Blood Never Dies (12 page)

‘I like it,’ Slider said. ‘Some solid DNA evidence would be wonderful. Good boy. Have a biscuit.’

‘Can I go and talk to Rita, then?’

Slider gave him a look so hard you could have knocked nails in with it. ‘No. Wait till after work. Sexual thoughts ruin the concentration.’

‘I’ll sit outside your door and whimper,’ said Bailey, completely unabashed.

That was the trouble with civilian experts, Slider thought when he had gone. You had no authority over them.

Of course, Williams might have had a woman up there some other time, and it might have nothing to do with the murder. And if the prints did not match anything on record, they’d have to hope Tufty at the forensic lab could get enough for a profile, and then they’d have to have a suspect to match it against . . . but even so, it was evidence, and there was precious little of that so far.

A
bunch of them ended up going for a curry after work. Swilley had gone home to her husband and child, and McLaren had gone off, wistful but still doggedly in love, to his beloved, presumably to have a salad and perhaps a workout at the gym followed by a nice drink of water. Slider just hoped the sex was amazing afterwards, or poor old McLaren was suffering for nothing.

The respite of earlier in the day had ended, and the evening outside was stifling, the air warm, damp and faintly unpleasant like dog’s lick. The leaves hung limp from the trees as if thinking they might as well get it over with and fall now. The traffic ground homewards along Uxbridge Road towards a swollen pink west, and there was a fin-de-siècle feeling of the dog days of school summer break.

At the suggestion of curry, Fathom groaned, fanned himself ostentatiously, and said, ‘In this heat? You must be mad!’

But Connolly said, sweetly ‘It’s not fearsome cold in India, y’ know, Jerry.’

And Atherton said, ‘Indians eat hot curries to cool themselves down. It’s a well-known physiological fact that—’

Connolly interrupted him with an abrasive look that said
I’ll do me own arguments, thank you
, and said, ‘It’s a well-known physiological fact that if I don’t get a murgh makhani and a gobhi aloo down me neck in the next half hour, I won’t answer for the consequences.’

Slider went with them because Joanna was out that evening, playing at the Festival Hall, and it was already too late to see George before he went to bed. He rang his father, who said serenely that he shouldn’t worry, he’d hold the fort, and it was only cold lamb and salad anyway so nothing was spoiling – which settled it for Slider, who hated cold lamb and salad. Atherton went because Emily was away again, in Paris this time covering the EU budget emergency talks. ‘If I didn’t have a photo of her on my bedside table I’d start to think I imagined her,’ he’d complained to Slider earlier.

What luck Bailey had had with Connolly Slider didn’t know, but it certainly hadn’t resulted in a date for this evening; and Bailey hadn’t still been hanging around when they all walked out, so perhaps she had sent him off with his tail between his legs.

They strolled down to the provocatively named Anglabangla, their haunt of old. It had changed hands recently, and the new owner had brought in a chef who could actually cook, so the food was now dangerously tasty. Previously it had been rumoured that in the back they kept three vats of sauce labelled hot, medium and mild and three buckets of lumps labelled meat, chicken and prawns, so a mere two scoops could assemble anything on the menu. Now, the smell of the fresh spices as you came in the door had your jaws watering helplessly.

But policemen being conservative creatures, they were all secretly hoping the new broom would not sweep away the 1970’s décor – swirly orange carpet, flock wallpaper, faded plastic flowers and all. It was not retro and witty, it was original, naff and therefore priceless.

They settled down among the dim, red-shaded lamps and twangy music and, salivating, read the menus.

Mackay leaned forward. ‘Here, I was in this Indian restaurant the other day. The waiter comes over and says, “Curry OK?” I says to him, “Go on then, just the one song.”’

Several people groaned, and Fathom said, ‘Heard it!’

‘Just for that, you can get ’em in, Andy,’ said Hollis. ‘Pints all round.’

‘Janey Mack, I’m starvin’!’ said Connolly. ‘I could eat a nun’s arse through the convent gates.’

‘In the old days, you might have had to,’ Atherton said. ‘Now at least it’s cuisine, if not exactly haute. But there’s still a touch of nostalgia somewhere deep in my heart for the old ptomaine regime.’

Connolly looked at him with bright, analytical interest. ‘Jayz, I never knew anyone the cut of you at all. There’s a word describes you, could I think of it.’

‘I can think of several,’ Atherton said. ‘Hip, stylish, dangerously cool – a little bit post-modern-ironic. Sort of Emin-meets-Eminem, but in a good way. Wouldn’t you say, guv?’

‘Absolutely,’ Slider nodded wisely. ‘You do realize I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about?’

‘That’s all right, neither have I,’ said Atherton.

‘Oh good. I was afraid one of us had lost the plot there for a minute.’

Two smiling waiters arrived with trays of pints. Being an Indian restaurant it was only basic lager, but traditions have to be upheld. Drinking anything but cheap lager with a curry would be as unthinkable as drinking a cocktail with a ploughman’s, or a pint of Boddie’s with a Devon cream tea.

Conversation was fragmented and wide-ranging at first, but as the curry settled the day-long cravings and calm spread over the table, they came at last, inevitably, to discussing the case.

‘The basic problem is that we still don’t know who Williams or Horden really was, and without that we don’t know why anyone’d want to kill him,’ said Hollis.

‘Way to go, Colin,’ said Connolly. ‘Always start by stating the obvious.’

He gave her a stern look over the top of the spectacles he wasn’t wearing. ‘All we know is he worked as a porn actor for a bit, and some people have said he seemed too posh for it. But there’s loads of posh people, both sexes, do it, for the money. Strippers, models – prostitutes.’ He appealed to Slider, who nodded. ‘We’ve all come across high-class call girls.’

Mackay agreed. ‘There was that MP last year, real posh-snob bloke with a hoity-toity accent, turned out he’d been in skin flicks before he got elected. It was in all the papers.’

‘All true,’ said Slider. ‘So there’s nothing essentially odd about Horden being a porn actor. But there is about him spreading false names and addresses behind him, and getting himself murdered by someone who tried to make it look like a suicide.’

‘What did he do between leaving Ransom’s and getting killed, that’s what exercises me,’ said Atherton. ‘It seems to me he went to some trouble to get
into
Ransom’s. He got the tattoos, got himself waxed, sought out Tommy Flynn for an introduction—’

‘Now, that’s something, guv,’ Mackay interrupted. ‘Given Flynn saw him around the club, and he knew enough to know Flynn was his man, it looks like he was into the club scene. Maybe that’s where we ought to be asking questions.’

‘Good point,’ Slider said. ‘We’d better get someone in there.’

‘As I was saying,’ Atherton went on loudly, ‘he took trouble to get himself into Ransom’s, and Barrow threw him out on the spurious grounds that he couldn’t act, which was obviously a cover.’

‘What’s spurious?’ Fathom asked.

‘Cover for what?’ Hollis asked.

‘He means Tommy Flynn said he could act,’ Connolly translated.

‘Tommy Flynn has more holes in his head than a fine Emmenthaler,’ Atherton said, ‘but it doesn’t mean he wasn’t right about that.’

‘What’s an Emmenthaler?’ Fathom pleaded, trying to keep up.

‘It’s a bunch a holes, ya divvy, held together wit cheese,’ Connolly said impatiently. And to Atherton, ‘What’s your point?’

‘Why did he want to be a porn actor, that’s my point,’ Atherton said.

‘For the money,’ Mackay answered. ‘Why not?’

‘That’s too simple. He appears from nowhere, false name – two false names – everyone who sees him thinks he’s out of his place. Barrow turns out to be a nasty sort with more form than a benefits application – and connections to the club scene, by the way. And our man ends up dead.’

‘Two months later,’ Slider said. ‘No reason it should have anything to do with Barrow.’

‘Which is why I said right at the beginning, what did he do in between?’ Atherton concluded triumphantly. ‘That’s got to be the crux of the matter.’

Fathom opened his mouth to ask what a crux was, and Slider said hastily, ‘I’d just as soon know where he came from
before
the tattoos and Conningham Road.’

‘Wouldn’t we all,’ said Atherton. ‘An ending without a beginning is no fun.’

‘It could still have been suicide,’ Hollis said, and everyone groaned. ‘If it’s just the keys you’re going on—’

‘Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, it was murder,’ Atherton said kindly. ‘We know there was a woman involved in it. The whole thing looks like a night of seduction – pizza, a few drinks, then she says, how about a lovely bath together, followed by nookie?’

‘And she slips him a micky, kills him, shoves his worldlies into a sack and does a legger,’ Connolly concluded. ‘Gets my vote.’

‘But the person who came out with the sack was dressed in trousers and a beanie,’ Slider said. ‘Not exactly seduction clothes.’

‘Women don’t get all dressed up for a date these days, boss,’ Connolly said. ‘Little girly dress and high heels kind o’ caper? That class o’ sexist malarkey doesn’t go down at all with your modern, free-thinkin’ female.’

‘It needn’t a been someone he’d only just met,’ Mackay pointed out. ‘He could’ve been doinking her for weeks, and they got past the dating stage. That’d make it easier for her to persuade him to have a bath. It was hot, Sunday. She could even have said, “You niff a bit, darlin’, go and have a bath an’ I’ll bring you a drink in.”’

‘Even if there were a woman up there with him,’ said Hollis, who was having marriage problems and never wanted to go home, so had an interest in prolonging the discussion, ‘it needn’t have been a woman ’at killed him. A woman could have done the seduction and bath, and then when he was asleep, opened the door for the murderer.’

They did him the courtesy of thinking about it. Then Atherton said, ‘Nah! That was a woman’s murder. Too elaborate. Too clever-clever.’

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Mackay said. ‘A man would’ve been more direct. Bashed him on the head or stabbed him or whatever.’

‘I suppose it could have been planned by a woman, and still carried out by a man,’ Slider said.

‘Botev had a key,’ Hollis said ‘He could a slipped in and done it once Williams was asleep.’

‘But the one thing we know is that Botev wasn’t black-sack man,’ said Slider.

‘If Horden did have a date up there,’ Connolly said, ‘it could just as easy’ve been a feller. You’d still get the artistic flourishes with a gay lover. In fact, everything I’ve learnt about Horden, or Williams, or whatever his name was, is a bit gay.’

‘You’re forgetting the fingermarks on the vodka bottle,’ Atherton reminded her. They had been put through the system, too, and come up blank. Bottle lady had no previous.

‘Which is all very nice but doesn’t get us any further forward,’ said Slider.

‘So what a we do next, Boss?’ Connolly asked, wiping the sauce from her plate with the last bit of the big greasy naan she’d shared with Hollis.

‘Is that a royal “we”?’ Atherton asked, watching her in pained fascination.

Slider wasn’t having any divisions in his firm. ‘“We” is fine. Like a Berlusconi jacuzzi, we’re all in this together. And what we do is keep on with what we’re doing. Look for the pizza. Follow up Paul Barrow. Look into the clubs. We don’t know that Horden didn’t try porn acting elsewhere – we should try his photo round some other studios.’ He knew how thin it sounded. ‘If we can’t get some kind of a lead on it tomorrow, we’ll have to think about going public, in the hope that a relative or girlfriend will come forward. Mr Porson won’t want this getting away from us, and it’s been two days now.’

There was a silence. Going public with the photo of a corpse would have the Hammersmith PR team throwing a fit. It just didn’t look good to flash pictures of dead people at the general public, whose sensitivity to ‘offence’ was renowned – and litigious.

‘Trouble wi’ going public,’ Hollis said, ‘is we’ll get the press round our necks. It’s been like a Bank Holiday, not having them around.’

‘Well, never mind,’ Slider said after a silence. ‘Let’s keep positive. When you touch the bottom of the swimming pool, the only way is up.’

‘And in a public pool, you’re only going through the motions anyway,’ Atherton concluded.

Connolly shoved her chair back. ‘Jayz, that’s it! I’m outta here, before the rest of yez start chippin’ in with the shit jokes.’

‘Time I was going, too,’ Slider agreed. ‘Early night, start fresh in the morning.’

‘Tomorrow to fresh woods and ghastly poo,’ said Atherton. ‘How are we splitting the bill?’

Slider was in bright and early the next morning, but not as bright or early as Mr Porson, who hadn’t a comfortable wife to drag himself away from. Slider was summoned, before his bottom had hit his seat, to present an update on progress.

Porson tipped a sachet of sugar into his milky coffee and stirred it vigorously with a biro. Slider guessed he had not yet opened his mail or received a phone call, because he was cheerful and not even a bit angry. He listened in silence to Slider’s expos-ition, and then said, ‘Well, don’t worry about it. It’s not as if it’s a high-profile case, no connections with anyone important. We haven’t got anyone breathing down our backs to get a result. Better do it right than do it quick, that’s my maximum.’

Slider almost fell over, having spent most of his life being yelled at to get it done yesterday, no matter what ‘it’ was. But you don’t look a gift doughnut in the raspberry jam. ‘Thanks, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a feeling there’s more to this case than meets the eye.’

‘Well, feelings are in the eye of the beholder,’ Porson said wisely, ‘so run with it. What lines are you following up?’