He looked at Slider for encouragement.
‘Yes?’
‘And she sort of stumbled away from the car – trying to hurry, you know, over the grass, but in those heels – and she put her hands to her face, as if she was crying. Or she might just have been rubbing her eyes, of course, but given what happened later, maybe she was crying.’
‘What did happen later?’ Slider asked.
He stared. ‘Well, she was murdered, wasn’t she?’
‘You saw that?’
‘No!’ He was indignant. ‘You said she was murdered, not me.’
‘Please, just tell me what you saw,’ Slider said patiently.
‘Well, that’s all,’ Eden said reluctantly. ‘I stopped watching then. I mean, I wasn’t that interested. I didn’t know she was going to be murdered, did I? It wasn’t my fault.’
‘Of course not,’ Slider said soothingly. ‘Nobody said it was. You saw her get out of the car and run away—’
‘She didn’t run, really. Just sort of – hurried, but clumsily. Those heels . . .’
‘Quite. And did you see the man get out and follow her?’
‘No. I told you, I stopped watching. I’d only looked out to see if the car was still there, and she happened to get out at that moment. I didn’t want to see any more. I pulled the curtains and went to bed. In the morning the car was gone, of course, and I didn’t see her. I understand she – her body – was hidden in the bushes. But I left very early, and of course I turned the other way out of the house, towards the station, so I wouldn’t have been looking in that direction anyway.’
‘Can you tell me anything about the car? Make, colour, registration number?’
He looked regretful. ‘I’m not very good on cars. I don’t have one myself – never taken the test, as a matter of fact. I prefer walking, and trains for long distances. Much more rational mode of transport. The car is the curse of modern society in my opinion. All I can tell you is that it was medium sized – not a Mini, for instance, and not one of those Chelsea Tractors, either. Just an ordinary car – a saloon, do you call them? It was dark blue, I think. I didn’t notice the number plate, I’m afraid.’
‘Well, thank you,’ Slider said, with an inward sigh. ‘That does help. Can you give me an estimate of the time this happened?’
‘Well, as I said, I got the last train to East Acton, which got in just before one o’clock. You could look it up if you wanted to be absolutely accurate. It’s only a few minutes to walk home from there. Then when I got in, I pottered around a bit, got some things together, laid the table for my breakfast, so it might have been a quarter past or twenty past one when I went upstairs. Maybe half past one. I don’t think it could have been later than that.’
‘Right,’ said Slider. Given that they knew she had died before two o’clock, the moment when she stumbled from the car was probably the beginning of the last scene, and unfortunately the audience had drawn the curtain on it. ‘Did you see anyone else about on your walk home?’
‘Only the other people who got off the tube with me. I think there were three or four – half a dozen, perhaps – but they scattered outside the station. No one else came in my direction. Oh, there was a couple standing by the council sports changing rooms – you know that concrete block on the edge of the common?’
‘Yes, I know. A couple?’
‘Well, a youth and a girl. Kissing, and – you know, fondling each other.’
‘Could you describe them?’
‘Certainly not,’ he said. ‘I most definitely didn’t look in their direction. I just caught sight of them out of the corner of my eye. Once when I accidentally looked at a couple doing that, the boy came over and was very rude and aggressive, asking who I was staring at and threatening to “punch my lights out”. And I hadn’t even been looking at them, just glanced in their direction and away again. As if I would look! There’s nothing to interest me in human beings acting like dogs on heat, I can assure you! There’s all too much of it around. So I made very sure not to look at them.’
‘Were they still there when you looked out of your bedroom window?’
‘I don’t know. I couldn’t have seen them from my window because they were at the other end, on the side away from the road. I could only see them coming from that end. There always seems to be someone doing that sort of thing around the changing rooms,’ he added with a burst of annoyance. ‘Why they have to go there I can’t think. And if it’s not couples it’s groups of youths in those hooded tops, smoking and drinking lager and making a noise. I feel quite threatened sometimes, and it must be worse for my neighbours, some of whom are quite elderly. But the police don’t seem to want to do anything about it.’ He had red spots of indignation on his cheeks now. ‘Well, perhaps now there’s been a murder they’ll take our complaints more seriously. There was a time when, if you rang the police, they came round. Not any more.’
Much as Slider sympathized with people like him whose lives were made hideous by gatherings of youths, he didn’t want to get into that. He had one last question to ask.
‘So apart from the young couple kissing, did you see anyone else hanging around? A funny-looking little man perhaps?’ He described Oates.
‘No, no one else. Just the couple by the sheds, and the girl further along putting her shoes on.’
‘And I suppose you don’t know who the young couple are?’
‘Well, I’d have said so if I did,’ he said, with indignation again. He seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of it. ‘I have the feeling I’ve seen them around locally, but I couldn’t say more than that. As I said, I try not to look at people on the streets late at night. It doesn’t pay. But they likely would be local, wouldn’t they, at that time of night and on foot?’
‘Very likely. Oh, you weren’t passed by a motorbike, I suppose? Or did you hear one going round the streets nearby?’
‘No, not that I noticed. But there’s so much traffic all the time, I might not necessarily hear it if there was one. It’s a sound you learn to shut out. That’s one of the reasons I have to get away from time to time, to the wilderness, just me and nature in all its primitive glory. With my little tent and my backpack, I can go where I please, and get right away from so-called civilization. It restores me. I don’t think I could cope otherwise.’
Which was all well and good, Slider thought afterwards as he went away, for those not actually fighting in the front line. But at least now he had a more solid time; and he knew that the car under the railway bridge was involved. Which looked rather like eliminating both Carmichael and Ronnie Oates.
And that left Wilding, damn it.
SIXTEEN
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
‘Well, that’s always the problem, isn’t it?’ Atherton said. ‘When the delicate mayfly of theory meets the speeding windscreen of evidence . . .’
‘You needn’t sound so pleased about it,’ said Slider.
‘I know you have a father’s sensibilities. But although I would never dream of saying “I told you so”—’
‘Try it, and you’ll be walking funny for the rest of the day.’
‘—I did always favour Wilding for suspect,’ Atherton concluded. ‘And there’s no difficulty about him. Motive – tick. Opportunity – tick. Means – a car and a pair of tights – tick. Alibi – big cross. And he lied to us.’
‘Motive depends on his knowing about Zellah’s external activities. And on disapproving of them being enough of a reason to kill your beloved only child,’ said Slider. ‘And if you say the words “religious nut” one more time you’re going home with a note.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Atherton said with large sincerity. ‘His religion is neither here nor there. His possessiveness and control-freakery are quite sufficient. Are you going to let Carmichael and Ronnie go?’
‘Not quite yet,’ Slider said. ‘If I let Ronnie out before naming another suspect the press will be all over him and wild stories will proliferate like triffids. A
nd with Carmichael, I still want confirmation of his alibi. If we accept that the man in the car was the murderer, Ronnie’s ruled out because he can’t drive. But Carmichael could have borrowed a car.’
‘Or stolen one.’
‘Uncharitable. Anyway, I still have to make a decision about the drugs charge. I know I promised him I’d forget it, but there is the public good to consider.’
‘Not to mention your career if it ever got out,’ Atherton added. ‘A caution at least might be indicated.’
‘Meanwhile, we put everyone we can spare on looking for Wilding.’
‘We might get more response if we put out a public appeal.’
‘I thought of that. But I don’t want to spook him into killing himself before we’ve had a chance to talk to him.’
‘How cold you are,’ Atherton said with mock admiration. ‘The inference being that you don’t mind him killing himself afterwards.’
‘What else is there left for him?’ Slider said starkly.
Connolly was still plodding round the Old Oak Common area, re-interviewing those people covered in the original canvass, and knocking on new doors in case there were others like Mr Eden who had not yet come forward. In particular she was looking for what the others were shorthanding as the Snogging Couple, who – thanks to Eden – they now knew had been on the scene as late as one o’clock, and possibly later. They might have seen . . . well, anything!
And given the excitement in the area over the publicity it was receiving, and the usual burning desire of people to be famous, it was odd they hadn’t come forward. Of course, the other burning motivation the police came across was ‘not wanting to get involved’, but in Connolly’s experience it was usually older people who went with that, while the younger ones went with seeing their names in the newspapers or, grail of grails, their faces on the telly.
She had gone as far as Wells House Road, not because anyone living there could have seen anything from their windows, being on the far side of the railway bridge and tucked away down a side turning, but because they might have been going home late that night. Having drawn a blank, she stepped out on to Old Oak Common Lane again and stood for a moment, wondering what to do next. Opposite her were the sidings and sheds of the railway depot, sandwiched between the high-speed line from Paddington and the Grand Union Canal, and it occurred to her that there could hardly have been a place more fertile of suicide opportunities. It was a bleak kind of place, and the houses along here were grim, sooty and run down. There was something about the hinterland of railways that always gave her the creeps, and she decided on the spur of that moment not to pursue her enquiries any further afield but to get back to the comparative comfort of the ex-council houses near the common.
There were, in fact, two railway bridges over Old Oak Common Lane: one for the local line and one for the main line. Connolly had just stepped into the shade of the first bridge when she noticed a man standing under the second one.
He had his back to her, standing under the shadow of the bridge, but at the further side, nearest to the common. He seemed to be staring at the place where Zellah had died, which was still taped off and had two peelers on duty, guarding the forensic tent and the patch of earth and bushes it covered. She had spoken to them earlier, on one of her passes down Braybrook Street, so she knew they were PCs Gostyn and D’Arblay. Gostyn was fairly new to the station, but D’Arblay had known this ground for years, and she had worked with him often, and liked him. In fact, it was he who had encouraged her to apply for a try-out in DI Slider’s firm. He admired Slider and said he was a very fair boss, and a brilliant detective. These considerations rushed through her mind, because the man under the bridge, cut out for her against the bright sunshine beyond, but probably hidden in shadow to the PCs, was Wilding.
She was sure it was. She had been to his house and had a good look at him when Atherton interviewed him; she knew his height and shape, the big shoulders, the large head with the thick bushy hair, the corner of his glasses just visible because of the angle of his head. She couldn’t see his face, but she was sure it was him. He was wearing grey trousers and a dark-red checked short-sleeved shirt that could have been brother to the dark-blue one she had seen him in before. He was just standing there, unnaturally still, not fidgeting or shifting his weight, and his hands hung loosely at the end of his arms in a way that, to her, suggested despair. A normal man stuffed his hands in his pockets, or clasped them, fiddled with a button or scratched his ear, but in the time she watched him he didn’t move them at all. It was the pose, the immobility, of a man who had given up.
Obviously she must approach him, but what if he ran, or resisted? He was considerably taller and stronger than her and she’d have a job restraining him. She stepped back carefully around the edge of the railway arch, where she could conceal herself but still keep an eye on her quarry, and radioed in.
Nicholls was still the relief sergeant, and she asked to speak to him personally. He was quick on the uptake when she explained the situation to him.
‘I want to try going up to him quietly, Skip, and see if he’ll come with me, which he might just do. He looks totally banjoed. But if he runs, I’ll need help catching him. He’s a lot bigger than me. Could you radio D’Arblay and warn him? But tell him not to look.’
‘Aye, I’m with you. You don’t want them staring at him and spooking him. I’ll tell him to warn Gostyn. But d’you think Wilding’s likely to be violent? I don’t want you taking any chances.’
‘I don’t think he’ll hurt me, Skip. He’s not that kind of desperate. But he may run, and if we have to bring him down he’ll struggle.’
‘OK, lassie,’ Nicholls said. ‘I’ll get straight on to them. Let me know how it comes out.’
Cautiously, Connolly moved forward again under the bridge to a position where she could see the two PCs. They were just standing there in the sun, not talking. She saw D’Arblay bend his head and put his hand up to the radio switch, but she couldn’t hear anything from this distance. She willed him not to look across at Wilding and, bless him, he didn’t. With a wonderfully casual movement he stretched his arms and then took a couple of steps, as though needing to ease his muscles, turning his back on the railway bridge and blocking Gostyn for a moment as he spoke to him. Connolly saw D’Arblay grip Gostyn’s arm, and could imagine the low, urgent command, ‘Don’t look over there, whatever you do.’ She moved forward quietly, on the further side of the road from Wilding because she didn’t want to creep up on him and startle him. He saw the movement and turned his head towards her at the same instant that Gostyn, unable to control his impulse, looked directly across at Wilding.
There was a breathless moment of tension as Connolly’s system flooded with adrenalin and her nerves and muscles prepared to leap into action. She felt the hair lift on her scalp in animal reaction. It was Wilding all right, now she could see his face. He was unshaven, his hair was unkempt, and he had bags under his eyes you could have travelled to Australia with, but mostly it was the expression of his face that made her shiver. He looked like a man who had looked down into Hell.
‘Mr Wilding,’ she said, trying for a normal rather than a humouring-lunatics tone. ‘You remember me? I’m PC Connolly. I came to your house on Tuesday. I’ve been hoping we could have another word with you.’
He shook his head slowly, though it seemed rather in bewilderment than as a negative. She stepped closer. He looked at her dully, as if not understanding what she had said, and not caring much to try.
‘Would you come with me? Just for a chat?’ she said. Another step, and she was able to lay her hand on his arm. She didn’t want to touch his bare skin – she was afraid that would be too intimate a contact – so she laid it against his upper arm, just below his shoulder. She felt him trembling, a faint, fast vibration. Exhaustion, she wouldn’t wonder. Still he looked at her. His lips were dry. ‘How about a cup of tea?’ she said. ‘I bet you could do with one.’
The word ‘tea’ made him try to
lick his lips, and his tongue was so dry it stuck to them. He closed his eyes a moment and lowered his head with a sigh. Then he opened them, and looked at her with resignation. He was too tired, she thought, to care any more what he did.
‘Come on,’ she said kindly. ‘My car’s just down here.’ And with only a little urging, she got him to start walking. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw D’Arblay speaking into his radio again, presumably reporting her success. Gostyn, the big goon, was staring as if his career depended on it, and she was afraid any moment he’d come running at them and Wilding would take off. She didn’t feel safe until she had let him into her car and closed the door on him. When she got in at her side, the smell of his sweat was filling the hot interior, intensifying her sense of him and his distress. It was like shutting herself into a confined space with a dangerously wounded animal – a bear, perhaps, or a lion – which might turn in its pain and kill her. The journey back to the station seemed horribly long, and she had never been more aware of the fragility of the female human frame.
Slider had tea and sandwiches sent in to Wilding, and despatched one of his uniforms, armed with Wilding’s car keys, to fetch in his car, which he said was in Wulfstan Street. Not that it would be any help to the investigation, for even if they found traces of Zellah in it, why wouldn’t they? But you never knew.
Wilding drank two cups of tea, but didn’t touch the sandwiches. When Slider went in with Atherton to question him, he saw this, and asked if Wilding would like something different to eat.
‘I want nothing,’ he said stonily. ‘My life is over. I have no wish to preserve it.’
‘I understand,’ Slider began.
‘Spare me your empty pieties. You don’t understand.’
It was a little flash of spirit, and Slider was glad of it. There was still something there to work with, a spark that cared a tiny bit about something, whatever it was.
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