Fell Purpose (31 page)

‘No, just walked quite quickly, tottering on those heels, you know. When she reached it the door opened and she got in.’

‘Did you see who was in the car?’

‘Well, no. I wasn’t really looking, you see. I got the impression it was a man.’ He screwed up his face as if that would help memory. ‘In my mind it’s just a shape inside the car, but a bigger shape than if it was a woman. A tall man, probably. That’s all I can say.’

‘All right. So she got in the car, and it drove off?’

‘No,’ he said, sounding annoyed. ‘I didn’t say that. It didn’t drive off. She got in, and it just stayed there, under the bridge. It’s dark there, because there’s no street light nearby, so I thought it was another of those kerb crawlers. We had trouble that way a while back, people picking up prostitutes and doing it in their cars under the bridge. Disgusting! And leaving their condoms lying around afterwards for anyone to see! I complained to the police, if you want to know, and we had a patrol car come round at night for a couple of weeks and eventually they moved on, the girls did. That was back in the spring. It’s been all right since then. So I thought, hello, it’s starting up again. Which was why, when I went upstairs to my bedroom, I looked out of the window to see if the car was still there.’

‘And was it?’

‘Yes, it was. I was quite upset about it, I can tell you, thinking we were going to have all that trouble again, those foul-mouthed girls shouting things at you as you went past, making fun of you, throwing those things in the garden. One of them put one through my letter-box once, because I’d told her to clear off. Made me feel quite sick, having to deal with it. And once you’ve got them hanging around, the drug dealers come next, and your life isn’t worth living. So that’s why I was looking out from behind the curtain, with the light off, so they wouldn’t be able to see me. The car was still there, and as I watched, the door opened on the passenger side again and she got out – the same girl.’

He looked at Slider for encouragement.

‘Yes?’

‘And she sort of stumbled away from the car – trying to hurry, you know, over the grass, but in those heels – and she put her hands to her face, as if she was crying. Or she might just have been rubbing her eyes, of course, but given what happened later, maybe she was crying.’

‘What did happen later?’ Slider asked.

He stared. ‘Well, she was murdered, wasn’t she?’

‘You saw that?’

‘No!’ He was indignant. ‘
You
said she was murdered, not me.’

‘Please, just tell me what you saw,’ Slider said patiently.

‘Well, that’s all,’ Eden said reluctantly. ‘I stopped watching then. I mean, I wasn’t that interested. I didn’t know she was going to be murdered, did I? It wasn’t my fault.’

‘Of course not,’ Slider said soothingly. ‘Nobody said it was. You saw her get out of the car and run away—’

‘She didn’t run, really. Just sort of – hurried, but clumsily. Those heels . . .’

‘Quite. And did you see the man get out and follow her?’

‘No. I told you, I stopped watching. I’d only looked out to see if the car was still there, and she happened to get out at that moment. I didn’t want to see any more. I pulled the curtains and went to bed. In the morning the car was gone, of course, and I didn’t see her. I understand she – her body – was hidden in the bushes. But I left very early, and of course I turned the other way out of the house, towards the station, so I wouldn’t have been looking in that direction anyway.’

‘Can you tell me anything about the car? Make, colour, registration number?’

He looked regretful. ‘I’m not very good on cars. I don’t have one myself – never taken the test, as a matter of fact. I prefer walking, and trains for long distances. Much more rational mode of transport. The car is the curse of modern society in my opinion. All I can tell you is that it was medium sized – not a Mini, for instance, and not one of those Chelsea Tractors, either. Just an ordinary car – a saloon, do you call them? It was dark blue, I think. I didn’t notice the number plate, I’m afraid.’

‘Well, thank you,’ Slider said, with an inward sigh. ‘That does help. Can you give me an estimate of the time this happened?’

‘Well, as I said, I got the last train to East Acton, which got in just before one o’clock. You could look it up if you wanted to be absolutely accurate. It’s only a few minutes to walk home from there. Then when I got in, I pottered around a bit, got some things together, laid the table for my breakfast, so it might have been a quarter past or twenty past one when I went upstairs. Maybe half past one. I don’t think it could have been later than that.’

‘Right,’ said Slider. Given that they knew she had died before two o’clock, the moment when she stumbled from the car was probably the beginning of the last scene, and unfortunately the audience had drawn the curtain on it. ‘Did you see anyone else about on your walk home?’

‘Only the other people who got off the tube with me. I think there were three or four – half a dozen, perhaps – but they scattered outside the station. No one else came in my direction. Oh, there was a couple standing by the council sports changing rooms – you know that concrete block on the edge of the common?’

‘Yes, I know. A couple?’

‘Well, a youth and a girl. Kissing, and – you know, fondling each other.’

‘Could you describe them?’

‘Certainly not,’ he said. ‘I most
definitely
didn’t look in their direction. I just caught sight of them out of the corner of my eye. Once when I accidentally looked at a couple doing that, the boy came over and was
very
rude and aggressive, asking who I was staring at and threatening to “punch my lights out”. And I hadn’t even been looking at them, just glanced in their direction and away again. As if I
would
look! There’s nothing to interest me in human beings acting like dogs on heat, I can assure you! There’s all too much of it around. So I made very sure
not
to look at them.’

‘Were they still there when you looked out of your bedroom window?’

‘I don’t know. I couldn’t have seen them from my window because they were at the other end, on the side away from the road. I could only see them coming from that end. There always seems to be
someone
doing that sort of thing around the changing rooms,’ he added with a burst of annoyance. ‘Why they have to go there I can’t think. And if it’s not couples it’s groups of youths in those hooded tops, smoking and drinking lager and making a noise. I feel quite threatened sometimes, and it must be worse for my neighbours, some of whom are quite elderly. But the police don’t seem to want to do anything about it.’ He had red spots of indignation on his cheeks now. ‘Well, perhaps now there’s been a murder they’ll take our complaints more seriously. There was a time when, if you rang the police, they came round. Not any more.’

Much as Slider sympathized with people like him whose lives were made hideous by gatherings of youths, he didn’t want to get into that. He had one last question to ask.

‘So apart from the young couple kissing, did you see anyone else hanging around? A funny-looking little man perhaps?’ He described Oates.

‘No, no one else. Just the couple by the sheds, and the girl further along putting her shoes on.’

‘And I suppose you don’t know who the young couple are?’

‘Well, I’d have said so if I did,’ he said, with indignation again. He seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of it. ‘I have the feeling I’ve seen them around locally, but I couldn’t say more than that. As I said, I try not to look at people on the streets late at night. It doesn’t pay. But they likely would be local, wouldn’t they, at that time of night and on foot?’

‘Very likely. Oh, you weren’t passed by a motorbike, I suppose? Or did you hear one going round the streets nearby?’

‘No, not that I noticed. But there’s so much traffic all the time, I might not necessarily hear it if there was one. It’s a sound you learn to shut out. That’s one of the reasons I have to get away from time to time, to the wilderness, just me and nature in all its primitive glory. With my little tent and my backpack, I can go where I please, and get right away from so-called civilization. It restores me. I don’t think I could cope otherwise.’

Which was all well and good, Slider thought afterwards as he went away, for those not actually fighting in the front line. But at least now he had a more solid time; and he knew that the car under the railway bridge was involved. Which looked rather like eliminating both Carmichael and Ronnie Oates.

And that left Wilding, damn it.

SIXTEEN

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

‘
W
ell, that’s always the problem, isn’t it?’ Atherton said. ‘When the delicate mayfly of theory meets the speeding windscreen of evidence . . .’

‘You needn’t sound so pleased about it,’ said Slider.

‘I know you have a father’s sensibilities. But although I would never dream of saying “I told you so”—’

‘Try it, and you’ll be walking funny for the rest of the day.’

‘—I
did
always favour Wilding for suspect,’ Atherton concluded. ‘And there’s no difficulty about him. Motive – tick. Opportunity – tick. Means – a car and a pair of tights – tick. Alibi – big cross. And he lied to us.’

‘Motive depends on his knowing about Zellah’s external activities. And on disapproving of them being enough of a reason to kill your beloved only child,’ said Slider. ‘And if you say the words “religious nut” one more time you’re going home with a note.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Atherton said with large sincerity. ‘His religion is neither here nor there. His possessiveness and control-freakery are quite sufficient. Are you going to let Carmichael and Ronnie go?’

‘Not quite yet,’ Slider said. ‘If I let Ronnie out before naming another suspect the press will be all over him and wild stories will proliferate like triffids. And with Carmichael, I still want confirmation of his alibi. If we accept that the man in the car was the murderer, Ronnie’s ruled out because he can’t drive. But Carmichael could have borrowed a car.’

‘Or stolen one.’

‘Uncharitable. Anyway, I still have to make a decision about the drugs charge. I know I promised him I’d forget it, but there is the public good to consider.’

‘Not to mention your career if it ever got out,’ Atherton added. ‘A caution at least might be indicated.’

‘Meanwhile, we put everyone we can spare on looking for Wilding.’

‘We might get more response if we put out a public appeal.’

‘I thought of that. But I don’t want to spook him into killing himself before we’ve had a chance to talk to him.’

‘How cold you are,’ Atherton said with mock admiration. ‘The inference being that you don’t mind him killing himself afterwards.’

‘What else is there left for him?’ Slider said starkly.

Connolly was still plodding round the Old Oak Common area, re-interviewing those people covered in the original canvass, and knocking on new doors in case there were others like Mr Eden who had not yet come forward. In particular she was looking for what the others were shorthanding as the Snogging Couple, who – thanks to Eden – they now knew had been on the scene as late as one o’clock, and possibly later. They might have seen . . . well, anything!

And given the excitement in the area over the publicity it was receiving, and the usual burning desire of people to be famous, it was odd they
hadn’t
come forward. Of course, the other burning motivation the police came across was ‘not wanting to get involved’, but in Connolly’s experience it was usually older people who went with that, while the younger ones went with seeing their names in the newspapers or, grail of grails, their faces on the telly.

She had gone as far as Wells House Road, not because anyone living there could have seen anything from their windows, being on the far side of the railway bridge and tucked away down a side turning, but because they might have been going home late that night. Having drawn a blank, she stepped out on to Old Oak Common Lane again and stood for a moment, wondering what to do next. Opposite her were the sidings and sheds of the railway depot, sandwiched between the high-speed line from Paddington and the Grand Union Canal, and it occurred to her that there could hardly have been a place more fertile of suicide opportunities. It was a bleak kind of place, and the houses along here were grim, sooty and run down. There was something about the hinterland of railways that always gave her the creeps, and she decided on the spur of that moment not to pursue her enquiries any further afield but to get back to the comparative comfort of the ex-council houses near the common.

There were, in fact, two railway bridges over Old Oak Common Lane: one for the local line and one for the main line. Connolly had just stepped into the shade of the first bridge when she noticed a man standing under the second one.

He had his back to her, standing under the shadow of the bridge, but at the further side, nearest to the common. He seemed to be staring at the place where Zellah had died, which was still taped off and had two peelers on duty, guarding the forensic tent and the patch of earth and bushes it covered. She had spoken to them earlier, on one of her passes down Braybrook Street, so she knew they were PCs Gostyn and D’Arblay. Gostyn was fairly new to the station, but D’Arblay had known this ground for years, and she had worked with him often, and liked him. In fact, it was he who had encouraged her to apply for a try-out in DI Slider’s firm. He admired Slider and said he was a very fair boss, and a brilliant detective. These considerations rushed through her mind, because the man under the bridge, cut out for her against the bright sunshine beyond, but probably hidden in shadow to the PCs, was Wilding.