Dear Departed (37 page)

‘That timing is everything,’ said Slider. ‘But we’ve still got to find out what the meeting with Chattie was really about. Ah, this could be the missing link.’

Hart had appeared at the door. ‘She doesn’t look a bit like an ape,’ Atherton said.

‘Wossup?’ she said, looking from one to the other. ‘Have I missed anuvver racist remark?’

‘Have you got it?’ Slider asked, seeing badinage in his colleagues’ eyes.

‘Yeah, boss. Bill Simpson. Research chemist. Works at the unit at Bedford. But I’ve found out something more. He’s been off work for a week.’

‘Has he, indeed? You interest me strangely.’

‘Yeah. He phoned in sick on Friday week past, and he hasn’t been in since. Said he had the ’flu. The person I spoke to at Bedford said he’d been looking a bit queer for a day or two before, so they weren’t surprised he’d gone sick.’

‘I wonder if anyone’s heard of him since?’ Slider said thoughtfully.

‘D’you want me to ask ’em?’

‘No, I don’t want to alert anyone. I’ll go round and see him. Where does he live?’

‘Luton,’ said Hart.

‘Well, I suppose somebody has to,’ said Atherton. ‘I hope you don’t want me to come with you.’

‘Can I come, guv?’ Hart said. ‘I ain’t picky.’

‘No,’ Slider said. ‘I’ll take Swilley. If I’m right, this could take sensitive handling.’ He got up and went briskly through to the CID room.

Hart and Atherton looked at each other. ‘Well, that’s two of us he’s insulted at one go.’

Bill Simpson lived in a flat in a glum new block in one of the less appealing parts of Luton. Swilley was a good companion, and rode with Slider in silence all the way, where a lesser mortal would have troubled him with questions. Only when they got out of the car did she say, ‘How d’you want to work it, boss?’

‘If I’m right, he’s holed up and terrified, so he probably wouldn’t open the door to me. I want you to knock and get us in. Reassure him.’

‘Am I police?’

‘Oh, yes. I don’t think it’s anyone in authority he’s afraid of.’

‘Right you are.’

The block was long and narrow rather than square, and four storeys high. Simpson’s flat was on the top floor, and the lifts weren’t working. They walked up the stairs, which smelt faintly of urine, but at least weren’t littered with abandoned needles. Glum, but not that rough, fortunately, Slider concluded. When they reached the door, Slider stood back out of sight and Swilley positioned herself in front of the peephole and knocked and rang. After a while she put her ear to the door, and whispered to Slider, ‘There’s someone in there. I can hear him moving about.’

‘Try again, and call out to him,’ Slider whispered back.

She knocked again and called, ‘Mr Simpson? Could you open the door, please, sir? It’s the police, and we want to talk to you.’

As Slider had hoped, the female voice gave the occupant hope. Swilley saw the shadow on the peephole, held up her warrant card, and smiled.

‘What do you want?’ came a muffled voice from within.

‘Just to talk to you,’ Swilley said. ‘It’s not trouble for you, I promise you.’

‘Let me see your ID,’ the voice said. ‘Put it through the letterbox.’

Slider nodded, and Swilley obeyed.

Eventually the voice said, ‘All right, it looks genuine. What do you want?’

‘I can’t talk out here. Please open the door. No-one’s going to hurt you. We just want to ask you a few questions.’

‘We?’ There was quick alarm. ‘Who’s we?’

‘I’ve got my boss, Inspector Slider, with me. He’s really nice, honest.’

She moved aside and Slider moved out to where he could be seen, and held up his brief as well. That, too, had to be pushed through the letterbox before Simpson would consent to open the door a crack, with the chain on. Slider smiled gently at the portion of a face that appeared, and said, ‘I know you’re frightened, Mr Simpson. We’re here to help you, but you must tell us what it’s all about. Please let me in. I promise you, you’re not in trouble, and no-one’s going to hurt you.’

‘You don’t know,’ the voice quavered, and the red-rimmed eyes filled with tears. ‘They killed her, and they’ll come for me next.’

‘We’ll protect you. Please open the door.’

He seemed convinced at last, or perhaps was simply too desperate for someone to talk to to resist. The door closed, the chain rattled off, and then it was opened again with great caution. Slider thought he was still expecting the sudden rush, the door kicked in and himself grabbed, so he stood quite still, until Simpson had examined his appearance fully. As to Simpson, he was unshaven, haggard, and exhausted-looking. His hair was matted and tousled, his eyes bloodshot and haunted, and his face was ravaged by that cruellest of diseases, adult acne. Slider found himself remembering Barrington again, his tortured former boss, who had ended up with a gun barrel in his mouth and half his head on the kitchen wall. Barrington’s face had been scarred like a moonscape from acne. A huge pity washed through him.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said again.

Simpson’s lips quivered. He was close to breaking. ‘They must have known I overheard them,’ he said, almost in a whisper. ‘They killed her. It was my fault for going to her, getting her
involved. I should have gone to her father, but he was out of the country, and I was afraid to wait. It was my fault she was murdered.’

‘No, no, it wasn’t,’ said Slider, edging in gently past him, Swilley following.

‘They killed her and they’ll come for me next. You’ve got to help me.’

‘I will help you,’ Slider said soothingly. ‘Just tell me exactly what it was you overheard.’

Atherton put the phone down. ‘The cock o’ the walk’s not come in to work. Skulking at home with a stomach bug, apparently.’

‘It may be true,’ Slider said. ‘Fear does go to people’s stomachs sometimes.’

‘You think he knows what we – what you suspect?’

‘His secretary may have told him we pumped her,’ Slider said. ‘I felt at the time she was suffering from a crisis of loyalties. Or he may just be worried because we turned up at all. He didn’t strike me as a man of great resolution or great intellect.’

‘He struck me as a pillock,’ said Atherton.

‘That’s what I said. Well, it’s good that he’s at home. We can kill two birds with one stone.’

‘We?’

‘You can come this time,’ Slider said. ‘I may need you. I don’t know quite how the conversation’s going to go.’

‘He needs me,’ Atherton observed to the air, in a quavering voice.

‘Stop clowning, and let’s get going,’ said Slider.

Cockerell’s house was in a village called Buckland Common, in the green and delicious edges of the Chiltern Hills. It was modern, large, set in an acre or so of manicured lawn, and built in the presently fashionable mock-Tudor style, whose vernacular involved stuck-on beams, diamond-pane windows, gables, long sloping roofs, and fancy tile hanging, but omitted any chimneys. There was also a tennis court and a deeply authentic Tudor detached double garage. Given its size, position and acreage, Slider reckoned it would probably market at about a million and a half, which hardly put the Cockerells in the poor
and needy bracket. Ruth’s resentment of her father’s wealth was obviously comparative.

It was she who opened the door. Slider recognised her from the photograph in Cockerell’s office. She was of medium height, slender, with dark hair in a hairdresser’s arrangement; she wore slacks and a short-sleeved jumper of expensive but dull knitwear;
her face was expertly made-up, which went a long way to concealing that she was plain; but her expression was sullen and, at the sight of Slider and Atherton, became also alert and wary.

‘We’ve come to see your husband, Mrs Cockerell,’ Slider said.

‘Well, you can’t,’ she snapped. ‘He’s ill.’

‘I’m afraid I shall have to insist. It’s very important. Will you tell him we’re here, please?’

Calculations flitted about behind her eyes, but at last she stepped back and let them in. ‘I’ll tell him, but I don’t know if he’ll come,’ she said ungraciously, and left them standing in the hall while she went upstairs.

Slider looked quickly around. The interior was different from both Henry’s and Chattie’s, in that everything was modern and expensive, but conventional, arranged without flair or taste. It was the wealthy man’s equivalent of a room display in a Courts’
showroom. The nearest room on the left was the living room, on the right a dining room. The house smelt of furniture polish and new carpet, and was silent, not even a ticking clock anywhere, only the sound of birdsong coming faintly from the garden, struggling through the Tudor double-glazing.

In the living room, on the floor beside one of the sofas, was an expensive crocodile handbag. Slider gave Atherton a sharp look and quick jerk of the head. Atherton went in and picked it up, looked through it quickly. He held up a mobile phone, one of the new tiny Motorolas that would fit into the top pocket of a man’s shirt. The same sort that Chattie had had. ‘Just one. Switched on,’ he said.

Slider nodded and Atherton came back to his side. ‘Must be upstairs,’ Slider said quietly. ‘Probably in one of her drawers.’
And he remembered Nutty Nicholls saying once that women always kept things of value, or things they wanted to hide, in their underwear drawer.

Slider took out his own mobile, tapped in the number of Atherton’s, and replaced it in his pocket. Then they waited in silence until footsteps came back down the carpeted stairs, and David Cockerell appeared, looking much less
soigné
than the last time, in a pair of grey flannel bags, a blue checked shirt open at the neck, and carpet slippers. Slider had a deep horror of men’s carpet slippers and an instinctive suspicion of anyone who would wear them. Cockerell was looking ill enough for his excuse to be true, but interestingly he did not seem to be worried by Slider’s and Atherton’s presence, only annoyed.

‘I don’t know what’s so urgent that you couldn’t wait until I was back at the office,’ he opened proceedings. ‘I’m not well, as my wife told you.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry to hear that,’ Slider said. ‘But it’s rather important. I have some things I want to talk to you about. Shall we sit down and be comfortable?’

‘You’re very free with my hospitality,’ said Cockerell, with weak indignation.

‘It might take a while,’ Slider said. As you’re not well, I thought you ought to sit down, but we’ll talk standing up if you like.’

Put like that, Cockerell had to submit. He led the way into the living room. Slider almost held his breath over whether Mrs C would come with them, but it seemed she did not want to be left out of anything – or perhaps needed to know what they knew – and she followed them in. They all took seats, and under cover of the general sitting down, Slider pushed the send button on his phone. Atherton’s mobile rang.

Slider and Atherton both reached for their phones. It had become a universal gesture, these days. Even Cockerell looked about for his own, and Ruth made a half-rise gesture towards her handbag before Atherton said, ‘It’s me,’ and answered it. Slider pressed the end button on his and returned it to his pocket. Atherton spoke a word or two into his phone, then rose and said to the company, ‘Excuse me. I’ll just take this outside,’ and left the room.

Mrs Cockerell completed the movement towards her handbag, took it back with her to her seat, extracted a packet of cigarettes and lit one, without offering them to anyone else.

‘Well,’ Cockerell said impatiently to Slider, ‘what have you got to say to me? It had better be important.’

‘I think it is. You see, someone told me a story today, which I hadn’t heard before. It was very interesting. It seems that many years ago an Australian doctor discovered that ulcers weren’t caused by an excess of acid in the stomach, as everyone had always thought, but by a bacterium.’

‘Helicobacter pyloris,’
Cockerell said impatiently. ‘Everyone knows that.’

‘Yes, I suppose most people do know it now. But the thing was, they didn’t then. This doctor did all sorts of tests and controlled experiments, and he proved conclusively that it was the bacterium that was to blame, and that you could eliminate it and cure the ulcers with a simple dose of antibiotic. Well, you’d think everyone would be delighted, and I suppose his patients were. But when the doctor tried to go public with his findings, things got rather nasty. The Australian medical profession and the drugs companies banded together to rubbish his ideas and prevent him publishing his findings. They condemned him as a quack and a lunatic. Because, you see, they had been making a fortune for years out of selling antacids to ulcer sufferers, and this doctor’s research was going to kill off the golden goose.’

‘What the devil has all this rigmarole got to do with me?’ Cockerell said testily, but there was consciousness in his eyes. Ruth Cockerell was watching Slider like a cat at a mouse-hole, her whole face and body intent and alert. Only one hand moved, lifting the cigarette to her mouth and away.

‘I’m getting to that,’ Slider said. ‘Just let me finish my story my own way, if you will, or I shall lose my thread. Anyway, this doctor’s life was made such a misery that he lost his practice, and he was hounded out of the country. He went to America, where eventually he managed to convince people that he wasn’t mad, and his findings were published, and gradually the right treatment began to be offered to ulcer sufferers. Though I believe there are still some doctors who won’t believe it and go on prescribing antacids and special diets. And the thing is that it was more than twenty years ago that this doctor first tried to get his ideas into the public forum. Twenty years! Doesn’t that astonish you?’ His audience didn’t answer. ‘You see, it hadn’t occurred to me before,’ Slider said pleasantly, ‘but of course there’s more money to be made out of cures that
don’t work than cures that do, because the sufferers keep having to come back for more, and they will do anything and pay anything for relief. And this is especially true with common, non-life-threatening ailments which are, nevertheless, extremely unpleasant to put up with, like ulcers. And like acne.’

Ruth’s expression did not change, and her body language gave nothing away, but Cockerell’s shoulders seemed to slump a little, and he drew a breath like a sigh, as of one caught at last. Still, he seemed prepared to play the end game.