Blood Never Dies

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  She was in her thirties, pale and rather pudgy, but with a hard mouth and eyes and a voice you could scour pans with. She had the look of someone who ‘knew her rights’ and would take offence with almost professional promptness at anything she thought infringed them.

  ‘What you dragging all that up again for?’ she demanded. ‘He’s dead. Can’t you lot leave him in peace?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t really important. Do you know who Jesse’s friends were?’

  ‘Didn’t have any,’ she said, on an exhalation. Slider managed not to flinch as it hit him full in the face. ‘He was always a loner, even from a kid. Left home as soon as he could and never went back. You wouldn’t think he lived just round the corner, number of times I see him of a year. Always remembered the kids’ birthdays, I’ll give him that – I got two. Bought ’em both bikes for Christmas. And he was talking about an Xbox next time. But sending a present’s not the same as being around for ’em. And they love their Uncle Jesse, my two – worship him. But he’s always too busy. I could count on the fingers o’ one hand the times he’s took ’em to a football match or the park or whatever.’

  ‘But you had the key to his flat?’

  ‘Yeah, he give me that, case of emergencies.’

  ‘Did you go there often?’

  ‘Never. When I see him, it was out. Pub, usually, or a restaurant. He’d get us tickets to his shows, sometimes. Tell you the truth, him and my Dean – my husband – didn’t see eye to eye. So it didn’t make for happy families, you know?’

  ‘Why didn’t Dean like him?’

  She shrugged, dragging on the fag with a power that could have sucked the ink out of a biro. ‘Dean thought he was a bit slick, too full of himself. Reckoned Jess thought he was better than us.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘Jess? Nah. He was just a loner, like I said. Never had time for no one. But he was still my brother, all right? He loved me and I loved him, and that’s it and all about it.’

  Slider could imagine the rows on the subject between husband and wife.

  ‘Did he have a girl friend?’

  ‘Nah. Never had time for that sort of thing.’

  ‘Boyfriend, then?’

  ‘Piss off! He wasn’t one o’ them. Nothing wrong with my Jesse. He had women when he wanted – just didn’t want a relationship with it.’

  ‘So he never talked about any particular woman? Never brought one with him when you met?’

  ‘Married to his job,’ she answered elliptically. ‘That’s all he ever cared about – his bloody job, running back and forth for them bloody Asset Strippers. It wasn’t just a day job, you know. He had to hang around them all the time, not just at work but when they went out and everything, case one of ’em wanted her fag lit or her arse scratched. Couldn’t do nothing for themselves. I said to him, you’re just a skivvy, that’s all. But he loved it. Sucker.’

  Slider had come to the conclusion that Jessie Guthrie had not allowed his sister inside his life much. But there was one more question to ask, and he put it bluntly, to see what her reaction would be. ‘Did you know he was dealing drugs?’

  ‘Piss off!’ she said scornfully and at once, but her eyes gave her away, the alarm followed by the steely caution. ‘He never done nothing like that.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Slider said soothingly, ‘I’m not trying to get you into trouble. It won’t come back on you if you tell me the truth, I promise. We know he was dealing. We found the stuff in his flat.’

  ‘Planted it, more like,’ she said, but it was a routine objection. Behind the automatic hostility she was worried.

  ‘Did he ever mention anything about where he got the stuff? Mention any names or places? Anything at all that you can remember. It’s very important,’ he added beguilingly.

  She remained unbeguiled. ‘He never,’ she said emphatically, ‘dealt no drugs.’ She threw down the fag end and ground it out with a vehemence that suggested it should be Slider’s head down there. ‘I gotter go.’

  ‘What did he do before he started working for the Asset Strippers?’ Slider asked, a last bid to catch her attention. ‘Did he have a trade, or training in anything?’

  She paused, considering why he was asking. But she said, ‘Yeah, he went to stage school.’ Her sisterly feelings had overcome her reluctance to cooperate. She spoke with pride. ‘He wanted to be a dancer. Not bally, I don’t mean – in shows and that. He was good, an’ all. He got parts. He did Starlight Express in Glasgow and Guys and Dolls in Bournemouth, and then he was in Les Miserables for two years.’ She pronounced it the English way. ‘He was brilliant. It was a bloody rotten shame he give it all up for that stupid job. He was nothing but a skivvy to that lot, but he could have been up on the stage himself. I told him he’d regret it. And now look where it’s got him.’ Tears jumped into her eyes, surprising her as much as Slider. She dashed them away impatiently, wiped her nose with the back of her hand, tugged her nylon hat down more tightly, and said, ‘Now if you’ve quite finished.’

  ‘Thank you for your help,’ Slider said.

  ‘Been a pleasure talking to you, I don’t think,’ she said, and stalked away, honour satisfied.

  What a crushing retort, Slider thought humbly, and took his leave. Trying to fit these pieces together in his mind was like doing a jigsaw puzzle from the back, with the picture face-down. Things were obviously connected, but you couldn’t see what they meant.

  But ‘hear a new word, and you’ll hear it again within the day’, as his mother used to say. Corley had left the Hot Box saying he was going to be a dancer. Guthrie had been a dancer who had left to become a gofer. What the heck was that all about?

  TWELVE

  The Swiller’s Feeling for Snow

  ‘Well, Corley never trained as a dancer,’ Atherton said, finishing his prawn and avocado sandwich in Slider’s room, ‘though he was an actor, in Footlights. I suppose he might have done some dancing, but as far as we know not professionally. And why on earth would he say that to Villiers, when he didn’t need to say anything? He could have just said he’d got a better job and left it at that.’

  ‘It is a bit odd,’ Slider said, throwing the wrapper from his cheese ’n’ pickle into the bin and wiping his hands on his handkerchief.

  ‘More fishy than a sushi restaurant. Unless Connolly’s right and he was laying a trail of breadcrumbs. But what was he up to?’

  ‘The similarities between Guthrie’s death and Corley’s are suggestive,’ Slider said. ‘In both cases they were found alone and it was meant not to look like murder – Corley’s suicide and Guthrie’s accidental overdose. Both had their clothes off and in Guthrie’s case sex had certainly been had, while in Corley’s we know someone else was there. Given there was no struggle, it looks as though a tryst of some sort was involved.’

  ‘Right, the killer—’

  ‘If there was a killer.’

  ‘Let’s cast caution to the winds for a minute and assume it was murder – the killer sets up some kind of romantic encounter, does away with the victim when they’re in a vulnerable condition, and has it away on their toes, in Corley’s case with just about everything, including the remains of his fifteen thousand pounds, and in Guthrie’s—’

  ‘Possibly with his secret store of cash,’ Slider concluded, ‘given that if he was a dealer and it wasn’t in his bank account, it must have been somewhere.’

  They looked at each other in silence. ‘So what does it all mean?’ Atherton asked at last.

  ‘Badgered if I know,’ Slider admitted. ‘I’m beginning to think maybe Mr Porson was right, and he—’

  One of the uniforms, Willans, appeared in his open doorway, tentatively tapping on the architrave in apology. ‘Sorry, sir – got some bad news.’

  ‘Is there another sort?’ Slider sighed.

  ‘D’Arblay’s called in – he was the one went round to Tommy Flynn’s house to bring him in. Apparently, he’d dead. Flynn, sir. And it’s not
an accident.’

  Despite the address of Palliser Road being West Kensington, it was in fact still in the borough of Hammersmith, which was a great relief all round, especially as the Kensington lot were known to be very fussy about rival Vogons on their ground. By the time Slider and Atherton got there, two more uniforms had taken up position, one on the door and one on the gate, keeping the interested neighbours back, while D’Arblay was at the top of the stairs guarding the door to the flat, and little Jilly Lawrence, one of the female PCs, had corralled Mrs Panda from downstairs, who was hysterical and enjoying it.

  ‘A neighbour’s taken her two kids,’ she whispered to Slider. ‘I don’t think she knows anything but she’s the sort to make trouble.’

  ‘Hang in there,’ Slider said. ‘I’ll come and speak to her in a minute, but I want to take a quick look upstairs first.’

  On the upper landing, handsome, blue-eyed D’Arblay was looking a little pale, but resolute. From inside the flat the music was playing, loudly but not at offensive level, unless you were trying to get to sleep.

  ‘I could hear it as soon as I got out of the car, sir,’ he said, ‘and I could see the window was partly up. But when I rang the doorbell there was no answer. I rang the other bell and got her downstairs.’ He made a graphic face. ‘She said she was fed up with the noise, she’d been banging on the ceiling but it made no difference. She said she heard him come home in the early hours, he’d put the music on then and it hadn’t been off since. I went upstairs and she insisted on following me up, but there was no answer when I banged on the door. She said she wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t overdosed and what kind of policeman was I?’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘Well, sir, she didn’t have a key and the lock looked pretty frail so I thought I’d better shoulder the door. It was easy – that old Yale was half off anyway. Unfortunately, she got a look inside before I could stop her, and she was off, screaming like a banshee, so I had to deal with her before I could radio in. I haven’t been inside but you can see from here he’s dead. With all the blood in there, I thought it better not to step in it.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ Slider said. ‘We’ll wait for the forensic boys. I’ll just take a look from here.’

  ‘Funny, with all that blood, there’s no footprints on the stairs,’ D’Arblay said over Slider’s shoulder as he looked in. ‘You’d think the murderer could hardly help . . .’

  Tommy Flynn was naked, lying on his side half way between the bed and the window, in a positive welter of gore. The reason was easy to see – his throat had been cut right across and to the bone, so that his head lolled back, only held on by the cervical spine. Even for a policeman, it was as nasty a sight as you’d want to bargain for in a lifetime. Near his outflung hand, Slider could see a bloody knife with a decorative ivory-inlaid handle and double-sided blade about a foot long – the sort of thing years ago people brought back from Africa as a souvenir. There wasn’t much else to see without going closer. The music was coming from a sound system in the chimney alcove near the window. The bed was up against the wall, the covers rumpled and thrown back, and there was an open door on the back wall through which could be seen a corner of the kitchen, which was at the back of the house overlooking the garden and the railway line. Presumably the bathroom was through there too. It was a tiny place, the original two bedrooms of a two-bedroom terraced house – but presumably it had been cheap. Nothing in the furnishing or accoutrements suggested Tommy Flynn had ever had more money than it took to keep him going from week to week.

  ‘Right,’ said Slider. He looked at D’Arblay. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes, guv,’ he said sturdily. ‘I’ve seen worse road accidents.’

  ‘Good lad. Hang in there.’

  Lawrence had done a good job of calming Panda Woman, whose name turned out to be Kelly Watson, so that she had stopped shrieking and was now bravely cradling a cup of tea and demanding her kids back. ‘They’ll be going mental wivout me,’ she asserted. Slider asked her a few questions while they were being fetched, but it was obvious she didn’t know anything. She had heard ‘him upstairs’ come in in the early hours, banging the door and going up the stairs. She didn’t know what time, but she had been watching a movie on TV until 12.30 and then gone to bed, and she’d been asleep so it must have been after one. Then she’d heard the music go on, but she’d fallen asleep. The next thing she’d woken with her baby crying, and it was seven o’clock. Once she’d got the kids up and fed she’d noticed the music was still going. After a bit she got fed up with it and banged on the ceiling with the broom handle, but to no effect. Then that policeman had arrived.

  No, she didn’t know if he’d come home alone. No, she hadn’t seen him, only heard him – she was in bed. No, she hadn’t heard any sounds of rumpus from upstairs, nor anyone leave. He had friends back a lot but she didn’t know any of them. She didn’t know if he had a girlfriend.

  The children arrived and interrupted this litany of negatives. They were as stolid a couple of little nose-miners as Slider had ever seen, and plodded in with nothing more than mild enquiry on their faces as to what was going on. But their mother flung herself at them with shrieks of anguish and clutched them to her bosom, which soon had them bawling in sheer fright in one-and-a-half-part harmony. Slider was glad of the excuse to leave.

  Outside, Connolly was just arriving, despatched by Hollis as reinforcement on the grounds that she knew more about Flynn than anyone else. She brought the news that the doctor and forensic were on the way, and that Mr Porson was asking Hammersmith central nick for manpower to cover the basics, since they were already stretched.

  ‘Jeez, the poor bastard,’ she commented on Flynn, having had the permitted look through the door to get her up to speed. ‘He was a mouthy skanger, but he didn’t deserve that. What does your wan downstairs say?’

  ‘She knows nothing, except that he came in in the early hours. Heard, not seen.’

  ‘Is it to do with our case, boss? Sure it must be? Corley and Guthrie and now your man, all killed in the early hours with music on in the background.’

  ‘If you so much as think the words serial killer you’re going straight home,’ Slider said.

  ‘I wasn’t going to, honest. But doesn’t it look like they’re popping anyone who might be able to lead us to them?’

  ‘And who is “them” in your script?’

  ‘Them that’s doing the popping,’ she said unhelpfully. Something occurred to her. ‘Boss, d’you need me here? Only it might be worth seeing if Tommy Flynn’s pal is up the pool room again. It was their usual hang-out.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ Slider said. ‘Go.’

  The local doctor on call pronounced life extinct – these little rituals had to be performed – and left with his eyes on stalks and his mouth distinctly wry. The inside of the human neck had not been designed to be seen. By the time Freddie Cameron arrived, forensic was in, and he clothed up and oozed up the stairs to insert himself into a distinctly crowded room.

  He came down to make a first report to Slider before going back to secure the body for removal. ‘Well, the weapon looks right for the weapon,’ he said. ‘It’s hellishly sharp. Cut was made from behind and from left to right, which gives us a right-handed murderer.’

  ‘No chance it was self-inflicted?’

  ‘None. Angle’s all wrong.’

  ‘Would it have taken a lot of strength?’

  ‘Strong hands, perhaps, but determination rather than mighty muscles, provided he didn’t struggle – and there’s no sign of struggle. It’s more a knack than brute force. Judging by his pupils he had ingested a large dose of something, which probably rendered him docile. The murderer would only have to manoeuvre themselves up behind him and be quick – tug the head back by the hair and make one quick, hard movement. The droplet pattern suggests he was killed where he fell; and of course the murderer would have been shielded by his body from most of the blood.’ He regarded Slider a moment. ‘No attempt to make this look like suicide. I
f it’s the same killer as in the Corley case, it looks as though he’s getting more impatient.’

  ‘Thanks for reminding me I’m getting nowhere fast,’ said Slider.

  ‘No charge,’ said Cameron elegantly, and went back upstairs.

  Connolly had a distinct Groundhog moment when she entered the pub. The scene was unchanged. It could have been the same men sitting there staring at the television screen – it could even have been the same sporting event for all she knew. As she slipped discreetly upstairs, she toyed with the idea that the broadcast companies had been showing old tapes for years without anyone noticing.

  In the pool room she struck lucky. In a lazily-moving curtain of illegal smoke, there was a group of young men standing around the table, two playing and the other three watching, and one of the onlookers was the lad she had seen with Tommy Flynn. As soon as he spotted her he started to sidle, but she had positioned herself between the exit and the only other door – to the gents – so she could reach either before he could.

  ‘I just want a chat with you,’ she said, holding eye contact. ‘It’s not trouble for you, I swear on me mammy’s grave.’ His eyes were flitting about, looking for escape, and the others had now had their attention caught and were looking at her with their mouths open. ‘Ah, c’mon, what harm? I’ll buy yez a pint,’ she said, giving him a friendly smile and gesturing to the door.

  ‘Kin’ell, Baz, if you don’t I will,’ said one of the others. ‘You don’t get offers like that every day.’

  ‘Yeah, get it on,’ said another.

  Her quarry gave a foolish smirk and came towards her, trying to put on a swagger. Through the door on to the landing outside, with Connolly close behind him; and just at the point when she felt him think about bolting, she caught his wrist and snatched his arm up behind his back. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ she said grimly. ‘Ever heard an arm break? It’d put y’off your lunch.’