One Under

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  She was a comely woman in her late fifties, with a neat figure, thick healthy hair that had been allowed to go naturally grey, and patient brown eyes behind gold half-glasses that perched perilously on the end of her nose like mountain climbers, with only a pearly rope around her neck to stop them plummeting to their doom.

  She was now the PA to Peloponnos’s successor, but he was, fortunately, out of the office, so Slider was able to have a relaxed chat with her. She seemed quite ready to abandon her work for conversation, and quickly got tea on the brew and the biscuit tin out.

  ‘Yes, I did know he’d gone,’ she said, to Slider’s enquiry. ‘I saw it in the paper. Poor soul.’ It sounded more perfunctory than heartbroken.

  ‘Were you surprised?’ Slider asked.

  She pursed her lips. ‘We-ell,’ she said. ‘I mean, you’re always surprised, aren’t you? But perhaps not as much with George as someone else. I can’t say I ever would have expected it, but he was always what I’d call a nervy character. He thought about things too much. Always pointing out what could go wrong, if you know what I mean. Sometimes too much introspection can be as bad for you as too little.’

  ‘You got on with him all right?’

  ‘Oh yes, he was a very nice person to work for. Never bad-tempered or anything like that. Quite considerate; and polite – you’d be surprised how many aren’t. Throw work at you without a please or thank you, some people – mentioning no names.’ She glared for an instant at the door to her new boss’s office. ‘George always had manners – a real gentleman. And he took me with him when he was made chief planning officer, which was nice.’ She gave him a smile. ‘The pay increase was welcome, I can tell you.’

  ‘He wasn’t married?’ Slider tried.

  ‘No.’ She gave him a narrow look. ‘If you’re wondering whether there was anything between him and me, you can put that idea right out of your mind. I’m happily married, and it was never a relationship like that. And I don’t think he was the other way, either – though there has been speculation round the offices. Well, when a man never brings a woman to socials, and never talks about any woman, people are bound to wonder. But I always got the feeling he was quite normal in that department, but too shy to do anything about it.’ She looked at him. ‘He lived with his mother, you know?’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘He did talk about her. Very good to his mother – isn’t that what they say? She probably put the kybosh on him having a romance, poor chap. There are a lot of mothers like that – can’t let go. He was very nice, you know, but perhaps a bit too gentle, too easy-going. Except …’

  ‘Yes?’ Slider encouraged.

  ‘I was going to say, except in his work. That was why he got made chief, because he was dedicated. Very serious about it. Always took every application on its merits. You couldn’t sway him with appeals to sentiment or anything like that. He was impartial – and quite firm. I suppose it was just social situations that made him nervous.’

  ‘So if someone said he had a very young girlfriend – a teenager – would that surprise you?’

  ‘Yes, it would. I never heard he had. Why? Is someone saying that?’

  ‘There’s been a suggestion.’

  ‘I can’t see George managing to ask a teenager out. Knowing what teenagers are like today – so bold and up to everything, spit in your eye as soon as look at you. You should see them at the bus stop when the schools let out. I suppose if it was a really shy, gentle girl – but where would he ever meet someone like that?’ She pondered. ‘I know young girls often do go for an older man, but … Who is she? This girl you’re asking about.’

  ‘Her name’s Kaylee Adams.’

  Mrs Parling shook her head. ‘Never heard that name before. And you say George was going out with her?’

  ‘We don’t know that. There was some suggestion of a connection between them, but it was very tenuous. Really, I’m just trying to get a sense of the man. I suppose he mixed with a lot of high-up people?’ He changed direction to stop her asking any more questions.

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose so. There’s a lot of rich people in the borough, and they’re the ones most likely to put in planning applications – the big controversial ones, anyway, the ones that don’t get nodded through. We’ve had a spate of people wanting to dig out their basements to make an extra floor below ground. Those have got to be looked into very carefully. Of course, they can’t build upwards in most cases, so down’s the only option if they want to live in the posh bit of the borough.’

  On the spur of the moment, Slider got out the copy of the architectural drawing, and handed it to her. ‘Do you recognize this?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, that looks like George’s work,’ she said at once.

  ‘Can you tell?’

  ‘I’ve worked with architects before. They all have their own style. You get to know the way they draw their little trees and people and so on. Of course, him being an architect before he came to planning was a great help. Where did you get this?’

  He avoided that one. ‘Do you know what house it is?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ She tapped the drawing with a finger. ‘Now that was a bit of a surprise. You could usually guess which way George would jump over a decision, that was one of the joys, but this one I got completely wrong. You see, it’s a Grade II listed house, so they should never have been allowed to put that terrace on. There were other alterations to the inside, which weren’t really problematic – I mean, it was only a matter of making sure they used the right materials and didn’t jeopardize the safety of the structure and so on – but this roof terrace … I was sure right to the end he was going to turn it down, but then suddenly he said yes. Of course, that was after he’d suggested some alterations. I suppose that’s when he made this drawing. But even so … I wondered,’ she added uncomfortably, ‘whether there wasn’t some pressure brought to bear.’ She raised her eyes to Slider’s. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t say anything, except that he’s dead now, so it can’t hurt him, can it? But I do know the borough CEO went in and had a long meeting with him, and when I went in afterwards, the plans were on his desk – not this drawing, the proper plans, the blueprints. So I think they were discussing it. And the same day he said he was allowing it to go through. So I wonder if Arnold leaned on him. But don’t quote me on that – it’s just my own speculation.’

  Slider remembered that Arnold Fulleylove, the borough CEO, had been one of the names on the handwritten list. ‘When you say “leaned”, do you mean bribed? Or blackmailed?’

  She looked alarmed, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t accuse anybody of anything like that. And as a matter of fact, I never would have thought George was the kind of person to be swayed from something he thought right – not in the area of his work, anyway. But I suppose we all have a weakness somewhere. And it’s a fact,’ she added, staring into her teacup uncomfortably, ‘that he got that new job soon afterwards, and that seemed to come out of the blue.’

  ‘Who did this house belong to?’ Slider asked, tapping the drawing.

  ‘Gideon Marler,’ she said. ‘The MP?’

  ‘Yes, I know who you mean,’ said Slider. His nerves were tingling. ‘I suppose,’ he said casually, ‘there would have been meetings between Mr Peloponnos and Mr Marler in the course of the application?’

  ‘Well, I know there was one,’ she said, ‘when George went over to meet him at the house to discuss it with him. I don’t know if there were others. But they used to talk on the phone quite often.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘I put his calls through,’ she said simply.

  ‘Did they talk about anything else, apart from the house?’

  She looked at him oddly. ‘Well, I never listened in to his conversations. Why do you ask?’ She seemed to come to some conclusion. ‘Look, was there anything odd about George’s death? I mean, it was suicide, wasn’t it? Only you read things about suicides being faked, and here you are, asking all these strange questions—’

  ‘Oh n
o,’ Slider said, his mind busy elsewhere. ‘It was suicide all right. Set your mind at rest about that.’

  ‘Well, what’s it all about then?’ she asked, with a hint of impatience.

  ‘I really can’t tell you,’ Slider said. And added in a low voice, ‘I wish I knew.’

  ‘So you’re suggesting that Georgie rigged the planning application,’ said Atherton, ‘and in return Marler got him the spiffy new job on the trust?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ Slider said, but he got no takers.

  ‘Not just the bigger salary,’ Swilley said, ‘but probably more congenial work, and the chance to meet some high rollers who might be useful to him in other ways. I wish I could get a look at his financial accounts.’

  ‘You think he was making more money than his salary?’ Connolly asked.

  ‘That’s what I’d like to find out. He did pay off his mortgage two years ago, after only a year in the new job.’

  Atherton nodded. ‘A venial man could really cream it off. Developers fight over those contracts like foxes over a KFC box, and a sweetener to the right person can get your name to the top of the list.’ He met Slider’s look. ‘What? Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of it happening. Government contracts, council contracts, NGO contracts – where two or three are gathered together, spending someone else’s money, there shall ye find the potential for corruption.’

  ‘If he was rolling in it,’ said Connolly, ‘why’d he keep living in that mingy little cheesebox? He was an architect. Janey Mac, it musta given him a pain in the arse every time he came home.’

  ‘Maybe his mother liked it,’ said Atherton.

  ‘Maybe he got rewarded uvver ways,’ said Hart quietly. ‘Not everyfing’s about money.’

  ‘Well, what then?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not his muvver,’ she retorted.

  Slider thought of Mrs Peloponnos, and his conviction that she knew something about her son, something she didn’t want to face. Was that it? Did she know he was on the take, in one way or another?

  ‘The one thing we do know,’ he said, ‘was that Gideon Marler knew Peloponnos, though he told me he’d never heard of him. Now, it’s not as if it was a casual and unimportant contact. And it’s not as if he was called John Smith. If you can’t remember a name like Peloponnos …’

  ‘True, boss,’ said Swilley, ‘but what then? And what’s it got to do with Kaylee?’

  ‘Probably nothing,’ he said. ‘We’ve no suggestion of a connection between Marler and Kaylee. We’re barking up two entirely unconnected trees here.’

  ‘Each of them containing a mare’s nest,’ said Atherton. ‘You know, I’m sorry to say it, but I’m starting to think maybe it was just a hit-and-run. Doc Cameron could be wrong.’ He looked at Slider. ‘It’s a possibility. I’m just saying.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Slider. It was just that instinct – and Porson obviously shared it – told him it wasn’t a possibility, not this time. Kaylee’s death had not been an accident. But he had nothing to show that Peloponnos was involved in it. Apart from one phone call.

  He came to a decision. ‘Get the telephone log for Peloponnos’s landline, at his office,’ he said to Swilley. ‘He didn’t use his mobile for anything interesting, but maybe he’d think the office phone was safe.’

  ‘Right boss.’

  ‘If Marler did get him the spiffy new job – and we’ve no evidence to say he did – they might still have been talking to each other.’

  ‘What will that prove?’ Atherton asked impatiently.

  ‘It’s just a little more evidence that something was going on,’ said Slider. ‘God knows we need all we can get.’

  McLaren came in with a list, an ominously long one. ‘The Merc GL550s, guv,’ he said. ‘Even with a first index letter, it doesn’t cut it down much. I haven’t had a chance to go through them all yet, but I have come across one interesting one. Starts with AH. Well, we thought it was an E, but that could’ve been a bolt instead of a top stroke.’

  ‘True,’ said Slider.

  ‘And it goes to Gideon Marler.’

  ‘Marler again!’ Slider sat up. Now, at last, the possibility of a connection between the three protagonists.

  ‘Yeah. I checked with DVLA, and he’s got four motors. There’s a BMW, a Mazda with his wife as co-driver, a Vauxhall Astra which looks like his daughter’s, and the Merc. I reckon the BMW’s his personal wheels and the Merc’s his business wheels. See, the Merc’s the only one registered to his London address.’

  ‘That’d be his constituency home, I suppose,’ Slider said.

  ‘Yeah, and where the other three are registered’ll be his private home. It’s in Rickmansworth.’ He looked up. ‘Rickmansworth, that’s about four miles from Harefield.’

  ‘A lot of MPs live out that way,’ Slider said.

  ‘Yeah, guv,’ said McLaren. ‘I’m just saying.’

  ‘Of course. Well, get Fathom on it, tell him start looking for it on Saturday night or Sunday morning, anywhere between the London house and Harefield. ANPR, traffic cameras, everything. And give the full number to Uxbridge – they’re in a better position to look for witnesses, anyone who saw the car go through on Saturday night or Sunday morning.’

  ‘Right, guv.’

  ‘You’d better keep going through the other Mercedes – we don’t want to miss anything obvious while looking at Marler.’

  ‘Right, guv. But if it was Marler picked her up Saturday night, surely it’ll be him that dumped her Sunday morning.’

  ‘If it was him. Get on with it.’

  Gideon Marler, MP, was at a meeting with the chairmen of several residents’ associations, for which purpose he was using a room at the town hall. He came out in his shirtsleeves into the corridor where Slider was waiting. Through the open door, Slider caught a glimpse of half a dozen elderly, well-dressed folk sitting round a table covered in papers and water bottles, and David Easter standing behind the empty chair at the head.

  ‘Oh, it’s you again,’ Marler said, closing the door behind him. He grinned self-deprecatingly. ‘Well, I did say contact me any time … Or are you just mesmerized by my charm?’

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you again,’ Slider said, ‘but I do have another question.’

  ‘All right, spit it out,’ Marler said smilingly. ‘Anything to help our chums in blue.’

  ‘You had a large alteration done to your house three years ago, for which you had to get planning permission. That involved at least one meeting, plus several phone calls and considerable correspondence with the chief planning officer.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Marler.

  ‘Whose name was George Peloponnos. Someone you said you had never heard of.’

  Marler’s smile seemed to stiffen a little. ‘Is that it? What’s your question?’

  ‘Why did you deny knowing him?’ Slider asked.

  ‘I didn’t deny anything. Can we not use loaded language, please? I couldn’t remember ever having heard of him. Why should I?’

  ‘You had a lot of dealings with him. Your building work must have been important to you – that’s a lovely house.’

  ‘The house is important to me; the name of every petty official in the local council who happens to send me a piece of bumf is not. Why on earth should I remember the name of a planning officer?’

  ‘Quite an unusual name,’ Slider said.

  The smile was fading fast – indeed, it was only hanging on with its fingertips to the corners of the mouth, and had lost the eyes altogether.

  ‘I don’t remember him. All right? You seem to be making a big thing out of this, for reasons I cannot fathom. What, exactly, are you accusing me of?’

  Slider lifted his hands. ‘I’m not accusing you of anything, sir.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  ‘I was just puzzled. It didn’t seem to me the sort of thing you would forget.’

  ‘Well, I did. Mea culpa and all that, but I meet hundreds of people a week, in the c
ourse of my work, and I can’t remember the name of every person I’ve ever come into contact with. It was years ago, for God’s sake. And now, if you’ve no other questions, I must get back to my meeting.’

  ‘Of course, sir. Thank you for your time.’

  Marler managed a tight, PR sort of smile before he disappeared, and Slider walked away, down the corridor and out to his car. It was, he thought, a perfectly reasonable explanation. Why should he remember Peloponnos? Except that it was not the sort of name you wouldn’t remember having heard before, once it was mentioned to you, though you might not remember the context.

  And Peloponnos had rung his mobile on Saturday morning. Now, of course, it was perfectly possible that Peloponnos had misdialled, and hearing Marler’s voice had been too embarrassed to admit it and had pretended it was a wrong number.

  Perfectly possible. But along with the Mercedes, it was a co-incidence, and he didn’t like coincidences.

  Retribution was swift. When Slider got back to the station and went in through the back from the yard, the custody sergeant, O’Flaherty, looked up from his desk and said, ‘Ah, dere he is. Hail to thee, blithe spirit. Bird thou never wert, or so it says here.’

  ‘What’s up, Fergus?’

  ‘You’d know that better than me, Billy boy. Mr Porson wants you, chop chop. I think it could be the crack o’ doom. I know he always sounds like a nerthquake, but this time … I’d be puttin’ the kevlar on if I was you, darlin’.’

  ‘My conscience is clear,’ Slider said sturdily.

  Porson’s door was open, as always, and as he arrived Slider could see the great man standing behind his desk facing it. Not pacing up and down, but standing still, which was bad.

  ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Shut the door.’

  Slider obeyed, and approached. Porson’s granite features wouldn’t have looked amiss on Mount Rushmore, and at the best of times a scowl came more easily to him than a smile. On a good day he could be snappier than a crocodile handbag. Today his glare could have put the Gorgon out of business.