Eau C’est L’Heure
Slider had to go himself to identify the body of Everet Boston, remembering at the last moment that he was the only one of the team who had met him face to face. Boston had been dispatched efficiently with a blow to the back of the neck, fracturing the cervical spine at the level of the second and third vertebrae – the ‘hangman’s blow’. A quick death, he thought, for what comfort that was, which was very little. The whole thing sickened him. Gang wars were bad enough when it was pot-headed youths or rival pushers knifing each other in the heat of the moment, but this calculated removal of people merely out of greed, for threatening a livelihood, was disheartening and disgusting.
Back at Harrow Road nick, Priestfield gave him tea and talked him through what they knew, which was virtually nothing, while eyeing him with the interest and sympathy accorded to one visibly on the brink of disaster.
‘So what’s this now – four?’ he asked.
‘It doesn’t take long to get round on the grapevine, does it?’ Slider complained. Anyway, this one’s on your ground, and I’m no poacher.’
‘Thanks,’ Priestfield said shortly. ‘But it is connected with your ongoing, I take it?’
‘I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,’ said Slider wearily. ‘I’ll give you what we’ve got, but it’s not much. They’re all professional hits, and you know what that means.’
‘No forensic evidence.’
‘Right.’
‘And unless you can get to the brains behind it—’
‘Right.’
‘Ah well,’ Priestfield said, ‘at least they’re not innocent bystanders. It makes me sick when some old keff gets blagged for his pension.’ He stretched until his shoulder muscles crackled. ‘God, it’s been a long day.’
‘Are you finished now?’
‘Yes, I was only hanging on to see you. The DCI’s at the scene and there’s nothing for me to do here tonight. I’m going home, see if my dog still recognises me. You can bet the wife won’t. You?’
‘I haven’t got a wife,’ said Slider.
‘Oh well, you’re all right then,’ said Priestfield.
Slider thought of the cold empty flat and another tepid takeaway meal congealing in its container even as he forked it. ‘Yes, I’m all right,’ he said.
When he got back to the station, Nicholls warned him that Porson was in. ‘Came through looking like a ghost.’
‘Say anything?’
‘Not a word.’
Slider climbed the stairs and went quietly to the door of Porson’s room. It was open, as always, and through it he saw the man himself sitting at his desk, bowed a little forward, hands clasped on the desk-top, staring at nothing. He was so still he might have been asleep, except that his eyes were open.
After a moment, Slider said gently, ‘Sir?’
When Porson looked up, Slider realised he had been looking at the framed photograph that always stood on his desk. He also realised that he had never actually seen the photograph, though it was not hard to guess who it was of.
‘Did you want something?’ Porson said. His voice came out so unused he had to clear his throat.
‘I was just going to ask you that,’ Slider said.
Porson made a throwaway gesture of one hand. ‘Got to be somewhere. Can’t settle at home. Keep seeing her out of the corner of my eye. Think I hear her calling me from another room.’ He met Slider’s eyes with a kind of shyness. ‘Maybe that’s what gives rise to ghost stories.’
Slider thought of what Nicholls had said, and remembered that someone – was it C.S. Lewis? – had said that a ghost was a person out of his place. To him, of course, Porson’s place had always been here. It had been impossible to think of him having a home life – but then it nearly always was with senior brass. By definition they were inhuman. But now Porson’s heart and mind were plainly elsewhere, and he was out of place here in his office.
With a visible effort, Porson roused himself. ‘Any developments?’
It seemed inhumane to drop it on him; but then Slider thought perhaps it would serve as
a useful counter-irritant. ‘We’ve lost Everet Boston.’
‘What do you mean, lost him?’ Porson asked sharply. ‘I didn’t know we’d found him.’
‘Somebody else found him,’ Slider explained, ‘floating in the Grand Union Canal.’
‘Oh, bloody Nora,’ said Porson. ‘Go on, then, give it to me.’ Slider told him what he knew. ‘Well, that’s it then!’ Porson said with large exasperation. ‘Finito. We’ve got no evidence against anyone, and we’ve lost every witness we had who might have led us to this so-called big boss. We might as well pack our towels and go.’
Pack our towels? Slider wondered. Was that a Germans-and-deckchair image, or had he caught the tail of ‘throw in the towel’ as it wandered across his line of vision? He shook the thought away. ‘There’s still the girl, sir. Lenny Baxter’s girlfriend. She might know something about the boss, or at least point us towards someone else in the organisation. If we could find her,’ he added fairly.
‘If she’s still alive,’ said Porson. ‘What chance they won’t have cleared her up like they’ve cleared up Boston?’ Slider didn’t answer that. After a moment Porson asked, ‘What are you doing to trace her?’
Slider almost shrugged. ‘The only lead we’ve got is the Susan who used to be friends with her and Lenny, who may or may not be Susie Mabbot, who ran a house in Notting Hill.’
‘That’s not bloody much!’
Slider admitted it. ‘We’re trying to trace her but we’ve had no luck so far. And we still might get some witnesses coming forward from the repeat TV appeal tonight.’
Porson hauled a sigh up from his boots. ‘Palfreyman’s been leaning on me, you know that. And Mr Wetherspoon’s leaning on him. Now there’s a fourth body—’
Gone Tomorrow Page 25