Atherton and Swilley exchanged a rare look of sympathy. ‘He’s just comprehensively trashed the two of us, you understand?’ he said.
‘You’re always telling me I’m really mumsy now,’ said Swilley, who looked like Barbie made flesh, and was mumsy in the same way that the middle of the Atlantic was really dry.
‘But what does that make me?’ Atherton enquired querulously.
‘It makes you on your way to Salisbury,’ Slider said.
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you. Why not?’
‘He was at a stag do with an entire football team’s worth of witnesses. What’s to find out? Can’t I just do it on the phone?’
‘There may be things that people will tell you face to face. Hibbert may have the most solid alibi outside tea with the governor in Pentonville, but he might have said something to his friends in a drink-induced open moment that will give us a lead.’
‘A lead where?’
‘If I knew that I wouldn’t need to send you. I need someone with subtlety, perseverance and an enquiring mind.’
Atherton was not beguiled by the compliments. Too little, too late. ‘You need me at your side,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to leave you high and dry.’
‘I’ve never been lower or wetter,’ Slider assured him. ‘Go!’
So when Andy Bolton came in, Slider went down to talk to him himself. He was a short young man, very muscular and fit, good-looking in an obvious sort of way and sporting a tan which, given the time of year, might well have been sprayed on. He had no obvious resemblance to The King other than blue eyes and a thick head of black hair styled in the manner, with quiff, duck’s arse and sideburns all present and correct. Perhaps the tan was part of the act, Slider thought. It certainly made his teeth look very white.
‘The wife said you wanted to talk to me,’ he said amiably, ‘but I haven’t had a minute to spare before now to get over here. It’s a busy time of year, especially with this extra-cold weather. I’m a gas-ffitter, you know? And I wouldn’t’ve had a minute now, only I had to take the morning off to move our stuff out to Hayes, to the wife’s mum and dad’s. Well, she’s got it into her head Mr Fitton downstairs is a murderer and there’s no talking to women when they get like that. But I’m glad to have her out the way, anyway. It’s like a madhouse back there, in Cathnor Road, with all the media and everything, and in her condition it’s not good to put a strain like that on her. We’re a bit cramped at her mum and dad’s, and it’s going to take me longer every day getting in and back, but it eases my mind to know someone’s keeping an eye on her while I’m out. So what did you want to see me about? Only, I don’t know as I can tell you anything more than Sharon – the wife.’
He obviously liked to talk as much as his other half did, but his voice was light and easy on the ear – Slider could tell he was a singer – so it was no great hardship. The rather round blue eyes regarded Slider with friendly openness, and that in itself was a pleasant change from the usual hostility and suspicion. ‘It’s always good to get another perspective on things,’ Slider said.
It was enough to set him off again. ‘Oh, I know, you people have got your way of doing things. I’m just the same. When I do a job I have to have my tools set out a certain way, I do things in a certain order, I’m very methodical. Some people make fun of me for it, but that’s the way I am. I can’t abide messiness or carelessness – well, you can’t take chances with gas. Other people’s lives depend on it. So, poor old Ronnie Fitton down in the basement – he’s having a rough old time of it, isn’t he? Is that right, he murdered his wife?’
‘Haven’t you read the papers?’ Slider asked.
‘Not to say read. I’ve seen the headlines. It gave me a shock, seeing my own house right there on the front page. Some of the others were talking about it, though, at this job I was on yesterday – fitting out a new block of flats. The chippies and plasterers were joshing me rotten about living in “the murder house”. But I haven’t got time for reading that sort of rubbish. Sharon – the wife – was glued to the telly all evening waiting for the news but I made her turn it off. I said it wasn’t fair on the baby to dwell on that sort of thing. I took her down the pub in the end, just to get her out – not that she’s a drinker, especially not with the baby coming. She just had a lemon and lime. But it was a change of scene for her. She kept going on about Mr Fitton – he’s not really a murderer, is he? He seems like such a nice old boy. Reminds me of my dad, a bit.’
‘It’s true he killed his wife, a long time ago,’ Slider said. ‘Nothing is known against him since then.’
‘Well, I can’t believe he’d kill Mel. Just ’cause he killed his wife? Why would he? They were really friendly.’
‘Were they?’
‘Oh, yes. Always standing nattering – every time I went in or out of the house, it seemed like. And they used to go down the pub together.’
‘Did they?’ This was interesting news to Slider.
‘Yeah, every once in a while. They used to go down the Wellington, down Paddenswick Road. Well, that’s the nearest. Me, I like the Anglesea Arms – down Wingate Road?’ Slider nodded. ‘It’s quieter, a bit classier. But maybe that’s why Mr Fitton liked the Wellington – you wouldn’t stand out in there, being’s it’s so noisy and crowded.’
‘More anonymous?’ Slider offered.
‘That’s it.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll be going for a drink anywhere now, after having his face plastered all over the paper like that. It doesn’t seem fair. I feel sorry for him – everyone’s got it in for him now.’ He thought a moment. ‘Unless he did kill Mel. Do you think he did?’
‘We don’t know yet,’ Slider said. ‘How do you know he and Melanie went for drinks together?’
‘Oh, she told me, when I saw her come in with him once. And I’ve seen them going into the Wellington when I’ve been passing on me way home. She liked him, so he must have been all right, mustn’t he?’
‘What did her boyfriend think about her going to the pub with him?’
‘Scott? Well, I don’t know if he knew,’ Bolton said. ‘It was of a Thursday evening, usually, and that was the night Scott always worked late. So she may have told him or she may not have. I mean, there was no reason he shouldn’t know. No reason he should object. It wasn’t like she was seeing another man or anything. I mean, Ronnie Fitton – well, he’s old. He’s not – you know, someone she’d have an affair with. And none of us knew about him being – about him killing his wife and that. But he’s never said anything to me about Mel and Ronnie Fitton being friends, Scott hasn’t, so I’ve never said anything to him. You don’t go stirring things up, do you?’
‘Why do you think it would stir things up? You think Scott would object if he knew?’
Andy frowned with puzzlement. ‘No, like I say – well, not like that. But he’s a funny old geezer, and I know if my wife struck up a friendship with him, to actually going to the pub with him, I’d think it was a bit funny.’
‘Did Melanie ever tell you why she was friends with Mr Fitton? What the connection between them was?’
‘No. I never asked,’ Bolton said easily, with his frank, blue look. ‘Not my business. D’you think I should’ve said something, then? To Scott?’
Do I look like an agony aunt? Slider retorted silently. ‘Tell me about Scott Hibbert,’ he said. ‘Your wife said you and he were friends.’
‘Oh, he’s all right,’ Bolton said, but without great enthusiasm. ‘I dunno about friends. We pass the time of day, that sort of thing. And we’ve gone for drinks now and then. To the Anglesea mostly. He likes the Conningham and I’ve been there once or twice with him, but it’s a Hoops pub and I’m Shed.’
The Hoops were Queens Park Rangers football team; the Shed was Chelsea. No further explanation was necessary.
‘Do you like him?’ Slider asked.
Andy Bolton seemed to struggle with this idea. ‘He’s all right,’ he said again. ‘He can be good company. Bu
t I mean – well, he strikes me as a bit . . .’ He stared blankly as he thought. ‘I can’t say I know anything against him for a fact, but sometimes the way he talks, I get the impression he’s a bit of a wide boy. A bit of a wheeler-dealer, you know?’
‘You think he’s not honest?’
He looked alarmed. ‘Oh, like I said, I don’t know anything against him. But if someone was to tell me he was up to something a bit shady, I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s a bit mouthy, you know? Always going on about the important people he knows and the big money he’s gonna make. If you’ve been anywhere or done anything, he’s always got to go one better – like if you’ve had a trip on a hot-air balloon, he’s gone skydiving with the Pope.’
‘He’s a fantasist?’ Slider suggested.
‘Yeah, like that,’ Bolton agreed. ‘Not that there’s any harm in that. I mean, it’s quite entertaining to listen to him sometimes. But I tell you one thing.’ It seemed to burst through his natural unwillingness to speak ill. ‘I don’t like the way he is around women. He’s always looking at them, and making remarks. I don’t like that sort of thing. You may think it’s funny, but I think women should be treated with respect. And while he was living with Mel, he shouldn’t have flirted with other women, and talked dirty to them. Any chance he got,’ he went on, thoroughly roused now, ‘he’d have his arm round their waist and be whispering and sniggering. One time we went to the Conningham, there was this female, he’d been chatting her up, like I say, and she went off to the loo, and he went straight after, and he was away a long time. When he came back he sort of gave me a wink and smacked his lips. I reckon they’d gone out the back and . . .’ He let the sentence die, and sat for a moment frowning down at his hands.
Well, well, Slider thought. So friend Hibbert is a bit of a Lothario? Somehow he wasn’t surprised. Fantasist, Lothario and wide boy. Suspect-wise, what was not to like? ‘I understand you were helping him with his Elvis impersonations,’ he said, to prime the pump again.
Bolton looked up, startled out of his thoughts, and gave a reluctant smile. ‘Sharon told you about that, did she? Well, it’s something I’ve done for years. I know it sounds funny, but I make a bit of money at it. You can, if you work hard, but it’s a crowded field, so you’ve got to be good. Well, Scott was always asking me about it. Just to take the piss, to start with. But when he realizes there’s actual money in it, he starts to take it serious, and says he wants to get into it.’ He shook his head. ‘I always tried to put him off. I mean, I can’t see he had any talent for it. And I was worried that what he was really interested in was the girls – you know, you always get some hanging around when you do a stage act, even if it’s only in a pub or a community hall. Groupies, he called ’em. He kept talking about them being easy – like fruit falling off a tree, he said. I didn’t like that. But he went on and on until in the end, more to shut him up, really, I said I’d help him.’
‘He actually had a date – a booking?’
‘I don’t know if you’d call it that. It was a mate’s stag night. They weren’t paying him or anything, as far as I could gather. Good thing, too – I know he’s a mate and everything, but it has to be said, he’s a crap Elvis. Can’t sing, can’t dance – all he had was the dark glasses, and the white rhinestone suit he was gonna hire.’
‘And that was on Friday – last Friday, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s right.’ He looked suddenly stricken. ‘God, the poor bastard. He must be kicking himself that he went. If he’d stayed home, none of this would’ve happened. He must be heartbroken.’
‘So he did love Melanie?’
‘Oh yes. They were besotted – all over each other. I know maybe I’ve given the wrong impression – he was a bit of a pain in the neck sometimes, but he was all right really, and he did love her. I think he got annoyed with her sometimes because she wouldn’t marry him.’
‘Why do you think that was?’
He made a comical face. ‘I know, women are all supposed to be mad to get married, aren’t they? But this time I know for a fact he asked her and she said no – or not yet, anyway – because they both told me. All she said to me was she wasn’t ready yet. She said they’d only been going out two years and it wasn’t long enough, and she said she’d got enough on her plate as it was. But Scott wanted kids, and the sooner the better. They were already living together, the way he saw it, and he had plans for them to get a house – well, he is in the trade – and the next step in his mind was to get married, have kids. But every time he asked her, she said she wasn’t ready.’
Slider nodded. ‘It’s a big step,’ he said profoundly. Then, ‘Do you know if there was anything in her past that might have made her reluctant to get married?’ he tried. He wondered how far the information about Melanie’s ‘bit of trouble’ had gone.
But Bolton shook his head. ‘I wasn’t that chummy with her, really. We’d have a chat, and she was very nice and easy to get on with, but she never gave anything away. It was just time of day, sort of thing. I never felt – well, I reckon there was another Mel inside the one I knew. Must’ve been, when you think about it – I was just the neighbour, after all. Scott’s the one you need to talk to about that,’ he concluded; but with a faintly puzzled air, as if he wasn’t sure Hibbert was the person to apply to, actually.
Which was interesting for all sorts of reasons.
EIGHT
Attitude Sickness
Simone Ridware, Melanie’s work colleague and friend at the Natural History Museum, was a different prospect from Kiera Williams: older, to start with – late thirties by the look of her – well spoken and obviously educated. What Swilley always classified to herself as a National Trust sort of person – posh and well off – but in this case clever too. She was apparently in the Micropalaeontology Section, and how that differed from the Palaeontology Section Swilley no more cared than she could spell it.
Simone Ridware had offered to take her to the canteen for their talk, but Swilley arranged to meet her in a café nearby, by South Kensington Station. Just going into a museum gave her vertigo.
Despite being called Simone she was not French, even a bit. ‘It was a name my mother picked. She just had a liking for it,’ she said apologetically. ‘I have a brother called Hubert, so I suppose I got off lightly.’ She came from Maidstone originally, where her father was a solicitor, had gone to Benenden, then Cambridge, had worked for BP for a short time and then found her home-from-home within the dreaming spires and glazed Victorian tiles of the Nat His Mu. She had married a subsurface geologist she had met at BP (bet their conversations at home are exciting, Swilley thought) and had two children, Poppy and Oliver, aged five and seven, and lived in a large Victorian house in the nice bit of Muswell Hill. No surprises there.
She was, however, wearing a very elegant suit on her enviable figure, and Swilley would really have liked a better view of her shoes. Who’d have thought palaeontology was a hotbed of fashion?
They ordered coffee and Danish pastries, and Mrs Ridware opened the batting with, ‘You want to talk to me about Melanie, of course. What can I tell you?’
She had short, dark hair, fine and curly, like soft black feathers all over her head, and an averagely good-looking face subtly enhanced by skilful make-up. A geek, but hardly dull at all, Swilley paraphrased to herself. To the penetrating eye, she looked a little pale and worn under the make-up, and Swilley wondered if it was on Melanie’s behalf, and hoped so. She put aside her chippy prejudices and prepared to listen.
‘What was she like?’ she asked. ‘Did you like her?’
‘We were friends,’ said Mrs Ridware, as if that said it all. And then, ‘I had tremendous admiration for her. She came from quite a difficult background, but she never let it hold her back. What she achieved, she achieved on her own merits. She was very good at her job, and she had a brilliant career ahead of her.’ She paused and, as if realizing that this sounded too much like a press release, added in a different tone, ‘Yes, I liked her. We were v
ery close, and I shall miss her very much.’
‘When you say she had a difficult background—?’ Swilley tried.
‘She came from a poor home,’ Mrs Ridware said. ‘Her father was feckless and her mother was ineffectual, so she was thrown on her own resources. He was often out of work, and I believe he gambled, too, so money was always tight. And her mother was a poor housekeeper. All too often Melanie as a child came home to have to cook supper herself and wash and iron her own clothes for school. She never had the material things other girls had, and I know you may think that’s character-building –’ she smiled at Swilley, who hadn’t thought anything of the sort – ‘but girls can be cruel and it’s hard always to be an outsider. But despite his inadequacies, she adored her father. I gather he was a charming wastrel.’
Swilley nodded.
‘That sort can be the hardest to resist, and do the most damage.’
‘Melanie told you all this herself, did she?’ Swilley asked.
‘Yes, over time. It was hard for her to confide at first – I think she’d held herself back for so many years it had become a habit. But we liked each other from the first moment she joined the museum, and bit by bit the barriers came down – with me, at least. She was always guarded with other people.’ She hesitated, and Swilley gave an encouraging nod. ‘She developed a technique of getting everyone she met to talk about themselves, so that she wouldn’t have to talk about herself. To be the listener is always safer – and it makes people like you. Everyone loved her. She had a large number of friends. But I think fundamentally she was a very lonely person.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Partly her background – her parents, I mean – and partly her father being killed. You know about that?’
‘In the train crash – yes.’
‘It was a terrible blow to her, and she had to do all the coping because her mother couldn’t. She had to suppress her feelings and get on with things. And then her mother remarried a basically unsympathetic man, so the protective shell just got thicker, until it became such a habit she couldn’t break it. When she first came to the museum I think she was desperate to talk to someone, but simply didn’t know how. Fortunately we struck up a friendship and—’ She shrugged, elegantly. ‘I was glad to be her confidante.’
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