Blood Sinister

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Five minutes later she said, ‘Can’t sleep?’

  ‘How could you tell?’

  ‘I can hear you thinking.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you. Go back to sleep.’

  ‘No, it’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’m awake now.’ She rolled over to face him, and he went onto his back, taking her on his shoulder – their talking position. ‘You’re very late. Is it the case or another woman?’

  ‘What would I do with another woman?’

  ‘Remind me in the morning and I’ll draw you a diagram. So what’s happened?’

  ‘We brought the prime suspect in for a little chat,’ Slider said. ‘We’ve matched the semen in the vagina to his blood type, and his Westminster boss has blown his alibi.’

  ‘Oh, good. You arrested him?’

  ‘No, he was just helping us with our enquiries. It’s not always the best idea to arrest them. Once you do that, you’re on the clock and all sorts of rules apply.’

  He told her of the long interview with Prentiss, in its various stages. ‘While we were talking to him I sent Hollis round to see Maria Colehern, and she confirmed that Prentiss had been there on Thursday night at the time he stated. Not that that was any surprise – if your mistress won’t back you up, who will? But Hollis liked her. He believed she was telling the truth.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘It doesn’t help him,’ Slider said. ‘He seemed terribly relieved and grateful when she backed him up, but it doesn’t help him at all. She can’t be his alibi if we don’t have a definite time for the murder, and if he’s the murderer he ought to know that.’

  ‘Don’t you think he’s guilty?’

  ‘Yes, I think he’s guilty as hell, but I can’t make up my mind if he’s playing a long game, or just stupid. He doesn’t seem stupid, but if he wanted an alibi, why didn’t he use his wife? She tried to give him one, but her evidence is so compromised now we can’t take her word on anything. Why did he say from the beginning he was at Agnew’s flat just for the half-hour? If he was going to deny the rest – including having sex with her – why not deny it all?’

  ‘Maybe he knows someone saw him,’ Joanna said. ‘Or maybe he doesn’t know whether she told anyone he was coming, so he’s trying to cover all eventualities.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Slider, ‘you could be right there. And of course it has worked to an extent. It’s tied our hands. We know he was there and he admits he was there but that doesn’t prove that he murdered her.’

  ‘Even with all his lies?’

  ‘His lies suggest he had something to hide, but that’s not enough,’ Slider sighed.

  ‘So what does he say he was doing there?’ Joanna asked.

  Slider told her what Prentiss had said about his visit.

  Phoebe Agnew hadn’t seemed surprised to see him. ‘Phoebe was the sort of person you could just drop in on,’ Prentiss explained. ‘She never minded. Liked it, in fact. It wasn’t as if she was the houseproud sort who needed advance notice so that she could put her best foot forward. Well, you’ve seen her place. It was always a tip – like a student bedsit. In fact, in some ways she still lived like a student. She never minded what time of the day or night it was, she was always ready for a drink and a chat.’

  Phoebe, he said, had got the whisky bottle out straight away, and he’d accepted a glass and told her his problem over Noni and Maria.

  ‘She seemed in a bit of an odd mood, though,’ Prentiss said. ‘Distant. Distracted, maybe. At times she hardly seemed to be listening to me. To tell you the truth, I think she’d had a lot to drink,’ he added, ‘and she was putting away the whisky at an alarming rate. She refilled her own glass and offered me a top-up before I’d taken more than a sip or two. And after that I saw her fill up a couple more times.’

  ‘Are you saying she was drunk?’ Slider had asked him. A woman sleepy with drink would struggle less when she was strangled, of course.

  ‘Not really. She always could hold her drink like a man,’ Prentiss had said, ‘but she has been drinking more heavily these last few weeks. I had words with her about it at New Year – asked her if she realised how much she was getting through. She told me to mind my own damn business. Anyway,’ he went on, ‘on Thursday night when I’d told her my problem she didn’t say anything, just sat there sipping at the blasted whisky, so I asked her if she’d been listening to me. I said, “Just say if I’m boring you and I’ll go.” And she flared up and said, “Oh, stop being such a prima donna! You think the world revolves around your penis!”’

  ‘It was brave of him to tell you that,’ Joanna commented.

  ‘I think he was telling us how exasperating Agnew could be,’ Slider said, ‘and inviting our sympathy for murdering her.’

  ‘Go on,’ Joanna said. ‘What did he say next?’

  ‘He said it had suddenly occurred to him that maybe Agnew was starting the menopause too, and that that was what was making her irritable and irrational. So he decided to be patient and kind with her, because she couldn’t help it, poor cow.’

  ‘Patronising bastard!’ Joanna exclaimed. ‘What d’you mean, starting the menopause too?’

  ‘He’d wondered if his wife’s odd moods were partly from the same cause, because she and Agnew were the same age.’

  ‘How you men do harp on about hormones!’

  ‘Never mind the “you men” business,’ Slider said sternly. ‘Anyway, Prentiss said he asked Agnew very kindly and calmly if there was something bothering her, and she said, “I’ve got a problem that makes yours pale into insignificance.” So naturally Prentiss asked her what it was, and she said, “I wish I could tell you, but I can’t.” Prentiss pressed her a bit, said surely she could tell him, he was her oldest friend, and hinted that with all his friends in high places he might be able to help her.’

  ‘Sensitive,’ Joanna said. ‘Doesn’t miss an opportunity for self-aggrandisement.’

  ‘Well, he said that Agnew just snapped at him, “You’re the last person who could help me with it.” So he shrugged and let it go.’

  ‘And what about his own problem? Did he get her advice?’

  ‘No, he said she seemed to think it was trivial and irrelevant. She said, “You get yourself into these things, try thinking how the other people involved feel”, which he said annoyed him because that was exactly what he was doing, trying not to hurt either the wife or Maria Colehern.’

  ‘It’s a bugger when women don’t recognise a compassionate, self-sacrificing man when they see one,’ Joanna agreed. ‘So did you believe all that?’

  ‘Oh, yes, there was too much detail for him to have made it all up; and his annoyance with Agnew showed through clearly, which is presumably not what he would have wanted. I can see him losing his temper because she didn’t understand him and kept claiming her own problems were worse. And I suppose it explains why he persists in denying he had sex with her: he thinks being her lover makes him more likely to kill her than being a detached platonic friend.’

  ‘Well, he’s not wrong there, is he?’ Joanna said. ‘If she were just a platonic friend he’d shrug off her moods and leave her to it. So where do you go from here?’

  Slider moved restlessly. ‘We’ve got to find more evidence. We’ve got the house-to-house still going – if someone saw him coming out in a dishevelled or agitated condition, that might help.’

  ‘What did Maria Colehern say about him when he arrived on Thursday night?’ Joanna asked.

  ‘That he seemed normal enough. Perhaps a bit subdued and preoccupied, but no more than she would expect from a man with his business and political commitments.’

  ‘Well, he might have enough self-control to fake normality in front of her, given that he was relying on her for an alibi.’

  ‘But it wasn’t an alibi,’ Slider fretted.

  ‘Maybe you’ve missed something that was meant to fix the time of death,’ Joanna said. ‘Think of it: he left some subtle clue that you haven’t cottoned on to, and he’s bei
ng driven mad with frustration, not able to point it out to you without dropping himself in it!’

  ‘A pleasing thought,’ Slider said. ‘Anything that could make that bastard writhe …’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘What else can we do? Find out more about his relationship with Agnew, I suppose. The thing is, I can’t quite see him murdering her on what he’s told us so far. Getting mad and smacking her, perhaps; but to strangle a big strong woman like that, even if she is drunk, takes enough time for an angry man to think better of it, if he hasn’t got a really adequate reason. Especially a man with as much to lose as Prentiss. There must be more cause between them than that; and if we can nail the why, and present him with it, we might shock him into confessing.’

  ‘How will you go about that?’

  ‘We’ve still got all her papers to go through – something might emerge. And meanwhile, there’s his and her nearest and dearest to winkle at.’

  ‘Good. You sound better now you’ve decided what to do.’

  ‘It’s relieved my mind to talk, but I’m sorry I’ve woken you up,’ he said. ‘D’you want to get a couple of hours now?’

  ‘You’re wide awake, aren’t you?’

  ‘To tell you the truth, I’m absolutely starving,’ he confessed.

  ‘Then it must be breakfast time,’ she said, starting to get up.

  ‘But it’s only five o’clock!’

  ‘What’s an hour or two between friends? Anyway,’ she added, suddenly serious, ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Uh-oh! What have I done?’

  ‘Let’s get some food going first.’

  While he made toast and tea, she scrambled eggs and, in deference to his hunger, grilled several rashers of bacon. The smell – surely the best in the world, especially early in the morning – got his juices going so that he was almost frantic by the time they sat in their dressing-gowns at the tiny kitchen table. They ate with cheerful daytime clatter, just as if the accumulated sleep of the rest of London wasn’t lapping at the walls of the house like a reproachful tide.

  ‘So, what have you got to tell me?’ he asked. ‘How was the concert, by the way? I haven’t really seen you to talk to since then.’

  ‘It was nice,’ she said. ‘Faure´ and Schumann. Musicians’ music.’

  ‘Isn’t it all?’

  ‘Not by any means. Some of the things the public like to listen to, we don’t like to play. And vice versa. The best music is both. Brahms, for instance. But I digress.’

  He reached across the table for her hand. ‘I like it when you do that.’

  ‘Stop mucking about, Bill Slider. I’ve got to talk to you seriously about Gerhard Wolf.’

  ‘Aha! I knew I ought to worry about a man named after a predator. Do you think it’s going to lead to more work for you?’

  ‘Nail on head, with a vengeance,’ she said. ‘The thing is, you know how tough things are at the moment?’

  ‘Yes, you’ve told me,’

  ‘I haven’t told you everything. The orchestra’s got virtually nothing until April. Our Government grant is being “discussed” at the highest levels, which means they want to withdraw it, or merge us with one of the other Big Four orchestras. And worst of all, we may be losing the summer opera tour.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me that,’ said Slider.

  ‘It’s so grim to contemplate I didn’t even want to think about it until it was certain one way or the other. But the fact is the opera company’s losing money, and the only way they can economise is to cut out the big operas, particularly on tour. They’re talking about only taking a chamber orchestra this year.’

  ‘But if they take fewer musicians, you’ll still be one of them, surely?’ Slider pleaded. ‘You’re number five.’

  ‘No, I don’t mean they want to cut us down to chamber orchestra size. They want to drop us completely, in favour of a chamber orchestra. The Academy of St Paul’s is the front runner. So you see,’ she concluded bleakly, ‘if we lose the summer tour, it means we’ll only have something like four months’ work a year. No-one can live on that.’

  ‘But you do freelance stuff.’

  ‘When I can get it. There’s less and less of that around, too, and more and more musicians going after every job. The fact of the matter is, Bill, that I can’t earn enough to live on.’

  He was silent. He ought to be able to say, never mind, darling, I’ll keep you, but that just wasn’t true. He could barely afford to keep himself. Once all the deductions were taken out – tax, National Insurance, the maintenance for the kids, pension contributions, life insurance, payments on the car – he only just had enough left for his food and petrol and so on. In fact, because he was living with Joanna in her flat, he didn’t even pay a proper share of those expenses. The contents insurance, for instance, and the council tax she paid – and she covered the whole telephone bill, though he gave her half the gas and electricity.

  While the children were at school he was never going to have enough to keep Joanna; and as a Detective Inspector he could neither earn overtime nor take on a second job to boost his income. He could see why some officers, often with more than one ex-wife and family to pay for, got into debt and turned desperate.

  ‘So what has this Wolf person got to do with it?’ he asked at last. He had an awful apprehension about where this might be going.

  She closed her fingers round his in the manner of a nurse about to exhort a patient to be brave. ‘He’s offered me a job.’

  ‘In the whatsname – the Grossman Ensemble?’

  She nodded. ‘They’ve got a fantastic schedule – dates right into next year, regular bookings for festivals all over Europe. Recording contracts too. Wolfie’s brought the musical standard up to a level where all the best conductors want to be associated with them; and Adela Pronck, the general manager, is just a total diva when it comes to publicity and getting bookings. She’s had enquiries from all over the world in the last few months. You know what it’s like – when you’re hot, you’re hot. Word goes round and before you know where you are, managements are fighting each other to get you.’

  ‘It’s a compliment, then, that they want you?’ Slider said, trying to sound positive.

  ‘Yes, it is. And I won’t even have to audition. Wolfie’s an old mate – he knows my playing. That’s why he called me to fill in in Leeds. And Adela never interferes with artistic decisions, so if Wolfie says I’ve got the right sort of sound and flexibility, it’s a done deal.’

  She stopped abruptly, as if she had suddenly heard her own voice. Slider felt cold through to his bones, despite the bacon and eggs. ‘You sound as if you’ve made up your mind,’ he said.

  ‘No, I haven’t, not yet,’ she said. She bit her lip. ‘It’s an opportunity I can’t afford to miss. But it would mean living abroad. They’re based in Amsterdam. Most of the concerts are in Amsterdam and Frankfurt. And the recording sessions. And they tour a lot, mostly in Germany, Holland, Belgium and Switzerland, and there are American and Australian tours coming up, and Hong Kong in October. Sometimes they come to England,’ she added on a failing note. ‘As you see. But not often.’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ he said. There didn’t seem anything else to say.

  ‘It’s a fabulous opportunity,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I see that.’

  ‘Bill, what am I supposed to do? If I take the job I’ll have to live in Amsterdam. There’s just no way I could travel back and forth.’

  ‘How long would it be for?’ he asked.

  She shrugged. ‘It’s a permanent job. I don’t really see myself living in Amsterdam for ever, and if the business picks up over here again of course I’d want to come back. But – well, it’d be a few years. At least.’

  ‘So what happens to us?’ he asked at last.

  She took a deep breath. ‘That’s the problem I’ve been trying to think around ever since Monday night.’

  ‘I thought you had something on your mind.’

  ‘The only s
olution I can come up with is that you come with me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come with me. Come to Amsterdam. Make a new life with me abroad.’ She squeezed his hand again, to stop the negative she saw gathering like snow slipping down a roof. ‘You’ve got nothing in particular to keep you here, have you? Your old house is sold, and now your divorce is through—’

  ‘My children aren’t nothing,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t mean that, but how often do you see them anyway? Once a month? You could fly back once a month to visit them – once a fortnight if you wanted.’

  ‘But what if anything happened – an emergency? How would Irene get in touch with me?’

  ‘There are telephones,’ she pointed out. ‘Amsterdam’s not the end of the world. You could get back in a few hours—’

  ‘A few hours!’

  ‘You’re being unreasonable. Would you refuse to move to Wales because it would take you a few hours to get back in an emergency?’

  ‘Wales would be quite different.’

  ‘Would it? Amsterdam’s no further, really. Just because it’s a foreign country—’

  ‘That’s not the point. Anyway, I wouldn’t move to Wales either.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you? Not even if it was the only way for us to be together?’ He was silent. ‘Please, Bill, don’t reject it out of hand. At least think about it.’

  ‘I am thinking about it,’ he said. ‘Amongst other things I’m thinking what the hell could I do in Holland?’

  ‘The same as you do here.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Policing is completely different over there. I could be a policeman in Wales if I could get a post, but I could never learn a whole new system of law in a foreign country – and they’d never take me at my age anyway.’

  She saw the truth of that, though reluctantly. ‘Well, you could get some other job, then.’

  ‘I don’t speak Dutch.’

  ‘You could learn.’

  ‘I’m not qualified for anything else. The only thing I know how to do is what I do. And anyway, I don’t want any other job,’ he finished on a burst of honesty. ‘I like what I do.’