‘It doesn’t necessarily follow—’ Slider began.
‘No, but it’s a hell of a good indicator,’ said Porson. ‘It’d look good in court. Stand up on its own like a pair of soldier’s socks.’
‘He had good character the last time,’ Slider pointed out.
‘Last time he never denied it. Put his hand up right off. I think we got to tread careful. Don’t want the press saying we’re hounding a man who’s doing his best to pay his debt to society.’
‘They’re the ones doing the hounding. They’ve been shouting his guilt ever since they discovered his record.’
‘Well, you don’t expect them to be rationable. No, it’s our nuts on the block here. We’ll keep him until the forensic comes back on his flat, and then if there’s nothing there, let him go. I still think he’s tasty, but without evidence . . . He won’t be able to go anywhere. Everyone in the country knows his face now.’
And Slider experienced a pang of sympathy for Fitton, which really, really annoyed him. He went back to the interview room feeling distinctly narked.
‘Why didn’t you tell us about your work at Stamford House?’ he asked trying not to show it.
Fitton gave him that same darkly calm look. ‘How many times do I have to say it? It’s my business.’ Slider took a breath to reply and he went on in a different tone, more conciliatory. ‘Anyway, I don’t want you bothering those kids. They’ve got enough on their plates, without the Vogons clumping all over ’em, asking ’em questions. You leave ’em alone. You could knock ’em back months, just when they’re making some progress.’
‘I’m not going to ask them anything. There’s no need. The director told us about your involvement with them.’
‘Oh, did he?’ Fitton commented, and did a bit of a brood.
Slider tried to capitalize on the new mood. ‘So what was the nature of your interest in Melanie Hunter?’
‘Who said I had any interest in her?’
‘Was it because she’d been in trouble at one time?’
He looked up at that. ‘Criminal trouble?’
‘No, not that. But she’d been a bad girl, and pulled herself round. That must have taken courage. Was that why you admired her?’
‘I didn’t know she had,’ he said slowly, staring at some inner landscape. ‘But I guessed there was something. There’s a sort of look about girls who’ve been through the mill . . . She never said anything to me,’ he added sharply. ‘And I wouldn’t ask. But I told your girl – the Irish one – there was more to Mel than met the eye. She was in some kind of trouble, but she never told me.’
‘So why did you go for drinks with her? To try to help her? Did she see you as some kind of father figure?’ He was seeing the edge of a scenario he really didn’t want to contemplate, in which Fitton, driven to megalomania by his success with disturbed children, felt obliged to put the girl out of her misery – another crime which was no crime in his eyes, like the justice delivered to his erring wife. No one came out of prison after fifteen years entirely sane.
Fitton was silent a long moment, and Slider didn’t think he was going to answer. Then he said quite abruptly, ‘She wanted to help me.’
‘Help you do what?’
‘With the kids. She wanted me to get her into Stamford House. I told her it was way too dangerous. Those kids may be under sixteen but they’re violent criminals. She thought she could help some of the girls. I see now, if you say she’d been there herself, why she thought that. But she had no idea. It wasn’t on. Still, she kept asking, and even when she stopped asking, she liked to ask me about what I’d been doing and how they were getting on, the ones I was mentoring. And I—’ A long pause, and then, almost sub voce, ‘I enjoyed telling her.’
Yes, Slider could see that. A man so cut off from all normal discourse; the interest – the admiring interest – of a pretty young woman in the most important thing in his life. Very understandable; but also, given the nature of the pressure cooker, a potentially combustible situation. If something had threatened to take her away from him . . . Or she had said the wrong thing, lost interest in his mission, dissed his protégés, or appeared to . . .
A thought occurred to him. ‘Did she ever give you money to give to them – to help them through a difficult patch, for instance?’
Fitton looked surprised, and then angry. ‘I didn’t take money from her. And I didn’t give money to the kids. D’you think I’m some kind of amateur? If you want to know anything about them, go to the director. I’m done talking to you.’
Slider ended the interview; Atherton turned off the tape and called in the constable to return Fitton to his cell. As he passed him, Slider asked casually, ‘Do you like Chinese food?’
But there was no reaction from Fitton’s set face or grim voice. ‘I can take it or leave it,’ he said.
Slider and Atherton trod upstairs. ‘It could still be him,’ Atherton said. ‘He obviously had feelings for her. And he’s more than a little nutty.’
Slider nodded. ‘In fact, I’m feeling bad, now, about sending Connolly round there. But this helping with the disturbed kids is a powerful thing on his side. Unless we get some real evidence from the flat, or an eye witness, we can’t even hold him. But he’s still got the best opportunity to get rid of the body and the takeaway cartons.’
‘Unless he really can’t drive.’
‘And in any case, what would he drive? So far we haven’t got her car logged anywhere on Friday night after she left the pub, and we don’t know about any other car he has access to.’
‘Right,’ said Atherton cheerfully, ‘so we’d better leave him to one side and concentrate on the person who had equally good opportunity, even better access, who could have been spending her money hand over fist for two years for all we know, and who’s lied to us about his whereabouts and has a busted alibi. Do you like Chinese food, indeed! Let’s ask Scott Hibbert the same question.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ Slider said. ‘As soon as Fathom gets his report in, we’ll reel him in for a chat.’
They reached the door of the office, and Hollis came towards them, looking like a worried peperami stick, with Mackay eager at his elbow.
‘I was just going to ring down to you, guv,’ Hollis began.
Mackay couldn’t wait. ‘Hibbert’s had it away!’
‘What?’
‘On his toes.’
‘Done a runner,’ Hollis amplified.
‘See?’ Atherton said in triumph. ‘I told you so.’
ELEVEN
That Bourne to Which No Traveller Returns
Fathom was looking worried. He wasn’t one of the very brightest: if brains were air miles, he couldn’t have got further than Birmingham. But stick him in front of a computer with a well-defined task and you couldn’t go wrong. So as he loomed in Slider’s doorway with his forehead resembling the winning entry in a drunken ploughing contest, Slider was alarmed.
‘Guv, I’ve tracked Hibbert’s motor last weekend. He’s got a silver Ford Mondeo – well,’ he sidetracked himself, ‘it’s reckoned an OK car now, since James Bond’s drove one in that film. I mean, it used to be really boring, but now all the reps want one, even the ones that used to drive BMWs—’
‘Hibbert’s movements?’ Slider prompted him gently.
It was like watching an oil tanker doing a U-turn. The turbines thrashed painfully for a moment before he righted himself. ‘Oh, yeah. Well, I’ve picked him up on the Watford Way, the A41, at Fiveways Corner.’
‘He said he was going to Hendon on Friday morning,’ Slider said, ‘so that fits.’
‘Yeah, guv. That ping’s Friday lunchtime, ha’pass twelve time. Then he’s took the M1, M25, round to the M3, and I’ve got him filling up at the Fleet Services, westbound.’
‘So it looks as though he was heading down to Salisbury,’ Slider said. ‘But leaving early in the day – I wonder if his employers knew he was taking the afternoon off?’
‘Dunno,’ Fathom said. ‘He di
dn’t go to Salisbury, though – not right away. He’s stopped on the M3. I’ve picked him up Winchester, Eastleigh, then he’s took the M27, A31, I’ve caught him at Ringwood, then he’s on the A338 towards Bournemouth. I’ve lost him after that. There’s not so many cameras down that way as there are in the London area. But I reckon he must have stopped somewhere in the Bournemouth area, because the next time he’s pinged is at Ringwood again, going north this time on the A338, which takes him to Salisbury. That’s half ten-ish Saturday morning.’
‘Which looks like heading for the eleven o’clock wedding,’ Slider said.
‘Yeah, guv,’ Fathom said, with an anxious look. ‘So how did he get from Bournemouth to Shepherd’s Bush to murder Hunter without getting pinged?’
Slider glanced at the paper in his hand. ‘What are the rest of his movements?’
‘Back to Bournemouth straight after the wedding. Then Sunday morning I’ve got him on the A303, M3 back to London. He stops on the motorway all the way to Sunbury, then I’ve got him Richmond, Barnes, and Hammersmith Bridge at ten to ten. Which is right for him getting home at around ten, like he said. So if that’s the way he went home Sunday, how’d he do it Friday?’
Slider shook his head. ‘There are ways, I suppose. Not every road has a camera on it by a long chalk. He could have gone a roundabout route, by the back roads—’
‘Yeah, guv, but how would he know where the cameras were?’
‘Or even that there are cameras,’ Slider completed. Few people did, and even if they knew, or suspected, driving habits were so ingrained it was hard for them to keep the idea in mind when going from A to B. A man with no criminal background would be unlikely to govern his movements by fear of being caught by the ANPR. ‘However,’ he said in a comforting tone, for Fathom was looking as bereft as if his puppy had been taken away from him, ‘there is another possibility – that he did the journey in a different car.’
Fathom’s face cleared. ‘Oh, yeah!’ That was altogether more explicable. A man might not know about the cameras, but he might just grasp that if his car was spotted in the wrong place at the wrong time it could spell trouble.
‘What’s exercising me more is what he was doing in Bournemouth.’
‘The Bournemouth area,’ Fathom corrected. ‘There’s a lot of places he could have gone from there, if he didn’t go on the main roads.’
‘Let’s say that when I say “Bournemouth”, I mean the Bournemouth area,’ Slider said.
‘Maybe it was something for his firm after all,’ Fathom said. ‘He went straight there from London. And didn’t that bloke, the best man, say he was talking about doing a big deal?’
‘True. And I suppose even a liar and fantasist might tell the truth sometimes, by mistake. Well, you’ve done some good work here, Fathom.’
‘Thanks, guv.’
‘And given me lots of questions to ask Mr Hibbert – as soon as we find him.’
‘Yeah,’ Fathom said, his momentary pleasure at being praised flagging. An all-cars, all-areas general shout had gone out for Hibbert. He had achieved fugitive status, and other eyes than Fathom’s would be scanning the ANPR for the silver Mondeo now.
Slider gave him a consolation prize. ‘I’d like you to get on to his employers – Hatter and Ruck – and find out if he was doing anything for them in Bournemouth, and whether they’ve had any contact with him since Friday. And if he wasn’t on company business in Bournemouth, whether he’s ever mentioned the place or has any connection with it.’
Porson had been talking to headquarters at Hammersmith, as was apparent from the redness of his right ear and his air of restrained frenzy. ‘Mr Wetherspoon first, and then the PR girl – woman – person.’
‘Lily Saddler,’ Slider offered her name, to get Porson out of the PC mire. It was no wonder he had difficulty remembering it. She was the third in two years – it was a job no one stayed in very long, largely, Slider thought, because of Mr Wetherspoon, whose tact, sensitivity and sweetness of nature made him about as popular as Hitler at a bar mitzvah.
‘Saddler, that’s her,’ Porson said. He gave a sigh that would have registered on seismographs all round the world. ‘Bloody PR again! I don’t know why we don’t just get Saatchi and Saatchi in to run the police and have done with it. Anyway, the upshoot is they’ve decided there’s no harm in letting the press have Hibbert doing a runner. They’ll get on to it sooner or later, and Mr Wetherspoon thinks it’ll be good to have something else already on the go for if and when we have to let Ronnie Fitton out, so they can’t say we’ve been wasting our time chasing our own tails while the real villain gets away.’
‘It’s a point,’ Slider conceded.
Porson eyed him. ‘I can see through you like a book,’ he said. ‘You think Fitton’s a washout, don’t you?’
‘I wouldn’t go that far, sir. I certainly think he’s capable of it. I’d even say it looks like his kind of murder – done in a moment of rage, the hands round the throat and the single blow to the head. But I also think, who better than him would know how to cover his tracks? If he did do it, we may never be able to put together a case against him. Unless they find some blood in his flat. Just evidence of her being there won’t do, because they were friends, there’s no reason she shouldn’t go in there.’
‘You’re full of bloody sunshine, you are,’ Porson said disconsolately. ‘When are you expecting the forensic report?’
‘Some time today. They finished the site examination yesterday – the flat’s so empty it was relatively easy – so we’re just waiting for the swab analysis. Unofficially, Bob Bailey isn’t hopeful. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t kill her elsewhere, of course.’
Porson grunted. ‘Trouble is, elsewhere’s a big place. I’m going to have to get on to Mr Fox, see if we can widen the search area, look around those woods for some blood, or some bloody clothes. I’d be grateful,’ he said with an air of pathos, ‘for a nice pair of discarded surgical gloves.’ He pulled himself together. ‘Meanwhile, we’ll have to pin our hopes on Hibbert. One thing, getting the press involved will find him quicker. If he’s gone to ground, once his picture’s in the papers, someone will recognize their new next-door neighbour.’
Connolly was waiting for him when he got back to his room. ‘Boss, I know we’re all off our heads about your man Hibbert doing a legger—’
‘It doesn’t mean we can’t keep our eyes open in other directions,’ Slider said.
‘That’s what I was thinking.’ She was wearing smart grey slacks and an enormous reddish-coloured shaggy sweater with one of those roll-necks that didn’t fit closely, so her neck and head rose from it like something growing in a flowerpot. She had recently had her hair cut shorter so it was a flower with the petals furled, he thought.
‘There’s something here,’ she said, waving the papers she was holding. ‘I was going over the interviews with the friends Hunter went for a jar with on Friday. You know one of the questions we asked them was if she had any phone calls? Well, this one, Leanne Buckley, said she had a phone call from her dad.’
‘But when I spoke to Ian Wiseman, he said he hadn’t spoken to her for two weeks,’ Slider remembered. ‘He said she’d spoken to her mother on the Friday.’
‘Yeah, boss. Her mammy said she’d phoned her in the afternoon, from work. So he wouldn’t have been around. He couldn’t have just taken the phone from her for a quick hello, and then forgotten it.’
‘So what’s your point?’
‘I went back to this Buckley female, just to check, and she’s quite sure about it. She said she was sitting next to Hunter when the call came in, and she seemed upset by it. Didn’t say much, just yes and no and I see, that class o’ caper. But whatever was being said was annoying her, and finally she said, “Yes, all right, Dad,” really narky like. And here’s the best bit, boss –’ she forestalled his comment – ‘this was around ten o’clock, and soon afterwards Hunter says she’s feeling like shite and wants to go home, and she breaks the party up.
’
‘I always felt it was a bit early,’ Slider said.
‘Yeah, me too, boss. When you get together with your mates for a crack, especially on someone’s birthday, you don’t hang up your boots while the trains are still running. So I’m thinking, what if Wiseman asked her to meet him somewhere?’
‘Given that they had a row last time they met, why would she go?’ Slider objected.
‘Well, he is her dad. Even if she didn’t like him, you kind of do what the owl ones ask, don’t you? And say he said he wanted to make up with her? He was sorry for giving out to her, and wanted them to be friends. So she thinks better get it over with, and says OK.’
‘She might perhaps want to do that for her mother’s sake.’
‘Yeah, boss. It’d be uncomfortable for her mammy with the bad blood in the house, so she could think, I’ll do it for her, sure the owl man’s making the effort, have to give him the benefit of the doubt.’
Slider thought about it. ‘And the Chinese takeaway?’
Connolly frowned. ‘Well, to be honest with you, that has me a bit confounded. But I suppose he might have said, I’m just coming from praccer and I’ve not eaten, could y’ever get me a takeaway on your way home?’
‘But he could have got his own takeaway, if he was going over there by car.’
‘I know. I haven’t quite worked that one out. But the fact is –’ she stared at him earnestly, like someone trying to persuade through Pelmanism – ‘he said he didn’t speak to her and he did, and she got upset and left early. That’s got to be worth something, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Slider. Besides which, Wiseman was good for villain. Quite apart from his being her stepfather – most murders were done by someone close to the victim – there was his disposition, his disapproval of Melanie; the fact that he had rowed with her in the recent past, and hit her; his daughter Bethany’s evidence that he spoke contemptuously of Melanie’s mother (though of course what children said always had to be taken with a pinch of salt).
BS14 Kill My Darling Page 17
