‘All right, you can question the neighbours. But for God’s sake be subtle about it. And don’t let the press see you. The last thing we want is to start public speculation about it.’
‘The press are having a field day with the Acton Strangler,’ Atherton said. ‘They won’t be looking for any other explanation.’
‘I dunno why we are,’ McLaren said. ‘Have you seen the Standard, guv? They’ve got an interview with a geezer ’at shared a cell with Ronnie in the Scrubs. Claims he was talking about getting his revenge on the establishment when he got out, and offing a posh girl.’ There was a chorus of protest. ‘All right,’ McLaren said, unabashed, ‘even if he didn’t use the word “establishment”, there’s no reason he couldn’t’ve said something like that. It’s just as likely as not. And there she is, dead. What more do you want?’
‘World peace,’ Atherton enumerated. ‘The perfect Yorkshire pudding—’
‘And lipstick that don’t come off on your glass,’ Hart concluded.
TEN
Stupid Like a Fox
Slider had a bad night, too tired to sleep, his mind revolving uselessly round the facts and speculations, trying to make sense of them, and interrupted constantly by disjointed images that seemed terribly significant in the dead of night, but whose meaning eluded his grasp. He was almost glad when young George woke up and began crying. It wasn’t like him: he was usually a good sleeper. Perhaps it was the start of another tooth coming through. Or perhaps he had picked up his father’s restlessness.
Joanna stirred, and he told her to go back to sleep. ‘I’ll see to him.’ She murmured and sank back instantly into her warm slumber. Slider got up, collected the baby from the cot at the foot of their bed, and carried him out to the kitchen, where he at once became wide awake, intrigued by the novelty of being up at this hour and fully intending to do the situation justice. After a lively session involving drinks of water, half a banana Slider found in the fruit bowl, and a scientific investigation of the contents of every tin on the kitchen counter (tea, coffee beans, rice, lentils, pasta shells, and – good Lord, Father, what’s this? – didn’t know they were here – rusks!) the scion of the house consented to settle down on the sofa in the living room and be read to out of his favourite book, which Slider had dubbed ‘The Three Little Pigs In Escrow’. And it was here that Joanna discovered them in the morning, curled up together and fast asleep. To her fell the unhappy duty of waking up her beloved and telling him he was late.
Slider drove to work with that detached, arm’s-length-from-reality feeling you get after a broken night. He told himself he did some of his best thinking in that condition, and himself was far enough gone to believe it. He hadn’t had time for breakfast at home, so he sent for a bacon butty from the canteen and consumed it while he did his essential morning paperwork. Then, a little fortified (because under relentless pressure from the troops the canteen had at last got the bacon butties perfected) he went down to conduct his interview with Ronnie Oates.
Nicholls was on duty. ‘Ronnie had a quiet night,’ he reported.
‘More than I did.’
‘Wean giving you trouble?’
‘Let’s just say there’s nothing I don’t know about designing premium anti-wolf housing for porcine triplets.’
Nicholls was quick on the uptake, a multiple father himself. ‘Wait till you get on to the gingerbread man. I’m surprised they’re still allowed to print that, as a matter of fact.’
‘Too gruesome?’
‘Too homophobic. All that persecution of a ginger. Talking of which . . .’
‘You don’t think Ronnie’s gay?’
‘It’s what all the psychologists would tell you. Repressed homosexual urges leading to hostility towards females, who represent his mother, at once forbidden and forbidding. It’s classic.’ He observed Slider’s alarmed expression indulgently, and concluded, ‘I’m just winding you up. Ronnie’s too dumb to be gay. Anyway, he’s a happy bunny this morning. Enjoyed his supper, solid night’s sleep, big breakfast, and now he’s having a fag and reading the paper. Well, looking at the picters, anyway.’
‘I’m so pleased we’ve satisfied him. Maybe we’ll get that third star this year.’
‘We managed to get him to shower, as well, and put him into overalls, so he’s considerably more fragrant than heretofore. Clothes are bagged up. Probably what he was wearing on Sunday – I think he only changes with the seasons – so there might be something interesting on them.’
‘Interesting, but repulsive,’ said Slider. ‘All right, wheel him in there.’
Slider had Hollis with him, as the least scary of his firm, and the one with whom Oates had already established a relationship. Hollis held the door for him and he carried in two mugs of tea, one of which he put down before Oates, already seated at the table. The pale-blue overalls matched his pale, surprised-looking eyes. His complexion was slightly less grey after the shower and the plentiful food, and he looked extremely chipper.
‘There you are, Ronnie,’ Slider said. ‘Two sugars, that’s how you like it, isn’t it?’
‘Two sugars, yeah. Ta.’ He took a noisy slurp.
‘I’m Inspector Slider, and you know Sergeant Hollis, don’t you? We just want to ask you a few questions, all right?’
‘Yeah,’ Ronnie said easily. ‘You got a fag on you? Only I run out.’
Hollis, who didn’t smoke either, knew the routine and had brought a packet in with him. He handed it, and the matches, to Slider, who extracted a cigarette, gave it to Ronnie, and lit it. Then he put the pack down between them, at an ambiguous distance from Ronnie, who eyed it speculatively and with an edge of greed.
‘Better?’ Slider said, as Ronnie blew smoke out from his mouth and nose together with a sigh of content.
‘Yeah.’
‘What did you have for supper last night?’
‘Steak ’n’ kidney pie an’ mash. It was top. Could’ve done with a pint, though,’ he added slyly.
‘Sorry, can’t manage that in here. Never mind, have a nice cup of tea instead, and tell me about Sunday. What did you do on Sunday?’
‘I dunno,’ Ronnie said vaguely. ‘Which was Sunday?’
‘You went down the pub for your dinner,’ Slider suggested.
‘Oh yeah.’
‘Which one?’
‘Down the Goldsmiths,’ he said. The Goldsmith’s Arms in East Acton Lane was about two minutes’ walk away from the Oates house.
‘What did you have?’
‘Roast pork,’ he said. ‘An’ syrup pud an’ custard. They do a good dinner there of a Sunday.’
‘And then you went home for a bit, and you went out later.’
‘I dunno. Don’t remember.’
‘You went to the fair, didn’t you?’
‘Oh yeah. I like fairs.’
It was all too easy to lead him, Slider reflected; but how else to get anything out of him? His reply was always that he didn’t remember, and he probably didn’t, without clues. ‘Tell me about the fair. Was it a good one?’
‘Yeah. It was big.’
‘Did you go on the rides?’
‘Nah. I just walked about. I had a hot dog and onions,’ he remembered suddenly. ‘With mustard.’
‘And did you notice a girl?’
‘What girl?’ He sounded wary for the first time.
‘Any girl.’
He thought for a minute, smoking, and Slider tried to project a deep pool of calm and confidence. Finally a bulb lit inside Ronnie’s dim brain. ‘There was one on the waltzer,’ he said. ‘She was screaming fit to bust. She done it on the rocket an’ all, and the chairoplanes. Screaming her head off.’
‘You followed her round,’ Slider suggested. ‘Was it fun, hearing her scream?’
‘It was fun looking up her skirt,’ he said slyly, grinning to himself. ‘She had them knickers on that’s just a kind of string. Like dirty girls wear.’
‘Do you think she was a dirty girl?’
; ‘Yeah, I reckon she was. Cause she went up the bushes after, where people go to do it.’
He had come most obligingly to the point. ‘So you followed her to the embankment, did you?’ Slider asked casually, as if it didn’t matter in the least.
‘Nah. She had a bloke wiv her. He took her on the dodgems. Can’t see up their legs on the dodgems. I was firsty, so I went over the North Pole for a pint.’
‘That’s right. Did you stay there a long time?’
‘Where?’
‘In the North Pole.’
‘I had a couple of pints in there,’ he agreed, then frowned. ‘I dunno when that was. Was it Sat’dy?’
‘It was Sunday, when you went to the fair.’
‘The fair was good. It was a big one. Lots of lights. I like the lights. They’re best when it gets dark, though.’
‘So what did you do after the North Pole?’ Ronnie looked blank. ‘Did you go back to the fair?’ Slider tried. ‘To see the lights again?’
‘Yeah,’ he agreed – too easily? ‘I walked about the fair a bit.’
‘Did you see the girl again? The one that screamed?’
‘No, I never see her. Not there.’ He frowned again with effort, and managed, ‘I was hungry. The hot dogs smelled nice, but I didn’t have no more money, after the pub. So I went home.’
Something occurred to Slider. ‘What way do you go home from there, Ronnie?’ He looked bewildered, not understanding the question. ‘Do you go on the bus?’
‘Me mum’s got a bus pass,’ he said vaguely.
‘What about Sunday night? Did you take the bus home?’ Ronnie shook his head vaguely. ‘Did you walk home, maybe? It was a nice night, warm, not raining. Nice for walking.’
‘Yeah, I walked home,’ he agreed. ‘I never had no money left for the bus, so I walked home.’
‘Along the streets?’ Slider offered, trying not to hold his breath. ‘Or did you go over the grass? Across the Scrubs?’
‘Yeah, I went over the Scrubs. It’s quicker that way.’
‘It’s a short-cut,’ Slider said, breathing out with relief. They were back on track. And it was absolutely true. From the fair to Ronnie’s house across the Scrubs cut off a big corner and saved a walker somewhere near a mile. It was the most natural thing in the world for a lad who had lived in the area all his life – and was too thick to be afraid of walking across dark commons at night – to go that way. And it fitted with the witnesses who said they had seen a strange-looking man wandering across the Scrubs. Ronnie was not the sort to yomp along briskly, heel to toe and head up. His natural gait would be as woolly and indefinite as his thought processes. He would have ‘wandered’ all right.
‘Did you see that girl while you were walking over the Scrubs?’ he asked. ‘The one that screamed?’
‘The one with the rude knickers,’ Ronnie said, and chuckled. ‘No, she wasn’t there. She’d gone before I left.’
‘How d’you know that?’
‘Everyone’d gone. They was closing down when I left. I don’t like it when they turn the lights off.’ He frowned, but hadn’t the vocabulary or brainpower to describe why he didn’t like the lights going out. Slider could imagine. The glorious, bright, multicoloured gorgeousness of the fairground depended on its lights. When they went off, there was just wood and canvas, dullness, drabness, blown rubbish, and the dark of night creeping in.
But more importantly, Slider thought, they were getting something like a timing now, which was always difficult with a man like Ronnie, who had neither watch nor sense of time. ‘So you stayed at the fair until it shut down?’ he said. ‘You stayed all the time until they put the lights out?’
‘Yeah,’ said Ronnie. ‘I didn’t like it when they put the lights out. The dodgems man told me to clear off,’ he remembered suddenly. ‘So I cleared.’
What had the fat lady said in Atherton’s report? It was near two o’clock when her son got to bed. So the fair probably shut around one in the morning, maybe half-past. Ronnie was walking across the Scrubs between one and one-thirty-ish, and Zellah died some time before two o’clock. And he had seen her at the fair and thought her a dirty girl, the sort like that Wanda Lempowski who let him do things if he gave them money. But he didn’t have any money. And Zellah was not, in fact, a dirty girl.
‘So when you got across the other side of the Scrubs,’ Slider said, ‘what did you do?’ The blank look again. He couldn’t answer non-specific questions. ‘You didn’t go straight home, did you?’
‘Nah.’ He looked sly again. ‘Sometimes you see people round there. I like to watch ’em. Once this couple broke into the changing rooms, and I watched ’em through the window. And people in cars.’
‘Was there a car there that night? Under the railway bridge?’
‘Nah. There wasn’t nobody. Everyone’d gone home. But I found a thingy there, under the bridge. One of them things you wear on your porker. A fresh one,’ he added with a relish to which Slider managed not to react. Ronnie sat back complacently, and then a vague look of unease came over him. ‘You won’t tell my mum?’
‘We won’t tell her anything,’ Slider said warmly. ‘Promise. We’re all men together here, aren’t we?’
‘Yeah. All men. Women don’t understand. My mum don’t like all that stuff. She gets cross with me if I talk about it.’
‘So what happened then, Ronnie?’ Slider said, easing him back to the scene. ‘After you found the thingy under the bridge. Did you see that girl?’
‘Yeah, I see her.’
‘Was she walking home, like you?’
‘I dunno.’
‘What was she doing when you saw her?’
‘She wasn’t doing nothing.’
‘Did you ask her if she was walking home?’
‘She w’n’t walking,’ he said, as if Slider should have known that. ‘I told you, she was asleep.’
‘Asleep?’
‘Yeah, she was lying in the bushes, asleep.’
‘What were you doing in the bushes?’
‘I went to see if there was any more thingies. People do it in the bushes, and they leave ’em around. I see her lying down. I was gonna show her my porker, but my mum said I mustn’t do that no more. So I come away.’
‘Did you go right up to the girl?’
‘Nah, I never.’
‘How did you know she was sleeping, then?’
‘Well, she was lying down.’
‘If you didn’t go right up to her, how did you get hold of her handbag?’
‘I never,’ he said. ‘I never touched her.’
‘We found her handbag in your room, Ronnie. Under your pillow. A nice pink one. You must have taken it from her.’
He stared at Slider for a long, congested moment, and then another light bulb flickered in his head. ‘I found it.’
‘Found it where?’
‘I dunno. I just found it.’
‘Now, Ronnie,’ Slider said, stern but fatherly, ‘you’ve got to tell me the truth. Otherwise I might have to tell your mother.’
Ronnie looked alarmed. ‘No, don’t tell Mum. I won’t never do it again. I promise.’
‘What did you do to that girl, Ron? You can tell me. Tell me the truth and I won’t tell your mum.’
‘I never done nothing to her.’
‘You squeezed her neck, didn’t you? Like you did to Wanda?’
‘No, I never done that,’ he objected. ‘I just looked a bit. At her legs.’
‘You squeezed her neck until she fell asleep, and then you took her bag.’
‘I never. I found it. Finders keepers, my mum says.’
‘Where did you find it?’
‘I dunno. It smelled nice so I took it. I put it under my pillow for in the night.’
Slider had a depressing vision of Oates masturbating over the smell of Zellah’s handbag. But they were no further forward.
‘Tell me about squeezing her neck,’ he said.
Ronnie looked sulky. ‘She told me to. She said
I could if I give her money.’
‘No, not Wanda, the other one. After the fair, on Sunday. The one in the bushes. Tell me about squeezing her neck.’
‘I never. I never touched her.’
‘What did she say to you?
‘She was asleep.’ He paused, searching the airwaves for inspiration. ‘I see her knickers, though. On the chairoplanes. She had them dirty-girl knickers on.’
And so the world turned.
In the end, it was Slider who tired first. Ronnie, with no apprehension and no sense of time, could keep it up all day if necessary, but Slider, being carbon-based, wore out. Ronnie was taken back to his cell – pleased to have been given the pack of ciggies – and Slider climbed wearily to his office, with Hollis beside him.
‘We’re not going to get it out of him yet,’ Hollis said. ‘He’s too cunning.’
‘Cunning as a jar of chutney,’ Slider said. ‘I’ve had more intelligent exchanges with my shirts.’
‘He’s out of the shallow end of the gene pool all right,’ said Hollis, ‘but he’s just clever enough to stick when he gets to the dangerous bit. He’s not bright enough to make up a story. He just says he don’t know or he can’t remember.’
‘Unless he really doesn’t remember. Defensive amnesia.’
‘I’m sure there’s something there,’ Hollis said thoughtfully. ‘Something he doesn’t want us to know. But whether it was killing the girl or not . . .’ He shook his head.
‘On the face of it, it could have been the way he said,’ Slider agreed. ‘She could have been already dead, and he took her bag as a souvenir. But then why does he deny going right up to her? And what was he doing in the bushes that he won’t tell us?’
Hollis screwed up his face. ‘Well, guv, what’s his favourite hobby? Say he saw her already dead and got excited, gave himself a hand shandy on the strength of it. He’s told his mum he won’t get Horace out except in the bathroom, so he doesn’t want to tell us in case we tell her.’
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