Blood Lines

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘I know that. But remember, the first rule of computers is rubbish in, rubbish out.’

  ‘And we get to deal with all the rubbish,’ Nutty said in an undertone as the shop door opened and a lean man in a stained fawn mackintosh came in. He had the sort of hair that looked as though he’d been playing with live wires, and carried a plastic bag ominously full of documents. His face wore the monomaniac intensity of the intellectually disrupted, and Slider beat a hasty retreat, hearing Nicholls behind him say with massive patience, ‘Yes, sir, can I help you? It’s not the CIA tapping your phone again, is it?’

  Slider was woken from a heavy sleep by a kiss on the cheek, and struggled up through layers of black flannel to find Joanna hunkered beside him, smiling. She was still in her coat, which was over her long black dress; she smelled of outdoors, with a faint whiff of cigarette smoke from her hair.

  ‘What are you doing, sleeping on the sofa?’ she said.

  ‘I wasn’t sleeping, I was thinking.’

  ‘You’re an awful liar,’ she said kindly. ‘Why didn’t you go to bed?’

  ‘I don’t like that bed when you’re not in it,’ he said feeling foolish.

  ‘You don’t mean you’ve slept on the sofa ever since I went away?’

  ‘Not at all. I just haven’t slept,’ he said with dignity, struggling into a sitting position. ‘What are you doing home so early?’

  ‘I couldn’t wait to be with you, so I didn’t even go to the pub.’

  ‘You smell of the pub.’

  ‘That was the interval. Don’t you want me? Shall I go away again?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure you were coming back tonight. I thought you might stay with your parents again,’ he said.

  She eyed him cannily, resting her elbows on his knees and her chin on her hands. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ he protested. He expected her to wheedle it out of him, but instead she got up and went out of the room, and he was afraid she had taken offence – afraid and annoyed. He could hear her moving about, and after a bit got up and followed her. She was in the kitchen. She’d taken off her coat and was making cheese sandwiches by the simple method of cutting wedges of cheese and folding a slice of unbuttered bread round each. He sniffed the air for her mood, but she said in a normal voice, though without turning round, ‘I’m starving. Have you eaten? D’you want one of these?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  She flicked a look at him over her shoulder, and said, ‘I want a whisky. Have one with me? I wish you’d lit the fire – I’ve been looking forward to a Laphroaig in front of the fire all the way up the M23.’

  ‘It didn’t seem cold enough,’ he said, hoping his voice sounded natural to her, because it didn’t to him. He collected the bottle and two glasses and led the way back into the sitting-room. He sat on the chesterfield, and she got into the opposite corner with her legs tucked under her so that she was facing him, what he thought of as her interrogation position. The thought that he knew so many of her gestures made him smile inwardly, and she saw it.

  ‘So, what’s the matter?’ she asked again. ‘Did seeing Irene upset you?’

  He was surprised. ‘No! Well, yes, it did, I suppose, but I’d forgotten all about that. There’s nothing wrong, really. I’ve missed you, that’s all. I don’t like it here without you, but I’ve got nowhere else to go.’

  ‘And?’

  He gave an embarrassed sort of smirk. ‘If you must know, I was jealous.’

  ‘Jealous?’ She sounded incredulous.

  ‘There you were, in the Trevor, drinking pints, having fun—’

  ‘I was working.’

  ‘—with all your friends around you.’

  ‘You had nothing to be jealous of. On the other hand, I’ve had a hellish time thinking of you going to see Irene.’

  ‘You can’t be jealous of Irene,’ he protested.

  ‘But I am. She had you for all those years. Her interest in you was legitimate. You shared your life with her, she knew everything about you.’

  ‘It was never the way it is with you, with her,’ he said.

  She grinned. ‘I’m glad to hear it. But even knowing that doesn’t help. I’m not talking rationality here.’

  ‘I’m glad to know you do get jealous. I find that comforting. When I think of you surrounded by all those men – and musicians at that! What are you laughing about?’

  ‘I’ve spent all my spare time for the last two days in the company of Clive Barrow, principal cello, and his friend John. They’re wonderful company.’ Slider raised an enquiring eyebrow. ‘We call them the Botty Celli. You had nothing to worry about.’

  ‘If lack of opportunity is the only assurance I’ve got—’

  She put her plate down, reached for his neck, and pulled him to her to kiss him. ‘There’s no pleasing some people. And when I came home early especially to give you something.’

  ‘I’ve got something for you, too,’ he said.

  ‘Oh? Oh, so you have.’

  Fortunately it was not until about fifteen minutes later that the telephone rang. ‘It’s bound to be for you,’ Joanna said, struggling into a sitting position and pushing the hair out of her eyes.

  It was. ‘Ah, Bill – did I get you out of bed?’ It was Tufty.

  ‘No, I’m still up.’

  ‘Lucky pup. Wish I was.’

  ‘What are you doing still on duty?’

  ‘Looking after your interests. I had a swiftie with Bob Lamont earlier, and I bullied him into having a look at your fingerprints. He’s just come through to tell me he thinks the thumb on the wallet is the same as the set you sent through today – Philip Somers. He’s got to go over it again in the morning in more detail, but he mentioned in passing he’s pretty sure it’s the man, so I thought I’d mention it to you, in case you wanted to go and surprise a confession out of him.’

  ‘At this time of night?’

  ‘Best time – catch him unawares. A few sharpened matches under the fingernails—’

  ‘We don’t do that in the CID.’

  ‘No? Oh well, suit yourself. At least it’ll give you something to chew over in the stilly watches.’

  ‘There’s plenty to chew,’ Slider said.

  ‘Mastication is the thief of time,’ Arceneaux warned.

  ‘I wish you hadn’t said that.’

  ‘Said what?’ Joanna asked as he returned to her.

  ‘My prime suspect’s just been and got primer,’ he said, gathering her into his arms. ‘God, you feel nice! I’m tired. Let’s go to bed.’

  ‘Not one of those sentences goes with another,’ she complained.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Relative Values

  They arranged to meet Atherton for breakfast at the Dôme down by the river at Kew Bridge.

  ‘How’s it going between him and Sue?’ Slider asked on the way there.

  ‘How does he say it’s going?’

  ‘Don’t you start getting evasive,’ Slider complained.

  ‘Like that, is it? Well, as far as I can see, they’re very interested in each other, and each is trying to advance their relationship by pretending not to be.’

  ‘That’s helpful,’ Slider said.

  ‘It’s a problem,’ Joanna said seriously. ‘Sue’s had a couple of lousy relationships, so she’s not going to be the first one to show her hand. And from what I can gather, he seems to want her to make the running. It isn’t fair.’

  ‘He has more to lose than her,’ Slider said absently, and drew down a storm on his head. ‘I only meant that he’s quite happy being single, whereas she—’

  ‘Happy? Much you know. And I tell you something else – if Jim doesn’t sort himself out soon, he’s going to end up a very sad case. If you’re his friend you should tell him so. Sue’s the most generous person in the world, and she’d give him everything, but she’s not going to parade herself like a concubine while he lies back on a divan and plays the sultan. It’s for the man to make the first move, al
ways has been and always will be.’

  ‘I love it when you play the traditional woman,’ Slider smiled. ‘Can’t you see my chest swelling?’

  Joanna looked sideways at him. ‘I know how to handle men,’ she said modestly. ‘Flatter their egos and they’re putty in your hands.’

  ‘I don’t like those plurals,’ Slider objected.

  ‘That’s exactly what Sue says.’

  They found Atherton sitting alone in a patch of sunlight like a contented cat, reading The Observer.

  ‘Make you go blind,’ Slider warned, pulling out a chair for Joanna. ‘No Sue?’

  ‘She’s got a rehearsal. She’s doing a concert tonight – Verdi’s Requiem at Woburn Parish Church.’

  ‘Bad luck,’ Slider sympathised.

  Atherton shrugged. ‘Her family lives in Woburn Sands, so it’s a chance to see them.’

  ‘At least it’s the Verdi,’ Joanna said. ‘It’s the only choral piece anyone really likes doing. We call it the Okay Chorale.’

  ‘Anyway, she needs the money,’ Atherton added repressingly.

  ‘Who doesn’t?’

  ‘In the midst of life we are in debt,’ said Slider. The waitress arrived and they ordered, and the conversation wandered off on the trail of breakfast generally, and where you could get the best hash browns in New York – a subject on which Slider had little to say, since he’d never been there. So it was not long before they reverted to the case, some of the details of which were new to Joanna.

  ‘From a professional viewpoint I can’t be sorry he’s dead,’ she said. ‘Critics like him do nothing but harm. They know nothing about music – often their crits are the purest bunkum. I’ve read a crit in a serious paper that said the playing was “off-key”. What the hell does that mean, “off-key”? And they perpetuate all sorts of ghastly snobberies and one-uppishness about which composer’s “better” than another, just because it’s this year’s fad. And they never give us credit, even though we do all the work. It’s because of them soloists and conductors can get such humungous fees.’

  ‘Don’t sugar-coat it,’ Slider advised. ‘Tell us what you really think.’

  ‘How can you say they know nothing about music?’ Atherton said indignantly, from the vantage point of an arts page reader.

  ‘Because I’ve read what they’ve said about concerts I’ve played in.’

  ‘You just don’t like criticism.’

  ‘Informed criticism I can take. But look at what Roger Greatrex said about the Don, for instance – praising Lupton’s “incisive conducting”, for a start, without mentioning the fact that every single evening he follows us for the first sixteen bars because he hasn’t the faintest idea how to cope with that opening.’

  Slider listened indulgently, having trodden these paths before in Joanna’s wake. ‘Well, perhaps whoever murdered him was a music lover,’ he suggested lightly.

  ‘You said you had a prime suspect?’ Joanna veered obediently.

  ‘We’ve several,’ Slider said. He told Atherton about Tufty’s telephone call.

  ‘I’m not sure where that gets us,’ Atherton said, ‘except that it proves Somers interfered with the body. Which means he’s lied to us. But what did he want from the wallet? He didn’t take money or credit cards.’

  ‘Whatever it was he wanted, it suggests he may have had a motive for the killing.’

  ‘Anyone may have had.’

  ‘He was the only person covered in blood, the only person we actually know had contact with Greatrex’s essential fluids,’ Slider said; but his tone was dissatisfied.

  ‘What?’ Atherton asked. ‘You prefer Palliser or Parsons?’

  ‘Or Person or Persons Unknown,’ Slider said. ‘The trouble is we haven’t found an explanation that fits all the circumstances yet. All we’re doing is eliminating this and that. What about that religious tract card, for instance? How does that fit in?’

  ‘Maybe it doesn’t,’ Joanna said. ‘Maybe he picked it up somewhere out of curiosity, or did it for a joke to give to someone. Or maybe some nut shoved it at him in the street and he put it in his pocket absent-mindedly and forgot about it. There could be any number of explanations that’ve got nothing to do with his death. I wouldn’t like to take bets on the odd stuff you’d find in my pockets after a day on the tubes or in the streets. I was given a flyer for an evangelist meeting at St Martin-in-the-Fields last week, and just stuck it in my pocket. If I’d been killed next minute you’d be hanging around the Crypt looking for a killer in Jesus boots.’

  ‘True, if unhelpful.’

  ‘Which takes you straight back to your prime suspect.’

  ‘Of course, we don’t know that Somers had a motive, just because he messed with the body,’ Atherton said. ‘He might just have been exercising an unpleasant curiosity.’

  ‘But he did say something to Fiona Parsons about not wanting to have anything to do with Greatrex,’ Slider said. ‘According to Dorothy Hammond he said he wouldn’t share the same planet with him if he could help it.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean he had the drive – or the balls – to kill him,’ Atherton said. ‘Now Sandal Palliser, he’s a different class of a man, as O’Flaherty would say. He’s mean and he’s tough, and we know he’s concealing something from us. That’s suspicious behaviour.’

  Slider sipped his coffee. ‘Sandal Palliser said cherchez la femme.’

  ‘That alone should be enough to condemn him,’ Atherton said. ‘Anyone who uses cliché like that—’

  ‘French cliché, which is even worse,’ Joanna added.

  ‘I should like you to follow up Somers,’ Slider said. ‘See what frightening him with the fingerprints will do.’

  ‘Whatever you say, captain,’ Atherton said. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m going to see Palliser again – after I’ve made a couple of phone calls.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t think it was Palliser?’

  ‘That’s why I’m bringing an unbiased mind to it.’

  ‘Clear as you go, that’s what you always say,’ said Atherton, getting up.

  ‘Are you staying here?’ Slider asked Joanna.

  ‘Might as well,’ she said, and to Atherton, ‘Leave me the paper?’

  ‘I’ll phone you later,’ Slider said. ‘I don’t expect I’ll be late today.’ It still seemed odd to be saying that to Joanna instead of Irene. Odd, but nice.

  Sandal Palliser seemed resigned rather than surprised to see Slider. ‘Can’t I even have my Sundays to myself?’ He was looking tired, and some of the steel had gone out of his frame. Age had crept up a bit closer to him over the weekend.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Slider said without regret. ‘There are some things I want to ask you about your movements on Thursday. There are still some gaps to be filled.’

  ‘Dogged type, aren’t you?’ Palliser sneered. ‘I’ve told you all I intend to tell you. Unless you want to charge me.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t want to do that,’ Slider said calmly. ‘Not yet, anyway.’ Palliser was still blocking the door, and Slider glanced past him and said, ‘Can I come in?’

  Palliser had looked at him carefully after the penultimate words, and said at last, more soberly, ‘Oh, very well. You can talk to me all you like. I don’t promise to answer you, that’s all.’

  ‘Is Mrs Palliser in?’ Slider asked, following him into the passage and closing the door behind him – there was not room for him to pass and let Palliser do it.

  ‘No, she’s gone to church.’

  ‘You don’t accompany her?’

  ‘I’m not of her persuasion,’ Palliser said coldly. ‘You’d better come up to my study.’

  Upstairs, Palliser turned his chair from his desk so that he was facing the window, and gestured Slider to the other. The room was chilly with the sun off it, but outside the garden romped and burgeoned and seeded itself as nature intended, and Palliser fixed his gaze on it, as though it comforted.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Talk away.’

>   ‘I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of the relationship between you and Greatrex and Mrs Greatrex,’ Slider began.

  ‘What the hell business is it of yours anyway?’

  ‘A man’s been murdered. I’m afraid that means a lot of things become my business, whether I want them to or not. Frankly, I’d just as soon not delve into your private life’ – Palliser gave a grim little smile in acknowledgement of the touch – ‘but you haven’t been very forthcoming, Mr Palliser. You’ve refused to answer some questions. And you’ve told me lies.’

  Palliser stared at the garden. ‘Oh really?’ he said indifferently.

  ‘For one thing, you told me that Roger Greatrex was infertile. Now that just wasn’t true.’ Palliser did not move or answer. ‘I checked with his mistress. I checked with his GP. And this morning I checked with his wife.’

  Now Palliser shot him an angry look. ‘You can leave Caroline out of it.’

  ‘Well, no, I can’t do that,’ Slider said gently. ‘But she confirmed what I had already been told by someone else – that their lack of children was because he wouldn’t, rather than because he couldn’t. Now, I can’t help wondering why you would tell me such a thing – unsolicited – when it wasn’t true.’

  ‘It’s what he told me. I can’t help it if he lied to me.’

  ‘Oh, but I don’t think he did. It just isn’t a lie a man would tell without a good reason, and he had no good reason. And if you and he went woman-hunting together in earlier days, it’s something that would have been on your minds – the fear of unwanted pregnancies. No, I don’t think Greatrex would have lied to you on that score; so I come back to the question, why would you tell me such a thing? And more importantly, why would you want to believe it?’

  Palliser’s face looked yellow, but it might have been the cold northerly light from the window. ‘For God’s sake—’ he muttered, and stopped.

  ‘The other thing you told me that relates to the subject is that Greatrex’s son Jamie is not really his son,’ Slider went on, watching him closely. ‘If that was the case, whose son is he? You don’t answer. Well, it was meant to be a rhetorical question. Because unless you’re suggesting that Mrs Greatrex was inclined to run around with other men, you must be wanting me to think that you were the father.’