‘But there’s Toby’s hair on her clothes,’ Atherton objected.
‘A good counsel will get over that, given he and Toby found the body.’
‘The wound could be matched to the roof edge of his car.’
‘It’s a common make and model. Without any traces of her blood on it . . . And he was a minicab driver. One thing he knows how to do is wash a car. There were no witnesses. We’ve got nothing but the coincidence of her being his daughter.’
‘But she was there – only yards from his home!’ Joanna protested. ‘Doesn’t that mean something?’
He shook his head. ‘He used to take her to the Lido when she was a kid. Who’s to say she wasn’t just having a nostalgia trip and got killed by a nutter walking in the woods? We can’t prove he knew she was there. She didn’t tell anyone he had come back into her life, and we don’t know that they were ever seen together. The CPS would never go on a confession alone, particularly one like that, made under emotional strain, if it was retracted. No, if he thinks better of it, there’s nothing we can do.’
‘Well, perhaps losing his beloved daughter is punishment enough,’ Joanna said, and then caught up with something he’d said. ‘What do you mean, “if it was an accident”?’
‘He said her foot skidded in the mud,’ said Slider. ‘But the ground had been frozen hard for weeks. There was no mud. I noticed myself when we arrived on the scene, because I was thinking about possible footmarks.’
‘Maybe she skidded on something else,’ Joanna said reasonably.
‘Maybe,’ Slider said. ‘But someone falling backwards against a car like that – you wouldn’t expect the blow to be hard enough to kill. But if, being drunk and furious and afraid, he dashed her backwards with all his considerable strength – he was a manual worker, so he was pretty sinewy . . .’
‘But it would still be an accident,’ Joanna said.
‘The law wouldn’t see it that way,’ Slider said. ‘Intent to hurt someone, if it ends in killing them – especially with the deliberate cover-up afterwards. He tied her scarf round her neck to make it look as if she’d been strangled. He must have been afraid his hands would have left a mark. That’s quite calculated, you know. Not the action of a man in a blind panic. It would weight the evidence against him. If . . .’
‘If?’ she asked.
‘If the CPS decided to go with it.’ He gave a shrug, ‘Not my problem, fortunately. Those of far higher counsel than me will go through it all and decide what to charge him with and why. And there’s plenty to play with, so they’ll get him for something. And as you say, maybe losing her will be punishment enough.’ He thought of Ronnie Fitton and his crime and punishment speech. It was never enough, was it, for those who cared?
‘Surely your opinion will be taken into account,’ Joanna said, concerned for him now, rather than the unknown and now unknowable Melanie.
‘Me? I don’t have an opinion. I’m just the meek ass between two burdens. More than two, it generally feels like.’
‘Issachar was a strong ass, not a meek one,’ Atherton said, to lighten the mood. ‘I don’t usually get to correct you on the Bible, but if you’re going to quote . . .’
‘All asses are meek,’ Slider said.
‘Ah, well, there I have to disagree with you,’ Atherton said. ‘What about McLaren?’
‘Oh, poor McLaren,’ Joanna protested. ‘You’re always picking on him.’
A twitch of a smile moved Slider’s mouth. ‘One thing I will say about him: he may be weird, but at least you know he probably won’t reproduce.’
Some time later, after Joanna had gone home to relieve his father, Connolly brought him a cup of tea. There was so much to do that several of the team had been invited to come in and do some overtime, and she was one of those who had accepted.
She found Slider surrounded by young skyscrapers of documents, but staring at the studio photograph of Melanie Hunter. He didn’t look up as she placed the tea gently on his desk, but he said, ‘Now it’s just The Melanie Hunter Murder – a shorthand reference in books and papers, coupled in the minds of those who remember at all with this picture.’
She sought for something to say. ‘But you got a result, boss. That’s something.’
‘Not to her,’ he said. He put the picture down with an air of squaring his shoulders. ‘Thanks for the tea.’ She gave a little you’re welcome gesture, and as she didn’t immediately turn away, he said, ‘You’re glad it didn’t turn out to be Fitton, aren’t you? I think you had a soft spot for him.’
‘Not exactly soft. Just not desperate hard. I think he cared about Melanie.’
‘Not to the extent of finding out what was going on in her life,’ Slider said, thinking of that Not my business. ‘I don’t think anyone cared that much about her, poor girl.’
‘Marty did,’ said Connolly, and then wished she hadn’t, because far from giving him any comfort, she’d clearly just given him someone else to worry about.
Eventually they had the firm’s traditional celebration drink at the Boscombe Arms. So far, Hunter had not retracted his confession, and the mess of possible charges was under consideration. Slider’s worry was that the CPS would end up thinking it was not worth the money it would cost to take it to trial, especially as the story was such a good one it would probably get the jury’s sympathy. But Porson had said they would have to move on the ‘tampering with a body’ side of it, at least, pour decourager les autres. ‘Can’t have people faking murders to cover up accidents,’ he had said, with no apparent sense of irony. And Paxman, meeting Slider in the canteen one day, brooding over mulligatawny soup, had said that if they went on the tampering bit, it would make no sense without the rest. ‘He’ll be jugged, good and hard, don’t you worry,’ he had concluded with unusual sympathy.
It was good that they had found out a little bit about William McGuire. According to MisPers, an elderly aunt from Colwyn Bay had reported him missing, but two months after the train crash, and only because he had missed sending her a birthday card, which he always did, and had not responded to a letter she had sent asking why. He had no other relatives. Nothing much was done about it at the time. As Hunter had said, when someone like McGuire goes missing, no one is very surprised. The old aunt, now 87 and in a home, but still with all her marbles, was contacted and told that he had died in the Greenford rail crash, and it was reported to Slider that she had been glad to know at last what had happened to him, having long made up her mind to it that he was dead.
The superintendent of the home sent Slider a photograph which the old lady had asked to have ‘put in his grave with him’. It was of McGuire, in palmier days, standing with his elder brother Robert, whom he had hero-worshipped. Robert was in uniform – he had been an NCO in the Welsh Guards, one of forty killed in the Falklands. Their parents had died when they were in their teens and Robert had always looked out for William. William had wanted to follow Robert into the army, but wasn’t bright enough – he could barely read and write. ‘He was a little bit simple, poor lamb,’ the Colwyn Bay auntie was reported as saying, ‘but always ever such a good boy.’
Quite how you put a photograph ‘in a grave’ Slider wasn’t sure; finding the grave at all would be an extra, time-consuming task he could well do without. He was glad, at least, that what with all the other wrongs done him, McGuire had not been murdered. And for the sake of closing files in his mind, he was glad to discover what he had been doing on the train that day – the auntie had said he was on night duty at the annexe, so he would have been on his way home. He wasn’t just fulfilling his meeting with destiny.
And so to the celebration, and the astonishing fact that McLaren had sidled to Slider’s door shortly after it had been announced and asked, with a casualness that would have fooled nobody, whether they were ‘bringing people’.
Slider hadn’t got as far as thinking about that – there was so much stuff in his in-tray by now, the bottom layer had turned to coal. Traditionally the celebration had bee
n for the firm only, but Joanna had sometimes come, and though that was probably a special dispensation for him as the big boss, there was no stated rule against it. What was far more interesting was that McLaren wanted to bring ‘somebody’, which presumably meant a woman, and Slider knew he would lose his place in his team’s heart if he denied them the chance to see what sort of woman would go out with McLaren.
So he said yes, and as soon as McLaren had gone, hastened to telephone Joanna to tell her to come.
He didn’t say a word to anyone else, but perhaps McLaren himself had mentioned it. At any rate, tension grew through the day, and when they finally decamped for the pub, you could have sliced it, buttered it, whacked a slice of corned beef between and sold it on a sandwich stall. When they got to the Boscombe and secured their usual corner, there was no sign of any extraneous bodies, but McLaren had an air of nervousness, and the usual loud conversation was curiously muted as everyone watched the door while attempting to appear not to.
The publican, Andy Barrett, brought the pints and some grub. It had gone upmarket a bit of late, and instead of the lopsided doorsteps and pork pies of yore there were three sorts of sandwiches in neat triangles on a big salver, with salad garnish; nachos and salsa; and a selection of Indian snacks – samosas, bhajis and pakoras.
Joanna came in. Everyone hitched up a bit and she squeezed in beside Slider.
‘What’s all this?’ she asked, indicating the snacks. ‘Posh grub?’
‘The clientele is getting younger,’ Atherton said across the table, with a touch of moodiness. Emily was away again. ‘An effort has to be made.’
‘I miss the old days,’ Joanna said. ‘Those fluorescent-orange Scotch eggs. The Barbie-pink pork pies.’
‘That’s just colour prejudice,’ said Atherton.
‘So when’s the main event coming off?’ she asked.
Slider made a shushing face, but Connolly, who had heard, had no shame, and turned to McLaren and said, ‘Yeah, right, Maurice, where’s this bird of yours? Sure I’m starting to think you’ve imagined her.’
‘She should be here any minute,’ he said, with what Slider would have sworn was a blush. ‘She’s coming from work.’
Every ear was pricked. ‘What’s she do, then?’ Connolly asked. ‘Nurse, is she?’
Joanna exchanged a private smile with Slider. Male musicians often went out with nurses for the same reason – they understood impossible schedules.
‘No, she’s a beauty therapist,’ McLaren said.
Everyone was too stunned to lay tongue to the obvious retorts, which was probably just as well.
‘At the Jingles Sports and Beauty Club – you know, down Chiswick, by the river. That big white building.’
‘Yes, I know it,’ Joanna said, to rescue the poor mutt from the prevailing shock and awe. ‘I’ve gone past it a few times going down to Barn Elms, to the recording studios. That must be an interesting job.’
‘Yeah. She’s the senior consultant,’ he said with pride. He met Joanna’s eyes and said, with an air of flinging himself off a cliff, ‘She’s been giving me a make-over.’
The explosion of suppressed derision from around the table was fortunately masked by the door opening again and McLaren saying with rather touching eagerness, ‘There she is.’
Atherton, who had been fiddling with his mobile, wondering whether it would seem too needy to ring Emily again, looked up, and felt his jaw drop like rain in Wimbledon week. McLaren’s girlfriend stood framed in the doorway, looking around for a friendly face. She was a good deal older than him, for a start, but seemed to have forgotten to take that into account when getting dressed. Her skirt was short and black, her shoes vertiginous and strappy, her top was clinging and fuchsia pink, and displayed a cleavage Carter and Caernarvon would have felt compelled to stick their heads down. ‘I see wonderful things!’ But more Tooting Common than Tutankhamen. Her make-up was blatantly professional, her hair brazenly highlighted, and her costume jewellery so bright it could have been used to signal aircraft. All she needs, Atherton thought in astonished awe, is a pimp and a lamp post.
McLaren had lurched to his feet, and Atherton, turning his gaze that way, saw Maurice’s face so soft and marshmallowy and eager and proud, it would make you vomit if it didn’t touch you to the quick.
‘Everybody, this is Jackie. Jackie Griffiths,’ he said in a voice of wonder. And suddenly Atherton could not bear to see him kicked, even in a friendly manner. He was getting to his feet, but Slider was ahead of him, and because they had both risen, oddly everyone else did, too, and a kindly formality came over the party, keeping those who might have mocked silent.
‘Good to meet you, Jackie,’ Slider said, reaching out a hand across the table.
‘This is the boss, our guv, Mr Slider,’ McLaren babbled.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Jackie said, shaking the hand. Her nails were long, square cut and French varnished. She smiled a professional smile. ‘Maurice has told me a lot about you. About all of you.’
Was there a hint of threat in that? Slider wondered vaguely. The introductions went round, a chair was brought, Jackie sat down, and the moment for ribaldry was safely past. McLaren went to the bar to get her a drink, and she looked round them all, beamed, and said, ‘What d’you all think of Maurice’s new look? I think it’s an improvement, don’t you? I said to him, you’re a nice-looking chap, but you don’t make the most of yourself.’
Slider had never considered McLaren as being nice-looking, or indeed anything-looking. He was just McLaren, the food disposal system, the man for whom the question had been coined, ‘Are you a man or a mouth?’
‘We all noticed the difference,’ he said.
She turned to him happily. ‘Well, I’m glad my hard work wasn’t all for nothing! D’you like his new hairstyle? I’m not sure I’ve got it quite right yet, but I’ll have to wait a few weeks before I can cut it again. Lucky it grows so fast. He’s got lovely thick hair. I told him—’ McLaren returned with a gin and tonic to place before her, and she looked up at him. ‘I told you, didn’t I, you’ve got lovely hair, but you don’t do anything with it.’
‘You live somewhere out Ruislip way, don’t you?’ Slider asked, to settle at least one question in his mind.
‘Northolt,’ she said. ‘How did you know?’ Luckily she didn’t wait for the question to be answered. ‘It’s a bit of a trek out to Chiswick, where I work now. I was thinking of moving when I got the new job, and it’d be nice to be a bit nearer to Maurice, but you’ve got to think of house prices. Of course, they do say two can live as cheaply as one. Maybe I could get someone to share with,’ she concluded with a gay laugh and a roguish glance at McLaren, who only gazed back at her, obviously entranced by her vivacity. Slider had never known him so silent.
Mind you, Jackie talked so much there was no need for anyone else to do a thing. It occurred to him sadly that there might now have to be a rule about bringing people in future. But he couldn’t feel anything but kindness towards someone who was willing to go to so much trouble to bring happiness and an appearance of living in the twenty-first century to someone like McLaren, the man civilization forgot.
On the way home, Joanna said, ‘It didn’t feel much like a celebration.’
‘I’m afraid she did talk a lot,’ Slider said. ‘But there’s no harm in her.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ she said. ‘It’s just that there’s usually a certain elation because you’ve got your man. The Mountie syndrome. But everyone seemed a bit subdued.’
‘It’s the uncertainty, I suppose. Not knowing what Hunter will be charged with or whether it will go to trial.’
‘But you solved the problem. The mystery. You started off knowing nothing, and now you know it all. That must be a satisfaction. Intellectually, at least, if not emotionally.’ She looked at him, at his face waxing and waning as they passed street lamps. ‘And Auntie McGuire knows what happened to her Billy at last.’
He smiled. ‘All right, I give in.
It’s a triumph of sorts, and I’ll accept the bouquets and put it behind me. Now what shall we talk about?’
‘We could talk about my troubles.’
‘Have you still got troubles? Oh yes, you’re stuck with Daniel Kluger for the rest of the season. Can’t you just rise above him?’
‘That’s the trouble. It might just be possible. There’s a job being advertised – co-principal in the LSO. More status, more money, a chance to get away from Kluger. And my laggard desk partner.’
Slider was alert. ‘Are you thinking of going for it?’ he asked carefully.
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘They don’t mind women any more. Jack – our leader, I mean, Jack Willis – thinks I could get it. But.’
He waited a bit and then said, ‘But what?’
‘It would be more work – which is great, more money – but I’d be away a lot more. Concerts, recordings. Travelling. Not being there to put Georgie to bed. All the babysitting problems that come with it.’
‘Luckily, we’ve got Dad,’ he said.
‘George needs his parents too.’
‘I can be fairly regular when there isn’t a big case on.’
‘Hmph,’ she said. And then, ‘Not seeing so much of you. Is it worth it?’
‘I can’t answer that,’ he said. ‘It’s your career. It would be a big step up for you, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes. Different pieces, different artists, different style of playing. Exciting. Challenging. Living on my wits – even more than I do now.’
‘But you love all that, don’t you?’ He glanced at her sideways. ‘Or don’t you? You don’t have to do it, you know, if you don’t want to.’
‘I do want to! Of course I do! But it’s the old dilemma, isn’t it? I’m a married woman with a child. I can’t give my all to my career without failing the other side.’
‘And vice versa,’ he said quietly.
‘Oh, blast you, why must you always see both sides?’ she said, with an exasperated sort of laugh. ‘You men just don’t know what it’s like. You can have everything.’
‘Well,’ he began.
Kill My Darling Page 29