Shadow Play

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Let me go, boss,’ said Swilley.

  He smiled at her. ‘No one’s ever going to think you’re stupid.’

  ‘She’s got the tits for it,’ Hart answered for her. ‘You’d be amazed how many men never look above or below the bust line. I’d offer to go, but my suntan might upset him.’

  ‘You can go,’ Slider said to Swilley. ‘I don’t mind you using your assets.’

  ‘She can swing that, an’ all,’ Hart commented.

  ‘Just don’t overdo it,’ said Slider. ‘We don’t want you pounced on. Meanwhile—’ he turned to Atherton – ‘see what you can find out from the council about Davy Lane and the whole development issue. I’m remembering that Rathkeale was a councillor—’

  ‘Not in Hammersmith. That was Leeds.’

  ‘I know. But I’m stuck with the nagging feeling that Rathkeale comes into it somewhere. Maybe he had connections with more than one council. The one thing we know about Kimmelman is that he was involved in blackmailing Rathkeale.’

  ‘Thank Gawd,’ Hart said, rolling her eyes, ‘someone’s remembering where all this started.’

  ‘Where it started was Jacket’s Yard and Gypsy Eli,’ Atherton objected.

  ‘Pick, pick, pick! Rathkeale is still number one suspect, an’ the fact his motor never moved that Sunday just makes him look tastier to me.’

  ‘You have an untutored palate,’ said Atherton.

  She grinned. ‘Yeah, it’s all that curry goat and okra. Gawd, you’re a right old colonialist sometimes!’

  THIRTEEN

  In Which We Swerve

  There were still two cars parked on the frontage, suggesting the occupants were in. After she rang the bell, there was such a long hiatus that Swilley thought the door wasn’t going to be answered, but at last there was a shadow on the glass, another long pause, and then it opened. She would have expected a cardigan and carpet-slipper aspect, but the man – Charles Holdsworth, from Atherton’s description – was fully dressed in suit and tie, hair neatly brushed, clean shaven with a whiff of aftershave. His face looked worn and there were bags under his eyes, but at the sight of her he put on the sort of lizard smile that men of that age and class always have available for attractive women they think slightly beneath them. It was meant to be roguish. The words, ‘what’s a lovely young lady like you doing, visiting an old fogey like me?’ seemed to hover in the air above him. If he says, ‘what a lucky chap I am’, I’m going to deck him, she thought.

  ‘Mr Holdsworth, I’m Detective Constable Swilley. From Shepherd’s Bush,’ she said.

  His mouth kept smiling, but the rest of his face didn’t want anything more to do with it and moved pointedly away. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘And what can I do for you?’ There was just enough emphasis on the ‘you’ to indicate that she was one of a long line of people bothering him, and that they had used up her share of his patience before she even got there. His eyes inside their pouched and wrinkled lids were like a chameleon’s, and his mouth had as much humour. At any moment a long and muscular tongue might flick out, stick itself to her forehead and reel her in.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ she said, trying to sound as if she meant it, ‘but I wonder if I could ask you one or two questions.’

  He seemed to consider his answer a moment, before saying, ‘Certainly.’

  She paused, expecting him to ask her in, but he didn’t move. She must interview him on the doorstep. Lucky it wasn’t raining. She got out the picture of Leon Kimmelman and proffered it, but he didn’t take it, and only gave it enough of a glance to see what it was. ‘It’s about—’ she began.

  ‘Not this again!’ he said with a heavy sigh. ‘I told the other person who came here last week that I don’t know this man. Surely he must have told you that? Don’t you people communicate with each other at all? Who is your senior officer? I shall have a stiff word with him. I am not prepared to be badgered day and night with pointless questions that I’ve already answered.’

  ‘We do communicate everything, of course, and Mr Slider is quite well aware of your previous statement,’ she said, with a faint emphasis on the word ‘statement’ to remind him that what was said to the police was always and everywhere official. At the same time, remembering her injunction not to scare him off, she gave him as winsome a smile as she could manage. It would have frightened a sensitive man, but she wasn’t worried about this gender-wars fossil. ‘But you see, new information has come to light, and I have to follow it up.’ She hoped to give the impression that it was a pointless job, and that was why they gave it to a poor little girlie, so he should go easy on her.

  He seemed to thaw just slightly. ‘New information. What new information?’

  She smiled hopefully, and would have liked to smile upwards at him so that she could be appealing, but even with the advantage of the doorstep he was no taller than her. ‘We have discovered, you see, that Mr Kimmelman was paid a monthly salary by a company called Target.’

  He toughed it out. ‘And this concerns me because …?’ he asked impatiently.

  ‘Well, sir, you are a director of Target.’

  There was a breath of a pause as he regrouped. Interesting, she thought. Did he think she didn’t know that? Was it meant to be a secret? Or did he genuinely not see the point of the question?

  ‘My dear young lady,’ he said, and he sounded quite relaxed now, ‘you surely cannot expect me to know every one of the company’s employees by sight.’

  ‘I’m sure not, sir. But we have information that this man was your driver.’

  His face did not change. ‘It’s possible that he has driven me on one or two occasions. I couldn’t say. It would have been a long time ago, and I would not particularly be paying attention. I have been driven by many different people over a long career, and I’m sure I could not pick any of them out if you paraded them in front of me.’

  She nodded sympathetically, leaving him a space to drop himself in it, if he was inclined.

  But he only said, ‘In any case, I have very little to do with that company any more.’ He hoisted the smile again. It looked as though he’d read about smiling in a book and was trying it for himself for the first time. ‘I am more or less retired.’

  Well, it was possible that he was retired from Target, as there was no commercial activity in that business. She tried him with: ‘What about your other company?’

  She would have put money on his saying, ‘My other company?’ – and he did.

  ‘Farraday,’ she said baldly.

  ‘That’s really more of a convenience for holding assets. Tax management, that sort of thing. A financial device – I won’t bore you with the details,’ he said, giving her a ‘you wouldn’t understand, dear’ look. ‘I am, as I said, more or less retired from commercial life. My days revolve around the golf club and the bridge club, ha ha. Perhaps a little consultancy now and then, but nothing more exciting. I’m very much the – er – elder statesman, I’m afraid.’ He tried the smile again. She flinched. It still needed more time in the nets.

  ‘I see,’ she said.

  He seemed reassured by this meaningless phrase. ‘Well, if there’s nothing else?’ he said, stepping back, preparatory to closing the door. ‘If you’ll excuse me …’

  Given that the boss didn’t want him put to flight, she said, ‘Thank you for your time, sir,’ and let it go at that. She had given him the opportunity to know Kimmelman, and now he had denied him thrice. That went on file. But she didn’t quite know what to make of him. Given his age and the stiffness of that generation of businessmen, he could be just what he seemed – a harmless boring old fart. The sort that saw an unbridgeable gulf between the proper occupations of men and of women. The sort that viewed the police rather as paid servants. The sort that always said, ‘I don’t have to divulge my private business to anyone,’ even when their lives depended on full disclosure. And, yes, it was perfectly possible that someone who looked down their nose so much would not register the features or name of a minio
n even when they were under it.

  Or …

  She turned away and heard the door snick shut behind her. She walked back to the car, and as she reached it, turned in opening the door, and looked back at the house. Someone was standing at an upper window, looking out at her: a little old lady, with white hair. It was the anxious and sorrowful expression that attracted her attention. There was something, in any case, about a person staring from an upper window that always made you think of false imprisonment. The mind naturally wanted to supply the hastily crayoned notice pressed against the glass, the slashed and uneven capitals shouting HELP I AM BEING HELD HOSTAGE. As she looked, the woman disappeared abruptly from the window, as though yanked away by a hidden hand.

  Overactive imagination, she told herself. As for sorrowful – with a son always in trouble, who wouldn’t look that way? Looking at her watch, she saw that it was nearly home time. So it was back to the factory, write up her report, and then dash to the Tesco in Shepherd’s Bush Road on her way home. Tony would have collected Ashley from pre-school, but it was his darts night at The Clarence in North End Road so he’d want his supper before he went. And she’d have a nice quiet evening with the telly and the ironing. She liked ironing: the clean smell, the soothing repetition, plus the satisfaction of seeing everything crease-free and folded and put away. And it was the perfect excuse to watch some TV: she had three episodes of Suits to catch up with.

  Joanna was in, but Slider was out – one of the frustrations of their respective lives was trying to schedule a time when they could both be at home to enjoy each other’s company. At least Joanna, with an unpredictable job herself, understood: Slider’s first wife, Irene, had been a stay-at-home, and his frequent and long absences from the hearth had led her in the end to find another man. It was a common fate for policemen. Of course, many of them hastened the process by embracing the many opportunities of infidelity offered by the Job: put red-blooded men, teeming with adrenaline, in a situation where no one could check up on their whereabouts from hour to hour, and it was not surprising if some of them went astray.

  Slider, being both faithful and uxorious, would much sooner have been at home and thoroughly accountable, even had his evening promised him any pleasure. As it was, it was a meet-the-constabulary drinky-do for social workers, being held in one of the less lyrical rooms in Hammersmith Town Hall. There was cheap wine and rather limp canapés, and a lot of really earnest people, mostly women, all trying at once to get across the difficulties of their job, resulting in a level and pitch of noise that made it impossible to do other than smile sympathetically and make reassuring murmurs. The only good thing about it was that it was not a dress-do. Lounge suit and tie was required, of course, but Slider had been in that all day and had ceased to notice it.

  Slider would have made his escape as soon as the numbers began to thin, but he had been buttonholed by a woman with desperate eyes who, he gathered, really just needed someone to talk to. She had been recounting her most distressing cases for half an hour when finally one of the few men among the social workers came up to her, clutching a motor-bike helmet, and said if she wanted a lift he was leaving right now. She abandoned Slider in mid-sentence and apparently without regret, and trotted off with her companion as though she hadn’t a care in the world, leaving Slider feeling somewhat had.

  ‘Thank Gawd for that – I thought she’d never leave,’ said a voice at Slider’s elbow. He turned to find DI Dave ‘Oggy’ Ogilvy standing there. Oggy was a bread-and-butter detective much like Slider, who had known him as a uniformed constable in Central, back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth. ‘Come and have a proper drink. This wine muck’ll rot your innards.’

  Oggy was a good sort, and a sharp copper, despite his flabby waistline and red sweaty face, but between a pint with him and an early-ish night with Joanna there wasn’t even a contest. Still, in making his excuses, he couldn’t do less than stay long enough to have a bit of a chin with him. Oggy was not the sort to have many friends among the new breed of university-educated, highly laminated young officers that surrounded their new Commander Carpenter. And if Slider remembered right, he was divorced and didn’t see much of his kids. To avoid setting off a litany of complaint about Policing Today, Slider got in first and mentioned the Kimmelman murder. Oggy had heard of it. He spread his feet wide and asked for details, so the following fifteen minutes was enjoyable to both of them. Oggy said he’d keep an ear to the ground, Slider said they must have that drink some time, and they were able to part with honour satisfied on both sides.

  It did mean Slider was almost the last leaving, and he clattered down the stairs to the fire exit onto Nigel Playfair Avenue alone, Oggy having gone the other way, to an exit on the other side.

  He pushed out into the crepuscular street light, to hurry across the road to the car park, his mind on home and possibly a little late supper and definitely a late but not little malt whisky – he thought he had some Scapa left in the cupboard – so he was not paying full attention to his surroundings. But an instinct buried deep in the brainstem of all coppers, the primitive bit that would prefer them to survive attacks by sabre-toothed tigers or ugly blokes with coshes, thank you very much, made him jump before he heard the roar of the engine or saw the black shape rushing at him. Something hit him a glancing blow and flung him forward; his feet scrabbled for balance and a toecap hit the kerb, sending him on what would have been a beautiful salmon-leap arc had be been a rugby player scoring a try. He hit the pavement, hurting his hands, banged his elbow, and managed to roll over, heart pounding, scrambling defensively to his feet, brainstem expecting the attack to continue.

  He was aware of a number of images that might have been successive or simultaneous, looming largest the black SUV that had screamed at him, laying rubber. A passing cyclist had been knocked off his bike, whether by contact or simply overbalancing while trying to get out of the way he didn’t know. Two young people arm in arm further up the road had shrieked. Someone on the far side of the car park – his mental snapshot had shown their head arrested above the roof line of the car as they paused in the act of getting in – was hurrying over.

  The car was gone. The danger seemed over. Now survival-brain had gone off duty, he was free to register pain – hip, palms, shin, elbow – and the aftermath of adrenaline – thundering heart and shaking hands. Outposts reported back: no serious harm done; oh, and we did see the car, didn’t we, parked at the near side of the road with the engine idling, because we registered in the split second as we passed it that it was on a double yellow and facing the wrong way, and thought that as the engine was running it was probably waiting for somebody and we didn’t have to make it our job to tell it to push off.

  Now people were reaching him. The young people turned out to be a pigeon pair – hard to tell at a distance, both being in trousers, jackets and hoods. Car park man was elderly and concerned, probably lonely and longing to be useful to someone. The cyclist was late twenties, muscular, professional-looking, with one of those pointy racing helmets full of holes and a hi-vis jacket over his own. The cyclist got there first, took Slider’s arm in a strong, supporting grip and said, ‘Are you all right? Hurt anywhere?’

  ‘Bruises,’ Slider said. ‘Nothing serious.’

  ‘You were lucky,’ he said, his voice taut with reaction. ‘That was deliberate. Just as I was passing, he accelerated, swerved straight at you.’

  ‘Did he hit you?’

  ‘No, I sort of twisted out of the way, lost my balance. I was too busy looking at you. God, that was …! I’ve never seen anything like that before.’

  The youngsters arrived, saying things like ‘Cool!’ and ‘Did you see that?’ to nobody in particular. Now the old man arrived, fluttering and concerned, and wanting to insist on driving Slider to the hospital, ‘Just in case. You can’t be too careful, you know. Internal injuries.’

  Slider, who knew that a policeman could be too careful, concentrated on the cyclist. ‘Did you see who was dri
ving?’

  He shook his head regretfully. ‘No. It was all too quick. I wasn’t really looking, not to notice – you know how it is.’

  ‘Tinted windows. You couldn’t ‘a’ seen,’ said one of the youngsters – the male half. They were still arm in arm, welded together from shoulder to knee.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Slider asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said eagerly. ‘I looked as it went past. It was a BMW X3. Super cool! It went down the end, and straight out left onto King Street, like a … a …’

  ‘Arrow,’ the girl suggested.

  ‘Bat outta hell,’ the boy corrected.

  ‘Did you get the registration number?’

  ‘Nah. Sorry.’

  He looked at the cyclist, who shook his head too.

  The boy said, ‘It was a man driving, though. It’s only the side windows are tinted. Coming straight, I could see it was a man.’

  ‘Would you recognise him again?’

  ‘Nah,’ he said with genuine regret. ‘It was just, like, a glimpse, like a shape, that’s all. Wish I’d got the number,’ he concluded wistfully. ‘That would’ve been mega.’

  The old man was still burbling about hospital. The cyclist said, ‘I’ve got to go. But if you want a witness, I’ll give you my card. Not that I can be much help.’

  Slider took it anyway, and wrote the name and number of the young boy on the back, and then made his escape. His bruises were throbbing now, and one part of his mind was urgently asking him to consider which one of his many enemies might have tried to run him down, and how they had known where he was, while another part was suggesting that the malt whisky be urgently advanced several places up the agenda.

  Joanna was not one to flap, or, indeed, to show much concern, but he knew how much she was upset by the tremor in her voice as she cleaned the grazes on his palms and rubbed arnica into his bruises and said, ‘Was it definitely deliberate? I don’t like to think of someone trying to kill you.’