Kill My Darling

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Any trouble with the press?’

  ‘Nah. Too cold for ’em to hang about all night on the off-chance. The one in the house across the road’s the only one still around, and he missed his chance. Musta been cooping. The story’s in the paper, but there’s no picture, only of the forensics going in.’

  ‘Oh, they’re in already, are they? Good.’

  Slider was about to pass on, when Paxman retained him with a large, beefy hand on his arm. ‘Bill, are you sure about this one?’

  ‘Sure? I’m not even close. Why, what’s up?’

  Paxman shook his head slowly, as if goaded by flies. ‘I dunno. I’ve got a feeling about this geezer. There’s something about him.’ He waited for thought to develop. ‘He’s too quiet,’ he concluded, as if that was not really what he meant, but was the closest he could get.

  ‘He’s the best suspect we’ve got,’ Slider said. ‘And we had to do something.’

  Paxman nodded. He understood that. ‘Just be careful. He could be trouble.’

  ‘What sort of trouble?’ Slider asked.

  ‘I dunno,’ Paxman said. ‘Wish I did. Just – be careful.’

  ‘I will. Thanks, Arthur.’ Paxman was long on the job and old in the ways of men. Slider always took him seriously.

  Slider had studied Ronnie Fitton’s file, and there was much about him that did not fit the usual criminal profile, and some features that did. He was born to an ordinary working-class family in West Acton. His father worked for British Rail as a ticket collector and station attendant; his mother worked part-time on a supermarket checkout. They lived in a small terraced house, privately rented.

  There had been another son, Keith, two years older than Ronnie. He had been killed by a train when he was fourteen: he and some friends had been trespassing on railway property and Keith and another boy were playing ‘chicken’. The other boy survived; Keith was killed instantly, tossed up on to the low embankment between the lines and the back gardens like a stringless marionette.

  That must have had the hell of an effect on Ronnie, aged twelve, Slider thought. It was the sort of thing that could turn a boy to the bad, but it seemed to have had the opposite effect. Defence counsel at his trial had made much of the fact that after his brother’s death he had never been in trouble, had worked hard at school and got three GCSEs, and had gone to a vocational college and got himself a trade qualification in graphic design. After working for various printing firms, he had ended up as manager of a sign-making company, earning a good salary. He had married a girl he had been dating for a couple of years, and bought a house in Northfields not too far from the business. Then, two years into the marriage, he had come home unexpectedly early and found his wife in bed with another man, and killed her.

  It was the first break in the pattern of exemplary behaviour, and on the surface it was inexplicable. He had no history of violence: friends and neighbours agreed the couple had been on good terms and there was no suggestion he had ever raised a hand to her. But it was possible to imagine that he had been affected by the shock and horror of the brother’s death – they had apparently been close – which had been brought upon him by his own wrongdoing. Had young Ronnie buckled down and behaved all those years, done the right things in the right order, and at least subconsciously expected his reward to be that his life would be blessed? – only to be betrayed by the person closest to him. Slider thought there could well have been deeply suppressed emotions – grief and rage – from the time of his brother’s death which broke through in that moment of betrayal and caused him to lash out. The trouble was that he did not say of himself that he had snapped, lost his temper and lashed out. He had refused to say anything other than that she had deserved it, thus portraying it as a calculated act and not subject to mitigation.

  What Slider came away with was a sense of a frightening degree of control, which in turn suggested a frightening amount of something underneath to need controlling. It would make him a dangerous man, as Paxman hinted. You would never know what he might do, or when he might do it. It was over twenty years since he had killed his wife; the safety valve on the pressure cooker might have reached its limits. And if it was Fitton who killed Melanie, it would make sense of the no-sexual-fassault aspect. It was love and betrayal that had sparked him to kill his wife. Had he loved Melanie? And had she betrayed him in some way? Not sexually: Fitton’s would have been a secret and suppressed love, perhaps an idolization. She would only need to do something he regarded as betraying his image of her, something he thought beneath her.

  Or, of course (he had to admit to himself) that fierce control could have been simply covering up a series of criminal deeds. He could have been a ‘right wrong’un’ all along, but with the mental acuity not to get himself caught, and it was blackmail after all. One thing you could be sure of – good man or bad, he would not have wanted to go back inside.

  Fitton seemed very calm. He sat in a relaxed attitude on the chair in the interview room, his lean legs in the paper overalls crossed, smoking a cigarette. His face showed nothing, not fear or apprehension or even interest in what was happening to him, but Slider felt that there was a point of carbon steel somewhere in the middle of him, like the tip of a whipping top. He might appear to be motionless, but that was only because he was spinning so hard.

  Slider took his place on the opposite side of the table. Atherton came in behind him and sat by the tape machine. Fitton did not look at either of them. He took a drag on his cigarette and blew upwards, watching the smoke and the ceiling.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ Slider offered.

  Fitton shook his head.

  ‘Are they treating you all right?’

  ‘No complaints,’ Fitton said.

  ‘You’ve had breakfast?’

  ‘Full house. You do a good one here.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll mention it to the Michelin inspector.’

  Fitton gave no reaction to the pleasantry.

  ‘Have you had your phone call?’

  ‘I’ve got no one to ring.’ He said it as a plain statement of fact, not an appeal for sympathy.

  ‘Solicitor?’

  ‘Don’t want one.’

  That was usually a bad sign – the guilty man calleth his brief when no man pursueth, as the proverb had it. But in Fitton’s case you couldn’t read anything into it. He hadn’t wanted anything to do with his legal team the first time round, either. He seemed to have a robust contempt for the profession.

  ‘You’re sure?’ Slider said.

  Now Fitton looked at him – and the level eyes were not calm, like the rest of him, but hard, with a spark in them like a glimpse of fire deep down in a fissure in the earth. There was a volcanic eruption somewhere being suppressed; molten magma was flowing along secret channels far below the surface. He said, ‘I don’t need one because I’m not answering your questions.’

  ‘Why is that?’ Slider asked.

  ‘Don’t try and make friends with me,’ Fitton said. ‘I didn’t kill her and you can’t prove I did. You’re wasting your time.’

  ‘If you didn’t kill her, you must want to help us find out who did.’

  ‘I don’t care if you do or you don’t. It won’t bring her back. Time to help her was when she was alive.’

  ‘Did you try to help her?’

  ‘Not my business,’ he said briskly. Then he paused, seeming, curiously, not to like the sound of that answer when he heard it out loud. He added, ‘She knew where I was.’

  Not the same, Slider thought. Not the same at all. He said, ‘Well, then, you must at least want to see justice done?’

  The spark flickered brighter for an instant. ‘Justice? You talk about justice? You’re all in hock to the press, the lot of you. You only arrested me because the newspapers kept demanding why you didn’t, and your PR department told your bosses they had to do something about it. Bad press is the only thing that matters to you bloody lot these days. The press could get the Home Secretary and the Commissioner the sack i
f they put up a campaign against ’em, so the shove goes in, all the way down the line until it ends up with you. And you just have to do as you’re told, whether you like it or not. So you pull me in because I’ve got a record. You call that justice?’

  ‘You’ve obviously thought about it a lot,’ Slider said evenly.

  ‘Had a lot of time for thinking, didn’t I?’ He turned his head away again, drawing on his cigarette.

  ‘Do you think justice was not done in your own case? Do you feel aggrieved about that?’

  ‘Not much good at this psychological bollocks, are you?’ he enquired of the air. ‘I killed my wife. I never denied it. I was punished. I never complained about that. But justice had nothing to do with it. It was retribution.’ He finished the cigarette and stubbed it out in the tinfoil ashtray on the table.

  ‘In what way was justice not done, then?’

  He looked at Slider with a sad shake of the head like a teacher dealing with a very thick pupil. ‘It’s called the Justice System. That’s just its name. Don’t get sucked in by fancy language. Crime and punishment, that’s all it is. I killed my wife. That’s against the law. I was punished. End of.’

  ‘Very well, then, don’t you want the person who killed Melanie to be punished?’

  ‘Not interested. I’ll have that cup of tea, now. Two sugars.’

  Slider sighed inwardly, and nodded to Atherton. Depriving him of tea or cigarettes was not going to make any difference to a tough nut like this. But he had proved he liked to talk. The only chance was to build an atmosphere where he would sound off on his pet themes and perhaps let something slip.

  While Atherton was at the door, talking to the constable outside, Fitton looked at Slider with a marked drop in attitude and asked, ‘How’s Marty?’

  ‘We took him to Melanie’s parents.’

  ‘Who took him? That girl you sent round? The Irish one?’

  ‘Yes. She said he seemed happy to be there.’

  ‘I hope they treat him right.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t they?’

  He looked at Slider thoughtfully for a moment, and then said, ‘You know as much as I do. You work it out.’

  Slider tried, ‘You’re fond of him? Marty?’

  ‘I like all dogs. They don’t mess you around. They can’t lie to you. I’m glad that pillock Scott didn’t take him back. He doesn’t deserve a nice dog like Marty.’

  ‘Did you have a dog when you were a kid?’

  Fitton eyed him sidelong. ‘I said, don’t try to make friends with me. I don’t like lies, and pretending is lying. You’re not interested in me. You just want to get enough on me to charge me so you can get your pat on the back from the bosses. It’s all political with you coppers nowadays.’

  ‘I’m not like that,’ Slider said, mildly but with truth. ‘I saw her body. You say you hate lies – well, I hate waste. And no one had the right to take her life away from her.’

  ‘People take other people’s lives away all the time – not by killing ’em, but by crushing their spirit, brutalizing ’em, denying ’em education, chances, bottling ’em up in a ghetto of ignorance and hopelessness. They’re as good as dead. A life like that is worse than death.’

  Slider couldn’t decide whether this was a deeply felt socio-political view or simply smoke being blown in his eyes to keep him from asking any more pertinent questions. Long winded discourse was a funny way of not answering, he thought, and he was glad other arrestees didn’t resort to it. Policing was exhausting enough as it was without being lectured into the bargain.

  The tea came. Fitton blew on it, sipped it, put it down, asked for another cigarette. He was the king of the custody suite, his attitude said. I’ve done time for murder – this is kiddy league stuff in comparison.

  Slider decided to go for specifics. ‘You gave us the impression that you knew Melanie only casually. But in fact you knew her quite well. You went out for drinks with her quite often. Why didn’t you tell us about that?’

  ‘That’s my business.’

  ‘No, it’s ours now. Everything about everyone who knew her is our business.’

  ‘That’s your bad luck, then. I’m not answering your questions.’

  ‘If you’re innocent, why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t have to tell my business to anyone.’

  Crap, Slider thought. ‘You know, don’t you, that murder always leaves forensic traces, which we will find. Sooner or later, the truth will come out. Why don’t you make it easier on yourself? You chose the hard line the first time round, and where did that get you? There may be mitigating circumstances that can be taken into account. There may —’

  ‘Don’t make me laugh,’ Fitton interrupted, with no laughter anywhere in sight. ‘Mitigating circumstances! If you charge me I’m back inside for the rest of my kip. They’ll throw away the key. I don’t fancy that, thank you very much. My flat’s not much, but it’s mine, and I don’t have to share it with some farting, snoring, nose-picking Neanderthal with stinking feet.’

  ‘Then help us.’

  ‘Help yourselves. I had a reasonable life, until you lot sold me out to the papers. All I wanted was to be left alone. Fat chance of that, now.’

  There was a knock, and Atherton went to the door, conducted a whispered conversation, then said to Slider, ‘Mr Porson wants you.’

  Slider got up. ‘I’ll be back,’ he told Fitton.

  ‘Take your time,’ Fitton replied.

  Porson was looking worried, which was so unusual it gave Slider a qualm. Fierce or impatient were Porson’s normal expressions, along with any degree of either in-between. The old man didn’t do worried. He flung himself headlong at problems, sword in hand, slashing away – less in Zorro than in anger, Slider always said.

  ‘Getting anywhere?’ was Porson’s first question.

  ‘Like Bank Holiday Monday on the A303.’

  Porson grunted. ‘Being abstrapalous, is he?’

  ‘Refusing to answer questions. He’s too calm and a lot too cocky for my liking – but there’s a lot of anger there, underneath. I can see him doing it. On the other hand, I don’t get the feeling he’s a bad man, basically.’

  ‘You can be a good man right up to the moment you’re not,’ Porson said. ‘But I had a phone call this morning that complicates matters.’

  Oh joy, Slider thought. My life was too simple. There was just no challenge.

  ‘In fact, it’s chucked a bit of a spaniel in the works,’ Porson went on. ‘It was from the director of Stamford House.’

  Stamford House, the secure home for violent young offenders. They had forgotten about that, Slider thought. Or had put it to one side, rather. ‘Don’t tell me they had someone over the wall on Friday?’ Slider asked. ‘We didn’t think this looked like something one of them would have done – hiding the body and so on. They’d have had to have a car to—’

  ‘No, no, it’s nothing like that,’ Porson interrupted. ‘No, it was about Fitton.’ He picked up a rubber band from his desk and stretched it round his fingers. ‘He knows him, you see.’

  ‘Personally? Or in a professional capacity?’ Slider asked.

  Porson began stretching and easing the rubber band. Slider took a surreptitious half step backwards. He could see it flying off Porson’s fingers.

  ‘Both. You see, it turns out he’s been helping over there, with the kids.’

  ‘Fitton has?’

  Porson nodded unhappily. ‘Started off with coming in to give ’em a talk about what it was really like in prison – explode the myth, show there was nothing glamorous about it, put ’em off it for life.’

  ‘How did that come about? How did the director know about him?’

  ‘He didn’t. It was the other way round. Fitton volunteered. Said he wanted to help. Couldn’t stand seeing those young kids going to the bad, like the ones he met inside. If he could save a single one, his suffering wouldn’t be in vain, sort of effort.’ Porson’s eyebrows went up like a pair of herons taking off fr
om a pond. ‘Apparently he was very eloquent. Anyway, the director bought it. They’ve got a hell of a tough ask in there; anything and anyone that might help is welcome. After all due checks and percautions, they let him come in and do his talk, and a Q and A afterwards. The kids were well impressed. The staff even more so. He handled their questions with tact, didn’t let them get purulent about the murder or make him some kind of hero, and they obviously related to him, gathered round when it was over, started talking about themselves, asking his advice.’

  The rubber band flew across the room, just missing Slider’s ear. Porson didn’t even notice it was gone. ‘Thing is, it’s hard to reach these kids. Most of ’em view all grown-ups as the enemy. They desperately need guidance but won’t let ’emselves take it. So someone who could talk to ’em, who they’d talk to, is worth his weight.’ He shrugged. ‘He’s been going in a couple of times a week, taking groups sometimes, talking to individuals other times. Advice, information, sometimes just a shoulder to cry on. Doing good work, apparently – good results. Some real little nut jobs have calmed down a lot. So when it said in the papers we’d arrested him – well, the director was agog, the staff were up in arms. As far as they’re concerned he was from the planet Krypton. Couldn’t do wrong.’ Porson raised sorrowful eyes to Slider’s. ‘He was in there Friday. All afternoon.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Slider. ‘He told us he was out, but wouldn’t say where. Said it was his business.’

  So,’ said Porson. It wasn’t much, but his expression was eloquent. They were silent a moment.

  ‘It doesn’t necessarily follow—’ Slider began.

  ‘No, but it’s a hell of a good indicator,’ said Porson. ‘It’d look good in court. Stand up on its own like a pair of soldier’s socks.’

  ‘He had good character the last time,’ Slider pointed out.

  ‘Last time he never denied it. Put his hand up right off. I think we got to tread careful. Don’t want the press saying we’re hounding a man who’s doing his best to pay his debt to society.’