Dear Departed (10 page)

Mackay reflected wryly that they, Slider’s firm, had stopped going there for the very same reason.

Everyone was talking about the murder; everyone had something to say about the Park Killer. You couldn’t chuck a brick in there without hitting an expert forensic psychologist. D’Arblay, with his nice wholesome face and gentle manner, was talking to some of the older customers, who clucked and ooohed in slow horror over the murder like broody hens, and found a perverse thrill in contemplation of the photos. ‘That
nice young thing!’ ‘Who could do a thing like that to such a pretty girl?’

The star of the show, however, was an old man who, it turned out, had actually spoken to the victim. He recognised her at once from the photos and said, ‘It’s that girl I see in the mornings when I’m walking the dog!’

He lived in Dalling Road, up the Brackenbury end, and mornings he took the old dog out, just round the streets, down Dalling, up Wingate, along Goldhawk as far as Brackenbury and back round. He used to take the dog to the park, but he was getting on now, the dog was, and round the streets was enough for him with his hips. Had Arthur Itis in his hips, the dog had. Well, oo ’adn’t? He never knew dogs could get it, though. Got a lot of yuman diseases, dogs did. What come of living with yumans, he supposed. Anyway, quite often he’d see this young lady setting off in her PT gear, and she’d smile and say hello.

‘Normally they wouldn’t give you the time o’ day, young people,’ he said, with a sniff. ‘Look at you as if you was dirt – if they don’t barge right through you, just as if you wasn’t there. Never think we fought two world wars for the likes of them.’

D’Arblay guessed his age to be about sixty-five, which meant he wouldn’t have fought in one war, never mind two, but he listened patiently. You never knew what you might find out if you kept your ears open and your mouth shut – that was what Mr Slider (something of a hero to D’Arblay) said.

‘What time of day would that be?’ he asked.

‘Ooh, lessee, about a quart’ past seven, give or take, time I get round there. We don’t walk fast, the dog an’ me. And she’d be coming out, down her steps, or I’d pass her going down the street. I see her most days, and she always give me a “good morning”, and she’d say “nice day” or something like that. She walked nice, with her head up, not slouching along like some of ’em. Always smiling. Lovely smile, she had,’ he said sentimentally, as though she had been a childhood sweetheart. ‘Sort that makes you feel good to be alive, know what I mean? I can’t believe anyone would kill her.’ He sighed, drained off his pint, and smacked his lips hopefully, with a sideways glance at D’Arblay. D’Arblay only looked blank. The old man sighed again and said, ‘Not a bit like that other one. Nasty piece of
work, she was. Wouldn’t give you the drippings off her nose, that one, never mind a smile.’

‘What other one is that?’ D’Arblay asked.

The old man feigned deafness, staring into his empty glass. D’Arblay fetched him another pint, and the old man perked up at once.

‘Very nice of you. Very civil. Cheers!’ He drank off half the bounty, wiped his lips, and said, ‘That other one, I seen her going in and out now and then, different times o’ day. Sometimes with my young lady, but sometimes not. ’Ad ’er own key.’

‘What did she look like?’ D’Arblay asked. They had all been briefed about the top-floor room. If he could get a lead on the lodger, or whatever she was, it would please Slider.

‘Scrawny,’ said the old man. ‘Bag o’ bones. Dyed hair – black – cut all messy, you know the way they do. Studs everywhere. She looked like she’d been up’olstered. And that ’orrible makeup, like Drackerler’s mother, and black nail varnish. Skirts up to ’ere, no brassière and them thin little tops so you could see all she’d got.’ He shook his head in condemnation. ‘The other one was a lady, but this bit, well, she looked like a tart, there’s no other word for it. And never a smile. You know the way they look, girls like that. Sullen, I’d call it. Like everyone was out to do ’em down. Most of ’em don’t know what ’ardship is. And we fought a war for the likes of them.’

D’Arblay asked him a few more questions, but he didn’t seem to have anything more to add, and D’Arblay left him to it, telling his story again to a fresh group who gathered round to marvel at someone who had actually Known The Victim.

The description of the Sinister Lodger went down well back at the factory.

‘And it gives us a handle on her morning routine,’ Slider said. ‘The jog was evidently her usual daily round, so the killer may have known about it.’

Swilley had gained a small piece of information at the tube station. The paper-seller there had recognised the photo of Chattie and said that he saw her every morning. The station entrance, where he had his stand, was opposite the south gate of the park and he would see her come out of the park, ‘in her tracksuit or whatever’, and cross the road to buy the
Guardian
and the
Telegraph.
Round about eight o’clock, that’d be. Then she’d stick one under her arm, open the other, and start reading it as she walked back the way she’d come. He, too, described her as a ‘really nice young woman, always ready with a smile and a bit of chat;
friendly, you know? Not like some of them, just throw the money at you.’

‘But she didn’t have the newspapers with her,’ Atherton said. ‘It looks as though she was killed before she went down to the station, so a little before eight o’clock.’

‘Unless the killer took the papers away with him,’ Swilley said.

‘Why would he do that?’

‘Suppose they got covered with blood?’

‘Well, that wouldn’t matter, as long as it was her blood,’ Atherton pointed out.

‘If the murderer was bright enough to realise that.’

‘So,’ Slider said, ‘she leaves home about a quarter past seven, runs around the park for half an hour or so, then on her way to the station to buy her paper meets the murderer.’

Of the incoming reports following the appeal, the most promising were of a man running out of the Paddenswick gate, and of a man on a bicycle riding very fast out of the King Street gate. The latter had almost knocked down the informant, a Mrs Beryl Rose, who was walking to the tube station on her way to work. He hadn’t even looked round to see if he’d hurt her, though she’d shouted at him angrily. He’d just pedalled straight into the traffic, nearly causing an accident, weaving wildly round the cars and vans and shooting off down King Street towards Chiswick. This report was corroborated by two people, one of whom had stopped to ask Mrs Rose if she was all right, and exchanged a few words with her about the menace of people who rode bikes on the pavement, and why didn’t They do something about it. The time given was variously just after eight, five past eight and ten past eight. The man was described as young, white, probably tall, probably fair, wearing black skin-tight cycling shorts, a lightweight blue windcheater jacket and a cycling helmet.

‘Why would he be wearing a jacket on a hot day?’ Hart asked, and answered herself, ‘To cover up bloodstains maybe?’

The most promising thing about the description was that Mrs Rose said he had a sports bag strapped to the carrier behind the saddle. A bag of some kind would seem to be an essential for removing the weapon and any bloodstained clothing from the scene. On the other hand, the other two witnesses to Bicycle Man had not noticed the bag, so it was only Mrs Rose’s word.

Running Man had also been fingered by three people, independently of each other. He was young, black, wearing baggy fawn chino pants, a loose grey hooded jacket over a black T-shirt, and trainers. He had raced ‘like the wind’ out of the park gate and up Paddenswick Road towards the Seven Stars. A further witness had seen him ‘run madly’ across the road at the Seven Stars, dodging the traffic filtering round the double roundabout there, and disappear up Askew Road. The time given was about eight o’clock, just before eight o’clock, and five or ten to eight. Against Running Man was the fact that none of the witnesses said he’d been carrying a bag, though one witness thought he had been carrying a mobile phone.

Probably they would turn out to be nothing, but both Running Man and Bicycle Man would have to be looked into. A media appeal was planned, asking them to come forward and get themselves eliminated from the inquiry. If Bicycle Man were innocent, there was good hope that he would turn up; but young black men in gangsta gear were generally suspicious of the police, and Slider was afraid that he would continue a thorn in their side for some time.

Porson got back from Hammersmith and scooped up Slider on his way upstairs. Slider scurried in his wake, feeling like Alice. Porson’s legs were long, and he moved at a terrific rate, like an ostrich, his summer coat flapping around and behind him like shabby plumage. In the winter he wore a tent-like green ex-army overcoat, but his summer tegument was a beige mac. It had once been expensive, and had flaps and capes and pockets and buttons everywhere.

Reaching his room he barked, ‘Close the door,’ over his shoulder, shucked off his coat, threw it at the old-fashioned elk stand in the corner, and seemed slightly soothed when it
caught and stayed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve done it. It wasn’t easy. Mr Palfreyman wasn’t best pleased, and I had to do a bit of fancy footwork, but I’ve got us the case
and
the budget. But we’ve got to get on with it. We can only have the extra uniform for a week. Have you got anything yet?’

Slider told him about Running Man and Bicycle Man. ‘Of course, they may not turn out to be anything. What we really need to do is find people who saw the victim in the park that morning, but we’re hampered because we can’t issue a mugshot through the media until we’ve informed the next of kin.’

‘And you don’t know who they are?’

‘We’re going through her papers now, hoping to find out. It’s a vicious circle, really – if we could publish her picture, we’d have all sorts of friends and family coming forward.’

Porson looked gloomy. ‘Got to respect the susceptitivities of the great GP,’ he said, without conviction. ‘If someone finds out about it the wrong way, they’ll start screaming bloody murder.’ Then his frustration burst forth. ‘Everyone wants to sue these days. Nation of crybabies, that’s what we are now. Everything you do, you have to look over your shoulder all the time in case a writ’s coming flying at you.’

Slider murmured something sympathetic, and Porson stared at him, flame-eyed, working up to something.

‘Fact is, I’m sick of all this pussyfooting PC malarkey. They tie both your hands, won’t let you talk to anyone in case it upsets them, and then wonder why your clear-up rate’s down. I’m thinking of pulling the plug after this case, promotion or not.’

‘Oh, no, sir, don’t do that,’ Slider said.

Porson snorted. ‘Miss me, would you?’ he enquired ironically.

‘Yes,’ Slider said sturdily. ‘We all would. A good super is hard to come by, more especially these days. Everybody admires and respects you, sir.’

Porson looked surprised. Then he turned away to stare out of his window and spoke with his back to Slider. ‘Fact is,’ he said again, and with the awkwardness of one unused to making personal confessions, ‘I’m afraid of losing my edge.’

‘No, sir,’ Slider protested, but Porson held up his hand in his traffic-stopping gesture.

‘It’s true. When Betty died …’ A long pause. ‘When you suffer a bereavement, you run the gambit of emotions. I expected that. Says it in all the books. Denial, anger and so forth, blah-de-blah.’ He waved away the psychotalk with a large hand gesture. ‘But now I’m through all that, I just feel tired. As if I can’t be bothered.’

Slider said, ‘That’s one of them. One of the reactions. You’ll come through that, too.’

Porson said nothing. He cleared his throat thunderously, then fumbled a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and blew his nose. He began to turn and Slider was afraid of what he was going to see – the trace of tears? A tremulous, confiding Syrup?
He wasn’t sure he could handle that.

Porson showed him a face like a badly hewn statue, and eyes that gleamed like steel rivets under scowling brows.

‘So bloody well get on with it, then! Thirty-six hours on and you haven’t even got a next of kin? I’ve stuck my neck out to get this case, and if you make me look like dick over it, I may be leaving, but you can kiss your bollocks goodbye, clear?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Slider. He almost smiled with relief. Abuse from above made him feel more comfortable. It was his normal medium.

Atherton and Hart were seated at one desk, heads close together, going through the victim’s diary and address book, cross checking them with each other and with other documents taken from the filing cabinet.

‘The trouble is,’ Atherton said, when Slider delivered Porson’s gee-up, ‘though she tends to write in business appointments with proper names, with the personal ones she uses a lot of initials and codes.’

‘How do you know those are the personal ones?’

‘Well, I’m guessing, of course, but it tends to be the evening engagements. There’s one on Tuesday night – “JS 8pm”. Her business engagements check out against the clients on file, and she keeps a time sheet for each, showing when and for how long she either worked for them or was with them on their premises. Expenses too. All very businesslike.’

‘But then there’s all this “DC 10 TFQ” stuff,’ Hart put in.

‘That’s in here for Tuesday. I’m trying to run down the initials through the address book, but I’m not having much luck. There’s definitely no-one under Q. DC 10’s an aeroplane, and TFQ sounds like an airport terminal. Maybe she was meeting someone off a plane – ha ha.’

‘If she was, she was spending the afternoon with them. There are two business appointments for the afternoon, both crossed out. We checked, and she cancelled them on Monday. So Tuesday is a mystery,’ Atherton said. ‘Apart from Marion saying she saw her at a quarter past six, we can’t place her at all for that last day.’

‘Marion!’ Hart snorted, but very quietly.

‘What about next of kin?‘ Slider pressed his own urgent need.

‘People don’t put their mums and dads in their address book,’ Hart said. ‘I mean, they know
their
addresses, don’t they? There’s nothing under Cornfeld, anyway. I tell you what, though, guv,’ she added, lifting a confiding face, ‘there’s a lot of blokes’ addresses in here, and quite a lot of just blokes’ names and telephone numbers. I reckon she had a right merry old time on the quiet. Out most nights by the look of it.’