Gone Tomorrow

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘That’s total bollocks,’ Collins said calmly; but suddenly he was beginning to sweat. Slider could smell it; and his bald crown was shining. ‘If you’ve got anything on me, charge me. Otherwise—’

  Slider shook his head. ‘As I said, that’s the least of your sins. Observation suggests there’s a great deal going on that we’d like to know about.’ All this he had from Nicholls, the uniform sergeant in charge of the observation. The file might be bogus, but the suspicions weren’t. ‘People passing drugs to one another. Illegally imported cigarettes—’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Collins interrupted. His voice was still calm, but the tension in his body was almost tangible. Slider was afraid he might blow apart any minute, filling the room with thousands of tiny cogs and springs. ‘If people take drugs, I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘Yes,’ Slider said with broad sympathy, ‘but if it happens on your premises you’re still responsible. It’s a bugger, isn’t it? Now so far we haven’t pushed the investigation because, frankly, you’re fairly low down on our hit-parade of villains. But you can always be moved up the list—’

  ‘You can’t prove anything against me.’

  ‘And,’ Slider went on as if he hadn’t spoken, ‘it wouldn’t take a moment to send off this list of after-hours offences to your brewery. Have you got a second career lined up, Mr Collins? Any other job you’ve always had a secret desire to try out?’

  The mobile eye went very still as Sonny Collins indulged in some deep thought. It was staring at the wall over Slider’s left shoulder. Because of the angle of his head, the glass eye was staring over his right shoulder. It was unnerving.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ Collins asked at last in a low growl.

  ‘Just a little information,’ Atherton said. He had been standing all this while. Now he pulled out the chair beside Slider and sat down as if they were all coming to business.

  ‘What, about Eddie Cranston?’

  ‘That’ll do for starters,’ Atherton agreed. ‘What’s he up to, Sonny? What’s his scam?’

  ‘He’s just a poncey little slag,’ Collins said with large contempt. ‘He hasn’t got the balls to get into anything big-time. Listen, he’s got a string of women he lives off, takes a cut of their benefit money – that’s the kind of toe-rag he is.’

  ‘Yes, we knew that,’ Atherton said. ‘What else does he get up to?’

  Collins seemed to have a little difficulty with moving his lips, as though the next confession was harder. ‘He gets hold of a lot of iffy stuff, flogs it off to mugs.’

  ‘Receiving stolen goods?’

  ‘I never said stolen,’ Collins said.

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ Slider said. ‘How could you know?’

  ‘What sort of goods?’ Atherton asked.

  ‘Electrical stuff – microwaves, CD players.’ He shrugged. ‘And a load of other crap. Umbrellas. Toys. Aftershave once. Anything. You know, the sort of gear you get at flood damage sales.’

  ‘Of course. He’s a regular little Del Boy, isn’t he?’ Atherton said. ‘Cigarettes?’

  ‘No,’ Collins said sharply. ‘He’s never had cigarettes as long as I’ve known him.’

  ‘What about drugs?’

  The lip curled. ‘Him? I told you, he’s not got the balls. He’s strictly small-time.’

  ‘So what were he and Lenny getting into together?’

  The eyes went still again. ‘Who’s Lenny?’

  Slider leaned forward a little. ‘Oh, come on, Mr Collins. Unlucky Lenny, the man who had a fight with Eddie at your pub and ended up dead a few yards from your doorstep the very same night? What a short memory you’ve got.’

  ‘I told you,’ Collins said, working up a spurt of anger, ‘I don’t know him. He’s not a regular.’

  ‘But you’d seen him before?’

  ‘No. Never seen him before in my life.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Atherton said. ‘But Eddie came to your pub on purpose to meet him. Why was that, if he wasn’t a regular?’

  Collins stared a moment, and then was suddenly calm, as if he’d thought of something. ‘You’d better ask him. No use asking me, is it?’

  ‘We’ll do that. So where does he live?’ Slider asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Collins said, and this time he anticipated the protest. ‘It’s the truth. I don’t know. It’s somewhere local, that’s all I know.’

  ‘Where does Carol Ann live?’ Atherton asked, quickly and lightly.

  Collins looked surprised. ‘Carol Ann? The barmaid at the Boscombe?’

  ‘That one,’ Slider confirmed without missing a beat.

  ‘ I dunno,’ Collins said, and it sounded genuine.

  ‘How do you know her?’ Atherton countered.

  ‘She’s a barmaid,’ Collins said as if it were self-evident. ‘We all know each other. What’s she got to do with it?’

  ‘You’re getting confused,’ Atherton said. ‘I ask the questions, you give the answers, right?’

  ‘All I know about Carol Ann is she works at the Boscombe Arms. If you want to know any more, ask them. But she’s straight as far as I know. Is that it now? Have you finished? Only I got work to do.’

  ‘Just for the record, where were you between eleven Tuesday night and eight Wednesday morning?’

  He stared thoughtfully. ‘I was in the pub clearing up till about a quart’ to twelve. Then I locked up and went down the Shamrock Club for a drink. Barman there’ll tell you. Liam.’

  ‘And you stayed until when?’

  ‘Must’ve been about ha’ past two, quart’ to three. Then I went home. Took a taxi. Got home fourish, give or take.’

  ‘Anyone at home to confirm when you came in?’

  ‘Do me a favour,’ he said scornfully. ‘I live alone, above the pub. Let me know when they make that illegal. Anything else?’

  ‘That’s all for now,’ Slider said. ‘Thank you very much for your co-operation.’

  Atherton stood as Collins stood so that he could look down at him. ‘Isn’t it much nicer when we’re all friends?’ he enquired sweetly.

  Collins managed to stare at both of them at once. ‘I could break you in half with my bare hands,’ he told Atherton with horrid confidence. He was wearing a black sports jacket over his usual kit, but still Atherton could see the muscles squirm under his skin-tight vest. He looked like an unusually well-dressed sack of ferrets.

  ‘Well, that was very nice,’ Atherton said as they trod upstairs. ‘And almost painless.’

  ‘I wonder why he decided to co-operate,’ Slider mused.

  Atherton gave him a look. ‘Because we threatened him. Have you forgotten?’

  Slider shook his head. ‘That wasn’t it. He was frightened all right, but I don’t believe he was frightened by anything we could do. The way it looked to me, he decided to give up Eddie Cranston in the hope it would deflect us from something else.’

  ‘Yes, the drug dealing or whatever else he’s got going that can lose him his licence. I think you’re making it too complicated.’

  ‘Maybe. It’s just he didn’t seem worried by the suggestion of drugs, either passing in his pub or Eddie being mixed up with. It wasn’t that that made him sweat. And I still think he knows Lenny.’

  ‘You think he gave up Eddie to keep us away from his connection with Lenny? But why?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know. It’s just a feeling.’

  ‘We all love your feelings,’ Atherton assured him.

  ‘His alibi’s all just a bit too pat, isn’t it?’

  ‘If it checks out.’

  ‘It’ll check out. He wouldn’t have offered it otherwise. I wish we’d asked him for it yesterday, before he’d had a chance to get it organised. I don’t trust a man with an alibi ready for the asking like that.’

  ‘There’s no pleasing some people. Anyway, it doesn’t cover the whole night. Maybe Lenny was killed at five am after all.’

  ‘Don’t humour me. Anyway, I thought it wa
s Eddie we were after?’

  ‘True, oh king. And now we’ve got a handle on Carol Ann, which ought to lead us to said Eddie, and that’s enough to be grateful for for one morning.’ Slider was silent, still in thought. ‘We can always get Collins in again later and beat him up some more.’

  Now Slider looked at him, amused. ‘Funny how when you both stood up, he looked the taller of the two.’

  ‘Those muscles are all for show,’ Atherton assured him airily. ‘I have the subtle but amazing trained strength of the master of eastern martial arts. My whole body is a lethal weapon.’

  ‘Quite a few women have told me that,’ Slider agreed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  From Err to Paternity

  The Boscombe Arms, on the corner of Percy Road and Coningham Close, was a very different sort of pub from the Phoenix: one of those tall, handsome High Victorian efforts, all wood panelling, mirrors and elaborate engraved glass. It attracted a different kind of clientele, did a lot of food, and would have recoiled in horror from the mere suggestion of plastic glasses.

  The guv’nor was a youngish, stocky, sharp-eyed man with a taller, older and even sharper-eyed wife who came up behind him like a shadow as soon as she realised he was answering police questions. She didn’t say anything, but you could tell her husband was speaking with her in mind.

  ‘Carol Ann Shotter. No, she’s not in today – called in sick on Tuesday. Said she had the flu. What’s she done?’

  ‘Nothing that we know of. We just want to ask her about a friend of hers. Has she worked here long?’

  ‘Oh, about six, eight months. Nine maybe. She’s a good worker. Never given any trouble. She had good references. Used to work in the Elephant in Acton.’

  ‘Why did she leave there?’

  ‘She said she got fed up with the buses, wanted to work nearer home. She only lives in Abdale Road. She wasn’t in any trouble,’ he assured them earnestly. ‘This is a respectable house. We don’t have any trouble here, and we don’t take on dodgy staff. All my staff are very good people. Can’t afford otherwise. We get a nice class of customer in here – lots of money. They wouldn’t come in if we had riff-raff behind the bar.’

  ‘So it sounds as if the Eddie – Carol Ann romance might be a recent thing,’ Atherton said. ‘If Sonny Collins hadn’t heard about it, and she’s only been working locally for a few months—’

  ‘Maybe. And if she’s a fully employed barmaid she isn’t one of his benefit babes,’ Slider said.

  ‘No wonder Karen Peacock got all uppity about her. Nothing like real superiority to get under a person’s skin.’

  ‘It wasn’t very superior of her to phone Karen Peacock up just to boast.’

  ‘She probably didn’t. I don’t gather that Karen is very bright. I expect she phoned with a message from Eddie about his alibi and Karen heard what she expected to.’

  ‘You can be quite psychological when you try, can’t you?’ Slider said.

  The house in Abdale Road to which they had been directed was not one of the done-up-regardless ones. It was not a slum by any means, but it had the tell-tale marks of a rented rather than an owned property – the cheap paint job, the cracked concrete in the front patch, the chipped coping of the garden wall and the missing gate, the gay tussock of grass growing in the roof gutter. Landlord was written all over it. It had heavy but clean nets in the downstairs window, and the upstairs window had its curtains drawn.

  ‘House of sickness,’ Atherton observed. ‘Is she in bed, or has Eddie gone to ground up there? Or both?’

  ‘Why do you always ask rhetorical questions?’

  ‘Do you think we need back-up?’

  ‘Let’s hold our horses. We’re just asking questions at this stage. We don’t even know he’s in there. She might really have the flu.’

  ‘A flu that conveniently started on Tuesday morning. Suppose he panics and runs out the back?’

  ‘He can’t get anywhere. All the gardens back onto one another. He’d have to scramble through every garden right down the row and then shin over a ten-foot wall at the end. I think we’d hear him.’

  ‘I love your confidence.’

  ‘It’s not mine. I’m looking after it for a friend. Look, if she’s his alibi, he’s not going to run away, is he? If his story is he never done nuffing and she can prove it, he wants to be found in her house, doesn’t he?’

  ‘It’s a lot of “ifs”.’

  ‘Just knock on the door.’

  Atherton still didn’t really expect the knock to be answered. He expected the upstairs curtain to twitch, followed by a muffled sound of feet running down the stairs and a rattle of the back door being opened. But after quite a short pause the door opened and a woman stood there with the half enquiring, half suspicious look any normal person wears in the circumstances.

  ‘Miss Shotter?’ Slider asked, showing his brief. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Slider and this is Detective Sergeant Atherton. Would you mind if we had a little talk with you?’

  Carol Ann Shotter was in her late twenties or early thirties. She was a dyed blonde with a good figure, and her face missed being attractive by such mere millimetres that at a quick glance or in a poor light she’d have passed as a bit of a sort. There was a tension about her as her eyes moved quickly from one face to the other, but it was more a readiness for action than fear or guilt. She seemed not nervous, but watchful, expectant.

  ‘What’s it about?’ she asked, inevitably.

  Slider smiled. ‘Just a few questions. I’d rather not ask them on the doorstep, if you don’t mind. Can we come in?’

  She yielded. The house was laid out in classic London Dogleg – stairs straight ahead, narrow passage hooking round them, one room at the front, one at the back, and the back-addition scullery beyond. But it was all on a tiny scale, like a human doll’s house. The front room into which she led them was about nine feet square, so that the small sofa, two armchairs and television arranged round the miniature fireplace (blocked in and fitted with a gas fire) took up all the available space, and four people sitting in the four available places could have linked hands for a séance without leaving their seats.

  The furniture was old and had been cheap to start with, as had the carpet; and there were no pictures or ornaments to soften the furnished-let look. One of the shallow chimney alcoves had been filled in with shelves, which were stacked not with books, but with videos. The only reading matter in sight was a heap of holiday brochures dropped on the floor at the end of the sofa. The other feature of the room that jumped to Slider’s attention was that though the television set was at least five years old, the video player under it was brand new.

  Carol Ann Shotter sat down, nervously tugging at her skirt. She had good legs in sheer black tights, Atherton observed, but she was too old by ten years for a mini that short. Perhaps it was professional kit. Her stretchy cotton top emphasised her bust, and she was well made up for a woman at home on sick leave. But the purported flu was not in evidence. Not so much as a sniffle.

  ‘I understand you’re Eddie Cranston’s girlfriend,’ Slider opened, not making it a question.

  ‘I – well – yes, I suppose so,’ she said with less than a whole heart. ‘I mean—’

  ‘He lives here with you, does he?’ She hesitated, and Slider pushed her a little. ‘Well, does he or doesn’t he? You must know, surely?’

  ‘Well, he sort of does and he sort of doesn’t,’ she said. ‘He’s got his own place, but he stays here a lot.’

  ‘I see. He’s here now, is he?’

  ‘He’s upstairs in bed,’ she said. ‘He’s not well.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Slider said, ‘not this awful summer flu? You’ve got it yourself, haven’t you? But no, wait, there’s been a miracle cure!’

  She looked at him with dislike. Are you being funny?’

  ‘Your boss says you phoned in sick on Tuesday, and you’ve been off since. But here you are, bright as a button, not a soggy tissue in sight.’

  Sh
e roused herself to fight back. ‘What right have you got to go round asking my boss about me? You want to lose me my job?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Slider said politely. ‘I just wondered if your absence from work could possibly have anything to do with Eddie’s little adventure on Monday night?’

  ‘Look,’ she said – the first word in the vocabulary of capitulation, ‘I don’t know what this is about, but Eddie’s not done anything.’

  ‘Then there’s no reason he shouldn’t talk to us, is there?’

  ‘He’s ill in bed.’

  ‘Oh come on, love,’ Atherton said. ‘Do we go up there, or do you get him down? It’s up to you.’

  She sighed. ‘I’ll go up and tell him.’

  ‘Just call him down,’ Atherton amended.

  One more burning look, and she stalked past him to the foot of the stairs and shouted, ‘Eddie! Come down here. Come on!’

  There was a long pause and then the murmur of a voice from above. Atherton, from his angle, could see a pair of male feet in socks at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Who d’you think? It’s the police.’

  Another murmur.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, get down here! I’m sick of this.’

  After a hesitation, the feet began to descend, and slowly a pair of black tracksuit bottoms joined them, and then a blue teeshirt with some dark hair peeking out at the neck, and then the face and head of Eddie Cranston, visible at last. He had the dark, ripe good looks and thick, black, swept-back hair of a complete bastard, along with a narcissistic suntan and the obligatory gold jewellery, including a watch so vast and covered in knobs it looked like a mine on a strap. The identifying small mole on the cheekbone was there, along with a fine black eye. Judging by its state nearly three days on, he mustn’t have been able to open it at all on Tuesday.

  He reached the foot of the stairs and stopped, looking at Slider and Atherton, trying to be the hard man, though it’s not easy for a man to appear cool when he’s obviously recently lost a fight. Carol Ann plainly felt the same. She stepped aside to give them a clear view, and said in that withering tone women reserve – Slider never understood why – for men they were sure of: ‘Look at him. Didn’t want anyone to see him with a shiner. I ask you!’