Blood Sinister

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘And in that case, she might be in a position to tell us what Agnew was working on in the last few months,’ Slider completed for her. ‘Well, it’s a thought. Where does she live, this female?’

  ‘It’s an address in Fulham.’

  ‘Not too far. Okay, let’s see what she’s got to say. No, wait, not you,’ Slider said to Swilley. ‘I’d sooner have you on the files—’

  ‘Who wouldn’t?’ Atherton murmured.

  Swilley turned on him. ‘If you’ve got something to say, say it out loud.’

  ‘He can’t tell talk from mutter,’ Slider said kindly. ‘Don’t mind him. I’d like you to keep going through the papers. You’, he turned to Atherton, ‘can go and interview Miss Brissan.’

  ‘Sounds like a drunken beauty queen,’ Atherton said cheerfully. ‘Me for that! Giss the address, oh blest police siren. Ta. If I’m not back in two days, send the RCMP.’

  Slider translated with an effort. ‘The Mounties?’

  ‘No, a really cuddly motherly prostitute,’ said Atherton.

  Swilley watched him go. ‘You shouldn’t encourage him, sir, you really shouldn’t.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed

  Atherton had visualised Sula Brissan as tall, sveldt, young, and languid with unfulfilled passion. She turned out to be a brisk woman in her forties with short, thick grey hair; but she did have paralysingly lovely, deep-set blue eyes, and had evidently been sexy for so much of her life that she regarded Atherton with the unmistakable look of a woman who expects to be fancied. Obediently, he fancied her, so they got on well.

  ‘Yes, I read about it, of course. It’s terrible,’ she said, making tea and loading the washing machine at the same time. To judge by the laundry, Atherton thought, exercising his detective skills, she had teenage children rather than little ones, which might not present such difficulties if she wanted to break out. On the other hand, there was a small baby to hand, in a car seat set on the floor; a steriliser/warmer stood on the window-sill, and a couple of bottles and teats were in the drying-rack. Atherton’s signals were confused.

  ‘And you’ve no idea who did it?’ she went on.

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘There was all that speculation in the papers about Josh Prentiss, of course,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Poor Josh, it’s buggered his career. Not that I like him much, but I’d never have thought he was capable of murder – and in any case, why Phoebe? They were old friends.’

  ‘You know him – Prentiss?’

  ‘I know just about everybody,’ she said, without conceit. ‘I was a Parliamentary researcher for years, and then I did all the Westminster stuff for IRN, before I went freelance.’

  ‘So tell me, did Agnew and Prentiss make the beast with two backs?’ Atherton asked.

  ‘No,’ she said with a pitying laugh at his naivety. ‘It wasn’t like that. Everybody knew they were just friends. It was a famous case – proof that platonic relationships can exist. No, they were like two old schoolfriends, or brother and sister, or something. She was more of a brother to him than his own brother, really.’

  ‘You know Piers Prentiss as well?’

  ‘I’ve met him,’ she said. ‘I don’t know him well.’ She handed him his tea in a mug. The kitchen was large and extended, untidy in the way of a much-used family room, and full of thin sunshine and the companionable noise of the washing machine and, in the background, the unheeded radio tuned to Capital. A fat Cyprian cat sat patiently at the glass-panelled back door, waiting to be let in. Middle-class family life in the nineties. ‘So what did you want to know?’ she said, leaning against the sink and sipping her tea.

  ‘What was the research you’d been doing for her?’

  ‘It was background for a political biography she was writing.’

  ‘Biography of whom?’

  She hesitated a moment. ‘Oh well, she’s dead now so I don’t suppose it matters. But it was a big secret. Nobody knew except me and her. It was Richard Tyler.’

  Atherton raised an eyebrow. ‘He’s a bit young for a biography, isn’t he?’

  She smiled. ‘It’s not how old you are but how much you’ve done. Look at all the biographies of the Beatles that came out as soon as they were famous, and they were even younger. She’s been working on Richard for about six months now, ever since he became a junior minister. He’s a remarkable person, and due to be remarkabler. Do you know about him?’

  ‘That he’s a member of the Freeman set and very in at Number Ten,’ Atherton said.

  ‘Oh, you do know your political gossip? I somehow never thought of policemen as being interested in things like that.’

  ‘Most aren’t. I’m unusual.’

  ‘So I see.’ A flirty look passed between them. Then the baby started crying; just like Jiminy Cricket. ‘Well, if you know that much,’ she said, putting down her mug and picking up the baby with a practised movement, ‘you’ll know that Whitehall is seething with factions. Ambition is rife. Richard’s one of the young turks and the hottest tip for rapid promotion.’ She slung the baby against her shoulder, supporting its bottom with one hand. ‘He has a fabulous intellect and a photographic memory. He advises at the highest level, promotes the image, and disses the opposition – and I don’t mean the official Opposition either, but the outs in the Party. He’s known as a fixer, and he’s got a publicity team that spins like Shane Warne on speed. And he’s good-looking. No wonder the media love him. Well, you’ve seen all the Sunday supplement guff about him. They’ve even done his taste in interior decor – “the Tyler look”, etcetera, etcetera.’

  The baby, which had quietened when she picked it up, began wailing again. ‘He needs changing, the little beast. Oh, don’t worry, I won’t do it in front of you,’ she added with a laugh at his expression. ‘Grandchild,’ she explained. ‘I thought I’d done with all this, but Nature kindly arranges a second go. My daughter’s what the tabloids call a “working mum”.’ The baby, expertly jiggled, lowered the gain a notch. ‘Where were we?’

  ‘Tyler. You obviously think the world of him,’ Atherton said.

  She made a face. ‘I don’t have to like him to know he’s hot. My tip is that once the reshuffle’s announced he’s going to be the biggest media obsession since Princess Di. That’s why it all had to be secret, Phoebe’s book on him.’

  ‘Why, had she uncovered some terrible secret?’

  ‘No, nothing like that,’ she said. ‘For commercial reasons. Phoebe was a very prestigious commentator. If anyone had known she was working on it, they’d have tried to get in first and steal her thunder. It’s cut-throat, the world of biographies. I can’t tell you! The big political ones sell in the hundreds of thousands. I’ve researched for a few people, and believe me, if you get a good idea for the next subject, you keep it strictly to yourself.’

  Atherton looked his disappointment. ‘So all her secrecy and dark hints about her latest piece of work were nothing more than commercial prudence?’

  ‘Why, what did you think?’

  ‘Oh, that maybe there was some danger to her from what she was doing.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said robustly. ‘She’s not exposing the Mafia, you know! And Richard may be ruthlessly ambitious, but he’s perfectly respectable. So are his people. An old political family. Steeped in it. His father and grandfather were both MPs and his mother was the daughter of a life peer and former Cabinet Minister. Funny how it so often does run in families,’ she mused. ‘Like actors, really. You have the Redgraves and Masseys and so on, and you have the generations of politicians, too.’

  ‘I suppose in both cases, you get on as much through personal contact as talent,’ Atherton suggested.

  She grinned. ‘In the case of MPs, much more! So what else did you want to know?’

  ‘Who has the papers now – the work you and Phoebe had done so far?’

  ‘She had it all. I don’t keep copies of anything once I’ve sent it off. I suppos
e’, she said regretfully, ‘it’ll all moulder in some police locker somewhere for ever, and someone else will eventually have the same idea and bring out their inferior Tyler biography.’

  ‘Well, I suppose all the papers will be released to her next of kin sooner or later,’ Atherton said. ‘Which is her sister, I imagine.’

  ‘I never knew she had a sister,’ said Mrs Brissan. ‘Maybe I should write to her and see if she’d let me have them.’

  ‘You could try,’ Atherton said. ‘Tell me, did Richard Tyler know she was doing this biography?’

  ‘I really have no idea. She never said one way or the other.’

  ‘Isn’t it usual to get the subject’s permission?’

  ‘Depends. There’s the authorised biography, if the subject is controversial or powerful – gives it more weight. And if there’s any chance of being sued for libel, it’s best to get them to read what you’ve written and okay it. But otherwise you get more punch from launching it on an unsuspecting world – and you can get some brilliant publicity if the subject does object to anything. It’s more fun that way if you’ve got the balls – and Phoebe certainly had them.’

  ‘But she’d have had to have his permission to interview his parents, say, or look at his personal documents.’

  ‘His parents are dead. And the work I did for her only concerned public records. Whether she asked him for anything else – as I say, I’ve no idea.’

  ‘So you’d been working on this for some months – and then you stopped? Why was that?’

  ‘Well, that was a bit odd,’ Mrs Brissan said, frowning. ‘She wrote to me in December to say that she didn’t want any more work done. Just like that. No reason given. Naturally I rang her to ask what was going on, because I’d got quite involved in it. But she was very offhand, not like her usual self. I mean, we’d known each other for years, but she talked to me as if I was a stranger. She wouldn’t say why she was stopping, just repeated that she didn’t want any more work on it, and asked me to send anything I had outstanding, including any rough notes. She said she didn’t want me to keep anything relating to the topic. I was a bit offended. I said, you don’t think I’d pass them to anyone else after you’d paid for them, and she said she was sorry, she didn’t mean to offend me, it was just that she had rather a lot on her mind. So anyway, I sent her everything I still had, plus my invoice for the work, and that’s the last I ever heard from her. But she didn’t pay the invoice, so I sent it again – just before she died. I suppose that won’t get paid now. Not that it matters beside what happened to her, poor thing.’

  ‘Well, thanks,’ Atherton said, feeling they had come to a dead end. ‘You’ve been a great help.’ The baby was quiet again, and so that it should not have been a completely wasted journey, he added, ‘Would you like to have lunch with me – my way of saying thank you?’

  She gave him an infinitely knowing look. ‘I’m a married woman.’

  ‘I only offered you lunch,’ he protested, lifting his hands.

  ‘No you didn’t – and thanks very much. When you’re a mother of three, and a grandmother of one, it’s nice to know you’ve still got it.’

  ‘You’ve got so much you could take on a couple of assistants,’ Atherton said, yielding.

  She eyed him thoughtfully, and turned away to put the sleeping babe back in its carrier. ‘Is there a Mrs Atherton?’ she asked, her back to him.

  ‘Not unless you’re volunteering.’

  ‘Not for all the tea in Lancashire,’ she said. She straightened and turned. ‘But you ought to get married. It can be lonely, being an ex-rake.’

  Atherton staggered. ‘Good God, you don’t pull your punches, do you?’

  ‘You and I understand each other,’ she said. ‘I’ve been there, done it – just ten years ahead of you. Don’t get left behind, that’s my advice. Married men live longer, and they’re much less likely to commit suicide.’

  ‘Richard Tyler?’ Slider said. ‘I wonder whether that was why Phoebe Agnew wanted to stop Piers seeing him? That row they had at New Year, you remember?’

  ‘I don’t quite see why,’ Atherton said. ‘I mean, if anything it would be beneficial to her, wouldn’t it? Another personal contact with her subject – maybe access to more information. He might tell Piers stuff he wouldn’t tell anyone else – and Piers is such a blabbermouth he’d let it all out as soon as she applied the single malt in sufficient quantities.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right. It would make more sense for her to encourage the relationship.’

  ‘Anyway, I don’t see that it helps us. Even if there were a file missing, and even if that was it, the only person who knew about it was Mrs Brissan—’

  ‘According to her.’

  ‘Quite. But Agnew hadn’t even told her dear old mate Josh who the subject of her biography was, so it seems likely she did keep it secret. And why should it provoke anyone to murder her anyway?’

  ‘You’re right. In any case, it doesn’t look as if that’s the thing that was worrying her,’ Slider said. ‘She said to Josh she had a problem that would make his pale into insignificance, and that he was the last person who could help her with it, and it’s hard to see how her research for a biography could fit either of those categories.’

  ‘So what next?’ Atherton asked.

  Slider leaned back and put his hands behind his neck to stretch it. ‘God, I don’t know. There ought to be something in her papers, or somebody she knew or worked with ought to have known what this problem was. If she’d been worried and drinking more heavily for the last few weeks, you’d think she’d have told someone.’

  ‘Maybe it was just the menopause after all,’ Atherton said. ‘All in her mind.’

  ‘And she was murdered by telekinesis?’

  ‘By a random lunatic.’

  ‘Thanks. That’s helpful.’

  ‘Lunchtime, guv,’ Atherton said. ‘Give yourself a break. Feed the brain cells.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. I am hungry, now you come to mention it,’ Slider said, shoving his chair back and standing up. ‘I fancy a big plateful of—’

  Of what, Atherton was never to know – though he suspected chips – for the phone rang.

  Slider picked up. It was Detective Inspector Keith Heaveysides of the Essex Constabulary. He was sorry to have to tell Slider that Piers Prentiss had been found dead in his shop this morning, and in view of Slider’s recent interest in him, Mr Heaveysides wondered if he’d like to come along and pool information, hopefully to their mutual benefit. Pardon? No, it certainly wasn’t natural causes, and there didn’t seem to have been any robbery, either from the person or the premises. Yes, certainly. Not at all. They were all on the same side, weren’t they? Not a problem. His pleasure entirely.

  Slider liked Heaveysides straight away. He was one of those tall, full-fleshed, fair men who go bald right over the top very early in life, but keep a boyish face as if in compensation. He seemed a genuinely nice person, but yet to have survived in the Job with a name like his, he must have had a toughness, or at least an inner serenity, to survive the teasing.

  He took Slider and Atherton into his office and gave them coffee (from his personal filter coffee machine, so it was drinkable) and biscuits while he filled them in on the story.

  ‘It was his cleaner who found the body,’ he said.

  ‘Marjorie Babbington?’ said Slider.

  ‘Oh, you know her, do you?’

  ‘We met her when we interviewed Prentiss at his house. She must be pretty upset.’

  ‘She’s holding up well. You know the sort – stiff upper lip. Anyway, she was doing the cleaning in the house this morning when someone comes knocking at the door. It’s a local chap, name of Hewitt. He’s gone past and seen the lights are on in the shop, tried the door and found it’s locked, so he’s called at the house in a neighbourly way to say did you know you’ve left the lights burning.’

  ‘Was the closed sign up?’

  ‘Yes, and he’s a regular cus
tomer of the shop, so he knows it’s usually shut on a Monday. That’s why he wonders. So anyway, Babbington answers the door, Hewitt says blah-di-blah-di-blah, she says Prentiss isn’t there. He says it’s an awful waste of electricity so she says all right I’ll get the keys and come and turn ’em off.’

  ‘Where did she expect Prentiss to be?’

  ‘Well, Monday being the closed day, he could be anywhere. She wasn’t worried. If he was going away for any long time he always told her so she could look after the dogs, but as it was she thought he’d just popped out. So she gets the spare keys and goes in by the back door, and there’s Prentiss lying dead behind the counter.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘It looks as if someone knocked him down from behind with a blunt instrument, and then strangled him,’ said Heaveysides. ‘The ligature’s been removed so we’re no wiser about that, but the police surgeon said it was a smooth band, maybe a silk tie. Prentiss must have been groggy from the blow because he hardly struggled – just a couple of broken nails.’

  ‘Break-in?’

  ‘No, both the shop doors, front and back, were locked.’

  ‘You said spare keys. What other sets were there?’ Atherton asked.

  ‘I was just coming to that,’ said Heaveysides. ‘Mr Prentiss had his own set on his own key-ring, which he kept in his pocket, and they were missing. We’ve had a bit of a search of the house, and immediate environs, but they haven’t turned up yet.’

  ‘I doubt if they will,’ Slider said. ‘And you say there was no sign of any robbery or theft?’

  ‘Nothing as far as we can tell. Of course, in an antiques shop like that you don’t know what was there to begin with, but everything looks all right. And Prentiss’s money and credit cards were still in his pockets. It’s a bugger,’ he added feelingly. ‘He was a nice old stick. Everybody liked him. You know that in places like this you can get a lot of prejudice and queer-bashing, but it never seemed to touch him. And this is a quiet community. We haven’t had any violent crime here in years, leave aside the odd fight outside the pubs of a Saturday night.’