‘I mean just an opportunity. Both of us in the same room at the same time, alone together.’ She was silent. ‘Aren’t you pleased?’ he asked after a moment.
‘Yes, of course I am.’
‘You don’t sound it.’
She looked up at him, suddenly serious. ‘Bill, are you sure about this?’
His feet seemed to fill up with cold water. ‘Of course I am. God, we’ve talked about it often enough! What’s the matter – aren’t you?’
‘It isn’t me that has to do it,’ she said reasonably. ‘It’s a big step.’
‘Are you trying to put me off?’
‘No. I just want you to be sure it’s what you want.’
‘I knew it was what I wanted the first moment I met you. I’ve never felt like that about anyone else in my life. I know that sounds corny, but it’s the literal truth.’ He stared at her, puzzled. ‘Why am I having to convince you, all of a sudden?’
Her face cleared and the sun came out. ‘I just felt like a change,’ she lied. ‘Of course, if I didn’t love you so much, I could quite happily settle for an affair with you, just as I do with all the others—’
The phone rang.
‘What others?’ he demanded,
‘Sorry, your five minutes is up,’ she said, grinning evilly, and reached for the phone. ‘Hullo. Oh, hi! Yes, thanks, very nice. Well, when I say very nice – doing the choral symphony three times in a week is no joke. I reckon that Beethoven bloke must have been deaf. Yes, he’s here. No, no, we were just talking.’ She handed the receiver to Slider. ‘From the excitement in his voice,’ she said, ‘I think that’ll be it for the evening.’ She got up and left him with a cold space all down his front.
‘This had better be important,’ Slider said into the mouthpiece.
‘Would I disturb you otherwise?’ Atherton said, wounded. ‘I’ve been at Bent Bill’s, and I’ve met a dear old couple there who have definitely identified Peter Leman from the photograph.’
‘Tell me!’ Slider said, struggling up straight and looking for his trousers.
‘Well, they like to go there for a midweek drinkie because it’s quieter than at weekends. They were there on Tuesday night, and as they were leaving at about half past ten, they saw Leman come in with Slaughter and walk up to the bar to order a drink.’
‘How do they know it was Slaughter?’
‘They gave me the description, I gave them the photograph.’
‘How sure are they?’
‘Very. They walked right past them. Slaughter isn’t the least memorable man in the world, and they noticed Leman for his nice bum.’
‘It sounds good. Are they willing to swear a statement?’
‘Not willing, but they’ll do it. Oh, and one other thing, Guv. They say Leman was wearing a leather flying jacket with a sheepskin lining. And do you remember, the torn in Slaughter’s house—’
‘Mandy.’
‘Yes, Mandy – she said that the man Slaughter brought back with him had a leather jacket with a “sort of white collar”. He was coming upstairs in the shadow, remember.’
‘Yes,’ Slider said. ‘It sounds as though we’ve got him, then. I’ll come in. Where are you now?’
‘In their flat in Aubrey Road. They were a bit sensitive about talking to me in the pub. I’m getting the statement now, then I’ll go back to Bent Bill’s and lean on the barman.’
‘Be careful you don’t break something. I’ll see you back at the factory.’
Joanna was looking at him with interest as he put the phone down and stood up.
‘Result?’ she asked succinctly.
‘It could be. At least, it may be enough to persuade the suspect to tell us the rest. He’s been on the verge of breakdown anyway for some time.’
She stepped close. ‘Good. I’m pleased for you.’
He kissed her. ‘I’ll have to go now, though,’ he said apologetically.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry.’
He kissed her again. He was getting an erection. He hoped it was her, and not the excitement of the case. ‘If it’s not too late, shall I come back afterwards? Or will you be asleep?’
‘You can always wake me,’ she murmured, lip to lip and hip to hip. ‘Sleep I can have any time.’
‘All right, then,’ he said. Yes, it was definitely her.
CHAPTER 6
A Bird in the Strand is Worth Two in Shepherd’s Bush
SLAUGHTER WAS WEEPING, BUT STILL coherent. Slider decided to carry on.
‘Come on now, Ronnie. Why don’t you get it off your chest? You’ll feel better if you tell me all about it.’
‘I never killed him! I never!’ Slaughter sobbed.
‘Killed who? Who was it in those plastic sacks? It was Peter Leman, wasn’t it?’
‘No! I don’t know! I don’t know nothing about that. I never done it, I tell you!’
‘But you did meet Leman on Tuesday night, didn’t you? You went with him to the Crooked Billet?’
Slaughter, who was occupied in wiping his nose with his fingers, reluctantly nodded.
‘Was that a yes, Ronnie? You have to say it out loud, for the tape. Was it Leman you met on Tuesday night?’
‘Yes,’ Slaughter said at last. He was getting rather tangled up in the strings of mucus, and since he had only a short-sleeved tee-shirt on, Slider pushed the box of tissues closer to him. Slaughter took one and blew his nose, took another and wiped his mouth. The pale lard of his chops was damp and quivering with distress.
‘All right,’ Slider said kindly. ‘Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me about you and Peter Leman?’
‘There’s nothing to tell, really,’ he mumbled.
‘He was a nice-looking man, wasn’t he?’ Slider offered temptingly.
Slaughter sat up a little straighter, sighed, and smoothed his hair back with both hands. When he lifted his arms, a waft of rank sweat emerged. Tape rooms always smelled of sweat and trainers: it was the essential odour of crime, Slider thought.
‘Yeah, he was nice,’ Slaughter said. Slider exchanged a glance with Atherton. Slaughter had accepted the past tense and handed it back to them.
‘A nice smile, he had, too –I should think he was a friendly kind of person, wasn’t he? How did you first meet him?’
‘Well, he come to the shop, didn’t he? Asked if I needed a part-timer. Well, I had this girl – Karen – but she kept not turning up. So I said yes. So he come in Friday nights and Saturday nights after that.’
‘How long ago was this? When did he start with you?’
‘It was March, I think. Or Febry.’
‘Just Fridays and Saturdays? Did he have another job as well?’
‘I dunno. I didn’t ask. That’s all I needed, just the weekend.’
‘Was he good at the job?’
‘Yeah. He picked it up all right. He was clever –educated an’ that. He spoke nice, too.’
‘Too good for the job, was he?’ Atherton put in.
‘He worked hard, all right,’ Slaughter said defensively. ‘There wasn’t no swank about him. I liked him.’
‘And did he like you?’ Slider asked.
Slaughter blushed furiously and looked down. ‘No. I dunno. He never said – I never thought about it. I didn’t think he was—’
‘That way inclined?’ Slider said helpfully.
Slaughter looked up. ‘I thought he was straight. Anyway, he was educated and everything. He’d never look at a bloke like me.’
‘You’re a successful businessman,’ Slider suggested. ‘For all his education, he hadn’t got a job.’
Slaughter only shook his head wordlessly, as if trying to convey the inequality of the situation.
‘All right, so when did you first realise that he was interested in you?’
Slaughter looked puzzled. ‘He never said nothing. He never so much as looked at me. I mean, you can usually tell, can’t you? Right up until that night—’
‘Tuesday?’
‘Yeah.’ He had short circuited himself, and looked to Slider for another question.
‘You met him at the Crooked Billet?’
But Slaughter was clear on that point at least. ‘No, it was like I told you. The shop was quiet and I was fed up. I was thinking of closing up early, and then Peter comes in and starts chatting to me—’
‘What time was that?’ Atherton put in.
‘Dunno exactly. Be about quarter-past ten, maybe. He goes what about going for a drink. So I goes yeah.’
‘You went straight to the Crooked Billet? By taxi?’
‘Nah, in his car. He had his car parked outside.’
‘What sort of car?’
‘It was a nice one. Red, sort of. Like a dark red.’
‘What make?’ Ronnie shrugged helplessly. ‘All right, you went to the Crooked Billet. Did you talk to anyone else in the bar?’
He shook his head, and opened his hands in a gesture of frankness. ‘There’s a different kind of bloke goes in there midweek. Not my sort. Antique dealers and that – posh queens and couples and that. Anyway, I just wanted a quiet drink with Peter. We had a pint of lager top each. That’s what I like, lager top, and he said he’d have the same.’
‘And what time did you leave?’
‘After drinking-up. About twenty-past eleven, I suppose.’
‘And what happened then?’
Ronnie seemed to blush. ‘Well, we was just stood there, like, saying goodbye, and he says, he says do I live near there, and I says yes. And then he says – he says—’
‘Yes?’
This bit seemed to be difficult. Slaughter’s eyes were anywhere but on Slider. ‘He asked me if I had a boyfriend, and I said no. Then he said – he said he’d been thinking about me a lot recently.’
He stopped, overcome with emotion, and seemed unable to go on. His eyes started leaking again. Slider nudged the tissue box suggestively and asked, ‘Whose idea was it to go back to your place?’
He shook his head, mopping dolefully. ‘I dunno, really. He said how about a cup of coffee, and I said okay. And then he said was there anywhere open around there. So then I said—’ He stopped.
‘You suggested going back to your place for coffee?’ Nod. ‘Out loud, please.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And what happened when you got back to your place?’
‘We had a coffee.’ He stopped again, with an air of finality.
After a moment, Slider said, ‘You put some music on, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Did you dance together?’
‘Sort of.’
‘And then what happened?’ Shake of head. ‘Did you have sex together?’
Slaughter said nothing, only threw him a brief, reproachful glance.
‘I don’t want to know all the details, Ronnie. That’s your private business. I just want to get clear in my mind what your relationship with Leman was. Did you and he—’
‘No,’ Slaughter said suddenly, defiantly. ‘But he wanted it all right. I mean it was him what was coming on to me, not the other way round. I never thought he’d fancy someone like me, but he was coming on really strong, when we were dancing and everything – you know, like putting it out. But he was like stringing it out, sort of –flirting and teasing, as if he was going to do it, but not yet.’
‘Making you wait? Making you want him more?’ Atherton suggested.
‘Yeah, like that,’ Ronnie said eagerly. ‘But then, all of a sudden, he changes his mind. And then he starts saying— ‘ He gulped. ‘Saying all sorts of things. He hadn’t got no call to say things like that. So I got mad.’
‘You quarrelled with him, didn’t you?’
It came out in an indignant flood. ‘He said things. When it turned out, like, he didn’t want to – you know –I thought maybe he was shy. So I asked him, well, when we could meet again, and he said never. He said he could do better than me for himself. He said he never wanted to see me again. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, we’d been having a good time, hadn’t we? And it was all his idea. I wouldn’t never have had the nerve to ask him. But now he was, like, making fun of me, and saying rotten things to me. He called me a slob. He said only a blind man would want to go to bed with me.’ Slaughter’s hands balled into fists in remembered anguish. ‘I got mad at him. I started shouting and, like, slagging him off. I told him he was a slag and a cock-teaser and that, and he was just jeering and laughing at me—’ He choked. ‘I could have killed him, the rotten little bastard!’
He stopped, and in the silence that followed, his own words must have echoed back to him. The animation of anger slowly drained from his face, to be replaced with a look of hollow dread.
‘Yes,’ said Slider gently. ‘I understand perfectly.’
‘No,’ Slaughter whispered. ‘No, I never done it. I never killed him. You got to believe me.’
‘You left your bedsitter with him. You were seen going down the stairs together,’ Slider said, to get him back to the narrative. ‘How did you persuade him to go back to the shop with you?’
‘I never—’
‘You pretended to make up the quarrel.’
‘That was him, When I got mad he said he was sorry. He said to calm down, he never meant it. He said he liked me really. I didn’t believe him, but he asked me to walk with him to his car, ‘cos he was scared of the streets.’
‘What time was that?’
‘I dunno exactly. It must of been about half-past twelve, quarter to one, I suppose.’
‘So you walked him to his car – and then what?’
‘He just got in and drove off.’
‘Are you sure you didn’t get in with him?’ Slaughter shook his head helplessly. ‘His route to South Acton would have taken him right past your shop in the Uxbridge Road. A red car was seen parked outside it at one in the morning –just about the right time for you to get there if you left your house at a quarter to one,’ Slider said. Slaughter was staring at him, fascinated. ‘I suggest you got in his car with him, persuaded him somehow to stop at the shop and go in with you. And then you killed him.’
‘No,’ Slaughter moaned.
‘You were angry with him for refusing to go to bed with you, for laughing at you. You hit him on the back of the neck with something very heavy—’
‘No. No. I never.’
‘And then when you found he was dead, you decided to cut him up into pieces and hide him in the rubbish sacks. You thought no-one would find him. Wasn’t that the way it was?’
‘No!’
‘You probably didn’t mean to kill him, did you, Ronnie? You’d had a quarrel, you were upset and angry. Perhaps you had another quarrel in the shop, and you hit him a bit too hard. Isn’t that it?’
‘I never killed him. I walked him to his car. He drove off, and I went home—’
‘Ah, but you didn’t go straight home. Your neighbour swears you didn’t come in before four o’clock.’
‘I just went for a walk. I couldn’t go home right away. I was too upset. I went for a walk, that’s all.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘You walked around all night?’
‘I don’t know. Not all night. I don’t know how long I walked about. I was upset.’ Slaughter’s face was wet again, but now it was sweat, not tears.
‘Ronnie, why don’t you just tell me what you did, get it off your chest?’
‘I ain’t done nothing!’
‘Then why have you been lying to me? You’ve been telling me from the beginning that you went home alone on Tuesday night. Why didn’t you tell me about Peter Leman before?’
‘Because I didn’t – I didn’t want anyone to know.’
‘To know that you’d been with him? To know that you killed him?’
‘No!’ he said desperately. ‘I didn’t want anyone to know I’m gay!’
Atherton stirred restively. Slider said, ‘It isn’t a crime any more, Ronnie.’
Sl
aughter said nothing, staring at the desk with the air of one who had said all he meant to say.
Silence would get them nowhere. Atherton decided on a little shock treatment. ‘Everyone’s bound to find out anyway when they read about the trial in the paper.’
‘Trial?’
‘The murder trial,’ Atherton said pleasantly.
‘But I never done it,’ Slaughter protested. ‘I never killed him.’
‘Killed whom?’ asked Atherton.
‘Peter. I never killed Peter.’
‘So you knew it was Peter’s body in the rubbish sacks, did you?’ Slider asked gently.
Slaughter stared at him for a moment with his mouth open, and then burst noisily into tears. Slider watched him for a bit, but he obviously wasn’t going to stop this time.
‘I think we’d better break off for the time being,’ he said.
Slider stood watching Barrington read through the statement. It had taken a long time to get it down, with Slaughter breaking down every few sentences; and then when they had told him to read it through and sign it, he had asked them to read it aloud to him, since he didn’t have his glasses with him. Slider thought he knew it by heart by now, having gone through it so many times, and it didn’t amount to much. Slaughter’s clumsy, crabbed signature on the bottom of the page represented hours of work and nothing much worth having.
When he had finished, Barrington sat in silence for a moment, drumming his fingers on his desk top. ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘Charge him.’
‘He still hasn’t admitted it, sir,’ Slider pointed out.
‘Nevertheless,’ Barrington said with irritation. ‘I don’t want him wandering off. We’ve got enough trouble with villains committing crimes while they’re on bail, never mind murderers with access to sharp knives prancing about loose.’
‘We still can’t place him at the scene of the crime—’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Barrington ‘s eyes sparked like a Brock’s Golden Rain. ‘It’s his shop, isn’t it? And no-one but him had the key, according to his own admission.’
‘That’s exactly it, sir. Why would he admit anything so damaging?’
‘Because he’s stupid!’ Barrington frowned. ‘I’m not a hundred per cent happy with the way you’re handling this, Slider. You’re letting a villain with a minus IQ run rings round you. What’s your team been doing? Why haven’t we got a witness yet? Someone must have seen these two men going into the shop that night – it’s on the main road, for God’s sake! And where’s the rest of the body? He must have put the bits somewhere. I want every inch of ground between the shop and his home covered until you find them.’
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