Dead End (26 page)

‘And we know he had the opportunity to take the gun, because Buster said he’d called on Radek on Tuesday afternoon,’ McLaren said.

‘Opportunity is not proof. And what about his Murray alibi?’ Norma said.

‘I wouldn’t value that above the paper it’s written on,’ Atherton said happily. ‘If Marcus left his father in the café at a quarter past one, he had plenty of time to get back to Shepherd’s Bush by half past two to be murdering his grandpa. He even had time to go home first and collect the gun, supposing he hadn’t taken it with him for the meet with his dad. And he could have arranged the alibi with Murray either before or afterwards. My personal bet would be afterwards.’

‘Tell us why, oh mighty one,’ Norma said sourly.

‘Well, I don’t see him as the sort to plan anything in any detail. I imagine he went storming off in a frenzy of self-pity, shot his grandad, then ran home in a panic. He realised he had to fix himself an alibi, so he rushed off to land his old pal Murray in it; and incidentally indulge in a spot of the doings by way of calming his nerves after the horrid ordeal. That way he really would be at Murray’s flat on the afternoon in question, and it would only be a matter of fudging the time he arrived.’

‘And what did he do with the gun?’ Norma asked.

‘God knows. Maybe he stashed it at his flat, maybe he took it to Murray and asked him to get rid of it. But there’s all of London on the way, or afterwards. It could be anywhere. It could be at the bottom of the Thames.’

‘Not if he meant to put it back,’ Slider said. ‘Putting it back would still be the safest option, as long as no-one ever discovered it had been missing.’

‘Does he know we know?’ McLaren wondered.

‘If he’s been in touch with Buster he probably knows, but there’s no reason he should have been. It’s a good chance anyway that he doesn’t. I think we ought to pay his flat a visit before he does find out. Even if we don’t find the gun, we might find a duffel coat and a wide-brimmed hat.’

‘I must say it’s nice investigating a crime amongst the upper echelons for a change,’ Atherton said. ‘At least their houses and flats don’t smell of urine and their cupboards aren’t full of filthy rags.’

Slider was about to answer when Anderson and Jablowski came in. He looked at his watch. Three o’clock. ‘You two are back early,’ he said.

‘We thought we’d get written up before end of shift,’ Jablowski said.

‘You’ve got something?’

‘Nothing terribly exciting. Just a confirmation of the Marcus-Murray alibi.’

‘What?’

‘Another good theory destroyed by unnecessary facts,’ Atherton said gloomily.

‘What theory?’ Anderson asked.

‘We’d just got Marcus down for chummy,’ McLaren said, and explained.

‘Oh, bad luck,’ Anderson said. ‘But we’ve got a witness sighting of him going into Murray’s flat at about half past one. There’s a fruit and veg stall on the corner of Russell Street, just opposite the door to Murray’s flat. The trader – Ray Tate’s his name – knows Murray well. Reading between the lines, I think he gets certain illegal substances from him from time to time. Anyway, Tate says on Wednesday he’d been watching for Murray to come out because he wanted to “talk to him”, inverted commas, and he saw a fair young man ring the doorbell at about half past one. He didn’t know him, but he thinks he’s seen him there before. Murray let the fair man in and shut the door. About half past three Tate takes a break and a cuppa tea, decides to ring Murray’s door while he’s got five minutes. No answer, which Tate thinks is odd because he’s sure no-one’s gone out in the last two hours. He rings again, and looks through the letter-box, sees Murray’s feet half way down the stairs, just standing there. He shouts out “Steve, it’s me, Ray,” but the feet turn round and disappear, so he reckons Murray’s got his reasons for not wanting company and gives it up. But he keeps an eye on the door all the same, hoping to catch Murray as he comes out. Only Murray never appears, not before Tate closes up at half-five.’

They digested this. ‘Well, it’s not conclusive,’ Slider said. ‘Someone could have slipped out while Tate was serving a customer or bending down picking up a box of apples. He can’t have been watching every minute of the afternoon. But it’s an indication.’

‘Anyone slipping out wouldn’t be able to tell before he opened the door that Tate wasn’t watching,’ Anderson said. ‘The door panel’s hammered glass, you can’t see through it. So it would be quite a chance if someone managed to get out unseen.’

‘In any case,’ Atherton said, ‘we’re only interested in the time between half past one and, say, two o’clock. If Marcus didn’t leave by about two, he couldn’t have got back to Shepherd’s Bush in time to do the murder.’

‘Maybe it wasn’t Marcus that Tate saw go in,’ McLaren said hopefully.

‘We showed Tate the mugshot, and he said he thought that was him,’ Anderson said. ‘It’s as close as you’ll get.’

‘Never mind, I still think it’s worth taking a look at Marcus’s flat,’ Slider said. ‘It isn’t what you’d call a water-tight alibi, and there’s definitely a connection there somewhere. At the very least, instinct tells me that Marcus knows more about it than he’s said.’

The house in Caroline Place had once been a handsome thing, but was showing the symptoms of being divided up into too many flats. The steps and rendering were cracked, the door and windows needed painting, and the heterogeny of curtains at the different windows gave it a shabby air. Still, it was central, close to a tube, and would probably be bringing in about a hundred pounds a body per week to the landlord.

The landlord came scuttling out from the basement like a crab out of its rock crevice as Slider and Atherton reached the foot of the steps up to the front door. He was stout and short, so that he looked almost spherical, a round head stuck onto a round body without benefit of a neck in between, like something a child had made out of Plasticine. He was dressed in a white shirt open at the throat and with the sleeves rolled up, black trousers and a black waistcoat with a gold chain across the extreme point of his circumference, which for some reason made Slider think of undertakers. His face was pudgily white, his head almost hairless, and yet he managed to give the impression of being exotically swarthy, perhaps because his eyes had the dark melancholy of an ancient race. He stuck his arms out, pumping his elbows and waving his thick fingers to help him up the steps out of his hole,
puffing and calling, ‘Yes, yes, I’m coming, vait, don’t be so impatient!’

Slider stopped and looked at him with mild enquiry. He stood before them, looking them over with quick, suspicious eyes. ‘Yes, yes, vot do you vont? I am Mr Rose, this is my house. Vot are you, police? Not customs, no, policemen, I think. Plain clothes. Vy you calling at my house?’

‘We came to see one of your tenants, Mr Rose,’ Slider said, somewhat amused at the quick identification. It spoke long experience.

‘On a Sunday?’ he protested, spreading his hands. ‘It must be serious. Vich one you vont? I don’t vont no trouble here. I keep a quiet house, I am honest landlord, trying to make honest living. Don’t come here making trouble at my house.’

‘No trouble, Mr Rose,’ Slider said soothingly. ‘We just want a little chat with Mr Coleraine. What number flat is he?’

The thick face sharpened, a quick intake of breath hissed between the teeth. ‘Ah, so, number four. I knew it! Ven I see policemen coming, I knew it must be number four.’ He gave the impression of leaning closer, though he could hardly have got closer than he already was. ‘A bad boy that! I vood have got rid of him, but he pays, he pays, always on time, no trouble, and I am a businessman.’ A shrug. ‘I cannot turn away good money. But now he has someone sharing vid him, and this is forbidden. I say to him, Mr Coleraine, you know I let this rooms to you and you only, no others, no lodgers, and he denies. I cannot catch him, but I know there is another up there. If I can catch him, I get rid of him, I promise you. He’s a bad boy. In a minute, he goes. Like this.’ He made the gesture of snapping his fingers, but it was like trying to snap two grilled pork sausages.

‘How do you know there’s someone sharing with him?’ Slider asked with interest.

Mr Rose shrugged again, and tapped his nose. ‘This tells me. I let rooms all my life, and my mother before me. I know. I cannot catch him, but I know.’ He slid his eyes sideways and up, glancing significantly at Slider’s face and away again. ‘I think he gives him key. This is forbidden,
absolutely
forbidden. I vont him out of my house.’

He folded his arms round his chest, a smouldering bonfire of ancient grudges, and watched broodingly as Slider and Atherton
mounted the steps. The front door was on the latch, and Slider pushed it open. A communal hall, smelling of floor polish; institutional green lino, a large speckled mirror on the wall beside the door, a battered side table below it on which reposed a collection of leaflets which presumably had been pushed through the letter-box and picked up by some resident public spirited enough not to walk over them but too indifferent to dispose of them. Beyond the mirror was the door to the ground-floor flat with a plastic number 1 screwed to it; stairs leading up straight ahead; on the first floor doors numbered 2 and 3. Narrower stairs, and on the second floor a door numbered 4 and a very narrow, precipitous flight going on up to the attic.

Atherton laid his ear to the door and after a moment nodded to Slider. ‘Music,’ he murmured. ‘Shall I knock?’

The door was opened after a few moments, just enough to reveal Marcus Coleraine in jeans, a purple singlet, bare feet and hayrick hair, blocking the view into the flat. At the sight of Atherton his face shut down. ‘What do you want?’

‘First of all, Mr Coleraine, we’d like to come in,’ Atherton answered.

‘What for?’

‘We’d like to talk to you, son,’ Slider said gently. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Slider of Shepherd’s Bush Police Station. Sergeant Atherton you know, of course. Your father’s at the station at this very moment making a statement, and from what he’s told us, we think there are some things you might be able to clear up for us.’

Marcus still didn’t move, looking from face to face with an air of trying to calculate the incalculable. Finally Slider said, ‘Can we come in? Or is there some reason you don’t want us to see behind you?’

A moment’s more resistance, and Marcus stepped back and opened the door. ‘Come in if you must,’ he said. Inside there was a sound of music playing very quietly – Dvo
New World Symphony –
and an agreeable smell of bath soap. The short passage had two doors opposite each other, both open – one on the kitchen and the other on the sitting-room – and then bent round a right-angle up ahead, presumably to the bedroom and bathroom. All the walls were painted cream, the woodwork white, there was oatmeal Berber underfoot, and everything seemed clean and fairly new.

Marcus had backed up as far as the sitting-room door, but was not inviting them any further in. The assumption that they might be prepared to stand in the hall and talk annoyed Slider. What was the point in this time-wasting, unless it was simply meant to annoy for annoyance’s sake?

‘We’d like to look around, if you don’t mind,’ he said evenly.

‘Have you got a warrant?’ Marcus asked. Atherton gave Slider a look. Would they never learn?

‘No,’ said Slider patiently. ‘I can get one if I have to. Is there some reason you don’t want me to look around? Is there something you have to hide?’

Marcus hesitated. ‘What are you looking for?’ he asked, trying for a reasonable tone of voice. ‘Maybe I can save you trouble.’

Slider held his eyes. ‘For one thing, we’re looking for your grandfather’s revolver.’ Marcus’s eyes flinched slightly, and Slider felt a surge of triumph. The boy took an instinctive half-step backwards, and Atherton, adjusting his position accordingly, was able for the first time to see into the sitting-room.

‘Guv?’ he said, touching Slider’s arm. Slider followed the direction of Atherton’s nod. On a table just inside the sitting-room door was the telephone, and beside it a brown, broad-brimmed trilby-type hat. From where he stood, Marcus could not see what they were looking at, but there was alarm as well as enquiry in his eyes.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked quietly.

‘What’s the matter? You’re in a world of grief, son, that’s what’s the matter,’ Slider said gently. ‘Why don’t you tell me all about it, and get it off your chest? You know we’ll find out in the end.’

‘Yes, I suppose you will,’ Marcus said rather blankly, his mind evidently working. And then suddenly, shockingly, he grinned. ‘Oh well, it couldn’t last for ever. I did my best, that’s all.’

‘Your best?’

‘It wasn’t me killed Grandpa,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree there. But I’m not going to get into trouble over it. I didn’t mind helping as long as it didn’t come back on me, but if Dad’s fingered me, the simp, I’m getting out from under.’ He turned his head and shouted towards the back of the flat. ‘Lev? Lev! Come here, will you? It’s all right, come on out!’ Nothing happened, and Marcus turned back to
Atherton and Slider. ‘He’s hiding in the bedroom, the dumb bastard. Doesn’t realise the game’s up. Go in and sit down and I’ll fetch him.’

But at that moment someone appeared at the turn of the passage, a small, slight young man, smaller than Marcus, with a narrow, pale, thin-skinned face, fine hair the colour of corn-silk, and over-large blue eyes set in delicate orbits of mauve shadow. His mouth was curious, wide and almost without a top lip, except for a small pink mark in the centre where there ought to have been a peak. His lower lip was soft and childlike and drooping, and when he saw the two men it began to tremble. He flung Marcus a look of mingled reproach and fear, to which Marcus merely shrugged with robust indifference.