Blood Never Dies

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘The basic problem is that we still don’t know who Williams or Horden really was, and without that we don’t know why anyone’d want to kill him,’ said Hollis.

  ‘Way to go, Colin,’ said Connolly. ‘Always start by stating the obvious.’

  He gave her a stern look over the top of the spectacles he wasn’t wearing. ‘All we know is he worked as a porn actor for a bit, and some people have said he seemed too posh for it. But there’s loads of posh people, both sexes, do it, for the money. Strippers, models – prostitutes.’ He appealed to Slider, who nodded. ‘We’ve all come across high-class call girls.’

  Mackay agreed. ‘There was that MP last year, real posh-snob bloke with a hoity-toity accent, turned out he’d been in skin flicks before he got elected. It was in all the papers.’

  ‘All true,’ said Slider. ‘So there’s nothing essentially odd about Horden being a porn actor. But there is about him spreading false names and addresses behind him, and getting himself murdered by someone who tried to make it look like a suicide.’

  ‘What did he do between leaving Ransom’s and getting killed, that’s what exercises me,’ said Atherton. ‘It seems to me he went to some trouble to get into Ransom’s. He got the tattoos, got himself waxed, sought out Tommy Flynn for an introduction—’

  ‘Now, that’s something, guv,’ Mackay interrupted. ‘Given Flynn saw him around the club, and he knew enough to know Flynn was his man, it looks like he was into the club scene. Maybe that’s where we ought to be asking questions.’

  ‘Good point,’ Slider said. ‘We’d better get someone in there.’

  ‘As I was saying,’ Atherton went on loudly, ‘he took trouble to get himself into Ransom’s, and Barrow threw him out on the spurious grounds that he couldn’t act, which was obviously a cover.’

  ‘What’s spurious?’ Fathom asked.

  ‘Cover for what?’ Hollis asked.

  ‘He means Tommy Flynn said he could act,’ Connolly translated.

  ‘Tommy Flynn has more holes in his head than a fine Emmenthaler,’ Atherton said, ‘but it doesn’t mean he wasn’t right about that.’

  ‘What’s an Emmenthaler?’ Fathom pleaded, trying to keep up.

  ‘It’s a bunch a holes, ya divvy, held together wit cheese,’ Connolly said impatiently. And to Atherton, ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘Why did he want to be a porn actor, that’s my point,’ Atherton said.

  ‘For the money,’ Mackay answered. ‘Why not?’

  ‘That’s too simple. He appears from nowhere, false name – two false names – everyone who sees him thinks he’s out of his place. Barrow turns out to be a nasty sort with more form than a benefits application – and connections to the club scene, by the way. And our man ends up dead.’

  ‘Two months later,’ Slider said. ‘No reason it should have anything to do with Barrow.’

  ‘Which is why I said right at the beginning, what did he do in between?’ Atherton concluded triumphantly. ‘That’s got to be the crux of the matter.’

  Fathom opened his mouth to ask what a crux was, and Slider said hastily, ‘I’d just as soon know where he came from before the tattoos and Conningham Road.’

  ‘Wouldn’t we all,’ said Atherton. ‘An ending without a beginning is no fun.’

  ‘It could still have been suicide,’ Hollis said, and everyone groaned. ‘If it’s just the keys you’re going on—’

  ‘Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, it was murder,’ Atherton said kindly. ‘We know there was a woman involved in it. The whole thing looks like a night of seduction – pizza, a few drinks, then she says, how about a lovely bath together, followed by nookie?’

  ‘And she slips him a micky, kills him, shoves his worldlies into a sack and does a legger,’ Connolly concluded. ‘Gets my vote.’

  ‘But the person who came out with the sack was dressed in trousers and a beanie,’ Slider said. ‘Not exactly seduction clothes.’

  ‘Women don’t get all dressed up for a date these days, boss,’ Connolly said. ‘Little girly dress and high heels kind o’ caper? That class o’ sexist malarkey doesn’t go down at all with your modern, free-thinkin’ female.’

  ‘It needn’t a been someone he’d only just met,’ Mackay pointed out. ‘He could’ve been doinking her for weeks, and they got past the dating stage. That’d make it easier for her to persuade him to have a bath. It was hot, Sunday. She could even have said, “You niff a bit, darlin’, go and have a bath an’ I’ll bring you a drink in.”’

  ‘Even if there were a woman up there with him,’ said Hollis, who was having marriage problems and never wanted to go home, so had an interest in prolonging the discussion, ‘it needn’t have been a woman ’at killed him. A woman could have done the seduction and bath, and then when he was asleep, opened the door for the murderer.’

  They did him the courtesy of thinking about it. Then Atherton said, ‘Nah! That was a woman’s murder. Too elaborate. Too clever-clever.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Mackay said. ‘A man would’ve been more direct. Bashed him on the head or stabbed him or whatever.’

  ‘I suppose it could have been planned by a woman, and still carried out by a man,’ Slider said.

  ‘Botev had a key,’ Hollis said ‘He could a slipped in and done it once Williams was asleep.’

  ‘But the one thing we know is that Botev wasn’t black-sack man,’ said Slider.

  ‘If Horden did have a date up there,’ Connolly said, ‘it could just as easy’ve been a feller. You’d still get the artistic flourishes with a gay lover. In fact, everything I’ve learnt about Horden, or Williams, or whatever his name was, is a bit gay.’

  ‘You’re forgetting the fingermarks on the vodka bottle,’ Atherton reminded her. They had been put through the system, too, and come up blank. Bottle lady had no previous.

  ‘Which is all very nice but doesn’t get us any further forward,’ said Slider.

  ‘So what a we do next, Boss?’ Connolly asked, wiping the sauce from her plate with the last bit of the big greasy naan she’d shared with Hollis.

  ‘Is that a royal “we”?’ Atherton asked, watching her in pained fascination.

  Slider wasn’t having any divisions in his firm. ‘“We” is fine. Like a Berlusconi jacuzzi, we’re all in this together. And what we do is keep on with what we’re doing. Look for the pizza. Follow up Paul Barrow. Look into the clubs. We don’t know that Horden didn’t try porn acting elsewhere – we should try his photo round some other studios.’ He knew how thin it sounded. ‘If we can’t get some kind of a lead on it tomorrow, we’ll have to think about going public, in the hope that a relative or girlfriend will come forward. Mr Porson won’t want this getting away from us, and it’s been two days now.’

  There was a silence. Going public with the photo of a corpse would have the Hammersmith PR team throwing a fit. It just didn’t look good to flash pictures of dead people at the general public, whose sensitivity to ‘offence’ was renowned – and litigious.

  ‘Trouble wi’ going public,’ Hollis said, ‘is we’ll get the press round our necks. It’s been like a Bank Holiday, not having them around.’

  ‘Well, never mind,’ Slider said after a silence. ‘Let’s keep positive. When you touch the bottom of the swimming pool, the only way is up.’

  ‘And in a public pool, you’re only going through the motions anyway,’ Atherton concluded.

  Connolly shoved her chair back. ‘Jayz, that’s it! I’m outta here, before the rest of yez start chippin’ in with the shit jokes.’

  ‘Time I was going, too,’ Slider agreed. ‘Early night, start fresh in the morning.’

  ‘Tomorrow to fresh woods and ghastly poo,’ said Atherton. ‘How are we splitting the bill?’

  Slider was in bright and early the next morning, but not as bright or early as Mr Porson, who hadn’t a comfortable wife to drag himself away from. Slider was summoned, before his bottom had hit his seat, to present an update on progress.

&n
bsp; Porson tipped a sachet of sugar into his milky coffee and stirred it vigorously with a biro. Slider guessed he had not yet opened his mail or received a phone call, because he was cheerful and not even a bit angry. He listened in silence to Slider’s expos-ition, and then said, ‘Well, don’t worry about it. It’s not as if it’s a high-profile case, no connections with anyone important. We haven’t got anyone breathing down our backs to get a result. Better do it right than do it quick, that’s my maximum.’

  Slider almost fell over, having spent most of his life being yelled at to get it done yesterday, no matter what ‘it’ was. But you don’t look a gift doughnut in the raspberry jam. ‘Thanks, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a feeling there’s more to this case than meets the eye.’

  ‘Well, feelings are in the eye of the beholder,’ Porson said wisely, ‘so run with it. What lines are you following up?’

  Slider told him. ‘And I’d like to get someone into the club he used to frequent, possibly some others that may be linked, as well. Find some people who knew him.’

  ‘Right,’ said Porson. ‘There’s a uniform lad you might be able to use, keen to get into the Department – bright lad – couldn’t hurt to try him out. Phil Gascoyne – come across him?’

  ‘I’ve seen him about,’ Slider said. ‘I used to know his dad, Bob – he was a lecturer at Hendon.’

  ‘Oh yes, I know who you mean. Is that his dad, then?’ Porson frowned. ‘I never knew why he was called Bob, when his name was Harry. Bob’s not an abbreciation for Harry, is it?’

  ‘No, but back when he was a lad, the coin you put in a gas meter was a shilling – a bob.’

  ‘Right! Gas coin. Got it,’ Porson said, and looked pleased with the enlightenment as he mouthed the words to himself a couple of times. Then his phone rang. He focused sharply on Slider and his brows snapped down like an atomic-powered Tower Bridge. ‘Well? What are you standing there for? Two days in and nothing to show for it – you’ve got no time to waste, laddie.’ Slider headed for the door. ‘And if you don’t find out who he is by the end of today, we’ll have to go public, so get a breeze on!’

  It didn’t last long, Slider thought. But it had been a nice change.

  Gascoyne joined them for the morning meeting, looking self-conscious in his ‘civvies’, into which he had changed downstairs with much joshing from his fellow woodentops, and solemn warnings from Organ that they were all nuts up there. ‘Watch your step.’

  ‘And don’t forget who your real mates are,’ said Gostyn sternly. ‘You can take the uniform out of the man, but you can’t – no, hang on, I got that wrong.’

  ‘Piss off, Gostyn, you dip,’ Gascoyne said affectionately, and straightened his face to a seemly gravity and earnestness as he trod up the stairs to CID heaven.

  Slider welcomed him, finding a tall young man with a broad, pleasant face that missed being handsome by such mere millimetres it was hard to pin down why, close-shaved fair hair, and candid blue eyes. From the open honesty of his face to his large well-planted feet, he looked so quintessentially a copper that Slider cancelled at once the half-formed thought he’d had in Porson’s office of putting him into the clubs. He’d be clocked in an instant. McLaren would have been the obvious choice before, but McLaren’s edge had been blunted by salad and callisthenics. He had an undeniably clean-living look about him these days, as he drooped in the background, perched on his desk with the hunched-shouldered look of an unhappy budgie. Atherton had brought in a box of doughnuts and McLaren didn’t take one, that’s how bad it was – though he did sigh, which Slider took as grounds for hope that there was something left alive inside that might one day be revived. No, he’d have to put Mackay into the clubs, and use Gascoyne on Mackay’s jobs.

  Fathom had been working on alibis. ‘Botev claims he was home all Sunday night, guv, with his wife and kids. Trouble is, his wife doesn’t speak English – or he claims she doesn’t – so he has to translate for us. And o’course he says she says he was there.’

  ‘What about the children?’

  ‘Four little kids, eldest one is eight,’ said Fathom. ‘So unless you want me to put pressure on him – get the kids aside, bring the wife in, get a Bulgarian interpreter . . .’

  Slider saw the point. They had nothing on Botev, except that he had a key. His fingermarks had been found on the door, the radio, and the bathroom door-frame, but so far nowhere else. And they knew he was not black-sack man. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Can’t do that, unless we get something else on him. Any more witnesses among the neighbours?’

  ‘No, guv,’ said Hollis. ‘So far nobody else has seen the victim go in or black-sack man come out. Two in the morning on a Sunday to Monday night . . . now if it had been Sat’day to Sunday it might’ve been different.’

  And it was an inner-London problem, Slider thought, that other people just became wallpaper and you didn’t tend to notice them. It might have been different in the suburbs, but in Shepherd’s Bush you expected there to be people about late at night, so why should you bother to remark it? ‘What about the Pakistani boys?’

  ‘It seems there was a party, guv,’ said Fathom. ‘House in Cobbold Road. Talked to a couple of the guys living there. It’s hard getting anything out of ’em – too monged and too scared – but it seems our two was there, and it didn’t break up finally until about four. And they said they’d never heard of Williams. I had another go at our two, threatened to search their gaff if they didn’t tell me everything they knew about Williams, but they stuck to it they’d never seen him or heard of him and I believed ’em.’

  Slider nodded. ‘We’ll keep an eye on them, but I don’t think they’re involved. The job was too controlled to be carried out by substance abusers. Anything on the car?’ he asked McLaren.

  ‘No, guv,’ McLaren said, and defended himself. ‘It’s not easy when we haven’t got the reg number or make. Even two of a Monday morning there’s a lot of motors about in the Bush. And there’s no camera showing either end of Conningham Road, so any cars caught on Goldhawk or Uxbridge needn’t’ve come out from there.’ He shrugged to show it was what Mr Porson would have called looking for a needle in a woodpile. ‘I’m working my way through everything from ten minutes before to ten minutes after, but so far they’re all legit.’

  Slider nodded. ‘Well, keep at it. Anyone with connections to anyone in the house, or Botev, or Ransom House. Or anyone dodgy to any degree. When you run out of options, extend the time another five minutes either side. We’ve only Mish’s word for the time, and she only said “about” two o’clock.’

  ‘Wouldn’t’ve been much later,’ Hollis observed. ‘I’ve never known a pross willingly go over time.’

  ‘Norma – anything?’

  Swilley glanced at her notes. ‘I’ve been looking into the Marylebone Group and Ransom and all that set-up. It’s not easy, as you know – it’s been set up not to be easy. We can’t get information out of Cyprus without prima facie evidence, and Ransom being a branch, they don’t have to register with Companies House. All they have to do is provide a set of accounts to the Revenue for tax purposes. That’s done by a firm of accountants – Adamou and Magnitis in Clerkenwell. And they don’t have directors, just a legal representative, which is a firm of solicitors, Regal Forsdyke. The top man there is David Regal. The beauty of the system as far as they’re concerned is provided they pay a decent amount of tax to HMRC, no one bothers to ask any questions. And any legal liability for anything at all falls on the parent company in Cyprus—’

  ‘Which you can’t get any information out of,’ Atherton concluded. ‘Brilliant! Colossal dead end.’

  ‘I didn’t say I hadn’t found out anything,’ Swilley said, giving him a look that could have deboned a leg of lamb. ‘I had a look into the Forty-Niners club, because that’s one place we know Williams hung out. It turns out it’s part of the Apsis Leisure Group. Also in the Apsis group is the Hot Box – where we know Barrow worked – and a couple of others. And Apsis is part of the Marylebone Group
– who also own the buildings, and a lot of other property in Soho.’

  ‘And Marylebone also own Ransom Productions,’ Slider said. ‘That’s very good.’

  ‘So now we’ve got a line through Ransom Productions, Tommy Flynn, the Forty-Niners, Williams and Barrow,’ said Swilley.

  ‘But I still don’t see that it helps,’ Atherton persisted. ‘Williams uses the club – why not? Lots of people do. He asks Tommy Flynn, who also uses it, about a job. Flynn has a job with a company that’s affiliated with the club – which is probably how he got it in the first place. So what?’

  ‘The “so what” is that Williams ends up dead,’ Swilley said.

  ‘Well, excuse me if I don’t see a grand conspiracy there,’ Atherton retorted coolly.

  ‘I didn’t say there was a grand conspiracy. I just said there was a connection,’ said Swilley.

  ‘And what is there about this connection that gives a reason for his murder?’

  ‘Well, why don’t you tell us why he was killed, Jim?’ Swilley asked sweetly.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ Connolly interrupted impatiently, ‘would yez listen to the two of you. We don’t even know who the fecker was, yet.’

  The telephone rang at that moment and Hollis answered it. He held out the receiver to Atherton. ‘Someone asking for you.’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Atherton,’ he said, sitting on the edge of the desk and turning his back to cut out the sound of the continuing talk.

  ‘This is John Johnson here. You know, Honest John? Blues ’n’ Tattoos Parlour?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Johnson. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Well, you did say if I remembered anything else about that poor young man – however trivial, you said. This is really trivial, but I thought p’raps I’d better mention it. I hope I’m not wasting your time,’ he concluded doubtfully.

  ‘The smallest thing can turn out to be important,’ Atherton said reassuringly. ‘What have you remembered?’

  ‘Well, when he came in, he was carrying a bag from Vinyl Heaven. That’s a shop just down the road from here, deals in old LPs, vintage CDs, obscure bands and so on. Bit of a niche market. It was a CD-sized bag the chap was carrying, and it looked new. Well, you wouldn’t keep a bag of that size to carry anything else in, would you?’