‘Lemme go! I ain’t done nothing!’
‘Then what did you run for? Keep still, you idiot. We’ve got you now.’
But not until the cuffs were on did he stop thrashing, and even then Slider suspected it was lack of air rather than lack of ambition. ‘Get off me! I can’t breathe!’ he was moaning.
Hart eased herself off, taking hold of the handcuff chain for precaution as she rose. Slider and McLaren took an arm each and heaved the lad to his feet. He was about five-foot-seven, lean, good-looking, in his early twenties, though he looked younger because of his slight build. Despite the warm day he was wearing his black leather jacket over jeans and boots. His longish dark hair was all over the place, and he had a red mark down one side of his face where it had been pressed to the pavement, which slightly detracted from his air of sophistication – and no one looks their best in handcuffs. But Slider could guess that in good times he had the air to attract the girls and make the boys envy him.
He glowered at Slider. ‘I haven’t done nothing! Take these things off me!’
‘You’ve run away from me twice, son,’ Slider said. ‘That’s enough for me.’
‘You’d run away if people were always after you. You cops never leave me alone.’
Hart gave his chain a yank. ‘Stop dealing drugs and we’ll leave you alone.’
‘I don’t deal drugs,’ he said. ‘Just ’cos I was in trouble once. You never give anyone a chance. Anyone from the estate, you’re down on. You’re all the same, you—’
‘Oh, stop whining,’ she said. ‘You’re nabbed. Take it like a man.’
Slider almost snorted, but the approach seemed to work with Carmichael. He sagged a little and looked sulky. ‘So what’re you arresting me for?’
‘We’ll think of something. I’m sure when we have a little look in your flat we’ll find something interesting,’ Hart said.
‘Plant it, more like,’ he muttered sullenly.
Hart winked at Slider. ‘There y’are, guv. Out’v his own mouth. He wouldn’t’ve said that unless there was something up there to find. I knew he didn’t run for nothing.’
‘Why don’t you bastards leave me alone?’ Carmichael almost wailed. ‘Why don’t you go after the big players?’
‘Because we want to talk to you about Zellah Wilding,’ Slider said.
‘Who?’ Carmichael said.
‘Your girlfriend,’ Hart said. ‘You must remember her.’
‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ Carmichael said. ‘We broke up.’
‘It was off, and then it was on again,’ Hart said.
‘I tell you I haven’t seen her in months.’
‘Well, in that case,’ Slider said, ‘we’ll arrest you for lying to us. We’ve got a dozen witnesses that you were with her on Sunday night.’
‘Oh shit,’ said Michael Carmichael.
‘That’s what you’re in, all right,’ said McLaren.
‘You didn’t half go, guv,’ Hart said to Slider as McLaren was putting Carmichael into the squad car they had summoned. ‘I was well impressed.’
‘Do you really think I’ll respond to blatant flattery like that?’ he said severely.
‘What sort of blatant flattery will you respond to, then?’ she asked cheekily.
He ignored that. ‘You, on the other hand, brought him down with a tackle that could qualify you to play for England.’
‘Thanks, guv. I’ll take all the flattery I can get; any sort.’
‘I don’t understand how he got into the flat, however, when it was being watched twenty-four hours a day.’
Hart met his eye. They both knew the answer. He had been missed going in. But Hart nobly didn’t even say, ‘It wasn’t us.’
‘You and McLaren can give the flat a good going over,’ Slider said.
‘Righty-o. I bet we find enough in there to put the pressure on him. But I can’t see why he wouldn’t tell us the trufe anyway – about Zellah, I mean. Once he knows we don’t think he killed her. We don’t think he killed her, do we?’ she added on a faintly puzzled note. ‘I mean, it was Ronnie Oates done her?’
‘It looks that way.’
‘So we only want him for corroboration?’
‘So it seems.’
She cocked her head at him enquiringly. ‘Guv, I can’t help feeling you’ve got reservations about this case.’
‘I can’t help feeling there’s something I’ve missed,’ Slider confessed
‘That’s just normal paranoia,’ Hart said comfortingly. ‘Everyone on the planet gets that. Don’t worry, some ’orrible snag will come up and blow the case to bits and you’ll have to put it back togevver against the clock with the big brass breathing down your neck, and everything will seem nice and normal again.’
‘Thanks, I feel better now,’ said Slider. ‘I’m going back to the factory.’
His room looked like a public place within the meaning of the act. There were so many people in it he couldn’t get through the door, and when enough of them spotted him and melted away to give him access, he found Joanna in there, with young George Slider sitting on the edge of his father’s desk holding court. With a rusk in one hand and a pencil in the other, he was waving his arms swoopingly at his fans, like Solti conducting Debussy, except that Solti, though equally bald, had never smiled so seraphically at an orchestra.
Joanna looked guilty. ‘Sorry. Is this a completely inappropriate time? I just picked him up from the baby-minder after rehearsal. I was on my way home when I thought that, as you’ll be late again this evening, you’d like to see him awake for once, so I popped in. But I can pop out again just as quickly.’
George had spotted his father now and was beaming in delight, showing his new top incisors, which he was growing to match the two at the bottom. ‘Mumurummum,’ he said.
‘I didn’t realize it was that late,’ Slider said.
‘It isn’t. We finished early. I think the conductor had somewhere more exciting to go.’
Slider picked up the baby, who signalled his approval by pushing the damp end of the rusk into his father’s ear and saying, ‘Blum mum num.’
‘I’m glad you came,’ Slider said. ‘But I can’t spare you long. We’ve just brought someone in and he’ll need questioning.’
‘I know, don’t worry. I should go home, anyway. There’s a mountain of ironing I’ve been putting off. I can get some of it done while he’s having his nap.’
‘I wish I could take you out to lunch,’ Slider said wistfully, ‘but . . .’
‘We’ll catch up when all this is over. I just wanted my boy to know he still has a father.’ She smiled as she said it to show she was not complaining.
‘I slept with him last night. What more does he want?’ He grinned at his son, who tried to grab his nose, so the pencil in his hand came dangerously close to Slider’s eye. He removed it gently. ‘I’m glad you brought him.’ It helped to keep a person grounded. He made that noise with his lips that all babies find irresistibly funny, and George responded by demonstrating his award-winning chuckle. ‘If we could bottle that, we could sell it for a fortune,’ Slider remarked, making him do it again.
‘By the way – I meant to ask you – did you speak to your father?’
‘Yes. He rang me here yesterday morning.’ Good Lord, was it only yesterday? ‘He’s talking about selling the house.’
‘Yes, he said something about it when I was over there on Monday.’ She hesitated. ‘Reading between the lines, I think he’d like to move nearer to us.’
Slider sighed. ‘I wish he could, but London prices being what they are . . .’
‘I know.’
‘I worry about him.’
‘I know. But he can look after himself. He’s a big boy. And talking of big boys . . .’ Through the windows on to the CID room, she had seen that Atherton had come purposefully in and was heading towards the communicating door. ‘Let me have him. I’ll get out of your hair.’ She took the baby back, shouldered her bag, and pecked her husban
d on the cheek in passing. ‘I’ll leave something out for you to heat up, in case you’re hungry when you get home.’
‘Have a good concert. Drive carefully,’ Slider said.
She departed through the door to the corridor, George watching his father over her shoulder with a slightly disconcerted air, and reaching out for him in farewell with the damp rusk. ‘Bloo,’ he said.
Atherton came in at the other door, unaware that his big entrance had been upstaged by one of the world’s great exits, and said, ‘Wilding’s flitted. That’s one for my side!’
‘It’s not exactly flitting, is it?’ Slider said, perched on Atherton’s desk for a change. ‘They were under siege from the media, angry and distressed. When I saw him on Wednesday he complained they were prisoners in their own home. They’d probably just had enough.’
‘It’d drive anyone mental,’ said Connolly.
‘Ah, but wait till I tell you what the neighbours had to say,’ said Atherton, and gave him a summary of the Barretts’ evidence. ‘Now, leaving aside all prejudice for bad neighbourly relations, Wilding was out in his car on the night Zellah died, and didn’t tell us. When I interviewed him he said he was working in his shed all evening until quite late and then went to bed.’
‘Yes,’ said Slider. ‘That is a point. And if it’s true that he often slipped out without his wife’s knowing . . .’
‘It puts things in a different perspective.’
‘Yeah. Wandering about at night—’ Mackay began.
‘Driving,’ Connolly corrected him.
‘I was gonna say,’ he went on, giving her a look, ‘he’s probably down Paddington picking up tarts. He’s a kerb-crawler.’
‘Why does it have to be something to do with sex?’ she objected.
‘It always is,’ said Mackay with some justification. ‘I mean, what else would he bother to hide from his wife? He’s got some sex-habit he needs catered for.’
‘S and M, most likely,’ Fathom agreed. ‘He looks the type. He’s out nights finding a Miss Whiplash to give him correction.’
‘He’s a pillar of society,’ Connolly said.
‘They’re the worst,’ said Mackay confidently. ‘All pious and holy when anyone’s looking, then creeping out at night murdering prostitutes. Look at Reg Christie.’
‘We’re not talking about murdered prostitutes,’ Slider reminded him. ‘However, in fairness to the “here comes a churchgoer, let’s chuck a brick at him” brigade I seem to be fostering in my midst, it does make you wonder whether his repression of his daughter was ever taken any further.’
‘I wondered about that,’ Atherton said. ‘I asked the neighbours if he ever knocked his wife and daughter about, but they only said they’d heard him shouting at them. And if I was married to Mrs Wilding I’d probably shout. But they obviously don’t know what went on inside the house.’
‘And neither, I suppose, will anyone,’ Slider said. ‘That’s the problem with a family that never lets anyone else in. He could have been abusing her, but if he was, I’d imagine it was only the psychological sort of abuse.’
‘Only?’ Atherton queried, with a pained air.
‘You know what I mean. Physically abused children tend to be too quiet and don’t do well at school. They’re not described as live wires by their friends. They don’t go to ballet classes and extra-curricular drawing and shine at lessons.’
‘But then,’ Mackay said, ‘what was Wilding doing out in his car on the night Zellah was murdered, and why didn’t he tell us about it?’
‘Following her,’ Atherton said. ‘That’s my bet. If the old bat next door is right, he left not long after her. He was following her to see what she got up to when she was out of his sight. And I would be surprised if he hadn’t done it before.’
Slider nodded unwillingly. ‘It is suggestive. He obviously liked to keep a high level of control over her. And Mrs Wilding said he was very against her staying over at a friend’s house. Perhaps he wanted to make sure that was where she was going to sleep.’
‘Suspicious brute,’ Atherton said.
‘The question is, how long did he follow her, how much did he witness, and what, if anything, did he do about it?’
‘Say he followed her to the Black Lion an’ saw her go off with Mike Carmichael, when he’d forbidden her to see him again,’ Connolly said.
‘And he went mad with rage,’ Fathom went on, ‘and decided to punish her.’
‘You don’t punish someone by strangling them,’ Slider said. ‘Strangling is always intended to kill.’
‘Perhaps,’ Atherton said – and the tone of his voice told Slider that he wasn’t happy thinking this – ‘he decided she was so far gone in sin it was the only way to save her soul.’
Slider wasn’t happy thinking it, either, because there was something about Wilding’s towering person and character that made it seem plausible. Each man kills the thing he loves – and who had loved Zellah more? ‘There’s still the problem of the tights,’ he said.
‘As I said before, there must be lots of pairs around at home,’ said Atherton.
‘But if he went home to get a pair,’ Slider said, ‘how did he know where she would be? And in any case, why would a man in a homicidal rage bother, when he’s got a pair of large, strong hands at the end of his arms?’
There was a little silence. The hands came before Atherton’s mind’s eye, strong and grimy with a workman’s little nicks and scratches. Had he got those from carpentry? But it was true, he wouldn’t need to go and fetch a pair of tights. ‘Unless,’ he said slowly, ‘he’d already had enough evidence that she was going to hell in a hand basket, and he took the tights along with him in case execution proved necessary. In which case it wasn’t just spur-of-the-moment homicidal rage.’
‘In which case,’ Mackay agreed, ‘he’s seriously bonkers.’
‘It’s a lot of suppositions,’ Slider said. ‘But there are certainly important questions to ask him. The trouble is, we don’t know where he is, do we?’
‘The old bat next door said they’d probably gone to his wife’s sister’s,’ Atherton said, ‘so we’ll start by trying to find her.’
‘How?’
‘Bit of this, bit of that,’ Atherton said airily. ‘The wonders of the internet, plus the Wildings’ address book. Leave it to me.’
‘That’s what I was thinking of doing. But make it quick, wonder-fingers. If – and it’s only an if, but all the same – if Wilding did kill Zellah, he’s dangerously deranged, and his wife could be the next target.’
‘If it had been me,’ Atherton said, departing, ‘she’d have been way up the list.’
Meanwhile, Slider went to see Porson.
The new Wilding development caused the Syrup’s massive eyebrows to hurtle together above his nose as if for comfort. ‘This is not good,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it. A man driving secretly round the streets at night, and not telling us. And then flitting. He’s got something to hide, all right.’
‘And then there’s Michael Carmichael,’ Slider said. ‘He denied knowing Zellah, then said he hadn’t seen her for two months. Why? We know he was with her that evening and that they had a row, after which she walked off. And local residents in the Old Oak Common area said they heard a motorbike roaring round late that night. It could have been Carmichael looking for Zellah to finish the row, having fetched his bike and gone after her round by road. He finds her, they go at it again, and he ends up strangling her, the only way to shut her up.’
The eyebrows huddled even closer together. ‘That’s plausible. But it would have to be a really serious row to go that far. And what about the tights? Where would he get those?’
‘The tights are always a problem,’ Slider said.
‘Not with Ronnie Oates,’ Porson said. ‘If we assume he went out looking for his own brand of fun and took them with him.’
‘But he’s never done that before.’
‘He’s never had to. Prozzies have tights to hand.’<
br />
‘Then why would he assume this time he’d need to take his own?’
‘I don’t know,’ Porson sighed. He walked over to the window, scratching gently at his scalp as if he hoped to stimulate thought within. ‘Damn it, Slider, now we’ve got three suspects! Normally you’d be grateful for one, but now we’ve got a plethora.’
Slider was so startled the Syrup had used the right word in the right context, and pronounced it correctly, that he couldn’t immediately assemble an answer.
‘Wilding’s got the best motive,’ Porson went on. ‘Righteous rage, possessiveness, thwarted love and all that sort of thing. But Carmichael is young and we’ve been told he’s got a temper, and they were argy-bargy-ing. On the other hand, Oates doesn’t need a motive. She’s his random victim. And he’s got previous. All right, he’s not murdered before, but it’s the same method. You can’t teach an old leopard new spots.’
Slider relaxed, back in the comfort zone.
‘I don’t know,’ Porson concluded unhappily. ‘You’ll have to go after all three of ’em until something breaks. If it was Wilding, he’ll have tried to cover his tracks. But the criminal always makes one carnal error. With Carmichael it’ll be more a matter of breaking him down and catching him out. As for Oates—’
Porson’s door was almost always open, and at that moment Hollis appeared in the doorway and tapped politely to attract their attention. He looked tired, and his tie had been loosened and pulled awry, while his impossible hair was at its liveliest, suggesting a certain degree of frustrated finger-raking had recently taken place.
‘They told me you were here, guv,’ he said to Slider, but his eyes moved on to Porson. ‘Ronnie Oates has confessed.’
Porson looked as if he’d been thrown a lifeline. ‘That’s more like it. Confession is as confession does. I don’t like it when they don’t cough. What sort of state’s he in?’
‘He’s fine, sir,’ Hollis said. ‘Quite cheerful. Thinks himself no end of a buck, if you want my opinion.’
‘Good. We don’t want the defence claiming we beat it out of him.’
‘No, sir. He’s all right. Better than me.’
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