Dear Departed (39 page)

‘A feast fit for a king,’ Joanna said, observing McLaren savaging a sandwich with faint wonder. The sandwich didn’t have a chance.

Swilley swung the plate her way. ‘Have something,’ she said, ‘before Maurice scoffs the lot.’

It was the first time Joanna had been to one of these dos. She sat on the banquette beside Slider, and felt all the pleasure of being his woman, accepted, not exactly one of the group but a welcome honorary member. Pints were sunk, conversation blossomed, the noise level grew. She answered friendly
questions from Swilley about her pregnancy and from Hollis about their plans for finding somewhere else to live. At one point Slider put his arm round her casually to balance himself as he leaned over for a piece of pork pie, and then left it there, warm and heavy and comfortable. She tried not to be aware of Hart watching the action, but noted in spite of herself that Hart looked at Slider a great deal more than she ever looked at Atherton. She saw Atherton watching her and Slider together, too, when he wasn’t swapping barbed badinage with Swilley. She wondered whether he wished he had Sue there, as Bill had her.

‘And there’s something else to celebrate,’ Hart said loudly, to catch attention. The noise level fell a notch as everyone looked at her. ‘Least,
I
think it’s good news,’ Hart went on, looking round the group, but allowing her eyes to come to rest at last on Slider. Well, Joanna told herself, that’s natural. He is the boss, and the heart of the group: she appreciated so much more, now, for having witnessed the drink-up, how that was true.

‘Go on, then, Tone,’ McLaren invited, gathering the crumbs from the otherwise empty sandwich plate with a wetted forefinger. ‘Tell us.’

‘Mr Porson’s had a word wiv Mr Wevverspoon, and I’m not going back to the DAFT squad. I’m wiv you permanently. How about that?’

She beamed, and so did everyone else, and there were thumps of congratulation on her back and a tickly kiss on her cheek from Hollis’s appalling moustache. Atherton took advantage of the precedent and said, ‘Jolly good,’ and kissed her too, only on the mouth. She let him, to a chorus of oy-oys, and even gave a show of wriggling her shoulders and lifting one foot behind in a Hollywood manner, but as soon as they broke apart she looked inevitably at Slider for his reaction. Joanna glanced up at him and saw he was smiling indulgently, and laughed at herself for a fool. There was nothing in that smile but fatherliness.

All the same, she thought, there’s too much attention being paid to that girl, and she said, loudly enough to attract attention, ‘I still don’t know the end of the story. Who’s going to tell it?’

‘Go on, boss,’ Hart urged, giving him her full attention. ‘I think there’s different bits all of us’re wondering about.’

So Slider told the tale.

‘The effect of theatricals on a weak mind,’ he concluded, when he got to the bit about Chattie’s mobile. ‘I had the feeling that a parade of scientific evidence wouldn’t move her – especially as we hadn’t actually matched her DNA at that point to the stuff found on the clothes – but the entirely superficial ringing of the mobile got through her guard.’

‘How did you know she had it?’ Joanna asked.

‘I didn’t,’ said Slider. ‘But we couldn’t find it anywhere, so it seemed likely that the murderer had taken it away, and when we checked and found Ruth’s mobile was the same model, it seemed even more likely.’

‘She might have thrown it away.’

‘She might have, but if she had, I felt it was likely someone else would have found it, and either they’d have handed it in, if they were honest, or turned it on, if they weren’t. As soon as it was turned on, we’d be able to trace the signal. It never was, so it was a matter of Atherton slipping upstairs while I talked to them and seeing if he could find it.’

‘It was in the drawer of her bedside table,’ Atherton said, ‘along with her pearls and her pills. Very traditional.’

‘As to the actual murder,’ Slider went on, ‘Ruth had the perfect excuse to accost Chattie in the park, and persuade her to go into the shrubbery to talk. Chattie would believe it was about the suppression of the Codermatol again, and the secrecy, and Ruth wearing the hood of her top up would make sense and not make her suspicious.’

‘You guessed from the beginning it was someone she knew, didn’t you, boss,’ Swilley said, ‘because the CD Walkman had been turned off and she’d taken the earphones off. They were hanging round her neck. She wouldn’t go to that trouble to talk to a stranger stopping to ask her for a light, or something.’

‘The knife was an ordinary kitchen knife,’ Slider went on, ‘of the sort of which Ruth has a set in her kitchen. We’ll test them all for blood, of course. It’s surprising how often you can get enough even from a knife that’s been washed several times. She’d have done better – from the Murderer’s Manual point of view – to discard it with the clothes and replace it with a new
one, but I suppose she didn’t like the waste of the idea. She’d been brought up frugally. She wiped it on the grey top before she chucked it. Her biggest mistake, of course, was discarding the jacket and gloves so close to the scene. Otherwise we might never have found them.’

‘Yes, why did she?’ Joanna asked.

Atherton answered. ‘Because she wanted to have a look at the scene of her crime, and admire the way she’d misdirected us.’

‘I guessed it when I saw the map in my mind’s eye. Ashchurch Grove makes a sort of D shape with Askew Road, Askew Road being the curved bit. When she left the park she went off up Askew Road, presumably heading back for her car; but then she passed the end of Ashchurch Grove and I suppose its direction tempted her and curiosity overcame her. There was no hue and cry after her, so she felt safe and thought she’d stroll back from a different direction and have a good laugh at how she’d fooled us. But she didn’t quite like to bring the bloodstained clothes back, so she dropped them, in their carrier bag, over the fence of one of the gardens. There were bags of rubbish everywhere, so why should one more be noticed?’

‘And in any case, she’d worn gloves, so no-one could bring it back to her – so she thought,’ said Atherton.

‘How do you know that’s what she did? Did she tell you?’ Joanna asked.

‘No, I told her,’ Slider said. At the very beginning, when I still thought it was the Park Killer, I had the faces in the crowd round the scene photographed, because it’s amazing how often they will come back to see. Curiosity, I suppose. A very basic human instinct.’

‘And she was there?’

‘She was there,’ Slider said. ‘When I saw her photo in her husband’s office, I thought she looked familiar. I’d spent so long staring at those damned crowd photos, her face had lodged in my brain.’

‘One thing I don’t understand,’ Joanna said. ‘How did she get Chattie to take the poison?’

‘I worked that out,’ Slider said, ‘when I remembered something Bicycle Man, Phil Yerbury, did when he came in to be interviewed. Ruth was a runner too, so she knew the pattern.
What’s the first thing a runner or a jogger or whatever does when they stop for any reason?’

Joanna had followed him. ‘Take a drink of water?’

‘Right. And they don’t just sip, they chuck it back in a couple of huge gulps. All Ruth had to do, as Chattie was feeling for her bottle, was to say, “Here, have some of mine.” A little Lucozade or something in it to disguise any bitterness and – wallop.’

‘Clever,’ said Joanna.

‘If she’d refused, Ruth would just have had to stab her cold, but it was worth a try. And evidently it worked. Chattie was so kind-hearted she probably wouldn’t have refused what seemed like a friendly gesture, especially as I imagine Ruth had not been particularly friendly before. Maybe Ruth said it was a special energy drink or something. Anyway, she swallowed enough to put her into a coma within minutes.’

‘And you still don’t know what it was?’

‘It doesn’t matter, really. The tox lab will come back to us in its own good time, but we’ve got enough evidence to be going on with.’ Even as he said it, a slight doubt was niggling the back of his mind. They could link Ruth to the stabbing, but in Freddie Cameron’s opinion it wasn’t the stabbing that killed Chattie. Unless they could link the drug to Ruth as well, a clever brief might still get her off. His brain began to worry over the possibility, and he pulled it back. Not here, not now.

‘Anyone want another pint?’ Hollis asked.

The order was taken, and under cover of the conversation that broke out around it, Slider said to Joanna, ‘Well, we’ve got her, anyway, and a better example of where greed and self-pity can lead you, you wouldn’t need to find. Her husband’s a broken man. Poor Bill Simpson has been scared out of his wits, and still feels guilty about Chattie’s death—’

‘But at least the acne cure won’t be suppressed. He’ll be glad about that.’

‘I hope it won’t.’ He sighed. ‘So many lives ruined. Things done that can’t be undone.’

‘Now, don’t start that again,’ she said. ‘You always get depressed at the end of a case. Think positive: you avenged Chattie.’

‘But that doesn’t bring her back,’ said Slider. And I only ever
saw her dead. I wish I’d known her. I think she was a genuinely good and kind person.’

‘Unless she really did have an affair with this Cockerell person,’ she teased him gently.

‘Of course she didn’t. It would have been a deplorable lapse of taste on her part. Cockerell admitted that he fancied her, and tried to get off with her, but she talked him out of it, and they just had a few lunches together and some long heart-to-hearts and became friends.’

‘Well, of course, he would say that,’ said Atherton, leaning over to put a full pint in front of each of them.

‘It was the truth,’ Slider said indignantly. ‘Why would she want to bonk that slippery cheese?’

‘He was the big cheese,’ said Atherton.

‘No. Sorry. I just don’t buy it. Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams. Chattie was a princess.’

His arm was round Joanna and he gave her a squeeze as he said it. She smiled, and then yawned, and said, ‘Last pint, then I must get home to bed. I can’t take these late nights any more.’

‘You musicians have got no stamina,’ Atherton said. ‘We intend to make the night hideous with our carousings – don’t we?’
he added to Hart, who had moved round to join them.

‘Yeah, what he said,’ she agreed, leaning on him. ‘So, all over bar the shouting, eh, guv?’

‘Yes, thank God,’ Slider said. He lifted his pint to his lips, and inside his head, made a silent valediction to Chattie, whom he had never known, but was close to loving.

Swilley called over heads, ‘Boss, there’s a phone call for you. Urgent.’

‘Flaming Nora,’ Slider said, ‘are they even going to pursue me to the pub?’ He struggled up from the velvet embrace of the banquette, edged out from behind the loaded table, and went over to the bar.

The landlord put the phone down in front of him. ‘I’ve put it through to here,’ he explained. ‘They said it was urgent.’

‘Thanks, Andy.’ Slider wearily picked up the receiver, expecting trouble. It was not a premonition, just that most urgent phone calls were trouble, of one sort or another.

It was Porson. Ah, glad I caught you there, Slider. Just had a
bell from Chief Superintendent Ormerod. He thought you ought to know. Put you on your guard, at least.’

‘What is it, sir?’

‘It’s about Bates, Trevor Bates, that last case of yours. Bit of a shambles, red faces all round. Seems they were moving him to the maximum-security remand facility at Woodhill when the van was held up. He must have managed to communicate with some of his people on the outside. That’s what comes of treating ’em soft, all those phone calls and private sessions with dodgy briefs.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Slider said. ‘You mean the Needle’s escaped?’

‘Yes, laddie,’ Porson said, with deep regret. ‘He’s escaped. Clean as a whistle. They haven’t got a clue where he is now, and given that he wasn’t best pleased with you, Ormerod thought you ought to be alerted, in case he came after you. Unlikely, maybe, but even so …’

‘Bloody
Nora,’ Slider said, with deep feeling and, in fairness, some justification.