‘It’s possible,’ Slider said. ‘All too depressingly possible.’
‘And he picked up the bag as a souvenir, but doesn’t want to say he took it from her body because that’s part of what he’s ashamed of.’
‘It makes sense. Unfortunately.’ They reached their floor. Slider paused. ‘On the other hand, it makes just as much sense that what he’s hiding is the murder.’
Hollis shrugged sympathetically. ‘We’ll have another go at him later. Maybe we can walk him up to it gently and get him to cough.’
‘Maybe,’ said Slider.
‘Or we could pretend this is the seventies and beat it out of him,’ Hollis said blandly.
‘Eh?’
‘Just joking, guv.’
Porson was not pleased. ‘He’s leading you round the Marlborough bushes. Where do we go from here? The clock’s ticking, you know, Slider. Sooner or later we’ll have to get him a lawyer, and then there’ll be no getting anything out of him. His brief’ll scream diminished responsibility and that’ll be that. Have we got enough to charge him?’
‘He’d still have to have a lawyer,’ Slider pointed out.
‘But at least we wouldn’t be on the clock.’ He lifted a hand and used the fingers for points. ‘We’ve got his usual modus bibendum, he admits following her around at the fair, he admits he was on the spot at the right time, and he’s been found with her handbag.’
Slider shook his head. ‘We could charge him but it’s not enough for a case.’
‘On what we’ve got, a jury would go for him like buttered teacakes.’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ Slider said. ‘A good barrister would point out that everything we know could equally be explained by what he says being true. He could just as easily have found Zellah when she was already dead. Unless we can prove he was lying – if someone actually saw him doing something to the body. Or if we got anything off his clothes—’
‘Well, get on with that, anyway. Meanwhile, keep at him. A confession would solve all the other problems.’
‘I’m just giving him a rest, sir, then I thought I’d let Hollis have a shot. He knows him pretty well.’
‘Hmm. Does Hollis think he did it?’
Slider hesitated. In spite of everything, he had the feeling that Hollis had doubts. ‘He doesn’t think he didn’t,’ he said at last, and for a wonder Porson accepted that without comment.
When he got to his room, Connolly was there, fresh as a daisy and twice as tasty.
‘I had a crack at the barman at the North Pole, sir. Name of Dave Beswick. He knows Ronnie by sight – apparently he goes in there quite a bit. Your man says he’s never any trouble, sits over a couple of pints, doesn’t talk much. Beswick didn’t realise who he was until he saw the arrest on the telly with the mugshot. He never knew Oates had a past. Remembers the Acton Strangler case, but didn’t put the two together. Why was he called the Acton Strangler, anyway, when he was from East Acton?’ she diverted.
‘More euphonious,’ Slider said. ‘Like the Boston Strangler. The East Acton Strangler just doesn’t cut it.’
‘Does sound a bit culchie,’ she agreed.
‘What does this Dave Beswick think of Oates?’ Slider asked.
‘Only that he’s a quiet bloke, no trouble, sir. Thought he was a bit of a denser, that’s all.’
‘Did he give you any times?’
‘He said Oates went in about ten o’clock. They’d got extended hours for the Bank Holiday weekend, so closing time was midnight. Oates made two jars last till then. Didn’t speak to anyone while he was there, apart from Beswick, and then only to order the bevvies. Not much of a gas, your man,’ she added, with a cocked look at Slider.
‘Oates says he didn’t see Zellah when he went back to the fair after the pub, and we’ve got her having a quarrel and walking off about midnight, so it’s possible she had already gone at that point. He could be telling the truth.’
‘Does it matter, sir?’ Connolly asked. ‘After all, we know she wasn’t killed at the fair. Whether he followed her or went on his own, we know he was on the scene where she was killed.’
‘True. But with someone like Oates you need all the confirmation you can get of anything he says. It’s the only way to filter fact from fantasy.’ He frowned, going over the interview again in his mind.
‘So – what now, sir?’ Connolly asked, after a moment’s sympathetic silence. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Re-interview anyone from the canvasses who said they saw anything, and see if they can identify Oates at the scene, and if so, get some times.’
‘Righty-o.’
‘Anything useful from the people ringing in?’
‘Not yet. The ones that seem genuine are people who saw Oates at the fair, but that doesn’t get us anywhere. The rest just seem like over-excitement.’
‘There’s a lot of it about. Keep fielding them, anyway. And you can go and see anyone from the canvasses you think is promising. Do you know where Sergeant Atherton is?’
‘He went to Ladbroke Grove to check the surveillance team, then he was going to interview the Wildings’ neighbours.’
‘Right.’
‘Are you going to have another go at Oates, sir?’
‘I’m going to let Hollis have a crack at him,’ Slider said. ‘I’m going to see a man about a horse.’
‘Sir?’
‘And a still life, and a whole series of nude women.’
‘Sounds like fun,’ she said uncertainly. You never knew with the CID geezers when they were joking and when they were serious.
‘Fun? I don’t know,’ he said. ‘How do you tell when a person is waving and when they’re drowning?’
‘You have me there, sir.’
‘It’s all right. You weren’t meant to understand,’ he said.
ELEVEN
Ars Longa, Vita Sackville-West
Markov, the art master, lived in a smart new block of six flats in Bravington Road, a run-down area now being renovated, which, being on the far side of the railway and the Harrow Road, came under the title of Kensal Town, though it was only a stone’s throw from Ladbroke Grove, and resembled it in style and demographic.
A quick bit of research on the St Margaret’s website – it still slightly amazed him that schools had websites – had armed Slider with the knowledge that Markov’s name was Alexander – Alex; he was thirty-eight, married to Stephanie, an intensive-care nurse manager at St Charles’s Hospital, and his hobbies were skiing, and holidays in Italy where he liked to sketch old masters in situ. A photograph showed him as handsome, smiling and debonair, and it was no surprise to Slider to read that his nickname among the girls was ‘Magic Markov’.
The three-storey block had replaced two large nineteenth-century houses, and the flats were of the sort termed ‘luxury’ by estate agents, because they had two bathrooms and the sort of street door you had to be buzzed in through. Where once there had been two front gardens, there was now a neat bit of paving with parking spaces marked off in brick. Only one was occupied – by a black Toyota, as Slider noticed automatically – so presumably everyone else was at work. He wondered briefly how much the parking habits of Londoners helped burglars in their trade.
He was duly buzzed in, and instructed to come up to the top floor, where Markov met him at the top of the stairs. ‘Just wanted to warn you we have to be quiet,’ he said in a low voice. ‘My wife’s a nurse and she’s on nights this week, which means she’s sleeping now, so I don’t want to wake her up. I hope you understand.’
‘Of course,’ Slider said. ‘It’s good of you to see me.’
‘Oh, no problem, no problem at all. I couldn’t be more shocked about poor little Zellah. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it on the television. But come in. If you don’t mind we’ll talk out on the balcony. We’re less likely to disturb Steph there.’
The flat, despite having developers’ proportions, was decorated in a modern and luxurious style, open-plan, wood-block floors, pale w
alls and lean, painfully modern furniture. There was a showpiece sofa covered in taupe suede – you’d have to be wearing freshly dry-cleaned clothes ever to sit on that, because it would show every mark, and getting them off would be the devil. There were modern art pictures on the walls, and some equally obscure bits of modern sculpture (or were they called ‘installations’ now?) on stands and shelves. The Markovs, Slider decided, must be doing all right. The place said taste, money and modernity. More importantly to Slider, it smelled nice – of cleanness and light furniture polish.
Markov led the way through to the balcony, which was the width of the sitting room and just deep enough to take chairs and a small round table. It looked out at the back over the gardens of this road and the next, which included some glorious big trees. Markov was evidently pleased with the view, because he turned at the railings and looked expectantly at Slider. ‘Nice, eh? It was one of the reasons we bought this place.’
‘Very nice,’ Slider said.
‘Can I get you something to drink? Tea, coffee – a glass of wine?’
‘That’s very kind of you, but no thank you. Nothing for me.’
‘Oh. Well, I’m going to have a glass of wine. It’ll be back to school for me next week, so I might as well make hay while the sun shines.’ He gave a little, unconvincing laugh. ‘Sure you won’t join me?’
‘No, really. Thanks all the same.’
The bottle was evidently open, for he was back in no time with a large glass of chilled white in his hand. He leaned against the railings, facing inwards, to sip it, so Slider was able to get a good look at him. He was tall and well-made, though not ostentatiously muscled – working out at the gym was obviously not one of his hobbies. He had thick, toffee-brown hair, expensively cut (Slider recognised the symptoms from Atherton) in a sort of floppy, public-school style, and shot with blonde streaks which were either the result of all those Italian holidays, or put in artfully for a hundred and sixty quid by a bloke called Adrian. He was wearing stone-coloured chinos and a denim-blue shirt, open at the neck and with the sleeves rolled up, showing tanned forearms. But the lean, classical face was neither as young nor as handsome as the photograph on the website had suggested. He had not shaved that morning, and his eyes looked bloodshot and pouchy, while his smile and debonair manner seemed effortful.
‘So, to what do I owe the honour of this visit?’ he asked at the end of a large-ish swig.
‘I wanted to talk to you about Zellah Wilding,’ Slider said.
The smile wavered, but stuck gallantly. ‘So I imagined. But I don’t know how I can help you. It’s school holidays and I haven’t seen her for a month. I have no idea where she was or what she was up to.’ He swigged again.
‘I didn’t suppose you had,’ Slider said. What was the man so nervous about? ‘I saw some drawings that she did, and they impressed me with their skill. I’m not an expert, of course, but they did seem to me to have something. I wanted to ask you your impression of her, as a person.’
‘Oh,’ he said, but didn’t immediately go on.
Slider thought he’d better prime him. ‘Your headmistress said you thought the world of her, and believed she had talent.’
‘Betty’s a mathematician,’ he said with a throw-away laugh. ‘She has no eye for the visual arts. Her idea of beauty is a quadratic equation.’
‘So, you didn’t think Zellah had talent?’
He seemed to pull himself up. ‘Oh – well – I didn’t say that. Yes, Zellah had talent. She was a very bright child all round. She could draw nicely, and had a good eye for line and colour. Whether it would have gone on to develop into anything more than that, one can’t say. Lots of girls can draw nicely, but they don’t all become artists. And her father wanted her to go into engineering. I doubt he’d have been happy with a painter in the family.’ His expression changed. ‘Anyway, we’ll never know, now, will we?’ He emptied the glass. ‘Sure I can’t tempt you?’
‘No, thank you.’
He went into the house, and returned quickly with the glass refilled. Slider was beginning to understand the eyes and the unshaven slackness of the face. Perhaps he was more upset by Zellah’s death than he wanted to show. If he had based his reputation on buccaneering good looks and insouciance, he might be unwilling to reveal a sentimental side, especially to another man, who might see it as weakness. Or perhaps he had other troubles in his life.
‘So, what were these pictures of Zellah’s that you saw?’ he asked when he had settled again. This time he sat on one of the wrought-iron chairs and crossed one leg over the other, resting the ankle on the knee in the classic Englishman-abroad pose.
‘I found a sketch pad of hers in her room at home, which she had gone to some trouble to hide. There were drawings of horses—’
‘God, yes, those horses! She was horse-mad, like all these girls!’
‘And some still-life things, and then some drawings of nude figures. Life studies, is that what you call them?’
The smile disappeared. ‘Yes. I arrange classes out of school hours for the girls who are serious about art. Teenage girls being what they are, it’s difficult to hold them in school time without a lot of sniggering idiots making a noise in the corridor and trying to look through the glass door panel. Prurient little beasts.’
‘Yes, I understand,’ Slider said.
‘Do you?’ He sounded unexpectedly annoyed. ‘It’s not even just the kids; it’s the parents, too. The human form is a thing of beauty: clothes are not. Just that. But the hoi polloi fasten on to the nudity aspect and make a vulgar song and dance about it. It’s ignorance, pure and simple.’
Slider forbore to mention that ‘hoi polloi’meant ‘the people’ and to say ‘the hoi polloi’ was a tautology and a mark of ignorance. This man had probably had to field a lot of complaints from parents over the years, and specialists often got annoyed with ordinary people who didn’t understand their specialism. You should hear policemen talking about the great General Public, he thought.
‘There’s a long and honourable tradition of painting the naked human form,’ he said soothingly.
‘I paid for the models myself, out of my own pocket,’ Markov concluded, with a steep descent into bathos. ‘I don’t know what they had to complain about.’
‘Look,’ Slider said encouragingly, ‘I’m not here to criticize your teaching techniques. I’m only saying I understand why Zellah hid her sketch pad from her parents.’
He looked relieved at the sympathetic approach. ‘God, yes! That philistine of a father of hers! I met him at parents’ meetings and school events and so on. Onward, Christian soldiers! He was an absolute ogre. No wonder Zellah was terrified of him.’
‘Was she? I’m trying to understand her, you see. Different people give me different accounts of what she was like. You obviously knew her better than her other teachers—’
‘Why do you say that?’ he interrupted.
‘Well, you saw her out of school hours, with your art classes.’
‘As a teacher.’
‘Quite. But I’m sure she revealed things about herself through her drawings. That’s what art is for, isn’t it?’
‘Oh – well, yes, I suppose so.’
‘So, how would you characterize her?’
He took another swig before answering, and stared thoughtfully at the middle distance. ‘She was a clever girl, as I’ve said. But a quiet one. It wasn’t easy to get anything out of her. She never talked about herself.’
‘Her friends say she was a bold spirit, defiant of convention,’ Slider said. ‘Sexually active, for one thing.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t know about that.’ He glanced at Slider and away again. ‘You know how schoolgirls like to show off and exaggerate.’
‘You mean her friends are exaggerating about her? Or that she exaggerated about herself?’
He hesitated. ‘You saw her life-study drawings? What did you think of them?’
‘I thought they were very good,’ Slider said. ‘I thou
ght they had a great deal of feeling, not just technical accuracy.’
‘Yes,’ he said. He paused, as though thinking something out. ‘Zellah did talk sometimes about boys, the way girls of that age do, but I always thought it was – well – a way of trying to fit in with the others. Because of her parents she was rather cut off from the other girls. I think she felt like an outsider. But those drawings showed the real Zellah.’
‘Meaning . . . what exactly?’
‘Meaning I think she was attracted to other women,’ he said, returning his gaze almost reluctantly to Slider, and surveying his face as if for reaction.
‘You think she was a lesbian?’ This was a new turn.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t know, but I would guess that she was still a virgin. But young people of that age are often puzzled and confused about their sexuality, especially if they’ve had few chances to experiment. Perhaps she was just beginning to feel these feelings – finding women attractive – and worried about being different from other girls. So she joined in the girl talk and the boasting with her friends, to hide her real self from them. But in her drawings she could only be honest. That’s where the real Zellah came out.’
Slider pondered this for a moment. It made sense in its own psychological terms, all right; but he knew Zellah had not been a virgin, so whatever she may or may not have felt about it, she had certainly put her money where her mouth was. But those lyrical drawings of females nudes – was that what they were saying? He had thought the nakedness was in direct line of descent from the naked horses; that the freedom from clothes represented a greater, spiritual freedom – the freedom denied to the caged thrush. Though of course, longing for spiritual freedom and a suppressed attraction to women were not mutually exclusive ideas.
After a moment he asked, ‘Did you think her a happy person, at the bottom?’
Markov looked grave. ‘No, I thought her very unhappy. In fact . . .’ A hesitation. ‘In fact when I first heard she was dead, just for a second it flitted through my mind that she might have committed suicide. But from what the media seem to be saying that wasn’t the case.’ He finished on what was almost a wistful note, as if he hoped that somehow or other Slider could tell him it was suicide after all.
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