Kill My Darling (2 page)

‘Be worth a fortune, a maisonette,' he went on, ‘price of houses round here. But
he
tries to make out that mine's not worth anything. “Needs too much doing to it,” he says, like he'd be doing me a favour, taking it off my hands.' He made a sardonic sound. ‘I know what it's worth, thank you very much, Mister Smarmy. The parking spaces alone are worth a mint.' He jerked a thumb towards the front window. ‘I bought all three when I had the chance, years ago. And that was
before
residents' parking. I rent 'em out. Seventy quid a week, each.'

Connolly wasn't sure this was getting them anywhere. She tapped her pad with her pencil. ‘This boyfriend – have you got his name and address?'

‘Name's Scott. Scott Hibbert.'

‘Address?'

‘He lives upstairs. They live together.'

‘Oh, I didn't realize.'

‘Been here two years. Don't know what she sees in him. He's not
that
good-looking. I suppose he's got money in his pocket. Maybe she just likes to have someone to take her out, buy her meals. Women are funny: go for real creeps rather'n be on their own. What's wrong with your own company?'

He seemed actually to be asking her, and she reflected that it was the opposite to what she was usually asked – which was, from the aunties and neighbours back home, when are you getting married, why haven't you got a boyfriend? But the first rule of interviewing was don't get sidetracked into responding.
Ve vill ask ze qvestions.

‘Where was the boyfriend last night, so?'

‘I don't know. Mel told me he was going away for the weekend, when I saw her Thursday morning. I was outside having a smoke when she was leaving for work. I said, “Never mind, nearly the weekend,” and she said, “Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Scott's going away and I've got it all to myself.” Something like that. Said she was going to lie on the sofa and watch soppy films all weekend.'

‘She didn't say where he was going?'

‘No.'

‘Only, she might have gone to join him,' Connolly said, thinking aloud.

He drew an audible breath. ‘I've told you,' he said with suppressed energy, ‘she would
never have left the dog
.'

‘Right,' said Connolly. She was finding being with him in this confined space unsettling. She wanted to be out of here. ‘I don't suppose you have his mobile number? No. Well,' she concluded, standing up, ‘I'll make a report about it, but unless it's a minor, there's not much we can do at this early stage.'

She didn't add that it also needed a more involved person than the downstairs neighbour to report someone missing. Mr Fitton plainly felt himself to be Melanie's gateway guardian, but that was not how the law saw it; but she didn't want to rile him any more with the suggestion. There was a sort of gleam deep in his eyes that made her nervous. Old geezer or not, he had a sort of wiry strength about him that required cautious handling.

Nobody liked missing persons cases. Most of them were just a waste of time: the subject turned up in due course with a perfectly reasonable excuse, or a perfectly excusable reason – or, on the odd and more entertaining occasion, with the guilty look of a dog with feathers round its mouth. Then they cursed the reporting party for making them ‘look a fool'. Such was human nature, the police often got it in the neck for ‘interfering', and came in for a helping of bile. There's always so much to go around.

The exceptions, when the missing person really was missing, were even less likeable: time-consuming hard work, often unresolved; and when there
was
a resolution, it was hardly ever a pleasant one.

It was the quiet time of a non-match Saturday afternoon when she got back to the station, and she found her boss, Detective Inspector Slider, propping up the doorway of the charge room talking to
his
boss, Detective Superintendent Fred ‘The Syrup' Porson. Connolly, a latecomer to Shepherd's Bush nick, had assumed that the sobriquet was ironic, since Porson was noticeably, almost startlingly, bald. It had had to be explained to her that when his dear wife had died, he had abandoned the rug: a hairpiece so unconvincing – so said Slider's bagman and friend, Detective Sergeant Atherton – it was not so much an imitation as an elaborate postiche. Connolly had had to have that one explained to her as well. She had not been impressed. Atherton, she opined, might be a bit of a ride, but he'd want to ease up on the gags. He was so smart you'd want to slap him.

It was not Porson's weekend on, but as he was not a golfer, he didn't have much to do outside the Job since his wife died. His only daughter was married and lived in Swindon so he didn't see much of her, and he often found himself turning up, faintly surprised, at the shop when he should be elsewhere, like a cat returning to its former home. Slider was leaning comfortably, arms crossed, but Porson, who never stood still, was fidgeting about in front of him like a partnerless man dancing the schottische.

They both looked relieved at the interruption of Connolly's arrival.

‘Hullo,' Slider said cordially. ‘How was it?'

‘What's this? Been out on a case?' Porson enquired eagerly.

Connolly explained and Porson deflated gently like a balloon on the day after the party. ‘Nothing in that. Ten to one she turns up before long.'

‘Yes, sir. But he was very insistent she wouldn't have left the dog. Said she was pure dotey about it.'

‘Not much of a dog lover if she keeps a big dog in an upstairs flat,' Porson complained.

‘It's actually the garden flat, sir,' Connolly said, uncertain if she should be correcting the Big Cheese.

‘Still leaves it alone all day when she's at work,' Porson pointed out triumphantly.

‘Maybe she'd asked someone to take care of it, and they forgot,' said Slider, making peace. But Connolly could see he had taken the point. There was a slight thoughtful frown between his brows.

Porson's had drawn together like sheep huddling from the rain. ‘Waste of bloody time. The dog that barked in the night? Or didn't bark, or whatever it was.'

But Connolly, encouraged by the fact that Slider evidently trusted her instincts, made bold to say, ‘I just got the feeling there was something in it, sir. This Mr Fitton – there was something about him. I'm not sure what it was, but . . .'

‘Wait a minute,' Porson said, suddenly interested. ‘Fitton, you say? Not
Ronnie
Fitton?'

Connolly glanced at her pad. ‘Fitton, Ronald. That's right, sir.'

‘Come with me,' said Porson.

When the record was brought up on the computer screen, Connolly recognized the face of her interviewee, despite the accretion of years. In fact, he'd had all the same lines when the mugshot was taken, they'd just got deeper; and his hair, though longer and bushier then, had been grey already. The intense eyes were the same. He'd been quite a looker, in the lean, craggy, Harrison Ford sort of mould.

‘Fitton, Ronald Dean,' Porson said. ‘Recognize him now?'

‘I think it's the same man, sir,' said Connolly.

But Porson was talking to Slider.

‘I don't know that I do,' he said.

‘Maybe it was before your time. He was quite a cause celeb at the time. Got sacks o' love letters from daft women.' Porson shook his head in wonder. ‘One bit o' fame and they're all over you like a certifiable disease, never mind what you've done.'

‘What
did
he do, sir?' Connolly asked.

‘Murdered his wife,' Porson said. He looked at her, as if to judge her reaction. Connolly got the idea he was enjoying himself, and remained sturdily unmoved. ‘Caught her in bed doing the horizontal tango with the bloke next door and whacked her on the head. She died in hospital a couple of hours later. Funny thing, he never touched the bloke. Just threw his clothes out the window and told him to hop it. Bloke ran out in the road starkers and nearly got run over; white van swerved to avoid him and went into a lamp post.'

‘I remember the case now,' Slider said. ‘It was before my time, but I remember reading about it.'

‘Couldn't miss it, with details like that.' He rubbed his hands with relish. ‘White van man turned out to have a load of stolen plant in the back, so they got him at the same time. Then Fitton's ripped the leg off a chair to hit her with. You wouldn't've thought it to look at him – stringy sort of bloke. The tabloids were burbling about madmen having the strength of ten.'

‘But he went down, didn't he?'

‘Oh yes. Funny, though, he could've got off with a lighter sentence – he was respectable, got no previous, never been in trouble, he only hit her the once, and there was provocation. And like I said he never touched the bloke. Only, he wouldn't express any remorse. Said she had it coming and he'd do it again in the same circs. Said adulterous women deserved to die. That didn't go down well with the women jurors. And prosecuting counsel was Georgie Higgins – remember him?'

‘Wrath of God Higgins? Yes, he was quite a character.'

‘Anyway, he thundered on about taking justice into your own hands and judgement is mine sez the lord and let him who is without doo-dah stow the first throne and so on. That all went down a treat with the beak, who happened to be old Freeling, who was so High Church God called him sir. Freeling gives Fitton one last chance to say he's sorry, and Fitton not only refuses but comes out with he's an atheist, so Freeling goes purple and jugs him as hard as he can. You could see he was itching to slip on the black cap, if only they hadn't gone and abolished hanging.'

‘So he got life?'

‘Yes, and then he buggered up his parole by getting into a fight with another prisoner and putting him in the san.' He stroked his nose reflectively.

Now Connolly had placed that monk-like spareness and tidiness: not a soldier or sailor but a long-sentence con. ‘Nice class of a character you had me visiting,' she muttered.

‘Well, apart from that he was a model prisoner. And there was provocation,' Porson said. ‘The other con had it in for him, apparently, and he had form for starting barneys. So,' he reflected, ‘Fitton's back on our ground, is he? And a young lady he's interested in's gone missing.'

Oh, right, Connolly thought.
Now
she's a missing person. That's what happened when bosses came in on their days off. What Mr Porson needed was a hobby. She glanced at Slider and saw the same thought in his face.

‘Too early to say that, sir,' Slider said mildly.

‘It's the early bird that gathers the moss,' Porson retorted. ‘If it goes bad, the press'll be all over us for not jumping to it right away. You know what they're like. They love a damson in distress.'

Slider barely blinked. He was used to Porson's hit-or-miss use of language, and the old boy was sharp as a tack and a good boss. A bit of Bush in the boss was worth bearing for the sake of the strand in hand.

‘But we've got no reason to think she
is
missing,' he said. He anticipated Porson's next words: ‘And Ronnie Fitton would hardly call us in and draw attention to himself if he
had
done something to her.'

‘Hmph,' Porson said.

‘It's not even twenty-four hours yet. And nobody close to her has reported her missing.'

‘As you say,' Porson said, and took himself off as if tiring of the subject; but he turned at the end of the corridor to say, ‘I just hope it doesn't come back and bite you in the arse.'

Connolly caught Slider's momentary stricken look, and when Porson had gone said indignantly, ‘The meaner! That was below the belt, guv.'

But Slider did not let his firm criticize senior officers – not in front of him, anyway. ‘Haven't you got a report to write up? And if you're short of something to do, I've got some photocopying.'

Slider was not on the following day. He was celebrating a Sunday off by sitting on the sofa, nominally reading the papers and watching little George while Joanna practised in the kitchen, but in reality conducting frequent essential checks on the inside of his eyelids, when the telephone rang.

It was Atherton, obscenely breezy. ‘Your supposed missing person just got missinger.'

‘That's not even a word,' Slider rebuked him with dignity. ‘And what are you telling me for?'

‘I thought you'd like to know. The boyfriend just reported she's gone walkabout. We haven't told him Fitton already reported it, just in case.'

‘In case what?'

‘Well, Mr Porson thinks Fitton did it.'

‘That doesn't mean he didn't.'

‘What a
volte face
! Yesterday you wouldn't admit there was an it for him to have done. Connolly said you had to bite your cheeks at the suggestion.'

‘In any case, the boyfriend must know by now that Fitton spoke to us, because Fitton has the dog and he'd have had to go to him to get it back.'

‘That's a point. He didn't mention the dog. All right, you go back to sleep. I'll handle everything. And if I need help, I can always pop upstairs and ask Mr Porson.'

Slider sat up. ‘Bloody Nora, what's he doing there?'

‘There's no way to answer that without laying myself open to disciplinary action.'

‘And what do you mean, he didn't mention the dog?'

‘Do you want me to read you the interview transcript?' Atherton enquired sweetly.

‘No, no. You win. I'll come in,' Slider said, sighing like a whale with relationship problems. ‘Connolly felt there was something to it. That girl's developing good instincts.'

‘But you did the right thing,' said Atherton. ‘Couldn't go on Fitton's say-so. And we still don't know she's missing, for the matter of that – only that she's not at home. She may just have done a runner, and from the look of the boyfriend, who would blame her?'