‘It couldn’t have been like that,’ Slider said. ‘Zellah wasn’t a prostitute.’
‘Unless,’ Connolly said, ‘she was just doing it to sort of get back at her dad. Not the strangling, obviously, but having sex for money. You know, “You don’t trust me so I’ll give you something not to trust”, sort of thing. Not knowing what Ronnie liked to do.’
‘Cutting off her nose to spite her face, you mean?’ Slider said.
Hart said thoughtfully, ‘Yeah. If she’d had a rotten evening and was looking forward to a row with her dad, she might just decide to throw everything over and be as bad as she could for the hell of it. Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, sort o’ style.’
Slider said, ‘Ye–es. It’s a theory. There’s just one tiny snag with it.’
‘Ronnie,’ said Hollis. ‘Even to get back at her old man, would she really come on to Ronnie Oates?’
‘Exactly.’
‘So what d’you think is going on, then, sir?’ Connolly asked.
‘Ronnie’s attention-seeking,’ Slider said. ‘He doesn’t grasp the significance of what he’s doing; he’s just enjoying being a big man and having everyone listen to him.’
‘Not to mention whatever he wants to eat, plus waiter service,’ Hollis added. ‘The trouble is—’
‘It still could have been him,’ Slider concluded. ‘The fact that this present account doesn’t add up doesn’t mean there isn’t another one somewhere that does, that he’s not remembering. We have to get more confirmation, someone who saw something. Connolly, you were on that. Anything?’
‘Not yet, sir. I’m still trying to find out who the snogging couple were. They seem to have been around a lot of the time. And the blue or black car parked under the bridge comes up a bit, but no one remembers the number.’
‘Keep working on it,’ Slider said. ‘Something will come up. Meanwhile—’
‘Meanwhile,’ Atherton interrupted, walking in at that moment, ‘Wilding has flitted again.’
‘Wojjer mean, again?’ Hart said. ‘How can you flit from a flit?’
‘I found the wife’s sister,’ Atherton said, perching on a desk and looking round. ‘No tea for me?’
‘We didn’t know you were coming,’ Hart said. ‘Have a bun and get on with it.’
He took the last remaining Bath bun and began picking the currants out with his long, precise fingers, like a doctor removing buckshot from a bottom. ‘I traced Mrs Wilding’s sister, and rang up to see if they had gone there, which they had. The sister – a Mrs Peachey – sounded nervous and twitchy, so I asked to speak to Mr Wilding, and the next thing, Mrs Wilding came on, distraught. It seems they’d had a huge row about Zellah. Our Pam, having the usual unregulated emotions of the cerebrally challenged, apparently expressed her grief over the loss of her daughter by attacking her husband for having been too strict with the girl all her life. The logic of her position escaping the fond father, he attacked her right back for having persuaded him to let Zellah go to Sophy’s for a sleepover against his better judgement. He said it was her fault Zellah was dead. She responded that, au contraire, if he’d let her have a normal life she’d have known how to take care of herself. Little Pam screamed that he had killed his precious as surely as if he had strangled her himself, upon which he bellowed loud enough to shake the chandeliers, belted her round the side of the head, and rushed from the house shouting that he was going to kill himself. She yelled he should get on with it and do everyone a favour. However, when he didn’t return, she cooled off and started to wonder whether he really meant it, and now she’s in a state of complete meltdown. End of Act Two, audience goes wild, curtain, lights up and ice cream all round.’
‘Them as says it, never does it,’ Hollis suggested.
‘Unless, of course, they are already racked with guilt because they actually did strangle the precious,’ Atherton said. ‘It’s looking better, isn’t it? He was out all night and didn’t tell us; he knew what time the murder happened without our telling him; he had her phone at home – what girl ever goes out without her mobile? – and he did a runner. Now he’s done a runner from a runner.’
‘She didn’t use the mobile after that morning,’ Slider said. ‘We got the records. She phoned Carmichael from it that morning, and that was the last call made. So it’s quite possible she did just leave it behind by mistake.’
Atherton looked pleased. ‘That’s even better. She left it behind. Daddy, creeping about her bedroom trying to catch her out – because I’d bet anything he did snoop around when she wasn’t there – finds it, does last number recall and discovers she’s rung the boyfriend from the sink estate when he’s forbidden her to. He blows a fuse and decides she has to go. Actually,’ he concluded, ‘it’s better if she really did leave the mobile behind.’
Slider couldn’t deny that. Deceit was something that really could enrage a controller like Wilding. He thought of the sketch book, not quite properly concealed under the mattress. Had Wilding found that as well? Had he realized that all the rules he could make wouldn’t stop his little girl from slipping away from him eventually? Had he seen in these successful deceits the inevitable end of the game, where she grew up and left home and he never saw her again? In his passion, rage and grief did he perhaps decide that the only solution was that she must never grow up?
‘We’ll have to find him, that’s certain,’ Slider said. ‘For his own safety if nothing else.’
‘Sceptic!’ Atherton snorted. He discovered he was hungry, having missed lunch, and demolished the denuded bun in three chomps.
‘Did Mrs Wilding have any idea where he might have gone?’
‘She could only think he must have gone home, but she’s been ringing there without getting an answer.’
‘Any other relatives he might have gone to?’
‘I asked that. Wilding was an only child. Mrs W only has the one sister. Parents all dead. A couple of cousins they aren’t close to. And they’ve never really had any friends. Why am I not surprised? Besides, she’s convinced he’s gone to “do something stupid” as she so elegantly puts it, which I gather is either kill himself or someone else.’
‘Who else could he kill?’ Connolly asked. ‘If he’s blaming his wife and she’s blaming him?’
‘Sophy, for leading Zellah astray,’ Atherton suggested. ‘Sophy’s parents for not bringing her up right. Carmichael for trying to corrupt the perfect lily.’
‘We’ve got Carmichael here,’ Mackay pointed out.
‘I don’t suppose Wilding knows that,’ Atherton said. ‘And if my idea about last number recall is right, he might have gone off to slaughter the Goth before doing himself in.’
‘All right,’ Slider said. ‘We’ll ask Basingstoke police to look out for him. Alert Reading police in case he goes to Woodley South estate. We’ll have to have someone watch the house in Violet Street in case he goes home. And we’ll put out a Met-wide alert for him. We’ve got the make and reg number of his car?’ Atherton nodded. ‘All right, get those and a description of him out to every borough.’
‘Wanted for murder?’ McLaren asked eagerly.
‘For questioning.’ Slider still felt a father’s tenderness about suspecting him, however bad things looked. ‘And to stop him committing suicide—’
‘Which would bugger up the investigation,’ Hart concluded.
‘Where do Londoners go to kill themselves?’ Slider asked.
‘The river,’ said Connolly.
‘Or the railway,’ Mackay added.
‘There’s plenty of railway right next to the murder site,’ McLaren pointed out.
‘And a dog returns to his vomit,’ Atherton said.
‘Must you?’ Hart complained, still bun in hand.
‘That’s a good point,’ Slider intervened. ‘If he doesn’t go home, he might go back to the scene of the crime, whether he did it or not. It was the last place she was alive.’
‘We’ve still got it taped off,’ Atherton pointed out.
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‘Better alert the uniforms there to keep an eye out for him,’ Slider said. ‘Connolly, run down and do that, will you? Impress on them the importance of nabbing him if sighted. Is that everything covered? Can anyone think of anything else?’ No answer. ‘Right, then, let’s get organized. And meanwhile,’ he added with a sigh, ‘I’d better go and see Mr Porson about the extra expense.’
‘Not our fault, guv,’ Hart said smartly. ‘It was that organ, Organ, for letting him go. What a dipstick!’
‘Organ Organ?’ said McLaren eagerly. ‘That’s as bad as Michael Carmichael.’
Hart gave him her most exasperated huff. ‘You’re so slow, you should have your own time zone.’
Atherton appeared at the door to Slider’s office where he was toiling over the essential paperwork. ‘I was thinking it was time to go home.’
‘Hmm?’ Slider looked up vaguely. ‘So, go.’
‘But you’ve got my woman. I can’t have her back until you go home and release her.’
‘Point,’ said Slider.
‘I thought that if we went together, I could pick her up and drive her home. She was going to get a taxi, but . . .’
‘Oh. Right.’
‘And then I thought, how about picking up some fish and chips on the way? I’m certainly starving and you must be too.’
‘Fish and chips,’ Slider said. He imagined the smell – the crisp batter, the fragrant chips, the delicate hint of vinegar – and his stomach groaned audibly. ‘What a good idea.’
‘It was one of mine,’ Atherton said modestly. ‘Of course it’s good.’
Slider stretched crackingly. ‘I can do the rest of this tomorrow.’ He put his pen down, stood up, reached for his jacket, and the phone rang.
‘Leave it,’ Atherton urged. ‘You’re not here. If you’d been fifteen seconds nimbler on your feet you’d have been halfway down the corridor by now.’
‘It might be important,’ Slider said.
‘A ringing phone is like an unopened letter,’ Atherton said. ‘Leave it long enough and it doesn’t need answering.’
But Slider had already picked it up.
‘Bill! How’s life?’ It was Freddie.
‘You should ask someone who has one.’
‘I didn’t think you’d still be there.’
‘Then why did you phone me?’
‘Don’t be so literal. I’ve done your post.’
‘Oh,’ said Slider, and sat down. ‘It’s Freddie Cameron. He’s done the post,’ he said to Atherton.
‘Can’t it wait?’ Atherton complained from the depth of his day-long hunger.
‘Who’s that, Atherton?’ Freddie heard him. ‘I’d have thought he’d be down at the gym or something by now.’
‘Why the gym?’
‘Exercise. Healthy mind in a healthy body. I assume he’d pick one he has a chance at.’
‘Listen, insult him on your own time. I want to go home,’ Slider said. ‘Any surprises in the post?’
‘Not insofar as the murder’s concerned,’ Freddie said. ‘The cause of death was the strangulation all right, as I said at the time.’
‘I knew you’d be right. I have complete faith in you.’
Cameron expanded on the warm zephyr of regard. ‘Raised venous pressure, if you want a precise cause of death. Most lay people think the cause of death in strangulation is hypoxia, but in fact in a case like this—’
‘Freddie, it’s me.’
‘Oh, sorry. My long way round of telling you considerable force was used. The hyoid and cricoid were both fractured. Obstruction of the carotid arteries was severe enough to cause cerebral ischaemia, and there was bleeding into the neck muscles.’
‘And the ligature was, in fact, the ligature?’ Slider asked.
‘Yes, no doubt about that. It woz the tights wot done it. And there are no signs of any other injury, or of poisons, drugs or excess alcohol. You’re looking for a strangler all right.’ It was important to say this, because there had been a case not so long ago where the strangling had been faked to conceal a death by poison.
‘Right,’ said Slider. ‘Well, thank you. It’s as well to have that cleared up. You sent the tights off for testing?’
‘Yes, of course, and all her clothing, but don’t get your hopes up.’
‘My hopes don’t know which way up is. Any defensive injuries?’
‘I’m afraid not, and nothing under the fingernails. I think she must have grabbed at the ligature instead of trying to fight him off. Big mistake, of course,’ he added sadly. ‘I imagine the attacker was so much bigger and stronger than her that she was overwhelmed very quickly, and had little chance to resist.’
That rather ruled out Carmichael, then, Slider thought. He was neither tall nor heavy. Though he did have strong biker’s hands. Ronnie Oates was not tall or muscular, either, though he might have the proverbial strength of the madman. But Wilding was a big man in every dimension. Damn. He really didn’t want it to be Wilding. ‘Anything else?’
‘Just one thing – the reason I thought I ought to ring you tonight rather than waiting until tomorrow, in case the consideration changed anything.’
‘I was wondering.’
‘She was pregnant.’
‘Come again?’
‘You heard me.’
Slider stared at nothing. Oh, this was a whole new can of worms, kettle of fish, any receptacle you liked of any multiple zoological specimens you cared to name. ‘How long?’ he asked at last.
‘About eight weeks,’ Cameron said. ‘I’m sorry, Bill.’ He knew his friend would mind. It always made things worse when the victim was pregnant – two lives taken at one blow.
‘It’s all right,’ Slider said automatically. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’
‘I sent a sample of foetal tissue off right away to the DNA lab for typing. Of course, it’s up to you whether you want to pay for the express service. I just sent it with the standard forms. I don’t know what stage your investigation is at . . .’
‘More suspects than you can shake a stick at,’ Slider said rather absently.
‘That bad, eh? But this might filter them out somewhat, perhaps?’ Slider didn’t answer, and he went on, ‘Well, I’ll love you and leave you. I’m off home to the memsahib. We ought to get together some time, you know. Have dinner, or what-not. When the rush is over.’
Slider pulled himself together. ‘If we wait that long we’ll both be dead. Let’s make it sooner rather than later.’
‘Right-o. Be in touch.’
And he was gone. Slider replaced the receiver and looked up at Atherton, who was straining at the leash with curiosity.
‘She was pregnant. Eight weeks pregnant.’
Atherton sighed with what appeared to be immense satisfaction. Strange how his reactions were so different, Slider thought; but then he had never had any children – or not that he knew about, as he always said when asked.
‘Now we’ve got a game,’ Atherton said. ‘That’s a whole new tin of sardines. DNA will out. You always said the problem with Carmichael was the lack of a motive. Now you’ve got one, hot and strong.’
‘But she’s only two months pregnant, and he hadn’t seen her for three months.’
‘That’s only what he says. What better reason could he have for lying about it? This is just what we needed – the grit in the oyster, round which the theory forms.’
Slider looked unhappy. ‘My life is all grit. I should like to have a bit of oyster round it. It occurs to me that this feeds in to your alternative theory just as well – that Wilding did it. If he knew about it.’
‘Suits me,’ said Atherton cheerfully. ‘Either one.’
‘Except, would he really kill his own grandchild, if he knew about it?’
‘Then perhaps he didn’t know. Look, enough thinking for now. I’m hungry. You’re hungry. The brain needs feeding. Out there somewhere there’s a piece of rock salmon with your name on it, and the gnomes down at the chip face are this mom
ent hewing out potato delicacies and hand-carving them to your exacting requirements.’
Slider stood up again with a tired smile. ‘Enough. I get the picture. No more thought.’
Atherton handed him his jacket. ‘Keep that promise, and there’s a pickled egg in it for you.’ They walked out into the corridor. ‘Reminds me of the old saying,’ he went on. ‘You know the one: give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat and drink beer all day.’
‘You are certifiably nuts,’ Slider said, but he laughed, which was what Atherton had been aiming for.
FIFTEEN
Whores de Combat
The fish and chips definitely came under the category of Things That Sounded Like A Good Idea At The Time. The Chizzick Chippy – as they had taken to spelling themselves lately for inscrutable Lebanese reasons – did a rock and chips to die for, and during the short hours of the night Slider thought he was going to.
As Atherton had bought Emily a poke of chips to keep them company, it was natural for Slider to offer a drink to go with, and he happened to have some bottles of Marston’s Pedigree in the kitchen cupboard. By the time Joanna got back they had settled in for conversation. She wasn’t sleepy yet and wanted a beer too, and chip envy drove her to propose making herself a toasted cheese sandwich. Naturally Atherton, who cooked even better than he made love (according to his CV) jumped up chivalrously and offered to do the making. Pretty soon it was toasted cheese all round, which on top of the fish and chips was like signing a pact never to sleep again this side of the Apocalypse (which took place later in Slider’s large intestine).
They talked about the case of course, and the sad and interesting news that Zellah had been pregnant.
‘Maybe that’s why she suddenly wanted to see this Carmichael bloke,’ Emily said. ‘To persuade him to help her. Pay for an abortion, if nothing else.’ She looked round at them. ‘She must have been terrified, poor thing. Think of having to face a father like that, or having him find out! And from what you’ve said she wouldn’t have any money, or access to any. I don’t know whether she knew Carmichael was a drug dealer—’
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