About the Author
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles was born and educated in Shepherd’s Bush, and had a variety of jobs in the commercial world, starting as a junior cashier at Woolworth’s and working her way down to Pensions Officer at the BBC. She won the Young Writers’ Award in 1973, and became a full-time writer in 1978. She is the author of over sixty successful novels to date, including thirty volumes of the Morland Dynasty series.
Visit the author’s website at www.cynthiaharrodeagles.com
Also by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
The Bill Slider Mysteries
ORCHESTRATED DEATH
DEATH WATCH
NECROCHIP
DEAD END
BLOOD LINES
KILLING TIME
SHALLOW GRAVE
BLOOD SINISTER
GONE TOMORROW
DEAR DEPARTED
GAME OVER
FELL PURPOSE
BODY LINE
The Dynasty Series
THE FOUNDING
THE DARK ROSE
THE PRINCELING
THE OAK APPLE
THE BLACK PEARL
THE LONG SHADOW
THE CHEVALIER
THE MAIDEN
THE FLOOD-TIDE
THE TANGLED THREAD
THE EMPEROR
THE VICTORY
THE REGENCY
THE CAMPAIGNERS
THE RECKONING
THE DEVIL’S HORSE
THE POISON TREE
THE ABYSS
THE HIDDEN SHORE
THE WINTER JOURNEY
THE OUTCAST
THE MIRAGE
THE CAUSE
THE HOMECOMING
THE QUESTION
THE DREAM KINGDOM
THE RESTLESS SEA
THE WHITE ROAD
THE BURNING ROSES
THE MEASURE OF DAYS
THE FOREIGN FIELD
THE FALLEN KINGS
THE DANCING YEARS
CHAPTER ONE
A Scar is Born
In the canteen queue Detective Inspector Slider came up behind DI Carver.
‘Hullo Ron. You look as if you’ve been up all night.’
Carver, a balding man with a perpetual grudge, grunted. ‘Had a call-out last night.’
‘Must have been something serious to get you out of bed,’ Slider said blandly. The night shift in the Department consisted of one DC, who called up a DS in the case of something he couldn’t handle. Only really serious crime warranted telephoning the Ops DI, who was likely to be just a teensy bit tetchy if disturbed for what he regarded as trivia. ‘The big one, was it? Murder? Armed robbery?’
Carver looked a snarl. ‘Attempted burglary. Big house in Stamford Brook.’
‘Oh, bad luck,’ Slider said with brimming sympathy. Ron Carver had sometimes said things about him behind his back. ‘Open window, opportunist thief?’
‘The window was shut, as a matter of fact,’ Carver corrected loftily. ‘Bloody sash window,’ he added savagely. ‘Child’s play – two seconds with a five-bob penknife. It don’t matter how often you tell ’em, they won’t fit locks. And it’s not as if this one couldn’t afford it – she was loaded.’
‘Much missing?’
‘Nah, she frightened him off.’ He glanced sideways at Slider and began to unbend. One couldn’t waste a good story, after all. ‘She didn’t reckon he was after her Renwahs. Oh no. And she was ready to defend her honour to the hilt – literally. Gilbert says she come to the door brandishing a bloody great knife. Sacrificial dagger, apparently, real Abraham and Isaac job, souvenir of Tel Aviv.’
‘Sharp?’
‘As a lemon. Apparently, she’s sat in the lounge in the dark thinking about going to bed when she’s heard the window going up in her bedroom, so she’s grabbed the knife off the coffee table, tiptoed in, and there’s chummy on the drainpipe with his leg over the sill. Well, she reckons that’s not all he wants the leg over – though to look at her you’d think it was more hope than fear – so she’s only gone for him, hasn’t she? Hacked him in the leg with this bloody pig-sticker, and he’s gone. Near as damn it fell off the bloody drainpipe – first-floor window and a concrete strip at the bottom. But anyway, he shins down and has it away across the garden, and she’s straight on the dog to us. Keeps the number on her phone pad – reckons it’s quicker than nine-nine-nine.’
‘A doughty female,’ Slider commented.
‘I haven’t told you the best bit yet,’ said Carver. ‘Benny Cook feels it’s his duty to warn her about the consequences, should chummy have broke his leg or his neck falling off her drainpipe. So he says, “You really mustn’t go about hacking at people’s legs like that, madam,” and she comes back like the Queen Mum, “Young man, I was aiming for his genitals.”’ Carver’s haughty falsetto was worth coming in early for, Slider thought.
Carver went off with his breakfast into the guv’nors’ dining-room, but Slider preferred to mess with the ORs, and exchanging friendly nods with some of the sleepy night relief just coming off, who had stayed for a cuppa and a wad, he took his tray to a window table. A few moments later his bagman, Detective Sergeant Atherton, appeared beside him, dunking his teabag at an early morning andante. ‘How long have you been here?’ he asked.
Slider looked up. ‘Who’s Prime Minister? Pass the tomato sauce before you sit down,’ he said.
‘Dear God!’ Atherton stared unwillingly at Slider’s tray: two fried eggs, double fried bread, sausage, bacon and tomato, tea an’ a slice. ‘I see you’ve plumped for the Heartburn Special,’ he said. ‘Last train from St Pancreas.’
Slider chuckled. ‘You’re such a gastro-queen. How did you ever come to be a copper?’
‘I was switched in the cradle by gypsies,’ Atherton said, sitting down opposite him. ‘Why are you breakfasting here? Oh, of course, Joanna’s gone down to Glyndebourne.’
‘She left early to miss the traffic. And she’s got a couple of morning orchestra calls, so she’s staying down tonight and tomorrow,’ Slider said, trying to sound indifferent about it. But the fact was, sleeping in her bed in her flat when she wasn’t there made him feel uneasy. He anticipated restless nights. ‘What’s your excuse?’
‘I’m not early in, I’m late out,’ Atherton said, extracting his teabag by the tail, like a drowned mouse, and laying it carefully in the ashtray where it would later infuriate the smokers.
‘With?’
‘One Nancy Gregg. A little blinder. Met her last week on that house-to-house in East Acton.’
‘What about Sue?’
‘Sue?’ Atherton said as though it were a word in Urdu, of meaning unknown to him.
‘Sue Caversham, violinist, friend of Joanna’s,’ Slider reminded him drily. ‘I thought you and she were a big thing.’
Atherton sipped, at his most superb. ‘No commitment has been made on either side.’ And then, ‘She’s down at Glyndebourne as well, you know. You can’t expect a healthy, red-blooded young male suddenly to become celibate. We ’as urges, guv.’ He dropped into a whine. ‘I dunno what came over me. It’s all a blank. Summink must of snapped—’
‘Yes, yes, I get the picture.’ Slider folded a piece of wonder-bread and carefully mopped up tomato sauce. Atherton watched him in dilating horror. ‘So, did you hear Mr Carver’s firm had a sleepless night?’
‘Yes, I was talking to Hewson about it,’ Atherton said. Hewson was the DS on call. ‘Modest bit of excitement. He quite took to the intended victim – told me she had balls.’
‘Surely not?’
‘She’s one cool dame. You’ll be able to meet her later on if you like. She’s coming in to see if she can pick anyone out from the mugshots. Apparently she caught a glimpse of chummy’s boat, though it was dar
k, of course, and it all happened quickly. Hewson isn’t too hopeful, but it would be nice to nail one of our persistent offenders.’
‘Did she actually wound him?’
‘Apparently. There was blood on the blade of the knife,’ Atherton said. ‘Even if she can’t pick anyone out, it might be worth tugging a few of our best customers and see if anyone’s limping. A known section-nine-er with a matching cut on the thigh ought to be convincing enough even for the CPS.’
‘And how would you propose discovering this cut? Ask them to take their trousers down?’
‘That is one difficulty,’ Atherton admitted. ‘Not least because there’s a few who’d agree to. Still, I understand Mr Carver intends putting the word out on the street that the villain ought to sue this woman for assault.’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t believe anyone’d be daft enough to come forward. It means putting his hand up for burglary.’
‘It never does to underestimate the stupidity of the criminal,’ Slider said. ‘I remember the time One-eyed Billy got nicked because he took a stolen Magimix back to Currys to complain one of the attachments was missing.’
‘I never know whether to believe your stories,’ Atherton complained. ‘And I’ve never understood why he’s called One-eyed Billy, when he’s got two perfectly good ones.’
‘Because his father was called One-eyed Harry,’ Slider said, serene in the knowledge that he could only add to his own legend. ‘It’s like a family name. Harry’s wife was always known as Mrs One-eye. It was perfectly respectful – everyone liked her. When she took her teeth out she could fold her lower lip right up over her nose. Broke the ice at parties.’
Atherton felt it was time to raise the tone. ‘Reverting to the subject of that break-in last night, the lady in question, interestingly enough, is someone you’ll have heard of quite recently: Christa Jimenez.’ Seeing Slider’s blank expression, he added, ‘She sang in that Don Giovanni you went to at Glyndebourne.’
‘Oh? Which one was she?’
‘Donna Elvira. Don’t you know? Don’t tell me you slept through it all!’
‘Of course I didn’t,’ Slider said indignantly. ‘But I’m not an opera buff, the names don’t mean much to me. She was the dame with the big maguffies, right? Looked like an advert for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk?’
‘Come again?’
‘Low-cut dress.’ Slider elucidated. ‘A glass and a half of full-cream milk in every cup.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Atherton said drily. ‘I haven’t seen the production.’
‘You haven’t missed much,’ Slider grumbled. Joanna was playing in two operas down at Glyndebourne this year, and orchestra members were allowed to bring two guests each to the pre-dress-rehearsal. Though there were many who’d have given their eye teeth for the privilege, and Slider was not unappreciative, it was still small compensation for the amount of time she had to spend away from him. Besides, though he didn’t like to admit it in front of Atherton, he wasn’t all that keen on opera – especially a modern, minimalist production which offered him nothing to look at while he listened. ‘If I’d paid seventy-five pounds for a ticket,’ he said in sudden wrath at the thought, ‘I’d have expected at least some nice scenery and costumes, or my money back.’
Atherton didn’t quite keep his smile under control. Slider gave him a suspicious look, and he straightened his face. ‘It did have terrific reviews,’ he mentioned, ‘from some very serious critics.’
‘You think I’m a philistine,’ Slider said, a little ruffled. ‘But I don’t believe those critics really like all that modern stuff. They just pretend to so as to make themselves superior to the rest of us. Anyway, they get paid to sit through it. Something that’s put on for the public, and paid for by the public, ought to aim at pleasing the public.’
‘Ah, there you have the whole dilemma of arts funding in a nutshell,’ Atherton said. ‘Well, I’d better go and have a shave and change my shirt. Mustn’t be late for work, must I, especially now we’re short-handed. I wonder if we’ll ever get a replacement for Beevers.’
Detective Sergeant Beevers had left three weeks ago. Slider said, ‘Who ever would have thought of him entering the Church?’
‘It’s only a Baptist ministry,’ Atherton said.
‘Snob! A priest is a priest is a priest. But I’d have thought Beevers was in The Job for life. It isn’t as if he had any outside interests—’
‘Except the Church.’
‘Well, yes, obviously. But if it had been one of the others, now – take Norma, for instance—’
‘I’ve often taken Norma in my dreams,’ Atherton said tenderly, ‘but I’d never dare try it on in real life.’
There was a moment’s reverent silence. Woman Detective Constable Kathleen Swilley was blonde, athletic and slim, with firm, pouting breasts and long, shapely legs – every man’s erotic dream. She could also shoot the eyebrows off a fly at fifty paces and packed a punch like an army mule, and because of her machismo was generally known as Norma. She hated her given name so much she didn’t even mind.
Atherton sighed, coming down to earth, and stood up. ‘I suppose one of these days we’ll get a new super, too. That’ll be something to look forward to. Not that Mr Honeyman’s any trouble.’
Since Detective Superintendent ‘Mad Ivan’ Barrington had committed suicide, they had only had a night watchman at the crease: Det Sup Honeyman, working out his time until retirement and hoping for a quiet life.
‘I hear McLaren’s started a book on who we’ll get,’ Slider said.
‘He says that according to the grapevine – alias his mates at Kensington – nobody’s very anxious for the job. With the last two supers dying in harness, they reckon Shepherd’s Bush is a poisoned chalice. That’s why we’ve had the night watchman so long.’
‘They’re a right bunch of Hans Andersens down at Kensington,’ said Slider. ‘Obviously now Mr Honeyman’s here, they aren’t going to replace him until he retires, and he won’t have done his thirty years until next month.’
And a man on the brink of completing his thirty in an increasingly dangerous profession was not going to do anything to risk his life, health or reputation, which was why Eric Honeyman was ‘no trouble’ almost to the point of catatonia; but out of respect for the chain of command, Slider didn’t say so aloud. ‘I don’t suppose it’s possible ever to stop coppers gossiping,’ he complained, pushing back his chair and standing up, ‘but it’d be nice to break McLaren of the habit of phoning Kensington twice a day for fresh rumours. But he just doesn’t seem to take to training.’
‘Hit him with a rolled-up newspaper,’ Atherton suggested, following him to the door.
Slider had stayed on at the end of the shift, clearing desultory bits of accumulated paperwork and trying to rearrange his ‘pending’ pile into stuff he was likely to do something about eventually, and stuff he was hoping would simply die of old age. Even as he tried to be conscientious about it, part of his brain knew that he was sitting at his desk because it was preferable to deciding what to do tonight. Ain’t you got no home to go to? enquired a thread of song ironically. He had the key to Joanna’s place, ten minutes away in Turnham Green, but despite his shaving gear in the bathroom it was still Joanna’s place and not home, especially when she was not in it. When she was there it was a dear and familiar haven; without her it seemed as cosy as a 1950s seaside boarding-house.
The ex-marital home in Ruislip, from which his wife and children had decamped, he had never loved even when his family lived there. It was now fulfilling a secondary rôle as an albatross hanging round his neck. The idea was for him and Joanna to buy a place together once he had sold the albatross and paid Irene her half; but with the housing market suffering from clinical depression, even the estate agent had passed from cautiously jaunty to defensively evasive. All the same, a good number of his possessions were still stored there, and he supposed if he were stopped by the police, it would be the address he would give as his. It was where Irene thought he
still lived: she didn’t know about Joanna yet.
But he only went there when constrained; which left staying at work as the only alternative. It made him realise how few friends he had. Detective Inspector was a lonely sort of rank. Too much blokeing with the lads undermined authority; and in any case, he’d never been fond of football. Socialising above his station was even more out of the question: he was not ambitious enough either to ingratiate himself with his seniors, or to be welcomed by them as an aspirant. Besides, up there in the stratosphere internal politics and golf were the reigning interests, and he’d never really got the hang of intrigue. As to golf, he had met many golf-club members during his years of living in the suburbs. Most of them were dull, and many of them were called Derek.
Atherton was his only close friend. Atherton had no ambition and no nagging doubts about himself, so Slider had nothing to prove to him and nothing to fear from him. His intellectual curiosity made him the ideal partner at work, and his hedonism ditto at play. Moreover, Atherton liked Slider, and made it plain enough to reassure without embarrassing a solitary man with the usual difficulties of his age group in expressing his feelings.
In the feelings department, Joanna had been an earthquake to Slider. She had burst in on a lifetime’s reserve and obedience to duty with revolutionary ideas about one’s duty to oneself and the nature of happiness. She had turned his life upside down, and he had to admit he hadn’t made a very good job of coping with it. Coming alive at his age was worse than pins and needles, and it was hardly surprising if he had periods of reaction, especially when she was not there to reassure him. But the boats were burned now, anyway. Irene had run off (well, sauntered off) with another man, taking the children with her, so there was no way back into his old life. A life with Joanna, some time in the future when everything had been sorted out, glittered like the distant prospect of the Emerald City. He told himself everything would be all right; it was the limbo of the present that was so uncomfortable.
‘Sir? Mr Slider?’
Slider looked up, coming back from a great distance to find standing in his open doorway a man about whom much was familiar: a strong, fleshy, broad-bottomed man in a brown suit which original cheapness and subsequent hard wear had rendered shapeless, especially about the overworked pockets. He wore an off-white shirt with the sort of tie men choose for themselves, and thick-soled shoes scuffed at the toe and worn down at the heel. He wore a large, elaborate but cheap metal-braceleted watch on his right wrist, and a large, plain gold signet ring on the third finger of his right hand. The first and second fingers of his left hand were amber cigarette holders. He had detective written all over him.
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