Death Watch

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘So you’ll be having a word with Gorgeous George, then.’ Paxman smiled slowly. ‘He’s a funny bastard. You heard about his latest scam? He sells a clapped-out Japanese car to a black bloke and charges him a fancy price because he says it used to belong to Nelson Mandela. This bloke meets a friend, boasts about it – turns out the friend’s also bought a car from Gorgeous George, same story. So they go round there to sort him out. A bit of a frackass ensues, and a neighbour calls us out. I send D’Arblay, who asks what’s occurring, and Gorgeous George gives him a wide-eyed look and says, “I never said I got ’em from Nelson Mandela. I said I got ’em from the Nissan main dealer.” What a funny bastard.’ Paxman drew a beefy sigh. ‘Almost makes you believe in God.’

  Gorgeous George – Pieter George Verwoerd was the name on his well-worn passport – was in his office, for once, in his shirt sleeves, making a telephone call. It was one of those moments of sudden quiet that happen in London, when for perhaps five minutes it simply chances that no traffic passes, nor pedestrians, dogs or planes. Outside on the forecourt the used cars basked in the spring sunshine, innocent as seals on a rock; and a sparrow sitting on the roof gutter guarding a nest site said ‘Chiswick, Chiswick,’ over and over again like a demented estate agent.

  Gorgeous George looked up as Slider came in. He said abruptly into the telephone ‘I’ll call you back,’ put the receiver down, and thrust his chair back from the desk to look up at Slider from a position of complete apparent relaxation.

  He was a larger-than-life character, giving an impression of great size, though he was neither tall nor fat. His light hair waved vigorously, like someone trying to attract the attention of a friend on the opposite platform of the Circle Line tube at Bayswater. His eyes were hazel and lazily feral, his lips full, his chin firm. He had a large, healthy laugh, which revealed an inordinate number of strong white teeth. Women found him irresistible. Men found him difficult to resist. His passage through life had been littered with broken hearts and broken limbs.

  He had been a game warden in his youth, so legend had it, and had got himself out of trouble on one occasion by staring down a lion so that it gave up the idea of eating him and simply walked away. It was also said that he had worked in a slaughterhouse, where he had learned how both to subdue and to execute the unwilling with the least exertion or damage to himself.

  Both legends were in their own way typical of the man and the effect he had on people. It was certain that he understood animals, and was suspiciously lucky on the ponies, and that even previously one-man dogs would go up to him with love in their eyes and lay their lives at his feet. The sniffer-dog handlers at Heathrow Airport knew him very well indeed, and viewed him with considerable jaundice.

  Slider knew he had a weakness for the man, and that he wasn’t alone in liking him, in spite of all suspicions. Gorgeous had so far got away with having some very disreputable acquaintances, and had never yet collected a record, though many visits had been paid him by various coppers, wanting to discuss cars with a tendency towards elective surgery, and orphaned consumer durables in search of a caring family environment.

  ‘Well now, to what do I owe the honour of this visit?’ he said at last.

  ‘I just fancied a chat,’ Slider said blandly, pulling a chair across and sitting down opposite him. ‘How’s it going, George?’

  ‘When did you ever just want a chat? I hope this is not going to be a roust,’ Gorgeous said. He opened the box of twenty-five Wilhelms which was lying on the desk, extracted one, offered it to Slider, and then slipped it between his luscious lips. ‘Because’ he went on, the cigarillo wagging with the words, ‘I always think of you as the thinking man’s copper, and I should hate to see you wasting your time and making a fool of yourself.’

  He struck a match and drew the flame onto the tobacco. A blue wreath of smoke rose towards the ceiling.

  ‘Your concern touches me deeply. But you should know better than me whether I’ve any reason to want to roust you’ Slider said.

  ‘My conscience is clear,’ he said, lazily smiling. ‘Much to my relief. I couldn’t fob you off like that blue-eyed boy of yours – what’s his name?’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Atherton.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s him. He came round here the other week asking me about funny money – as if I’d ever have to do with counterfeit! He took some convincing, too – and when I had a customer hanging around about to buy one of my specials. Lost me a perfectly good sale. They should use him on the recruitment posters,’ he added with assumed disgust. ‘He does for community relations what Icarus did for hang-gliding.’

  ‘You shouldn’t underestimate him,’ Slider said. ‘He’s a good copper.’

  George shrugged, removed the cigar from his lips, and inspected the burning end with interest. ‘You shouldn’t send a boy out to do a man’s job,’ he said. ‘A boy with his mind on other things, as well – I saw him afterwards in The Wellington with his arm round a bird, looked like a plonk. Practically climbing inside her blouse, the eager little mountaineer.’

  Slider laughed out loud, and George lifted his eyes to him. ‘That’s rich, coming from you!’

  George grinned ferally. ‘Ah, but I don’t let it distract me from the real purpose of life.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Making money,’ he said simply. ‘You got money, you got power – and incidentally all the women you can eat. And, not to change the subject, what do you want?’

  Slider produced the photograph of Neal. ‘I believe you know this man.’

  Gorgeous George looked at it and handed it back indifferently. ‘Why should you think that?’

  ‘He was seen going into your premises on Saturday afternoon.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean to say I know him, does it? My premises are open to the general public.’

  ‘But he was here on Saturday afternoon?’

  ‘You’ve just said he was seen going in. What do you want from me? Reassurance?’

  ‘Did you see this man on Saturday afternoon?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘I couldn’t have seen him, because I wasn’t here on Saturday afternoon.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Well, as it happened, I had a business meeting with a financier in Newbury.’

  ‘At what time?’

  ‘Two o’clock, two-thirty, and three-fifteen.’

  Slider grinned. ‘Business, eh?’

  ‘I came away fifteen hundred to the good. What would you call it?’

  ‘You must have a system.’

  ‘I have an infallible system, which I will divulge to you at no extra charge.’ He leaned forward and lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘I always back the grey. And when there’s no grey, I back the noseband.’

  ‘And that works?’ Slider asked with interest.

  ‘It’s as reliable as studying form, and much less like hard work.’

  ‘I’ve heard it said,’ Slider stared innocently at the ceiling, ‘that you lean on the paddock rails and talk to the horses as they walk past. And that the horses tell you what they’ve decided amongst themselves.’

  ‘You get a nice class of conversation from the English thoroughbred racehorse,’ he remarked. ‘I’ m a traditionalist. I love the simple things – English countryside, well-bred horses, and old-fashioned English coppers. God, what a country this is! You should never have let the Empire go.’

  He looked expectantly at Slider, like someone facing a friend across a tennis-net, in anticipation of a challenging but good-natured game, and Slider squared his mental shoulders. It was a bit much, he thought, that he should have to perform for his living. This wasn’t Broadway.

  He tapped the photograph as it lay on the desk between them. ‘We’ve been told that this man was seeing a woman on your premises.’

  ‘And which of them do you want to know about – the man or the woman?’

  ‘Let’s start with the woman,’ Slider said, hoping a
new path might prove straighter. ‘What’s her name?’

  George shrugged. ‘The name she gave me was Helen Woodman. Whether that was her real name or not…’ He let it hang.

  ‘And what was she doing here?’

  ‘She rented my small flat off me. You know I’ve got two flats over the showroom? Well, I have – the one I live in, and a small one, furnished – just one room plus kitchen and bathroom – which I let out sometimes.’

  ‘Only sometimes?’

  ‘When it suits me. Sometimes I want to use it myself, for friends or relations.’

  Slider tried to marry up the notions of Gorgeous and friendship and failed. He put his money on relations. He remembered, irrelevantly, the story of the Irish couple who sat up all through their honeymoon night waiting for the carnal relations to arrive.

  ‘Is she there now?’

  ‘No. She quit on Sunday.’

  ‘Oh? Did a bunk?’

  George smiled. ‘That’s your nasty, suspicious police mentality asserting itself. No, she didn’t do a bunk. She told me from the beginning she only wanted the place for three weeks. She said she had some research to do in London, and she needed a pied-à-terre for three weeks, that’s all.’

  ‘What sort of research?’

  ‘Didn’t say.’

  ‘Where did she come from? Did she give you a permanent address?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask her for one? That was rather trusting of you, wasn’t it, George?’

  Gorgeous George turned his hands palm upwards. ‘She paid me cash in advance. There’s nothing in there she could nick or damage. And if she gave me any trouble, I was quite capable of handling her.’

  ‘Can you describe her?’

  ‘Five foot eight or nine, about twenty-six, slim, long red hair – a real looker.’

  The red-headed tart again, Slider thought. This was better. ‘Could you help us put together a photofit of her?’

  Gorgeous shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t do you much good. She wore very heavy makeup – clever stuff, like theatrical makeup. Without it, she’d look quite different. And the red hair was probably a wig. Have you ever seen a torn off duty? Well, then, you know all about the world of illusion.’

  ‘Was she a tom?’

  ‘Not quite.’ George hesitated. ‘Not a regular one, but there was something about her. She was putting out, but it didn’t come from the heart – or the loins, if you like. The way she looked at you – she had the cold eye. Like a parrot, know what I mean? I suppose if she was doing research, she must have been a student of some kind, which is much the same thing.’

  Slider smiled at this jaundiced view of youth. ‘What sort of accent did she have?’

  Gorgeous shrugged. ‘Standard south-east.’ He drew thoughtfully on his cheroot. ‘She was good class, not a poor white. Well fed. A big, strong girl, like a basketball player. I watched her carry her suitcase up the stairs and, she handled it like it was nothing.’

  Slider sighed inwardly. No two things George had said about her added up so far. ‘How did she find out about your flat?’ he asked next.

  ‘I didn’t ask,’ Gorgeous said indifferently. ‘Business is business. Anyway, everyone round here knows about it. She could have asked in a shop or a pub.’

  ‘Do you advertise it anywhere?’

  ‘I used to, in the newsagent at the end of the road, but I don’t bother any more. Like I said, everyone knows about it, and I don’t let it out all the time.’

  ‘When exactly did she first approach you?’

  ‘It was a Monday at the beginning of March.’ He glanced at the calendar on the wall. ‘When would that be? The fifth, I think. Yeah, Monday the fifth. She said she wanted the flat for three weeks from the following Monday, up to this Monday just gone. Paid me cash in advance.’

  ‘Did you see her about much? What did she do all day?’

  George shook his head. ‘She wasn’t there all the time. I’d see her coming and going for a few days, and then she’d disappear for a few days. Then she’d be back. Like that.’

  ‘Did any other men visit her at your flat?’

  ‘What d’you mean, any other men?’

  ‘Apart from him.’ Slider gave the photograph of Neal a little push.

  Gorgeous George sighed and looked deeply at him. ‘Don’t do that to me, Bill. Not to me. No little traps. I never saw that man go up to her flat.’

  Slider looked back. ‘There’s no grief for you in this, George. I just want to know.’

  ‘I never saw anyone go up there, with her or without her. That’s the truth.’ Slider said nothing. ‘What does it take to convince you? Look, I rented the rooms to her, and after that the place was hers for three weeks. It’s got a separate entrance, up the old iron fire escape round the back, so she could come and go as she pleased, and so could anyone she wanted to invite home. I never saw this bloke go in there, or any other bloke, and for the matter of that, I never saw her to speak to but the twice, once when she moved in, to collect the key, and once when she moved out, to give it back.’

  ‘When exactly was that? When did you last see her?’

  ‘On Sunday morning. She rang the bell of my flat, about half elevenish, and said that she’d changed her plans. She wouldn’t be staying on until Monday after all, she was leaving right away, and she gave me back the key and off she went.’

  ‘She went? Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah, I watched her go. She had her suitcase with her. She crossed the road and went down Ravenscourt Road as if she was going to the station. I went straight up to the flat to have a look round, make sure it was all right, and it was clean as a whistle, polished and everything. She’d gone all right. And that was the last I saw of her.’

  Slider contemplated the new information with faint dismay. If she left on Sunday morning, that put her out of the frame, didn’t it? And what, then, was Neal doing in the area on Sunday night? Unless she had already set up the meeting with Neal, which the murderer was to keep in her stead – and that had always been a possibility.

  Gorgeous had been watching him. ‘What’s this tart done, anyway?’ he asked.

  Slider came back. ‘Nothing, as far as we know. We just want to ask her a few questions.’

  Gorgeous George grinned. ‘She doesn’t seem all that eager to talk to you, or anyone else for that matter, to judge by the way she’s covered her tracks.’

  ‘What sort of a woman was she?’ Slider asked abruptly. ‘Did you like her? You’ve known a lot of women in your time, George. Just person to person, on your instinct, what did you think of her?’

  George drew again on the cheroot, and blew a cloud up to the ceiling, watching it with narrowed eyes. ‘It’s hard to say. She was a good-looking skirt, and showing it off, except in a kind of way she just wasn’t there at all.’

  He thought a moment. ‘You know how female crabs grow a new shell every couple of years? They just climb out of the old one, and the new soft one underneath hardens up. And when you go diving on the reef, you see what you think is a crab, but when you pick it up, it’s just an empty shell, perfect in every way, except there’s no eyes in the eye stalks. That’s how you tell. You look at it, but it doesn’t look back.’ He tapped an inch of ash delicately into the ashtray, where it lay like the pale ghost of its parent cigar. ‘That’s how she was. Maybe it was all that makeup. It kinda depersonalises a woman.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d want too much personality,’ Slider said, from his knowledge of George’s sexual appetite.

  ‘I like women,’ George said. ‘I don’t let ’em bother me, but I like ’em. But this one—’ He shrugged. ‘Well, when I’m on the job and giving my all to a woman, I prefer her to be there.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Kicking the Puppy

  IT WAS VERY LATE WHEN Slider finally started off on the drive to the Catatonian outpost of Ruislip, where, until Joanna, he had spent the little left over bit of his life that was not work. Atherton’s dinner ha
d had to be cancelled, of course, and he had snatched time only for a telephone conversation with Joanna, but she had taken it very well.

  ‘It’s all right, I need to practise anyway,’ she said. ‘We’re doing Scheherezade on Friday. It’s not called Sheer Hazard for nothing, you know. Shall I see you tomorrow?’

  ‘I hope so,’ he said, and then felt mean about it. ‘Yes, of course. I’ll make time, somehow.’

  ‘All right,’ she said pacifically. ‘You sound tired.’

  ‘I am,’ he said, and left it at that.

  And that had been what seemed like hours ago, and now he was very, very tired. His mind nudged at the various situations he was supposed to be getting to grips with, without biting into any of them. The drive home along the Western Avenue was usually good thinking time, when a lot of sorting and clearing went on in his back brain; but tonight he was too tired to do more than fret and mourn.

  Home. Strange that he should ever have called it home, and yet he still did when he wasn’t thinking; when Joanna wasn’t about. There was no pleasure there, no companionship and very little comfort, and as far as he could remember there never had been. He hadn’t particularly wanted to move out there, but Irene had liked the house and the neighbourhood, and in fairness he had felt it should be her choice that prevailed, since she would be there a great deal more than him.

  Of course, they might have moved onwards and upwards to better things if he had fulfilled Irene’s ambition and got himself promoted with proper regularity. The glamorous M40 corridor lay within tempting reach; the social cachet of the detached house was not an empty dream for the man who Got On as he should. The children might have gone to a private school; Irene could have made friends with people who drove Range Rovers and Volvo estates; and Slider might once more have lived in a house with chimneys, and windows that stopped a respectable distance from the floor.