Dead End (30 page)

Joanna, wrapping the garlic bread in foil ready for the oven, said innocently, ‘You never cooked it with Irene, then?’

‘That,’ Slider said, ‘was well below the belt.’

She grinned quickly at him. ‘Sorry. It just slipped out.’

‘And actually, the answer is no. I’ve cooked it
for
her, years ago when we were first married and lived in a bedsitter with a gas ring, but never
with
her. So my case remains sound.’

‘You really think,’ she said, ‘that once we’ve had dinner I won’t be able to resist you? That I’ll tumble into your arms like a ripe plum falling off a tree?’

‘Counting on it,’ he said, adding oregano like a man with palsy.

‘Oh Bill, don’t rush me.’

‘Rush you?’ he said indignantly. ‘It was me that suggested we ate first.’

‘What’s this “first” business?’ she objected. He put down the spoon, turned and put his arms round her waist, lifting her slightly off her feet and pressing her hard against him.

‘Listen to me, woman,’ he said. ‘I’ve apologised for being such a complete and utter waste of space these last two years, and I’ll apologise again as often as you like, but I’m not going to let you ruin the rest of both of our lives by making us live apart.’

She looked him straight in the eye, which given her position was all she could look him in. ‘I suppose you think that being masterful is going to—’ There was quite a long silence. ‘My,
you are strong,’ she murmured at the end of it.

‘I’ve always been strong in the arms and shoulders,’ he said. ‘It comes of shovelling muck all through my formative years.’ He lowered her, still held against him, to the ground.

She looked up at him with a faintly troubled expression. ‘It still hurts, you know.’

‘I know.’

‘I didn’t want you to think it was just that easy.’

His smile faded. ‘I had two children. I was married for fifteen years. No, I didn’t think it was just that easy.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a small voice.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not laying that on you. And I’ve no regrets. But I don’t want to waste any of the time we’ve got. I—’

‘Yes? You what?’

‘No, it sounds pretentious.’

‘So sound pretentious. You think someone’s writing all this down for posterity?’

‘I was just going to say, I deal so much with death and sadness in my job, I want everything we do to be a celebration of life.’ He made a face. ‘Yeuch, I can’t believe I just said that.’

She smiled seductively. ‘Your sauce is catching. I can smell it.’

He dropped her precipitately and grabbed the spoon. ‘Just in time. How long is your bread going to take?’

‘Ages. The oven isn’t up to heat yet. We’ve time to sit down and have a glass of wine. And you haven’t told me about the case yet. You must be pleased to have got it all sorted out so quickly.’

‘The sorting out hasn’t begun yet. Now we’ve got the real plod of putting all the documents together and trying to get it into a form that won’t send the CPS into fits. Of course, I know in detective fiction it’s all over once Sherlock fingers the villain and swans off for coke with Watson, but it’s not like that in real life. In real life working out who dunnit is the least of our troubles – certainly in this case.’

‘Well never mind, sit down here, take hold of this, and tell me the latest developments,’ she said, handing him a generous glass of Dolcetto d’Alba, glowing liquid ruby in the firelight and smelling of the warm south. Ensconced in the depths of the chesterfield – it wasn’t the sort of sofa you could apply a
meagre verb like ‘sit’ to – with Joanna’s thigh against his, he sipped and told her the tale.

‘Atherton thought it was a nice change to investigate amongst people whose houses didn’t smell of urine,’ he finished, ‘but I’ve found it depressing to see how badly all these people have behaved, people who ought to know better. Casual sin and casual lawbreaking – drugs, embezzlement, greed, adultery, murder – looting their way through life and dropping the litter behind them like tourists. Not one person’s shown any compassion or had one thought to anyone else. It was just me, me, me.’

‘All sin is selfishness. And selfishness is the root of all sin,’ she said.

He gave her a tired smile. ‘Oh, and by the way, Atherton told me to remind you you were wrong – about the murderer not being a musician.’

‘He’d better not bank on collecting. Maybe Polowski didn’t do it,’ she said. ‘Maybe it was Marcus all along, and he was only covering for him.’

‘No, no, it was Lev Polowski who pulled the trigger all right.’

‘But?’

‘But what?’

‘No, that’s my line. You sounded as if you wanted to say “but”. Is there something funny about it?’

‘How well you know me.’ He sighed. ‘There’s lots that’s funny about it. I know we’ve got the right man and he’s confessed of his own free will, but I just don’t feel right with this case. There’s something unsatisfying about it – like watching a film where the hero and heroine meet in a restaurant, and they keep loading the forks, but you never see the food go down. Nobody’s actually chewing and swallowing.’

‘All right.’ She swivelled round to sit cross-legged facing him. ‘Go through it with me, then, item by item. What doesn’t feel right?’

‘Well, to begin with, there’s the question of why Buster didn’t recognise Lev.’

‘He was a long way away, and it was dark,’ Joanna said. ‘Remember we were sitting under the lights – you can’t see out into darkness. And Buster had no reason even to look that way until after the shot was fired.’

‘Oh, I know. I didn’t mean that. But the description of the murderer included his small size, the duffel coat and the hat. Now wouldn’t you have thought that would ring a bell?’

‘Why should he know anything about Polowski’s wardrobe?’

‘He’d called on him just the day before. And duffel coats aren’t that common any more.’

‘Maybe he wouldn’t know that. But probably he wouldn’t even think of it. With the shock of the shooting itself, and then he’s been devastated with grief ever since – he’s hardly in a state to ponder sartorial niceties.’

‘You sounded just like Atherton then. All right, I accept that – but then why didn’t he tell me that Lev had called at the house on Tuesday? He mentioned Marcus and Alec Coleraine, and when I said was there anyone else, anyone at all of any description, he said no.’

‘Forgot, maybe. People do.’

‘Forgot? Marcus had, in his own words, “wound Radek up”. They were about to go out and already late, and there’s another interruption, and an emotional scene, and Keaton doesn’t remember it, even when prompted?’

‘Well then, why do you think he didn’t mention it?’ she asked Socratically.

‘I don’t know. I wish I did.’ He sipped his wine thoughtfully, and she took the opportunity to go out to the kitchen and check on the oven. When she came back, he said, ‘Polowski says Radek looked ill when he got up on the platform. Did you think so? Did you notice anything in particular?’

She frowned. ‘Well, I told you he was sweating a lot, but he always did. Maybe it was more than usual. He wiped his face with his handkerchief before he began. I don’t know. It all happened so quickly, and I wasn’t really looking at him to notice him. He wasn’t a man to gaze at.’

‘Lev gazed at him. He said his behaviour was different from usual.’

‘So what are you trying to suggest – that he knew he was going to be shot? But that wouldn’t alter the fact that he was shot, would it? I mean, that is a fact, isn’t it? You took a bullet out of him?’

‘Not me personally. Jenkins the pathologist did, though. I wish it had been Freddie.’

‘Why, don’t you trust this new one?’

‘He hasn’t got so much experience. Maybe he missed something.’

‘But I thought he had more firearms experience. Wasn’t that his specialist area?’

‘True.’

‘Well, then. I don’t understand what the problem is.’

‘Nor do I really,’ he said ruefully. ‘Maybe I’m hungry.’

‘There’s always that,’ she agreed. ‘Combined with the fact that your life has been turned upside down recently, and you’ve been working long hours and probably not sleeping much.’

‘And I haven’t even told the worst yet. Mad Ivan wants to be friends with me.’

‘What?’

‘He asked me if we could start again with a clean slate, and then he invited me to dinner.’

She smiled slowly. ‘And you chose me! Well, I need never doubt again.’

He reached out a hand for her. There was some extremely urgent unfinished business rushing about his bloodstream. ‘We don’t have to eat now, do we?’

‘Yes, we definitely do. Try to be a little sophisticated. Anticipation is half the dish – didn’t Sophocles say that?’

‘I doubt it. He was Greek, wasn’t he?’

Atherton lay on his back feeling – feeling – well, feeling like he’d never felt before, actually. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

Sue turned onto her elbow and looked at him over her plump shoulder like a partridge hiding behind a pink rock. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘There’ll be plenty of other times.’

‘It’s never happened to me before,’ he said with a voice driven by humiliation.

‘It has to me,’ she said. He glanced at her, unwilling to meet her eyes in case it was embarrassing.

‘Has it?’

‘Yes. But it’s not a contest, you know.’ She wriggled herself into a more comfortable position. ‘The difficulty is knowing what to say. After all, if I say it doesn’t matter it sounds as if I’m not disappointed, and if I say I’m disappointed, it sounds as if I’m blaming you. It’s a bit like time travel, really. The danger
is not that you might come face to face with yourself, but what on earth you’d find to talk about with someone who knows all your best lines.’

He grinned unwillingly. ‘You really are a complete nut.’

‘I know,’ she said complacently. ‘Did I dream it, or was there some of that pudding left?’

He sat up doubtfully. ‘You want it now?’

She sat up too, the sheet miraculously continuing to cover her breasts just as if she was in a movie. ‘Why not? It’s the second most indecent thing I can think of to do at the moment. Can I have it in here, out of the serving bowl?’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said. He felt quite relieved. At least he knew he could cook. It was a mystery really, why he’d failed; and it wasn’t because he hadn’t really fancied Sue – after all, they’d been bouncing the springs every spare moment since they met.

He opened the bedroom door and Oedipus shot in and jumped up onto the bed, giving him an affronted look over his shoulder. He stalked up to Sue with his tail straight up like a broomstick and began rubbing himself against her, purring like a geiger counter. She laughed and looked up at Atherton. ‘That’ll learn you!’

‘Nothing of the sort,’ Atherton said. ‘He’s just showing his good taste.’ Their eyes met and he felt better. He really, really liked her. More than anyone else he’d met in years.

He began to turn away to go to the kitchen and she said casually, as if quite at random, ‘Did you ever sleep with Joanna?’

He stopped very still. His back was to her so she couldn’t see his face, and the pause seemed to go on for a very long time.

‘No,’ he said at last.

‘Well, that’s okay then,’ she said lightly. He forced himself to turn and look at her, to find out the worst, but she was smiling an all-embracing smile of perfect understanding. He felt comforted and comfortable, as if he’d been to confession and had all his sins cancelled.

‘Bring two spoons,’ she said.

Slider woke with a violent jerk. His head had fallen right back onto the arm of the chesterfield, and his neck hurt. He sat up, bewildered, met Joanna’s eyes, and found the memory of a
recent gigantic snore sculling about his brain. It must have been the noise of it that woke him.

‘You fell asleep,’ she said kindly.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said thickly. ‘Bad manners.’

‘It’s all right. You’re tired and full of good things, and it’s warm in here.’ She eyed him curiously. ‘Were you having a dream? You were twitching and muttering.’

His absent brain cells started to ooze back into their usual crevices. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was – yes, I remember now! I was playing in your orchestra. We were doing a concert.’

‘What were you playing?’ she asked, amused.

‘The trumpet.’

‘You can’t play the trumpet.’

‘I can’t play anything, but it was all right in the dream. I knew I could play it all right. That wasn’t the problem. There I was sitting at the back with the others and—’ He frowned. ‘Oh yes, I remember, the problem was that I had the wrong music in front of me. Any minute the conductor was going to start waving his hands and I’d have to play, and I knew my bit wouldn’t fit in with everybody else’s.’

‘That’s what you were muttering, I think – “It won’t fit, it won’t fit.”’ She looked at him patiently, seeing by his frown that he was far away in thought. His hair was ruffled, his eyes bloodshot, the muscles of his face slack with tiredness. A fine stubble was just beginning to show at this distance from this morning’s shave, and she could see that if he grew a beard now quite a bit of it would be grey. She had one of those infrequent moments of seeing him whole and separate, something complete and absolutely outside herself, as if he were rimmed with light; and she loved him so hugely she could only sigh, as one sighs sometimes with pain. That was why he’d gone on pursuing her in spite of her best efforts, she thought: because, being logical and clear-sighted, he saw that being apart wouldn’t stop them feeling like that about each other, so there was no point to it. She was going to have to accept love with all its inconveniences, and she had a moment of panic, because she’d got used to living on her own and liked her independence, and the safety that came along with it. But on the other hand, there was a sort of reprehensibly girly excitement about the thought of setting up home together and doing the things ordinary people did, like
choosing wallpaper and buying carpets and deciding where to go for their summer holidays. Doing things with Bill. Alice in Magazineland. Suddenly she felt like crying.