He thought. ‘Saturday night,’ he said.
‘You do realise it’s Monday night? No wonder you’re tired.’
‘Everything’s happening,’ he said. ‘We’ve made an arrest on one murder and we’re about to make an arrest on another, and what with one thing and another—’
‘Yes, I get the picture. That accounts for why you haven’t picked up your messages.’
‘You could have called me on my mobile,’ he said.
‘I’d have loved to,’ she said drily, ‘but it’s turned off.’
‘Oh yes,’ he said vaguely, ‘I did that to stop it ringing.’
‘That’ll do it,’ she agreed. ‘Have you eaten anything?’
‘Not for – oh, years and years,’ he said, managing to smile.
‘Come and eat, then. You can spare the time for that. Even Wellington took time out at Waterloo for a snack.’
‘Station buffets can be handy.’
‘They haven’t knocked the cheek out of you then,’ she noted, taking his hand and tugging, gently but insistently, like a child.
The canteen was quiet, and they took a corner table well out of earshot of anyone else. ‘You’re right, of course,’ he said, unloading his tray. ‘I’m famished.’
‘And the brain needs food to operate properly,’ Joanna said. He’d chosen the all-day breakfast, heavy on the beans; she had a piece of quiche and some salad. She wasn’t really hungry, but knew he wouldn’t eat if she didn’t. She talked inconsequentially while he stifled the first urgent pangs; then, when his fork-work slowed below warp speed, he told her about the case, and about Mary Coulsden.
She had always admired her cousin Everet, the slick, streetwise, ineffably sophisticated yet kind cousin Ev, her hero and icon of naughtiness. When he had introduced her to Lenny Baxter, she was predisposed to like him, as she would have liked anyone Ev recommended to her. But Lenny was handsome and well-built, smartly dressed, appeared to have money, and was generous with it. He had an air of edgy dangerousness that was missing from the more familiar Ev, which thrilled her; and he had charm, too, something that of course could not be known to anyone who had only ever met him dead.
She fell instantly into infatuation with him, and after only a few dates was ready to move out from her parents’ home and into his.
‘She was finding life at home too stifling anyway,’ Slider said. ‘A lively youngster with old parents, and church-going parents at that. All children want to rebel at some point.’
‘I bet you never did,’ Joanna said.
‘I grew my hair long in 1968,’ he mentioned.
‘Ruat coelum!’ she said, but he didn’t understand her pronunciation. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, things seemed all right at first for her with Lenny. She found him exciting, she liked spending money, smoking and drinking, and going about with him and his wicked friends to the sort of places she knew her parents would disapprove of. She was in love with him and thought he was in love with her. The first shock was in the course of a drunken party when he proposed to share her with two of his friends. She was drunk too, and rather excited by the wickedness, and went along with it, but the next morning she felt bad about it. She told Lenny she would never do anything like that again. Lenny told her not to be so narrow-minded and that it was just a piece of fun – and Lenny, after all, must know best.’
‘Yes, I can see how it would have gone,’ she said. ‘I bet he made fun of her parents’ religion.’
‘How did you know?’
‘Figures. Religion isn’t cool these days.’
Not long after the incident at the party, Lenny told her he wanted to ‘lend’ her to Ken Whalley in return for the key to the park.
‘She argued about that one; but he pressed her, saying old Ken was harmless and it would all be over in seconds. Then he was offended and said he’d thought she loved him and why wouldn’t she do this one little thing for him. In the end he wore her down, and she did it.’
‘What a bastard,’ Joanna said.
‘Yes. Of course, she began to realise in the end that he was a bastard, and to guess that he didn’t really love her. But if ever she got close to rebelling he’d charm her back again and tell her he loved her and buy her a present.’ He shook his head at it. ‘I’ve noticed time and again that women don’t seem to care how badly a man behaves, as long as he says he loves her. And vice versa – they’ll leave a good and loving man because he doesn’t use the words often enough.’
‘We’re so shallow and fickle,’ Joanna said, and he managed a troubled smile.
‘Sorry. All generalisations are false—’
‘Including that one,’ she finished for him.
So the truth was that Teena, who had first been mentioned to Slider as the tom Lenny lived with, was not a prostitute in the proper sense. It was all at Lenny’s instigation, sometimes for money – as time went on and his affairs became more involved, always for money – but there was another motive which Teena, from her innocent upbringing, only ever sensed and never clearly understood. Lenny liked lending her; he liked having her in company, and he liked to watch other men having her. She didn’t like it, felt besmirched and humiliated by it, but Lenny’s hold over her was absolute. She quickly learnt about his temper, and that the air of dangerousness which had thrilled her – and still did – was in fact the leading edge of a real violence. So out of fear and infatuation she stayed with him. Life was at least more exciting with him, and where else, after all, could she go? Certainly not back home. Lenny offered her soft drugs, and she relied on them more as time went on to soften the edges of her world and lend an air of unreality to the things her childhood conscience still told her were wrong.
She had no idea he was in money trouble, though she knew he spent freely and was losing money on the horses. Still his ‘business’ interests seemed so wide and varied she assumed they would cover his lifestyle. But as his money troubles got worse, and he got himself into more of a muddle, his temper grew worse and she grew more afraid of him. Sometimes now she wanted to get away from him, but the one time she had hinted at leaving him he had grabbed her by the neck and said if she ran away he would find her and kill her. It was what men like him said, and not all of them meant it, but she believed it. Who would take the risk that he didn’t? It was what accounted, said Slider, for so much abuse of women.
Then one day Lenny told Teena that the boss – the Needle himself – had seen her and fancied her.
‘How?’ Joanna asked. ‘I mean, where did he see her?’
‘In the Phoenix. There were CCTV cameras in there. We thought they were just for ordinary pub security, but of course they’d been put in by – or at least at the order of – Needle Bates, who liked to spy on his employees. Lenny had taken Teena in there several times. She is very pretty, of course; and it might have occurred to Bates that being under Lenny’s thumb she’d be compliant about his strange ways; and also, of course, he could be sure Lenny wouldn’t object.’
‘What a sweetheart,’ said Joanna.
‘Which?’
‘Both.’
‘Yes, Lenny wasn’t exactly above his company. Well, anyway, what he didn’t know was that Teena knew something about the Needle’s proclivities, having heard it from Susie Mabbot during one of those ladies’ loo confessions when they were out in foursome with Lenny and Everet. Susie made light of it, but Teena could see she hated it and feared the Needle. And of course Susie was now dead, and Teena had her suspicions about who had killed her. The evidence about all the tiny holes had not been generally released, but that only gave her imagination room to run riot. So she refused point-blank to do what she was told. First Lenny argued and cajoled – this was so important to his career, he would get into trouble if she didn’t do it, et cetera. Then he smacked her around a bit – but carefully, so as not to damage the goods – and told her if she didn’t obey, Bates would kill him, but not before he killed her.’
‘Poor kid.’
‘Yes. Anyway
, then things all came to a head at the same time. This is speculation, but I think Bates had decided to get rid of Lenny, partly because he was unreliable, and partly as a way to get Teena for himself. Lenny must have been dragging his feet about “lending” her, hoping to talk or bully Teena into it. Teena, meanwhile, had worked herself up into a pitch of terror. Lenny had told her he was going to force her to do as she was told and be nice to the boss, and she couldn’t see any way out. She apparently tried to get Everet to help her but he didn’t understand or didn’t believe what she was trying to tell him.’
‘Everet didn’t know about the Needle killing Susie?’
‘Not then. It was only afterwards he began to put two and two together with his buried suspicions and make ten.’
On that Monday night, Teena had been out to the all-night supermarket and on her way back saw Lenny outside the flat, talking to two of the Needle’s men. She assumed they were arranging her fate between them, and that it was imminent. She concealed herself and watched. When they went away and Lenny went into the flat, she rang him on her mobile and told him that she had something important to tell him and he must meet her in the park.’
‘Why there?’
‘She knew the flat was bugged. Lenny had told her. It was one of the conditions of employment. And she knew, of course, that Lenny did his own business in the park so it must be private there.’
‘And what was she going to tell him in the park?’
‘She wanted to plead with him one last time. Her idea was that they should both run away and start a new life somewhere else.’
‘How traditional.’
‘But when she’d seen him leave the flat, she dashed in and grabbed the paperknife from beside the telephone, in case he wouldn’t listen to reason. She’d got to the point when she felt it was him or her. And,’ Slider added thoughtfully, ‘she probably wasn’t far wrong.’
Joanna reached across the table and laid her hand over his, and he chafed her fingers as he spoke, as if it comforted him.
‘So she followed him to the park, to the children’s playground where he used to conduct his business. She said when she saw his face, she knew straight away that it wasn’t any good, and she just walked up to him and stabbed him before he could guess what she was up to, and before she lost her nerve. I thought that single blow straight to the heart was professional,’ he said, ‘but it turns out it was just lucky. One of my many misjudgements.’
He must have gone down like a felled horse, he thought: a dreadful thing, and yet giving small, slight Teena a terrifying sense of power. Then horror overcame her, and she ran for it; ran sobbing back the way she had come, a murderess now, and still afraid for her life; too upset to notice Blind Bernie and Mad Sam – though if she had noticed them she probably would have ignored them.
‘They were street furniture, practically,’ Slider said. ‘And anyway, who would think of them as witnesses? Not the CPS,’ he added, ‘that’s for sure.’
Finding herself still clutching the bloody weapon, she flung it away as she passed the empty house. Later she had thought that was the wrong thing to have done, but it was not surprising if she hadn’t been able to think clearly at a moment like that. She thought that the Needle’s men would be after her, and she certainly feared them more than the police. She went back to the flat, packed a bag in jittering terror, and left.
‘She didn’t know where to go. She thought of Everet, but didn’t know how far he could be trusted. He still worked for the Needle, and suppose he just gave her up to him? She couldn’t go home to her parents – certainly not now she’d killed a man. In the end she thought of Sassy Palmer, whom she’d met at Susie’s house and knew had been a friend of Susie’s.’
‘Always trust a girlfriend when you’re in trouble,’ Joanna said. ‘How did you know she was there?’
‘I guessed. Sassy said she had never met Everet’s cousin, but she knew the word “cousin” was female in this case. And she said she had met Lenny with Everet when they called for Susie to go out as a foursome, but not Teena. Why would they have left Teena outside? So if she had met Teena and was lying about it, there must be a reason. And finally I realised I had smelt her scent in Sassy’s house – Paris. I’d smelt it first in Lenny’s flat.’
‘God bless your nose,’ Joanna said. ‘You’re so clever.’
‘No, I’m slow, too slow. There were indications I ought to have picked up. Right at the beginning, Freddie Cameron said there was a fresh pint of beer in Lenny’s stomach. That ought to have told me he was killed earlier than two in the morning.’ He paused, thinking. ‘Funny thing, Nutty said to me that there was a woman at the bottom of most things. There were enough hints I should have picked up. If I’d got onto the true line earlier two lives might have been saved.’
‘I doubt it,’ she said, but he only shook his head, unable to be comforted by her. She knew this mood of his after a serious case. It was reaction to the tremendous mental effort and the awful responsibility. ‘You’re tired,’ she said. ‘When are you finishing tonight?’
He looked a little blank, and then dragged in a sigh. ‘I hadn’t even thought about going home, but now you’re here …’ The food was making him sleepy now. ‘Give me another half hour at the desk, and then we’ll go home together.’
In the car, going home, he told her the rest of the story: conjecture still, but he hoped capable of proof. Bates’s goons had gone to the park later, at the time previously arranged, the time for which Sonny Collins would have fixed his alibi according to orders. Finding Baxter dead, they had gone through his pockets for the keys to the flat, for any form of identification and, perhaps, for his betting-book.
‘I imagine they rang the boss for instructions and Bates told them to sit the corpse on the swing as a kind of joke. It’s too depressing to think of them having that sort of sense of humour for themselves.’
‘What about the chain – why did they take that away?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe they picked it up on the way in with the intention of using it on Lenny, and then took it with them without thinking. Or maybe the boss told them to keep it for some other purpose. I don’t know how devious his mind really is.
‘After that it was a matter of clearing up behind them. Back to Lenny’s flat to remove anything that might incriminate anyone.
‘And, presumably, to take Teena. But Teena was gone. Bates must have been furious.’
Then the other strands of Lenny’s life had to be unpicked. Herbie Weedon, his other employer, was bugged. When it looked as though he was going to be a nuisance, he was eliminated.
‘Or perhaps he wasn’t supposed to die, only to be frightened. But his heart gave out.’
And then Everet Boston, at last worried for his cousin and tending to put two and two together and to talk too much – Everet had to be silenced. But he had already revealed the importance of Sonny Collins in the network. So now Sonny was a danger.
‘Did Sonny jump or was he pushed?’ Slider wondered, waiting for the traffic lights to change. ‘The thing I’d most like to know, and never will, is what was in his mind when he took the pills.’ Maybe he wasn’t up to all the bodies. To get rid of Lenny he might have seen as essential, but one murder was leading to another, and where would it end? And doing nothing might – was this the final betrayal? – lead to his being murdered himself, if Bates, who seemed to be getting more and more paranoid, decided he couldn’t trust him. Maybe the Needle he had known and loved in Hong Kong was mutating into something even he couldn’t contemplate. To live with the knowledge of his evil, or to give him up, were equally unthinkable alternatives. The only other way out was the Big Sleep.
Slider was silent until they moved off again, and then he said, ‘The most extraordinary thing of all was the sheer chance of it. Bates was so careful. If it hadn’t been for the leather jacket, we never would have looked at him at all. And the Phoenix was just a little outpost of the empire. The whole towering structure of Bates’s world, built up pi
ece by piece over the years, was made to totter through the frailty of Lenny Baxter, and one American amateur smuggler.’
‘Will you get him – Bates? For the other murders?’
‘I think so. We’ll get him for Susie Mabbot; and Teena can identify the two men she saw talking to Lenny outside the house. We know one is Thomas Mark, and we think the other is Bates’s butler. Once we’ve got them tied in, and tied in with his visits to Susie Mabbot’s, I think they’ll give him up to save themselves.’
‘And what about Teena?’
‘Her fingermarks are on the paperknife along with Lenny’s blood, which supports her confession, so we probably won’t have to call on Mad Sam, which is a blessing. It’s enough to convict her, but she’ll turn Queen’s evidence against Bates and get off with a reduced sentence for manslaughter, I should think. Well,’ he added wearily, ‘it’s out of my hands now. Susie Mabbot was Notting Hill’s case anyway, and the NCS has already got an enquiry in train on Bates. They’ll take the whole thing over.’
‘Including Teena Brown?’
‘I should think so.’
‘But it will be good for you, won’t it? I mean, you got a result.’
He gave a tired smile. ‘Oh, I should think I might get a commendation.’
‘As much as that?’
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ he said. ‘How long can you stay?’
‘If I get up at the crack of dawn, until Wednesday morning. That was our turning, by the way. You’ve gone past it. You really are tired, aren’t you?’
‘Bashed,’ he said, indicating right at the next corner.
‘But you got him,’ she said encouragingly.
‘They’ll get him,’ he corrected. ‘We got her. Poor weeping thing.’
After some satisfying lovemaking and a hot bath, he found himself irrationally wide awake again, so he opened a bottle of wine while she put some music on and they got into bed to enjoy them.
‘So what’s going on with Sue and Jim?’ she asked.
‘Oh, I think they’re all right,’ he said.
‘What about his wandering eye?’
Gone Tomorrow Page 32