Dear Departed

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  There was a great deal of food for thought here, and a lot of seething emotions under this Noddy roof, but he wasn’t sure where it was getting him.

  ‘I have to ask you this,’ he said. ‘Do you know of anyone who would have wanted to harm your daughter?’

  ‘No,’ she said decidedly. ‘Everyone loved her. She hadn’t an enemy in the world.’

  ‘What about jealousy as a motive?’

  ‘Lovers, you mean? I don’t believe that. She had a light touch. Yes, she always had men around her, but I don’t think she ever cared deeply for any of them. It was just fun – on both sides. She knew how to handle them. She learned that from me.’

  ‘Do you know of anything she might have been mixed up in, any business interests she had other than Solutions, any money troubles?’

  ‘No, not at all.’ She looked at him shrewdly. ‘I take it that not everyone agrees with your assessment that it was not the Park Killer?’

  Slider was startled. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘At first, when you came in, you said “we” all along, but then you said, “ I believe she was killed by someone who knew her.”’

  ‘That’s very observant of you,’ he said.

  ‘People are my livelihood – how they look and what they say. If I did not observe, I couldn’t write.’ She looked around her, with the air of someone suddenly waking up; the animation drained from her face, and the blind, grieving look returned. Talking with him, she had forgotten, deep down where it counted, that they were talking about her daughter’s murder. Now she had reminded herself. ‘What does it matter, anyway?’ she said dully. ‘Find her killer, don’t find him. She’s dead, and she won’t be coming back.’

  He took his leave. As he struggled into his mac, the book fell out of his pocket, and he picked it up and hesitated a moment, wondering whether it would please her if he asked her to sign it. But she looked at it, and when she met his eyes he saw that it would not be a good idea.

  ‘What did you bring that for? Long Summer Days. My latest success,’ she said, with bitter irony. ‘It’s waste paper. Throw it in the nearest bin. My daughter’s dead, my lovely, smiling daughter. It makes me sick to think I ever cared about anything else.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Summer Daze

  The rain had cleared away, and the pavements were steaming in a Bangkok sort of way as Slider parked the car. His wet mac was making the car smell like old dogs, so he carried it in with him to dry out indoors. It must be hell on the tubes today, he reflected.

  Stuff had bred on his desk in his absence, as usual. There was the preliminary report from Bob Bailey, and he pulled it out to read it first. There was nothing new. They had not found any blood other than that in the immediate vicinity of the body, which suggested the killing had taken place at that spot and without a struggle – but he already knew that. It also meant that the killer had not tracked the blood around and probably did not have much on his clothes; but Slider pinned his faith on a belief that you could not stab someone without getting blood on you somewhere. Blood from the bark next to the body had been sent off for DNA profiling and to be tested against the victim’s. Sweet wrappers and cigarette ends were being held pending instructions.

  On another piece of paper was a message asking him to call Freddie Cameron. He dialled, and just as Cameron answered Atherton appeared in his doorway with a question on his lips. Slider held up a hand. ‘Freddie. What’s new?’

  ‘Ah, back from the jungle so soon? They told me you were in the wilds of Herefordshire this morning.’

  ‘Hertfordshire.’

  ‘A distinction without a difference. Well, old chum, I thought you’d like to know my official findings in advance of the written copy. It’s pretty much what we discussed at the post. In my opinion death was due to respiratory collapse, caused by a toxic substance at present unknown.’

  ‘So the stabbing had nothing to do with it?’

  ‘The wounds aren’t severe enough to cause death, and in any case wouldn’t account for the cyanosis and congestion. If she was conscious when it was going on, it might have contributed to shock, but she would have died anyway.’ He heard Slider’s silence and added, ‘My view, considering the blood patterns, is that she was probably unconscious when the blows were struck.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Slider

  ‘Does it occur to you,’ Cameron said kindly, ‘that you’re too sensitive for this job?’

  ‘Pots and kettles, Freddie. What else?’

  ‘I found no puncture wound such as would be left by injection, and the stomach contents revealed no solid matter.’

  ‘Jogging on an empty stomach? Not the recommended way.’

  ‘What I meant was there were no tablet or capsule residues. But yes, you’re right, no eggs and B, no toast, no porage. Just a quantity of liquid. I’ve sent a sample off to the tox lab, along with blood, kidney, liver and vitreous humour –’

  ‘Sounds like a mixed grill.’

  ‘– but from here on we just have to wait. Those tox boys are in a different time zone from the rest of us.’

  ‘So she drank the poison?’

  ‘It would seem so.’

  ‘But how would she be induced to take it?’ Slider mused.

  ‘Not my province, thank God,’ said Freddie.

  ‘That never stops you having an opinion,’ Slider said. ‘How quickly would she lose consciousness?’

  ‘Depends what the drug was and how much was administered. But liquid would pass quickly into the small intestine and be rapidly absorbed from there. With one of the ultra-short-acting barbiturates she could be unconscious within a few minutes and dead minutes after that. And,’ he added, ‘it would have had to be quick, wouldn’t it, from the murderer’s point of view? Anything taking longer than a few minutes to induce unconsciousness would risk the victim calling for help or running away.’

  ‘It’s a good job she was stabbed, otherwise it could be suicide and we’d be even more hampered. I wonder the killer didn’t think of that.’

  ‘This strikes me as a very stupid killer.’

  ‘We’ll have to have the contents of the water-bottle tested, just to be sure.’

  ‘Done and done.’

  ‘All right, assuming she was drugged with a short-acting barbiturate, where would the murderer get the stuff?’

  ‘It’s not prescribed in this country and you can’t buy it legally. But there are lots of illegal pharmaceutical drugs about if you know where to go. You can buy them on the Internet these days. Or you can smuggle them in from places like Mexico or Hong Kong where they are prescribed. Or steal them from a hospital or warehouse. The field of possibilities’ – Slider imagined him waving a hand – ‘is enormous.’

  ‘Thank you so much,’ he said drily.

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ Freddie assured him. ‘As to the weapon, I’d say it was a very sharp, narrow, single-edged blade about seven inches long, with a cross-guard only on the cutting edge. So it could be a combat knife or a kitchen knife. I’ve drawn you a picture of the sort of profile. You’ll have the written report later today, when I’ve checked it for spelling mistakes. The man who invented the spellchecker should be shot. I’ll send it over in the bag.’

  ‘Thanks, Freddie.’

  Slider rang off, and turned to Atherton.

  ‘She drank it?’ Atherton said.

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘In a bottle marked “Poison”, I suppose. Very Alice in Wonderland.’

  ‘Someone might have spiked her water-bottle.’

  ‘But that would mean access to her house that morning. I can’t believe she’d fill her water-bottle up in advance, the day before. What did you get from the mater?’

  ‘Not much, except a ferment of emotions revolving round the daughter and the divorce, which was obviously acrimonious. And that there was no family money or private income. But,’ he added, with slight reluctance, because he could see this moving in a direction he didn’t like, ‘she evidently thought Chattie
was living hand-to-mouth on the shaky proceeds of her business. She’d never seen the house, for a start. They always met elsewhere. She thought it was a slum and Chattie was ashamed of it.’

  ‘Sounds as if our Chattie had something to hide from Mummy,’ Atherton said. ‘I wonder what?’

  Slider said, to distract him, ‘And there’s another half-sister somewhere. Stella Smart was the second wife of three. But apparently there wasn’t any contact between them. I suppose we’ll have to talk to her, but it’s not priority.’

  ‘Always nice to have more things to check up on,’ Atherton said. ‘In the meantime, there was quite a response from last night’s appeal. About a dozen people who were in the park and want to be crossed off. One or two possible sightings that are worth following up. And a man who says he saw Chattie on Tuesday evening in the Anchor – that’s the pub at the end of her road.’

  ‘Good! Get on to that one.’

  ‘I was going to do it myself,’ Atherton said, with a slight question mark.

  ‘Yes, go. What else?’

  ‘Oddly, a lot of people phoned up just to say they knew her and liked her. I’ve never known anything like that before. It was a bit Jill Dando-ish.’

  ‘So – what then? There’s an undertone in your voice.’

  ‘I suppose I’m just being perverse, but when everyone says a person is an angel, I can’t help wondering if there’s a con going on. And given that she had a lifestyle above her station, and concealed it from her mum, I’m wondering more than ever what she was up to.’

  ‘You’re thinking drugs,’ Slider said flatly.

  ‘Well, they always do jump to mind,’ Atherton said, not watching his feet. ‘Or, given the prevalence of the man-motif, high-priced prostitution.’

  ‘We’ve no reason to think either of those things,’ Slider snapped. ‘Let’s not jump to conclusions, shall we?’

  Atherton raised his eyebrows. ‘Sorry. Have I stepped on a corn?’

  Slider drew a deep breath. The image of her, softly limp like a dead hare, and her rough-cut gold hair, so like Joanna’s, called to him for pity and vengeance. He said, managing a fair imitation of lightness, ‘It’s your mental health I’m worried about. This job makes you too cynical if you’re not careful.’

  ‘I shall try to nurture a rosy outlook,’ Atherton said, but he gave Slider an odd look as he left. Or Slider thought he did. Maybe it was just his paranoia again.

  Joanna phoned. ‘Just breaking for lunch.’

  ‘It’s not that time already, is it?’

  ‘Half past twelve, ol’ guv of mine.’

  ‘Flaming Nora, where does the time go? How was the session?’

  ‘Oh, brill. Lots of old friends. It’s basically a scratch Royal London Philharmonia, like the one we used to cobble together for concerts in Croydon in the dear distant days of double booking.’

  ‘Good. So you’ve someone to lunch with?’

  ‘Lots of someones. God, it’s good to be back!’ The words burst out of her, and he understood the depth of the feelings she had been hiding from him. She needed her work, as he needed his.

  ‘What’s the music like?’

  ‘Oh, you know. You’ve seen the films. Bang, crash, wallop, car chase, speedboat chase – dum-diddle-um-dum, dum-dum-dum. Lots of dots for us. It’s hard work, but it’s great being with real professionals. All these guys could do it standing on their heads – or, at least, they let you think they could. That’s showmanship. What do you think of Charlie?’

  He had to be quick on his feet for that one. ‘Charles Slider? It sounds like a senior officer in the Salvation Army.’

  ‘That’s odd – you know, it does,’ she said wonderingly. ‘But I didn’t say Charles, I said Charlie.’

  ‘You can’t christen a child Charlie. You have to start with Charles – and we said nothing with an s in it.’

  ‘Sebastian,’ she said. ‘Septimus. It’s like something out of Monty Python – six seditious Sadducees from Caesarea.’

  ‘Keep thinking, Butch,’ he advised. ‘That’s what you’re good at.’

  ‘Gotta go. The guys are waiting.’

  ‘See they keep waiting,’ he warned, and she was gone.

  As he replaced the handset, McLaren came in with a cup of tea for him – or, rather, half a cup of tea and half a saucer of tea. ‘Sorry, guv, I slopped a bit,’ he said. Slider hastily cleared a space for him to set it down.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Slider asked. It was rare to find McLaren with his mouth empty and it seemed a shame to waste the opportunity.

  ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘We’re getting through ’em. Funny lot of calls we’ve had, from people saying they liked her. Like if they said what a nice person she was, we’d let her off being dead.’

  ‘Character references,’ Slider said, charmed not so much by the flight of fancy, but that McLaren had had it. ‘Atherton told me.’

  ‘We’ve had two people say they saw her jogging, both sound all right. But no help on the murder. She was just jogging round the track, the circular one, with a few other people.’

  ‘With them?’

  ‘Not with them, as such. Just, there were a few going round.’

  ‘Nobody saw her near the shrubbery?’

  ‘Not yet. But,’ McLaren went on, ‘it’s looking good for my idea, the copycat murder.’ His head took on a defiant tilt as he said it. ‘We’ve had another four reports about Running Man. A lot of people saw him legging it out of the park, and three of them reckon he was clutching a mobile phone in his germans. And given that the vic’s is missing, I reckon that makes him tasty.’

  ‘Don’t call her the vic. This is not America,’ said Slider, fighting another losing battle.

  ‘All right,’ McLaren said equably. ‘So whajjer reckon, guv? Shall I follow it up? We know he went off up Askew Road. We could start canvassing up there, see who else saw him, spread the search area, see if he dumped anything.’

  Slider considered. He had to be flexible enough to consider that McLaren might be right, even though he was McLaren. ‘I need you here for the moment. See how it goes today. If it’s still looking good later we may put out a specific appeal on him tonight. Have you got a good description?’

  ‘Yeah, as to height and clothes and probable age. We haven’t got a witness who saw his face close up – yet.’ He gave Slider a hopeful look, like a dog in the presence of chocolate.

  ‘All right, well, keep on the follow-up for now, but you can ask specifically about him. And you can recontact anyone who was in the park at the right time. If you find anyone who saw his face, get ’em in and try for a photofit. But – McLaren!’ He called him back as he swung happily away. ‘Don’t push. Don’t put ideas into people’s heads.’

  McLaren looked wounded. ‘Guv!’ he protested. ‘It’s me!’

  ‘That’s why I said it.’

  PC Yvonne Collins stuck her head round Slider’s door. ‘Sir, there’s a man in Lycra shorts downstairs for you.’

  ‘Funny, I didn’t order one of those,’ Slider said.

  She sniggered. It was a point up to her that she had a sense of humour; and she wasn’t a bad-looking young woman, but there was the hardness in her face that women police always developed, which made Slider wonder why Atherton had gone after her – unless it was purely instinctive, like a dog chasing rabbits.

  ‘It’s the bloke you appealed for on the telly, sir, the bloke on the bike.’

  ‘Oh, right. I’ll come down.’

  Her duty done, she allowed herself a personal question. ‘Is Jim Atherton around, sir?’

  It sounded rather wistful. Slider felt he ought to warn her off, but what could he say? Anyway, he didn’t want to get caught in the fall-out from Atherton’s trouser department.

  ‘No, he’s out interviewing a witness.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and seemed not to know what to do with the information. Well, she wasn’t his problem, he thought gratefully, as he brushed past her and went off down the corridor, leaving
her standing there like a spare dinner at a conference banquet. Which, sadly, was pretty much what she was, he reflected.

  ‘I’m Phil Yerbury,’ said Bicycle Man. He was dressed in the skin-tight Lycra shorts and matching vest, and was carrying his helmet, one of the sporty ones with the point to the back and a lightning flash design on the side. He was tall and fair, but tanned, so that his body hair showed up white against his brown skin. A tuft of it poked out shyly from each armpit like a chinchilla rabbit scenting the air. He was very lean and his legs were admirably muscled, the tendons behind the knee standing out sharply like freshly chiselled relief, the calf muscles seeming to squirm impatiently under the tight skin, as if they would go off on their own and get cycling again if their owner stood there talking for much longer.

  A wave of heat and a smell of sweat came off him, but it was fresh sweat and not absolutely unpleasant. His face was lean and firm and missed being handsome by so little that you might not notice it in all that healthy tannedness.

  ‘I think I may be the person you were appealing for on the telly last night,’ he said, ‘but if I am, I don’t know why. I haven’t done anything.’ And in what looked like a nervous movement he pulled the water-bottle from its holster on his belt, and slugged back a good gulp.

  ‘You did the right thing by coming in,’ Slider said, putting warmth into his voice. ‘Would you like to sit down?’

  ‘I hope this isn’t going to take long,’ he said. ‘I’m working, and I don’t want to get behind schedule.’

  ‘Can’t you call it your lunch-hour?’

  ‘I don’t take a lunch-break,’ he said with barely suppressed scorn. ‘I’m self-employed. There’s terrific competition in the bicycle-courier world, you know. You can’t afford to slack.’

  He still hadn’t sat down, so Slider perched on the edge of the table. ‘It shouldn’t take long,’ he said. ‘Were you in Paddenswick Park on Wednesday morning at around eight o’clock?’