The searchlight moved on past his hiding place: she turned away towards the door. ‘I think I’ll go and have a quick bath,’ she said.
Was that all? In the old days she would have asked him about the case. Even in times of maximum irritation with him, she had always made a point of asking: she believed it was her wifely duty to express an interest in his job. Her slender, retreating back made him feel suddenly lonely, cut off from humanity. He had a contrasting mental flash of Atherton and Jablowski sharing their intimate, candlelit dinner and talking comfortable shop together. Now he felt like the Little Match Girl.
‘By the way, the new man’s come,’ he said desperately as she was about to disappear.
She stopped and half turned. ‘Oh? What’s he like?’
‘Smart. All spit and polish.’
‘That’ll be an improvement. That Bob Dickson was such a slob.’
He felt wounded by her lack of understanding. She must know by now how he had felt about his late boss. ‘He doesn’t like me,’ he said plaintively.
‘The new man?’ Now she looked at him again, that same, thoughtful look. ‘I wonder why?’
‘He didn’t like Dickson either.’
‘Well that probably explains it,’ she said. ‘Everyone in the Job must know you were Dickson’s man.’
It was an incisive, even an intelligent comment, but he didn’t know whether or not it was also derisive. He couldn’t think of anything to say, and she went, leaving him surprised for the first time in God knew how many years of their marriage.
Dickson’s office was Dickson’s no more. Fug, filth and fag ash had been swept away by the new broom. The clean windows stood wide open to the traffic roar, there was nothing on top of the filing cabinets but a red Busy Lizzie in a pot, while the only bare bit of the wall was now adorned with a framed print of Annigoni’s portrait of the Queen. The desk gleamed with furniture polish and was disconcertingly clear, containing only an in-tray, an out-tray, and between them one of those burgundy leather desk sets for holding your pens and pencils, from the Executive Gift Collection at Marks and Spencer.
The chair was different, too, a black leather, tilt-and-swivel, high-backed, managing director type Menace-the-Minions Special – two hundred and fifty quid if it was a penny. Barrington must have brought it with him, Slider thought as he presented himself in response to summons. You’d have to be a pretty important, influential kind of bloke to take your own chair with you wherever you went. The kind of bloke who’d have a car phone and a Psion organiser too.
‘You sent for me, sir?’
‘What’s the situation with Slaughter?’ Barrington asked without preamble. His ruined face and impossible hair had the irresistible magnetism of incongruity amid all that determined neat-and-tidiness.
‘He’s still sticking to his story, that he went home alone, even though we’ve told him he was seen going to his room with another man. And he still says he knows nothing about the body.’
‘Has he asked for a solicitor?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Have you told him he can have one on Legal Aid?’
‘More than once. He just shakes his head.’
Barrington stirred restively. ‘I don’t like that. It won’t look good in court if he hasn’t had access to a brief. If he still refuses one tomorrow, send for one anyway. You’ve got the name of a good local man, someone we can trust?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Slider said. ‘But—’
‘Don’t argue. Just do it,’ Barrington said shortly. ‘I don’t know what sort of ship Mr Dickson ran,’ he went on with faint derision, ‘but when I give an order I expect it to be obeyed without question. And I expect you to expect the same thing from your subordinates.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Slider said faintly. He was experiencing the same insane desire to giggle as when he had been called up before the headmaster of his school for bringing a hedgehog into Prayers. How had this man managed to get so far without being murdered by his subordinates?
‘Right. So what have you got on Slaughter?’
‘No form, sir. He’s not known anywhere. We’re still looking for witnesses but so far we can’t place him at the scene at the right time.’
‘That’s all negative. I asked what you’d got, not what you hadn’t got. What did he say about the bloodstains on his clothing?’
‘He says he had a nosebleed while he was getting dressed, so he took the jeans off and washed them out before it set.’
‘It’s a pity about that grouping. Still, no-one can prove it isn’t the victim’s. And there’s no sign of forcible entry to the premises, and Slaughter’s prints are all over everything and on the knives.’
‘About those knives, sir—’
‘Yes?’
‘It strikes me as odd that all but two of them were absolutely clean – no prints at all – and the other two had just single prints of Slaughter’s.’
‘What’s odd about that? He wiped them clean after the murder, and then used two of them in the morning. He’d have to have done that if he wanted it to look innocent.’
‘But the prints on the two knives were of his fingers and thumb only – no palm print. He must have washed and dried the knives and then left the prints putting them back in the rack.’
‘Well?’
‘But why only those two? There ought to have been similar prints on the others if he wanted it to look natural. And after all, since he works there, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with having his fingerprints on anything, so why go to so much trouble? It makes me uneasy. It’s either too clever or too stupid, I don’t know which.’
‘You want logic from a man like that?’ Barrington said impatiently.
‘No, sir, only consistency.’
‘We’re policemen, not psychiatrists. Your business is to collect evidence, and let someone else worry about the implications. Have we got enough to charge him?’
‘You’re asking my opinion?’ Slider asked cautiously.
‘I’m not whistling Yankee Doodle.’
‘Then – no, sir. Not until we can ID the body, at any rate.’
Barrington frowned, but did not pursue the line. ‘What courses of action are you following?’
‘House to house is still going on. There’s the rest of the residents in Slaughter’s house to question. There’s the pub he said he visited. Also all the other known gay pubs within reasonable distance. And we’re trying to trace all the casuals who’ve worked at the fish bar in the last six months – there were a couple of other prints in the back shop clear enough to identify and we want to eliminate them.’
‘Got enough men?’
‘For the moment. Unless we have to start looking for another suspect.’
‘I want Slaughter kept under wraps,’ Barrington said sharply. ‘That’s why I asked you about charging him.’
‘He’s co-operating with everything at the moment, sir. He hasn’t asked to leave.’
‘If he does, let me know immediately,’ Barrington said abruptly, and took a file from his in-tray and opened it, to signify that the interview was terminated. ‘All right, carry on.’
Slider left, quelling the desire to salute facetiously. Atherton was having a bad effect on his character, he decided.
Beevers had drawn a blank at Bent Bill’s.
‘In spite of the moustache and chubbiness,’ Atherton mourned. ‘I thought you’d be very much up their street.’
Beevers shrugged. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t get any offers, only that no-one I spoke to would admit knowing Slaughter.’
‘What about the barmen?’ Slider asked.
‘Same thing, Guv. They all went glassy-eyed when they looked at the photo.’
‘There’ll be other nights and other customers,’ Slider said philosophically. ‘At least we’ve got time on this one: Slaughter’s going nowhere. Someone else can have a crack at it tonight.’
‘Alec looks too much like a policeman. Why not send Norma?’ Anderson suggested. ‘They might
think she’s a bloke in drag.’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Norma, splendidly unconcerned. ‘Polish can come with me. The older ones might fancy a young boy.’
‘A catamite look a queen,’ Atherton offered.
‘Come again?’ Polish said blankly.
‘I wish you’d said that last night,’ Atherton complained. Slider saw Jablowski blush uncomfortably and hastened to intervene.
‘Let’s get on. What have we got from the house-to-house?’
‘One of the Ali Rebabas confirms that the chip shop was shut before eleven,’ Anderson said. ‘He went out to his car for something at about ten-to, and noticed that it was dark.’
‘That’s helpful corroboration anyway. What else?’
‘And a woman living across the road – a Mrs Kostantiou – saw a car parked at the end of the alley at about one a.m., which wasn’t there when she got up in the morning, about six o’clock. She thinks it was dark red or dark blue or brown. She doesn’t know what make and she couldn’t see the registration number.’
‘Terrific!’ Atherton groaned.
‘Slaughter hasn’t got a car,’ McLaren pointed out.
‘Might be the victim’s,’ Norma said.
‘Might not,’ said Atherton.
‘Never mind,’ Slider said. ‘Bring her in and let her look at the book, see if she can pick out the model. It could be something. See if any of the other residents saw it arrive or leave. Anything else?’
‘We’ve still got some of the people in the other side-street to do,’ said Mackay, ‘though given it’s their gardens that back onto the alley, it seems unlikely they’ll have seen anything in the middle of the night.’
‘There is one thing, Guv,’ Norma said hesitantly. ‘I’ve been checking into the other helpers at the fish bar, and I haven’t been able to get hold of one of the ones who’s been doing Friday and Saturday nights.’ She looked down at her notebook. ‘He’s a Peter Leman, lives in a maisonette in Acton Lane. I’ve called and I’ve telephoned, but no luck. It might be nothing, of course, but I’ve got a sort of feeling about it—’
‘You think it’s worth looking into?’ Slider asked.
‘She can fillet in her bones,’ Atherton said.
‘For that,’ Slider said, ‘you can do Bent Bill’s tonight.’
‘I’m back,’ said Joanna.
‘I can tell,’ said Slider.
‘How?’
‘The receiver’s gone all damp and my trousers are too tight.’
‘It’s just the other way round with me.’
‘Where are you?’
‘At the airport, waiting for the baggage. I just thought I’d phone you,’ she said with a casualness which didn’t, thank heaven, fool him.
‘How was the tour?’
‘Terrible. Three people got food poisoning in a fish restaurant in San Francisco, and one of our cellos fell down some steps in Washington and broke his arm. But New York was heaven. We couldn’t get all the desks of first fiddles on the platform at the Carnegie, so Charlie and I got a day off and did the tourist bit. How’s the sleuthing business?’
‘We’ve got a murder.’
‘What, another one? Shepherd’s Bush gets more like Chicago every day.’
‘This is one thing you won’t get in Chicago – a dismembered body in a fish and chip shop.’
‘Most unhygienic.’
‘That’s just what I said. When am I going to see you?’
‘I was going to ask you that,’ she said.
‘I could probably manage to drop in later. I’ve got to go to South Acton. But I suppose you must be tired,’ he said wistfully. ‘You’ll want to sleep.’
‘I’m jetlagged to hell, so I mustn’t sleep until bedtime or I’ll never get my clock right. Come whenever you like.’
‘I’ve waited two weeks to hear you say that.’
CHAPTER 5
Gone to Pieces
THE WHITE HORSE WAS OPEN all day, but that was the best thing you could say about it. It was a large 1930s building occupying a corner site, and its original individual bars had been knocked into one vast open-plan office inhabited at all hours by a muted selection of nondescript men in ready-made suits, whose precise function in life was impossible to determine. Some of them had portable phones and some of them didn’t, but all of them ought surely to have been at work, or why did they look furtively towards the door every time it opened?
Slider could never fathom the reasoning behind building Shepherd’s Bush nick right opposite a Watney’s pub. As he said to Cameron, ‘It reminds me of the busload of American tourists travelling along the M4 past Windsor, and one says to another, “They must have been mad to build the castle so close to the airport.” ‘ He stared sadly into a half pint of Ruddles, which was the nearest thing they had to real ale in the White Horse.
Freddie Cameron was a gold watch man, so it didn’t trouble him. He hitched his dapper little gluteus maximus into a more central position on the bar stool and asked, ‘Why is it only in London pubs that you get these things? Most uncomfortable invention. They wouldn’t stand for them up north.’
‘Our bottoms are different from theirs,’ Slider said. ‘Surely you’ve heard of the London Derriere?’ He looked at the bar menu. ‘Are you having a sandwich?’
‘No, thanks, I haven’t time. I’ve got to get across to Harlesden by two o’clock for a PM on that immolation case.’
Slider, who had been toying with the idea of a toasted ham sandwich, changed his mind. ‘So, what can you tell me about the Fish Bar victim?’ he asked instead. ‘Apart from the fact that he’d completely gone to pieces, of course.’
‘Young Atherton’s been a rotten influence on you,’ Cameron said sternly. ‘Deceased was male, about five foot seven; slender – weight around ten stone; sallow-skinned; probably dark haired to judge by the body hair – of which there was very little, by the way. No scars or peculiarities.’
‘Age?’ Slider asked.
‘I put him at first at twentyish, going by the skin and muscle tone, but now I think he was probably older. From the skull sutures I’d say he was nearer thirty. But probably he was young-looking for his age.’
‘Have you found a cause of death?’
‘Almost certainly a single heavy blow to the back of the neck at the level of the second and third vertebrae.’
‘Battered to death,’ Slider murmured, somewhat against his will. Still, better out than in.
Freddie didn’t flinch. ‘Death would have been instantaneous,’ he corrected stalwartly. ‘Fracture of the spine and rupture of the spinal cord. It was torn about two-thirds of the way across. An expert blow, I’d say – or a damned lucky one.’
‘And then the cutting up?’
‘With very sharp instruments, as I said before,’ Freddie went on. ‘I’ve taken the fingerprint, by the way, of the one finger we had, and sent a copy over to you but I don’t think it’ll help you much. Deep frying didn’t improve it.’
‘Yes, I got it, thanks. I wish it had come with a photograph, though.’
‘Someone’s done a good job on the head,’ Cameron admitted gloomily. ‘Scalp and face both removed, and the bits we’ve found of the face are no help at all.’
‘You can’t put them together again?’
‘Diced,’ he said succinctly. ‘Couldn’t do anything with ‘em except make a shepherd’s pie. Chummy was taking no chances. The scalp and hands are missing, as you know. Oh, we haven’t got the eyes, either. But he had a fine set of gnashers. I suppose you want the Tooth Fairy to have a look at them?’
That was the forensic odontologist. ‘Yes, please. We’ll see what comes of that. If it doesn’t lead to an identification, I suppose it’ll be a job for Phillips at UCH.’
‘The medical illustrator?’ Cameron raised his eyebrows. ‘Is it that bad, old boy? Won’t chummy come across?’
‘He’s sitting on his hands and keeping his knees tightly together.’
‘So what’s gone wrong with th
e old Slider Interview Technique?’
‘Look at it from his point of view,’ Slider said. ‘If he’s gone to all that trouble to hide the identity, he’s not going to tell us just for the asking who the corpus is. And until we know who, we can’t prove Slaughter even knew him, let alone topped him—’
‘And chopped him. I can’t get over that name –Slaughter!’ Cameron said, shaking his head.
‘He’s obviously banking on the body-work for his salvation. But if we can present him with an identification, I think he may fold up and admit the murder. Otherwise we’ve a long hard road ahead of us.’
‘Have you charged him yet?’
‘Barrington’s toying with the idea, but I can’t see how we can, yet. I’m not too worried about that. If we let him go and he does the off, it’s all evidence on our side. And he might just do something really stupid. He doesn’t,’ he added, ‘seem the brightest to me.’
Freddie studied Slider’s expression. ‘That puzzles you?’
‘It does, rather. There’s an inconsistency in it all.’
‘Human beings aren’t machines. Besides, what’s so bright about committing a murder and getting yourself taken up for it?’
‘He was all we had,’ Slider shrugged.
‘That’s exactly what I mean. Not very clever, setting things up with yourself as the only suspect, is it?’
‘That’s true,’ Slider said. He smiled. ‘How you do comfort me, Freddie!’
‘Can’t have you brooding, old bean,’ Cameron said kindly.
The ‘maisonette’ in Acton was in fact only the upper floor of a dismal turn-of-the-century terraced cottage which should never have been divided in the first place. The short front garden had been concreted over, and the concrete was stained and cracked, sprouting tufts of depressed-looking grass and a few defiant dandelions. The front gate and most of the front wall were missing, and there were only stumps in the ground where the railings that had once divided it from next door had been sawn off, probably during one of the scrap-iron-for-victory drives of the Second World War.
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