Outside the slicing wind had not let up, and as the glazing was Victorian, the crimson velvet curtains over the windows heaved and struggled like an opera singer getting dressed – much to the delight of the cats, who pretended they thought there was something hiding behind them that needed killing. The sealpoint Siameses, Sredni Vashtar and Tiglath Pileser – usually known as Vash and Tig – were relics of a previous relationship (divorce is so hard on the children, Atherton was wont to say) and had at least two cats’ worth too much energy for a house this size. Which was why he and Emily were talking about trying to get a bigger place, with a garden. Slider tried not to let his feelings show when this topic was discussed, because Atherton had never before had a relationship that got that far. For him, commitment had been remembering her name in the morning. But now with Emily . . . Slider was so happily married, he wanted the same thing for his friend – like the tailless fox, Atherton said cynically.
Slider had relayed his conversation with Hollis as Atherton went round with nibbles (olives, not crisps – oh, there’s posh!)
‘There’s something up with him,’ Slider concluded. ‘Hollis thinks he’s ill. But why would someone who is ill start to dress smartly and shave twice a day? I can see the losing weight bit makes sense . . .’
Atherton considered. ‘Maybe he was going to see a specialist, and that’s why he was poshing up.’
‘Oh, really!’ Emily exclaimed from the kitchen, immediately followed by a crash and an: ‘Oh damn!’
Atherton froze. ‘Everything all right?’ he called.
‘Fine!’ came the breezy reply. ‘Just dropped a saucepan lid. No, seriously, why would someone dress up to see a consultant?’
‘People used to tidy up when the doctor was coming,’ Slider defended his lieutenant.
Joanna smirked. ‘In the fifties, maybe. When Janet and John roamed the earth. You really are a couple of clots. Aren’t they, Em?’ she called.
‘S’obvious!’ she called back. ‘Plain as the nose on your face.’ There were some more noises off, with muffled curses, and then she appeared in the kitchen doorway, holding an empty tumbler. ‘What about another of these?’
‘Are you sure?’ Atherton said. ‘I mean, while you’re cooking? Kitchens are dangerous places – naked flames, hot superconductive surfaces . . .’
She stuffed the glass into his hand and kissed the end of his nose. ‘Has anyone ever told you you have a cute face?’
‘No, but I have acute anxiety,’ he responded. But he did another round of drinks. ‘So what is this bleedin’ obvious answer we’re all missing,’ he asked, tipping gin into glasses with abandon.
‘Not all,’ Joanna said. ‘Just you poor old hairy chaps. He’s in love.’
‘McLaren?’ Atherton stopped in the act of uncapping the tonic. The cats had come mincing over, looking for mischief. Tig was trying to get his head up Atherton’s trouser leg, while Vash appeared to be calculating whether he could jump straight from the floor to the top of Atherton’s head. He’d done it before. It wasn’t the process that hurt but the arrival. Heads were slippery and required landing gear to be down.
Emily counted on her fingers. ‘Sudden interest in his appearance, stopped stuffing his face, distracted expression, disappearing on his own instead of going for drinks.’
‘Yes, but – McLaren,’ Atherton said again.
‘Why not? It happens,’ Joanna said. ‘To golden girls and lads and chimney sweepers.’
‘Love makes the world go round,’ said Emily.
‘So do large amounts of alcohol,’ Atherton retorted, handing her the first glass. She grinned and disappeared into the kitchen.
‘It makes sense, I suppose,’ Slider said, staring at nothing. ‘He turned up at the murder shout before everyone else. I wonder if she lives out that way?’
‘Has he never been married?’ Joanna asked.
‘Oh yes – years ago, before I knew him. I don’t think it lasted very long. She left him. Usual copper reasons, I suppose – the unsocial hours, the drinking, blah blah blah. Since then – well, he’s not really a ladies’ man, our Maurice.’
‘More a pie, pasty and bacon sarnie man,’ Atherton said, handing Slider his drink.
‘Thanks.’ He was staring distractedly at an ornate Victorian pot on a tall stand in the corner. ‘Didn’t you use to have an aspidistra in that?’ he asked. It was empty now.
‘Aspidistra? You dear old-fashioned thing,’ Joanna said. ‘It was a fern, wasn’t it, Jim? What happened to it?’
‘The kits ate it. FYI, ferns go through cats like the proverbial dose of salts. It took me a while to work out what was causing it, but the results were definitely antisocial. As the saying goes, with fronds like those, who needs enemas?’
‘I wonder how serious it is,’ Joanna said. ‘Not the diarrhoea – McLaren’s fancy.’
‘I wonder if we’ll ever meet her,’ Slider said. ‘If that is what it is, and he’s being this secretive . . . Is he ashamed of her?’
‘More likely doesn’t want to be joshed to death by you dinosaurs,’ Emily called from the kitchen. ‘Dishing up now. A little help?’
Emily’s cooking was not as elegantly finished as Atherton’s, but it tasted good, and they tucked in happily to a chicken-and-rice dish raised above the everyday by fat black olives and slices of preserved lemon.
Slider recounted the day’s advances and Connolly’s theory.
‘She’s an ingenious girl,’ Atherton said. ‘But you can’t get over the dog.’
‘That’s the same whoever it was,’ Slider said.
‘He could have put the body in his car boot, driven home to establish his alibi, then gone out again in the middle of the night to dump it. That gets over the dog,’ Emily suggested.
‘But that would surely have left some sign on her clothes,’ Slider said. ‘Creases, oil stains. It seems to me most likely she wasn’t killed at the flat.’
‘You’ve only got this Ronnie Fitton’s word for it that the dog didn’t bark,’ Joanna said. ‘Didn’t you say the upstairs people were out all evening? And the top floor ones never heard anything anyway?’
Slider nodded. ‘But why would Fitton lie about that?’
‘Maybe he didn’t lie. Maybe he really didn’t hear anything. Which means it could have happened at the flat. Or, if he was the murderer, maybe he wanted to distract attention from himself.’
‘But if he was going to lie, wouldn’t he lie the other way?’ Emily asked. ‘Make out that there was a rumpus up there, make you think someone else was there.’
‘No,’ said Slider. ‘Safer not to give false clues that can rebound on you. He wouldn’t know what other witnesses might say. Not hearing anything is the default setting – no one can prove you’re lying about that. But if you claim to have heard something that never happened, or at a different time from everyone else, questions get asked.’
‘So – you think he might have done it, then?’ Joanna said, working out his negatives.
‘He’s the obvious suspect,’ Slider said. ‘He had a key, he knew the dog, he was on the spot.’
‘And he’s got a record,’ Atherton said.
‘Yes, the press have had a field day with that,’ Emily mused. She was a freelance journalist. ‘Nice people, aren’t we?’
‘On the other hand, if the deed wasn’t done at the flat – what then?’ Joanna asked. ‘Doesn’t that bust it right open?’
‘Yup,’ said Atherton, not happily.
‘Well, it’s early days yet,’ Slider said, though he knew it wasn’t, not really. After the first forty-eight hours, it got more and more difficult. And thanks to the ‘missing persons’ element, the forty-eight had been a diminishing dot in the distance before they were even called to the scene. ‘There’s got to be evidence out there. All we have to do is find it.’
‘And on the basis that it’s always the person closest to the victim, it will probably turn out to be either the boyfriend or the stepfather.’
‘In f
iction,’ said Emily, ‘it often turns out to be the first person you suspected.’
‘Which brings us back to Ronnie Fitton,’ said Atherton.
‘We’re going to have to do something about him,’ Slider sighed.
‘Ah, but what?’ Atherton finished lightly. ‘Shall I open another bottle?’
SEVEN
Deliver Us From Elvis
By the next morning, they had had to close off half of Cathnor Road, to the annoyance of local residents. The crowds were three deep, the press had got themselves all settled in with fleece-lined jackets and telephoto lenses on tripods, and the television news channels all had someone there, wearing a smart knitted scarf with the two ends pushed through the loop, talking to shoulder-cams and trying to make much of little. Add the police cars and forensic vans, and you had a three ring circus. The only happy people were the upstairs residents across the road who had rented out their windows to paparazzi, and the ingenious downstairs couple who were selling tea and sandwiches to the bored journos.
Because there really wasn’t anything to see. The Beales had moved out and gone to stay in their second home, a cottage near Marlow, from which, Mr Beale had told Commander Wetherspoon at some length (it turned out they had met once at a fund-raiser, which was enough of an ‘in’ to allow him to bend his ear), it was both costly and time-consuming to commute to work. The inconvenience and expense was intolerable considering that the police had the obvious suspect in plain view and could have arrested him right at the beginning and saved everyone a lot of trouble, which was surely what they paid their taxes for.
Slider had been happy for them to go – their alibi had checked out, not that there was any reason to suspect them in the first place, and the fewer people cluttering up the place the better. It was just a pity that out of sight was not out of earshot.
The Boltons had also moved out, to stay with Mrs Bolton’s parents in Hayes, because the strain was thought to be too much for Mrs Bolton’s condition. And Scott Hibbert had had to give up the flat to the forensic team as soon as the misper case had turned into a murder, and had been provided with a room in an hotel in Hammersmith, where the proprietor was used to such things and was primed to raise the alarm if there were any suggestion of flitting. So there was nothing for the media to observe at the house but the forensic comings and goings, and nothing to hope for but a sight of Ronnie Fitton, who was lying low behind drawn curtains. The old case of his murder of his wife was all over every paper and on every news broadcast, despite anything the Commander and other high-ups could do. It was in the public domain, and the suggestion that if there ever were a court case, it would be jeopardized by the impossibility of finding anyone for the jury who didn’t already think of Fitton as guilty, cut no ice with the media barons.
Porson, having been summoned to an early meeting at Hammersmith, returned to Shepherd’s Bush in a fouler. Commander Wetherspoon had that effect on people. He was tall, pompous, blame-allergic, and so ingratiating of those above him, generally all you could see of him was his boots.
‘All they care about is it’s a good story now,’ said Porson of the press. ‘And if there’s a trial and it goes wrong that’ll be an even better story, so why should they care? There’s nothing they like better than having a poke at the police – but who do they come screaming to if some punter shoves ’em out the way and they fall down and hurt their little selves?’ He rubbed at his jaw, pushing his head sideways to stretch his neck, and then used his other hand to knead his shoulder. ‘And to cap it all,’ he snarled, ‘I got this nostalgia all down one side. It’s bloody killing me.’
‘Ah yes,’ Slider murmured. ‘I used to have that.’
Porson straightened up and gave Slider a sharp look. ‘There’s a lot of pressure on me to arrest Fitton.’
‘We haven’t got any evidence against him,’ Slider said.
‘There’s more things to consider than evidence. Like it or not, we’re engaged in a public relations exercise every time we stick our noses out of doors. Nothing and nobody’s sacrospect these days. You got to be seen to be doing something, and if that something is Ronnie Fitton – well, you can’t bake bricks without eggs. If we can’t keep the press busy they’ll be muddying the waters so we can’t see the wood for the pile anyway. I got more people on my back than a donkey at the beach, and a bird in the hand’s as good as a wink to a blind horse any day.’
When Porson was agitated, his grasp on language became even more random than usual. You could tell how riled he was by the degree of dislocation. Slider put his current rage at around seven-point-five on the sphincter scale.
He had sympathy for the old man – he was always grateful to Porson for standing between him and the PR aspects of the job – but right was right; and he knew Porson believed that too. He maintained a steady gaze and said, ‘If we arrest Fitton too soon, it could jeopardize the case against him if we later find we have one to make.’
Porson stared, and then translated his restlessness into pacing back and forth behind his desk. ‘I know, I know,’ he said more evenly. ‘And I said all that to Mr Wetherspoon. But they’ve got different priorities from us up there in the stratosphere, God help us. And the Police Service isn’t a democracy.’
Slider was reminded of a joke of Atherton’s: in a democracy, it’s your vote that counts; in feudalism it’s your count that votes. Definitely feudal, the Job. ‘I know, sir. But if we do Fitton we’ve got to do it right.’
‘I know, laddie, I know.’ Porson paced a couple of times more, and said, ‘I’ll hold ’em off you as long as I can. But if it comes to it, we may have to sacrifice the sheep for the goats. Fitton’s a big boy. He won’t call for his mum if we do give him a tug. But we’ll leave him where he is for now. Only for God’s sake get yourself in gear and get me something. I can’t keep Mr Wetherspoon happy by showing him my legs.’
On this horrifying thought, Slider left.
When he was crossing the squad room on his way back to his own, Swilley called him, waving a couple of forensic reports. Slider eyed the pile of papers on his desk, visible through his open door – frankly, it would have been visible from space – and said, ‘Precis them for me.’
‘This one’s the stomach contents,’ she obliged. ‘Food was still present in the stomach, suggesting the victim died less than three hours after her last meal. Recognizable elements in the partially digested contents were some kind of fish, vegetables and sponge pudding.’ She looked up. ‘That accords with the meal she had at the Vic, according to her mates – pan-fried sea-bass with roasted vegetables and sticky-toffee pudding.’ She rolled her eyes slightly. ‘And if they were eating between, say, eight o’clock and nine, allowing for having drinks first and waiting for service, that means she was probably killed about half ten, eleven o’clock time.’
‘So that rules out imprisonment and a later murder,’ Slider said. ‘Well, it’s a relief to get that out of the way. She went home and was killed soon afterwards.’
‘Which makes it more likely she was killed at the flat, doesn’t it?’ Swilley said. ‘And that brings us back to Fitton.’
‘Or anyone who had a key or she might let in. What’s the other one?’ he asked, of the paper in her hand.
‘Examination of the clothes. Nothing much there: on the back of her coat and her skirt, some traces of earth and partially composted vegetable matter – I think they mean leaves, boss. They match the earth and leaves of the site – big surprise. And some hairs that turned out to be dog hair – no surprises there either.’
Slider nodded. ‘Shove ’em on my desk, then. I’ll look at them later.’
Before either of them could move, Atherton came in, waving a large paper bag. ‘Another day, another doughnut,’ he said. ‘I stopped on the way. Thought I’d do my bit for the common weal.’
It was amazing. Instantly he disappeared in a passionate press of bodies that had been quietly at their desks the instant before. From inside, his voice emerged. ‘What can I say? It’s
something I’ve always had.’
When the scrum evaporated, he brushed himself smooth and said, ‘So, what’s up?’
‘The pound, and Mr Porson’s blood pressure,’ Slider said. ‘But not our tails.’
Hollis drifted over. ‘What are we on today, guv?’ he asked. ‘We’ve still got canvassing to complete – Mackay was supervising that yesterday?’ He made it a question and Slider nodded agreement. ‘Fathom’s on cars – local stolen, parked, and ANPR’d in the area. And McLaren’s still trying to trace her route home.’
‘Forensic’s in the flat and the public areas of the house,’ Atherton added. ‘And the garden, such as it is. What else?’
‘There’s Hibbert’s alibi to check. That means going down to Salisbury.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Swilley offered.
‘No, I want you and Connolly to keep interviewing her girl friends. And go over her papers. I want to know more about her life. You’ve read Connolly’s report?’
‘About her little bit of trouble?’ Swilley said. ‘Yeah, boss. You think she wasn’t as white as she was painted?’
‘I’m not making any judgements,’ Slider said. ‘But she had a secret in her past, and that makes her interesting. Did anyone else know it? And did she have any others?’
Atherton shook his head. ‘Three perfectly good suspects and you want more?’
‘Three?’
‘What about Wiseman? I like him even better than Hibbert.’
‘That’s because you’re an iconoclast. I suppose we’ll have to check his alibi, just to be on the safe side. Soccer practice is as good as they get, but he was rather late home.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Atherton said.
‘No, I think I’ll put Connolly on to it when she’s done with the girl friends. It might involve talking to teenagers, and she’s got the most street cred amongst us.’
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