‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’ve every confidence in your interrogatory technique.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Porson was on the move again. ‘As he’s here voluntarily, we’re not on the clock, that’s one good thing. We won’t arrest him unless he looks like taking a wander – that’ll give us a chance to get all the witnesses taped up and labelled. Get the old chap who saw them – Tarrant, is it? – get him in and we’ll do a line-up. And get the motor witnesses to come and look at the book and pick out the van they saw in the square. Tomorrow will do for that.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Meanwhile, give Andrews half an hour, spot of grub and a cup of tea, and then have another go at him. Take him through the timetable, and run him gently up to the murder so he doesn’t even see it coming, get my drift?’
Slider got it. Excitement was making the Syrup unusually direct. Quite comprehensive, in fact.
Slider was late home, after the failure of the Porson Plan Mark I: Eddie Andrews cantered gently up to the fence, had not precisely refused, but had jumped carelessly, scattering brushwood. He was willing to co-operate – too willing, in Slider’s view: he followed wherever he was led, like a bloodhound on an aniseed trail, and the result was a less than compelling narrative. He didn’t deny anything, but he didn’t offer any explanations for the things that bothered Slider, either; he seemed to want the answers laid out for him as well as the questions. It left Slider restless. Everything added up to Eddie Andrews, and yet nothing added up. It was like eating without swallowing, making love with gloves on.
Talking of which, Joanna was home, and miffed that she had had a rare Saturday evening free and he had not been there to share it with her. ‘I know it’s not your fault. I’m not blaming you. I’m just saying it’s a pity, that’s all.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Had something to eat. Watched that film we taped the other day. The Clint Eastwood thing.’
‘Oh, I wanted to see that,’ he protested.
‘Don’t worry, by the time you get the leisure to sit down and watch it, it will be far enough in the past for me to watch it again.’
He was mollified. ‘I don’t suppose there’s anything to eat in the house?’
‘Didn’t you get anything?’
‘Not since …’ He pondered. ‘Breakfast, actually.’
‘They let you starve all day? You ought to stand up for yourself.’
‘Like Narcissus?’
‘What an educated quip. You sound like Atherton.’
‘Never mind all that. Your mind should be on me. Food, woman, food!’
Obligingly, she looked in the fridge. ‘Well, there’s salady stuff.’
‘I hate salad. I wish it was winter.’
‘That was practically a pout. Actually, when I say salad, it’s just a sort of honeymoon salad – lettuce alone. There’s some cheese and a bit of pâté left, but the bread’s a bit old.’ She looked at her lover’s suffering face and said, ‘Tell you what, there’s some bacon in the freezer compartment. I could whack that into the microwave to defrost it, and make you a toasted bacon sandwich. How would that do?’
‘I love you,’ Slider confessed.
‘So you say. It’s just my cuisine you fancy, really.’
‘You have a beautiful and curvaceous cuisine, but I love you for your mind, as well.’
One bacon sandwich thing led to another, so Saturday night was not a total flop after all; but Sunday started badly. He overslept and woke feeling doomed and heavy in the legs, and Joanna rushed in in a panic and said her car wouldn’t start.
‘I’ll have to take yours.’
Slider hated to be without a car. And he hated anyone else driving his. Irene wouldn’t have asked; but with a new relationship you have to tread gently. He gave his objection mildly. ‘Can’t you go by public transport?’
‘Not possibly. I’ve got a rehearsal in Milton Keynes this morning, then that blasted dedication service or whatever it’s called at Eton, and then back to Milton Keynes for the concert in the evening. I can only just do it with a car. Why do I take on these ghastly economy-class dates?’
‘Because you need the money.’
‘You’ve only got to get to Shepherd’s Bush, haven’t you?’
He couldn’t refuse against such reason, little as he liked it, and heaved himself out of bed. ‘You ought to get rid of that old wreck and get yourself something reliable,’ he grumbled, searching his jacket pocket for his keys.
‘Are you talking about my car or my man?’ she asked, eyeing his gummy state.
‘And how am I supposed to get to work?’
‘You could cycle up the avenue, but you haven’t got a bike. Or you could call out the AA and take mine when they’ve fixed it.’
‘I haven’t got time for that.’
‘You’d better have, or I’ll have to take your car tomorrow as well,’ she said, taking the keys from his nerveless fingers and kissing him hard on the lips in the same movement. ‘’Bye. Love you. Good luck with your murderer.’
‘See you tomorrow,’ he said glumly, knowing she would not be back before midnight.
Things didn’t get better. Eddie Andrews was still in pliant mood, and willing, not to say eager to make a further, expanded statement. But the details he added were vague in the extreme, and when pressed to be specific about times, places and materials he fell back on, ‘I can’t remember,’ and ‘It’s all confused – just a blur in my mind.’ He seemed more cheerful, and was eating well. Now he had confessed, the responsibility had been taken from his shoulders: it was a syndrome Slider had seen before – indeed, it was the basis of the Catholic Church’s success – but in this case he didn’t find it comforting.
Andrews readily agreed to an identity parade, but Sunday was not a good day for organising a line-up, and Slider had to rummage through the staff to make up the numbers.
‘I’ll do it,’ Swilley said kindly, when Slider asked for volunteers.
‘I don’t think his heart could stand it. McLaren – no, of course he knows you. Anderson, then. For me, laddie.’ Anderson got up, grumbling. Slider surveyed the room. The uniform loaners were in plain clothes today. ‘What about you, Defreitas?’
‘Not me, sir. I’m allergic to line-ups.’ Defreitas said hastily. ‘Take Renker. He wants a break.’
Renker stood up. ‘I don’t mind, sir.’
There was a chorus from around the room.
‘Don’t do it, Eric!’
‘Never volunteer, son!’
‘I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole, mate!’
‘Yeah, whatever happened to him?’ Renker enquired. ‘“Stretch” Polanski, the ten-foot Pole?’
‘That’s it!’ Slider exclaimed. ‘Not another word! Anderson, Renker, Willans – front and centre. You’ve volunteered. And when all this is over, I’m going to run away and join the circus.’
The three men filed out from their desks with a show of reluctance. ‘I thought this was the circus,’ Renker protested. ‘Otherwise, how come all the clowns?’
Slider rolled his eyes. ‘Everyone’s a comedian. Get downstairs, you three. And for God’s sake, try not to look like policemen.’
* * *
Tosca waited in the front shop, where she and Nicholls fell instantly and deeply in love, while Mr Tarrant did his duty. He did not pick out Eddie Andrews.
‘No,’ he said regretfully after a long and careful scrutiny of the line, ‘it isn’t any of those. The one at the end – number eight,’ this was Renker, ‘he’s about the right height. But he’s too fair. Number two’s hair is more like it.’ This was Anderson. ‘But he looks too heavy and broad. And I don’t think he’s quite tall enough. And three, four and five are much too short.’ Number four was Andrews.
Slider took Mr Tarrant out. ‘I’m sorry,’ the old man said. ‘I wanted to help. But none of them looked right to me, and I couldn’t say they did if they didn’t.’
‘Of course
not,’ Slider said. He hovered over a delicate area. ‘Regarding the height of the man you saw, sir, in your statement, you did say he was only “a bit taller than the woman”?’
‘No,’ Tarrant said anxiously, ‘I said he was quite a bit taller than the lady. I did tell the other officer, the one who came to my house, that I thought he was a very tall man, but your officer talked about perspective and about it being dark, and he pointed out – well, he persuaded me I was mistaken. But I did think at the time that he was very tall. Tall and slim.’
‘And with fair, wavy hair?’
‘Brown,’ Mr Tarrant said firmly. ‘A lightish brown, perhaps, but not fair or blond. And definitely curly. Quite tight curls.’
McLaren was unrepentant. ‘He wasn’t all that sure what he’d seen, guv. I had to help him out a bit. I didn’t twist anything, just talked him through it, so as to get it down clearly.’
‘Clearly?’ Slider was keeping a tight hold on himself, but it wasn’t easy. ‘He says brown hair and you write fair? He says curly and you write wavy?’
‘Well, guv, I mean, how’s he going to tell the difference anyway between light brown and fair? I mean, he’s across the road, and it’s quite wide there. And it’s dark, and he’s an old bloke, and his eyes are probably not up to much.’
‘McLaren, you are a waste of space!’ Slider raved. ‘You have the intellect of a brick! If he couldn’t see across the road, what’s the bloody point of having him as a witness?’
McLaren shifted uncomfortably. ‘I don’t mean to say he can’t see, but – you know – I was just, sort of, guiding him a bit.’
Slider put his head in his hands. ‘All you had to do was to take down what he said. Just let him tell you, and write it down.’
‘But, guv, we’ve got a confession,’ McLaren pointed out. ‘You can’t get over that.’
‘A paraplegic terrapin could get over that! Mr Tarrant says Andrews was nothing like the man he saw. He also picked out a Transit van from the cards, not a pickup, as the motor he saw parked on the square – an identification, incidentally, confirmed by the other motor witness we had. The phone-in who saw a man and a woman on the embankment didn’t leave his name. And the woman across the railway lines was too far away to identify the man she saw in the bushes. How long do you think it would take defence counsel to knock that house of cards down, balloon-brain?’
‘But Andrews still confessed. We know it was him. He knows it was him. We’ll get other evidence – bound to.’
‘Andrews is in a highly suggestible state of mind, and his confession is extremely suspect. And now you’ve contaminated the field. How are we supposed to know now what he really remembers and what’s been suggested to him? You were given a simple task to do, basic police work, and you made a complete Horlicks of it. I’m disgusted with you.’
‘Sorry, guv,’ McLaren said, with a stubborn lack of contrition.
‘Oh, go away,’ Slider said. He still had to go and tell Mr Porson his prince was a frog.
Porson, annoyingly, was inclined to side with McLaren. ‘It’s a nuisance, of course, but I don’t think the situation is irredeemiable. It’s not as if we’ve got no corroboration. We know he was drinking all evening and threatening to kill her, and we know she was having affairs. And her handbag was found in his pickup. We’ve got enough to be going on with, and other witnesses will come forward in time. Andrews isn’t asking to go home, is he?’
‘No, sir, but—’
Porson held up his hand calmly. ‘There you are, then. Andrews is here completely gratuitously. And if he wants to make a voluntary statement of his guilt, then it’s his perjorative to do so.’
Slider stumped up to the canteen for a cup of tea and a quiet fume. He found Atherton there at a table on his own, resting his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand like a Scott Fitzgerald débutante, dunking his teabag delicately with the other hand.
‘Your problem is, you always want to know everything,’ he said languidly, when Slider had unpocketed his troubles. ‘You want all the teas dotted and the eyes crossed. Porson’s probably right. And Eddie probably is guilty.’
‘Probably? Where’s your intellectual curiosity?’
‘Oh, I can’t be bothered with all that on a Sunday.’
Slider took a few deep breaths and drank some tea. ‘And to have to stand there while Mr Porson mangles language at me,’ he grumbled, diminuendo.
‘You don’t really mind that,’ Atherton told him. ‘That’s just psychosemantic.’
Somewhat restored, Slider went downstairs again and found Swilley looking for him. ‘I think we may have got something here, boss. A woman’s phoned, who says she was Jennifer’s best friend. And she says she saw Jennifer on the Tuesday evening.’
Janice Byrt lived, worked and generally had her being in that strange and lost part of Hounslow that lay under the flightpath of Heathrow. Once there had been only little villages, tile-hung farmhouses and rustic churches. Then arterial roads had linked them with ribbons of mock-Tudor semis, traffic lights and neat set-back arcades of shops. But the placid life still went on, in a world where people wore hats, and walked to the shops pushing babies in prams; for few had cars, and their sound was but as the trickle of a stream, and you could hear the birds when you went out of doors.
And then the airport came. Now the great white bellies of arriving and departing jumbos flashed like monstrous fish above them, crushing down the sky and leaving a shimmering wake of hot kerosene like a snail’s trail over the frail roofs. Roaring cars and bellowing lorries sucked up whatever air was left, and, to prevent any pocket of peace taking root, satellite dishes on every house probed the sky for new sources of bedlam, while shops and pubs vomited endless loops of strident pop.
In this insanity of noise and stink, a race of people clung to existence, like those bizarre microbes that manage to live inside volcanoes. The thirties semis had been armoured with triple-glazing and wall insulation, and a cheerful, and to all appearances normal, life went on, monument to man’s astonishing adaptability. Janice Byrt had a little hairdressing establishment on one of the traffic-lit corners where one arterial road crossed another, and the music of the day was regularly informed with the screaming brakes and tinkling glass of yet another driver’s belief that red lights were optional. Her shop front was painted pink, with pink ruched curtains in the windows and the name of the salon hand-painted in curly magenta writing on a pink background over the top: Hair You Are. It was an especially good joke, Slider discovered, because Janice came from Lowestoft, where they pronounce ‘here’ as ‘hair’.
She lived in the flat above the shop. Slider parked in the service road in front of the parade, and then found the archway several shops down that led to the granite stairs, which led to the balconies at the back, which gave access to the flats. Inside, the traffic noise was several degrees lower, and when a plane came over it was still possible to carry on talking, though the whole flat trembled like a vibrating bed in a motel, so that Janice’s collection of china figurines tinkled together as though they were chatting in tiny china voices.
‘You get used to it,’ she assured Slider when he asked about the noise. ‘I hardly hear it any more. And those new jumbos are ever so much quieter.’
Slider felt as though his brains were being scrambled by a master chef with an extra large whisk, but there certainly could be no more pleasant, normal and relaxed person than Janice Byrt seemed. He supposed it was natural selection. Those who went bonkers were carried off screaming to a suite at the Latex Hilton, and the rest just got on with their lives.
She had been shocked to learn of Jennifer’s death. ‘I didn’t know a thing about it,’ she said. ‘Well, I don’t have time for newspapers, and I never watch the news on telly – too depressing, all that war and MPs and stuff. It wasn’t till a friend of mine rung up this morning – she’d seen it on the news last night, and of course the name made her jump. She said she wasn’t really watching, but when she heard the name she looke
d up, and there was Jen’s picture all over the screen! That give her such a fright! So she rang me up this morning, and she say to me, “What d’you think about our Jen getting killed like that?” and there, I say to her, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, girl.”’ Her accent became stronger as she grew agitated, Slider noticed.
The friend who had rung her lived in St Albans. ‘Val and me were Jen’s bridesmaids when she married Eddie. Would you like to see the photo?’
Slider accepted with interest, and was handed a framed photograph from its place of honour on one of the crowded shelves of the chimney alcove. It was a typical wedding-photographer’s line-up: bride and groom flanked by two bridesmaids and best man, grass under foot and grey stones of the church out of focus behind. There was Jennifer with a glittering smile and meringue hair, scarlet lips and nails, all in white grosgrain, tight bodice and puffed sleeves that Princess Di had made fashionable up and down the land back in another age. She held red roses and white lilies wired into one of those bizarre flat-fronted sheaths designed by florists purely for holding in wedding-photos, and a silver cardboard horseshoe dangled on white ribbon from her wrist. Her other hand rested on the sleeve of a younger, blonder Eddie, bundled into a blue suit patently not his own, and looking, from his expression of bewildered euphoria, as if he’d just had his brains beaten out with a lump of pure pleasure in a silk sock.
To Eddie’s other side stood the best man, a scrawny, raw-faced, crop-haired youth who looked as if he’d only just learned to walk upright. To Jennifer’s other side stood a plump, dark-haired bridesmaid, and Janice.
‘That’s me,’ she said helpfully, pointing. The bridesmaids were in matching Princess Di jobs in bright pink taffeta with circlets on their heads, and small, flat, round bouquets of Valentine-pink roses that looked like Las Vegas wedding-parlour pizzas. ‘They were lovely frocks,’ she said wistfully, ‘only Val had the figure for it and I didn’t. My sleeves kept slipping down.’ Slider remembered being told just recently that no-one said ‘frocks’ any more. Who was that? Yes, poor Janice was small and weedy and flat in every dimension and looked as if her frock was independently rigged like a bell-tent, and she merely standing inside it, looking meekly out of the hole at the top. In a pneumatic-bust competition with Val, she was definitely the twin who didn’t have the Toni.
Shallow Grave (Bill Slider Mystery) Page 23
