Janice took the picture back from him and caressed it with a thumb. ‘It was a lovely wedding. Val’s married now, got two children. I’m the only one not married. That’s the only time I was ever a bridesmaid, too.’ She put the picture back in its special place, probably unaware that she had just told her whole life’s philosophy in four sentences.
‘You’ve known Jennifer for a long time?’
‘We went to the same school. She was Jennifer Harris then.’
‘In St Albans?’
She nodded. ‘She was my best friend. I was ever so shy, and then, well, my mum and dad moved from Lowestoft when I was fourteen, so I didn’t know anybody, and I felt really awkward and, sort of, out of it. I was never much good at making friends. But Jen just came over to me on the first day and started talking to me, and after that she sort of looked after me, and let me go about with her. She was lovely! I mean, she was pretty and everything, and so lively, too, always into everything, always laughing and teasing the boys. She was never scared of anything. And popular! I never did know what she saw in me.’
Slider nodded encouragingly. Every Dame Edna needs a Madge, he thought; and often the wildest extroverts were the most insecure underneath. They needed one quiet, loyal, reliable lieutenant who loved them blindly and uncritically – and also, who would never be a rival. ‘Did you wear glasses at school?’ he asked unwarily, out of his thoughts.
‘Yes,’ she said, surprised. ‘I wear contacts now. How ever did you know?’
He waved it away. ‘Doesn’t matter. Please go on. You kept up with Jennifer when you left school?’
Jennifer went to work in an estate agent’s office, and Janice became a hairdressing apprentice, and was still permitted to hang about with Jennifer’s gang, and play buffer and straight man in Jennifer’s games of seduction with the boys. ‘Of course, it wasn’t the same after she married Eddie, but we still kept in touch, and after she came to London, I decided to come too, to be nearer.’
Though quiet, plain, and shy with boys, Janice was no duffer. She had worked her way up the hairdressing hierarchy and finally opened her own salon which, though not in a fashionable place – or perhaps because of that – had a large and loyal clientele. It was making her a nice little pot of money. ‘I don’t really have anything to spend it on,’ she said to Slider, but without self-pity. ‘I don’t go out much, and I bought the flat cheap from the council years ago so there’s no mortgage. I like to buy things for my nephews – my brother’s boys – and I like nice holidays. But it still builds up. I suppose,’ she laughed deprecatingly, ‘it’s for my retirement, really.’
Over the years, too, Jennifer had come to value the quiet friend more, and had increasingly entrusted her with her confidences. ‘People think not being married I must be really sheltered. But that’s funny what women will tell you when their hair’s wet. I think they feel vulnerable – well, no-one looks their best like that, do they?’ She laughed the little laugh again. ‘I think it’s a bit like being a priest – you know, the confessional? I bet I’ve heard things that would make your hair stand on end. Well, not yours,’ she amended humbly, ‘you being a policeman, but most people. And you don’t have to do everything to know about it, do you?’
‘I should hope not,’ Slider said. ‘So tell me what happened on Tuesday.’
‘Well, Tuesday’s my half-day closing. Of course, Jen knew that. She turns up, oh, about ha’ past four, it must have been. I could see right away she was upset. She comes right in and says, “Give me a drink, Jan, before I start crying and make a fool of myself.” So I made her a gin and tonic, a big one. That was her drink, gin and tonic. I always kept some in for when she dropped in. I like a Cinzano, myself, or a sherry.’
‘Had she already been drinking, do you think?’
‘She wasn’t drunk, if that’s what you mean. But I could tell she’d had a couple. But she was too upset and angry to get drunk. She was burning it up, sort of.’
Slider nodded. He knew that mood. ‘What was she upset about?’
‘She’d been with one of her men that afternoon – David.’ She looked at Slider to see if he knew about him, and he nodded again. ‘She said, “He’s dropped me, Jan, the bastard’s dropped me. Now what am I going to do?” You see, it was different with David. She was always having affairs, but they never meant much. But she had high hopes of David.’
‘High hopes?’
‘Well, he was posh – you know, educated and upper class. Went to a public school and everything. And he was rich, too. Jen had always wanted someone like that. Eddie – he was a mistake, really. She married him too young. If she’d stayed single a bit longer she never would have married him at all, because they weren’t suited. He was dull, you know? No ambition. Jen wanted to go up in life. And she thought with David she’d really found the right man.’
‘Didn’t she know he was married?’
‘What, David? Yes, of course, but he didn’t love his wife. She was much older than him, and it was never a love match in the beginning. That wasn’t a problem. Jen was crazy about David, and what with everything he said she thought he felt the same. She was just waiting for him to say the word, and then she was going to leave Eddie and he was going to leave Diana – that’s David’s wife’s name – and everything would be all right. You see, Eddie’s ever so jealous, but he’d never start anything with a person like David. He’s very polite with people like that – scared of them, almost.’ She sounded faintly puzzled by the idea; Slider thought of the Syrup saying that Atherton would scare Eddie with his grammar. Was this his day for having insights thrust upon him from unlikely sources?
‘So what had happened between her and David?’
‘Well, apparently they’d met as usual that afternoon – at a motel somewhere, I think.’ Slider nodded. ‘And they were laying in bed afterwards and he suddenly says that was to be the last time, he didn’t want to see her any more. Jen was absolutely flabbergasted.’
‘Did he say why?’
‘She said he had some other woman on the go, and things were getting serious with her, and he was thinking of marrying this woman, and he couldn’t afford to have his affair with Jennifer messing things up, because this other woman was very proper and if she found out she’d have nothing more to do with David, and he didn’t want to lose her. Well, Jen said, “I thought you loved me,” and he said, “It’s got nothing to do with love.” Well, you can imagine how Jen felt when he said that! It turns out this woman’s going to come into a lot of money, you see. So Jen said to him, “What do you need money for? You’re rich enough.” And then he sort of laughs and says that he hasn’t got a penny, all the money is Diana’s, and what’s more she’s fed up with him, Diana is, and threatening to cut him off. So he’s got to make sure of this other woman right away. So he says, “I’m sorry, my dear, but it’s curtains for you and me.”’
She stopped with a fine dramatic sense, and looked at him, large-eyed, for his response.
‘Jennifer must have been very upset.’
‘She was. She was crying fit to break her heart at first, because she really thought he was going to marry her, and now it turns out he was just toying with her.’ Lovely phrase, Slider thought. ‘So I say to her, Jen, I say, if he ha’n’t got any money, you don’t want to marry him anyway, and she say, I do, Jan, I love him. I don’t care if he’s rich or poor. And besides, she say, I can’t stay with Eddie no more. I don’t care what happens, she say, but I’m getting out of that.’
‘Did she say why she couldn’t stay with Eddie?’
‘No. Just the usual, I suppose.’
‘What’s the usual?’
‘Well, he was terribly jealous, was Eddie, and never wanted to let her out of his sight. He’d’ve locked her up if he could have, literally. They were always having rows. And, then, he used to hit her as well.’ She looked at him sidelong to see what he thought about that. ‘That’s another reason she ought never to’ve married him, but there, she didn’t know at the beg
inning. It was only when he lost his temper with her, when they had their rows, not, like, all the time. But still, I think it’d been getting worse lately. Anyway, she said she’d got to get out.’
‘Yes, I see. What happened next?’
‘Well, after a bit, she calms down, and she says, “I’m not giving up. I’m going to see him again and make him take me back.” David, she meant. She reckons if she can just get him to meet her, she can talk him round. She was a great talker, was Jen.’ Her eyes filled with tears and her lips trembled at her own use of the past tense.
‘Did she say when she would see him?’
‘She was going to ring him and make him meet her that evening. She cheered up once she thought of that, and she went to my bathroom and washed her face and did her makeup again, and then she went off. That would be about ha’ past five. And that’s the last time I saw her.’ She blew her nose carefully. ‘I can’t believe I’ll never see her again. She was my best friend in the world. I don’t know what I’ll do without her,’ she said bleakly. She looked towards the net-curtained window as another full-bellied jet, pregnant with tourists, battered the air over her roof. The romance and glamour had gone out of her life. Now there was just Hounslow, and other people’s hair, for ever and ever.
Slider suppressed his pity. She wouldn’t want it, in any case, who had none for herself. ‘When she left here, do you know where she was going?’
‘What, you mean right away? Well, I can guess. It was what she said about, if it didn’t work with David, she was getting out anyway. She said to me, “I’ve got a couple of other irons in the fire,” she said, “and I might as well make sure they’re still hot, just in case.” She couldn’t just leave Eddie, you see, unless she had someone to go to, because he’d’ve come after her and knocked her about and made her go back. I mean, she knew she could always come here, but I couldn’t have helped against Eddie. And she wouldn’t want to live with me, anyway. She wasn’t someone that would want to be without a man.’ Janice seemed to accept this practical attitude to the heart’s obligations without offence; indeed, with approval.
‘So you mean, if David wouldn’t marry her, she was going to get one of these other men to?’ He was fascinated and appalled by Jennifer’s philosophy as it was revealed by her friend. Suppose other women thought like this, seeing men as a commodity, like meat with an income attached?
Janice nodded. ‘Though, really, it was just one. I don’t think she ever had any chance with Alan, because he was a reverend, you know, a vicar, and she wasn’t really cut out to be a vicar’s wife.’
Understatement of the decade, Slider thought. He wondered, though, how hot the turbulent priest’s iron had been. Had he protested too much to Atherton about his resistance to Jennifer’s charms? Had he, in fact, been her lover?
‘Yes, we knew she’d been to see the vicar,’ Slider said. ‘That fits in. But who was the other man, do you know?’
‘He was a policeman, as it happens,’ she said, with a nod and a shy smile to Slider. ‘She was quite excited about him, though he was married too; but she said he was very passionate. I think she half wished he had David’s class, because she fancied him a lot more. She didn’t tell me his name, though. She had a nickname for him. Duffy, I think it was. No, Daffy. That’s right, Daffy.’
Bloody Nora, Slider thought, as a lot of little pieces tumbled into place. And then he remembered Steve Mills, one of his firm who had become a suspect in a murder case he had investigated; and, like the famous petunia, he thought, Oh, no, not again!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Stalling Between Two Fuels
Defreitas was as white as paper. ‘I didn’t kill her, sir. You’ve got to believe me. I didn’t. I wouldn’t.’
Slider’s anger was cold. ‘Then why the hell didn’t you tell me about your involvement? What am I supposed to think when you conceal important evidence like this?’
‘I thought it wouldn’t come out,’ Defreitas said miserably. ‘You see, things are difficult at home. Me and my wife aren’t getting on. I hoped—’
Now Slider remembered how Defreitas had got out of the identity parade; and further back, the crash from the back of the CID room when he had mentioned that there were two types of sperm in the victim’s vagina. ‘My God,’ he breathed, ‘it was you she met on the footpath! It was you who was seen with her on the embankment!’
Defreitas looked as though he might cry. ‘I couldn’t tell you, sir. I was afraid if it came out no-one would believe me, they’d think I did it. But I didn’t, I swear it!’
Slider’s mouth turned down. ‘You swear it? What use is your word to me now? My God, I don’t think you begin to see what you’ve done!’
‘I’m sorry, sir. But I didn’t destroy any evidence, or lie about anything. I just—’
‘You just let us bring Eddie Andrews in on the basis that it was him who met his wife by the footpath. Don’t you understand? The heaviest evidence against him was that he was seen arguing with her shortly before her death, near where her body was discovered – near a place where he might have killed and concealed her. Now it turns out that person was you! Where do you think that leaves you?’
Defreitas saw now. He shook his head slowly from side to side, not so much in negation but like someone in pain. ‘No, sir. No, sir. You don’t believe that. She was all right when I left her. I would never have done a thing like that.’
Slider wanted to believe him. He seemed a nice lad. But images were chasing across his brain. The witness who saw Jennifer being led along the embankment towards the bushes. The witness who saw a man covering something with his jacket. In his mind Slider saw it: kisses, panting, a quick, practised coupling in the bushes – two people who’d done it before and knew how to get it done. Then something wrong was said, sharp words, a quarrel: Jennifer threatening to tell his wife; Defreitas, still kneeling over her, losing control. Then a quick movement and his jacket over her face, smothering her …
Thus far it played like panto. But after that, questions arose. Why would Defreitas go back to move her body from a place where it might lie concealed for days to a place where it would certainly be immediately discovered, by the householder or the builder? To implicate Eddie, was the only answer to that – and if it were so, it was a foul and despicable act; but risky, stupidly so. Defreitas had not previously impressed him as stupid; though people in unprecedented situations did do silly things.
But why had she not struggled? If she had, there would have to have been more bruising about the face, at least. Why – and how? – had he restored her makeup? And how had her handbag got into Eddie’s pickup? No, it didn’t make sense as it stood; but he could see how easily it would make sense to someone less particular – or someone who had an anti-police agenda, like the tabloids, and their readers, if it got that far. Exposure of that sort would cause great embarrassment to the Department; and even if they eventually charged someone else with the murder, there would always be those who believed Defreitas had ‘got off’. His future would be blighted.
But his career was blighted now, anyway – perhaps over. Slider came back from long thoughts to find pleading eyes on him. ‘You’d better have a bloody good alibi,’ he said. ‘And now you’d better tell me what happened.’
Defreitas had been drinking in the Goat on Tuesday evening. ‘I only had the one pint. I was making it last. I didn’t want to go home. I’d had a row with the wife earlier, you see, so I’d been out since about half past nine, just walking about. I got to the Goat about a quarter past ten and just went in for a pee, but by then I was fed up with walking the streets so I decided to have a pint.’
Just before closing time Jennifer had telephoned there asking to speak to him. ‘Karen took the call. Jen didn’t give her name, just asked to speak to me, and Karen passed it over. She was busy – I don’t think she really noticed. Jen said she’d been phoning round trying to find me – tried the First And Last and a couple of other places she knew I used. She said she wanted to se
e me right away. I said, where are you? and she just said, meet me at the footpath to the railway bridge in five minutes. So I went.’
When he met her she had come straight out with it, and said it was time he put his money where his mouth was and married her.
‘I was thrown – I mean, we’d never talked about that. As far as I was concerned we were just having a bit of fun, and I thought she felt the same way. But when I said that she got angry and started to create. Said a lot of things, about, you know, leading her on and taking advantage of her and so on. The usual old Tottenham. I said no-one had deceived anyone and she was old enough to know what was what, and if anyone had been doing any leading on it was her. Which was the truth,’ he added, seeing Slider’s frown. ‘I mean, it was her come on to me in the first place.’
‘And you were the helpless victim, forced to have sex with her against your will,’ Slider said with distaste. Defreitas reddened. ‘Go on.’
‘Well,’ he continued, ‘she said it wasn’t like that for her, that it was serious – though I swear she’d never even hinted anything like that before. I mean, if she had, I can tell you I’d’ve never have – well,’ he checked himself, ‘anyway, she said now she couldn’t stand living with Eddie any more and she’d got to get out. Well, I said what went on between her and Eddie was her business, and I couldn’t help her. Then she said if I didn’t agree to marry her, she’d go straight round and see Becky – my wife – and spill the beans. Well, then I got mad with her and said if she dared go anywhere near my house I’d—’
‘You’d kill her?’
Defreitas swallowed. ‘I don’t think I said that, sir. But I was angry. It’s the last thing I wanted then, her going round my house, with things like they are between Becky and me.’
Shallow Grave (Bill Slider Mystery) Page 24
