‘Now then, Maggie, don’t be like that,’ Joyce said coaxingly. ‘I’ve got a visitor for you. This gentleman’s a policeman, dear, come all this way to talk to you.’
Mrs Mills looked at Slider, and said, ‘He can stay. I don’t want you, though. Go away.’
‘Ooh, we can be rude when we try,’ Joyce said archly. She turned to Slider. ‘She’s a bit – you know,’ she whispered perfectly audibly, tapping her temple. ‘And a bit unsociable. Unsociable,’ she added loudly, ‘aren’t you, Maggie? All right, I’ll leave you alone with your boyfriend.’ She lowered her voice again. ‘There’s a button over there by the fireplace if you have any trouble. Let Mrs Maitland know when you leave again, won’t you.’
When they were alone, Mrs Mills looked at Slider, and then poked her tongue out at the closed door. ‘I was rude, wasn’t I? Can’t stand them, stupid bitches. Think if you’re old, you’re daft. Wait till they’re seventy, then they’ll see. What did you say your name was?’
‘Slider. Bill Slider.’
‘Well, sit down then. There’s a pouffe over there. They only give you one chair – afraid you might have company in your room, enjoy yourself or something. Bitches.’
Slider fetched the pouffe and sat on it in front of Mrs Mills. She looked down at him with a gleam of malicious pleasure, presumably at his reduced elevation. ‘Can’t see out from down there, can you? I like to look out. Sit here and look at the tree. You get birds in that tree. You’d be surprised how many. Watch ’em for hours. Did they tell you I’m gaga?’ She didn’t wait for him to answer. ‘Well I’m not. But I let them think it – saves me having to listen to their rabbiting. What do you want, anyway? What did you say your name was?’
‘Inspector Slider,’ he said, with less confidence.
‘What, police are you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘My boy Steve’s a policeman. Well, a detective.’
‘I know. I used to work with him years ago. That’s what I’ve come to talk to you about.’
She looked at him sharply. ‘He’s in trouble. I saw it in the newspaper. They think I don’t know, just because I don’t talk about it. I wouldn’t talk to them.’
‘I think your boy’s innocent, Mrs Mills, and I want to prove it,’ Slider said.
‘Course he’s innocent. He’s a good boy, my Steve. Always been a good son to me.’
‘That’s why I’ve come to see you. I want to talk to you about your sister.’
‘He’s in the police. Out in Epsom. I never see him now. Too far to visit. But he’s always been a good son to me.’
Slider leaned forward a little and tried to catch her eye. ‘I want to talk to you about your sister – about Betty.’
She sharpened. ‘Betty? What about Betty? Is she dead? Is that it?’
Alarmingly prompt – but at her age, you must hear a lot about death. Slider hesitated only a moment. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
Mrs Mills seemed to think about it. ‘Comes to us all. But she was younger than me, you know. Still, she didn’t lead a pure life. She smoked, drank – had affairs. Men!’ She snorted. ‘I could tell you a thing or two! She was always a wild one, even as a girl. I had to be mother to her, after Father died and Mother went a bit gaga. I always said she’d get herself into trouble one day – and she did! But she’d never listen to me. Oh no, I was just boring old Maggie, good enough to come to when she wanted something, but take advice – huh!’
‘When she got into trouble,’ Slider inserted, gently but urgently, ‘she went into a home, didn’t she? A mother-and-baby home.’
‘I’d have had her with me,’ Mrs Mills said, not as if she was answering, but as if following her own thoughts. She was not looking at him. ‘I mean, blood is thicker than water, and I was fond of her in a way. But Arthur wouldn’t have it. He was a good man, mind,’ she added sharply, as though Slider had argued, ‘but she made fun of him. I told her, the Devil laughs at the virtuous, and you’ll laugh on the other side of your face when you go Downstairs. I told her that. But she liked to make fun of him – until she wanted his help. Then it was a different story, oh yes! Well, he was a good man and he helped her, but as to having her in the house – never, and I couldn’t blame him. He was right, too,’ she added with a wise nod, ‘because she broke her word. She promised to go right away afterwards, but she came back.’
‘Why do you think she did that?’
‘To show off, of course, because she had money and we didn’t. Always buying him things, taking him places, trying to set him against his own parents with her money and her outings and I don’t know what. Arthur couldn’t stand her – painted hussy, he called her. They had some set-tos! But then just when you thought she’d gone too far, she’d come round and apologise, really handsome, and bring Arthur something, a book or a present, something he really wanted, and talk to him so nicely about church and the Scouts and Sunday school and everything, it made you wonder why she couldn’t be sensible like that all the time. He had to forgive her. She had charm, you see, when she wanted to use it. She wasn’t really a bad woman – just wild.’
‘Was that why you let the boy see her?’
‘Well, he was a fair man, was Arthur. She never appreciated him, really, because he had his funny little ways and he could be a bit ridiculous sometimes, I have to admit, but he loved the boy and he’d have done anything for him. And Steve really loved her, and Arthur said, he said, after all – you know.’ She nodded wisely. ‘And he said the boy must come first, we can’t put our pride before his happiness.’
‘That was very noble of him,’ Slider said, but she took it the wrong way and looked at him suspiciously.
‘What’s it to you, anyway? Who are you?’
Slider didn’t bother with the introductions. ‘The mother-and-baby home your sister went into – do you remember where it was?’
‘She’s not in a home. She works for the Civil Service – did very well for herself,’ Mrs Mills said. But she seemed to be tiring, and he knew he had to get on.
‘When she was a girl, when she got into trouble, she went into a special place. It was run by your minister, Mr Green, wasn’t it?’
‘Mr Green? Mr Green? He was here the other day.’ She looked rather dazed. ‘He keeps a friendly eye on the boy. Always did. I think he’s afraid she might steer him wrong. She was never one for religion. But she’ll think on the other side of her face when she goes Downstairs.’
‘Mrs Mills, I really need to know,’ Slider said urgently. ‘What was the name of Mr Green’s home for girls in trouble? What was the address?’
‘Out in the country, that was, to keep ’em out of harm’s way. Talk about hate it! She never liked the country. Nothing but mud, as far as the eye could see – mud and potatoes, she said afterwards. That’s all the country is – mud and potatoes. Five miles even to get a packet of cigarettes. Essex, I think it was. Or Kent. Some village.’
Wonderful, Slider thought. Only two counties to search. He could see she was tired now, and thought he had failed, but suddenly she spoke again out of her thoughts, quite sharply and lucidly.
‘He lived in East Acton, though. Shaa Road. House on the corner. Just up the road from the church. They’ve pulled that church down now, building a block of flats instead, sacrilege I call it. He was a great big man, great big hands and a deep voice. Joshua Green,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Betty always said it sounded like someone off The Archers.’ She looked at him, seeing him suddenly, and frowned. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she? That’s why you came. Policeman, aren’t you? Betty’s dead.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
She sighed. ‘I always knew I’d see her out. She was younger than me, but she led a wild life. I expect my boy will see about it, the funeral and that. My boy Steve. He’ll see to everything. He’s a policeman. Well, detective really. What did you say your name was?’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Negative Evidence
In the nature of things, there were like
ly to be four corner houses to Shaa Road, and even if he found the right one, he didn’t expect Green would still live there, if he still lived at all. But Slider hoped to catch hold of the end of a chain which might lead him to the information he wanted. This was something he could hand over to the team, but he wanted at least to find the right house to begin with, to see it with his own eyes.
As it happened, he hit the right one first shot. A neat, thirties-style urban villa with a red-tiled bay window and stained glass in the front door yielded to his ring at the doorbell a neat, small woman in her late fifties, wearing a nylon overall. Just behind her on the hall table a pair of rubber gloves, a duster and a tin of Mr Sheen stood where she had put them down; the smell of the polish mingled on the air with a slight threat of oxtail soup and that particular odour that some boarding houses and small hotels have – something of cheap carpets and institutional food gently ripened in a centrally-heated, double-glazed airlock.
‘Good morning. I’m looking for a Mr Green,’ Slider began. ‘He—’
‘If it’s about a wedding, I’m afraid he’s retired now,’ the woman interrupted with a sweet smile.
‘Oh – no,’ Slider said, beguiled. Did he look as though he wanted marrying? ‘He does live here then, Joshua Green? I have got the right house?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’ The woman waited patiently. Clergy wives were first filters, had to cope with all the nuts.
Slider reached for his ID. ‘Would you be Mrs Green?’
‘Not for all the tea in China,’ she said with unexpected wit. ‘I’m the housekeeper. Mrs Hoare.’
Slider blinked, and stopped himself asking why she had never thought of changing her name. ‘Detective Inspector Slider,’ he said steadily. ‘Is Mr Green at home? Could I have a word with him?’
‘I expect you could. Come in. He’ll be reading in his study at the moment.’ One of her eyelids dropped and rose again with oiled smoothness. ‘I generally wake him up for lunch, but it won’t hurt him to be disturbed for once. Just wait here.’
She went off round the corner and Slider waited, listening to the sound of a clock ticking, looking at the row of cacti on a shelf along the hall window, the neat piles of pamphlets and tracts on the hall table, the capacious umbrella-stand, the carpet chosen for its ability to take wear and hide marks. The walls were decorated with framed reproductions of Canaletto views of Venice, and there was a hideous Edwardian mahogany hallstand, complete with mirror and numerous tiny what-not shelves, which sprouted coat-hooks upon branched coat-hooks like a ten-point stag. It was a home that was a public place, and vice versa. It must be a rotten life being a priest, he thought – especially these days when you couldn’t even enjoy the satisfaction of a hearty malison when provoked. On the subject of which, he drifted closer to look at the tracts, but they were pre-printed on shiny paper with coloured colophons, and their messages had the kick of a pair of suede sandals. No more swords, wrath and vengeance for the Church, no blood, wine, betrayal and agony in the garden – just little homilies about being more understanding, helping Oxfam, and loving your brother regardless of race, colour, creed or sexual orientation. Slider wondered what the prophets of old would have made of that – what Joshua Green, if he was really a fiery preacher in his youth, made of it. It was all very restful, though. Maybe the Church Militant had been an aberration, and this was what God had wanted all along.
Mrs Hoare reappeared and beckoned to him. ‘He’ll see you,’ she said, leading him where she had gone before. ‘He’s just a little deaf, but if you talk clearly and straight at him he hears all right. You don’t need to shout.’ She opened a door. ‘Here’s Inspector Slider, now,’ she announced, and stood back to let Slider pass, saying to him, ‘Do you prefer tea or coffee?’
‘Oh, tea please. Thank you.’
The small room had french windows onto a very dull garden, and one whole wall was covered in bookshelves. The rest of the available space was taken up with a large old-fashioned desk with a much-buttoned leather wing chair on one side of it, and a depressed-looking row of wooden upright chairs on the other. Green was seated on the master’s side of this arrangement, and gestured Slider towards the supplicants’ position. He made a gesture of standing up, but did not actually rise, and seeing how upright he sat and the large-knuckled deformity of his big hands on the chair arms, Slider suspected arthritis and did not blame him.
‘It’s good of you to see me, Mr Green. I do call you Mr?’
‘Yes, yes, that’s all I am now – a retired soldier in God’s army – or perhaps I should say a reservist? Ha!’ He gave a single shout of laughter which Slider guessed had become a mannerism over many years, a jocularity designed to show that a man could be a devout Christian and yet not at all dull. ‘One never knows when one might be “called up” again.’ He marked the waggish inverted commas in his speech by speaking the words more slowly and in an even deeper voice. ‘And what do I call you? Inspector, is it?’
‘Mr will do,’ Slider said, taking the middle seat in Penitent’s Row.
‘Very well. “Mr” Slider. Puts us on equal footing, eh? Ha! Now, what can I do for you?’
He made a curious movement of his hands across his midriff and back to the arms of the chair, which Slider recognised as an attempt to steeple his fingers, thwarted by their crookedness. He had not yet grown used to his disabilities. Slider could see how he must have been ‘a great, big man’, and he was tall still, though age had shrunk him somewhat. He still had a fine head of hair, worn brushed back so that it framed his head like a lion’s mane; his bushy eyebrows had stayed black, and jutted out like rock formations over his dark eyes, hinting at the charismatic figure he must once have cut. Slider would have put his age at around eighty, but it was a vigorous eighty which might just as easily have been ninety or seventy. His features still had strength and firmness, though there was something rather ugly, Slider thought, about his mouth – very wide and very thin, with an unexpectedly red lower lip and no upper lip at all.
‘I’ve come to raid your memory,’ Slider said. ‘I am here concerning the case of Elizabeth, or Betty, Giles—’
‘The case? Is she dead, then?’ Green interrupted sharply.
‘She was found dead at her home last night,’ Slider said carefully, looking at the man with interest. ‘You were very quick on the uptake.’
‘You’d hardly have called her a case otherwise. I doubt she was “drug smuggling” or organising “a rave” at her age. She must be—’ He paused as if to work it out, but in fact left it to Slider. When Slider didn’t help, he concluded, ‘An elderly woman.’
‘You do remember her, then. Even though it was such a long time ago.’
‘Her sister was one of my flock, and her brother-in-law ran my Sunday school most competently for very many years. Naturally I remember her.’
‘And her son?’
The eyes were cautious under the bushes. ‘Her son? I was not aware that she ever married.’
‘She didn’t. Come, Mr Green, let’s not waste time fencing. Miss Giles herself told me the story only yesterday. Steven Mills, who was adopted by her sister Margaret, was her illegitimate child.’
‘Well, you astound me,’ Green said emphatically.
‘Surely not. It was you who arranged the adoption – amongst many others.’
‘If you know that, then you must know that I am not at liberty to disclose the circumstances surrounding any adoption. The children I placed are entitled to my absolute discretion – as are the adopting parents.’
‘I appreciate that,’ Slider said. ‘But in this case, Miss Giles herself told me half the story, and would have told me the other half today if she had not been silenced. She was murdered last night, Mr Green, brutally murdered, and her son Steven, whom she loved, is under suspicion.’ Green’s face was impassive, but he was listening hard. ‘Now I worked with Steve for some time a few years back, we were friends, and I was pretty close to him. I think I know him, and he’s a decent, good man, and
he loved his Auntie Betty and would never have harmed a hair of her head. I need your help to prove that.’
‘There is nothing I can tell you,’ Green said, but Slider could hear that he was weakening. He attempted to steeple his fingers again, and instead raised them to his lips. It wasn’t quite the magisterial gesture it ought to have been. It looked more as if he was sucking both thumbs at once.
Slider went at it again. ‘Nothing you tell me can harm Miss Giles any more. Arthur Mills is dead and Margaret Mills is in a home and, I’m afraid, mentally confused. Steve Mills, whom you helped once as an infant by placing him with good, loving parents, needs your help again. In those circumstances, it would be quite wrong of you to refuse information. It’s your duty as a citizen, but I think also as a Christian, to answer my questions.’
Green was silent for a few moments. Then he removed his hands from his mouth and said, ‘You are very persuasive, Mr Slider. You should have been a minister.’
‘I suppose I’m a fisher of men in my own way,’ Slider said, with a smile to show he was joking. ‘But my job is to go after the sharks.’
‘Ha! A useful occupation all the same. Well, then, well then—’ He paused a moment. ‘I suppose you are right. Betty Giles. You want to know about Betty Giles.’
‘You obviously remember the whole family very well. Did they stick in your mind for any particular reason?’
‘I remember all the adoption cases I handled. I’ve kept in touch with many of them: the children are like my own children, in a spiritual sense. I like to keep a distant but fatherly eye on them – and their adoptive parents. Not the unfortunate girls, of course – they would not wish to be reminded by me of what they once were. In those days, you know, society punished them very severely, condemned them for ever on the grounds of one sin – which sometimes they were too ignorant to realise was a sin. It’s quite different now. I think we have gone rather too far in the other direction these days. We are supposed to hate the sin and love the sinner. Nowadays we don’t even hate the sin.’
Blood Lines Page 26
