Dead End (24 page)

He stood up too. ‘This is important, for God’s sake!’

‘So’s that. That was our dinner in the oven, and it might burn. Don’t you want to eat?’

‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’ he scowled.

‘I don’t know. I think I may be hungry,’ she said flippantly. Then she stepped up close to him and looked up into his face in a way that made the back of his knees ache, because she looked tired and beaten and he wanted to gather her up and make everything all right for her. ‘Please, Bill, this is so hard for me. I’ve been living on my pride for a very long time and it’s hard to give it up just like that.’ She put her hands up round his neck in what seemed an automatic gesture, and that alone was like an electric shock to the gonads. ‘Do one more thing for me, you good man. Have dinner with me before you ask me any more difficult questions.’

‘You,’ he said unsteadily, ‘don’t have to ask me for anything. I’m the one who’s begging.’ He wanted to put his arms round her but he didn’t dare touch her at this point. Instead he managed to say, ‘What’s in the oven?’

‘Cassoulet. It’s Jim’s recipe,’ she added temptingly.

His saliva glands started up at the mere thought. Funny how the animal was always hanging around to debunk the spiritual man. ‘With those spicy Portuguese sausages?’ he asked. ‘What are they called?’

‘Chorus girls. Something like that. And bits of chicken. I’ve got a nice bottle of St Josèph too.’

‘You must have been expecting company.’

‘Nah, I eat like this all the time. Hungry, Inspector?’

‘My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.’

‘Come, then,’ she said, backing off and holding out a hand to him. ‘You can open the wine, and we’ll eat in here by the fire.’

He took the hand, her fingers curled round his, and the juice of life started to flow again, strong as a river, strong enough to roll rocks away. He followed her towards the kitchen. ‘What do you mean, elephants?’ he said. ‘What elephants?’

Secrets can make prickly bedfellows, and Slider had encountered more than once the villain who got to the point where he would sooner face the consequences than go on concealing the deed. So he was not entirely surprised to get a telephone call from Alec Coleraine, before he’d had a chance to call him. Coleraine sounded nervous and depressed.

‘I’d like to talk to you, if that’s possible.’

‘Yes, by all means,’ Slider said. ‘Go ahead.’

‘Not on the telephone. I mean, I want to talk to you privately. In confidence. Is that possible?’

‘Do you want me to come to your house?’

‘No, no, not here.’ He lowered his already lowered voice. ‘I don’t want Fay to hear. I – it’s rather delicate. Look, could you meet me somewhere? At a pub or something?’

‘If you like. What about The Mitre?’

‘No, they know me there.’

‘All right, what about The Kensington? Do you know it, on the corner of Elsham Road? They have live jazz there on a Sunday morning, so it’ll be good and crowded.’

‘You think – oh, I suppose you’re right. But you’ll come on your own?’

When he had put down the phone Slider walked along to the CID room, where Atherton and Norma were poring over the lists of shares sold and the stock market prices, working out how much the Russell trust was down. Anderson and Jablowski were out trawling Covent Garden again, and the rest were going over statements and following up phone calls.

‘I may be about to make you redundant,’ Slider said. ‘I’ve just had the prime suspect on the dog, wanting to arrange a meeting. He does not sound a happy man.’

‘The hounds of hell are on his traces,’ Atherton said.

‘I think he wants to tell me All,’ said Slider.

‘Where? When?’ Atherton asked. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

‘Now. The Kensington. And no. He wants a private chat.’

‘Be careful, sir,’ Norma said. ‘He might be desperate. If he knows you suspect him he might want to eliminate you as well.’

‘In a crowded jazz pub? I don’t think he’s that irrational. But it’s nice of you to care,’ Slider said.

Atherton looked him over carefully. ‘You’re very jaunty this morning, guv. Have you won the pools?’

‘Oh, better than that,’ Slider said with a grin. ‘Well, I must be off to the woods. I’ll be back soon with fresh supplies. Be good, children, and don’t tease the bears.’

Atherton remained staring at the closed door for some minutes, feeling hollow. Norma watched him sympathetically, and at last laid her hand on his arm. ‘It’s good for him. Be glad for him, at least.’

He looked at her. ‘I am.’

‘It would never really have worked out with you two, anyway,’ Norma said sensibly. ‘You’re too alike.’

He pulled himself together. ‘I’m sorry, who are we talking about?’

‘That’s right,’ Norma smiled and patted him. ‘You’re a nice bloke. Fancy a cup of coffee? I’ll get them.’

There are those whose sartorial standards never slip whatever the vicissitudes of life: they would not willingly meet the Grim Reaper himself without a tie on. Alec Coleraine was standing at the bar in The Kensington trying to get served – the social equivalent of trying to get a Council Tax office to acknowledge a change of address card – and looking as though the hounds of hell had actually got him by the shoelaces; but nothing could be more immaculate and correct for Sunday lunchtime drinkies than the cream turtleneck sweater, the tweed jacket with the leather elbows, the fawn cavalry twills, and the brown brogues polished so that the toecaps glowed like a bay horse’s bum.

His flinching eyes sought Slider’s and slid away again, and
he had to cough before he could ask, ‘What would you like to drink?’

‘I’ll have a bottle of Bass, please.’

‘Oh yes, jolly good. Good idea. I’ll have the same. Make that two, will you?’

The band was on the small platform warming up, and Slider looked towards them, as he looked at all musicians now, with a sense of interested kinship, and thought briefly and gloriously of Joanna. They hadn’t really talked, not to make plans or agree anything about the future. There hadn’t really been time for that yet; they had been too busy catching up on lost opportunities. But there could be no doubt, not after last night, he thought – and short-circuited himself. Last night! Billowy, sensuous memories beckoned, and he caught his mind back hastily like a Labrador from the master bed, gave it a stern shake and sent it downstairs. Not now! He had a case to think about now.

And this poor devil, whatever he had done, was plainly suffering for it as he ought. He must help him get it off his chest. Nasty expression that, whichever way you took it.

‘Shall we sit over there? It looks like about the quietest spot.’

‘I didn’t understand immediately why you suggested this place,’ Coleraine said, following him, ‘but I see now. If there’s a lot of noise, we’re not so likely to be overheard.’

‘That’s right.’ Slider sat, wriggling round behind a table, and Coleraine hesitated and then came in beside him, so that they both had their backs to the wall, facing outwards. Slider turned a little sideways so that he was almost facing him. ‘There is one thing I must get straight with you, however. You spoke on the phone about confidentiality. Anything I can keep secret I will, but you must understand that if what you tell me is material to any criminal case it will be my duty to report it.’

Coleraine put down his glass and looked at Slider, and drew a sort of shuddering breath. ‘Oh God, what have I done? Why did I ever start on this – this – they call it a slippery slope, don’t they?’ He gave an unconvincing laugh. ‘You go so far and you find you can’t stop. But it wasn’t for myself, I want you to understand that. I’m not as bad as you think. I didn’t do it for myself.’

‘It will be much better for you if you tell me everything,’
Slider said comfortingly. ‘And if it helps you, you can assure yourself that I know most of it already. You won’t really be giving yourself away.’

‘I – I thought perhaps you did. That’s why I – it’s keeping the secret, you see. And wondering all the time what’s going to happen next. It’s got so I’d sooner know the worst than have to go on wondering from day to day when the blow’s going to fall.’

‘I’m sure I’d feel the same way.’ There was a silence while Coleraine stared at nothing, absorbed in his own misery. Slider prompted him, ‘So tell me about it, then. Where’s the best place to start? With the Russell trust?’

Coleraine came back from his thoughts. ‘Ah, you do know about that, then?’

‘That you’ve been taking money from it over a period of years? Yes.’

He took the plunge. ‘I didn’t mean to defraud Henry, you know. In fact I meant to help him at first. It all started quite innocently with the Miniver fiasco – do you know about that?’ Slider shook his head. ‘Miniver was a mining company in South America – bauxite, cobalt, things like that. It was more or less exhausted and the shares had done nothing for years, but about three years ago I had a tip that they were going to rocket. Something to do with huge new deposits being found. Well, I like to do a bit on the market now and then, so I decided to have a flutter, but this friend of mine, the chap who gave me the tip, he persuaded me it was no use just dipping a toe in. With big profits to be made he said I ought to go the whole hog and, well, I was persuaded. I put all my spare cash into it; and then I thought of the trust. Why not do Henry a favour too? So I sold a large slice of his shares, and put that into Miniver too.’ He took a mouthful of his drink, and stared at the glass as if he hadn’t known what it was going to be. ‘I suppose I don’t have to tell you what happened next.’

‘The shares didn’t go up.’

‘Oh, they went up all right,’ he said bitterly. ‘They shot up. It was very exciting. And then just as I was thinking I’d made a nice profit and perhaps I ought to get out with it, the whole thing collapsed like a pricked balloon. Up like the rocket, down like the stick. Overnight the shares were worthless. Firelighters.
Of course the whole thing had been contrived somewhere along the line to make somebody very rich, and a whole lot of us got our fingers badly burned – including my friend who gave me the tip, so I can’t blame him. But it left me feeling—’ He paused. ‘It wasn’t just the money, you see.’

‘Wasn’t it?’

Coleraine looked at him with a little flash of spirit. ‘I know you think that’s all I care about, but I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth, you know.’

‘I didn’t think you were,’ Slider said.

‘I’ve had to struggle,’ he said defiantly. ‘I had nothing to begin with. In fact, I may as well tell you, since I’m telling you everything, that I was a Barnardo’s boy. So you see, when I say I had nothing, I mean really nothing – not even parents who would own me. You can’t imagine what that’s like, can you, to know that right from the beginning no-one wanted you, not even your own mother?’

He seemed actually to want an answer to that, so Slider said ‘No. It must be very hard.’

‘And I was a shrimp of a kid, too, pale and puny, and you know what kids are like. I was bullied by almost everyone. It’s no fun being the smallest. But it made me tough, and it made me determined. I had to think about what areas I could win in. I was never going to beat them on brawn, but I had good brains and I saw how if you had money in this world people had to give you respect. So I worked like a black at school to get on. I swore to myself I was going to be rich enough one day to cock a snook at everyone.’

Probably the other thing he learned, Slider thought, was that while he was never going to be able to beat the boys, he could win with the girls by playing on their sympathy and their motherly instincts. His defects would become virtues. Girls would be comfort and balm to him – and success with them would also be a means of getting one up on the members of his own sex he so hated. It was a syndrome he’d encountered before, the bullied boy becoming a successful ladies’ man. Sadly, it was hardly ever because they actually like women. Manipulation is no basis for friendship.

‘So you see,’ Coleraine went in, ‘everything I have, I got for myself with my own efforts. And losing like that in the Miniver
crash – being taken for a ride – well, it hurt my pride. It was hard to bear.’

‘You also had the loss to Henry Russell to make good.’

‘Yes. Of course. Well, anyway, I started speculating. I took trust funds out of the safe stocks and started to make them really work, going into much more volatile areas where the big profits are to be made.’

‘And the big losses,’ Slider said.

‘Yes.’ He looked glum. ‘It worked sometimes. I did make profits. But I reinvested them – and – well – bit by bit the fund was trickling away.’

‘The fruit machine syndrome,’ Slider said. ‘Everyone always puts their winnings back in and goes on playing until it’s all gone.’

‘Yes. Yes, I suppose so,’ he said rather blankly. ‘The trouble was – I don’t know how to say it. I don’t quite know how it happened. But it seemed as if it wasn’t just the money trickling away, it was my scruples. From taking the trust money to invest, and putting it on longer and longer shots, which was unethical if not illegal, it didn’t seem such a very long step to taking it for myself. I don’t mean stealing it,’ he added quickly, looking at Slider. ‘I only ever meant to borrow it, I swear to you. And it wasn’t really for me, either. You see my son – my son—’