‘Absolutely, sir,’ said Slider. ‘I’ll do my best.’
‘I know, laddie. You always do,’ said Porson.
‘How are you going to get him in?’ Atherton asked.
‘Stop breathing down my neck. I have a plan.’
‘A man with a plan: Panama.’
‘Right. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll eat my hat.’
‘It was a canal!’
‘Stop burbling, it’s ringing. Hello? Mr Markov? It’s Detective Inspector Slider here. Shepherd’s Bush police station. You remember I called on you – yes, that’s right. Oh, coming along slowly. These things take time. Mr Markov, there are just a couple more questions I’d like to ask you. It’s just a small thing, but it’s as well to get these things cleared up. Well, I wondered if you could pop into the station here this morning? If you wouldn’t mind. Yes, I could come out to you, but,’ he lowered his voice, ‘I assume your wife is there, and I would hate to disturb her. There are some aspects of the case I’m sure you’d prefer not to expose her to. Quite. There’s no need for her to be involved in any unpleasantness. Everything said here will be confidential. Indeed. Yes. Thank you so much. I’ll expect you shortly, then.’
He put down the phone and smiled like a cat. ‘He thinks I’ve cottoned on that he and Zellah were making the beast with two backs. He’ll come in to explain it away somehow.’
‘Devious and unscrupulous,’ Atherton said. ‘I like it!’
Markov looked as though he hadn’t slept much for days. He had shaved for the occasion and put on clean clothes, but his skin was slack with too much alcohol, and there were bags under his eyes. The eyes themselves were bloodshot, and his nose was red around the nostrils and kept running. ‘I think I’m getting a cold,’ he said, to excuse the constant need to sniff and wipe. ‘These summer colds are the devil – worse than the winter sort, I always think.’
‘Yes, very nasty,’ Slider said in a friendly way. ‘And so unfair, somehow. One feels far more put upon.’ He gestured Markov into a seat in the interview room, and went round to the other side of the table. ‘Can I offer you tea, or coffee?’
‘No, thank you. I wouldn’t mind some water, though.’
Slider had him brought a small bottle of mineral water and a plastic cup, and sat with hands relaxed on the table in front of him while Markov unscrewed the cap, poured some water and drank it. The action and Slider’s demeanour were working on him. The wariness with which he had entered had evaporated. He obviously thought that he was going to be able to talk his way out of whatever was coming.
‘Well, now,’ Slider said, with a comfortable smile, ‘I expect you’re wondering what all this is about. It’s quite a small thing, but I do need to have it cleared up. It’s about your wife’s car.’
‘Oh yes?’ Markov said. He frowned, as if he were trying to remember what, if anything, he had ever said about the car.
‘You did say that she cycled to work?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Then I wonder why you didn’t report it missing on Sunday night.’
‘Missing?’
‘If you knew she hadn’t taken it, it must have been stolen, mustn’t it?’
‘It wasn’t stolen,’ he said, looking puzzled. ‘It was there this morning.’ A blush spread through his waxy face as he remembered he had previously repudiated all knowledge of a car. ‘Oh! I mean – when I said before . . . it was . . . I didn’t . . .’
‘You said you didn’t own a car. Quite.’
‘It was the truth,’ he protested.
‘Yes, I know – your wife owns it. What I want to know is, what was it doing under the railway bridge at Old Oak Common on Sunday night?’ Markov looked absolutely stumped, his face rigid, his eyes stationary. ‘We know your wife was at work on Sunday night. You can’t work in an intensive-care unit without having plenty of witnesses to the fact. You, on the other hand, were at home, with no one to vouch for you.’
‘I was at home all evening,’ he blurted. ‘I was working on a painting. I can’t help it if there was no one else there.’ He thought so hard you could hear the creak. ‘Maybe a joyrider took it, and then brought it back.’
‘Did you drive here today?’ Slider asked. Markov’s eyes flitted about, looking for escape. ‘We know that you are insured to drive it. Did you drive it here today? Is it downstairs?’
‘Well . . . yes,’ Markov admitted, like someone swallowing a too-large lump of steak.
‘Then we’d like to have a look at it, if you don’t mind. Do some tests.’
‘What sort of tests?’ he asked faintly.
‘Forensic tests. Whoever took the car will have left traces of themselves – hair, skin cells, sweat and sebaceous oil on the steering wheel and so on. You can’t get into a car without leaving DNA behind. Everyone who was ever in it will be there.’
‘You’ll find my DNA in there,’ Markov said in a dry voice. ‘And Steph’s.’
‘Of course we’ll have to eliminate those. We could start with yours – if you’d be so kind as to let us take a buccal swab.’ He brought out the kit. Markov was sweating now, but he still couldn’t see where this was going. ‘You’d have no objection to that, would you?’
‘Well, I—’
‘Thank you. This won’t take a moment.’ It was done in seconds. ‘Thank you,’ Slider said. ‘And if we could have the car keys . . .?’
Markov handed them over. Atherton handed them and the swab to the constable outside the door and returned to his seat. Markov’s eyes flitted between them anxiously.
‘Of course,’ Slider said amiably, ‘the other traces we’ll find in the car will be Zellah’s, but we already have her DNA typed, so we’ll recognise those.’
‘Zellah? She . . .’ He stopped.
‘You won’t try to pretend she was never in your car, I hope,’ Slider said lightly. ‘You were having an affair with her.’ Markov only stared, helpless as a rabbit before headlights. ‘Quite clever to try to make me think she was a lesbian,’ he went on conversationally. ‘Throw me off the scent. Unfortunately, there was too much evidence the other way. Including the sad fact that she was pregnant.’
Markov went so white Slider thought for an electric moment that he might throw up. ‘You said – my wife – you implied she needn’t know. That’s why I came here. You won’t tell her?’
‘I won’t tell her you were having an affair,’ Slider said, ‘but I think she’s going to find out anyway. Your DNA will match the baby’s, and when that’s added to all the other evidence we have against you, we will be charging you with Zellah’s murder. I think your wife is bound to hear about that sooner or later, don’t you?’
Markov’s mouth opened and shut a few times, but he didn’t seem to be able to get any words out. At last he said, ‘I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t. You’ve got it wrong. It wasn’t me.’
‘Let me see your hands,’ Slider said.
Markov’s hands were on the table, balled into fists. He looked at them as if he didn’t know what they were, and lay them flat, palm down. Slider reached across the table, took hold of a forefinger of each, and turned them over, palm up. Across the palm of the right hand was a thin, faint red mark, the healing scar of a long but minor cut. ‘How did you do that?’ he asked.
‘I – I cut myself by accident. With a palette knife. Grabbed the wrong end. I’d had a glass of wine or two,’ he added with an attempt at a light laugh.
Inventive, Slider thought. Even at this stage. He shook his head and said, ‘You cut it on the chain around Zellah’s neck. We have a DNA sample from that, too, and it will match yours, just as the foetal tissue will. I think, Mr Markov, the time has come for you to tell me everything. We know you killed her, you see. We have all the evidence we need to charge you. There is just this one window of opportunity for you to tell your side of the story, mention any mitigating circumstances we might not know about. Now’s the time to talk. Otherwise, it’s premeditated murder of the worst kind, and nothing will save
you from the full penalty of the law.’
To his surprise, Markov began to weep. ‘I didn’t mean to! It was a mistake! An accident! I never meant to hurt her! You don’t understand. It wasn’t my fault.’
They were tears, Slider decided, of self-pity. Under-standable, but not very noble. He thought of Zellah, and wished her nemesis had been a bit more of a man, even though that would have made his job harder.
‘I never meant things to get out of hand,’ Markov said, his hands folded round a mug of tea as if it were a cold day. He was shaking a little. ‘I mean, I teach pubescent girls all the time, and they all fall in love with me. Well, most of them. It’s the whole art-master thing. I could have had dozens of them if I was that way inclined. But I’m no Humbert. But Zellah . . . Zellah was different. She was . . .’ He paused a long time, thinking, and then drew out his handkerchief and wiped his nose. It was still leaking, though whether from the recent tears or last night’s snow, Slider couldn’t tell.
‘She had a talent,’ he resumed at last. ‘It wasn’t just in drawing. She was brilliant academically, and she had a real feeling for music, painting, dance – everything. There was something about that girl – an artistic spirit. And she was beautiful. I don’t mean just physically. She was remote, shut away, like a frozen princess on an ice mountain, waiting for the prince who could ride his horse to the top and rescue her.’ He wiped his nose again, and then looked sharply at Slider, coming down to earth with a bump. ‘I don’t mean I ever intended to do anything about it. I’m an artist. I can look without touching. It all came from her side. She threw herself at me.’
‘And you and your wife weren’t getting on.’
‘We haven’t been for a long time,’ he said with a sigh. ‘We should never have married. Steph and I – well, we’re not right for each other. She’s too practical; I’m too romantic. And – well, there are money troubles. The mortgage is hefty, and I’m maxed out on my credit cards. I’ve got an overdraft, too. Painting in oils is expensive. Steph refuses to understand that. Of course, when I sell something, I pay the loans off.’
‘So, like many a man whose wife doesn’t understand him, you started an affair,’ Slider said.
Markov looked sulky. ‘I told you, that was her idea. She was crazy about me. I could take it or leave it.’
‘But you took it,’ Slider said. ‘Your wife working shifts made it easy for you to fit it in.’ Markov wanted to protest, but Slider waved that line away. ‘What happened on Sunday?’
‘I hadn’t seen her for a while. It wasn’t so easy for her to get away in school holidays. It must have been over a week – two weeks, probably. I was hoping, actually, that she was cooling off. You see, much as I liked her, I was afraid of Steph finding out. She owns the flat, you see. She could make it very awkward for me. If there was a divorce, I’d lose everything. I wouldn’t even have a roof over my head. OK, I’ve got the teaching job, but it’s part-time, and it doesn’t pay much, and if I took a full-time job I wouldn’t have time to paint.’
‘And you have an expensive drugs habit, and your wife’s income helps pay for that,’ Atherton said neutrally.
Markov looked at him resentfully. ‘It’s all right for you to sit in judgement over me. You don’t know what an artist suffers. The pressures,’ he put his hands to his head, ‘are unbearable sometimes. I need cocaine to be able to relax—’
‘Let’s get back to Sunday,’ Slider interrupted. He didn’t want to go off on the drugs line again. ‘You hadn’t seen Zellah for a while, and then suddenly she telephoned you. Oh yes,’ he added, ‘we know about that. Telephone calls are all logged, you know.’
‘Oh,’ he said blankly. ‘Well, yes, she phoned me and said she wanted to see me. Could she come over, she asked. Steph had gone to work, fortunately. But I was doing a bit of painting and I didn’t want to break off. I said I was busy. She said it was really important and she must see me. So I said OK, I’d meet her later. We agreed ten o’clock, in the fairground opposite the North Pole.’ He moved restlessly. ‘I was thinking this might be a good opportunity to break up with her, and it would be easier in a crowded place like that, where she couldn’t make a fuss.’
‘Good thought,’ said Slider drily.
‘But when I met her, she started talking about us, and our relationship and all that sort of thing, and how much she loved me, and next thing she was asking me when I was going to leave my wife for her.’
‘Amazing.’
‘I’d never said anything to her about that! Never so much as mentioned marriage! Well, I didn’t want a scene, so I tried to put her off gently, but she wouldn’t change the subject. Went on and on about it. Eventually I got fed up and, well, lost my temper a bit, and we ended up shouting at each other. And then she tells me she’s having a baby.’
‘How did you react to that?’
‘I was dumbfounded. I mean, we’d always used a condom. I said I didn’t see how she could possibly hold me responsible for her condition. I said she must have been seeing someone else. She started crying. She said she loved me, and that there wasn’t anyone but me. She said condoms weren’t always reliable. She begged me to leave my wife and marry her. She said her father would kill her otherwise. I said I was sorry for her but there was no question of it. It went on like that for a bit. We’d walked right to the back of the fair by that time, where the caravans and lorries are. Finally she rushes off in tears, runs away across the Scrubs.’
‘Why didn’t you follow her?’
‘I didn’t want to get into it all over again. I thought she’d calm down and just go home in the end. She was heading in the right direction. I didn’t want any more trouble.’ He seemed to see something in Slider’s face and went on, self-exculpatory. ‘I was angry, if you want to know. I knew if I went after her there’d be an even worse row. I thought it best to go home. I’d . . . I’d had a few drinks during the evening.’
‘Drinks?’ Slider queried.
Markov looked at him, and then shrugged. ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter now. You know about it anyway. All right, I was a bit wired. I’d had a couple of lines. I generally do a bit when I’m working. It helps clear my mind, gives me an edge.’
‘I see. And what happened then?’
‘Well, I was still angry when I got home. And worried. I paced about a bit. I had a couple of stiff drinks, to bring me down. And then she phoned again. She said she was at Old Oak Common, and she couldn’t go home because she was supposed to be staying over with friends that night. She said if she went home at this time of night when she wasn’t expected, it would all come out, and her father would kill her and then come after me. She wanted me to pick her up and drive her to her friend’s house. I didn’t see any way out of it, so I went.’
‘She was waiting by the side of the road when you went past,’ Slider said. ‘You drove on under the bridge and stopped, and she came and got in.’
Markov blinked. ‘How do you know?
‘There were witnesses.’
‘I didn’t see anyone.’
‘Never mind, they were there. Go on.’
‘Well, she got in, and I asked where did she want to go. She started crying again, and said she only wanted to be with me, begged me to marry her. I said I wasn’t going to listen to all that again. I said I wasn’t going to marry her, and she’d better get used to the idea. I told her she should have an abortion. I even offered to help her pay for it. She stopped crying, as if it was turned off with a tap. She looked at me.’ He paused, and shivered unconsciously. ‘I’ve never seen such a look on anyone’s face. I wish I could have painted it. She said she’d never have an abortion. And then she said, in this horrible, hard voice, that I’d have to marry her because she was going to tell my wife.’
‘Ah,’ said Slider. That was the last section of the jigsaw. He had wondered what it was that had triggered the final rage.
‘The blackmailing little trollop!’ Markov said, angered all over again at the memory. ‘She was going to ruin ever
ything! And when I’d just offered to help her! She jumped out of the car and ran across the grass. I went after her. I shouted at her to stop, but she didn’t. I caught up with her and grabbed for her, but I only got the chain of that thing round her neck. It broke – cut my hand – but it jerked her off balance. I think the heel of her shoe broke. Anyway, she stumbled and I caught her arm. She turned round to face me. We were right on the embankment by then. She said nothing I could say would change her mind. Either I could tell my wife or she would, but one way or the other I was going to marry her. And so . . .’ He stopped. He didn’t seem to want to go on. He looked at Slider almost in appeal.
‘And so you killed her,’ Slider said unemotionally.
‘I didn’t mean to!’ he cried. ‘I was just so mad at her! I didn’t know what I was doing. I thought of the trouble she was going to cause me, how she was going to ruin my whole life. And Steph, too, she didn’t deserve that. She was blackmailing me! All that talk about love was rubbish! All she wanted was marriage, and she didn’t care who she destroyed to get it. I was so mad, I just . . . I just . . . well, before I knew what was happening she was dead. I didn’t mean to, I swear it. I didn’t mean to hurt her. Something came over me. If I could take it back, I would. I never meant to hurt her.’
The appeal was blatant now, and tears started to leak from his eyes again.
Slider looked at him without pity. ‘If you didn’t mean to hurt her, why did you take a pair of tights with you?’
‘What?’ He looked dumbfounded.
‘You strangled Zellah with a pair of tights. They weren’t hers, and I doubt you drive around with a pair of women’s tights in your pocket. So you must have taken them with you for the purpose of killing her. Which means it was premeditated murder.’
He stared, whitening. ‘No,’ he said in a whisper of a voice. He must have read his fate in Slider’s face, because he began crying in earnest now. ‘I’m sorry!’ he gasped through the tears. ‘I’m sorry.’
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