Killing Time

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Look, I don’t think—’

  ‘You can tell me that, can’t you? She’s not much to look at,’ she said dispassionately, ‘so I suppose it must be love. Or was she just available? She wasn’t really Atherton’s girlfriend, was she? I’d hate to thinkyou were getting yourself involved on the rebound. I mean, don’t rush into something with the first female to come your way, just because she’s desperate and you don’t like being alone. It would all be such a waste if we both ended up unhappy.’

  This was terrible. He was on hot coals. ‘Are you really unhappy?’

  She paused before answering. ‘Does it matter if I am? I mean, if there’s nothing to be done about it? If you’ve got someone else and it’s serious, we’re never going to get back together again. Or is it,’ she added hopefully, ‘just a passing thing?’

  ‘It’s serious,’ he said unwillingly.

  ‘How can you be sure? You can’t have known her long. You’ve only just met her.’

  It seemed an ideal moment to begin setting the record straight. ‘I’ve known her a long time,’ he said.

  ‘What, because she was a friend of Atherton’s?’

  ‘A friend of both of us.’

  There was a silence in which he could hear her computer grinding to a conclusion, but he couldn’t think of a thing to say to interrupt the process. He wanted to tell her the truth, but couldn’t break the habit of subterfuge which had built up around his relationship with Joanna. He found it intolerable that she should blame herself entirely for the situation, but feared bringing down her wrath on his head by confession. But they were adults, weren’t they? And now that they had parted, surely the truth could be borne? It must be the best option, so that everyone knew where they stood, and a final and amicable arrangement could be made.

  ‘Look,’ he began – the most fatal, incriminating word a man could ever say to a woman.

  ‘You were having an affair with her,’ Irene said with chilling certainty. ‘Before. Weren’t you?’

  ‘Look, I—’

  ‘I knew there was something going on! I just couldn’t fathom out what. But I told myself I was imagining things. And then, when Ernie started getting interested in me—’ She found her anger. ‘You let me feel guilty! You let me take all the blame, and all the time you were having an affair! You were sniggering behind my back with that – with that—’

  ‘Irene, for God’s sake, it wasn’t like that.’

  ‘How long? How long?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Surely it doesn’t matter now. We’ve both got someone else. We’ve both got new lives. What does it matter whether—’

  ‘What does it matter? You let me go through agonies of guilt about breaking up our marriage, and all the time you were messing around with that – that – bitch – and you ask me what does it matter? My God, she isn’t even good-looking! How could you do it to me? It’d be bad enough if she was a dolly bird, but how could you betray me for that fat cow?’

  ‘Don’t talk like that. All that recrimination stuff is over—’

  ‘Oh, don’t you believe it, chum! I haven’t started yet!’ Irene spat, incandescent with rage. ‘There’s a few things going to be different from now on, I can tell you! I’ve been treating you with kid gloves, thinking I was the guilty party. Now you’re going to find out a few realities of life. By the time I’ve finished with you, you’re going to wish you’d never touched that bitch with a ten-foot barge pole. Your feet won’t touch the ground, I promise you that.’

  ‘Irene—’

  ‘You’d better get yourself a lawyer, Bill Slider!’ she yelled, and slammed the phone down.

  Slider replaced his receiver and contemplated it in unhappy silence for a while. ‘I don’t think I handled that very well,’ he said at last.

  ‘You all right, guv?’ Hart asked from the doorway.

  He looked up sternly. ‘Have you been listening?’

  ‘Not me,’ she said indignantly. ‘I just got here.’ She eyed him with interest. ‘You look a bit down. I was just going off. D’you fancy a drink?’

  He thought of Irene phoning up for a rematch and being told he’d gone down the boozer with Hart. Or even coming to find him and walking in on them. In any case, he had to be alone for when the Scotland Yard man rang. ‘No, thanks all the same. I’ve got some thinking to do. You go on home. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  When she had gone he sat a bit longer, staring at nothing, frowning in thought. And then he got up, making sure to grab his mobile, and went out. He was parked on the corner of Abdale Road – he couldn’t get into the yard – and as he came out onto the street his mobile rang. There seemed to be no-one around. He stepped back against the wall and answered it.

  ‘Yes,’ he said into it.

  ‘You were expecting a call from me,’ said a voice. It wasn’t a question.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can meet you now. Mention no names. You know where they found the PC who got hurt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There. Ten minutes. Don’t get followed.’ He rang off. This was a very cautious fellow, Slider thought. Ten minutes didn’t give him long to make sure he wasn’t followed – no time to drive circuitously. He hurried to his car. He decided to park in Hammersmith Grove and walk the rest. He saw nothing in his rear view, nothing suspicious when he parked and got out. There were people about, but no-one seemed to be paying him any attention – or deliberately not paying him attention – and he had no sense of being watched. Besides, this was his home ground, and it seemed absurd to be taking all these precautions on these ordinary streets. He walked without elaborations down the quiet backstreets, only keeping an ear open for footfalls, and snatching a look behind when he abruptly crossed the road. There was no-one about.

  When he reached the waste ground he felt more ill at ease. The lighting came only from the railway line above: there were deep shadows everywhere and blackness under the arches. He did not know what de Glanville looked like. Or sounded like, come to that – he was assuming the call came from him, but supposing someone else had got his mobile number, someone who had a grudge against him? There were plenty of those in his past, let alone the present case. He stepped onto the waste and kept close to the wall, and reaching the first arch backed just inside it and stood still, listening and watching.

  He smelled him first. As soon as the man moved, and before the moving air brought a sound to his ears, Slider’s nose picked up the cologne. Subtle, expensive. He put his back to the wall and looked into the darkness for the movement and said softly, ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘De Glanville.’ It was the voice on the phone – one worry down, anyway. ‘It’s all right. You weren’t followed.’ The voice came closer as it spoke, and now he appeared beside Slider in the entrance to the arch. Taller than Slider, but not by much; well-built without being heavy. A handsome, dark face with designer stubble making it look darker; thick, longish dark hair, brushed back and bronze-tipped and styled in a classy salon – or at least an expensive one. He was wearing the undercover cop’s favoured blouson-style jacket, in suede – new enough for Slider to smell that now, too – along with dark trousers and black leather casual shoes with thick soles. He had a gold and jet stud in one ear, expensive and discreetly unconventional. The intelligent brown eyes were watchful in a face made firm by responsibility. A man who could look after himself and expected to win. To Slider he had copper stamped all over him. No wonder Yates had clocked him.

  ‘Why here?’ Slider asked.

  ‘It was the only place I could be sure you’d know without my naming it. Mobiles are not secure. That’s why I called this meet.’

  Called this meet, Slider smiled inwardly. How they all loved playing cops and robbers! He had the strong desire to call de Glanville ‘son’; but probably the danger de Glanville faced was real and desperate. ‘You’re going to tell me what’s going on?’ he said hopefully.

  ‘I was in favour of telling you in the first place,’ de Glanville said. He had a
slight accent: Slider couldn’t decide what. There was something about the ‘e’ in ‘telling’ and the ‘th’ in ‘the’. ‘I don’t want local boys trampling all over my investigation, busting in on me and blowing my cover.’

  ‘Believe me, I don’t want to do that either,’ Slider said patiently. ‘If I know where the land mines are, I’ll know not to tread on them, won’t I?’

  De Glanville smiled, a brief flash of very white teeth in the dark lower half of his face. Slider thought women would find him attractive. Perhaps it was necessary to his job. ‘I’ve already had your oppo under my feet. What’s his name? Carver? Why don’t you people ever talk to each other?’

  ‘Beats the hell out of me. Look what I had to go through to get to talk to you,’ Slider said.

  ‘True. All right. Let’s get on the park. I’m in at the Pomona – I guess you know that.’ He used ‘guess’ as a foreigner uses it, not an Americanism. Could it be that he was a real Frenchman? But he didn’t quite sound French.

  ‘Are you after Yates?’

  ‘Yates is a player, but he’s not the biggest. That’s why we don’t want him flushed out yet. It’s his bosses we’re after. But I had contact with the man you’re interested in – Jay Paloma.’

  ‘You met him in the club? Several times?’ De Glanville nodded. ‘You were spotted. Yates told me about you. He said he thought you were a dealer.’

  ‘He was supposed to,’ de Glanville said with a touch of complacency. Stand aside, redneck, and let the big city experts in. ‘Paloma was buying snow – you know that, don’t you? I’d seen him sniffing round a dealer I was interested in and for operational reasons I didn’t want him hanging around that particular area, so I told him I’d supply him.’

  ‘How did you get the stuff?’

  ‘You don’t want to know that. I knew who he was getting it for, so I supplied him for some time. I thought there might be some important connection that way. It did seem for a time that our big player might be an MP and using Parliamentary privilege to shelter under. But it turned out to be a false lead. So I dropped Paloma.’

  ‘Wait a minute, let me get this straight. Did Paloma know who you were?’

  ‘Not who – but what.’

  ‘He was working for you, in fact.’

  ‘Effectively. I got him the stuff, he passed it on to his bum-chum and reported back to me. I primed him with the questions to ask and what to look out for. But as I said, it was a dead end.’

  ‘How did you persuade him to spy for you?’

  ‘It wasn’t hard,’ de Glanville said with a short laugh. ‘I was giving him the stuff at a fraction of the price, and he was pocketing the difference. He was perfectly happy. Plus I leaned on him a bit.’

  ‘Really?’ Slider said neutrally.

  ‘I had the goods on him, didn’t I? And you saw him: he was a bit precious – very dainty in his ways. He wouldn’t have liked a spell inside with all those nasty rough boys.’

  ‘Yes, that would scare him,’ Slider agreed. ‘When you dropped him, you told him you wouldn’t supply him any more?’

  ‘Of course. But he said he was getting out anyway. Saved enough of Grisham’s money to go back to Ireland. I said that was a good idea. Didn’t want him hanging around and maybe letting the cat out of the bag. Gave him a bit of a push in that direction, if you want to know. But as it happened, it wasn’t necessary.’ He shrugged. ‘Best result all round, really, when he got topped.’

  Slider nodded politely. ‘I suppose you don’t know who did it?’

  ‘Nope,’ de Glanville said. ‘That’s your business.’

  ‘I told you that Yates had spotted you for a dealer, and you said he was supposed to. But it occurs to me that he might have blown your cover.’

  ‘Because Yates sent one of his goons round to hit Paloma?’

  ‘How the hell did you know that?’

  ‘It’s my business to know things. But I want Yates left alone. We’re very close now. I don’t want him spooked. And I want that gorilla of his sprung.’

  Slider saw no reason to reveal his hand. He shrugged. ‘If you say so. But what about Cosgrove?’

  ‘Cosgrove was a worse problem to me because everyone knew he was a copper. He was clodhopping after Yates, and I had to get him warned off. I couldn’t have him hanging round the club.’

  ‘But do you know who whacked him?’

  ‘Nope. I got him off my back, that was all the mattered to me. He hadn’t been around there for weeks when it happened. But I doubt, frankly, if it was anything to do with Yates. Yates is too fly to put out a hit on a copper – and if he did, he’d do it more professionally than that. It had all the hallmarks of an amateur to me. But it’s not my case,’ he finished with a shrug.

  ‘It’s not mine, either,’ Slider said. ‘When did you last supply Paloma with any white?’

  De Glanville considered. ‘It was the Thursday before he was killed. Thursday night stroke Friday morning. I suppose he gave it to his friend on Friday or Saturday and a happy weekend was had by all.’

  ‘And that’s when you told him you didn’t need him any more?’ De Glanville nodded. ‘So he knew before the weekend.’

  ‘Certainly. Now I’ve told you everything you need to know. You’ll stay away from the club and Yates from now on. I want everything to settle down again.’

  ‘What will happen to him?’ Slider asked.

  ‘Yates? Why, have you got some beef against him?’

  Slider thought of Maroon, and Maltesa, and Candy, and all the other pathetic toms nobody cared about. Thank you, Mr Gladstone. But they had rights, like anyone else, and what they did was not illegal, that was what got him. Prostitution was not illegal – living off their backs, like Yates and his gorillas, that was illegal.

  ‘He’s responsible for beating up a girl I know,’ Slider said. All right, it was Jonah who broke Maroon’s face, but it was Yates who made Jonah possible.

  De Glanville hesitated, but then his face softened a little in sympathy. ‘He’s going down. Don’t worry about that. We’ve got enough on him to send him away for ever and ever. As soon as we’ve sprung the trap on the top bosses, we’ll clean up the scumbags like Yates.’

  ‘And Jonah Lafota?’

  ‘Him too.’ Dark eyes gleamed in the darkness. ‘My promise on that.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Slider.

  De Glanville looked out of the arch at the quiet night. ‘It’s safe enough. You can go now.’

  Slider said, ‘There is just one other question.’ De Glanville looked at him a little impatiently. ‘What is your accent? I can’t place it. I thought at first it was French, but now—’

  The teeth whitened across the dark face. ‘What are you, Professor Higgins? Belgian Congo. Zaire. I was born there. My dad was in the diplomatic. But my mum’s British.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Slider gratefully.

  He went a long way round to get back to his car, for safety’s sake, but he saw nothing and felt nothing. He got in and drove. It looked after all as if there wasn’t any connection between the Paloma murder and the Cosgrove case, except stupid concurrence. He didn’t mind being wrong, but he absolutely hated Carver to be right, to say nothing of Wetherspoon. He thought about Carver and Wetherspoon at Honeyman’s party. It hadn’t looked terribly much like Wetherspoon telling Carver to back off and Carver saying yes sir, certainly sir. It had looked a lot more like Carver getting his hand down Wetherspoon’s trousers, and Wetherspoon saying I’ll pull strings for you, Ron, just don’t stop loving me. But as Hart had said, that was just paranoid. Anyway, Cosgrove was not his case and not his business. He must put it out of his head entirely.

  So he drove to the pub where Busty was barmaid, to ask her the only other thing he hadn’t asked her – whether she knew Andy Cosgrove.

  The pub was crowded, and Slider, scanning the bar for Busty, was surprised and amused to see that one of the bar stools was occupied by the trim, moley person of Busty’s tame taxi-driver. What was his name? Oh yes, Be
nny the Brief. He had one hand wrapped round a half-pint jug and the other was supporting a lighted cigarette, and as Slider came up behind him he saw that his eyes were fixed adoringly on the heavenly shape of Busty Parnell, serving down the other end of the bar in a pink sequinned sweater, low-cut enough to leave everything to be desired.

  ‘Hello there, Mr Fluss,’ Slider said, remembering his name at the last moment. ‘Drinking and driving? Tut tut.’

  The little man started violently, and then smiled his crooked, multidentate smile as he recognised Slider. ‘Oh, I only have the one when I’m driving, don’t worry. I nurse it. I’m a great nurser. Can I get you one?’

  ‘No, thanks, I just came to have a quick word with Busty.’

  Benny looked pained. ‘Valerie, please, or Miss Parnell. She’s not – that horrid name – any more. That belongs to the past. That’s all over. She’s a respectable woman now.’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry,’ Slider said, amused. ‘It just slipped out. So you’re still on duty, are you?’

  ‘Not as such,’ Benny conceded. ‘But I’m keeping a clear head for driving Miss Parnell home when her shift finishes. That’s a sacred duty to me, so you don’t need to worry about me having too much, I can assure you.’ He burbled on a bit, but Slider wasn’t listening. Busty looked round at last and he caught her eye, and she came down to him with an eager look.

  ‘Hello! Have you got some news?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m afraid not. I just popped in to ask you something. Could I have a quick word?’ He flicked a warning glance Bennywards and she picked it up with commendable quickness.

  ‘Come down the other end, then, where it’s quieter,’ she said. ‘George, can you serve for me for a minute? Just five minutes. Thanks, love.’

  At the other end of the bar she propped up the hatch and made a little quiet corner for them. Slider eased himself in beside her. ‘I see you’ve got an escort laid on for later,’ he said.

  She made a face. ‘Oh, I can’t seem to shake him off. He’s been ever so kind since Maurice died, can’t do enough for me, but he gets on my nerves a bit. I’m thinking of setting George on him.’