Shallow Grave (Bill Slider Mystery)

by Harrod-Eagles, Cynthia

  Atherton glanced around him eloquently. ‘That ought to have cooled her ardour a bit.’

  ‘That’s why I did it. She made a fuss about it, said why couldn’t we go to my sitting room or the kitchen. Said why didn’t I offer her a drink and why was I being so unfriendly. I told her I hadn’t much time before service and if she had anything serious to say she’d better get on with it. So she dropped the smarm and took the hint, and it all came out. Her – lover, boyfriend, what you will – had dumped her.’

  ‘Did she say who it was?’

  ‘Oh, she made no secret about it. It was her boss. She’d been telling me all about it for weeks, trying to make me jealous – though she’d pretend it was a religious or a moral problem she had, so that she could tell me all the details. Thought it would get me excited. That’s the trouble with these altar babes, they’re cunning. And you’ve got to listen to them, or they’re straight off telling everyone you don’t care.’

  Atherton tried a curve ball. ‘So this was her boss at the pub, was it?’

  The bushy eyebrows rose. ‘Good Lord, no. The estate agent, David Meacher.’

  ‘Have you ever met him?’

  ‘Once or twice, at St Michael’s events. Just to recognise him. He’s chummy with Mrs Hammond. What he saw in Jennifer, I don’t know.’

  ‘I should have thought it was pretty obvious,’ Atherton said mildly.

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ Tennyson said glumly. ‘Anyway, she said she’d met him that day at a motel somewhere – one of their usual places. They’d spent the afternoon in bed, and then he’d calmly told her it was to be the last time.’

  ‘Should you be telling me all this?’ Atherton asked in wonder.

  He scowled. ‘You asked. I’m co-operating. Isn’t that what you want?’

  ‘I’m delighted,’ Atherton said hastily. ‘I just wondered whether—’

  ‘It wasn’t a secret. And she’s dead now anyway, so what does it matter? I’ve told you, she just liked telling me these things as part of her game of seduction. I had to pretend to give her advice, tell her to give up her activities and be faithful to her husband, but that was part of it too, for her. Gave her a thrill.’

  This bloke was definitely in the wrong profession, Atherton thought. With his misogyny he should have been a fashion designer. ‘When she told you this about being dumped, how was she? What was her mood like?’

  ‘She was furious. She thought he had some other woman lined up, and she wasn’t going to be dumped for anyone else. She said, “He’s got some game going, and I’m going to scotch it.” She even asked me if I knew what he was up to – as if I would! I said, “I hardly know the man,” and she said, “All you men like to stick together.” Then she said she was going to get him back, whatever it cost. I told her she ought to be satisfied with her husband, and stop running around with all these men.’

  ‘There was more than one, then?’

  ‘You ought to know,’ Tennyson said, shortly and obscurely. ‘But she seemed particularly keen on David Meacher – or that’s what I’d thought. But when I said that about not running around, she said, “I’d drop them all in a moment if you made it worth my while.”’

  ‘What did she mean by that?’

  ‘Use your imagination! She meant if I’d go to bed with her. Not that she would have given up the others even if I did. She collected men like badges. It was quantity she liked, not quality.’ He stopped abruptly, as if he thought that was a bit too uncharitable even for him. ‘Well, anyway,’ he went on, in a milder voice, ‘I told her that was out of the question, and got rid of her. I said she knew what she ought to do, and that I had to go and get ready for service.’

  ‘And what did she say to that?’ Atherton was fascinated by this glimpse behind the scenes of an English vicarage.

  ‘She said she knew what to do all right, that she was going to make Meacher see her again that night, and when she got him alone, he’d come back to her. And then she went.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘About half past six, I suppose. I went to the window to make sure she’d gone, and she was sitting in her car outside. I thought she was lying in wait for me, but then I saw she was talking on the phone. And after a bit she drove off, still talking.’

  Ringing David Meacher, Atherton thought, to make an assignation. That accounted for two of her mystery phone calls. Almost twenty minutes, that had been: he must have been hard to persuade. ‘How well did you know her husband?’ he asked next.

  ‘Not at all. He wasn’t a church-goer, and she didn’t tend to have him with her at social things. I only knew what she told me about him, which wasn’t much. It was mostly the things he’d bought her. Like her car – a Mazda RX5. Red.’

  Atherton nodded. ‘Dashing. And expensive.’

  ‘He bought her a personal number-plate, too. Cost him thousands.’

  Poor sucker, thought Atherton. It didn’t sound as if he got much of a return on his investment. But it was all beginning to shape up nicely now. Motive was not everything, but it was a lot, and Eddie Andrews was coming out more of a martyr every minute.

  The department was seething like a hedge full of sparrows when Slider got back. The extra help which had been drafted in crowded the confined space, no-one was at his own desk, phones were ringing, and there was a cluster round the whiteboard like dealers expecting a stockmarket crash. Files and papers migrated across the room majestically as continents, and McLaren sneezed sloppily whenever anyone got within spraying distance.

  ‘I’m not feeling well,’ he said plaintively, as Hollis went past.

  ‘Maybe it’s everything you ate,’ Hollis said heartlessly.

  Atherton was perched on a desk, looking as elegant and pleased with himself as a particularly fashion-conscious gazelle with a Harvey Nichols card. ‘Talking of eating,’ he said, ‘what was that meat in the canteen today?’

  ‘What d’you think I am? A pathologist?’ Hollis retorted.

  ‘And the lemon sponge,’ Atherton’s voice descended to a tomb of horror, ‘was made with synthetic flavouring.’

  ‘Dear God!’ Hollis responded like a poor man’s Christopher Lee. ‘I can’t believe it!’

  ‘Contrary to what you may think,’ Norma said witheringly, ‘your stomach is not the focal point of the universe. Some of us manage to raise our minds a fraction higher.’

  ‘I shall treat your contempt with the remark it deserves,’ Atherton retorted.

  Slider felt the moment had come. ‘If I can interrupt your lemon harangue for a moment,’ he said. Sadly, no-one noticed. Ain’t it always the way? he thought. He tried something else. ‘Ten-hut!’

  That got them. All eyes turned his way. ‘Ten hut?’ Norma said wonderingly.

  ‘He never forgets a phrase,’ Atherton said kindly.

  ‘Gather round, children, and let’s see where we are,’ Slider said. ‘Atherton, how was your priest?’

  ‘Turbulent,’ Atherton replied, and gave his report. Then Slider recounted his morning’s discoveries.

  ‘So where does that leave us?’ Norma asked, at the end of it. ‘Are we still after Eddie, guv, or are you putting Meacher in the frame?’

  ‘Eddie’s still got to be favourite,’ Hollis said. ‘Closest to the victim, won’t say where he was, and everything we find out about the woman gives him a better and better motive. Trying to knock off a priest—’ He shook his head in wonder at the depravity of humankind, and blew reproachfully through his moustache. ‘And if Andrews didn’t know until Lady Di told him that Jennifer was knocking off Meacher, that could have been the last straw. A night of ghastly revelation, all his fears confirmed, then – bang.’

  ‘I agree,’ Atherton said. ‘Meacher’s got no motive. If he’d already chucked her, why should he want to kill her?’

  ‘Because she wouldn’t be chucked,’ Norma suggested. ‘And maybe she was planning to make trouble.’

  ‘Who with?’ Slider said. ‘Meacher’s wife already knew about her.’


  McLaren made a nasal contribution. ‘With the new bint, whoever she was, that he was chucking her for, that probably didn’t know about her, but she might chuck him if she did, the new one might, if she told her about her – about herself, I mean, Jennifer.’

  ‘What did Horace say, Winnie?’ Slider asked the air.

  ‘You don’t know for sure that there was another woman,’ Atherton said. ‘It might be just what Meacher told her to get rid of her.’

  ‘All right, but Meacher hasn’t got an alibi,’ Norma continued doggedly.

  ‘We don’t know that he hasn’t,’ Slider said. ‘We’ll have to check – when we can find him.’

  ‘Why don’t you ring him on his mobile, sir?’ Swilley urged. ‘Ask him where he is?’

  ‘Thank you, Wonderbread, I did think of that. It’s switched off.’

  ‘That’s suspicious for a start,’ Atherton said. ‘For a man like him, turning off your mobile is like voluntary castration.’

  ‘We know his reg number. Shouldn’t we put out an “all cars”, guv?’ Anderson asked, with the eagerness of a former Scalextric owner.

  ‘He’s not a suspect yet,’ Slider said. ‘I can’t gear up an expensive pursuit just because he’s turned his mobile off. He’ll answer eventually, or turn up somewhere. Meanwhile, let’s hear what else we’ve got.’

  ‘Forensic report on the house is negative,’ Hollis said. ‘No sign of a struggle anywhere, nothing that looks as if it’d been used for smothering.’

  ‘What about the handbag?’

  ‘We might have something there, guv. There’s a set of marks on the handbag that don’t belong to Andrews or the victim. A good, clear set.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Slider said. ‘But, of course, she could have said to anyone at any point, “Chuck my bag over, will you?”’

  ‘We’ve put ’em through the system, and they come up negative. Whoever it was, they had no previous.’

  ‘That’s what you’d expect in this case,’ Slider said. ‘It might be an idea to eliminate the staff at the pub, anyway.’

  ‘What about at the estate agent’s?’ Anderson said.

  ‘Yes, if nothing else, it’ll be a way to get hold of Meacher’s for the record,’ Slider said.

  ‘If the prints proved to be Meacher’s, it wouldn’t help either way,’ Norma said. ‘He could have handled her bag quite legitimately at work.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I don’t think the prints are going to be useful, except maybe as supporting evidence,’ Slider said. ‘What else?’

  ‘We’ve had the report back from Mr Arceneaux about the semen sample,’ Hollis said, ‘and it seems there are two different types present.’

  There was a crash as someone at the back of the room knocked something off a desk. ‘All right, don’t get excited,’ Slider said. ‘So she had sex with two men that day? Assuming for the moment that Meacher was one—’

  ‘The priest could have been the other,’ Atherton said. ‘He could have been lying about not succumbing to her charms.’

  ‘Or it could have been Eddie in the morning before going to work,’ Anderson said.

  ‘Or Potter in the storeroom before she left on her date,’ Mackay said.

  ‘Or person or persons unknown,’ Atherton concluded impatiently. ‘Are we going to start looking for an entirely new and unconnected suspect?’

  ‘Why not?’ Norma said, at least partly to annoy Atherton. Slider had noticed a slight friction between them of late. For some reason, Swilley had disapproved of Atherton’s dating WDC Hart, the loaner who had come as his temporary replacement and stayed on for a few weeks after his return. Hart had gone back to her home station, and as far as Slider knew the affair was off; but something about the situation had annoyed Norma, and the banter that she and Atherton had always exchanged now sometimes had an edge to it. ‘If she was stock-taking, she could have met another lover that night that we don’t know about yet, who turned nasty – which would put Eddie telling the truth all along.’

  Atherton looked lofty. ‘What makes it Eddie for me is the car. If anyone else had killed her, I can’t see they would have risked taking her car back. Only Eddie knew that Eddie wasn’t home: anyone else risked having him come out to look as they parked it. And there again, the car keys were in her handbag, which was in his pickup. I can’t see how you can get round that one.’

  ‘She must have had a spare set,’ Anderson said,

  ‘Yes, but who would have had access to them, except Eddie? People keep their spare keys at home,’ Atherton pointed out.

  There was a silence of general consent to that. Slider moved on. ‘All right, how’s the welly brigade getting on?’

  ‘The back garden’s a blank, guv,’ Hollis reported. ‘Trouble is, it’s been so dry there’s nothing to take footmarks. They’ve done an inch by inch search of the Rectory garden from the bottom up and found nothing. Nothing on the wall at the bottom, either, to show anyone going over with a heavy object. Plenty of evidence of people walking along the railway embankment, but there’s a broken fence-panel at the bottom of the footbridge, and apparently kids get through onto the embankment there, so it needn’t have been Eddie. And there is an oil patch on the road not far from the footpath entrance, which could be where Eddie’s van was parked. But lots of people have leaky cars.’

  ‘Get a sample and have it tested,’ Slider said. ‘It should be possible to match it to the pickup.’

  ‘Or otherwise,’ Hollis concluded. ‘And, of course, he could have parked there any time.’

  ‘Well, that’s a fine upstanding body of negatives,’ Slider said. ‘Unless we get some eye witnesses—’

  ‘When’s the public appeal going out, guv?’ someone called from the back.

  ‘Tonight on the regional news at six thirty. So you’ll all be drawing overtime tomorrow. I hope you’re pleased.’ A general response of mixed yesses and noes. ‘And we shall need a team for tonight. Any volunteers?’

  ‘I don’t mind, sir,’ said Defreitas, who was amongst the uniformed men drafted in.

  ‘By golly, I hate a volunteer,’ Hollis said. ‘What’s up with you, Daffy? Ain’t you got no home to go to?’

  Defreitas looked embarrassed. ‘As a matter of fact, no. The wife and me are not getting on. I’d just as soon stop out, and earn a bit extra while I’m at it.’

  ‘As the actress said to the bishop,’ Atherton concluded for him.

  ‘What about you, Jim?’ Hollis said. ‘With your lifestyle, the extra wad must come in useful.’

  ‘Count me out,’ Atherton said. ‘I’ve got a date tonight.’

  Norma glanced at him sharply, and he gave her a defiant look in return.

  ‘I’ll leave you to sort out the rota,’ Slider said to Hollis. ‘Meanwhile, let’s get back on the street, boy and girls, and ask those questions. I want you to ask about vehicles: Eddie’s, Jennifer’s, and let’s include Meacher’s this time. I’d like to end up with a complete log of where they were every minute. Re-interview the householders in St Michael Square. Any luck with the neighbour on the other side, by the way?’ he asked Norma.

  ‘No, boss, still no answer. I think they must be away.’

  ‘Well, it’s probably not important. They wouldn’t be likely to have heard anything from that end, anyway. But keep trying. And let’s extend the house-to-house to the surrounding streets. Any nocturnal comings and goings. Any sightings of our three vehicles. What time did Jennifer’s car get back home? Talk to the householders on the other side of the railway, whose windows look onto the embankment: did they see Eddie, or anyone else, humping a suspicious-looking bundle along there late at night? And let’s have a team at the footbridge to find who are the regular users, and whether they saw anything. The back garden’s still the best way to the terrace. Swilley, keep chasing Forensic for the report on her clothes. She was somewhere before she was down that hole.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Do You Remember An Inn, Miranda?

  When patient tel
ephoning eventually located Meacher, he was back at his office in Chiswick. Having clapped a metaphorical hand over the jam-jar, Slider and Atherton hurried round while he was still buzzing with irritation.

  ‘I’ve been looking at properties, if you must know. I wasn’t aware I had to account for my whereabouts to you, or anyone.’

  ‘You’ve been out on business with your mobile turned off?’ Atherton said.

  ‘I turned it off to save the battery. I forgot to recharge it last night – if it’s any of your business. Really, this is too much!’

  ‘Do you think we might talk to you privately for a moment?’ Slider asked emolliently. Meacher’s assistant – a different one, Jennifer’s replacement, he assumed, a flat-faced young woman of obviously high breeding and presumably correspondingly low pay – averted her gaze abruptly at his words and concentrated on her computer screen, cheeks aglow.

  Meacher also looked, and then, with a theatrical sigh, said, ‘Oh, very well, if it will get you to go away and leave me in peace. Come through to the back. Victoria, I shall be five minutes. No calls until I come back.’

  ‘Right-oh,’ Victoria said, with false cheerfulness; her eyes followed them anxiously as Atherton and Slider trooped after Meacher into the small back office and shut the door. The room contained a sink with a hot-water geyser and a table with tea- and coffee-making equipment on it, four filing cabinets, and boxes of stationery stacked against the unoccupied wall. Another door, ajar, revealed a lavatory and washbasin. There was nowhere to sit and barely room to stand, and this seemed to please Meacher, who almost smiled as he leaned against the sink and folded his arms across his enviably suited chest with an exaggerated air of relaxation. He looked guilty as hell to Atherton, who was almost ready to give up the Eddie theory in favour of nailing this sartorial rival.

  ‘Right, make it quick,’ Meacher said. ‘I have a business to run.’

  ‘It can be as quick as you care to make it,’ Slider said evenly. ‘Just tell me where you were on Tuesday night, and we’ll be off.’