Dear Departed
Authors: Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
was born and educated in Shepherd’s Bush, and had a variety of jobs in the commercial world, starting as a junior cashier at Woolworth’s and working her way down to Pensions Officer at the BBC. She won the Young Writers’ Award in 1973, and became a full-time writer in 1978. She is the author of over sixty successful novels to date, including thirty volumes of the
Morland Dynasty
series.
Visit the author’s website at
www.cynthiaharrodeagles.com
The Bill Slider Mysteries
ORCHESTRATED DEATH
DEATH WATCH
NECROCHIP
DEAD END
BLOOD LINES
KILLING TIME
SHALLOW GRAVE
BLOOD SINISTER
GONE TOMORROW
DEAR DEPARTED
GAME OVER
FELL PURPOSE
BODY LINE
The Dynasty Series
THE FOUNDING
THE DARK ROSE
THE PRINCELING
THE OAK APPLE
THE BLACK PEARL
THE LONG SHADOW
THE CHEVALIER
THE MAIDEN
THE FLOOD-TIDE
THE TANGLED THREAD
THE EMPEROR
THE VICTORY
THE REGENCY
THE CAMPAIGNERS
THE RECKONING
THE DEVIL’S HORSE
THE POISON TREE
THE ABYSS
THE HIDDEN SHORE
THE WINTER JOURNEY
THE OUTCAST
THE MIRAGE
THE CAUSE
THE HOMECOMING
THE QUESTION
THE DREAM KINGDOM
THE RESTLESS SEA
THE WHITE ROAD
THE BURNING ROSES
THE MEASURE OF DAYS
THE FOREIGN FIELD
THE FALLEN KINGS
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 978 0 7481 3327 7
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2004 Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
Author’s Note
Shepherd’s Bush and White City are real places, of course, but this
is
a work of fiction, so if certain liberties have been taken with the geography, please don’t write and complain. None of the characters is based on a real person; and though there is a police station at Shepherd’s Bush, my Shepherd’s Bush nick is a made-up one, as are the Phoenix and the Dog and Sportsman pubs; which have no relation to any hostelry living or dead.
In loving memory of Geoffrey Knighton –
Hero, reluctant soldier, teacher, writer,
critic and friend.
“Life’s race well run, life’s work well done.”
open.guv.ok
There is nothing quite like knocking on a strange door for getting a policeman’s adrenaline going. Slider stood in the hotel corridor, listening to the white noise of the air-conditioning and the interesting tattoo of his own heartbeat, and wondering if he was about to die.
His mouth was so dry he had to pause a moment and manufacture some spit. The kevlar vest under his shirt made him feel hot and awkward, and the tape holding the wire to his flesh was making him itch. He’d had to borrow a jacket from a larger colleague to conceal the fact that he was protected. He looked, and felt, overweight and stupid.
In front of him was an ordinary, typical hotel door, and behind the door was an extraordinary, untypical man, who, moreover, might well be armed, and had amply proved his willingness to kill. Robert Bates, alias The Needle, was being brought to book at last. He had been the subject of ongoing investigations by various CO departments of Scotland Yard, not to mention – because nobody ever did – MI5 and MI6.
Slider’s path had crossed with his during the investigation of a murder, which, it turned out most disappointingly, Bates didn’t do. However, Slider had turned up a number of things Bates did do, including the undoubted murder of a prostitute whom Bates had used, tortured, and then dispatched. Because of the involvement of higher authorities, Slider had been warned off Bates, but such disappointments were commonplace in a copper’s life. Sooner or later, he had reasoned, The Needle would get his come-uppance. Then two days ago he had been summoned to the office of the area supremo, Commander Wetherspoon.
‘Ah, Slider,’ Wetherspoon said, tilting his head back so that he could look down his nose at him, ‘someone here who wants to speak to you, Chief Superintendent Ormerod of the Serious Crime Group Liaison Team.’
Ormerod was a large and serious man, who towered over Slider and would have made two of him in bulk, and at least ten in conscious supremacy. He had a handsome, authoritative face, eyes like steel traps, and the smell of power came off him like an aura. This man was from the far, far end of policing, the place of hard deals done behind closed doors, of anonymous corridors, terse telephone calls, operations with code names and briefings with senior ministers where the senior ministers behaved quite meekly. It was as different from Slider’s place on the street as the Cabinet Room of Number 10 was from the checkout at Tesco’s. Slider felt faint just breathing Ormerod’s aftershave; and when Ormerod smiled, it was even more frightening than when he didn’t.
Ormerod smiled. ‘Ah, Inspector Slider. Bill, isn’t it? I’m glad to meet you. I won’t waste time. Trevor Bates. You did some smart work on that case. I’m sorry you had to take a back seat, but very large things were at stake.’
‘I understand, sir,’ Slider said, since something seemed to be required.
‘We’ve got to the point now where we’re ready to arrest him, and we want you to be the one to do it.’
‘Me, sir?’ Slider couldn’t help it, though it made him sound like Billy Bunter.
‘Thought you’d like to be in on it,’ Ormerod said. ‘Sort of thanks for all your hard work.’
‘Consolation prize,’ Wetherspoon put in, and Slider was glad to see him quelled with a single look from Ormerod. Anyone who could quell Wetherspoon was a Big Monkey indeed.
Also,’ Ormerod said, ‘we think you could be useful to us.’
Ormerod explained. Bates was a high-powered criminal, and as sharp and cunning as a lorry full of foxes. It would be impossible to arrest him in his home, which was better defended than Fort Knox, and pretty hard anywhere else if he saw them coming. Bates often went armed, and usually had armed bodyguards around him.
However, the day after tomorrow he was attending a business conference in a hotel in Birmingham, and staying overnight, and was unlikely to be armed in such a place, especially as they had taken pains to fall back from him over the past few weeks and let him relax. He would not be expecting trouble, and though he would have an ‘assistant’ with him, for which read bodyguard, he would probably not be taking very heavy precautions.
‘All the same, we can’t take him in any of the public rooms, in case his goon gets rattled and starts loosing off,’ Ormerod said. ‘So we have to arrest him in his room at the end of the day. But we don’t want to go kicking the door in and provoking a shoot-out. We need someone to distract him. That’s where you come in. He knows you, you’ve spoken to him before, and he’s not afraid of you.’
With the rind taken off, what Ormerod was saying was that Bates thought Slider was a pathetic dickhead whom he’d already outsmarted once. He would therefore be more likely to open the door to him. Bates was also tricky, smart and strong, and had an unhealthy liking for torture, knives and needles. And guns. The words ‘tethered’ and ‘goat’ had wandered through Slider’s mind, looking for something to link up with.
Which was why Slider now regarded that anonymous hotel door with trepidation. If Bates opened it at all, it might be simply to shoot him, and he didn’t want to die. His pulse rate notched up another level as he raised his hand and rapped hard on it. The team was all behind him, he reminded himself. They had watched Bates to his room, watched the ‘assistant’ to his adjoining one, and were waiting just out of sight, listening to everything that came over Slider’s wire, ready for his signal. He hoped the wire was still working. He hoped they weren’t being deafened by his heartbeat.
He knocked again. Bates’s voice – Slider recognised it, with a shiver – called out irritably from within. ‘Who is it?’
Slider gulped. ‘Detective Inspector Slider, sir, Shepherd’s Bush. Could I have a word, do you think?’
‘What?’
Bates said incredulously. ‘Slider, did you say?’ His voice came again from just behind the door, and Slider guessed he was being examined through the peephole. He held up his brief. ‘I know you,’ Bates said. ‘What are you doing here? What the hell do you want?’
‘I’d like to have a word with you, sir,’ Slider said stolidly, Mr Plod to the core. ‘I’d like to ask you a few questions.’
There was a click and a rattle, and Slider’s stomach went over the edge of a cliff as the door was flung open and he waited for the hot flash and burn of a bullet or a knife in the guts. The kevlar was a comfort but it didn’t cover everything.
But he didn’t die. Bates stood there, lean, weirdly attractive, with his pale, translucent skin, clear grey eyes and backswept, shoulder-length fox red hair. He was still in his suit – three piece, exquisitely cut – but he had removed his tie and opened the top button of his shirt.
‘What the
devil?’
he said, and looked Slider up and down with amused contempt. ‘You came asking me questions once before about some pathetic trivia or other. A leather jacket, wasn’t it?’
‘It’s a little bit more serious this time, sir, I’m sorry to say,’ Slider plodded. ‘Can I come in? I don’t think you want to discuss your private business in the corridor.’
‘I don’t intend to discuss my private business with you at all,’ he said. ‘What the devil are you doing here anyway? Do your superiors know you’ve come bothering me?’
‘I don’t need permission from anyone when I’m following up a case,’ Slider said, hoping he would take this to mean he was mavericking. Bates had not shut the door on him, apparently fascinated by the absurdity of this idiot policeman following him all the way to Birmingham. Ormerod had read him right: arrogance would be his downfall. Slider took the opportunity to walk past him into the room, noting with huge relief that there was no-one else in it. The goon was still in his adjoining room, the door of which was over to the left. One shout from Bates and he would come busting in, probably with a gun. Slider was not out of the woods yet.
‘I didn’t give you permission to come in,’ Bates said, sounding annoyed now.
‘This won’t take long, sir,’ Slider said. His voice shook slightly, but it probably didn’t matter. Bates would expect him to be nervous of a powerful man like him. ‘And it is rather important.’
‘More lost clothing? Or is it a lost dog this time?’ Bates sneered; but he walked away from the door, and it swung closed
with a soft click. Slider cleared his throat, which was the signal. Nearly there now. Just a few seconds more. The team would be creeping towards the two doors, pass keys in hand.
Slider turned towards Bates, so that Bates had his back to the door. Triumph was beginning to sing in his veins along with the adrenaline, a heady mixture. He felt drunk and reckless with it, and knew it was a dangerous state of mind.
‘It’s a bit more interesting than that,’ he said, and the change of his tone brought alertness into the hard grey eyes. Slider saw the nostrils widen as though Bates were scenting like an animal for danger. ‘It’s to do with a certain prostitute called Susie Mabbot. I’m sure you remember her, even among your many conquests.’