‘After the divorce would have been good. I’d have settled for that.’
‘I hate lying to her. I hate lying about you. I’m sorry, I didn’t set out deliberately to tell her, but it just came out, and I can’t help feeling it’s for the best.’
‘As if your life wasn’t complicated enough already,’ Joanna sighed. She leaned forward and kissed his forehead. ‘You really are a clot, Bill Slider. She’s going to have your balls for jewellery now, you know that? She’ll divorce you for adultery, and it’ll all be adversarial instead of amicable. She’ll have the house off you, and every penny she can screw out of you, and refuse you access to the children on the grounds that you’re an unsuitable influence.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I just thought I’d mention it.’
‘Anyway, she won’t. How can she, when she’s gone off with another man?’
‘But now she can say you drove her to it.’
‘Oh, it doesn’t work that way nowadays. The courts know what’s what. It’ll all be settled half and half in the end – these things always are.’
‘But you’ll have to fight for your half now, instead of being given it.’
He lost patience. ‘What do you want from me?’ he snapped. ‘It’s done now. Don’t go on and on about it.’
She looked at him whitely. ‘I’m just pointing out—’
‘Perhaps you’d prefer me to go back to her? That would save you a lot of trouble.’
‘Of course, your divorce is none of my business,’ she said neutrally. ‘You must settle it your own way.’ And she went out of the room.
Slider sat and cursed, softly but fluently, and hit his knees with his fists a few times. Then he got up and went after her. She was in the kitchen standing over the kettle, waiting for it to boil.
‘You haven’t switched it on,’ he observed. She pushed the switch in without answering. He put his arms round her from behind and kissed the back of her neck. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
She turned inside his arms and looked into his face carefully – to see if he meant it, perhaps – and then sighed and leaned into the embrace.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I’m upset and worried. I shouldn’t snap at you.’
She rested her head against his cheek. ‘I worry about you. I wish we could just get away from all this.’
‘I know the divorce is your concern too—’
‘Oh, bugger the divorce. The divorce is a pleasant itch compared with having a maniac on the loose trying to kill you.’
‘He won’t try again,’ Slider said soothingly. ‘He’ll have scared himself too badly by nearly getting caught.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘Really,’ he said. He felt her relax. ‘Boy, I’m getting good at this lying, aren’t I?’
She began to laugh. ‘Oh, you bastard.’
He set her back from him and kissed her, and said, ‘I’ll be all right. I’m a survivor. It’s Atherton you ought to worry about. He thinks he’s lost his nerve. He’s too sensitive to be a policeman, really. I think you should do everything in your power to boost his morale and get his pecker up.’
‘Not until his stitches are out,’ she said. ‘Ah, but then! I want you to remember it was you who suggested it.’
He slept late the next morning, and went on dozing when Joanna got up, waking properly only when she came in with a breakfast tray. He dragged himself up. ‘Let me pee first.’ When he came back she had pulled the curtains, letting in the sunshine, and was sitting cross-legged in bed. He got in, and she settled the tray between them. Oedipus appeared from nowhere and jumped up on the bed, sat precisely with his tail round his feet, and closed his eyes against temptation. His purr gave him away, though. Slider felt like purring too. Scrambled eggs with Parma ham, toast, fresh peaches cut into easinosh slices, a jug of juice. He sniffed it. ‘Squeezed?’
‘For a treat. There’s a grapefruit in there too.’
‘Everything I like best. What’s the celebration?’
‘Oh, this and that,’ she said. ‘How’s your neck stroke head?’
‘It’s been worse.’
They ate without talking much, and then she put the tray aside and they made long, slow love; the best for ages, which made him realise how much of their lives together was snatched between his duties and hers. Co-ordinating two schedules of unsocial hours took determination and dedication – but it was worth it. Afterwards they lay entwined and, eventually, talked.
‘Shouldn’t you be going to work or something?’ she asked.
‘I was just going to say that. What have you got on today?’
‘Concert tonight in Newbury, but there’s only a seating rehearsal. It’s the repeat of the one we did in Leeds.’
‘So what time d’you have to be there? Five?’
‘Five-thirty. So I’ve got all day. I had thought of cleaning this place up a bit and doing some shopping. The joys of domesticity. You can help me if you like.’
‘I’m on to you. You just want to keep an eye on me.’
‘Do you blame me?’
‘As soon as this case is out of the way,’ he promised, ‘I’ll take the rest of my sick-leave and we’ll go away somewhere. If you can get the time off.’
‘Watch me. But what about the case? Did anything happen yesterday?’
So he told her what he’d told Atherton and Hart already. Going through it again was never a bad idea.
‘So you know all about who didn’t do it,’ she said when he had finished.
‘That’s right. We’ve run out of false trails at last. Now we’ve just got to find who did.’
‘It must be someone he knew, because he let him in.’
‘People let in people they don’t know,’ Slider said. ‘Meter readers, insurance salesmen.’
‘You don’t sit and drink whisky with the meter reader,’ she said. ‘Well, I do, but I’m unusual.’
‘True. But then you do it in the nude. Paloma was fully dressed. I think it’s fairly safe to conclude that he knew the visitor.’
‘Could it have been his lover? Grisham? Come to try for a reconciliation? He pleads, Paloma resists, they argue, Grisham loses control and bashes him.’
‘With?’
‘Whatever,’ she said evasively. ‘Something he found lying to hand.’
‘Whatever the weapon was, it was taken away, and Busty didn’t say anything was missing.’
‘She might not notice. Well, something he brought with him, then. A walking-stick.’
‘Very gentlemanly, but not heavy enough. But anyway, we know it wasn’t Grisham. He had an alibi. He was telephoning Paloma from his office in Westminster at half past one.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she said indignantly.
‘I didn’t want to short-circuit you. I thought you might say something useful.’
‘Everything I say is useful. So what about this weapon?’
‘Whoever did the job, it had to be something small enough to be concealable when he left the flat, and heavy enough to be that small. Probably metallic. Possibly with a square edge.’
‘Like a spanner?’ she suggested.
‘Yes, a heavy spanner would do it.’
‘So you’re looking for a man who owns a spanner. That narrows it down.’
‘Ah, but he might have bought it specially.’
‘True. So you’ve got to use your brains.’
‘Don’t say that as if it was a disaster.’
‘Why not try a different approach,’ she said, propping herself up on one elbow. With her short bronze hair tousled, she looked like a show chrysanthemum past its best. ‘It seems to me you haven’t considered the poison pen letters.’
‘Not recently. But of course we thought we had the right man in Jonah, so the letters seemed incidental – if they existed. He didn’t bring any in to show me, remember.’
‘But I can’t see why he would make them up. Assume they did exist – isn’t it likely that whoever sent th
em was also the murderer? That it was an escalating campaign which went to its logical conclusion.’
‘It’s a possibility.’ Slider sat up. ‘The escalation is certainly there. Six months ago, according to Paloma, it started with phone calls; three months later the letters started, and increased in menace week by week. Of course, these things don’t usually end in murder, but it’s not unheard of. But who hated him with that sort of concentrated hatred?’
‘Didn’t he give you any hint as to who he thought it was?’
‘He said he didn’t know. I got the impression he had his suspicion, but he wouldn’t say anything. At the time, I thought he suspected Grisham.’
‘But why would Grisham—?’
‘Oh, because of the Pomona Club – refusing to stop working there. But that was before I talked to Grisham. The man really loved Paloma; and I just don’t see him as the kind to work in that underhand way. When he really lost it he acted very directly – rushing into the Pink Parrot waving fistfuls of quids. A poison pen is a different kind of character – slow, brooding, insidious and mean.’
She shivered. ‘And now he’s after you.’
‘Well he won’t get me. But what intrigues me is why did the campaign go so suddenly from the letters to murder? I’d have expected some build-up of physical attacks before the final one – broken windows, vandalism, arson attacks, that sort of thing. To make him suffer as much as possible before killing him.’
‘Presumably he did something that speeded it up,’ Joanna said. ‘What happened in the days just before the murder? Could it have been something to do with that animal rights business?’
‘I don’t see what,’ he said, frowning. ‘That was a pukka AL job, though unauthorised, and none of them had any connection with Paloma – we checked. And the only person who was likely to mind about the publicity was Grisham, and we’ve investigated that. All the same,’ he went on, putting his legs over the side of the bed, ‘I think you’re right. Something he did in the days before his death – over the weekend, perhaps – sparked it off. We’ve got to work out what.’
‘You’re getting up?’
‘Mm. I have to go in,’ he said absently, heading for the bathroom.
She saw he was off on his other plane. ‘I wish I hadn’t started you thinking. I thought we were going to go shopping together,’ she said.
‘Oh yes, let’s have lunch,’ he said vaguely over his shoulder.
‘No, that was the Eighties,’ she called after him; but he didn’t hear her.
As he entered the CID room, Norma, without looking up from her desk, began to sing very softly an old CID melody.
They called the bastard Stephen,
They called the bastard Stephen.
The rest of the team joined in with increasing volume.
They called the bastard Stephen,
’CAUSE THAT WAS THE NAME OF THE INK!
‘I gather Jonah Lafota has departed,’ Slider said when they’d stopped.
‘Not this life, unfortunately,’ Norma said.
‘Sprung last night,’ Hart said resentfully. ‘Pity poor Candy.’
‘The fact is, ladies and germs,’ Slider said, ‘much as we may regret it, Jonah was telling the truth and Paloma was dead when he got there.’
‘We can still nail him for conspiracy can’t we, guv?’ Anderson pleaded.
‘And that filth, Billy Yates,’ Norma added. ‘We can’t let him off.’
‘I’m afraid there are bigger things afoot, and we are under orders not to frighten the rabbits.’ Chorus of groans. ‘But I am assured,’ he raised his voice over the woe, ‘that they will be going down and that deserts will be just. Eventually.’
‘Mushroom time,’ Anderson commented. ‘Get your heads down, here it comes.’
Slider ignored him. ‘So let’s concentrate our minds on the problem in hand, which is still who killed Jay Paloma. We’re back to basics. Whoever it was, it wasn’t the invisible man, so let’s get out there and ask questions. I can’t believe that nobody saw the murderer arrive and – more importantly – leave. However calculating he was, he’d have been in a state of nervous tension, and maybe blood-spattered when he left. Someone saw him, they just haven’t remembered it yet.’
They dispersed, muttering. He called them back. ‘Oh, and some good news, to speed you on your way. The latest report from the hospital is that Andy Cosgrove’s coma seems to be lightening. So there’s a good chance he’s going to come out of it.’
That at least produced a spatter of lighter expressions. McLaren, unwrapping a Topic bar, said, ‘If he does come out of it, and he’s still got all his marbles, he’ll be a fool if he doesn’t leave the Job. Once you’ve been in a coma like that, any little bump on the head can send you back down, and the next time you never come up again.’
Norma, who had a street gazette in her hand, threw the book at him.
Slider had all the documents of the case spread out over his desk, and when the phone rang it took him a minute to find it.
‘Inspector Slider? My name’s Larry Mosselman.’ When Slider didn’t react he went on, as if it explained everything, ‘They call me Mr Atlas.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You know – Mosselman, muscle-man?’
‘Ah! You’re a taxi driver?’
‘That’s right. I thought you were expecting me to call. Lenny Cohen’s been putting the word out that you’ve been looking to contact the driver who picked up a certain party on Monday the fifteenth?’
‘You know Lenny, do you?’
‘Everyone knows Lenny the Lion. We’ve played golf together once or twice, but he’s a bit out of my league now. Well, he does a lot of nights, so he gets the practice.’
‘You’re not with the same company as him?’
‘No, I work for Jack Disney’s garage in Old Road, Hackney – just behind the Victoria Park?’
‘Yes, I know it.’
‘Anyway, in connection with your enquiry, I heard about it when I went in yesterday to settle up, and I think I might be the cabbie you’re looking for. As far as I can tell from the picture, my fare was the same man, and I did put him down at the Lanesborough rank about twenty to twelve that Monday.’
‘Did you see where he went then?’
‘He walked on up the street, as if he was heading for the hotel entrance. That’s all I saw, because I wasn’t putting on myself, so I pulled away. But what made him stick in my mind,’ Mosselman went on intelligently, ‘was that when I picked him up, he’d just got out of another cab.’
‘Had he? Well, we did suspect he might have. He was trying to be cautious, cover his tracks.’
‘Not very good at it, though, if he let me see it,’ Mosselman said. ‘And Lenny saw me drop him as well. Mind you, he looked like a bit of a daft ponce, if you don’t mind me saying so.’
‘Talking of which, can you give me a description of your fare?’ Slider said, to be on the safe side. He took down the details, which as far as they went fitted Paloma. ‘And where did you pick him up?’
‘Hammersmith Broadway, about ten past eleven. On the gyratory, outside the new building where the post office used to be. He was standing on the kerb, on the wrong side of the railings. He waved me down, but traffic was slow so I’d had plenty of time to clock him as I approached, and I’d seen him get out of the other cab and pay it off. Anyway, he got in and asked for the Lanesborough, and I took him there.’
‘Right,’ Slider said. ‘Thanks. Well, it may not turn out to be important now, because we’ve found out where he ended up that day, but we’re always glad to have the loose ends tied up. It all adds to the picture.’
‘Right you are. Glad to help,’ said Mosselman. ‘Do you want me to come in and make a statement or anything?’
‘I don’t think it’ll be necessary, but I would like to take your address and phone number in case we need to contact you.’ He wrote to Mosselman’s dictation, and then added, ‘By the way, I don’t suppose you saw the driver of the cab this
man got out of?’
‘No, I didn’t see the driver, but I saw the name on the side of the cab. It was one of Monty’s Radio Metrocabs.’
‘Was it, indeed? Thank you, Mr Mosselman,’ said Slider.
Monty was not in his hutch, for once. Winston, one of the mechanics, said he had gone to hospital.
‘Nothing serious, I hope?’ Slider said.
‘Nah, s’just ’is check-up. It’s routine, right? Like, ’e ’ad this ’eart attack, like years ago, an’ they make ’im go, right, like, every six months, reg’lar.’
‘I see. I’m glad it’s nothing bad. Wouldn’t want to lose another good man,’ Slider said. Winston stared at him with his mouth open, and Slider hoped he was better in the motor mechanical field than he was at deciphering human speech. ‘I’ll just go and speak to Mrs Green,’ he said clearly, and left the mechanic to work on that.
Rita was also missing, and the bower was surprisingly peaceful without her. Gloria gave Slider a toothy smile and invited him to sit down, offering him tea and biscuits with an eagerness that suggested she could not stand the near-silence. ‘She’s gone with Monty to see the specialist,’ she explained when he asked after Rita. ‘I think she wants to persuade him to make Monty give up the cigars.’
‘But he doesn’t really smoke them. He lights them and they go out. He probably just likes something in his mouth.’
Gloria wrinkled her powdery nose. ‘They stink. I hate those things,’ she said. ‘Is there something I can help you with, or did you particularly want Rita?’
‘No, you can help me,’ Slider said. He told her about Mosselman’s information. ‘I’d like to check the day book again, in case we’ve missed anything.’
But the day book produced nothing that looked remotely like Jay Paloma. ‘He’s sure it was this cab company?’ Gloria said at last.
‘He said he saw the name on the side.’
She shrugged. ‘Then I suppose someone was doing him a favour.’
‘But the cabbie saw him pay,’ Slider said.
‘Well, it couldn’t have been on the clock,’ Gloria said. She looked at Slider. ‘It could have been Benny the Brief, I suppose. He was always round there, wasn’t he, round the flat, ’cause he was friends with that woman.’
Killing Time Page 28