‘Is Suzanne the only child?’
‘There’s a much older sister, apparently: married to a barrister, three children, two cars, an Irish wolfhound and a swimming pool. Second home in the Dordogne. Private education.’
‘Ah.’
‘I got the lot. No wonder Suzanne fancied a bit of rough trade. Nostalgie de la boue.’
‘No wonder she asked no questions.’
‘What have you found?’
‘He certainly lived here – gubbins everywhere. And he certainly had money, but where it came from, I’m no wiser. I’ve found his cheque book, bank statements, credit card bills, but no salary slips. He was a sharp dresser and did all his food shopping at Marks and Spencer, and there’s a cupboard full of booze – spirits and imported bottled lager – but no cigarettes, syringes or little glass tubes.’
‘A clean-living boy.’
‘I’ve also found his passport.’
‘Interesting reading?’
‘I think the Customs and Excise men would have found it fascinating. He was in and out like lamb’s tails. America, Hong Kong, Turkey, Bangkok, Algeria. Last trip San Francisco six weeks ago.’ Slider frowned. ‘Business of some sort, that’s for sure – using the word in its widest sense. Even with his unexplained wealth, he’d hardly be popping back and forth like that for pleasure.’
‘Maybe he just liked air stewardesses. Or stewards, come to that. Or both. Hardly matters, though, does it? Wherever his money came from, he’s thrown his hand in now.’
‘Must you?’ said Slider. ‘All the same, doesn’t it seem strange to you that this flash, jet-setting, BMW-driving, Guardian-reading type should take on a part-time job at a fish and chip shop, and then suddenly join up for one night of love with Ronnie Slaughter?’
‘Yes,’ said Atherton bluntly. ‘The words love and Ronnie Slaughter do not bed down easily together in one sentence. On the other hand, why should Slaughter lie about it? If he was going to lie, he’d lie the other way – especially since he says he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s gay.’
‘Unless the real reason for his meeting Leman was even more dodgy. Remember he didn’t say anything about Leman at all until we faced him with the witness statement. Then when he realised we knew it was Leman he’d met, he made up a reason for it.’
‘But what a reason! Surely he could have come up with something more convincing than that?’
‘But you’ve just indicated you believe it because it’s too incredible to be a lie.’
Atherton raised his eyebrows. ‘Credo quia absurdum} Well, you’ve got something there, Guv. Except that I don’t believe Ronnie Slaughter’s that bright.’
‘Unless he’s so bright he’s able to make us think he’s stupid,’ Slider said tauntingly.
‘Oh nuts,’ Atherton said. ‘You could go on like that all day.’ He wriggled, and felt underneath him. ‘What am I sitting on?’ He stood up and patted the counterpane, and then whipped the covers back to reveal a man’s handkerchief crumpled up in the middle of the bed. ‘Hullo-ullo-ullo! What’s this?’
‘It’s used, that’s what that is,’ Slider said distastefully as Atherton bent down to peer at it.
‘Certainly is – and if I’m any judge, it wasn’t his nose he blew on it. The lad had nasty habits.’
‘At that age, the essential juices flow fast and frequent.’
‘I suppose Suzanne was otherwise occupied. Do you suppose he was keeping this for later – a secret cache?’
‘Wait a minute,’ Slider said suddenly as the idea occurred to him. ‘That could be just what we want.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Atherton said firmly. ‘I’ll get pregnant the conventional way, thank you.’
‘Have you got any evidence bags?’
‘In the car.’
‘Get one, then. Don’t you realise, whichever nose he blew on it, there’s DNA in them thar folds.’
‘Of course! We can get a proper match with the corpse at last. Why didn’t I think of that?’
‘Because I’m brilliant and you’re stupid,’ Slider said pleasantly.
‘I knew there was a reason. I’ll go and get the bag.’
Joanna came to meet him for a late lunch, and they went to the Acropolis for steak and kidney pie, mashed potato, carrots, peas and cabbage, prepared and served as only the caffs of old England can do it.
‘Do you think you’d be able to tell if a man you were sleeping with was bisexual?’ Slider asked.
Joanna looked at him gravely. ‘It’s Atherton, isn’t it?’ she asked after a moment.
‘Eh?’
‘I don’t blame you, Bill. God, I’ve often fancied him myself! But why, why didn’t you tell me from the beginning?’
‘No, seriously, would you? Is it a thing you could tell?’
She made a thoughtful gravy inlet in her island of mashed potato. ‘Depends how well I knew him, I suppose. I’d like to think I would, but it doesn’t mean that a young, inexperienced girl also would. From what you’ve said, this Leman type was pretty well leading a double life. Presumably he was skilled at deception, or he’d have been found out long ago.’
‘I don’t understand the girl,’ Slider grumbled. ‘She’s smart as paint – pretty, intelligent – she’s got a job with a publishing company—’
‘She’s not all that intelligent, then.’
‘She could have any man she liked—’
‘Men don’t like going out with smart, pretty, clever girls. They like to feel superior.’
‘All the same,’ he said patiently, ‘she can’t be lacking opportunity. Yet she goes out with this chap she knows virtually nothing about, who has no history or friends or relatives, who won’t be pinned down, who comes and goes and is unaccountable. He works in a fish and chip shop two nights a week, and she never even asks him where he gets his money, although she says he had plenty.’
‘You think he was a villain, then?’
‘I don’t know. But usually when people won’t say where the money comes from, it’s because they’ve got something to hide. And there was nothing in his flat to indicate that he was investing it in any of the usual ways – no share certificates or dealing papers or anything of that sort. But his bank balance was healthy, and he paid in large amounts of cash from time to time. All we know is that he went abroad a lot on short trips.’
‘Sinister!’
‘But she says he was very fond of her, and seems in no doubt about it. And she’s genuinely distressed that he’s dead, and quite adamant that he wasn’t a bender.’
‘Is there no doubt that he went to bed with Slaughter?’
He shrugged. ‘He wanted to. Or at least pretended to want to. Unless Slaughter’s lying.’
‘Well, perhaps he is. I mean, if he fancied Leman and made a play for him and Leman reacted with horrified rejection, he might not be able to admit it.’
‘But that only provides a stronger motive for the murder. And in any case, he does say that Leman rejected him.’
‘True.’
Slider shook his head. ‘And in any case again, Leman certainly went for a drink with Slaughter and then went back to his flat with him. He didn’t do that under duress.’
‘Still, it doesn’t make any difference to the case, does it, whether he wanted Slaughter or only pretended to, or even didn’t? He met him for some reason, went home with him for some reason, quarrelled with him about something, went back to the shop with him, and got himself murdered.’
‘Quite. But it does help when you present a case to the Great British Public if it has a modicum of credibility and consistency about it.’
‘You sounded just like Atherton then.’
‘No, no, he sounds like me.’
‘Oh, sorry. What about Leman’s car, by the way? If he was killed at the chip shop, how did it get back to his flat?’
‘We have to assume Slaughter drove it there. Obviously he couldn’t leave it outside the shop, and if he was clever enough to conceal the murder, he was c
lever enough to think of that.’
‘Can he drive?’
‘He says not, but that doesn’t mean anything. Lots of people who’ve never taken a driving test can drive, and a negative of that sort is impossible to prove, anyway. But if he did drive the car back to Castelnau, he’ll be bound to have left some trace of himself in it, even if it’s only a single fallen hair, and forensic will find it.’
‘I see. Well, the case is pretty well wrapped up now, isn’t it? I mean, you’ve got your man and everything, haven’t you? No big problem about it, is there?’
‘No more than usual, I suppose,’ he said cautiously. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because of my concert tomorrow – you know, the charity gala with the reception afterwards? I’ve been offered a guest ticket for it, and I’d rather like you to come along.’
He looked doubtful. ‘Will I like it? I wouldn’t have to wear a dinner jacket, would I?’
‘An ordinary suit would do. I’m not proud. And yes, you will enjoy it. The music’s lovely. And if the reception’s really terrible, we’ll sneak out and have a late supper at La Barca, how’s that?’
‘All right. Why not?’ he said.
‘You might be a bit more gracious. It’s a very grand do, you know. There’ll be royalty there, and the stalls will be stuffed with VIPs and hotshots from the world of entertainment, all doing their bit for charity. What you might call a Cause Celeb.’
‘In that case, I’d love to come.’
‘These tickets are not easily come by,’ she told him severely. ‘They’re changing hands for more money than an unsigned Jeffrey Archer.’
He’d just reached the top of the stairs when the lift door opened and Barrington emerged explosively like the Demon King. The baleful eyes fixed on Slider.
‘My office. Five minutes,’ he barked, swivelled on the ball of one foot, and dashed off.
Interpreting this as a request rather than a set of random phonemes, Slider plodded after, following the faint whiff of sulphur that lingered on the air. With the difference in their metabolisms, he reckoned, it would take him the five minutes to get there. What would it be this time, he wondered: a window-box for the CID room? The length of Beevers’ sideburns? McLaren’s edible thumbmarks on his report sheets? The trouble was, it was very hard to learn to care about spit’n’polish. You either did or didn’t, quite naturally, from birth – like being able to sing.
Outside the office – which unlike every other DS’s office in the land kept its oak inhospitably sported – he waited, consulting his watch, until it was time to rap smartly and listen for the wild bird cry from within.
‘Come!’
Since it was plainly still save-a-word week, Slider said nothing as he presented himself. Barrington was not pretending to read, which on the whole seemed ominous. He had his hands on the desk a little farther apart than shoulder width, as if he was about to push himself up by them, and it had the effect of making his upper body look larger and more muscular than ever.
‘The department car,’ he said abruptly, ‘is the blue Fiesta down in the yard, yes?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Slider, with the imperturbable air of one no longer to be caught out by life’s random demands on his attention.
‘It’s in a disgusting state. The outside is dirty. There’s a chocolate wrapper in the dash compartment and an empty hamburger carton on the floor in the back. And the whole thing stinks of chips.’
McLaren, of course. He grazed all day long like a Canada goose, starting at one end of their ground and working his way across. He usually reached the McDonald’s on Shepherd’s Bush Green about midday.
‘It’s not good enough,’ Barrington snapped.
‘No sir,’ Slider agreed amiably.
‘I want it cleaned up. And I want no more eating in the car. Or in the CID room. What do you suppose a member of the public would think if they came in and saw our people eating at their desks?’
Slider declined that invitation to suicide. ‘Will that be all, sir?’
Barrington leaned back slightly from his hands, adding another inch or two to his breadth.
‘No. I wanted to get the trivial matter out of the way first. I have something much more serious to say.’
Could anything be more serious than McLaren’s eating habits? It was hard to imagine. ‘Sir?’
‘I have had a telephone call – an irate telephone call from Colin Cate. I assume you know who he is?’
The name sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t quite place—’
‘He is a very influential businessman, who used to be in the CID. He sits on various committees, including several police advisory bodies. He is widely consulted by everyone from the local authority to the Royal Commission. He owns a string of properties and businesses all over West London, including several on our ground. Am I ringing any bells yet?’
By the tone of his voice he was more interested in wringing balls. Slider kept a cunning silence.
‘Perhaps it would help you if I mentioned that he owns eight fish and chip shops, one of which he drove past this morning, only to find it closed, with police screens all over it. Need any more hints?’
Slider thought he’d better speak before Barrington’s voice went off the scale. ‘He owns Dave’s Fish and Chip Bar?’
‘Yes, Inspector, he does. And he was naturally wondering, just by the way, of course, why it was we hadn’t contacted him before now – as a matter of courtesy, if not because he might have been able to help us with the bloody investigation!’
Whoops, Slider thought. ‘We didn’t know he owned it, sir. Slaughter told us he was the owner.’
‘You should have checked it out! Good God, man, do you really think a slob like Slaughter could run a business? A simple enquiry to the Community Charge office –something which ought to have been pure routine – but of course you wouldn’t know about routine, would you? It was something my predecessor despised.’
‘I don’t think it will make any difference to the case, sir,’ Slider began, but Barrington overrode him in a sort of desperate Lionel Jeffries shriek.
‘It makes all the difference!’ Having left himself, vocally speaking, nowhere to go, he dropped back into normal dicdon. ‘You’re going to have to check every statement and every assumption against the new evidence. If Slaughter has lied about something as basic as that, what else has he lied about? You’re going to go back to the beginning and start again, you and your team, and this time you’ll do it by the book. I don’t want any more mistakes. Colin Cate has got his eye on this one now, and he is not a man to be underestimated. He has the ear of some Very Important People Indeed, do I make myself clear?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘You’re going to have to get a statement from him.’
‘Of course. I’ll send—’
‘As you were! You won’t send anyone, you’ll go yourself. He’s not received a very good impression so far, so I want him to have the best possible service from now on.’
‘Sir.’
‘He’ll be at the golf club this afternoon, and he’ll see you there, in the clubhouse, at half-past three.’
Too late for lunch and too early for tea, Slider thought. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘And for God’s sake watch what you say. Remember this man was a copper when you were still learning to shave.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Carry on, then.’ He waited until Slider reached the door, then added, ‘And get that car cleaned up.’
He went downstairs to see his old friend O’Flaherty, who was custody skipper on Early, and found him just going off duty and handing over to Nutty Nicholls.
‘Step across the road with me and have a drink,’ Fergus invited as he hauled off his tunic and inserted himself into a modest blue anorak. ‘I’m as thirsty as a bearer at a Protestant funeral, and there’s a pint waitin’ over there with me name on it.’
‘All fresh is glass,’ Nutty observed, sidelong.
‘I’ve got to go an
d interview someone important,’ said Slider. ‘I’d better not turn up with booze on my breath.’
‘Ah well, come and sip a lemonade and watch me drinking, then.’
‘Don’t you want to know about your body?’ Nicholls enquired in hurt tones as Slider turned away.
‘Slaughter? How is he settling in?’
‘He’s the happiest wee felon I’ve ever banged up. Chirpy as a budgie now we’ve charged him – isn’t he, Fergus?’
‘You’d think we’d done him a favour,’ O’Flaherty concurred. ‘Thanks us for every little thing. He even likes the canteen food – Ordure of the Day, we call it. Sure God, the man’s as daft as a pair of one-legged trousers.’
‘Probably a relief to him to hand over responsibility,’ Slider said. ‘I’ve seen it before with this sort of murder—’
‘Crime passionelle,’ Nicholls interpreted in his rolling Scottish French.
‘No, that’s a kind of blancmange,’ Fergus corrected.
‘God, you two!’ Slider exclaimed. ‘Talk about Peter Pan and Windy!’
In the pub Fergus collected his pint of Guinness and said, ‘D’you want a table, or would you rather sit on one of them things?’ He nodded with disfavour at the brown-leather covered bar stools. ‘Aptly named, I’ve always thought.’
‘Let’s find a table,’ Slider said. ‘I want to ask you about something.’
‘Y’ve a worn look about you this fine day,’ Fergus observed, following him. ‘Are you keepin’ some woman happier than she deserves?’
‘My wife smiled at me across the breakfast table this morning,’ Slider said cautiously. ‘I don’t know what you’d make of that.’
‘Sounds ominous.’ O’Flaherty sat down and drank deeply, and then wiped the foam from his lip daintily with his little finger. ‘But a wife at home and a mistress on the nest, Billy? Christ, I don’t know how you do it at your age!’
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