Shallow Grave (Bill Slider Mystery)

by Harrod-Eagles, Cynthia

  The door at the end of the corridor was locked, but the key was in it. It gave onto a garage in which the Range Rover now stood. On the far side again was another half-glass door, unlocked, beyond which was the empty garage whose doors he had tried earlier. There was a cold-water tap in the middle of the far wall, and in the wall at the back of the garage was another door. Slider opened it, and found a tiny yard, walled in all round, containing what was obviously the filling-cock to an underground oil tank.

  Slider closed the door again and turned to Mrs Hammond, who was waiting at his elbow nervously, as if expecting to be ticked off about something.

  ‘When I tried those doors just now,’ Slider said, nodding to the pair, whose cracks and chips and missing chunks were cruelly revealed by the bright sunshine outside, ‘they weren’t locked.’

  She moved her hands anxiously. ‘Oh, well, no, they don’t lock, you see. At least, I think there was a key once, but I don’t know where it is now.’

  ‘So those doors are always unlocked?’

  ‘Well, yes.’ She searched his face for clues as to where the rebuke would come from. ‘You see, the oil man brings his pipe in through here and out to the back yard.’ She gestured towards the rear door. ‘For the central heating. It means I don’t have to be in for him. He can just come when he likes.’

  ‘Aren’t you worried about people breaking in?’ Slider asked.

  She looked mildly surprised. ‘But why should they? There’s nothing here they could steal.’

  ‘The Range Rover?’

  ‘Oh, but they couldn’t get it out, could they? I never leave the keys in it. And the doors to that garage are locked.’

  ‘Someone might go through into the passage – there’s all your father’s wine, for instance. That must be valuable. And they could get through the kitchen to the rest of the house.’

  She shook her head. ‘I lock the door at night – I mean the door from the garage into the passage. And Sheba’s in the kitchen at night. She’d bark if anyone broke in.’

  ‘And on the night in question, the Tuesday night, she didn’t bark?’

  ‘Oh, no. I’d have heard her. I always wake if she barks.’ She seemed to falter. ‘Is there something wrong? Did you – were you—?’

  ‘It occurred to me to wonder,’ he said, ‘whether Mrs Andrews was left in your garage during that night, the Tuesday night. Or perhaps in one of your storerooms. I don’t like to upset you by the thought, but—’

  She still seemed puzzled. ‘Oh, no, she couldn’t have been,’ she said. ‘I’m sure she was never in any of the storerooms, or the garage, except when I was there. Why should you think so?’

  He tried to find a gentle way of making her understand. ‘You see, we know that she was moved at some point – that she wasn’t laid straight in the hole where you found her. She was put somewhere else first, for some hours and then moved later.’ Mrs Hammond seemed to pale, and put her fingers to her mouth as she understood him at last. ‘And it occurred to me that perhaps whoever killed her used your garage at first—’

  ‘That’s horrible!’ she said, through her fingers. ‘No, I don’t believe it. I’m sure she never was – not there! Oh dear, I can’t—’ She turned away, and with her back to him, fumbled a handkerchief out of her pocket and blew her nose. ‘No, it’s not possible,’ she said, muffled but for once definite. ‘Sheba would have barked.’

  They returned to the kitchen. The dog looked up briefly at them and then down again, resting her nose on her paws, her sore red ears twitching.

  ‘Your bedroom is above here?’ Slider asked.

  Mrs Hammond turned to him. Her eyes looked a little pink and frightened. He had upset her by talk of the body, he saw, but how could it be helped?

  ‘My bedroom and the boys’ rooms and our bathroom. Do you want to see?’

  ‘No, thank you, not now. Your father’s bedroom is at the other end of the house?’

  ‘Over the dining-room; and Mother’s was over the drawing-room, with their bathroom in between.’ She searched his face again. ‘But he has a bell by his bedside to call me, if he wants me. I’m a light sleeper.’

  It was sad how anxious she was to avoid blame, he thought. ‘And in fact your father didn’t call you on Tuesday night?’

  ‘No, he had a good night. He slept through.’

  ‘Yes, so he told me. Does he take sleeping pills?’

  ‘No, but he does have pain-killers. He was offered sleeping pills, but he wouldn’t have them. He doesn’t like the idea.’

  Slider left no further on than when he had arrived. All the same questions remained to be answered. It had to be Eddie, didn’t it? But if he did it, where did he do it? And where did Meacher come in? There was a hole in the story somewhere, and he was running out of leads. He had to hope that Porson’s appeal to the Great British Public would turn something up.

  He was on his way back to his car when something that Lady Diana had said came back to him, and he diverted to the Goat In Boots. Mrs Potter was ‘upstairs, resting’, according to her husband. ‘This business with Jennifer has knocked her bandy,’ he confided. ‘Well, it’s got to all of us, really. One minute someone’s with you, and the next—’ He shook his head dolefully. ‘I could go and wake her for you,’ he offered doubtfully.

  ‘No, it’s all right, I’ve just got one question, and you can answer it just as well. You’ve told me that when Jennifer left for her meeting on Tuesday night, she was wearing a navy dress with a red belt?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Can you remember whether she had a red scarf as well?’

  ‘What, on her head, you mean?’

  ‘On her head, round her neck – anywhere.’

  Jack pondered weightily. ‘I dunno,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t say I remember really. She could have had, but—’

  Karen, the barmaid, who was polishing glasses nearby with her ears on stalks, interrupted these musings impatiently. ‘But she did, don’t you remember? A red silk scarf. It was tied to the strap of her handbag.’

  Oh, very seventies, Slider thought. ‘You’re sure about that?’ he asked Karen.

  ‘Yes, course I am,’ she said. ‘You remember, Jack?’

  ‘Can’t say I do. But she could have. I wouldn’t swear one way or the other.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Slider said. ‘Thank you,’ to Karen. ‘It’s just a small point, but I wanted to clear it up.’ So the scarf was real, he thought as he walked across the square; and sometime during the evening she had lost it. Somewhere between the Meacher house and the grave. It was something to file away at the back of the mind. Probably it wasn’t important – not important unless it turned up in an interesting place, that is.

  The CID room was crowded again: the troops, together with various hangers-on who had nothing better to do, were waiting around the television for the appeal to come on. It would be Porson’s first television appearance since he came to Shepherd’s Bush, and the excitement was as palpable, and probably of the same kind, as among spectators at a Grand Prix hoping for an accident.

  Anderson and Mackay were playing the Porson game. ‘What’s the Syrup’s favourite part of north London?’ Mackay asked.

  ‘Barnet, of course. Too easy.’

  ‘What’s his favourite place in Leicestershire?’

  Anderson looked blank. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never been to Leicestershire.’

  ‘Wigston,’ Mackay said triumphantly.

  ‘Never heard of it. You can’t have that one.’

  ‘All right, how does he like to travel, then?’

  ‘Dunno,’ Anderson said, after some thought.

  ‘By hairyplane,’ Mackay said triumphantly.

  ‘Hairyplane?’

  ‘For God’s sake, shut up, you two imbeciles,’ Swilley said impatiently. ‘Here’s the boss.’

  Slider squeezed through to the front. ‘Where’s McLaren?’

  ‘Gone home, guv. Sick as a parrot,’ Mackay said.

  ‘
About time, after he’s infected all of us,’ Anderson put in.

  ‘Atherton back yet?’

  ‘He’s just coming in,’ Swilley said, gesturing towards the door.

  Atherton slithered through to them, looking glum but resigned. ‘Caroline Barnes confirms the alibi,’ he told Slider, without preamble. ‘I tried to shake her, but she stuck to it, though she looks nervous as hell. She says he came round, they had supper and went to bed.’

  ‘A simple story.’

  ‘And none the less incredible for that. So there we are.’

  ‘Yes, there we are,’ Slider said. He pondered. ‘It could be true.’

  ‘But then again …’ Atherton sighed.

  ‘Maybe someone will have seen Meacher’s car parked outside,’ Slider suggested.

  ‘Yes, that would be handy. But of course if no-one remembers seeing it, that doesn’t prove it wasn’t there. And knowing our luck—’

  ‘Shh, here it comes,’ Swilley said. There was a chorus of hoots and wolf-whistles, which Slider silenced in the interests of discipline. However odd Porson was in his mannerisms, he was still the boss, and Slider could not let them mock him in front of him. But in fact, Porson was surprisingly good on the screen. The portentous, trade-unionist delivery did very well on television, and under the unnatural lighting everyone looked as if he could be wearing a wig; the regional news presenter, indeed, looked as if he was breaking in a face for a friend. And the Super only slipped in one Porsonism, when he affirmed that anyone calling with information would have their unanimity respected – and even then you had to be alert to catch it.

  When it was over there was a storm of applause, not entirely ironic. Then the hangers-on drifted away, and the night team went to their desks to wait for the first telephone calls. Atherton stood up and stretched, brushed down his trousers, and said, ‘Well, I’m off.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you’ve got a date, haven’t you?’ Slider said absently.

  ‘Yup. How do I look?’

  Slider examined him. ‘Too excited.’

  ‘Somewhere at this moment a woman is preparing for an evening of bliss with me,’ Atherton said, ‘and there isn’t a thing she can do to me that I don’t deserve. If she plays her cards right, she could be staring at my bedroom ceiling till dawn.’

  ‘Who is this thrice-blessed female?’

  But Atherton only smiled enigmatically and sloped out like a cat on the prowl. And the first phone rang.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Lettuce, With A Gladsome Mind

  He half thought that Irene would be out on a Friday night, but when he had called her to suggest the meeting she had grudgingly agreed.

  ‘Matthew won’t be here, you know,’ she said. ‘Friday’s Scouts night.’

  Slider tried not to sound disappointed. ‘It’s you I want to see.’

  Perhaps his choice of words touched her, for she became defensive. ‘What time d’you expect to get here? Though knowing you that’s a silly question.’

  ‘I’ll try and get away by seven, so I should be with you before half past.’

  ‘Half past seven? You don’t expect me to cook for you?’

  ‘I can pick up a sandwich or something and eat it in the car,’ he said, already resigned.

  But she said, ‘Oh, I can make you a sandwich. I can do that,’ as if some other and outrageous personal attention had been in question.

  So when the Syrup’s broadcast was over he detached himself from the tentacles of the department and hurried down to the car before anyone could think up any more urgent questions for him.

  It was a fine summer evening; the air was heavy with the baleful stench of barbecue. Everywhere flesh was being scorched by flames, and a pall of oily smoke hung over London. It was like living in the sixteenth century, he thought. Funny how willing people were to eat burnt sausages and limp lettuce, provided you put them on a paper plate and made them do it in discomfort out of doors. At least he could be sure Irene wouldn’t do that to him. Barbecuing was men’s work: she was a very traditional woman.

  When he reached the house he thought for a minute there was someone else there: he’d forgotten she’d changed her car since she’d been with Ernie. She had a Toyota Celica – what Porson would call a Cecilia, of course. A bit posh for Irene. He assumed Ernie had put some money towards it, if he hadn’t bought it entirely, and wasn’t sure how he felt about that; then told himself it was damn well time he stopped feeling like anything about Irene and Ernie, if he really intended her to be his wife quondam but not futurus.

  He had a key, but tactfully rang the bell, and stood on the doorstep of what he had called home with many painful feelings, which were only sharpened when she opened the door to him and stood looking at him nervously and with an inadequately hidden expectancy.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, since she didn’t seem to be going to.

  ‘I thought you’d be late.’ She didn’t move to let him in.

  ‘Shall I go away again?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, and stepped back at last. She was nervous, and she had too much scent on: it hung in the hall like a cloud of insecticide and made his eyes burn. She closed the front door, and he suddenly felt nervous too, trapped in this small space with her, not knowing what she was feeling or what she might say. It was absurd not to know how to behave with his own wife of so many years; and he looked at her back as she shut the door and thought, She’s been to bed with Ernie Newman, and it completely threw him. Horrid images flashed up in his mind without his volition: her with Ernie; her with Ernie in the nude; her doing with someone else what she had only ever done with him before. Sex was such an absurd stroke revolting thing when it was someone other than oneself doing it.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Her voice brought him back to reality.

  ‘What? Yes – yes, of course.’

  ‘You looked as if you had a pain, or something.’

  ‘No, I’m all right. You look very nice,’ he said almost at random, but found that, indeed, she did. She had always been neat and pretty; tonight her smooth short dark hair was curling slightly with the heat, so that it looked like duckling feathers, and the descent from severity suited her. Her makeup was carefully done, and her pale mauve cotton dress left bare her slender arms, which were lightly tanned. ‘Is that a new frock?’

  ‘This old thing? I’ve had it years.’ But she seemed pleased, almost fluttered. ‘No-one says “frock” any more,’ she went on, her eyes scanning his face on a mission of their own.

  ‘Bishops do.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said again, automatically; and then grew brisk. ‘Well, don’t stand about in the hall like a visitor. Come into the lounge.’

  Everything was perilously the same: the three-piece suite, the carpet, the television tuned to some appalling sitcom which, to judge from the Beano jokes and weirdly 1950s stereotypes, had been written as a school project by a team of bright fifth-formers.

  No, one thing was different. There was no little button nose pressed against the screen. ‘No Kate?’ he asked.

  Irene’s eyes slid away. ‘I arranged for her to go to Flora’s for the night.’

  ‘Oh.’ Slider wondered why she was embarrassed. Did she feel guilty for depriving him of his daughter? Or was it something else? What? Her guilt made him feel wary. Was there trouble here for him?

  ‘I thought it would be better for us,’ she went on with elaborate casualness, ‘to be on our own so we could – talk freely.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Slider again. A horrid thought was struggling to be born, and he was reluctant to be its mother.

  ‘Well, sit down, then. Would you like a drink?’

  ‘Have you got any beer?’ he asked – a num question if ever there was one. But she was full of surprises tonight.

  ‘I’ve got a can of lager in the fridge. I thought you might like one.’

  He smiled. ‘Just one?’

  ‘Well, it’s a four-pack, actually. They don’t sell single cans in Sainsbury’s. No,
stay there, I’ll get it.’

  She went out, and he got up and turned off the television, having lost his immunity to it since living with Joanna. Into the sudden quiet, sounds jumped from the open french windows: children’s voices – next door’s, playing in the garden – and a clatter of cutlery from somewhere, a distant lawnmower, a car in the street accelerating past and changing up a gear, a dog barking with the monotonous rhythm of one who knows no-one’s coming. He walked to the window to look out. The square of garden was neglected: the grass needed cutting, and the borders between the dull shrubs had gone all Isadora Duncan with gracefully unfettered weeds, where once there would have been a Coldstream Guard of annuals. Neither of them had been here to do anything, of course.

  Burnt-sausage smoke rose up from the garden to the left, spiced with a whiff of paraffin; the sky was hazy and quivering with it. As he stood brooding, there was a characteristic thump-and-scrabble sound as a black cat came over the fence from next door and trotted by fast with its ears out sideways and the cunning-gormless look of a cat with prey. It had a barbecued spare rib clenched in its teeth, and only glanced at Slider as it passed, intent on escape. It reached the opposite fence, crouched and sprang up, and disappeared to crunch in peace in the empty garden beyond.

  ‘Oh, there you are.’ He turned back at Irene’s voice, and seeing her with a tray in her hands hurried to relieve her of it; but she said, ‘No, it’s all right, just take the Radio Times off the table, will you?’

  She put the tray down on the coffee table, which was drawn up to the sofa, and sat, evidently expecting him to sit beside her. On the tray was a tumbler of lager with the can beside it – the glass was too small to take the whole fifteen ounces – and another tumbler of what looked like gin and tonic. There was a plate on which stood a pork pie flanked with lettuce, cherry tomatoes, slices of cucumber and a teaspoonful of Branston pickle, a knife and fork, a paper napkin, and a jar of mustard.

  ‘I thought you’d prefer it to a sandwich,’ she said.

  His heart hurt him. Cans of lager, and now a pork pie. She didn’t approve of pork pies, she thought them common, but she knew he liked them, and there was a little tremor in her voice when she said, ‘I thought you’d prefer it,’ which told him she had deliberately arranged this treat for him and was waiting to feed off his pleasure and surprise. And she’d laid it out so nicely, with traditional pub garnish; and remembered the mustard. He wanted to howl and bite the furniture. ‘This all looks very nice. Thank you,’ he heard himself say. It sounded falsely avuncular to him, but she seemed satisfied.