Fell Purpose (20 page)

‘Do they always go on like this, sir?’ Connolly appealed to Slider.

‘I let them let off steam now and then,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile, let’s you and I have a sensible conversation. Did you get anywhere with the neighbours?’

She consulted her notebook. ‘It was the man at number six that took the film, sir, and sent it to the BBC. He’s retired, ill-health, so not much to do but watch his neighbours out of the window. He was a bit excited about Ronnie Oates coming back to his mum’s. Pretended to be angry about it,’ she said, lifting her eyes to Slider’s, ‘but you could see it was the best thing in his life for years. So when he saw the squad car he grabbed his camera phone and started filming.’

‘But on the night in question?’ Slider prompted her.

‘He saw Ronnie go out about lunchtime, come back in about three to half past, and go out again about eight. But he didn’t see him come back in. Said he went to bed about half-eleven.’

‘He wasn’t watching out the window all that time?’ said Hart.

‘No, but he said the walls of those houses are so thin you can hear someone coming in, especially if they slam the door, which Ronnie does, and he didn’t hear him come in. So if you allow for him dozing off, that means he probably didn’t come in before midnight.’

‘Getting the truth out of Ronnie won’t be easy,’ Atherton said.

‘That’s why I’ve left him to get comfortable and relax,’ Slider said. ‘The less he thinks, the more likely we are to get the truth. All right, we’ve got the watch set up on Carmichael’s flat, we’ve got Ronnie tucked up for the night. We’ll need a statement from the barman at the North Pole—’

‘Sir, I live out that way. I could do it on my way home,’ Connolly said.

‘All right, do so. Anything else?’

‘You thought about questioning the Wilding neighbours,’ Atherton said. ‘In support of my theory.’

‘It’s hardly a theory,’ Slider said. ‘More a wild stab in the dark.’

‘We’ve investigated a few of those,’ Atherton nodded.

‘Yeah, Sat’dy night down the Shepherd’s Bush Road,’ McLaren said. ‘Outside the Jesters Club. I hate bloody knives.’

‘And they’re always bloody,’ Atherton finished. ‘But to return to our
moutons
, which is to say Wilding – in the interests of being thorough, as someone we know and revere once said . . .’

Slider remembered, uneasily, the drawings, the poem, the corner of white sticking out from the mattress. You could only see it when you were sitting above it, as he had been. Whoever put it back that way would not have realized it was showing. Even so, would Zellah have been careless, when she was taking care to hide her secret life? She had drawn the cantering horse naked, too, he remembered, running free, without even a head collar.
Had
her father done more than clip her wings?

‘All right, you can question the neighbours. But for God’s sake be subtle about it. And don’t let the press see you. The last thing we want is to start public speculation about it.’

‘The press are having a field day with the Acton Strangler,’ Atherton said. ‘They won’t be looking for any other explanation.’

‘I dunno why
we
are,’ McLaren said. ‘Have you seen the
Standard
, guv? They’ve got an interview with a geezer ’at shared a cell with Ronnie in the Scrubs. Claims he was talking about getting his revenge on the establishment when he got out, and offing a posh girl.’ There was a chorus of protest. ‘All right,’ McLaren said, unabashed, ‘even if he didn’t use the word “establishment”, there’s no reason he couldn’t’ve said something like that. It’s just as likely as not. And there she is, dead. What more do you want?’

‘World peace,’ Atherton enumerated. ‘The perfect Yorkshire pudding—’

‘And lipstick that don’t come off on your glass,’ Hart concluded.

TEN

Stupid Like a Fox

S
lider had a bad night, too tired to sleep, his mind revolving uselessly round the facts and speculations, trying to make sense of them, and interrupted constantly by disjointed images that seemed terribly significant in the dead of night, but whose meaning eluded his grasp. He was almost glad when young George woke up and began crying. It wasn’t like him: he was usually a good sleeper. Perhaps it was the start of another tooth coming through. Or perhaps he had picked up his father’s restlessness.

Joanna stirred, and he told her to go back to sleep. ‘I’ll see to him.’ She murmured and sank back instantly into her warm slumber. Slider got up, collected the baby from the cot at the foot of their bed, and carried him out to the kitchen, where he at once became wide awake, intrigued by the novelty of being up at this hour and fully intending to do the situation justice. After a lively session involving drinks of water, half a banana Slider found in the fruit bowl, and a scientific investigation of the contents of every tin on the kitchen counter (tea, coffee beans, rice, lentils, pasta shells, and – good Lord, Father, what’s this? – didn’t know they were here – rusks!) the scion of the house consented to settle down on the sofa in the living room and be read to out of his favourite book, which Slider had dubbed ‘The Three Little Pigs In Escrow’. And it was here that Joanna discovered them in the morning, curled up together and fast asleep. To her fell the unhappy duty of waking up her beloved and telling him he was late.

Slider drove to work with that detached, arm’s-length-from-reality feeling you get after a broken night. He told himself he did some of his best thinking in that condition, and himself was far enough gone to believe it. He hadn’t had time for breakfast at home, so he sent for a bacon butty from the canteen and consumed it while he did his essential morning paperwork. Then, a little fortified (because under relentless pressure from the troops the canteen had at last got the bacon butties perfected) he went down to conduct his interview with Ronnie Oates.

Nicholls was on duty. ‘Ronnie had a quiet night,’ he reported.

‘More than I did.’

‘Wean giving you trouble?’

‘Let’s just say there’s nothing I don’t know about designing premium anti-wolf housing for porcine triplets.’

Nicholls was quick on the uptake, a multiple father himself. ‘Wait till you get on to the gingerbread man. I’m surprised they’re still allowed to print that, as a matter of fact.’

‘Too gruesome?’

‘Too homophobic. All that persecution of a ginger. Talking of which . . .’

‘You don’t think Ronnie’s gay?’

‘It’s what all the psychologists would tell you. Repressed homosexual urges leading to hostility towards females, who represent his mother, at once forbidden and forbidding. It’s classic.’ He observed Slider’s alarmed expression indulgently, and concluded, ‘I’m just winding you up. Ronnie’s too dumb to be gay. Anyway, he’s a happy bunny this morning. Enjoyed his supper, solid night’s sleep, big breakfast, and now he’s having a fag and reading the paper. Well, looking at the picters, anyway.’

‘I’m so pleased we’ve satisfied him. Maybe we’ll get that third star this year.’

‘We managed to get him to shower, as well, and put him into overalls, so he’s considerably more fragrant than heretofore. Clothes are bagged up. Probably what he was wearing on Sunday – I think he only changes with the seasons – so there might be something interesting on them.’

‘Interesting, but repulsive,’ said Slider. ‘All right, wheel him in there.’

Slider had Hollis with him, as the least scary of his firm, and the one with whom Oates had already established a relationship. Hollis held the door for him and he carried in two mugs of tea, one of which he put down before Oates, already seated at the table. The pale-blue overalls matched his pale, surprised-looking eyes. His complexion was slightly less grey after the shower and the plentiful food, and he looked extremely chipper.

‘There you are, Ronnie,’ Slider said. ‘Two sugars, that’s how you like it, isn’t it?’

‘Two sugars, yeah. Ta.’ He took a noisy slurp.

‘I’m Inspector Slider, and you know Sergeant Hollis, don’t you? We just want to ask you a few questions, all right?’

‘Yeah,’ Ronnie said easily. ‘You got a fag on you? Only I run out.’

Hollis, who didn’t smoke either, knew the routine and had brought a packet in with him. He handed it, and the matches, to Slider, who extracted a cigarette, gave it to Ronnie, and lit it. Then he put the pack down between them, at an ambiguous distance from Ronnie, who eyed it speculatively and with an edge of greed.

‘Better?’ Slider said, as Ronnie blew smoke out from his mouth and nose together with a sigh of content.

‘Yeah.’

‘What did you have for supper last night?’

‘Steak ’n’ kidney pie an’ mash. It was top. Could’ve done with a pint, though,’ he added slyly.

‘Sorry, can’t manage that in here. Never mind, have a nice cup of tea instead, and tell me about Sunday. What did you do on Sunday?’

‘I dunno,’ Ronnie said vaguely. ‘Which was Sunday?’

‘You went down the pub for your dinner,’ Slider suggested.

‘Oh yeah.’

‘Which one?’

‘Down the Goldsmiths,’ he said. The Goldsmith’s Arms in East Acton Lane was about two minutes’ walk away from the Oates house.

‘What did you have?’

‘Roast pork,’ he said. ‘An’ syrup pud an’ custard. They do a good dinner there of a Sunday.’

‘And then you went home for a bit, and you went out later.’

‘I dunno. Don’t remember.’

‘You went to the fair, didn’t you?’

‘Oh yeah. I like fairs.’

It was all too easy to lead him, Slider reflected; but how else to get anything out of him? His reply was always that he didn’t remember, and he probably didn’t, without clues. ‘Tell me about the fair. Was it a good one?’

‘Yeah. It was big.’

‘Did you go on the rides?’

‘Nah. I just walked about. I had a hot dog and onions,’ he remembered suddenly. ‘With mustard.’

‘And did you notice a girl?’

‘What girl?’ He sounded wary for the first time.

‘Any girl.’

He thought for a minute, smoking, and Slider tried to project a deep pool of calm and confidence. Finally a bulb lit inside Ronnie’s dim brain. ‘There was one on the waltzer,’ he said. ‘She was screaming fit to bust. She done it on the rocket an’ all, and the chairoplanes. Screaming her head off.’

‘You followed her round,’ Slider suggested. ‘Was it fun, hearing her scream?’

‘It was fun looking up her skirt,’ he said slyly, grinning to himself. ‘She had them knickers on that’s just a kind of string. Like dirty girls wear.’

‘Do you think she was a dirty girl?’

‘Yeah, I reckon she was. Cause she went up the bushes after, where people go to do it.’

He had come most obligingly to the point. ‘So you followed her to the embankment, did you?’ Slider asked casually, as if it didn’t matter in the least.

‘Nah. She had a bloke wiv her. He took her on the dodgems. Can’t see up their legs on the dodgems. I was firsty, so I went over the North Pole for a pint.’

‘That’s right. Did you stay there a long time?’

‘Where?’

‘In the North Pole.’

‘I had a couple of pints in there,’ he agreed, then frowned. ‘I dunno when that was. Was it Sat’dy?’

‘It was Sunday, when you went to the fair.’

‘The fair was good. It was a big one. Lots of lights. I like the lights. They’re best when it gets dark, though.’

‘So what did you do after the North Pole?’ Ronnie looked blank. ‘Did you go back to the fair?’ Slider tried. ‘To see the lights again?’

‘Yeah,’ he agreed – too easily? ‘I walked about the fair a bit.’

‘Did you see the girl again? The one that screamed?’

‘No, I never see her. Not there.’ He frowned again with effort, and managed, ‘I was hungry. The hot dogs smelled nice, but I didn’t have no more money, after the pub. So I went home.’

Something occurred to Slider. ‘What way do you go home from there, Ronnie?’ He looked bewildered, not understanding the question. ‘Do you go on the bus?’

‘Me mum’s got a bus pass,’ he said vaguely.

‘What about Sunday night? Did you take the bus home?’ Ronnie shook his head vaguely. ‘Did you walk home, maybe? It was a nice night, warm, not raining. Nice for walking.’

‘Yeah, I walked home,’ he agreed. ‘I never had no money left for the bus, so I walked home.’

‘Along the streets?’ Slider offered, trying not to hold his breath. ‘Or did you go over the grass? Across the Scrubs?’

‘Yeah, I went over the Scrubs. It’s quicker that way.’

‘It’s a short-cut,’ Slider said, breathing out with relief. They were back on track. And it was absolutely true. From the fair to Ronnie’s house across the Scrubs cut off a big corner and saved a walker somewhere near a mile. It was the most natural thing in the world for a lad who had lived in the area all his life – and was too thick to be afraid of walking across dark commons at night – to go that way. And it fitted with the witnesses who said they had seen a strange-looking man wandering across the Scrubs. Ronnie was not the sort to yomp along briskly, heel to toe and head up. His natural gait would be as woolly and indefinite as his thought processes. He would have ‘wandered’ all right.