Blood Sinister

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Maybe,’ said Slider. ‘Have another go at this bloke, in case he knows more and just isn’t telling. And ask around some of her other contacts. Ah, McLaren, how’s your Wordley idea getting on? You’ve been out of the office a lot. What have you got to show for it?’

  ‘Not much, guv,’ McLaren admitted. ‘I had a couple of goes at Kelly, and she’s given me a description of the geezer Wordley went off with. She says he was a big bloke, mid-thirties, a slaphead with an earring in the top of his ear. She still swears she doesn’t know his name, and I believe her now. Says she thinks she’s seen him somewhere before but can’t place where. But she’s obviously shit scared of him and Wordley. I don’t want to hang around her too much in case it gets back to him and gets her in schtuck.’

  Slider nodded. ‘Nothing on where Wordley is?’

  ‘No, but I’ve had info he was drinking in that club, Porky’s, in the Shepherd’s Bush Road Wednesday night. Well, that’s only five minutes from Agnew’s flat.’

  ‘It’s a long way between Wednesday night and six-forty-five Thursday evening, when she was seen alive by Peter Medmenham.’

  ‘Yes, guv, I’m working on that,’ McLaren said. ‘Wordley’s not an easy bloke to forget, but a lot of people are scared of him, so it takes time to track him.’

  ‘And what about a motive? Or are you sticking with motiveless violence?’

  ‘Well, there’s this stuff Andy was just saying about something she was working on that was worrying her. And Medmenham said she was worried and she’d been drinking heavier recently. Suppose it was something to do with Wordley? She got him off that blag, didn’t she, but say she’d found some more evidence that said he did it after all? That’d fry her brains all right, wondering whether to come clean and drop him, or hide it and live with her conscience?’

  ‘Supposing she’d got one,’ said Swilley.

  Slider shifted impatiently. ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘Point is, guv, it would give Wordley the best motive to off her,’ McLaren said.

  ‘It’s a lot of supposing,’ Slider said.

  ‘It’s more motive than we’ve got for Prentiss, which is none,’ McLaren pointed out. ‘And Wordley’s a slag with a record for violence.’

  ‘Blimey, you sounded almost intelligent then, Maurice,’ Swilley said admiringly. ‘You’ve got to hand it to him, boss.’

  ‘All right, you can stay on it, McLaren, but watch your step. Anything else?’ Silence. ‘Well, if that’s the magnificent total, I’d better just take it to Mr Porson, and hope he doesn’t throw a fit. I suppose you all saw the papers today? We’re on trial on this one. Keep at it.’

  When Slider got back from Porson’s office, Atherton had arrived. Slider sucked him into his office with a look.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late, guv,’ Atherton pre-empted him.

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘I had a bit too much last night and overslept,’ Atherton said. Slider noticed he didn’t say too much what.

  ‘Is that it? That’s your excuse?’

  Atherton shrugged gracefully. ‘What can I say? I could spin you a line—’

  ‘Well, do,’ Slider invited. ‘At least a good, four-ply, industrial-weave lie would make it look as if you had some respect for me.’

  But Atherton wasn’t playing. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I know it’s not on, and it won’t happen again.’

  Slider was stumped. There was nothing in that smooth carapace he could address. Having been cast in the role of boss, he could not speak as friend. He would have to find a different way in. ‘It had better not,’ he said. ‘Well, now you’re here, I want you to come and interview Piers Prentiss with me. I was going to take Swilley—’

  ‘Swilley? It doesn’t take much, does it? One little slip – and after I’ve given you the best years of my life!’ Atherton cried dramatically.

  It was a crack in the armour. ‘Where were you, anyway?’ Slider tried. ‘You look like hell.’

  ‘Wednesday’s my flower arranging class,’ Atherton said, papering it over. ‘So how come Prentiss junior? Have I missed something?’

  ‘If you’d been here, you’d have known.’ Slider brought him up to speed. ‘Porson’s quite keen on Wordley, but obviously Prentiss is still front runner, so the next step is to try and get some more information on his relationship with Agnew – and, we can hope, what she was working on – from a safe source. Hence Prentiss’s brother. I nearly went without you,’ he finished.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ Atherton said, and he sounded genuine this time. ‘It really won’t happen again. I’ll buy you lunch as my penance.’

  ‘It will be a penance. We’re going to Essex, remember.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Primrose path

  Piers Prentiss’s home was called Primrose Cottage. ‘And you can’t get more bijou than that,’ Atherton said. It had half submerged beams and little lattice windows, and round the small, low door a rambling rose grew, which would presumably look divine in summer but at the moment merely lurked thornily waiting for someone’s eye to put out. To complete the picturesqueness, the ancient roof was as wobbly as an auntie at a wedding, and the chimney leaned perilously out of true.

  ‘I wonder what holds that up?’ said Atherton.

  ‘Probably roadworks somewhere,’ Slider said vaguely.

  The cottage was in what had once been the high street of a village just outside Chelmsford; but the village had been absorbed, stuck to the town by bland blobs of infill – new ‘vernacular’ housing as tasteless as sticking-paste. Now the row of mediaeval dwellings, some of them with downstairs fronts converted long ago to shops, stood braced at one end by a petrol station, and at the other by a raw-looking supermarket already in the process of being out-evolved by a greenfield superstore just off the A12.

  The building next to Primrose Cottage was an antiques shop with ‘Prentiss’ over the window in tasteful gold lettering on dark green. The window display was of china, glass, old wooden boxes, silver and jewellery, and a couple of porcelain-faced dolls. Beyond were some handsome pieces of furniture and other, more eclectic items: a pair of leather riding boots on wooden trees, a spinning-wheel, a Victorian child’s tricycle and, on the wall, framed classic cinema posters.

  ‘Cinema posters are very collectable these days,’ Atherton said, peering in with a hand shading out the light. ‘I’m looking for one myself: Sean Connery and Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Bonds.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘It’s the one where she sings Diamonds Are For Ever.’

  ‘I know it well,’ Slider said. A middle of the road shop, and probably successful, he concluded: everything looked clean and well tended, and there were no depressing boxes of unsaleable junk, the usual hallmark of desperation. There was a ‘closed’ notice hanging on the door. He looked at his watch. ‘Lunch hour. He said on the phone he eats at home. It looks as though he doesn’t keep an assistant.’

  They rang the doorbell of the cottage, and waited on the narrow pavement while the local traffic pottered by behind their backs in an unhurried but constant stream.

  A barking got up from within, and a moment later the door was opened and a pair of small wiry dogs leapt up like clay pigeons being fired. They sprang with all four feet at once, barking with staccato endurance, timing it so that one took off as the other landed, to get the maximum coverage. But they were not showing their teeth, and the blunt end was eagerly a-twitch, so Slider assumed they meant no harm and turned his attention to the human accompanying them.

  ‘Piers Prentiss?’ he asked. He held up his brief and introduced them.

  ‘Yes. Hello,’ the man replied. ‘Down, dogs! Shut up! Don’t mind them, they don’t bite.’

  Piers Prentiss was as tall as his brother, but thin instead of massive, drooping a little at the shoulders, perhaps the reaction to living in Primrose Cottage, where the clearance was less than generous. His face was interestingly gaunt under the same leonine growth of hair, but cut rath
er longer, brushed back all round, and completely white. It made a startling contrast to the tanned skin and brown eyes, a shade darker than Josh’s, and he carried his head self-consciously, as though inviting comment. Slider guessed he had gone grey very young and made capital out of it; now, however, the lines of his face had caught up. He had the same short, broad nose as his brother, but his mouth was wider, thinner and looser, giving his face a downward drag that made him look older than Josh, and somehow more aesthetic. A mournful and thoughtful lion, not much of a threat to the wildebeest.

  His kit was expensively country casual: loose-fitting dark brown corduroy trousers and a forest-green lambswool sweater with an open shirt collar peeking out at the top; a gold signet ring and an expensive-looking gold watch weighted his long, delicate-looking hands. There was nothing in the least fey about his clothes, but they had the effect of making him look precious, perhaps by contrast. He looked as though he was just standing around inside them, and would have been surprised to discover that anyone thought they were his. In the same way, if you had ever seen him at a bus stop, you would have assumed he was looking for a taxi. This was a man you could not imagine on public transport; Josh would take a bus without a second thought if it suited his purposes.

  ‘You want to talk to me about Phoebe,’ Piers Prentiss said. Slider assented. ‘You’d better come in. I’m just having my lunch – do you mind? I have to open the shop again in half an hour.’

  He led the way down the narrow, flagged passage towards the back, and Slider and Atherton followed, with the dogs’ heads appearing regularly at their elbows, like people trampolining behind a wall. It was dark inside the cottage and smelled of damp brick and furniture polish, and Slider caught a glimpse through a door of gleaming wood and old chintz, before being led into the low-ceilinged and dog-smelling kitchen at the back. The reedy sunshine outside bounced off the diamond-paned windows, doing nothing much for the illumination inside. The kitchen looked like an advert from a Smallbone catalogue: no expense had been spared to make it look like the real thing, only better. There was a great deal of exposed brick, interspersed with white painted plaster; dark beams across the ceiling, red-brown quarry tiles on the floor; expensive pine units with black iron hinges and handles, and a huge dresser filling one whole wall floor to ceiling.

  ‘Lovely and warm in here,’ Slider commented.

  ‘It’s the Aga,’ Prentiss said, gesturing to where it sat fatly under the long, low inglenook. ‘Sadly the chimney isn’t up to much, so it’s only electric.’

  ‘What you’d call ohm on the range,’ Atherton murmured.

  Fortunately Prentiss didn’t hear him properly. ‘Yes, there must have been a range there, but the previous owners removed it. But to me, the space just cried out for an Aga, so I heeded the cries. I mean, if you’ve got an inglenook, flaunt it, I always say.’

  It was plain what Piers had been doing when they arrived. In the middle of the kitchen was an old pine table on which stood a stoneware bowl half full of yellow soup, spoon akimbo; a rustic-looking wholemeal loaf on a bread board; and butter and cheese crocks, next to which lay the folded-open Guardian. It looked like a still-life group; or the Smallbone ad again.

  ‘Would you like some?’ Piers offered, gesturing vaguely towards it. ‘Lentil soup – home-made. There’s plenty.’

  ‘No, thanks all the same,’ Slider refused for them both. ‘But please don’t let us stop you.’

  ‘All right, I won’t,’ said Piers, resuming his seat. ‘Make yourselves at home.’

  Slider and Atherton pulled out chairs and sat at the table. The dogs had stopped bouncing in favour of a lengthy and committed smelling of their shoes and trousers. They were terriers of some sort; their square faces and grizzled curls reminded Slider disconcertingly of Commander Wetherspoon, especially as they stared at him with the same dispassion. It made him feel he was on trial.

  ‘So, what do you want to know? It’s a terrible business about poor Phoebe. There was a big spread about her in the Guardian on Monday – was it? – or Tuesday. I hear,’ he twinkled gravely at them over his spoon, ‘you’ve been grilling my brother about it. He’s thinking of suing you for wrongful arrest.’

  ‘He wasn’t arrested. He was—’

  ‘—helping you with your enquiries, yes,’ Piers finished for him. ‘You can’t sue for that: that’s what I told him. Poor dear, he was mortified. He was on the phone last night, keening like an Irish peasant for his lost career – his political career, I mean – because the Government can’t bear anything that looks the least bit like sleaze, so poor Josh will be out on his ear before you can say floccinaucinihilipilification.’ He paused a beat to see if they appreciated his style, and meeting intelligent interest, he seemed to relax a little and expand. ‘I said, love, you don’t want to work for that bunch of crypto-fascist asses anyway.’ He pronounced it arses. ‘But of course the tragedy is that he does. The architectural stage was never big enough for Josh. The stage stage wasn’t. Well,’ he took and swallowed a spoonful of soup demurely, ‘I suppose there’s always Europe.’

  His voice reminded Slider of dried flowers: a faint, odourless ghost of some great past vigour. He moved his hands as he spoke, as though trying to help the failing voice along, but his gestures had the slow, underwater impotence of the running-dream. Still, talking was obviously very much his thing, for which Slider gave inner thanks. All he had to do was to filter out the useful grit from the river of words. He settled himself, exuding ease and not-being-in-a-hurry. Atherton, noting the posture, resigned himself to a long session.

  ‘Your brother was never on the stage, was he?’ Slider asked, on the back of Prentiss’s last comment.

  ‘Not an actor,’ Piers said, striking an attitude, ‘and yet, surely an actor manqué? Always wanted to be centre stage - always was centre stage, let’s face it – but without the nuisance of learning lines.’

  ‘He joined the Drama Society at university, didn’t he?’

  ‘However did you know that? Yes, he did – though of course in any university, joining Dramsoc has everything to do with social popularity and nothing to do with the theatre. But Josh could have been a thespian if only he’d had the self-discipline. He has real talent, you know. He dissipates it.’

  He smiled, and his rather lugubrious face was translated: the charm and pulling-power of his brother were there, but diluted, like September rather than July sunshine.

  ‘On the other hand,’ he went on, ‘if it comes to the parable of the talents, Josh would say I’ve buried mine under a bush. We were both born with every advantage, and look at our relative positions now.’

  ‘You come from a wealthy family?’ Slider slipped the question in as undisturbingly as an otter slipping into water.

  ‘Oh, yes. Family pile in leafy Buckinghamshire – not too many acres, though. Grandpa and Father were both ambassadors, so they preferred their wealth portable.’

  ‘So you must have spent a lot of time abroad?’

  ‘Oh, no, we stayed at home in good old England.’

  ‘Who looked after you?’

  ‘We had nannies and so forth until we went to school. But we had super holidays with the parents – up until Mummy died. That was when I was eleven. After that we didn’t go and stay with Father because there wouldn’t have been anyone to supervise us. But there were always relatives around. And Granny lived in the South of France – we stayed with her quite often.’

  ‘You went to Eton, like your brother?’ Atherton asked.

  He nodded. ‘Eton, Oxford and the Guards was the family tradition – until Josh broke it. After Mummy died, he was always getting into rows with Father. First he refused to go to university at all, and then instead of PPE at Balliol he chose architecture and UCL. Father dropped down dead with shock – well, almost.’ He made a deprecating gesture. ‘It was heart, but in fact he died in May 1972, just when I was about to do my finals. Still, I like to think it was Josh’s rebellion that brought it on. Makes the story so much
more symmetrical, doesn’t it?’

  He brooded a moment, crumbling a piece of bread in his fingers. There was some hostility buried here, Slider thought. Simple sibling rivalry?

  ‘So,’ Piers said abruptly, coming back, ‘brother and I inherited the family fortune between us. As soon as probate was through, Josh used his to buy his own firm and the house in Campden Hill Square. Such foresight! Everything he now has and is stems from that first sensible investment. I, on the other hand,’ he went on with an airy gesture, scattering crumbs, ‘used my half to allow me to live comfortably without having to take the antiques business too seriously. It’s moot whether the shop keeps me or I keep the shop. Now whose, I ask you, was the wasted talent?’

  ‘I hope that’s a rhetorical question,’ Slider said. Worldly success versus elegant living: was that the issue between the brothers? Piers wanted his comment to sound ironic, wanted his audience to conclude from his denigration of his lifestyle that he thought it superior; but underneath, did he really feel that he was a failure, and that Josh had scored on all fronts?

  ‘Oh, goodness, I wouldn’t force you to take sides!’ Piers said. He seemed to have been distracted from his lunch. The soup was cooling and congealing around the neglected spoon, and all he had done with the bread was to make a mess on the table. Now he pushed his chair back with a final air. ‘What about some coffee?’ He stood up, and the dogs, who had gone off trouser duty and were curled together on a beanbag in the corner next to the Aga, lifted their heads hopefully. ‘You’ll have some coffee?’

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve kept you from eating.’

  ‘Oh, no, don’t worry. I never eat much at lunchtime, anyway. Besides,’ he looked down at the bowl with sudden dislike, ‘I loathe lentil soup. One might as well eat cardboard boxes.’