Dead End

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Yes, I believe you,’ Slider said. ‘What did you do next?’

  ‘I ran. Just away, down the street, I wasn’t capable of thinking. Then when I found myself at the tube station I thought of Marcus. He’s so sophisticated, I thought he would know what to do. So I went to his flat. He wasn’t in, but I had the key, so I went in and sat for a bit until I stopped shaking. Then I telephoned Steve Murray, to see if Marcus was there, and he was. He told me to stay put and he’d come to me, but he didn’t, not till next day.’ His face darkened with the memory. ‘It was the worst night of my life. A hundred times I was going to telephone the police and give myself up. I wish I had. I didn’t even know whether Stefan was dead or alive.’

  ‘You could have watched the television news, or turned on the radio.’

  ‘I didn’t think of it. Not till the next day. I fell asleep eventually, you see – not having slept the night before I must have been tired. And when I woke in the morning I put the radio on and heard – heard he was dead.’ Tears welled again in an amazing, easy flood. ‘I was going to give myself up then, but Marcus came home and talked me out of it. He said to think of the scandal, and how upset his mother would be if she knew about Stefan and me. And how upset my mother would be to have a son a murderer. And when I thought of Mamma I just wanted to go home. So Marcus said I should lie low for a while, and that after a bit you – the police – would give up on the case, and then he would get me back to Poland somehow.’

  Slider shook his head. ‘You seem to take that young man’s word for most things. But what would have happened when you were missed? You couldn’t just disappear without anyone asking questions, and then the connection would have been made.’

  ‘Did you make it? Is that why you’re here?’

  ‘We came here to search the flat for the revolver.’

  ‘You suspected Marcus?’ Lev seemed horrified. ‘But how could you think he would kill his own grandfather?’

  Slider passed on that one. ‘Where is the gun, by the way? Have you still got it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, to Slider’s deep relief. ‘It’s in the bedroom. Shall I get it?’

  ‘No, it’s all right, we’ll get it in a minute.’

  Lev looked at him cannily. ‘Yes, there are five bullets left. You think I might shoot myself?’ Close, son, close, Slider thought. ‘No, not now. The moment has passed. Telling you all this has made me feel much better.’ He thought a moment. ‘What will happen to me now?’

  ‘We’ll take you back to the station and you’ll make a statement, and then I’m afraid you’ll have to be kept in custody until the powers that be decide what to charge you with.’

  ‘Will they send me to prison? Will I be accused of murder?’

  ‘That isn’t for me to say, son.’ Looking across the hall he could see Atherton just inside the kitchen, and gave him the nod to come in. ‘Let’s take one step at a time, shall we?’

  Polowski nodded meekly. ‘It’s right that I should be punished. But I didn’t mean to kill him, you know. In fact, I could almost swear he fell before I pulled the trigger.’

  Barrington listened in silence, his massive face, pitted like lava, as mobile and expressive as a mountain side. Quinbus Flestrin, the Man Mountain, Slider thought suddenly, out of the far past and his education at the conscientious secondary modern in Timberlog Lane. All the things they used to force children to read that you hated at the time and were grateful for later. His mind was like the lumber-room of an old family house: comfortably crammed with odd and interesting stuff, most of which he’d forgotten he’d got, but which might come in useful one day. He thought of his own children and was sorely afraid that such rational, modern, purpose-built creatures would have nothing in their attics but triple-thick insulation: very useful, but not providing much amusement for a rainy Sunday.

  ‘Right,’ Barrington said, ‘so what have we got besides the confession? The CPS won’t go on a confession alone these days, and we don’t want any mistakes over this one: Radek was a world celebrity. Let’s tabulate.’ He lifted his strong hands ready to count off on his fingers. ‘You’ve got the gun?’

  ‘Yes, and the ballistics report confirms the bullet taken from Radek was fired from that revolver. It’s the same make as the remaining bullets in the chamber. There’s no doubt that was the gun used.’

  ‘Fingerprints?’

  ‘Messy,’ Slider confessed. ‘It’s been well handled. We can identify some individual ones, but there are prints from both Polowski and Marcus Coleraine. The duffel coat and hat definitely belong to Polowski – we’ve got a witness who lives in the same house in Earl’s Court to identify them – but we can’t prove it was him wearing them at the time. And the coat originally belonged to Marcus.’

  ‘What about the witnesses who saw him between Shepherd’s Bush and Queensway?’

  ‘It’s the same as the witnesses at the church: none of them got a really good look at his face. The best is the women who saw him coming out of Queensway station, because he’d taken the hat off by then and had it stuffed inside his coat. Her description tallies, but I don’t know whether she’d pick him out of an identity parade if Marcus was in it too. Superficially they are very similar – small, slight and fair. We’ll try it, anyway. And there’s Marcus’s alibi, too. It isn’t perfect, but as long as no-one wants to deny it, it’ll just about stand up.’

  Barrington frowned. ‘You think there is some doubt as to which of them did it?’

  ‘No, sir. I’m sure in my own mind it was Polowski at the church. And they’re both telling the same story at the moment: as long as they continue to agree I think the external evidence is sufficient. I think the problem could arise when Coleraine realises how much trouble he’s in. He may then want to back-pedal and deny any involvement at all, and defence would jump on that, of course.’

  ‘Yes,’ Barrington said judiciously. ‘There’s also the question of whether he can be allowed to incriminate himself. We mustn’t forget his father’s a solicitor.’

  ‘Even if he is a bent one,’ Slider added.

  Barrington looked at him suddenly – at him, rather than in his direction. ‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully. He drummed his fingers on his desk top, and Slider feared an outburst might be on its way, but in fact what he said was, ‘This has been quite an unpleasant case. A lot of people have come out of it very badly.’ Slider said nothing. ‘Is there something particular about it that’s bothering you?’

  Slider was startled. Insight, sensitivity, sympathy – from Barrington? That would be an intriguing new sensation, though not necessarily pleasant – like having a hedgehog down your trousers. ‘Sir?’

  ‘You don’t seem comfortable with the result.’

  ‘Oh, I just don’t like how much reliance we’re having to place on Marcus Coleraine,’ he lied.

  ‘It’s a good result, though,’ Barrington said. ‘And quick, too. It looks good for us. The Commander will want to give it publicity – and I want you to know that I shall make sure the credit goes where it’s due.’

  Slider was so surprised he only just managed to reply. ‘It was a team effort, sir. Everyone’s pulled their weight.’

  ‘Good teams only exist because they have good leaders,’ Barrington said. ‘I’ve seen how your people work for you. You inspire loyalty, and that’s the sign of a good officer.’

  Wilder and wilder. Slider felt as though his head was rolling about the room like a bowling ball. He was so accustomed to taking the shinola shower that he never even took off his bath cap any more when entering the sanctum. Something strange seemed to be happening to Barrington, because he seemed to be suffering some mild spasms of the face. He looked at Slider and then down at his blotter and then at the portrait of the Queen on the wall to his right, and then at Slider again. And it was at that point that Slider realised the spasms were Barrington trying to smile. It was a ghastly sight and an even more ghastly notion.

  ‘I think I’ve sometimes been too rigid in my ideas of what mak
es a good officer,’ Barrington said at last. ‘I took certain precepts and had them carved in stone, and when you’re dealing with people, that can be a mistake.’

  Oh shit, Slider thought, he’s going to pour his heart out to me. He didn’t think he could cope with that.

  ‘Especially in civilian life. You can’t apply battlefield rules to guerrilla fighting. What I’m trying to say is that I may tend at times to hold up an ideal, a template, and measure people against it, rather than valuing what they’re good for in their own way.’

  Slider could have translated for him: I worshipped my old boss, and anyone who wasn’t like him was nothing; now I’ve found out that my old boss was nothing, I’ve been left all at sea. And looking more closely at the Man Mountain, Slider could see how far out on a Donald Duck lilo Barrington must have drifted in the past weeks. There was a strained expression in his eyes and his face looked thinner; his clothes seemed a little too big for him – even the ring on his wedding finger seemed loose. He had plainly been suffering, and Slider realised suddenly how little he knew about his chief’s private life. Had he had someone at home to comfort him after a hard day making subordinates miserable? Was he married? Had he ever been? It was difficult to imagine him doing anything so normal as putting on striped pyjamas and going to bed with a wife. Slider knew that Norma, to her own annoyance, found him unaccountably sexy, and violent passions did not seem necessarily incompatible with that asteroid façade; but it was impossible to visualise him ever unbending far enough to pop the question to anyone. He’d probably have to send a memo.

  No, that was unkind. If the poor old bean was trying to break the shell and emerge into humanity at last, it was only right to encourage the transmogrificaton. Thinking back to the last sentence, Slider decided he could hardly say yes sir or no sir, so he said, ‘I understand, sir.’

  ‘Do you,’ Barrington said. And then as though the first had not been a question, ‘Do you?’ He paused, stood up, walked up and down the space between his desk and the window, looking as incongruous as a tiger in an estate agent’s office. ‘What I want,’ he said slowly, ‘if it’s possible, is to start again. Clean slate. Do you think that’s possible – Bill? Pretend these unfortunate – er – tensions have never existed between us. I want us to work together in future without prejudice. I promise you I’ll back you all the way, and you’ll find me a good man to have on your side.’

  The smile finally broke the surface, and it was not a thing to dwell on. Slider wanted it over with as quickly as possible, before Barrington tried to shake his hand or something. ‘Sounds good to me, sir,’ he said, hating himself rather. But it was that or throw himself out of the window, and it was nearly teatime and they had Danish pastries in the canteen on Mondays.

  ‘Fine. Good. Well, then – we start again from here, right?’ Barrington stopped in the middle of his walk and thrust his hand out across the desk. Whimpering inwardly, Slider grasped it.

  ‘I’d better be getting on with it, then,’ he said, backing off. ‘Getting this case together.’

  He didn’t manage to get very far before Barrington, with a great effort, said – or rather blurted out – ‘I don’t suppose you’d be free this evening, would you? To have dinner? We could talk over any problems you think I ought to know about. I’d like this to be a happy station.’

  Come, Slider thought Alice-like, that’s going too far. Enough is enough. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I’ve already got plans for this evening.’ Which was true, actually and fortunately; and the conviction evidently carried.

  Barrington looked for a fraction of an instant disappointed and Slider felt for an equivalent space of time rather mean. But then the fissures in the rock-face closed up, he barked, ‘Some other time then,’ and sat down and pulled some papers towards him; the silent dismissal.

  Atherton stuck his head round the door. ‘I wondered what you were doing tonight. Only Sue’s coming round for dinner, and I thought you might like to join us. Little celebration, perhaps.’

  Blimey, what it is to be popular, Slider thought. Suddenly I’m the Prom Queen. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Much as I hate to turn down anything you’ve cooked, I’ve already got a date for tonight.’

  Atherton realigned his body vertically with his head, and leaned against the door jamb. ‘Oh? Is it anyone I know?’ he asked with elaborate unconcern.

  Slider’s grin would not have looked out of place on a Norman Rockwell paper-boy. ‘Yup. She’s forgiven me, and I think she’s going to take me back. We’re going to talk about it tonight – if we get round to it.’

  Atherton felt as though his intestines had suddenly gone off without him. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful,’ he said. ‘That’s really wonderful. I’m so glad for you.’

  ‘Don’t be too glad too far ahead of the game. You know how strong-minded she is, and how dumb I am. But it’s a foot in the door. I’m going to depend on my hunky torso to argue the case for me.’

  Atherton managed a smile. ‘She’s a gone goose, then.’

  ‘What’s this with you and Sue?’ Slider asked. ‘Is that serious?’

  ‘When have you ever known me to be serious?’

  ‘I thought perhaps it was a case of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.’

  ‘Oh well, you know how I feel about you, guv. Talking of cases, by the way—’

  ‘Don’t. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth.’

  ‘I hate to think what a good defence counsel will make of it,’ Atherton agreed. ‘But I was just going to say that you should remember to tell Joanna she was wrong. You told me she said we’d discover it wasn’t a musician who killed Radek.’

  ‘She was wrong, and she was right, because he didn’t mean to do it. I’ll tell her that.’ Slider stared away at nothing. ‘I should think they’ll let him off lightly, don’t you?’

  ‘Whether they do or not, he’ll serve life in his own mind. What’s done can’t be undone.’

  ‘And I still don’t really know whether he was a great conductor or just a showman. How much has the world been robbed of?’

  ‘You’d better ask Joanna,’ Atherton said shortly.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  There’s no Police like Holmes

  ‘I wonder if anyone has ever written about the rôle of spag bol in the process of seduction,’ Slider said, stirring in the tomato paste. ‘It does seem to me that once you’ve cooked and eaten it together, you’re bound to each other for life.’

  Joanna, wrapping the garlic bread in foil ready for the oven, said innocently, ‘You never cooked it with Irene, then?’

  ‘That,’ Slider said, ‘was well below the belt.’

  She grinned quickly at him. ‘Sorry. It just slipped out.’

  ‘And actually, the answer is no. I’ve cooked it for her, years ago when we were first married and lived in a bedsitter with a gas ring, but never with her. So my case remains sound.’

  ‘You really think,’ she said, ‘that once we’ve had dinner I won’t be able to resist you? That I’ll tumble into your arms like a ripe plum falling off a tree?’

  ‘Counting on it,’ he said, adding oregano like a man with palsy.

  ‘Oh Bill, don’t rush me.’

  ‘Rush you?’ he said indignantly. ‘It was me that suggested we ate first.’

  ‘What’s this “first” business?’ she objected. He put down the spoon, turned and put his arms round her waist, lifting her slightly off her feet and pressing her hard against him.

  ‘Listen to me, woman,’ he said. ‘I’ve apologised for being such a complete and utter waste of space these last two years, and I’ll apologise again as often as you like, but I’m not going to let you ruin the rest of both of our lives by making us live apart.’

  She looked him straight in the eye, which given her position was all she could look him in. ‘I suppose you think that being masterful is going to—’ There was quite a long silence. ‘My, you are strong,’ she murmured at the end of it.

  ‘I’ve always be
en strong in the arms and shoulders,’ he said. ‘It comes of shovelling muck all through my formative years.’ He lowered her, still held against him, to the ground.

  She looked up at him with a faintly troubled expression. ‘It still hurts, you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I didn’t want you to think it was just that easy.’

  His smile faded. ‘I had two children. I was married for fifteen years. No, I didn’t think it was just that easy.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not laying that on you. And I’ve no regrets. But I don’t want to waste any of the time we’ve got. I—’

  ‘Yes? You what?’

  ‘No, it sounds pretentious.’

  ‘So sound pretentious. You think someone’s writing all this down for posterity?’

  ‘I was just going to say, I deal so much with death and sadness in my job, I want everything we do to be a celebration of life.’ He made a face. ‘Yeuch, I can’t believe I just said that.’

  She smiled seductively. ‘Your sauce is catching. I can smell it.’

  He dropped her precipitately and grabbed the spoon. ‘Just in time. How long is your bread going to take?’

  ‘Ages. The oven isn’t up to heat yet. We’ve time to sit down and have a glass of wine. And you haven’t told me about the case yet. You must be pleased to have got it all sorted out so quickly.’

  ‘The sorting out hasn’t begun yet. Now we’ve got the real plod of putting all the documents together and trying to get it into a form that won’t send the CPS into fits. Of course, I know in detective fiction it’s all over once Sherlock fingers the villain and swans off for coke with Watson, but it’s not like that in real life. In real life working out who dunnit is the least of our troubles – certainly in this case.’

  ‘Well never mind, sit down here, take hold of this, and tell me the latest developments,’ she said, handing him a generous glass of Dolcetto d’Alba, glowing liquid ruby in the firelight and smelling of the warm south. Ensconced in the depths of the chesterfield – it wasn’t the sort of sofa you could apply a meagre verb like ‘sit’ to – with Joanna’s thigh against his, he sipped and told her the tale.