Blood Sinister

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘We just had a phone call from Piers Prentiss. He had a bit of information for you. Didn’t sound like much, but he seemed nervous as hell, so I thought I’d mebbe pass it on straight away.’

  ‘You never know what might be important,’ Slider said. ‘What did he have for me?’

  ‘He said he’d just remembered it – though I suspect he’d been a wee while working out whether or not to pass it on. But he said that while he was on the phone to your murder victim on the evil day itself – is this making sense?’

  ‘Yes, go on.’

  ‘Okay. While he was on the phone to her, he heard something in the background – in her flat, d’ye see? It was a pager going off.’

  ‘Is that it?’ Slider said after a pause.

  ‘That’s it, chum. Any use?’

  ‘I don’t know. You say he sounded nervous?’

  ‘Aye, ahuh. Wettin’ himself.’

  ‘Well, then, evidently he thought it was important, though I can’t quite see why for the moment. Unless he recognised the particular bleep.’

  ‘Or he heard something else he hasn’t coughed up yet,’ Nicholls suggested.

  ‘Yes. I’ll give him a ring and ask. Well, thanks, Nutty. All serene down there?’

  ‘Quiet as a church.’

  Slider rang off, went to look up Piers Prentiss’s number, and dialled. There was no answer. Slider was a little surprised – he’d have expected an answering machine. He rang Nicholls, and asked him to get Piers to ring him direct on his mobile, should he be in contact again.

  As soon as he put the phone down, it rang again. This time it was Irene.

  ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry. I was supposed to arrange something with you and the kids for the weekend,’ he remembered.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said resignedly. ‘I didn’t tell them it might be on because I guessed it wouldn’t be.’

  ‘I’m really sorry. It’s this case—’

  ‘It’s always a case. You’re a case, Bill Slider! I sometimes think the Job is all there is to you. Take it away and you just wouldn’t be there at all.’

  It was too close to home, this comment. He thought of Joanna going to Amsterdam without him. ‘I think you’re right. Maybe I should give it up.’

  She wasn’t used to him agreeing with her. Even now she didn’t want to hurt him. ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean it. You’re a good copper, and it’s important work.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said glumly. ‘The Job’s not like it used to be. And I start wondering whether there isn’t more to life than this. I’ve always given you and the kids a raw deal. You’ve always come second to it.’

  ‘No,’ she said, defending him against himself. ‘Maybe it wasn’t always a bed of roses, but your job put food on the table, that’s what matters.’

  He smiled to himself. ‘You’re a very traditional woman, aren’t you? There are things a husband does and things a wife does.’

  ‘Well, I happen to think men and women were made that way, that’s all, and these hard career women cause more trouble than they know. If they stayed home and cooked for their men and their children, the world might be a better place. There might not be so much crime to keep you working weekends.’

  That was one very neat link. TV would love her. ‘Look, we’ll do it next weekend, definitely – all right?’

  ‘If your case is finished by then.’

  ‘If it’s not, I’ll be finished,’ he said.

  He looked at his watch when he put the phone down. Joanna wouldn’t be back for hours yet. He wondered how Atherton’s trip to Newmarket had gone. He could do with someone to talk to, he told himself; and if Atherton wanted to exercise his culinary skills on their behalf, he wouldn’t object to that, either.

  He dialled the number, and a cheery Atherton answered at once. Oh, hi! Yes, he’d had a great day, thanks. Of course, come on round. Had Slider eaten? He was just going to knock something up. Nothing special, just a store-cupboard job. No, it was all right. Well, okay, Slider could bring a bottle, if he liked. Red for preference.

  Slider cleared up, left a message for Joanna in case he stayed late, and drove round, calling in at an Oddbins on the way for a bottle of Fleurie that he knew wouldn’t make Atherton’s eyebrow twitch. He was very tired and looking forward to a bit of comfort, and not prepared to have the door opened to him by WDC Tony Hart, dressed in tight ginger moleskin trousers and a white ribby sweater that left everything to be desired.

  ‘’Ullo,’ she said cheerfully. ‘S’prised to see me?’

  ‘Surprised doesn’t begin to cover it,’ he said.

  Atherton appeared behind her. ‘Tony came with me to Newmarket,’ he said. ‘She’s got a good eye for a horse.’

  ‘Spent me formative years down bettin’ shops,’ she said. ‘Me dad liked a flutter.’

  ‘Get him a drink,’ Atherton commanded her. ‘I’ve got to get back to my chopping.’

  Slider was divested of his coat and installed in an armchair with a glass of wine and Oedipus, the black former tomcat, kneading bread on his knees and purring like a DC10 about to take off. He glanced at the open door to the kitchen, and said quietly to Hart, ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’ she bluffed.

  He gave her a stern look. ‘What are you doing here?’

  She pulled a chair from the dining-table, reversed it and sat astride it, facing Slider. ‘Listen,’ she said broadly, ‘I’m offered it on a plate, I’m gonna take it, ain’t I?’

  ‘Are we talking about the same thing?’

  ‘You don’t like me goin’ out wiv Jim?’ she said. ‘Well, the way I see it, it’s up twim, ennit?’

  ‘He’s seeing someone else.’

  ‘All’s fair in love an’ war. This uvver bint can take care of ’erself – an’ so can I.’

  Slider shook his head wearily. ‘It’s none of my business. I just don’t want him to get hurt.’

  ‘Yeah, well, s’prisingly enough, I care about that an’ all. What jer fink, I’m chasin’ ’im for ’is money?’

  Slider took the proffered side turning gratefully. His own emotional life was in enough strife not to want to get mixed up in Atherton’s. ‘Talking of which, what do you think of the racehorse scheme?’

  ‘It looks all right. Dead posh stables an’ everything. Nobs wiv nobby voices. Nice-lookin’ gee-gees.’ She shrugged. ‘Personally, I fink he’s nuts, puttin’ all his dosh into it, but that’s none o’ my business. If he wants to chuck it about, that’s up twim.’

  ‘They told him there’d be a return of twenty-four per cent,’ Slider said.

  ‘If there was,’ she said with unexpected shrewdness, ’evryone’d be in on it, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Can’t you talk him out of it?’

  ‘Like I said, it’s not my business.’

  ‘If you really cared about him, it would be.’

  The cheery, throw-away air disappeared like a conjuring trick. She looked suddenly upset. ‘’Course I care about ’im. An’ if you ask me he’s ’eadin’ for a nervous breakdown. So what’re you doin’ about it? Don’t dump it on me. You’re the one who ought to’ve seen that coming. You’re his boss.’

  Atherton appeared with a plate of bruschetti. ‘You two quarrelling? What about?’

  ‘You,’ said Hart, with an edge to her voice. ‘Satisfied?’

  ‘Oh, what it is to be loved,’ he said, with one of his own. He handed the plate. ‘Everyone wants a little piece of me, but there just isn’t enough to go round.’

  Slider gave Hart a hard look, and asked him conversationally, ‘How was your horse?’

  ‘Fantastic,’ said Atherton. ‘Brilliant. Ran like a hare – well, like a racehorse really. Bloody fast. Beat everything else on the gallop. Clever, too. As it passed us I heard it say to the horse next to it, “I don’t know your mane, but your pace is familiar.”’

  ‘Seriously,’ Slider pleaded.

  ‘I tell you, it’s good. Carrington – he’s the boss-feller there – tim
ed him while we watched, and the time’s up there with the best. Everyone was very impressed.’

  ‘What are the others like – in the syndicate?’

  ‘All businessmen. All successful men in their own field. They wouldn’t be going into it if it wasn’t pukka. Like I told you, these days it’s not a mug’s gamble, it’s a sound investment.’

  ‘I don’t see what “these days” has got to do with it,’ Slider said, ‘but – anyway, you’re going for it?’

  ‘Bloody right I am,’ Atherton said. ‘Eat all these. I’ve got mine in the kitchen.’

  He departed. Hart looked at Slider. ‘Pax?’ she suggested. ‘I fink he’s a plonker parting wiv his akkers, and no-one ever got rich on the ponies, but it’s his business, all right?’ Her look hardened. ‘And so am I.’

  Slider remembered how when Hart had first joined them, Joanna had believed she fancied him, Slider. How wrong she had been proved! ‘All right,’ he said, ‘pax it is.’

  She crossed her arms on the back of the chair, pushing her bosom up under the sweater to sensational effect. Those ribs were never meant to take that sort of strain. ‘So, how’s your love life?’ she asked casually. ‘Married what’sername yet, Joanna?’

  He didn’t stay long at Atherton’s flat. With Hart there, he couldn’t talk much to him about the case, and no other conversation flowed easily between the three of them, despite Hart’s efforts to amuse. They ate a soufflé ham and mushroom omelette with a salad and diced sautéed garlic potatoes – Atherton’s scratch, store-cupboard meal – and drank the Fleurie, and then Slider left them to whatever they were going to do together, which to judge by the way Hart wound herself round Atherton in the doorway probably wasn’t a game or two of backgammon followed by the late-night movie and a cup of cocoa.

  While he was driving home, his mobile rang, and he pulled over and stopped at the side of the road to answer it.

  ‘’Ullo, Mr S.’ It was Tidy. ‘I got a bit a gen for you.’

  ‘Good man.’

  ‘Turns out your two villains was involved in a murder after all.’ Slider’s heart jumped, but Tidy went on, ‘Trouble is, it wasn’t your murder.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yeah, well, this is ’ow it was. They done this job Fursdy arternoon, right, this old girl lives in ’olland Park. Your bloke ’ad got info she was gonna be at a weddin’, so they could just walk in and out easy as pie. Well, Fursdy night they was out ’itting the ’igh spots, right? Celebratin’. Only Little Tommy, right, he’s a moufy git, and he was talkin’ it up big about the gear they’d got. So your bloke, Diction’ry, tells ’im to shut it. ’Ad a right ding-dong in this club down Earlsfield—’

  ‘Earlsfield?’

  ‘Well, they’d been travellin’ a bit by then. That’s where they’d fetched up. Anyway, they goes back to this flat wiv this other bloke they picks up at the club, game o’ cards, few drinks, right? Then the row break out again. It all turns nasty. Your bloke’s elephants, Little Tommy’s a nutter, ’e winds ’im up, Little Tommy does ’im wiv a knife.’

  ‘This is still Thursday night?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, early hours o’ Friday. They done the job about free o’clock time, an’ they’ve been boozin’ ever since. Now it’s after midnight. So, anyway, Little Tommy sticks ’im an’ as it away on ’is toes, right, so the other bloke, the bloke whose flat they’re in, ’e dumps Diction’ry down St George’s A & E and scarpers isself.’

  ‘And that’s where Dictionary is now?’

  ‘I reckon. You’d better ask ’em. Or the local rozzers. Mr Nidgett, ennit, down Wandsworth nick? He’ll tell you.’

  Joanna came home shortly after he got back.

  ‘Hello! Where’ve you been?’ she said. ‘I called you before I left.’

  ‘At Atherton’s. He gave me supper.’ He didn’t want to have to mention Hart’s presence, so he hurried in with Tidy’s phone call. ‘So a rather tasty suspect has been taken out of the frame. Not that I ever really fancied him, but it would have been nice to clobber a real villain for this one.’

  ‘I love it when you talk dirty,’ she said.

  ‘Wordley’s in intensive care in St George’s,’ Slider said, ‘and not likely to live, according to Derek Nidgett, the DI over at Wandsworth. They didn’t know who he was to begin with – had no ID on him – but one of the porters recognised the bloke who brought him in and they eventually traced him back to his flat. So then he – the other bloke – saw the game was up and started rowing for the shore. Now they’re looking for Tucker on an expected murder charge. But the upshot is that Wordley’s accounted for from about six o’clock onwards, and we know Phoebe Agnew was still alive at a quarter to nine because that’s when Piers Prentiss spoke to her. And in fact, that must have been only minutes before she was killed.’

  He went on to tell her about the rest of his day, and Noni Prentiss’s part in it.

  ‘So what do you do now?’ Joanna asked after a respectful silence.

  He shrugged. ‘Go back. Look into Agnew’s life in more detail – if we can find it. Look for inconsistencies. Find out what she was up to.’

  ‘You’ve wasted an awful lot of time on these Prentisses of various hues.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said feelingly. ‘But we had to check out the obvious people first. And at least now we know we aren’t looking for someone who faked a rape to cover his tracks. Whoever strangled her left immediately. There was a report of a man with a file or something under his arm, fixing his tie as he walked along the road. That could be something. And there’s this business of her telling a colleague she was doing some important work that might be dangerous.’

  ‘Sounds like baloney to me,’ Joanna said. ‘What was she, working for MI5? I’ll tell you’, she added, putting the kettle on, ‘what seems like an inconsistency to me. That bit about her persuading Mrs Prentiss to have the baby. These radical, feminist, anti-establishment, political types are usually fiercely pro-abortion, but you say Mrs P said she was dead against it. Cup of tea?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘And how was Jim?’ she asked abruptly.

  ‘He went to see his horse. He said it was fast. He’s still determined to go through with it.’

  ‘I know. I spoke to Sue a while ago. He’d just phoned her to tell her how wrong she was about it.’ She looked at his unhappy face and added, ‘Don’t worry too much. If he took the trouble to provoke her about it, at least it means he cares about her opinion. He wouldn’t bother to try and upset her if she meant nothing to him.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘It must have been after you left that he phoned her. How did he seem? Did you think he was miserable?’

  Slider thought of Atherton bidding him goodbye, standing grinning in his doorway with Hart’s elastic limbs wrapped round him, a glass of wine in his hand, and Elgar One on the CD player.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  Swilley came into Slider’s room. Atherton was perched on the edge of the window-sill, hands in pockets, legs crossed at the ankle, every inch the elegant, insouciant Englishman – Richard E. Grant, but without the flurried awkwardness. He and Slider had been discussing the case; Slider, sitting behind his desk, seemed gradually to be being walled in by the piles of files, which were growing at the rate of Manhattan skyscrapers.

  Swilley had more papers in her hand.

  ‘Ah, here comes the lovely Norma,’ Atherton said, ‘on lissom, clerical, printless toe. Is that one of Hymen’s lists you’re entering?’

  Swilley never encouraged him. ‘Is that a burk I see before me?’ she countered. ‘Boss—’

  ‘That’s me,’ Slider said, thinking it was time to get into the conversation.

  ‘You wanted us to look for anomalies. Well, there’s this. I don’t know if it’s anything,’ she added apologetically.

  ‘Anything could be anything. Fire away.’

  ‘Well, you know there was a bunch of stuff on one of the chairs under a blanket?’

  ‘Yes. I imagin
ed she’d shoved it there in the course of clearing up.’

  ‘You could be right. There was some recent correspondence and a telephone bill on top, so it could have been lying about waiting to be dealt with when she cleared.’

  ‘And some clean underwear,’ Slider added, ‘which she hadn’t had time to put away yet.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Swilley said. ‘So maybe she was interrupted or ran out of time or whatever, and just shoved it all under the blanket to get rid of it and make the room look tidy.’

  ‘I wish I knew why she wanted the room to look tidy,’ Slider said fretfully.

  ‘To impress the person she cooked the supper for,’ Atherton said.

  ‘That’s just the same question moved sideways,’ said Slider. ‘Anyway, go on. What have you found?’

  ‘It’s a letter from a female called Sula Brissan, dated Monday the eighteenth of Jan – so if she sent it first class it would have arrived on the Tuesday or Wednesday, depending what time of day she posted it. She says she encloses a copy invoice for the work done up to the beginning of December and she says, “I hope you won’t mind my asking you to settle this outstanding invoice as soon as possible. You know that I was working almost exclusively on your project, and cash is always a bit tight after Christmas. Any time you want me to pick up the research again, I shall be more than willing.” ’

  ‘And was it an outstanding invoice? Very large, or covered with gold leaf or something?’ Atherton asked.

  ‘Couldn’t say. It wasn’t there,’ Swilley said.

  ‘So Agnew was a tardy payer,’ Atherton commented. ‘Just what I’d have expected. She had a mind above material things.’

  ‘It wasn’t that she couldn’t afford it,’ Swilley said. ‘She had plenty in her bank account. But that wasn’t my point. The thing is, this letter suggests she’s done quite a bit of work for Agnew, but I can’t find the invoice or any trace of her – the Brissan woman – amongst the papers. You’d have thought there’d be a letter from her or another invoice or something with her address or handwriting on it, but no, nothing. Well, it just occurs to me that if there was a file missing from that filing cabinet, maybe that’s where the Brissan stuff went.’ She looked at Slider hopefully.