Shadow Play

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Oddly enough, neither do I. And it does pose some troubling questions.’

  ‘The question uppermost on my mind is whether you need an X-ray. This wrist looks awfully swollen. It could be a fracture.’

  ‘Everything moves about all right,’ he said. ‘I think it’s just a sprain. I’ll put some ice on it and see how it is tomorrow.’

  ‘Typical macho man. Talking of ice …’ she said, and topped up both their glasses. Then, ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘Only fiddly bits. Canned apes.’ It was what she always called cocktail food. ‘I’m starving.’

  ‘Cheese on toast?’

  ‘Please.’

  He followed her to the kitchen, and sat at the table with an ice pack on his wrist, watching her moving about and waiting for the question.

  ‘Did you see who it was?’ she asked.

  ‘No, there was no time. And the car had tinted windows.’

  A long pause. ‘It’s not going to be Trevor Bates all over again, is it?’ she said at last, with her back to him.

  There, that was the one. Trevor ‘The Needle’ Bates had escaped from prison after Slider had helped put him there, and had made determined efforts to kill him. Joanna had been pregnant with George at the time, making them both doubly vulnerable. But Bates was dead, having slipped and fallen off a roof during a wild, adrenaline-fuelled chase through Shepherd’s Bush. Slider had seen the body. He wasn’t coming back.

  However, he had put many people away in his time, some of whom might well feel resentful – though actually to try to kill a policeman required not only industrial-strength resentment but also a detachment from reality that in most cases prevented the task being carried out with efficiency. Bates had been intelligent and resourceful, but two minutes in his company told you he was only hanging on to the world you inhabited by his fingertips. The combination was rare, fortunately. Normal precautions were usually enough.

  ‘It’s not like that,’ he said.

  She said nothing more until she had placed the plate in front of him and sat down opposite. Then she said, ‘How did they know where you were? Did they follow you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I made sure they didn’t follow me afterwards, though. Nobody followed me here, I promise you.’

  She gave half a smile. ‘Horses and stable doors jump to mind.’

  ‘I’ll be more careful in future. Try not to worry.’

  ‘Of course not. Things like this happen all the time, right?’ She took a sip of whisky. ‘You’ve got some high-profile enemies. People who could afford to hire a hitman.’

  ‘Hitman,’ he scoffed, for her sake.

  ‘People like Millichip. If an Assistant Commissioner doesn’t know where to get hold of a bad hat—’

  ‘I never thought of Millichip! Of course, he’d find some low-life he’s got a hold over and put him on my tail. He’ll be gutted when he finds out it went wrong.’

  ‘You can joke, Bill—’

  ‘I can.’ He reached across and laid his hand over hers. ‘It was a very amateur attempt and if I’d been paying attention – which I will from now on – he wouldn’t have got anywhere near me. In fact, I should really have taken his number for parking on a double yellow. Whoever he was, he must have been a real clot not to think of that.’

  ‘Maybe he wasn’t trying to kill you,’ she said lightly. ‘Maybe he’d just realised he was going to get a ticket and tried to run away.’

  ‘People do stupider things,’ he said.

  He was required, of course, to make a report on the incident on Thursday morning. Mr Porson looked grave, and said, ‘We can’t have this sort of thing. Which of your slags is fresh out of the pokey?’

  ‘I’ll make enquiries,’ Slider said.

  ‘Pity you didn’t get the index. Turned left into King Street, did he? Must be cameras along there.’

  ‘My firm’s fully stretched—’

  ‘I’ll find a uniform to put on it,’ Porson said impatiently. ‘What worries me is, how did they know where you were? Anyone been making enquiries about you?’

  ‘I’ll ask around.’

  ‘Do that. Looks bad, having one of us targeted like that. Looks sloppy.’

  It’s lovely to know how much you care, Slider thought, as he went away. His wrist was swollen and stiff and Joanna had strapped it tight for him. Luckily it was his left, and he was right-handed. And he had a bruise the size of a saucer on his hip. But Porson couldn’t know that.

  The puzzle was soon resolved. Slider called his team together and said, ‘Has anyone been asking questions about me recently? Any unusual enquiries?’

  Everyone murmured in the negative, looking at one another. And then Fathom, with a jolt like someone who’s just touched an electric fence, said, ‘Oh, guv, I just remembered. Some woman rang last night after you’d left, wanting to speak to you. But she was pukka. I forgot to tell you, cos there was no message, she said she’d ring back.’

  ‘What do you mean, she was pukka?’ Slider asked.

  ‘She was from the commissioner’s office. Said her name was Hastings, Mrs Hastings, the commissioner’s PA. Dead posh voice. She asked for you, and I told her you’d gone, and she said she’d ring tomorrow – today, that is.’

  The commissioner’s PA? What would the commissioner – who was so high-up they said God called him sir – want with lowly DCI Slider? Even if he wanted to tell him off, he wouldn’t do it in person. He’d have people to do that for him.

  ‘And did you tell her where I was going?’ he asked patiently.

  ‘No, guv. I wouldn’t do that,’ Fathom said, injured. ‘I’m not daft. Anyway, she already knew.’

  Curiouser and curiouser. ‘Tell me exactly what she said. What you said, and what she said.’

  Fathom creased his brow. ‘She asked for you, I said you’d gone for the night, and she said had you gone home, because she could ring you there. She said she’d got the number. I said no, you’d gone to a meeting, and she said was that the one at Westminster Hall and I said …’ He paused, enlightenment slowly sifting through his brain like water through layers of shale.

  ‘Go on,’ said Slider.

  ‘I said no, it was the one at Hammersmith Town Hall,’ he said unhappily. ‘But wait, guv, she said, oh yes, of course, like she knew all about it, and she said she wouldn’t bother you there, she’d call you tomorrow. So I thought …’ His voice trailed off.

  No one, not even Swilley, said anything. If anything, she looked sorry for him.

  ‘I mean,’ he went on pathetically, ‘she sounded so, you know, pukka, and like she really knew. I mean, I thought …’

  Gascoyne had been quietly pattering away on the computer, and said quietly, ‘There’s no Mrs Hastings in the commissioner’s office.

  Slider said nothing, letting it sink in. He thought the lesson had been learned.

  Atherton said, ‘I wonder what she was going to say if you were there, and she got put through to you?’

  ‘I’m sure she had it all worked out. Try not to worry about her too much,’ Swilley told him sourly.

  ‘Who could it have been?’ Someone was bound to say it, and in the event it was Loessop. ‘Have you put any uppity females away, guv?’

  ‘Any slag could get a female to make a phone call for him,’ Hart pointed out.

  ‘But Jezza said she spoke posh.’

  ‘Anyone can put on a posh accent,’ Hart retorted. ‘Posh enough to fool him, anyway.’

  ‘Let’s not have any pointless speculation,’ Slider said. ‘We’ve got enough to do. I just want you all to be on your guard from now on. And report anything suspicious to me.’

  ‘And don’t tell any hitmen where the guv’nor is,’ Hart concluded. ‘No sense making their job easy for ’em.’

  ‘Enough,’ Slider said firmly. He didn’t want internal sniping. And if Fathom’s face got any redder he’d set fire to his hair. ‘Report.’

  Fathom spoke, perhaps hoping to make some points back. ‘I was down at
Ivanka’s yest’d’y, guv. All the clubs along there’ve got cameras, and I got a lot of stuff for the whole road for that Thursday. I haven’t put it all together yet, but I got the rent boys coming out of Ivanka’s all right, and getting in a car with Kimmelman. It was parked just along the road. I got the index, and I’ve run it through the DVLA. The registered owner comes back to Target.’

  ‘So he’s got a company car as well?’ said LaSalle.

  ‘I wonder where he kept it,’ said Loessop. ‘There’s not any parking round the back of Ruskin House, is there?’

  ‘No, those flats’re too old. No garridges, either,’ LaSalle supplied. ‘Maybe he’s got resident’s parking down one of the side roads.’

  ‘Now we got the index,’ McLaren said with enthusiasm, ‘we can put it through the ANPR, see where he went with it.’

  ‘We don’t know that he had it all the time,’ Gascoyne said cautiously. ‘If it was a company car, he might only have had use of it on certain occasions.’

  ‘Worth following it up, though,’ said McLaren. ‘What make and model was it?’

  ‘Beamer,’ said Fathom. ‘Black BMW X3.’

  ‘Not entirely unlike, then, the one that drove at me last night?’ said Slider.

  ‘You tosser, Jez, why didn’t you say so?’ Hart said witheringly.

  ‘We weren’t talking about that,’ he defended himself feebly.

  ‘Never mind that,’ Swilley said impatiently, ‘where does it leave us?’

  ‘Apparently with Kimmelman back from the dead,’ Atherton said calmly, perched on a desk with his elegant ankles crossed, ‘and hoping to wreak awful revenge.’

  ‘Bit of a confused zombie,’ Loessop commented. ‘We’re the ones trying to avenge his death. He ought to be going after his killer.’

  ‘That would make it too easy,’ Atherton said.

  ‘It puts Holdsworth slap bang in the middle of it, though, doesn’t it?’ LaSalle said hopefully. ‘Kimmelman’s his employee, and his company owns the motor that tries to kill the guv.’

  ‘If,’ Slider said, taking a tug on the reins, ‘it was the same car. There must be more than one black BMW X3 in the metropolitan area. And if Holdsworth had access to it or even knew about it.’

  ‘I can look into it,’ said McLaren. ‘Bound to be able to pick it up somewhere down King Street.’

  ‘Mr Porson’s putting someone on it. You’ve got enough to do,’ said Slider.

  ‘It’s still not making any sense, though,’ Loessop said broodingly, pulling at his chin plaits. ‘Kimmelman makes a blackmail tape of Kevin Rathkeale but never tries to blackmail him – why? Then someone whacks him and turns over his gaff, presumably looking for the tape – why?’

  ‘And why are we spending all this time looking into Davy Lane?’ Hart grumbled. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘It’s the only common link,’ Swilley said, ‘between Kimmelman, Holdsworth and Jack Silverman.’

  ‘I don’t see how Silverman comes into it,’ LaSalle said, ‘just because he was going to do the building on the Davy Lane thing. It could have been any builder. What’s his connection with Kimmelman and Rathkeale and everything?’

  There was a moment’s silence, and then several people said at once, ‘Myra Silverman.’

  ‘She was definitely connected with Rathkeale,’ Gascoyne said. ‘We had his secretary saying she’d been bugging him.’

  ‘I think another visit to Mr Rathkeale is indicated,’ said Slider. ‘Meanwhile, as a matter of urgency, let’s find out where that car was on that Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We need to know who Kimmelman was seeing. Because there’s every possibility he was mixing with some tasty characters, and that there were other things going on in his life, apart from the Rathkeale shake-down. Other blackmails, drugs, stolen goods – who knows?’ He ran his hand distractedly backwards through his hair. ‘I think I may have encouraged too much concentration on one aspect of his life.’

  ‘Not your fault, guv,’ Hart said. ‘Up till now we had nothing to go on, except Target.’

  ‘That, from you, is magnanimous,’ said Slider, ‘considering the whole Davy Lane thing is anathema to you.’

  Hart grinned. ‘Yeah boss. What you said.’

  FOURTEEN

  Conservation Piece

  In the interests of thoroughness, tying up loose ends, and showing generosity to her boss’s obsession with real estate, Hart went to see a Mr Meikle in the council’s planning department. She had asked the switchboard if anyone had been there for a long time, and was told chippily that he had been there ‘for ever’, which in the event turned out to be thirty-two years, pretty much the same thing as far as anyone under thirty was concerned.

  Meikle turned out to be a bulky man with a well-worn suit, heavy glasses and a comb-over. Hart tried not to stare at it, while thinking, how can any man stand in front of the mirror every morning with the left side of his hair five inches longer than the right, carefully spread the strands over his bald top, and regard the result with satisfaction? Did he really, really think it made him look as if he had a full head of hair? What was going on here? Of course, baldness was a touchy subject for men; the younger generation dealt with it by aggressively shaving the lot off, thumbing the nose at cruel nature. But the comb-over was such a forlorn thing, it made her want to give him a big hug, while simultaneously shaking him till his teeth rattled.

  He greeted her with a suspicious reserve, which she put down at first to her colour, before realising it was actually her sex that made him nervous. Once she’d twigged, she was able to work on him with a line of gentle flirting until he was so relaxed, he was practically putting his feet up on the desk. Ha, still got it! she thought. Eat your heart out, Norma’s bust.

  He knew all about Davy Lane, though he called it Coal Sidings Road, or rather by the jaunty abbreviation CSR. ‘It’s been political all the way, at every stage,’ he said. ‘Personally, I was in favour of the council flats plan. Back then, it was thought a disgrace for big houses like that to belong to one family, when there were people queuing up for council properties. Been on the list for years, some of them, and little hope of getting a place. Of course,’ he allowed, ‘the Bush has changed now. Very different place. There’s a lot of rich people have moved in, luxury properties everywhere, we’re becoming trendy – we’re the new Notting Hill, if you like.’

  It wasn’t clear from his tone whether he liked. He seemed torn between the traditional Labour disapproval of personal wealth, and the pride in his area becoming a desirable destination.

  ‘But one thing’s for sure,’ he concluded, ‘the whole process, viz a viz the CSR, has been a waste of what could have been valuable housing, one way or the other. And nobody’s done well out of it.’

  ‘Not even the developers?’ Hart tried him with.

  He sniffed. ‘Won’t break my heart over them! But as a matter of fact, they’ve lost a packet as well. That Target’s pretty much gone bust, so I’ve heard. Well, there was a lot of chicanery behind them buying CSR in the first place.’

  ‘There was?’ she asked, with flattering attention. Enlighten me, oh wise one!

  ‘Well,’ he said, gratified, ‘it was the Labour-controlled council that first wanted to put a listing on it, did you know that?’

  ‘I thought they compulsory-purchased it to pull it down?’

  ‘Yes, but they hadn’t got the money to carry it through, and when they knew they were going to be chucked out at the next election, they tried to rush the listing through, just to stymie the incoming council, so’s they wouldn’t be able to do anything with it. Land them with a white elephant, expensive to maintain, impossible to develop, see? But as it happened, they couldn’t get it done in time.’

  ‘But the new council went ahead and listed it anyway. Why’d they do that?’

  He chuckled. ‘Oh, that was the worst of all! See, the new council, Conservative-controlled, they knew there was no money, and the CSR was getting to be an eyesore. They always intended to
sell it off. But there was this councillor, Mr Holdsworth, he reckoned that if it was listed, it would knock the price right down, because a place like that’s only valuable if it can be developed. So he puts pressure on to get it listed. And then, when the listing’s gone through, he buys it himself, because he just happens to be the boss of a development company.’

  ‘Target.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Hart frowned. ‘But surely the council would want as much money as possible for the sale. Why would they agree to go ahead with the listing if it would lose them money?’

  ‘Oh, he talked them into it. Talked about heritage and architecture and aesthetics and so on and so forth. Blah blah blah. Made out he was just trying to maintain the last little bits of the Bush’s history – tragedy to lose such venerable buildings – future generation would condemn us for chucking away their treasure. And so on and so forth. What they didn’t know, of course, was that he was the boss of Target. He kept that nice and quiet.’ He chuckled again. ‘People in local politics, they think they’re the bees knees, but mostly they’re just Mr and Mrs Average, wet behind the ears as far as wheeling and dealing is concerned. So someone really savvy, like this Holdsworth bloke, can run rings round ’em. Still,’ he drew out a handkerchief and blew his nose, mirth having led to moisture. ‘Still,’ he went on, ‘they got their revenge all right. Once they worked out what was going on, how Holdsworth had done ’em like kippers, they put the boot in.’ Hart noticed that the refinement of his accent and his vocabulary had slipped, the further into his story he got. ‘They put the CSR into the Conservation Area. Now there’s double protection on it, so he’ll never get to pull it down,’ he concluded with satisfaction.

  ‘But he’d hoped to pull it down with the Grade II listing in place?’ Hart queried.

  ‘With him being inside, on the council, he must have thought he could do it. But he’d turned people against him, and like I said, once they found out the full story, that was it. And then he lost his seat at the next election, and that was that. There he was with a load of old buildings he couldn’t do anything with. Serve him right!’