Blood Sinister (10 page)

‘And I’ve spent a packet on timber,’ said Anderson, the DIY fanatic. ‘Ever since I gave the wife a nice bit of tongue-and-groove in the kitchen, she wants it all over the house.’

‘Must we discuss your sex life first thing in the morning?’ Swilley complained.

‘Overtime or not,’ Hollis said, ‘if we don’t clear Agnew up in short order, the press’ll string us up by the goolies. It’s in all the broadsheets today. She wasn’t just one of theirs, remember, she was anti-us, so they’ll be watching us.’

‘Talk about feeding the hand that bites you,’ said Atherton.

‘We shouldn’t have to investigate it at all,’ McLaren said resentfully. ‘She spent her life slinging mud at us and chumming it up with the slags we put away – serves the cow right if one of ’em turns round and offs her. Why should we care? Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.’

Norma made fierce shushing gestures at him. Porson had come in, with Slider behind him, and was standing just inside the door, his vast eyebrows drawn down in a frown like hairy venetian blinds. ‘Irregardless of who she was,’ he announced into the sudden silence, ‘I expect my officers to give of their best at all times. Whether the victim is male or female, black, white or tangerine, straight or as crooked as a bottle opener, it’s irrevelant to me. In my department everyone goes Club Class. Do I make myself crystal?’

There was a dutiful murmur of agreement, which evidently only went skin deep with some of them. Hollis asked a question that was on everyone’s mind.

‘Sir, are we going to take this case all the way, or is it going up to AMIP?’

Porson didn’t seem to want to be cornered. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of Peter Judson of AMIP to get that very point straightened into, but he’s been proving a bit illusory so far. However, the ball is certainly on our plate for the time being.’

The troops stirred Hollis like a gentle breeze in a wheatfield.
‘Only, I can see a scenario, sir, where we do all the work, and then AMIP jump in at the end and claim the credit.’

Porson frowned. ‘Yes, well, I don’t want to get bogged down on hypotheoretical points—’

‘But sir—!’

‘Now, you know me, lads,’ Porson said firmly, lifting his hands. ‘I don’t mince my punches. I promise you, Mr Judson will get short shift from me if he tries to prevassilate over this one. In the mean time,’ he looked round from under threatening eyebrows, ‘let’s just get on with the job we’re paid to do. It’s in the papers this morning, so we’ll all be under the telescope from now on.’

‘Sir, what about overtime?’ said Mackay, his credit card statement writ large all over his face.

The eyebrows went up and down a bit, and then Porson said, ‘I shall do everything I can on the renumeration front, I promise you that. But we’ve got a result to get, and I don’t want superfluous attitudes undermining our professional reputation. When push comes to the bottom line, the Job is about service. I think you all know what I’m talking about.’

It made a good exit line, but it left a roomful of muttering complaint. They all knew what he was talking about. He was talking about unpaid overtime again.

‘It’s like everything in this bloody Job,’ Mackay grumbled. ‘All the money goes on show, so there’s nothing left for getting on with the bloody job.’

Even Hollis, usually silent and loyal, joined in. ‘Queen Anne front and a Mary Ann back. We haven’t even got enough wheels.’

The troops were slumped in various dispirited attitudes around the room, like marionettes waiting for Slider to pull their strings. ‘Right, boys and girls,’ he said briskly, ‘let’s get on with it. In the case of Phoebe Agnew—’

‘Slagnew,’ McLaren corrected bitterly.

Slider paused. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know you’re sore about some of the things this woman wrote in life—’

‘Like, all of them,’ Anderson agreed.

‘But she’s dead now, and it’s our job to find out who did it. So I’ll say it again slowly for the hard of thinking: it doesn’t matter who she was or what she did, the law is the law for everybody.
Anyone who thinks differently can come and see me afterwards with his P45 in his hot little hand and we’ll have a chat about it. Savvy?’

There was an unwilling mutter of agreement.

‘Right,’ Slider said. ‘Let’s go. Phoebe Agnew was forty-nine, unmarried, lived alone in a rented flat—’

‘Why?’ Atherton said. ‘She must have been making plenty.’

‘Not everyone wants to own property,’ Norma argued. ‘And we’ve been told several times that she had a mind above material comforts.’

‘I’d like to know, though,’ Hollis put in, ‘what she did spend her money on. If she didn’t have a fancy pad or a lot o’ Nicole Farhi suits, it begs the question. I’d like to see a fat savings book.’

‘Who wouldn’t?’ said Mackay.

‘Okay,’ Slider said, ‘that’s one thing to look for amongst her papers. But it’s probably not important. Robbery from the person or the premises does not seem to have been the motive. She had a visitor, on the evidence of both neighbours – Lorraine Peabody and Peter Medmenham. Medmenham saw Josh Prentiss’s car parked nearby at about eight p.m., and Prentiss admits he was there between eight and eight-twenty or thereabouts, but denies having been there earlier.’

‘Neither witness actually saw a visitor earlier,’ Hollis pointed out. ‘Peabody heard music and the street door banging at around seven, and Medmenham says Agnew said the visitor was there at six forty-five and wouldn’t let him in; but she might’ve not wanted Medmenham in the flat for some other reason.’

‘True,’ Slider allowed. ‘But as against that there’s the meal. Could Prentiss have eaten a two-course dinner in half an hour?’

‘Why not?’ said McLaren.

‘Not everyone’s in your class, Maurice,’ Swilley said kindly.

‘I don’t see the problem,’ Anderson said. ‘Prentiss admits he was there at eight, and we haven’t got an exact time for the murder, so what does it matter whether he was there earlier or not?’

‘What matters,’ Slider said, ‘is finding out what happened. Prentiss lied to us at first about having been there at all. Then he admitted he was there, but only for twenty minutes. He denies having had sex with her—’

‘But sex with her was had,’ Atherton completed for him.

‘And as an added complication, we’ve got two different versions of where he was on Thursday. He says he was at home until around seven forty-five, at the Agnew flat eight to eight-twenty, and at a meeting with Giles Freeman in Westminster from nine until after midnight. But his wife says he didn’t leave home at all that day.’

‘We know his wife was lying about some o’ that, because we know he
was
at the flat,’ Hollis said.

‘Also,’ said Swilley, ‘she said Prentiss told her about the murder yesterday morning—’

‘Whereas he put on a good show of not knowing about it when we interviewed him yesterday afternoon,’ Atherton finished.

‘Well, there’s no mystery about why he’d lie,’ Hollis said, ‘but why would she? To protect him?’

‘Obviously. She thinks he did it, throws herself into the breach.’

‘Does a wife leap to the conclusion that her husband’s a murderer just like that?’ Slider queried. ‘And if so, why would she defend him?’

‘Fear,’ Swilley said. ‘She might be next.’

‘Did she strike you as fearful?’

‘Maybe. She didn’t seem at ease, anyway.’

Slider moved on. ‘How are you getting on with checking Prentiss’s movements after he left the flat?’ he asked Hollis.

‘Not well,’ Hollis said. ‘I can’t get near Giles Freeman. He’s got more wrapping round him than an After Eight. The best I’ve managed is his press officer – and he’s cagey as hell. Can’t say, no comment, have to check on that. Everyone’s going to “get back to me” and no-one ever gets.’

‘Keep trying,’ Slider said. ‘Freeman’s got to come across, if he doesn’t want a slap for obstruction.’

‘Can you slap a Secretary of State?’ Atherton asked doubtfully, eyeing his mild-looking boss in his ready-made suit. In the power-dressing league he packed all the force of a digital watch battery.

‘I can slap anyone,’ he said heroically. ‘But this whole Prentiss business is a mess. The trouble is, we know he was there and he admits he was there, but there’s no reason why he shouldn’t have been there. It doesn’t make him the murderer, all his lies notwithstanding.’

‘We’ve got the finger-mark on the whisky glass and the semen,’ Hollis said.

‘He’s covered himself for the finger-mark,’ Slider pointed out. ‘If the semen comes back his we might have a different picture. But in the meantime, I think we’ll have to at least entertain the notion that Prentiss didn’t kill her. Give it tea and biscuits, if not a bed for the night. So what else have we got?’

‘I’d go for Wordley,’ McLaren said. ‘Okay, maybe she done him a good turn, but he’s got form as long as your arm.’

‘He’s got no form on sex crime,’ Mackay demurred.

‘There’s always a first time,’ McLaren said. ‘If you ask me he’s an evil psychotic bastard who’d kill anyone without a second thought, just for looking at him sideways.’

Swilley shook her head. ‘You’re a prat, Maurice. Would an evil psychotic bastard who raped and strangled a woman who’d done him a good turn bother to use a condom, and then throw it tidily down the lav?’

‘And not check it had been flushed away properly?’ Atherton added.

‘Why not?’ McLaren defended his brainchild. ‘Barmy is barmy. You can’t account for nutters.’

‘By all means look into him,’ Slider said generously. ‘Find out where he was and how he felt about Agnew.’

‘Maybe he despised her, and hated being done good to,’ Atherton said. ‘I know I would. But would she have cooked him a nice supper?’

‘We don’t know the diner was the killer,’ Swilley said, and sighed. ‘In fact, if Prentiss is telling the truth about seeing her alive at eight, he couldn’t have been.’

‘Unless the supper was eaten after Prentiss left,’ said Atherton. ‘People do eat later in the evening in some strata of society,’ he informed her kindly. She stuck her tongue out at him.

‘Or Prentiss et it,’ said McLaren. ‘Or there was another visitor we don’t know about.’

‘The meal is a blasted nuisance,’ Hollis said.

‘And probably not even important,’ Atherton concluded. ‘Can chicken be a red herring?’

‘Thank you, we won’t go down that byway,’ Slider said hastily. ‘What else?’

‘Boss, I’m still not happy about Peter Medmenham,’ Swilley
said. ‘There’s something not right about his story. I think there’s something he’s not telling us.’

‘There’s probably a lot he’s not telling us. What the average citizen doesn’t tell us would make the Internet sag. But follow him up,’ Slider said. ‘Until we get confirmation on Prentiss one way or the other, there’s no need to stop at him. In fact, it seems to me the only way forward is to find out exactly what was going on, that day at the flat and in Agnew’s life in general. Let’s get some street witness, find out if anyone was seen entering or leaving. Talk to her work colleagues – find out what she was involved in recently. Go through her papers, see if anything shows up missing. And, of course, check the pedigree of everything we’ve been told so far. Test every statement, follow every lead—’

‘You sound like a chorus from
The Sound of Music
,’ Atherton complained. ‘It’s still Prentiss for me.’

‘Even if it is,’ Slider said, ‘I’d like at least to know why he did it.’

Slider came out of the washroom and bumped into Norma.

‘Oh – I was just looking for you, boss.’

‘Haven’t you gone home?’

‘Apparently not,’ she said gravely. She turned and fell in with him as he walked back towards the office. ‘I’ve managed to get hold of Medmenham’s dear old white-haired mum, and guess what?’

‘He didn’t go down there on Thursday night?’

‘In one! And she hasn’t been ill – fit as a fiddle, she said. Sounded quite indignant about it. Must have made a mistake, she said. Never had a day’s illness in my life, young woman, all that sort of thing. And she wasn’t expecting him, either. He turned up about eleven on Friday morning and said he wanted to take her out to lunch. So she drove them both into Chelmsford and they had lunch in a restaurant and she saw him off on the train.’

‘That’s a long way for him to go just for one meal,’ Slider said.

‘She said, “He’s such a good son, always thinking of little treats for me.” Said it before I even asked.’

‘Ah! So she thought it was odd, too.’

‘I’d guess she did. Also, I checked with the
Ham and Ful
and Martin, the editor, said the notion of having a day off doesn’t apply to Medmenham because although he’s a regular he’s a freelance, so he can choose his own hours.’

‘What would we do without bad liars?’ Slider smiled. ‘So what, I wonder, was he up to on Thursday night? Easiest way to find out is to ask him, I suppose.’

Norma looked serious. ‘If he killed Agnew, sir, he’s a dangerous man.’

‘Is that you worrying about me, WDC Swilley?’

‘Somebody’s got to, and Jim’s gone home.’

‘I’m not sure I like that juxtaposition,’ Slider said. He walked with her through the CID room, passing her desk on the way to his office. There was a thick file on it. ‘What’s this?’