‘Oh, don’t be coy.’
‘He said he’d be sorry to lose me if I did get into the Department.’ She turned a wistful face to him. ‘Do you think there’s a chance I could? I mean, there’s a vacancy, right enough?’
‘Because DC Anderson isn’t coming back?’ Anderson had been on secondment to an SO for over a year, and Slider had recently heard that it was being made permanent. It left him even shorter-handed than usual.
‘Yes, sir. And then, if Kathleen doesn’t come back . . .’
Slider had never heard anyone call Swilley ‘Kathleen’, and it took him a moment to realise who they were talking about. Everyone on his firm called her Norma because she was a better man than they were – so much so that she didn’t even mind the nickname. Odd to think of her now doing something so essentially womanly as having a baby. ‘Don’t you think she will?’
‘Oh, I haven’t heard anything,’ Connolly said, ‘but it must be hard to leave your baba every day. And then there’d be the late evenings and the weekends and everything. I can’t see how she’d crack it.’
‘Her mother lives nearby. I understand she’d take care of the baby.’
‘I didn’t mean physically. I meant how she’d crack it emotionally.’
‘So when you marry and have children you’ll leave the Job?’
‘I’m never going to get married. And I definitely won’t have kids,’ she said, with a sureness that intrigued him. ‘You’ve only got to look at Mrs Paulson to see where that carry-on leads.’
He wanted to know whether she didn’t think that would mean a very lonely future, but he couldn’t go probing into his people’s private lives. He’d had enough of that with Atherton’s serial involvements, particularly when he’d been dating one of Joanna’s friends and breaking her heart.
He said, ‘How did you get on with Mrs Paulson?’
‘I hardly needed to ask her anything – she was desperate to talk. Bored mental being a stay-at-home mammy. Mostly she went on about being worried about Chloë – the shock from Zellah being murdered and the fear that it would happen to her kid as well. She’s convinced it’s a serial killer targeting schoolgirls. She says that Sophy Cooper-Hutchinson’s the driving force of the group, and it was her led Chloë and Zellah astray. She’s sorry about Zellah. Thought Zellah was a good girl, couldn’t understand why the Wildings let her hang out with Sophy.’
‘If Sophy’s so bad, why does she let Chloë associate with her?’
‘I wondered that, sir – hinted around it as tactfully as I could. But it seems that the Paulsons and Cooper-Hutchinsons have been best pals for years, ever since their oldest sons were at school together. Joint family holidays, outings, dinner parties and all that carry-on. The children know each other from the cradle. So no criticism of the Cooper-Hutchinsons possible, and no way to keep the children apart. But I gathered that Mrs Paulson is a bit feeble, anyway, doesn’t feel she has any influence over Chloë, no right to tell her what to do. She was critical of Mr Wilding, but admired him on the side. On the one hand said he was too strict with Zellah and maybe that was what led her into trouble—’
‘Trouble as in . . .?’
‘Oh, getting murdered – and on the other hand said she wished she could be strict like that with her children. But then, she says, the Wildings have but the one kid, so it’s easy for them.’
‘You did well, getting all that out of her,’ Slider said.
‘It wasn’t hard,’ said Connolly. ‘She wanted to talk.’
That wasn’t what Slider had meant: people can talk all they like but the listener had to be hearing them. He was liking Connolly more all the time. ‘What did she think about Mrs Wilding?’
‘Didn’t like her. Too much of a chav for her taste.’
So that was where Chloë got the idea of ‘chavvy blood’, Slider thought.
‘She hinted,’ Connolly went on, ‘that Mrs Wilding was her husband’s secretary once, and they’d had an affair, and Mr Wilding left his first wife for her. Seemed to think that was a bit beyond the pale. What bothered her was not so much the affair, but the secretary thing.’
‘Too much of a cliché?’
‘Yes, sir, something like that. It made Mrs Wilding too common to mix with the likes of the Paulsons and Cooper-Hutchinsons. I thought it was interesting,’ she added, ‘that she didn’t seem to think Mr Wilding was tainted with the same brush.’
‘I can clear that up for you,’ Slider said, wincing at the mixed metaphor but letting it pass. Nobody was perfect, after all. ‘Chloë revealed to me Mrs Wilding’s cardinal sin, and the source of her chavviness.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Apparently, she’s fat.’
Connolly whistled. ‘Janey, dice loaded against her, or what?’
SEVEN
Fair Words Never Won Fat Lady
The fair was not open until the afternoon, but as it was school holidays, there were quite a few kids hanging around already. The coffee stall was open, and the hamburger-and-hotdog stand had fired up for the vital dispensing of hot grease. The air was redolent with the particular mixture of diesel, burned fat, rancid onions, trampled grass and sawdust that was a quintessential part of childhood dreams. It was Paradise – if you could stand it.
Some of the fair people were engaged on routine maintenance of the rides, others on cleaning and household chores, though some caravans still had their curtains drawn, indicating a lie-in after the late night. The side panels were off the merry-go-round, and a knot of fascinated juvenile idlers was gathered round two pairs of oily overalled legs sticking out from under it. The horses, frozen in mid-leap, flared their crimson nostrils in their eagerness to get galloping again; the cockerels strode out on their strong, ridged legs like Road Runner.
‘Yeah, what is it wiv them cockerels?’ Hart asked in wounded tones. ‘I never got that. What’s the connection?’
‘It’s one of those sweet, insoluble mysteries of childhood,’ Atherton told her. ‘Don’t breathe on the magic.’ A man was tinkering with the pipe organ, and it sounded an asthmatic note or two, mournful and joyous as a steam locomotive. ‘This must be one of the few go-rounds that still has a proper organ, not just recorded music,’ he said, betraying his enthusiasm.
Hart looked at him with fake fondness. ‘You big kid. You love all this. For two pins you’d be begging ’em for a ride.’
‘My good woman, it costs a lot more than two pins these days. Come on, stop gawping. We’ve got a job to do.’
The fair people were already doing a good job of ignoring the hangers-about, and somehow managed to ignore Atherton and Hart even more intensely because they were police, narrowing eyes that were already narrowed and turning away faces that were already averted, like cats punishing an errant owner. Sometimes their questions were answered by a grunt, more often by complete silence. When words were forthcoming, it was, ‘Don’t know nothing about that.’ They were armed with photos of Zellah and of Mike Carmichael but could hardly get anyone to glance at them, let alone recognize the faces.
The first proper response they got was at a snack stall, presently closed up, where a stocky man in shirt-sleeves and braces was around the back, spanner in hand, connecting up a new Calor gas canister. He had a cigarette clamped in his mouth, a cap clamped down over his head, and two days of white stubble sprouting from the whole lower half of his face. He stopped and straightened when they addressed him, though it seemed more to stretch his back than for their benefit.
But then he rolled the fag to the other side of his mouth, glared at them through narrowed eyes, and said, ‘Why don’t you piss off, copper?’
It was the friendliest thing anyone had said to them. Atherton felt pleased and encouraged. ‘Just look at this picture and tell me if you saw her here,’ he said beguilingly.
The man grew angry. ‘Is that the girl that got murdered? Why d’you come asking us questions? We don’t know nothing about it. You people never leave us alone.’
‘Take it easy
, mate,’ Hart said, letting her accent slip a little further towards the of-the-people end of the spectrum. ‘We don’t fink you had anyfing to do wiv it. Course we don’t. We’re just trying to work out where she was Sundy night. We fink she might’ve been here, thass all. It ain’t no grief for you. Did you see her? Have a look at the picture, go on.’
He squinted unwillingly sideways at it, and then, as Hart urged it at him with little pushes, took it, looked once properly, and then thrust it back at her as if unwilling to be caught holding it.
‘Might have been here. Lotter people here Sundy night.’
Hart glanced at Atherton. In these-people speak, that was a yes. ‘We reckon she might’ve been here wiv her boyfriend. This is him.’ She held out Carmichael’s picture. He didn’t touch that one. He removed the cigarette from his mouth and spat out a shred of tobacco on to the grass. ‘That who you reckon done it?’
‘Yeah,’ Hart said, and Atherton let her. If it took the heat off . . .
‘I seen her. She was wiv a bloke. Coulda been him. Never saw him proper.’
‘Thanks. That’s great. What was he wearing, d’you remember?’
He shrugged, and turned back to his barrels. He muttered something, and Hart bent forward, ‘Say again?’
‘Rifle range,’ he mumbled. Then he turned back sharply and glared at them. ‘Sod off. I got work to do.’
The man at the rifle range was just taking the covers off, in between stretching, yawning, scratching himself, and trying to light a roll-up that would not catch. He was younger than snack-stall man, lighter skinned, with greasy mouse-brown hair and a puggy, cockney face. ‘Cor, you ain’t ’arf stirred up a few people,’ he said as they approached. He was not exactly friendly, but did not seem to be suffering from the same congenital hostility as the others. ‘They don’t like your sort round here.’
‘We noticed,’ Atherton said.
The man shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t care. I ain’t one of them. Pikey bastards! They keep themselves to themselves. I’m a gayjo to them, even though my dad was in fairs forty years, and I’ve had the stall twenty. You can’t ever be one of them unless you’re born in one of the families. Fuckin’ gyppos. Well, they can keep it. I don’t care. I’m as good as they are. I make me money and stay out of it. You looking for that girl that was killed?’
‘That’s right. This is her. Did you see her?’
‘She was here all right. Pretty girl. Couldn’t miss her. Having a great time, she was. Screamed her head off on the waltzer and the atomic rocket. Having too much of a good time, if you get my drift.’
‘Showing off? Drunk?’
‘Both, I reckon. She was with this bloke. He was showing off as well. Took her on the dodgems, show her what a great driver he was. Banging into everything. Danny on the dodgems had to warn him. Had a couple of goes on my range. Not a bad shot,’ he conceded with professional grudgingness. ‘I let him win a teddy bear for her. Do me bit for our side.’
‘Our side?’ Atherton queried.
‘Men,’ Hart elucidated.
The rifle man nodded. ‘He was trying to pull her, but it wasn’t working. I could see that. She was flirting with him, but she wasn’t going to put out. I could’ve told him. She had the cold eye, for all her screaming and hanging on to him. Ended up having a row.’
‘Did they?’
‘I wasn’t surprised. I reckon he worked it out in the end, realized he was spending his money for nothing.’
‘Did you hear what they were rowing about?’
‘Nah. Just arguing back and forth, yap yap yap. At it for quite a while they were. Then she walks away. That’s all I seen.’
‘Did he follow her?’
‘Nah. He went off in that direction.’ He jerked his head towards the entrance on Scrubs Lane. ‘He might’ve come back, though. But I never seen him.’
‘Did you see her again?’
‘Not after that. But I wasn’t looking out for ’em. I had other things to do.’
‘And do you know what time that was? When she walked off?’
He scratched his head again. ‘It was just getting busy. I reckon – maybe half-nine, ten o’clock.’
Hart and Atherton looked at each other. That was awfully early. They must have got together again afterwards. She showed him Carmichael’s picture. ‘Is that the man she was with?’
‘Could’ve been. Looks like him. I wasn’t that interested in him, tell you the truth. Had a leather jacket on, though. I saw that. Could’ve been him.’ He passed the photo back. ‘You won’t get anything out of the others. They don’t talk to the cops. But Gary on the waltzer’ll remember her, and Danny on the dodgems. They won’t tell you, though. They’re all giving me filthy looks for talking to you, but I don’t care. My family’s bin in the fairs as long as any of them. We’re as good as them any day.’
He was half right. They couldn’t get anyone else to talk to them, though one or two of them looked at the photos and grunted before freezing them out. To counterbalance that, and to dispel any suggestion the fair folk were going soft, Danny on the dodgems crawled out from under a maintenance panel with a two-foot-long spanner in his hand, which he slapped suggestively against his other palm, while his brindled pit bull advanced snarling to the end of its chain and burst into a fusillade of barking, effectively drowning out any possibility of conversation.
They worked conscientiously towards the back of the fair, where the living vans and lorries were parked, between the rides and the open space of the Scrubs. No one in the caravans would speak to them either, and many of them would not even open the door. Eventually they got to a large van parked right on the edge of the lot, its open door towards the Scrubs, where a woman was sitting on the step knitting what looked like a string dishcloth, and smoking a roll-up wrapped in liquorice paper. She was so massively fat she looked like a shipping hazard, but she might have been beautiful once: the face above her accumulation of chins suggested it, with striking dark eyes and abundant black hair done up in large rollers all over her head. Her hands were like a couple of pounds of pork sausages, but they flashed away nimbly, and were decorated with a large number of gold and diamond rings. She was wearing an ankle-length skirt and voluminous smock-like top, probably because nothing else would have fitted her, and the lobes of her ears were pierced and carried thick, heavy gold rings which had enlarged their holes over the years into hanging loops of skin. But her plump bare feet, protruding into the sunshine from the hem of the skirt, were surprisingly small and rather pretty, with gold rings on three toes of each.
‘Excuse me, sorry to disturb you, but have you—?’ Hart began politely, but she looked up at them unsmilingly, while her fingers never ceased to knit.
‘Making fools of yerselves,’ she said, in the strange accent of the fair people, which was like East End London mixed with Essex, but with a different, more exotic tinge to it, which made them seem slightly foreign, like the tinge of sallowness to their skins.
‘Just doing our jobs. A young girl was killed,’ Hart reminded her.
‘Oh, I seen her. She passed by here.’ The fingers reached the end of a row and switched the knitting over all on their own. They weren’t so much like sausages now, Atherton thought, as like plump bald feral animals munching at something they had hunted down. ‘She went off that way.’ She nodded towards the open space.
‘Was she on her own?’
‘She had a row with him, didn’t she? Tall chap. Brown hair. Older than her. Bit like you.’ She nodded towards Atherton. ‘She was angry. He was trying to pretend he didn’t care, but he was angry all the same. Harsh words was exchanged, then she went off. Running, she was. Took her shoes off so’s to run. He went back that way.’ She jerked her head towards the fair. ‘Didn’t see me, either of ’em. I was looking out me winder, having a last smoke.’
‘Last smoke? What time was this?’
‘Midnight, near enough. I don’t stay up till we close, not these days. Near two o’clock, time my son comes to b
ed. But we was still open. Be about midnight, give or take.’
That was much better. Atherton said, ‘Did you see him go after her later?’
‘Nah. I watched till she stopped running, see if she’d come back, but she went trudging on, away over the common. I’d finished me smoke so I went to bed. Never saw neither of ’em again. Now I told you all.’ Her face grew a fraction sterner. ‘So don’t you come saying it was one of our chaps what done it. Don’t you try that. She was just a gayjo tart, nothing to do with us.’
‘We never thought it was,’ Hart said. ‘Thanks, ma.’
The woman turned her face away, staring out at the green grass under the smudgy August sky, her fingers chumbling away at their woolly carcase. ‘What for? I never told you nothing.’
Slider picked up the phone and said, ‘Slider,’ but was answered only by breathing. ‘Hello?’ he said impatiently.
His father’s warm, burring tones came back to him. ‘Sorry, son. I was debating whether to hang up, you sound so busy.’
‘I am busy, but don’t let that stop you,’ Slider said. His father hardly ever rang, and never at work before. ‘Is everything all right, Dad?’
‘Oh yes, don’t you worry. I’m fine.’
‘Joanna said you wanted to talk to me about something. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to ring you, but I’m not getting home until late and I know you go to bed about half past nine.’
‘Don’t worry about it. I’m sorry to bother you but there’s something that has to be decided, and I need your opinion first. I’ll get right to it. I’m thinking of selling this house.’
There were many things about that statement that required questions to be asked, but the one that got its nose in front was, ‘But you don’t own it. How can you sell it?’ The house he had been born and brought up in had been a tied cottage, for which his father, a farm worker, paid a peppercorn rent.
There was a soft chuckle down the line. ‘Bought it years ago. Just didn’t tell you. It was going to be a nice surprise for you when I popped off. Make up for losing me and all my helpful advice, see.’
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