Dead End (35 page)

‘So this is where you’re skulking,’ she said.

‘Oh God, I forgot,’ Slider said. ‘I was supposed to phone you, wasn’t I?’

‘When you had something to tell me. Apparently you’ve nothing to tell me.’

‘You know,’ he said examining her closely. ‘Who told you?’

‘Norma. I rang asking to speak to you and she spilled the beans. So I thought I’d pop round, since I hadn’t anything better to do.’

‘You don’t fool me. You were just longing to see me.’

‘Dream on, sonny,’ she rebuked him firmly. ‘So your funny feelings were right after all?’

‘I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. It’s going to mean a lot of work, just when we thought we were nearly finished.’

‘Never mind, at least you’ll be able to feel satisfied at the end of it. How is Mad Ivan taking the disappointment?’

‘Mr Barrington,’ Slider corrected sternly, ‘has disappeared.’

‘God, the excitement of your job! What do you mean, disappeared?’ Slider told her. ‘That doesn’t sound too good,’ she said. ‘Has someone been round there?’

‘That would be the police equivalent of poking a stick with an ’orse’s ’ead ’andle in his ear,’ Atherton said. ‘Who’s going to volunteer for that?’

‘But he might have fallen down the stairs or something, and be lying helpless,’ she said indignantly.

Slider sighed. ‘I was just giving him a chance to turn up or phone in, that’s all, in case he’d accidentally taken the day off. I was on the point of ringing his local nick and asking them to send someone round to see.’

‘So I should think. Are you going to get off this evening?
Because we’ve a lot to talk about and we still haven’t got round to it yet.’

‘I don’t know when I’ll be finished,’ he said. ‘Not until late, anyway.’

She smiled suddenly. Indeed, she positively grinned. ‘Got anywhere else to sleep?’

He smiled slowly. ‘Well, as it happens, I sort of haven’t.’

As it happened, he didn’t get to bed anywhere that night, because the local police, going round to Barrington’s house and finding his car outside and no response from within, broke a pane in the front door and let themselves in. They found Barrington in the kitchen, sitting at the table, with the muzzle of his rifle in his mouth and his head – or quite a lot of it, anyway – on the wall behind him.

Joanna, in a brown furry sort of dressing-gown which made her look as if she ought to have a Stieff label sewn to the back of her neck, leaned her elbows to either side of her teacup and watched Slider eating a rather shapeless cheese omelette of her own hasty devising. It was a very late late breakfast and he felt as if he hadn’t slept for years. Perhaps sleep was only a habit after all, and you could actually get out of it with practice.

‘So it turns out he wasn’t married?’ she said.

‘Never had been. It showed how little anyone knew about him. I feel so bad about him. He asked me to go and have dinner with him on Monday night. Think how lonely he must have been to unbend that far, and I turned him down.’

‘It wasn’t your fault. People don’t commit suicide because of what other people do or don’t do, but because of what they are to themselves.’

‘I didn’t say I felt guilty, I said I felt bad. You should have seen that place! Men have no talent for home-making.’

‘Some men. Look at Jim’s little bijou nest.’

‘True. But Barrington’s house was so comfortless. Lots of dark, depressing wood and leather – did you ever see Lawrence of Arabia’s house in Dorset? You could tell the man was mentally ill. He had a whole room lined with grey aluminium – walls and ceiling, the whole thing.’

‘What, Barrington?’

‘No, Lawrence. What Barrington had was a great ugly shelving unit taking up half his sitting-room, that looked as if he’d made it up himself out of old wardrobes. And all his shooting trophies were displayed on it. He was quite a crackshot in the army, and afterwards in his shooting club. Rows and rows of silver cups and shields and framed certificates, and he ends up with his brains all over the washable vinyl.’ He looked up at her. ‘It was a horrible kitchen, too. The wallpaper had a pattern of red tomatoes and green peppers in squares all over it, and the units were old and painted bright yellow. It must have been like that when he bought it. He’d never done anything to it. What a place to die.’

‘Oh don’t,’ she said.

‘And do you know what was in the fridge? Two steaks and a bag of ready-mixed salad. That’s what he was going to give me if I went to dinner with him. And a frozen blackcurrant cheesecake in the ice compartment. That was the dinner I didn’t join him for. What a lonely man.’

He saw Barrington’s rock-like, acne-scarred face in his mind’s eye, and the feral eyes looking out from the impassive façade. Year by year the granite must have built up, layer upon layer, separating him more absolutely from any contact, beyond hope of reversal. It must have been like being walled up alive, watching the last bright seed of daylight grow smaller, knowing that when it was gone all that would be left was the darkness and the cold.

Seeing he needed to go on talking about it, Joanna said, ‘Why do you think he did it? He didn’t leave a note, did he?’

Slider thought of Freddie saying ‘They like to tell the tale, old boy.’ Not Barrington, though. Too proud. And no-one, in any case, to tell. ‘I don’t know. I suppose everything just got too much for him. The toughest on the outside are often the most fragile inside.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s the job. We all go through it – but he had no-one’s shoulder to cry on. Maybe that made the difference.’

She touched his hand. ‘You couldn’t have helped, if he’d gone that far.’

‘I know. But I could have given him a few moments of human contact, even if it didn’t make any difference afterwards.’ He sighed and reached for his tea. ‘Then I had to
go and tell the Coleraines they couldn’t bury their dead after all.’

‘God, yes, old Radek. I’d almost forgotten him in all the excitement. He’s made a hole in our schedules, you know. I’ve got dates into next year that were with him. I suppose we’ll keep the concerts and get a new conductor for them, but we’ll lose all the recording sessions. That’s a lot of money, and even for us work isn’t that thick on the ground.’

‘That’s a good enough reason to go to his memorial service, then. They’re going to hold it next week, whatever happens about the burial.’

‘Will you be going?’

‘Yes. I’ll be the official presence. Want to come with me?’

‘If you like.’

‘She cried, you know,’ he said, remembering. ‘Mrs Coleraine. Whatever she said, she did care for her father. She cried on her husband’s shoulder, and he patted her and looked as if he wanted to cry himself. He looked as if someone had shoved a stick in his head and given his brains a good stir. He’d been suspecting Marcus, we’d been suspecting him, then it turned out to be Lev. Now he just couldn’t grasp the idea that it was Buster who did it after all; and sooner or later Mrs Coleraine is going to put two and two together about her mother. It’ll come out at the trial, if not before.’

‘There’ll be a trial, then?’

‘If Buster survives. He’s pretty old, and he’s got no good reason to live. If he gets pneumonia it’ll probably be the end of him. It might be better all round if he didn’t make it – it’ll be the devil of a case to put across, and it’ll cause everyone misery. And how long’s he going to survive in gaol anyway? Sometimes I don’t like this job.’ He hadn’t told Joanna about Atherton’s momentary lapse in Buster’s bathroom. There were some things said that were better forgotten. ‘Oh well, it won’t be Barrington’s problem anyway.’

‘You’ll have a new boss to get used to,’ she said, pushing the toast-rack towards him. ‘Won’t that be fun?’

He gave her a tired smile. ‘It couldn’t be any worse than it was before.’

‘Any idea who it might be?’

‘None at all. I can think of some I’d like more than others,
but in the long run it won’t make much difference. The job is the job. Clearing up after other people’s sin. The public refuse department.’

‘In other words,’ she said, ‘everything’s rotten. Life isn’t worth living. Might as well end it all here and now.’

He smiled slowly. ‘Oh no, I wouldn’t say that.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

‘After all, I am going to be able to get rid of the house in Ruislip. The architect in me will rejoice at that.’

She grinned. ‘If anyone will buy it.’

‘Everyone isn’t sensitive like me. And I’ll have you know it’s a much sought-after area.’

‘That only means no-one can find it on the map.’

‘There’ll be a bit of money left over, after paying back the mortgage and giving Irene her half. Not much, but a bit. Enough for a deposit,’ Slider said, and stopped. He felt too tired to start again. Lawyers, maintenance payments, removal men, custody agreements – a swarm of ants would have to pick over the bones of his old life before he could embark on a new one, and even then it would not be a clean start. You never shook free of your baggage, of course: failure and the consequences of it, responsibility, debt. That was why children could run up hills while adults always walked. Lucky Kate and Matthew. Lucky Joanna, for that matter, he thought, with nothing to be sorted out. She was just there, comfortably established, waiting for him to move in. And all he wanted to do now was curl up in her.

He had already forgotten his last sentence, but Joanna heard it echoing on the following silence. They still hadn’t talked about future plans – not even the practicalities of where they was going to live, assuming they were going to live together. But she could see the time wasn’t yet, and she wasn’t sorry to put it off a bit longer. It was still a bit of a nervous notion. She was used to her little ground-floor flat and her independence, and the second toothbrush on the window-sill would take some adjustment on both sides. She looked at his heavy eyes and grey skin, and said, ‘I’ll tell you one piece of good news, though.’

‘Hmm?’

‘I haven’t got to go to work until this afternoon, so you can go to bed and get some sleep, and I’ll still be here when you wake up.’

He pulled himself back across the chasm and reached over the table to take her hand. ‘Sleep? Who needs sleep?’ he said.

She grinned. ‘You’re an ambitious man, Bill Slider. You’ll go far.’