Orchestrated Death

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Once, in the few weeks at the very beginning of their marriage, they had both slept naked, but the idea was now so remote that it surprised him to remember it. After those first weeks, Irene had begun to wear her trousseau nightdresses because ‘it was a shame to waste them’, and he had begun to wear pyjamas because to continue naked while she slept clothed seemed too pointed, like a criticism.

  She came back from the bathroom bringing the smell of toothpaste and Imperial Leather with her, neat and almost pretty in her flowered cotton nightgown and with her dark hair composed and shiningly brushed. She was so complete, he thought, but it was not a completeness which satisfied. It was a completeness which suggested that the last word had been said about her, and that nothing about her could be any different: this was Irene, and that was that.

  Again, he thought, that was in complete contrast to Joanna, who in his thoughts of her seemed always to be flowing about like an amoeba, constantly in a state of change. Away from her he found it hard accurately to remember her face. Thinking about her at all had to be done cautiously, as if it might push the malleable material of her out of shape.

  Irene stopped at the foot of the bed, and was looking at him, her head a little lowered, chewing her bottom lip in a way that made her appear uncharacteristically vulnerable. She had a barrel-at-the-edge-of-Niagara look about her which warned him that she was about to broach a dangerous subject, and he wished he could forestall her; but to do so was to admit that there was no longer any point in caring enough to quarrel, and he couldn’t quite do that to her.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked when it was plain she needed a shove.

  For another long moment she hesitated, teetering, and then, all in a rush, she said, ‘I know all about her – your girlfriend.’

  Strange how the body acknowledged guilt even when the mind felt none. For a moment the hot, peppery fluid of it completely replaced his blood and rushed around his body, making his heart thump unexpectedly in his stomach; yet even while that was happening he had replied calmly and without measurable hesitation, ‘I haven’t got a girlfriend.’

  Irene made a restless, negating movement and went on as if he hadn’t spoken. Of course, I’ve known for some time that something was going on, but I didn’t know what. I mean, the fact that we haven’t made love for fifteen months –’

  He was stricken that she knew exactly how long it was. He could only have guessed. But female lives were marked out in periods and pills, and sex for them, he supposed, would always be tied to dates.

  ‘And then, all those times that you’re not here – well, some of them are work, I suppose, but not all of them. But I wasn’t sure until quite recently what it was.’

  ‘There’s nothing going on. You’re just imagining things,’ he said, but she looked at him, and he saw in the depths of her expression not anger but a terrible hurt; and he saw in one unwelcome moment of insight how for a woman this was a wound which would not heal. A man whose wife was unfaithful would be consumed with anger, outrage, jealousy perhaps; but to a wife, unfaithfulness was a deep sickness that ate away at the bones of self.

  ‘You don’t have to lie to me,’ she said. ‘I could tell from their voices that they knew all about it, Nicholls and O’Flaherty, when they phoned me up with your excuses. And Atherton – I’ve seen the way he looks at me, pityingly. I suppose they all know – everyone except me. And laugh about it. What a gay dog you are! I bet they slap your back and congratulate you, don’t they?’

  ‘You’re wrong, completely wrong –’

  ‘I’ve put up with it so far. But now you’ve started sleeping the night with her, and using this case as your excuse, and I’m damned if I’ll put up with that! It’s disgusting! And with a girl young enough to be your daughter! How could you do a thing like that?’

  So many things ran through Slider’s mind at that moment that he was, mercifully, prevented from speaking. For one thing he was surprised that Irene, even in the grip of oratory, should describe Joanna as being young enough to be his daughter; and another considerable number of brain cells was preoccupied with the problem of how she could possibly have found out. No-one at ‘F’ District would give him away, he would have staked his life on that, and the notion that she had put a private detective onto him was ludicrous. And underneath these preoccupations was the thought that these were shameful things to be thinking at such a moment, and that he should be feeling bad and guilty and remorseful at having hurt Irene.

  And what he did say in the end came out sounding quite calm and natural. ‘You’re completely mistaken. I haven’t got a girlfriend, and I certainly wouldn’t be interested in anyone young enough to be my daughter.’

  ‘Oh, you liar!’ she cried softly, and with a superbly unstudied movement flung a photograph down on the bed beside him. ‘Who’s this, then? A perfect stranger? Don’t tell me you carry a perfect stranger’s picture around in your wallet. You bastard! You’ve never carried a picture of me around with you, never, not even –’

  She stopped and turned away abruptly, so that he shouldn’t see her crying. Slider picked up the photograph, bemused and amused and relieved and sorry, and most of all just terribly, horribly sad. From the palm of his hand Anne-Marie looked up at him, all sun-dazzle and whipped hair and eternal, unshakeable youth, the little white starfish hand against the dark blue sea frozen for ever in that moment of joyful exuberance.

  Loving Joanna had stopped him being haunted by her, but now it all came back to him in a rush; the pointless, pitiful waste of her sordid little death. They had put her down like an old dog, stripped her with the callousness of abattoir workers, and dumped her on the grimy floor of that grim and empty flat. He remembered the childlike tumble of her hair and the pathos of her small, unripe breasts, and a pang of nameless grief settled in his stomach. It was his old grief for a world in which people did such pointlessly horrible things to each other; sorrow for the loss of the world in which he had grown up, where the good people outnumbered the bad, and there was always something to look forward to. It was the reason he had taken this job in the first place, and the thing he had to fight against, because it unmanned him and made him useless to perform it. Oh, but he and his colleagues struggled day after day and could make no jot of difference to the way things were, or the way things would be, and the urge to stop struggling was so strong, so strong, because it was hopeless, wasn’t it?

  Irene had turned again, and now flinched from the despair in his face. She had always known there was a streak of melancholy in him, which he had tried to hide from her as from himself; but until this moment she had not known how strong it was, or how deep it went. She remembered all at once those stories of policemen who drank themselves insensible the moment they came off duty, who took drugs, or rutted their way to oblivion through countless women’s bodies; and of the policemen who committed suicide, unem-phatically, like tired children lying down just anywhere to sleep. She wondered what it was that had held Slider together in the face of his own despair, and had little hope that it was her, except in so far as she and the children provided a kind of counter-irritant. She wondered how much longer it would work, and what would happen then; and whether, when the end came, she would have any right to resent her fate as victim of it.

  She looked at him with the resignation of a woman who sees that she will never be as important to her husband as his work, and for whom to stop minding is the worst of the possible alternatives. Slider saw the resistance go out of her and was grateful, though he didn’t know why it had happened.

  He said, ‘This is a photograph of the girl who was murdered, Anne-Marie Austen. The case I’m investigating. You can easily check that, if you don’t believe me.’

  She turned away. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I believe you.’ She pretended to be looking in a drawer, to keep her back to him, and her next words sounded curiously muffled. ‘I shouldn’t have looked in your wallet. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does. I s
houldn’t have done it.’

  He thought she was crying. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Come to bed.’

  But when she turned she was dry-eyed, only looked very tired. She got into bed beside him and lay down, not touching him, and then turned on her side, facing away from him, her sleep position. Slider put his book down and hesitated, looking down at her. So it was all right again. The danger was over. He had gone up the side turning and the posse had thundered past. It would be all right for a long time now because she would feel guilty about having wrongly accused him.

  He wished that he could have made love to her then: it might have comforted them both, and given at least a semblance of resolution to what was otherwise unfinished business between them. But it had been too long since they last did it for habit to achieve the gesture, and he could not do it from the heart of any feelings for her. He switched out the light and lay down. Since there was Joanna, he thought in the dark, he could not do that.

  CHAPTER 13

  A Woman of No Substance

  The department meeting was held in the CID room, the other offices being too small to hold everyone simultaneously. The others were all there when Slider went in. WDC Swilley, who hated her real name of Kathleen so much that she actually preferred being called Norma, was sitting on one of the battered desks swinging her long, beautiful legs for the benefit of her colleagues. She was a tall, strong, athletic girl, with the golden skin, large white teeth, streaky-blonde hair, and curiously unmemorable features of a California Beach Beauty. Slider often had the feeling that he was the only member of the department she hadn’t seduced, which he felt lent him a certain superiority over the others. Obviously she regarded him as a real person, while the others were only sex objects to her.

  She smiled at him now and said, ‘Here he comes, crumpled and in a hurry, the perfect example of the Married Middle-Management Man.’

  ‘You missed out some. What about Menopausal?’ said Beevers, sitting where he could get the best view of the famous Legs, which often haunted his dreams. He was an almost circular young man, with thick, densely curly light-brown hair, and a rampant and disarming moustache. He was married to a tiny, round brown mouse of a woman called Mary. He adored her, but her serviceable legs only twinkled, never swung.

  ‘How about Manic?’ Atherton added.

  ‘Not today,’ Slider said, loosening his tie with an automatic gesture. Today I am a monument of calm. A man who has done his homework can’t be shaken. Time you youngsters learned that – flair is no substitute for hard work.’

  He looked around them as they groaned automatically. There was DC Anderson, just back from holiday and probably bulging with photographs he wanted to show around. He was keen on what he called ‘artistic shots’, which nearly all turned out to be various stages of a sunset reflected on sea and wet sand. The other DCs, wooden-headed, obsessive Hunt and quiet, introverted Mackay, were sitting solemnly side by side on hard chairs, bracketed by the sprawling charm of Swilley and Atherton, and counterpoised by stumpy Beevers, who had a bit missing from his brain and so could never be made to feel shame or embarrassment.

  These, he thought, far more than the three in Ruislip, were his family; only if it were a family, he was probably the mother, while the Superintendent was the authoritarian father. They were one short at the moment, for the DCI, Colin Raisbrook, had suffered a mild heart attack and was on extended sick-leave. It was not yet clear whether he would be returning to the department. If they gave him early retirement, as Slider had, long realised with an inward sigh, Irene would be expecting him to be promoted to DCI in Raisbrook’s place; and if he was not, his life would be made extremely unpleasant.

  ‘It’s a filthy day,’ Norma said unemphatically, staring out of the window at the cold and steady rain, ‘and due to get worse. Any moment now Dickson will come breezing through that door like an advertisement for cosmetic toothpaste, and I shall want to murder him all over again.’

  ‘Hullo Super!’ Anderson chirruped, and Hunt obediently chanted the ritual reply.

  ‘Hullo Gorgeous!’

  ‘If he calls me WDC Snockers once more, I shall murder him,’ Swilley went on undeterred. ‘I hate a man in authority who tries to be funny and then expects you to laugh.’

  ‘I don’t think he does,’ Atherton said. ‘I think he exists purely for his own gratification.’

  This was too far above the head of Hunt, who brought the tone down to his own level by saying, ‘But if you murdered him, Norm, what would you do with the body?’

  ‘Sell it to the canteen,’ Mackay suggested. ‘Always roast pork on Wednesdays.’

  ‘I thought they got that from Hammersmith Hospital,’ Anderson joined in. ‘Wasn’t it Wednesday we had that pileup at Speake’s Corner, the Cortina and the artic? Brought the Cortina driver out in pieces?’

  ‘You lot don’t get any better. All this fourth-form humour makes me tired,’ Atherton said witheringly.

  ‘You’re always tired,’ Swilley remarked with a sad shake of the head, and Anderson hooted.

  ‘How would you know that, Norma? Let us in on your secret.’

  They were interrupted, not before time in Slider’s opinion, by the entry of Detective Superintendent Dickson. Dickson was large and broad and weighty, a prize bull of a man – no-one would ever have thought of calling him fat – whose brisk movements, added to the sheer size of him, gave him an unstoppable impetus, like a runaway lorry. He had a wide, ruddy, genial Yorkshire face, held in place by a spreading and bottled nose that spoke of a terrifying blood pressure. He had scanty, sandy hair, and a smile whose front uppers looked too numerous and regular to be his own.

  He had survived years of being called Dickson of Shepherd’s Bush Green by pretending that he had thought of it first, and had developed, like a compensatory limp, a passion for nicknames of his own. In a service fairly evenly divided between hard men pretending to be soft and soft men pretending to be hard, Dickson was in a category of one: a hard man pretending to be a soft man pretending to be hard. He drank whisky almost as continuously as he breathed, was never seen the worse for it, and one day would be found dead at his desk. Slider could never decide whether he would be glad or sorry at that moment.

  ‘Good morning lads. Good morning Norma,’ he breezed, favouring her with the full Royal Doulton. She glowered back. ‘Sit down everybody. We’ve got a lot to get through this morning.’

  It was some time before they had cleared away all the other matters and got to the murder of Anne-Marie Austen. Slider brought them up to date on what they had got so far, and then Dickson gathered their attention.

  ‘I don’t mind telling you that the powers that be are not too happy about this case – two more deaths, and nothing concrete to go on. Now either they’re very good, or we’re very bad, and either way we’re going to lose it if we don’t get something on the go. As far as the Thompson death goes, “N” District want to know if we think it’s part of the same transaction and I take it that we do? All right. They’ll do the legwork their end, and liaise with Atherton. Now, what have we got to follow up?’

  ‘The Birmingham end ought to be looked into,’ Atherton said with an eye to the main chance. ‘We know she was making regular trips there, and there’s the question of the flat she rented which she oughtn’t to have been able to afford. I could –’

  ‘Right,’ Dickson interrupted. ‘Bill, you cover that. Take someone with you. Atherton, you’re the musical genius around here – follow up this bloody violin. I don’t believe no-one’s seen the thing since 1940. And get onto this Saloman bloke and find out all about him.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Atherton said, rolling his eyes at Slider.

  ‘Beevers, I want you to check out the girl’s aunt – your face isn’t known down there. There’s our money motive, strong and nice. Find out who she knows, where she goes, where she was that night. Find out about her trips to London. It’s a small village, so you shouldn’t have any trouble getting people to talk. Now, what else?’
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  ‘I’m convinced it’s a large organisation behind it, sir,’ Slider said.

  ‘I know you are, and I have to admit it has that smell to me, but there’s nothing to prove it isn’t just a very ruthless individual.’

  ‘The cuts on her foot, sir – did anything turn up about those?’ Dickson didn’t immediately answer, and Slider went on, watching him carefully, ‘With the Italian connection, I couldn’t help wondering if there wasn’t some connection with the Family? Those cuts did make it look like a ritual killing.’

  There was a short and palpable silence. Dickson’s face went blank, his eyes uncommunicative. There’s nothing I can tell you about that,’ he said evenly. ‘Nobody’s got anything to say about the letter T.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t it be the murderer’s initial?’ Atherton said smoothly.

  ‘Why indeed,’ Dickson agreed, with an air of humouring him.

  ‘Suggestion, sir,’ Slider said quickly. Dickson’s face became a wary blank again. ‘Whether it’s an organisation behind it or an individual, my guess would be that the Thompson death was meant to tie up the loose ends: murder, followed by remorse and suicide. I wonder if there might be some mileage in letting them think we bought it? If the villain or villains thought the heat was off –’

  ‘What about Mrs Gostyn?’ Atherton interposed.

  ‘Accident. It might even have been one,’ Slider said.

  ‘We’d have to get the press to cooperate,’ Dickson said, ‘but it might just turn something up. I’m in favour. All right, I’ll see to it.’