Dear Departed (8 page)

‘Yes, sir,’ said Slider. ‘I presume we’ll be keeping the ID under wraps for the time being?’

‘Until we’ve informed the next of kin, at any rate.’

‘Also,’ Slider added, ‘it might help us to let the villain think we’ve bought the Park Killer scenario?’

Porson frowned. ‘Yes, that’s a bit of a queer thing, isn’t it, what Cameron’s saying?’

‘Of course,’ Slider said, ‘we don’t know whether the drugging was meant to kill her, or only subdue her so she’d be easier to stab.’

Porson pondered. ‘Doesn’t make much difference, does it? Whoever gave her the drug was the killer, one way or the other. But you’re sure in your own mind it wasn’t the Park Killer?’

‘It isn’t his MO,’ Slider said. As far as we can be sure from only two previous cases.’

‘Right. He could have changed his pattern, I suppose.’

‘But I think it’s unlikely. The stab wounds were mostly superficial and not given with any force.’

‘Not a frenzied attack, then.’

‘No, sir. A slow and deliberate attack.’

‘Well,’ said Porson, gripping and bending a plastic ruler between his large hands, ‘that’s good news in its way.’

‘Yes, sir. I hate a serial.’

‘We all do, laddie, we all do. But what I meant was, while I
was over at Hammersmith yesterday, I took the chance to have a talk with Mr Palfreyman about this.’ Palfreyman was head of the Homicide Advice Team, the demigod with the power to say who would investigate any particular murder. ‘As we know, the SCG’s lost most of its men and they’re struggling under a backlash of work. So there wasn’t much chance of them taking on the case. On the other hand, Mr Palfreyman wasn’t happy about leaving us to pedal our own Canute, so his idea was to form a new temporary dedicated Park Killer squad with some of us and some of Ealing’s boys and girls, under his own personal regis.’

Slider looked his horror at the idea. Porson was so moved at the thought of it that he bent the ruler too far and one end slipped from his grasp. It flew whirling across the room like a rogue helicopter blade, hit the wall and fell with a clatter. Porson hardly flinched.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘so it’s not bad at all if we can tell him convincively that it
wasn’t
the Park Killer, you see.’

Slider saw. The special squad was a mind-watering idea, and given that it was Palfreyman’s brainchild, which he had presumably seen as a path to glory, he wasn’t going to be happy about giving it up.

‘I’m satisfied in my own mind it wasn’t,’ he said firmly.

‘So am I,’ said Porson. ‘The Park Killer’s a stab-and-go raging nutter. He’s not going to pussyfoot about with narcrotics, hang about having a fag while he waits for his victim to lie down for a kip. You can’t teach an old leopard new stripes. So I think you can take it as read that we’ll be keeping this one at home, Slider. I’ll say what needs to be said to Mr Palfreyman.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Slider said. And, ‘Thank you.’

Porson raised his eyebrows, and his deeply sunken eyes took the opportunity to flash fire. ‘I don’t know what you’re thanking me for. You don’t know yet what sort of a case this is going to be. It could turn out to be a sticker, and all eyes are going to be on you now to pull the chestnuts out of the fan in double-quick time.’

‘All eyes’ meaning Mr Palfreyman’s, Slider thought. Well, he’d been threatened with top-brass disapproval all his career. ‘I can live with that, sir,’ he said. ‘By the way, did you have a chance to ask about extra help?’

‘Yes, I did. They’re sending someone over this morning who’s been on a roving brief, so they’re more or less spare.’

‘Roving brief?’

‘Some diversity programme follow-up survey,’ Porson said, with an absolute absence of expression. These were dangerous waters, Watson.

‘Oh,’ said Slider.

‘Only one body,’ Porson went on, ‘but it’s better than nothing.’

‘Right, sir,’ said Slider. He hoped it would prove so. Some young go-getter who’d stepped straight from Hendon into a political-statistical job might well prove to be more of a liability than otherwise.

‘So we have a whole new game on, boys and girls,’ Slider addressed the troops, who were slumped over their tables in attitudes that would have made a chiropractor weep. Hollis was removing relevant stuff, now become irrelevant, about the Park Killer from the whiteboard. Atherton was writing up his report on the information he’d got from Marion Davies. Swilley was in a corner talking quietly to the coroner’s officer, a new man who’d never met her before, who looked as though he couldn’t believe his luck and was right about that. McLaren was bracing himself for the rigours of the day by eating Toast Topper straight from the tin with a plastic spoon, using his left hand to alternate mouthfuls from a small box of microwave chips. Slider wished he could get rid of that microwave oven, but its use was probably guaranteed under the Geneva Convention, not to say EU employment law.

He continued. ‘It’s back to basics, find out everything we can about deceased, who had a grudge against her, who had a reason to kill her.’

‘It still could be a random killing, though, couldn’t it?’ Mackay called.

‘It could,’ Slider said fairly, ‘but I think it’s unlikely.’

‘Only, it’s a funny sort of way to off someone if you know them,’ he persisted. ‘I mean, if you wanted to poison them, you’d put something in their food or drink at home, wouldn’t you? Where you could make sure she was dead, and clear up after yourself, without being interrupted.’

McLaren did a hasty swallow that would have challenged a
boa constrictor and said, ‘Yeah, I’m with Andy on that, guv. Most likely to me is that it’s a copy-cat Park Killer, only he’s not got the balls just to grab and stab, he’s got to drug her first.’ He looked round defensively. ‘Well, I can see that. That makes sense.’

‘Only to you and a moron,’ said Swilley, who had sent her disappointed swain away and rejoined the group. ‘Honestly, Maurice, if brains were money you’d need a mortgage for a cup of tea. How’s a complete stranger clutching a big knife going to get her to swallow drugs while she’s out jogging and then hang around until she feels sleepy?’

‘Well, whoever did it’s got to get over that problem,’ Mackay said.

‘Yeah, why’s she going to do that for anyone?’ McLaren put in resentfully.

‘Guv, do we know how the drug was administered?’ Hollis asked, like a breath of sanity.

‘Doc Cameron says for the quickest reaction it should have been injected. I left him going over the skin with a magnifying glass. If it was administered orally, it would take quicker effect in liquid than solid form. Something may emerge from the stomach contents.’

‘God, I hope not,’ Atherton said.

‘Maybe the murderer put something in her water-bottle,’ said Mackay.

‘He’d have had to have access to her house to do that,’ Slider said. ‘But we’ll have the contents checked anyway.’

‘How quickly would it take effect?’ Swilley asked.

‘We won’t know that until we know what it was and how it was given. But for the method to work at all it would have to be pretty quick. Meanwhile, whether it was a murder by someone who had a grudge against her—’

‘Or whether we go with the dim bulbs’ theory,’ Swilley inserted under her breath.

‘—or it was a random killing,’ Slider went on, ‘much of the work is still the same. We carry on searching for a weapon, for blood marks, for clothing. Get her telephone statements and check all the numbers she rang, see if there was anything untoward going on. Ask the neighbours about any comings and goings or people hanging about. Follow up anything on the
statements we’ve already taken. Start doorstepping the street, anyone who overlooks the park, the shops along Paddenswick Road, the streets on the other side of the park too.’

‘What about the pub, guv?’ Mackay asked.

This was the Wellington, which years ago had been called the George and Two Dragons, because it was run by a little man called George Benson who was henpecked by both his wife and mother-in-law. It was on Paddenswick Road and opposite the park railings, hardly more than a few yards from the park gate.

‘Yes, good point. Someone had better call in there today.’

‘I could go. I know the landlord pretty well,’ Mackay said.

‘All right.’

‘And there’s a different crowd in at night from lunch-time,’ Mackay added quickly.

‘True,’ said Slider. ‘All right, you can do an evening visit as well. You’d better have some help.’ McLaren perked up no end at that, sat up straight and tried to look reliable. ‘See if one of the uniforms is willing. Plain clothes, of course.’ He thought. ‘Not Renker: he’d still look like a copper if he was stark naked. Willans has got his hands full. See if D’Arblay’s up for it. He’s a nice, confiding lad. People open up for him.’

‘Right-oh, guv.’

Swilley spoke up. ‘There’s the tube station, boss. The killer might have made his getaway that way. We ought to have someone on there at the same time of the morning. And maybe some leaflets to hand out.’

‘Good thought. You can arrange that,’ said Slider. All right, anything to follow up in the statements so far?’ There were negatives all round. ‘Anything come in on the telephone last night?’

‘Just the usual attention-seekers and Daft Dorises,’ Hollis said. ‘Apparently there were strange lights in the sky over the park Tuesday night.’

‘There are strange lights in the sky over the park every night,’ Slider said. ‘It’s on the flight path to Heathrow.’

Wingate Road, where the victim had lived, was just off the main road, but surprisingly was a little haven of quiet. It was a short street with a pub at one end, a nice, small, old-fashioned-looking
hostelry called the Anchor. It was obvious from the state of the pub and the houses that the street had been gentrified. Everything was in a condition of cherished middle-class repair, and the parked cars were rust-free and mostly under three years old.

The terraced houses dated from the 1850s, earlier than adjacent streets: two storeys plus semi-basement, square stuccoed fronts, the pitch of the roof hidden by a ruled-off parapet, the age given away only by the lovely proportion of the tall sash windows, each divided into nine small panes. At some point all the residents had been seized by a common urge to paint their stucco in a dusty pastel shade. The effect was delightful, like a tube of Refreshers.

‘That’s it,’ Atherton said, indicating a house of pale hyacinth blue. ‘Gloriosky! There’s a parking space. I wonder if one of these is her car?’

‘Didn’t you ask what’s-her-name – Marion Davies? You were there long enough.’

‘She wouldn’t have known, anyway,’ Atherton said. ‘Women never cease to amaze me. When you think of the hours they spend rabbiting to each other about shopping and hairdressers, and they don’t even know what sort of car each other drives.’

Slider parked the car, pulled two pairs of gloves from the box in the dash compartment, and got out.

‘Did you bring the key?’ Atherton demanded.

‘Yes, dear,’ Slider said patiently.

Inside the house, the long hall was cool and dim, a pleasure after the heat of the day, and it smelt beautifully clean, with an undertone of furniture polish. The staircase rose up straight ahead, the handrail a shining snake of wood, smoothed and rubbed to a rich patina by a hundred and fifty years of hands. Though the house looked small from the street, it went back a long way, and the ceilings were lofty, eleven or twelve feet high, Slider thought. It was a wonderful house, built with the fine proportions and attention to detail that were characteristic of the age: the skirtings, the panelled doors and brass door-furniture, the decorated cornices and ceiling roses, the handsome fireplaces.

‘Looks as if she made a decent living from this company of hers,’ Atherton said.

‘Or maybe she just had good taste,’ Slider said. There was nothing expensive about the furnishings, but the simplicity with which everything was arranged made it look good. The floors had been stripped and polished, and there were a few rugs here and there for comfort; modern furniture, plain walls and curtains, and no clutter.

There were two rooms on this floor. At the front, with the bay window, was the drawing room. The sofa and two armchairs were in coarse off-white material, grouped round a heavy glass coffee-table. Against the walls were hi-fi equipment, television and video, and a range of bookshelves. There were no pictures on the walls, just two four-foot-by-two framed posters. One was a movie poster for
Casablanca.
‘That must be worth a bit,’ Atherton remarked. The other advertised a Festival Hall concert by the London Symphony Orchestra, with a date from the 1950s. Boult and Curzon, Slider noticed. Frivolity was limited to a number of large plants in big floor pots, their leaves glossily polished. The room was so big it was a little too bare for Slider’s taste, but there was no denying it was stylish.

The rear room was slightly smaller, square and fitted out as an office, with the usual equipment. Here, too, everything was neat, tidy, clean and dusted. There was a big engagements diary and a red address book on the desk, which Slider noted for removal; and a small pile of unopened mail. Postmarks suggested it was yesterday’s. Presumably, then, it had arrived before she had gone out for her morning jog. She had picked it up and put it in here to be looked at when she got back. But she never got back.

‘Everything in here will have to be gone through,’ Slider said, with a wave that included the filing cabinets and the contents of the in- and out-trays. ‘We need to know what sort of business she was doing, and with whom.’

This floor of the house was slightly above ground level, and stairs at the back of the hall led down to the semi-basement, with a landing halfway down with a lavatory and a door to the garden. The basement had been knocked into one long, large room with the original stone-flagged floor, fitted out as kitchen and eating area.

‘Nice-looking kitchen,’ Atherton said. ‘All that slate and black granite must have cost a bob or two. She didn’t stint herself.’

They went back up to the hall, intending to take a quick look round upstairs before getting down to a proper search, but as they were walking towards the front door, a shadow appeared behind its glass and the bell rang.