‘More,’ said Tyler, leaning back in his chair. ‘This is fascinating.’
‘Unfortunately for you, you were seen leaving the second time. By two people. One of them saw you walking down the street re-tying your tie – the one you used to strangle her. He said you had a file or newspaper or something under your arm – the missing file, I suppose. Destroyed now, I imagine?’
‘Imagine is right.’
‘The other person saw you actually coming out of the house. Interestingly, she mistook you for Josh. And she was the one that moved the body, by the way. It must have been a terrible shock to you when you read the details of how the body was found.’
Something glinted in the depths of the golden eyes. ‘Go on,’ he said, but he wasn’t laughing now.
‘There’s not much more,’ Slider said, dully. He was very tired now. ‘The next day, as soon as the news broke, you telephoned Piers to tell him to keep your relationship secret, just in case anyone put two and two together. But in the end you decided you couldn’t afford to take the risk. If it got out, it would be the end of you. And Piers had confided his inconvenient worries to you. So Piers had to go as well.’
‘Why on earth should I worry about my relationship with Piers being known?’ Tyler said loftily. ‘I am quite comfortable with my sexual orientation, and so, I can assure you, is the Party.’
‘Yes, I know that,’ Slider said. ‘But they wouldn’t be so happy about incest, would they? That’s almost the last taboo, really, when you think of it,’ he added conversationally. ‘That, and possibly necrophilia.’
Tyler sat very still, staring at him, not in fear or anxiety, but it seemed in deep thought.
Into his silence, Slider went on. ‘There were one or two little clues that put me on to it. Small things. Josh Prentiss’s first name is actually Richard. He was called Josh to distinguish him from his father, another Richard. He and Phoebe Agnew had one sexual encounter, when they were both the worse for drink, at a post-finals party in June 1969 – that was when you were conceived. But afterwards Josh was quick to repudiate the encounter, and he was already attached to Anona Regan, Phoebe’s best friend. So she didn’t tell him. She never told him, in fact, just went away quietly, had the baby, and gave it up for adoption.
‘I don’t know whether she harboured a secret love for Josh all her life, or if she was just chastened by the experience. But after that she never let herself get attached to anyone. She concentrated on her career, and had casual affairs. But I imagine parting with her child was a deep vein of hurt. Then in the course of researching your biography, she discovered the truth about who you were. That was enough to make her thoughtful, but not deeply unhappy – after all, you were doing well in your chosen career, and she must have been glad to know how you had turned out. But then the unthinkable happened. You started an affair with Piers – he blurted it out to her at Christmas, even though you had impressed on him it was to be kept secret. Ironic, isn’t it, that the only person he told was the one who really mattered.’
‘Ironic,’ Tyler said tonelessly.
‘Though I dare say she would only have been the first of many – not the world’s most discreet man. Anyway, it was from that time that she became more and more anxious, started drinking heavily, obviously wondering whether it would be worse to tell you or not tell you. At a dinner party at New Year, she tried to persuade Piers to give you up, but he was deeply smitten, and wouldn’t hear of it.’
‘Piers was very attached to me – and I to him,’ Tyler said, with a creditable attempt at a little break in the voice.
‘Yes, I can believe that,’ Slider said. ‘A colleague of mine remarked that people are often attracted most to the people who resemble them. And really, now I come to examine you, you do look more like your uncle Piers than your father Josh. That’s often the way, isn’t it – that children resemble their parents’ siblings more than their parents. Same genes, different mix.’
Tyler wasn’t looking at him. He sat very still, staring past Slider’s head at the silk-covered wall.
‘Finally, when it seemed that the relationship between you and Piers was not going to go away, she decided to break the silence of a lifetime and tell you. She thought if she told you the awful truth, you would simply break things off with Piers. But she couldn’t resist having you to herself for a little while first. Doing for you what mothers do for their children, what she had never done for anyone – cook. She was so happy that day – a perilous sort of happiness, but still. I’m glad you gave her that, at any rate.’
Tyler’s lips quirked and he made a curious gesture – almost a ‘don’t mention it’ of the hand.
‘You had to hurry away for the division, and while you were away you started to think of the danger to your career if ever any of this got out. You’re a rising star, with everything before you. Someone even said to me you could be the youngest ever prime minister. You could kiss all that goodbye if ever the story were known. You could kiss your job goodbye, come to that – this is a government that won’t stand for any scandal, as you of all people must know. Phoebe said she’d never tell, but could you trust her? And what would she write in that damned biography of hers? You realised then that there’d be no peace for you while she lived.’
A clock on the bookshelf struck tinklingly. Tyler had been slumped in thought. Now he looked up. ‘Division,’ he said.
‘I’ve nearly finished,’ Slider said. ‘There’s only Piers left now. The how of that’s easy. He was always ready to see you, any time. And he would be easy enough to persuade to go over to the shop. I suppose you didn’t want to be killing him with the dogs around. Did you take the opportunity to look round the house for any incriminating letters or documents? Was that why you shut the dogs in the kitchen? Oh,’ he remembered, ‘by the way, it was you that took the photograph of Phoebe with Piers and Josh from his sitting-room on the Thursday, wasn’t it? To study her features, was it, to see if there was any likeness?’
‘I have to go,’ said Tyler.
‘Piers was unlucky, really – there’d have been no need to kill him if he hadn’t been your lover. Were you sickened by the thought that he was your uncle, and what you’d done with him? Once he was dead and gone, the fact that you’d ever slept with him could be forgotten, couldn’t it? But I wonder if he would have been the last. What about Josh? Phoebe swore he never knew, but could you rely on that? And who else might have known? A secret has so many threads, trying to eradicate it is like trying to root out ground elder. You could have been embarking on a lifetime of murder.’
Tyler stood up. It seemed an effort; but once he was on his feet, he took control. His shoulders seemed to square, his face to firm. Ruthlessness did not come and go. You either had it, or you didn’t.
‘You are absolutely insane,’ he said, ‘and while it’s been an experience to listen to you, I must warn you that to repeat any of this will bring the full force of the law down on your head. You have absolutely no evidence whatsoever for any of this nonsense.’
Slider looked up at him. ‘She scratched you while you were strangling her. Such a slight scratch you might not even have noticed it, but we got enough tissue from under her nails for a DNA sample. I take it you wouldn’t object to giving us a blood sample for comparison?’
Tyler’s lips parted, but he said nothing.
‘And you see, now we know who we’re looking at, we’ll get more evidence. You can’t come and go around London without being seen. And the investigation into Piers’s death is only just beginning. They’ll find traces of you there.’
‘You’re mad,’ Tyler said at last.
‘No. I wish I were. On my way here, I thought perhaps I was, but now I’ve seen you, I know. If I was wrong, you’d have thrown me out long ago. But you had to hear me out, didn’t you? Not only to find out what I knew, but because you love being the centre of attention.’
‘You’ll never make a case of this,’ Tyler said, with absolute certainty.
‘Won
’t I?’ Slider stood up. ‘Well, maybe I won’t. But the main thing is, you know that I know. So if you should have any more thoughts about eliminating people who might know your secret, you’ll put them aside quietly, won’t you – the thoughts, I mean, not the people?’
And suddenly, shockingly, Tyler laughed; a big, ringing laugh like a golden bell. From a man who was invincible, who could fly. ‘But you would be number one on that list, wouldn’t you?’ he said.
Slider only shook his head slightly, and turned away. There were a few seconds as he crossed the room to the door when his back was to Tyler, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, wondering if there would be a silent rush of catlike feet behind him, and a soft, deadly blow, or two big white hands round his throat. But he made himself plod on without flinching, and then the doorknob was in his hand, and he was out and free.
And he told himself not to be silly, of course the man wouldn’t kill him right there in his office. Or, indeed, at all. His fear was just the effect of mighty charisma on the mediocre man, that was all.
Porson was inclined to agree with Richard Tyler, that Slider had no evidence, that he was raving mad, and that it would never stick together into a case.
‘The fact that he heard me out,’ Slider said, swaying with weariness and emotional reaction, ‘and the fact that he hasn’t blown the Department sky high, point to his guilt. He ought to be screaming writs by now. The Home Secretary should be threading tiny cubes of me onto a skewer for kebabs. But he’s said nothing.’
‘He probably hadn’t found a calculator with enough digits to work out the damages he’s going to get,’ Porson said. ‘Don’t count your chickens! When he gets a moment to spare he’s going to hang your balls out to dry on the biggest, longest washing line in the world. And,’ he added before Slider could speak, ‘when he’s finished, I’m going to have my turn in the laundromat. What the hell came over you? How could you go in there like that with this cockatoo story without checking it with me first? How long have you been in the Job? Have you forgotten everything you ever learned about proper procedure?’
‘I didn’t see how I could get any further with procedure,’ Slider said. ‘So I just had to face him with it to see if I was right. And I was thinking of Josh Prentiss. I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t be next. This man is totally ruthless.’
Porson shook his head, lost for words.
‘We’ll get other evidence, sir. The DNA. The finger-marks. The street sightings. His phone records. He has no alibi. And we can prove that the relationship existed.’
‘I don’t think you understand,’ Porson said, with a patience that was more unnerving than his rage. ‘Whatever you can prove about his relationship with the deceased or anybody else, or even his presence in the flat, you can’t prove he killed her. It may be very heavily suggested by the circumstantials, but this is one case above all that the CPS won’t take on without a cast-iron confession-plus-evidence. Even if you had a video of him actually in the act, I doubt if they’d touch it.’
‘You mean, some people are above the law?’ Slider said resentfully.
‘No, just that sometimes you can’t punish them in the normal way.’ He eyed Slider a moment, thoughtfully. ‘If you can convince me and I can convince the Commander, action will be taken. His career will be over, I promise you that. And that’ll be as much punishment to a bloke like him as being banged up in the pokey.’
Unfortunate choice of words, Slider thought, with a tired surge of humour. But the old boy perhaps wasn’t far wrong. And at the moment it was hard to care. Porson saw the heaviness of his eyes, and said, ‘Go on, get off home now. And don’t dilly-dally on the way.’
Slider hadn’t a dilly or a dally left in him. He turned without a word and went.
The lights were still on downstairs in Atherton’s bijou residence. Slider had remembered he still had to tell him about Furlong Stud and thought he might as well get all the pain over at once. When the door was finally answered, and Atherton stood there, framed by the light, Slider got it out quickly in a blurt.
‘Look, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but I’ve had some research done on your racehorse thing, and it turns out it’s a scam.’
He got that far before he realised that Atherton wasn’t listening – that there was, indeed, something far wrong with his friend. Was he drunk? Ill?
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
Atherton didn’t speak, only stepped back and sideways to let him in, shutting the door behind him. Everything in the little sitting room looked the same – no immediate evidence of doom or calamity. Slider turned again. ‘What’s up? You look funny.’
‘It’s Oedipus,’ Atherton said.
‘Still not come back? Well, don’t worry too much. I’m sure he’ll turn up.’
Atherton shook his head. ‘I found him in the garden. Under the ceanothus.’
‘Found him?’ Slider registered the passive nature of the verb.
Atherton nodded. His mouth, shut tight, seemed to be a strange shape; and then Slider saw with rippling horror that he was crying.
‘He just – he just – crept away and died,’ Atherton gasped, and then he sat down in the nearest seat and buried his face in his hands.
Slider sat, too, and waited a long time. The pain of seeing Atherton cry was very bad. It was the end, he realised, of something that had begun a long time ago, at the point of Gilbert’s knife, or perhaps even before. Who knew how any of them paid the debt? It had to come out somewhere, the cost of the Job.
When the crying had eased a bit, he laid a hand on Atherton’s rigid shoulder, and pushed a handkerchief into his fingers, and then went into the kitchen and took his time finding a couple of glasses and pouring some whisky, to give him time to mop up.
When he came back, Atherton looked pale and exhausted. He took the glass without a word and drank half of it.
Slider said, ‘Where is he? Do you want me to deal with it for you?’
Atherton shook his head. ‘Thanks. But, no, I have to do it. He was my—’ He couldn’t quite manage the end of the sentence.
‘What will you do?’ Slider asked after a bit. Atherton’s back garden was tiny.
‘I’ll dig up the ceanothus and put it back afterwards. It was where he liked to sit.’
Slider nodded, and they drank in silence for a little while.
At last Atherton roused himself. ‘You sorted it.’
‘The case?’
‘Nicholls phoned me.’
‘Oh. Well, I don’t know. It’s not really sorted.’ He was too tired to go into it now. He waved a hand. ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’
‘Yeah. You’d better get home.’
‘Do you want me to help you with—?’
‘No. I have to do it. I’ll do it tomorrow. Thanks, though.’
Slider eyed him. ‘I don’t like leaving you. Are you going to be all right?’
‘Christ, it’s only a cat,’ he said roughly.
‘No, it isn’t,’ said Slider. ‘You should have someone with you.’
Uncharacteristically, Atherton looked away. ‘D’you think – if I phoned her – Sue would come?’
Slider managed not to smile. ‘She never goes to bed very early, does she?’ he said seriously. ‘Give her a ring.’
‘Maybe I will,’ Atherton said.
Getting into his car Slider thought, there are just some times when what a boy really needs is his mum.
Joanna was asleep when he got in, for which he was grateful. He didn’t think he could bear another word, question or even sidelong look. He cleaned his teeth with a minimum of fanfare and slipped delicately into bed beside her, and she turned with a warm, woolly murmur into his arms but didn’t wake.
But despite his tiredness, sleep didn’t come to him. He lay in the tide of Joanna’s breathing, feeling the world turn with him, big and slow, easing round the dark side; and thought of the people whose lives he had stumbled into, and whose pains and faults clung to him like s
ticky cobweb. He had achieved nothing, solved nothing, saved nothing; and that it had all been done for worldly ambition, without pity or humanity, exhausted him, as evil always had the capacity to do. It was Phoebe Agnew who came back again and again, and he wished he had not seen her face, discoloured and suffused. He was glad he hadn’t seen Piers dead – at least he’d been spared that.
The Greeks thought patricide the worst sin. Well, let’s hear it for matricide! For Phoebe Agnew, a woman he had never met. Her life had stopped when she parted with her baby: having declined motherhood she could not properly enter adulthood, but was doomed to go on repeating the same few lines over and over again, the ultimate perpetual student; growing older but never really up, until the day came when she met him again, and the circle was closed.
Josh Prentiss, a vain man, in love with his own youth, might well find the student irresistible; and if they hadn’t actually had sex together all those years, well, that was the least of it. Noni had grieved that it had always been Phoebe, and perhaps she wasn’t far wrong after all. Did Josh know, really, even if only subconsciously, how Phoebe felt? That he was the one man she had ever loved? Ha!
But he wished he didn’t have an image of her, flushed and excited with her bagful of shopping, waiting for him to come to supper, her lost child. What had she ever done for him but save his life? And so he took hers. If you listen very carefully, you can hear the gods laughing.
He fell at last into an exhausted sleep, too dead for dreams, and woke with a start to find it was daylight. Wrong, wrong, his head shouted. He must have slept in.
‘I let you sleep in,’ said Joanna. ‘You were dead to the world.’
He struggled up to sitting position. She was standing by the bed, in her dressing-gown, holding a mug from which a snippet of steam arose, like the irresistible wisp that used to drag the Bisto kids along to the haven of kitchen, mum and gravy. Oh, bugger, he had to stop thinking about that.
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