‘Belated reaction?’ Connolly offered.
‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Wiseman. ‘Anyway, it all seemed to come over her suddenly, after Ian and I got married.’ She frowned. ‘She didn’t really approve of that, she thought it was too soon, and anyway you know what children are, they think you should never look at a man again, but I was only twenty when I had her so I was much too young to throw myself in the grave with him, so to speak. And Graham – Melanie’s dad – well, he was a charmer all right, but he wasn’t a good husband. Melanie had no idea, of course – well, that’s not the sort of thing you tell your daughter, is it? Especially when she adores her dad like she did. But he was always in and out of different jobs and running up debts, and spending what we didn’t have. It was hand to mouth the whole time with him. You never knew where the next meal was coming from. He was the sort of man who’d leave the gas bill unpaid but take us away for a weekend in a hotel. Always bringing home presents and useless things for the house – he was gadget mad, that man. But Melanie had holes in her shoes and no winter coat.’ She shook her head at the memory and wiped her eyes again. ‘So when Ian proposed to me, I wasn’t thinking about it being too soon, I can tell you. A good man – a churchgoer and everything! And with a steady job – and ready to take on a stepdaughter just at the difficult age? I’d have been mad not to snap him up. But then Melanie sort of went to pieces. She sulked, and she was rude to me, and she’d barely talk to Ian, and Ian – well, I don’t think he had the knack of handling her, not that anything would have helped much, the way she was then. But they were like two cats glaring at each other, and if one said white the other said black and off they’d go. Well, anyway, the upshot was my poor Melanie got into bad company. She started smoking, she was always out late and not saying where she was – you know the sort of thing.’
Connolly nodded helpfully.
‘And all the time it was like she was defying Ian to stop her. Oh, he tried, and the rows were terrible, but it just seemed to make her worse. And then she—’ She stopped, biting her lip.
‘She got into trouble?’ Connolly said, to help her along.
Mrs Wiseman nodded her head, lowering her eyes in shame. ‘She got pregnant. We didn’t know she’d been going with boys. You know – having sex, I mean. Because she was always a pretty girl and naturally boys liked her and we knew she had boyfriends, but not that she was – doing that. Well, it was like the world came to an end. I mean, Ian – he’s really strict about anything like that. The rows before were nothing to what happened then. And she wouldn’t say who the father was. Ian was raging, he wanted to go round and make the boy face up to it, but she wouldn’t say who it was. And then in the middle of one row – I don’t know if it was just to wind Ian up, or if it was true – I can’t believe it was true – she said she didn’t know who the father was.’ She put a weak hand to her face. ‘Ian just went mad.’
Connolly handed over more tissues in silent sympathy. She could imagine the cataclysm. And she could imagine the young Melanie facing her stepfather down, sixteen or seventeen, confused, miserable, pregnant and frightened, having it made clear to her she had nowhere to turn. I hope he dies roaring for a priest, she thought with unexpected savagery.
‘So what happened?’ she asked after a moment, when the mopping was finished. ‘With the baby, and all?’
Mrs Wiseman hauled up a sigh from so deep it could have turned her tights inside out. ‘She had an abortion. Ian arranged it. I was a bit surprised, him being a churchgoer and all, but he said having the baby would blight her whole life. And ours. I suppose he was right. Well, I know he was, because when it was all over, Melanie sorted herself out, buckled down at school, went to university and everything, and she couldn’t have done that with a baby in tow. But I always wondered.’ Another sigh. ‘Well, you can’t help thinking, can you, what if? And it would have been my grandchild. I’ll never have one now.’
‘But Melanie agreed that it was the right thing to do?’ Connolly asked. It was hard not to get sucked into this kind of sorrow.
‘Oh yes – she knew it was the only way. And we managed to hush it all up, so that no one ever knew. Luckily it was the beginning of the school summer holidays, so Ian arranged for us all to go away, and it was done at a private clinic. By the time school started again it was all over and done with, and she was fit and well again, so there was no need for her friends or the teachers or the neighbours to know about it. It was like a clean start for her, and to do her credit, she took full advantage. She cut herself off from the bad gang and became, well, a model student. And daughter. And she thanked Ian, in her heart, for putting her right, I know she did. I mean, it wasn’t something we ever talked about, not directly, but once or twice when I’ve said how well she was doing, she’s said something like, yes, it was the right decision.’
‘And she got on with Ian all right in the end?’
‘Oh yes. Like I said to the other lady, I wouldn’t say they’re all over each other, but underneath I think there’s a real respect and affection. She knew he saved her from a terrible mistake. Everything she had, really, was down to him.’
Connolly relayed this story to Slider as they walked down to her car, settled in and drove away. ‘It accounts for why the best friend Kiera didn’t know anything about it – Melanie got whisked away, and came back with her sins scrubbed clean. Everything tidied away under the carpet. After that she put a shape on her life, and ended up on the pig’s back, but you can’t help wondering if there wasn’t some bit of her thought it could have been different . . . What was your man like?’
‘Mean, moody and magnificent,’ Slider said. ‘Well, mean and moody, anyway. It’s obvious he likes to control. He’d be a strict father.’
‘Yeah, I got that. Must a been cat for him, married to that blancmange of a woman.’
‘What did you get from the child – Bethany?’
‘That one! Eleven going on thirty-five. She waylaid me as I came out the door, couldn’t wait to wear the ear offa me.’
Connolly had heard her hiss as she stepped past Dave Bright, and looking back had seen the child standing down the side access, beckoning.
‘My dad’s mad as fire about all this,’ she confided as soon as Connolly was close enough. ‘Mel getting killed and everything.’
‘Why would he be mad?’ Connolly queried.
‘Cause he thinks it’s getting us talked about. He’s always going on about what the neighbours think. Who cares what the poxy neighbours think, that’s what I say. But he worries about that sort of crap. It’s being a teacher. Got to be ultra-respectable if you’re a teacher, or it’s all over the tabloids. That’s why he’s a sidesman at church. Thinks it gives him Brownie points.’ She snorted in derision. ‘Dad thinks I’m gonna be a teacher when I grow up. Catch me! I’m not doing anything where some poxy boss can tell me what I can do and can’t do. Dad’s mad because Mr Bellerby – he’s the head at Dad’s school – told him not to come in. Dad thinks he thinks he’s letting the school down, or some crap like that.’
‘I don’t suppose your dad likes you using words like crap,’ Connolly said.
Bethany looked surprised, and then narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re not cool like that other one that came, the tall one.’
‘Oh, I’m way cooler than her,’ Connolly said. ‘What did you think of Melanie?’
Bethany shrugged. ‘She was all right. She let me try her make-up and things, when she was a student. But she turned into this boring grown-up with a boring job, just like everybody else. I’m not going to be like that.’
‘Did you see a lot of her?’
‘She come over every now and then. For Sunday lunch.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘The burnt offerings, Dad calls it.’
‘Isn’t your mum a good cook?’
‘You kidding? She thinks the smoke alarm’s a timer. That’s what Dad says. She’s not my real mother, but I call her Mum and everything. I don’t remember my real mum – she died when I was a baby. Of gusto
enteritis. I’m gonna be a doctor when I grow up, but not a poxy GP – a big posh consultant, me, so nobody can tell me what to do. Dad married Mum when I was a baby so he’d have someone to look after me and cook and clean and everything. Good luck with that! He says she’s as much use as a sick headache.’
‘He doesn’t say those things to you?’ Connolly said, privately shocked.
‘No, course not. I hear them rowing, and he says it to her.’
‘Do they row a lot?’
‘Yeah. She gets on his nerves. And she snores, so they don’t sleep in the same room any more. She wakes me up, sometimes. It’s like the house is falling down.’ She looked troubled for a moment, and said, ‘She’s all right, really, my mum. I mean, I love her and everything. She’s just not very good at “mum” things.’
‘Different people are good at different things,’ Connolly said, and the child looked relieved.
‘Yeah, that’s right. She sings nice, my mum. She used to sing to me at night when she tucked me in. Course, I’m too old for that now, but I like it when she sings round the house, when she’s on her own and she thinks no one’s listening. And when Mel came, sometimes they’d sing together, soppy old songs from the dark ages, but it sounded nice.’
‘When did Melanie last come over?’
‘Two weeks ago, on the Sunday, but they weren’t singing then. Her and my dad had a right old ding-dong. They were in the kitchen making the tea after lunch and I was in the lounge with Mum and Scott, but we could hear ’em all right.’
‘What were they rowing about?’
‘Oh, the usual – her not being married and living with Scott. Living in sin, Dad calls it – honestly!’ She snorted in eye-rolling derision. ‘Dad kept saying Scott wanted to marry her and she should be grateful, and she said she didn’t have to be grateful to any man, and Dad said she ought to be grateful to him for saving her neck, and she said that didn’t give him the right to run her life, and he said she was just throwing everything away when he’d worked so hard to make us respectable, and she said you can talk and then he slapped her.’
‘He hit her?’
‘Oh, not hard. Just slapped her face for being cheeky. They didn’t talk any more after that and when they came back in with the tea they pretended nothing had happened, but I could see her cheek was a bit red.’
‘Does he hit you?’
‘He used to, sometimes, but he doesn’t now. He got scared of the social lady coming round. He was mad as fire about the government saying you couldn’t hit your kids any more. He said the country was going to the dogs. But like I said he’s got to be dead careful because of being a teacher, so he couldn’t afford to get mixed up with that social lot. They’d send you to prison soon as look at you. That’s who I thought the other one was, the other lady policeman who came before. I thought she was from the social at first. But they don’t have such nice clothes. It says in the papers a man killed Mel – that man in the basement.’
‘I’m sure it doesn’t say he killed her, because nobody knows who killed her.’
‘Well, it says he was a murderer, he killed his wife, so it’s gotta be him, hasn’t it? Are you going to arrest him?’
‘Not up to me. Anyway, we haven’t got any evidence yet. You can’t arrest anyone without evidence.’
‘You don’t know anything, do you? My friend Georgina says her dad said the police are a load of tossers,’ Bethany confided pleasantly. ‘He says you couldn’t find your own arse with both hands and a torch.’
‘That’s not a nice thing to say,’ Connolly said sternly.
‘No, but it’s funny.’ She grinned, and ran off into the back garden.
‘So wouldn’t you say that was interesting, guv?’ Connolly said, heading up the Uxbridge Road. ‘Your man’s starting to look a bit tasty for it. He’s narky as hell, he clatters his kids, he was giving out to Melanie as recently as a fortnight ago. And he was out Friday evening.’
‘Yes, he told me. He was coaching a school soccer team.’
Connolly took her eyes off the road to give him a level look. ‘Mrs Wiseman says he didn’t come home until late. She went to bed at eleven and it was after that. Sure, school soccer practice doesn’t go on that long.’
‘Ah,’ said Slider. ‘He gave me the impression he was home fairly early – he said he watched television with his wife.’
‘He coulda gone for a jar after, I suppose,’ Connolly said, to be scrupulously fair.
‘But then why wouldn’t he have said so?’
‘Because he thinks himself fierce posh altogether, and hanging around in boozers is not respectable,’ she suggested. ‘Or . . .’
Slider considered, watching the shops lining the street glide away behind them. ‘There’s certainly a lot of anger in him,’ he said. And suppressing it in the name of respectability, when his anger was righteous in origin and ought to be applauded, must be an extra strain, he thought.
‘Guv, suppose after praccer he went over to Melanie’s to give her another earful about not marrying your man Hibbert? She tells him to mind his business and he goes mental and lamps her.’
‘Possible, but there’s not enough time for him to get her to Ruislip and be back home by eleven.’
‘But he could go home right after killing her, wait’ll everyone’s in bed and go back and do the rest.’
‘Surely his wife would notice if he got up in the middle of the night?’
‘No, the kid told me they don’t sleep together. Your woman snores something fierce. So that’d cover any sound he made leaving the house.’
‘Ingenious,’ Slider said.
‘And possible,’ Connolly urged.
‘You’ve forgotten one thing, though. The dog.’
‘Oh, saints and holy sinners, that dog!’ Connolly cried, thinking Mr Porson wasn’t so wrong in thinking it was the fly in the woodpile. ‘Wait, though. It knows him, the dog. Say it was in another room when he killed her, maybe it wouldn’t bark.’
‘But he couldn’t leave it with the body in the flat while he went home. It’d cut up Cain,’ Slider pointed out. They’d reached the station now and she was turning into Tunis Road – going too fast and winding the wheel like a mad mangler. ‘You couldn’t—’
‘No, no, wait’ll I think it!’ she interrupted urgently, winding again, turning into Stanlake. The gates to the yard slid open and she kept winding. ‘I’ve got it! He could take the dog home with him, leave it in the car while he establishes his alibi, then take it back.’ She looked at him triumphantly as she backed into her space. ‘We could test his car for dog hair.’
Slider let her have a moment before saying, ‘Had we not just taken the dog over there. And even if we hadn’t, he could always say the dog had been in his car on another occasion. Why not?’
‘Yeah,’ said Connolly, deflating.
‘All the same,’ Slider said, ‘he’s definitely become interesting. There was obviously a history between him and Melanie, and he’s – not exactly lied to me, but he’s misled me about his whereabouts on Friday. There’s something he doesn’t want us to know. I think we must look into him in a bit more detail.’
‘Righty-oh,’ she said happily.
‘But carefully,’ Slider warned. ‘We don’t want to ruin his life if he’s innocent. Teachers have to be above reproach, you know.’
‘That’s what the wean said.’ She rolled her eyes as she remembered. ‘You’d want to hear the mouth on that kid, guv! Sure, the carry-on of her’s so bad, she could end up on the news.’
It was Hollis’s birthday, and he had invited the firm for a quiet drink – followed by several noisy ones – at the British Queen, which had become one of their after-work boozers as the poncification of local pubs drove them further and further down the road. Slider said thanks but no thanks – he had a long-standing dinner date with Atherton and Emily – but chipped in to the drinks pot anyway, as guv’nors were expected to; and watched in amazement as McLaren slipped away without saying anything to any
body.
‘McLaren not going?’ he asked Hollis.
‘He said he might join us later,’ Hollis said, evidently equally baffled. McLaren never missed a drink, having legendarily no life outside the Job. He lowered his voice. ‘Guv, I was taking a leak just now and he was in there, shaving.’
‘But he was clean-shaven this morning,’ Slider remembered. In fact, he had not had to exhort McLaren to stand closer to the razor for weeks.
‘Aye, and I know them leccy shavers don’t do the job like the old cold steel, but still . . .’
‘Yes,’ Slider said thoughtfully. Twice in one day? McLaren? The man who’d need the full-time attentions of a valet just to achieve the level of mal-soigné?
‘Guv, I’m wondering if he’s poorly,’ Hollis said awkwardly. No man likes to talk about his colleagues behind their backs. Especially on sensitive subjects. ‘He’s lost a bit o’ ground lately. Been off his oats.’
Slider nodded. McLaren had never been fat, but there had been the fleshiness of the chip-eater and beer-drinker about him. Now his lines were less blurred. ‘Maybe I should have a word with him.’
‘Discreet, like,’ Hollis added hastily. ‘You won’t let on—?’
‘Of course not.’
Which meant that at Atherton’s bijou terraced house in West Hampstead – which he called an artesian cottage because it was so damp – the conversation was, surprisingly, on McLaren rather than the case for the first half hour. Joanna had met them there, having left Slider’s father to babysit. Emily was doing the cooking for once, which meant that Atherton was rather distracted in any case, listening – and smelling – for crises in the kitchen. Not that Emily couldn’t cook, but she had her ways and he had his; and besides, he had been so famed for his dinner parties before they met, it was hard to give up the tiller to the cabin boy. He occupied himself giving each of them a gin and tonic large enough to have stood in as a water feature in a medium-sized courtyard garden, and fiddled about rearranging the cutlery on the table.
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