Blood Sinister

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘I can’t think who else she would go to the trouble for. Lorraine Tucker said she was flushed and excited when she met her with an armful of groceries that day. And she tidied up the flat, which everyone says she never did, not even for a lover. If she wasn’t in love, what else could it be?’

  Swilley nodded slowly. ‘It makes sense, I suppose. But how would she find out?’

  Atherton came in. ‘She researched. She was used to doing research, she knew how to go about it. And who had she been researching for the past six months?’

  ‘Richard Tyler,’ Slider said. ‘A junior minister at the amazingly young age of twenty-eight. Which would mean he was born in 1970.’

  ‘If we—’

  ‘I did,’ Slider anticipated. ‘I phoned Mrs Brissan. March 1970, she said, according to the Parliamentary Who’s Who.’

  ‘A lot of people must have been born in March 1970,’ said Swilley. ‘Was he adopted?’

  ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t say.’

  ‘It would be a large size in coincidences,’ Atherton said.

  ‘Maybe not so very large,’ Slider said. ‘When girls gave up their babies for adoption in those days, they were asked if they had any stipulations about the adoptees – religion or particular interests or whatever. And the stipulations were followed when possible. Phoebe Agnew might well have stipulated that her child must go to politically conscious parents. It was the biggest thing in her life, then as later. And since she was an intelligent white girl, there would have been a lot of competition for her baby, so the agents would have been able to be choosy.’

  ‘Okay so far,’ Atherton said cautiously.

  ‘Tyler’s father comes from an old Nottinghamshire family, and his parents lived at Stanton-on-the-Wolds, which is less than ten miles from Nottingham. And Richard’s the only child. If they couldn’t have children of their own, and applied to adopt, they’d have filled Phoebe’s requirements perfectly. I know it’s all speculation, but it fits.’

  Atherton wrinkled his nose. ‘You think she started doing the biography as an excuse to find out if he was her son?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Slider said. ‘Why should she ever begin to wonder if he was? No, I would suspect it was the other way round. He was her biography choice because he was hot. Then, as she went into his background, she started to have her suspicions.’

  ‘Another long coincidence?’

  ‘Not coincidence – concurrence,’ Slider said. ‘People with the same interests tend to end up in the same place. Tyler was brought up by a political family, so he went into politics. That’s natural. And he had the talent – that might be hereditary. Phoebe Agnew was a political creature and ended up in the same general circle, which is not, after all, such a large one that everyone doesn’t know everyone else. And then she picked on Tyler for sound commercial reasons. Not coincidental at all, when you think of it – inevitable, rather.’

  ‘She might also have been attracted to him without knowing why,’ Swilley said. ‘I read an article that said you are naturally attracted to people who look a bit like you.’

  ‘Explains a lot about incest,’ said Atherton. ‘Does he look like her?’

  ‘I’ve never studied him closely enough to find out. That’s the thing about recognising people. You have to know what you’re looking for before you see it,’ Slider said.

  ‘But I don’t see how it helps us,’ Atherton sighed. ‘Why should anyone kill her for being Tyler’s mother? And what about Piers? Where does he come into it?’

  ‘Besides, boss,’ Swilley said. ‘I’ve just thought – it couldn’t have been Tyler she did supper for, because Medmenham said when he spoke to Piers on the Thursday evening, he said his new lover had been with him all day and had only just left.’

  ‘Yes, he did say that,’ Slider said. ‘But I’ve looked at the notes on our interview with Piers, and he told us that Tyler left on the Thursday morning. I wonder whether he told Piers to say he was there all day, in case he needed an alibi. But Piers was such a plonker he forgot by the time we came to see him.’

  ‘What would he want an alibi for?’ Atherton said. ‘We know whoever ate the meal didn’t kill her, because Josh Prentiss was there afterwards.’

  ‘He might just not want anyone to know she was his mother. She wasn’t exactly an asset, was she?’

  ‘I don’t know – eminent, prize winning journalist, all the right political connections—’

  ‘But with a wild past, a scruffy lifestyle, and in any case not as eminent and respectable as his parents. And some people still think there’s a stigma about being adopted,’ said Slider.

  Norma shook her head. ‘I can’t see her telling, if he didn’t want her to. Why would she?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Atherton said, ‘It would be a bombshell for her biography – certain best-sellerdom.’

  ‘Yes, but she wouldn’t sacrifice her own kid for money like that.’

  Atherton snorted, and Slider intervened calmly. ‘Still, he might want to keep any contact between them to a minimum, and it would probably cause comment if it was known he had been at her house. I can see how he might want that kept secret.’

  ‘I suppose clearing up who ate the meal would be a help to us, even if he wasn’t the murderer,’ Atherton said. ‘What are you going to do, guv?’

  ‘Ask him, I suppose,’ said Slider. ‘If I’m right about this, and it was him she cooked supper for, he might have some other information that would explain the connection between the two murders.’

  Atherton boggled. ‘You’re going to ask Richard Tyler – the Richard Tyler – if he’s the illegitimate son of Phoebe Agnew?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Lions’ den time,’ Atherton said. ‘Sooner you than me.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Red Slayer

  It took a long time to get hold of Richard Tyler. Given the difficulties Slider had already caused by his pursuit of Giles Freeman, he felt he ought to clear it through Porson before he tackled him. He told Porson he just wanted to talk to Tyler about Piers Prentiss – background stuff, to see if he said anything that could suggest a connection between the two murders. He said nothing about any of the other possibilities he was pondering. If they were put up front, he’d never get an interview at all.

  Everyone else had gone home by the time the phone rang with his permission. Tyler would see him that evening in his private office at the House. Slider received the news without joy. He had spent the waiting time making other enquiries and piecing things together, and for the last half-hour had been sitting alone and thinking, and his thoughts had brought him only darkness. He collected up his papers, shoved them into a folder, and went out. It was getting colder, as forecast. He looked up automatically to see if the sky was clearing, but of course in the middle of Town, with the street lights, you couldn’t see the sky at night. Clouds or stars, they were equally hidden. The weather was what happened – you weren’t allowed to predict it.

  He was shown into Tyler’s office at exactly nine-thirty. Tyler was standing behind his desk, talking on the telephone while with the other hand he flicked through a pile of papers. His eyes registered Slider and he nodded, and freed his hand to gesture to the large leather chair on the other side of the desk, without breaking the rhythm of his speech.

  Slider had a few moments to study him. The general look of Tyler was familiar to him from newspapers and the television screen, but of course in the flesh people have details to be taken in which make them quite different, close up, from their image. The rather long, smooth, pale face, and the dark brown hair slicked back with gel were what he knew, together with the exquisite suiting and elegantly dashing silk tie. What was new was that he was much taller than Slider had expected, and broad at the chest – Slider had gained an impression of slenderness from the TV, but Tyler was quite well built, and what he had taken to be padding in the shoulders was all him. The television also didn’t do justice to the remarkably beautiful, luminous hazel ey
es, or the firmness of the wide, narrow-lipped mouth. He had read descriptions of Tyler as ‘feline’ but that didn’t really cover it. Feral, he thought; and ruthless. He was apparently very popular with women, and Slider could see why: he’d provide a safe but exciting ride, and look very, very good to be on the arm of.

  Chronologically he might have been twenty-eight, but there was something in this man which had never been young, was as old as ambition itself. Close to, there was a hint of fox in the hair, though it was hard to see under the gel, and a spark of red in the eyebrows; and there were freckles on the backs of the pale hands. Large hands, they were, bony and strong, undecorated except for a thin, old gold ring on the left little finger. The fingers of the right hand drummed a moment impatiently on the desk as he spoke into the telephone, and then snapped a paper over with a sharp sound. Strong fingers, with short-cut, well-kept nails. Very clean.

  He put the phone down at last. ‘Well, Inspector, what can I do for you?’ he asked uninvitingly. He looked at his watch. ‘I can’t give you long.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Slider, rousing himself from the clutches of his thoughts, ‘I’ll be direct.’

  ‘I wish you would.’

  ‘I’d like to know where you were on Thursday the twenty-first of January. Thursday week past.’

  Tyler’s eyebrows went up. ‘That is not what you are supposed to ask.’

  ‘You agreed to talk about Piers Prentiss,’ Slider said, ‘so I assumed you wouldn’t mind telling me that.’

  Tyler seemed to consider. ‘Well, if you already know that I was with Piers all day that Thursday—’ he began.

  Slider interrupted. ‘Ah, yes, I know that’s what he was supposed to say,’ he said apologetically, ‘but you know Piers – or rather, you did. I’m afraid he blurted it all out. About you leaving on Thursday morning. He managed to remember to tell Peter Medmenham that you were with him all day, but by the time I went to talk to him, he’d forgotten your instructions.’ The really scary thing, Slider thought, was how little impact any of this had on Richard Tyler’s expression. His face remained impassive, his eyes bright and thoughtful. Whatever he would do, he would do, Slider felt. You might as well try and talk a lion out of eating you.

  ‘I think you’d better leave,’ was what he did eventually say.

  ‘Oh no, don’t say that! Because we’ve got so much to talk about. Look, to save you trouble, I’ll tell you that I know you were at Phoebe Agnew’s flat on Thursday. You left your fingerprints behind.’

  ‘Impossible!’ he said quickly.

  Slider leaned forward a little. ‘Because you wiped them all away?’

  ‘Because I wasn’t there.’

  ‘Well, I admit you did a very good job,’ Slider went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘You’ve got a wonderful intellect and a photographic memory, as I’ve been told by several people. You made a mental note of everything you touched so that you could wipe it afterwards. You even had the wit not to wipe the whisky glasses, which you knew you hadn’t used, so that any prints there would incriminate someone else – Josh Prentiss, as it happens. You know Josh, of course?’

  Something did stir in the amber depths then; but Tyler said calmly, ‘You are talking complete drivel. Your statement is a nonsense for the simple reason that you do not have my fingerprints to compare with any you might have found at the flat.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. I’m just assuming the rogue set – the set that doesn’t belong to anyone else – is yours. And you won’t refuse to give me your prints for comparison, will you?’

  ‘Certainly I refuse.’

  ‘Oh. That makes things difficult. I can, of course, bring pressure to bear on you, but I wouldn’t like to do that. It’s much better if you do the thing voluntarily. Much better for your reputation as an MP to be seen to be helping the forces of law and order. And, after all, why shouldn’t you have supper at Phoebe Agnew’s flat? Nothing wrong with that, is there? She was your mother, after all.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Tyler said, but he sat down, rather slowly, behind his desk, and Slider felt a tired surge of triumph. If he really didn’t know, he’d have thrown Slider out. But he wanted to hear – to know what Slider knew.

  ‘Your date of birth and that of Phoebe Agnew’s illegitimate child are the same. She gave her son to be adopted and the order went through the Nottingham County Court. Your parents lived in Nottinghamshire, and you were their adopted child. That’s as far as I’ve got at the moment, but tomorrow I shall get a reply from the County Court records office and the two ends will be brought together, so it would be a waste of time for you to deny it. And why should you? She was a mother to be proud of, wasn’t she? A very fine journalist and a woman of intellect.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Tyler, without emphasis.

  ‘Oh – well, all right. I suppose she discovered your identity in the course of researching for her biography of you – did you know about that, by the way?’

  ‘No. I had no idea she was intending to write one.’

  ‘I suppose she told you about it when she invited you to supper?’ No answer. ‘We have your finger-marks, you remember. On the unit in her sitting-room, the one under the window that the hi-fi sits on. I suppose you must have leaned on it when you poured coffee or something.’ He demonstrated on the edge of the desk with his hand. ‘Palm and four fingers.’

  Behind the bright eyes a reel was being replayed. Slider’s information was tested against memory. Tyler sighed, just faintly, and said, ‘Since you seem to know so much, I will admit that she telephoned me at the office to invite me to supper. I refused, naturally, and then she said she had some important information that she had uncovered while researching my biography. Given her reputation as a journalist, I was inclined to give her credence, but I told her she must tell me what it was about there and then. She was unwilling at first, but when I threatened to put the phone down, she told me the same story that she seems to have sold to you, about her being my real mother – which is absolutely not true, by the way.’ So, Slider thought, he’s going to play the end game. ‘I’m afraid the poor woman was demented. I don’t know what was wrong with her, but I do seem to have an extreme effect on some women. She was obviously obsessed with me, but I think there was already some mental instability, and I’ve heard she drank very heavily. At any rate, I told her she was mistaken and put the phone down very firmly. And that’s all I know.’

  Slider shook his head slightly. ‘I’m afraid that’s not true.’

  Tyler continued impatiently, ‘It is a matter of public record that I was in the House on Thursday night. There was an important division at seven-thirty and the whips were out. You will find my name entered amongst the Ayes. I think that must be conclusive enough evidence even for you.’

  ‘Yes, I know you voted. I’ve checked that,’ Slider said. ‘Of course you left her alive. You dashed up to Westminster for the division, to make sure you were known to be at the House. But you weren’t there earlier. It’s an easy place to dodge around and not be seen in, so that even if no-one could swear to having seen you, no-one could swear you weren’t there. You were in the division lobby at seven-forty, as everybody knows. And then you went back to Phoebe Agnew’s flat.’

  ‘Absolute rubbish. I’m not going to listen to any more of this,’ Tyler said, but he didn’t move. His shining eyes were fixed on Slider, and for all his experience, Slider couldn’t tell what he was thinking or feeling. Perhaps all it was was vanity, the desire to hear himself talked about.

  ‘You were there at the flat with Phoebe at a quarter to nine when Piers telephoned her. Piers told me all about it.’

  ‘Piers couldn’t possibly have known—’

  ‘That you were with her? Why, because she didn’t mention your name?’

  ‘No, because I wasn’t there,’ he said calmly.

  ‘While he was on the phone to Phoebe, he heard your pager go off in the background.’

  ‘One pager is exactl
y like another,’ Tyler said.

  ‘Not quite. Each type has a different bleep. Obviously there are lots like yours, but the bleep he heard was that sort. He recognised it. He’d heard it before when he was with you. It troubled him so much when he finally remembered hearing it, because he couldn’t think what you were doing there. Did he ask you on Sunday – this last Sunday, I mean? Did he put his worries to you?’

  ‘Be careful what you say,’ Tyler said. ‘Be very careful.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be careful. And there are no witnesses to this meeting, so it doesn’t matter anyway, does it? But I have checked with your office, and they did call you on the pager at a quarter to nine that evening. Because no-one knew where you were – they thought you were in the House, but they couldn’t find you. It’s all making sense, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not the slightest. So what was I doing at the flat on this extraneous second visit, in your fevered imagination?’

  ‘Phoebe Agnew had told you on your first visit what she wanted you to know – the thing that was troubling her so desperately for the last few weeks of her life. You had to dash off for the division, because there was a three-line whip, as you’ve agreed. But you couldn’t leave it there. All the way up to Westminster you must have been thinking about the implications of what she said, and realising that if it ever got out, your career would be over. So you went back and killed her.’

  Tyler gave a shout of laughter. ‘What? Oh, this is very entertaining. I’m glad I granted you this interview. Go on. When you’ve finished, I’m going to have you removed, and I think you’ll find your career is pretty well over, but I’d like to know how far your imagination stretches.’

  ‘You were careful,’ Slider said. ‘You telephoned her to make sure she was alone – I’ve checked the records of your mobile, and the call is there. Afterwards you wiped away all your finger-marks – you even remembered to wipe the flush-handle of the loo, which was pretty smart of you, because that’s one that’s usually forgotten. There was just the one on the unit you missed, but no-one’s perfect, are they? And you collected all the paperwork on yourself, which you’d got her to show you on the first visit – I suppose that’s why you stayed to supper, wasn’t it, to give you time to make sure you found out everything she had on you.’