Killing Time (8 page)

Mrs Maplesthorp interrupted to add apologetically that they hadn’t thought anything about it really, the noise next door, though they’d always been quiet people, no trouble, and not usually given to fights or kicking doors in, but you didn’t get thanked for interfering between man and wife, she’d learnt that lesson the hard way when she’d tried to make peace between her brother and his wife, and got an earful from both of them, and they’d never spoken since, except at family funerals and things, though they always sent a Christmas card, which was a bit hypocritical when you thought of it …

Satisfactory, Hart thought when she finally made her escape. Three witnesses giving a similar story – you couldn’t ask for more than that in an imperfect world.

‘Has there been any trouble at the Pomona recently?’ Slider asked Sergeant O’Flaherty on his way out to the yard. Fergus was one of his oldest friends, a man of sharp, sidelong wit and vast experience, who lurked, like a birdwatcher in a hide, behind the persona of a joke Irishman, a pantomime Thick Mick. Sometimes Slider suspected that he had slipped so far into self-parody that he had started to believe it.

‘Not more than usual,’ O’Flaherty said. He was on his break and eating a sausage sandwich, washing it down with gulps of tea. ‘There was a bit of a frackarse Saturday night, but it didn’t
amount to much – more of a comedy turn in the end. Some animal rights nutters tried to storm the place, but the doormen dusted ’em off.’

‘Animal rights?’ Slider was puzzled. ‘What were they protesting about?’

‘One o’ the cabaret acts. Simulated sex with a sheep,’ Fergus explained with a curled lip.

Slider frowned. ‘But that’s—’

‘Asherjaysus, it wasn’t a real sheep, it was paper mashy an’ a bit o’ woolly stuff stuck on; but the animal libbers didn’t work that one out until they got in and chucked some paint at the performers. It missed them and hit the sheep, at which point the truth dawned. They was so gobsmacked it give the doormen a chance to grab. They gave ’em no resistance and the doormen chucked ’em out with just a bunch o’ bruises. They thought about suing, but when I pointed out what the headlines’d be, sense prevailed and they thought they’d better keep quiet about it, for the sake o’ pride.’ He finished his tea. ‘D’you know what the Pomona called the act, anyway?’ Slider shook his head.
‘A Pair o’ Sheepskin Slippers.’
He gave a snort of mixed disgust and amusement.

‘So how come it wasn’t all over the papers?’

‘The Pomona’s owned by Billy Yates, and he didn’t want the publicity any more than the animal libbers.’

‘Ah, of course,’ said Slider, understanding. Billy Yates was a local businessman with his fingers in almost every pie, and an inordinate influence in the local community.

‘He squashed the locals, and they didn’t dare syndicate. There was a paragraph in Monday’s
Evening Standard,
but it didn’t have the interesting details, so nobody else picked it up. Yates was fed up, mind you, having to take off the act, but he couldn’t have his
artistes
shagging a green sheep, now could he? O’ carse, he’d a’ had to take it off anyway, One o’ the slippers in question was your man Jay Paloma.’

‘Was it indeed?’

‘Didn’t you know that? I thought that was why you was asking.’ He looked at Slider keenly. ‘You think it was some nutter on a clean-up campaign?’

‘I’m not sure. Paloma was some bigwig’s rent boy, according to his flatmate. He could have been wiped for security reasons.’

‘Or jealousy. You know what these types are like – incontinent as the moon.’ Fergus screwed up his greasy bag and potted it neatly in the bin. ‘How’s Little Boy Blue gettin’ on?’ This was his nickname for Atherton. It was not unaffectionate.

‘I rang yesterday. They said the usual things.’ He tried to be positive. ‘It’s bound to be a long job. It was a massive wound.’

‘It shouldn’t a happened to a bloke like him,’ Fergus said. ‘But then, I never thought he should be a copper. Restaurant critic, maybe. It’s like seein’ a raceharse pull a coal cart.’

‘He’s a good detective,’ Slider objected. ‘You’re a Catholic, Fergus. Do you believe prayers are answered?’

‘Always,’ Fergus said firmly. He eyed his friend with large sympathy. ‘Sometimes the answer’s “no”.’

‘You’re such a comfort,’ Slider complained, and headed for the door.

Fergus called after him. ‘D’you know what’s headin’ the bill at the Pomona in place o’
Sheepskin Slippers?
It’s that big fat Vera doin’ a strip, all dragged up in Egyptian like Elizabeth Taylor.
Two Ton Carmen
they call it. It’s the last bastion o’ good taste, that place.’

‘Oh, you are awake,’ Slider said. ‘The nurses warned me not to disturb you if you were resting.’

‘I can rest all day,’ Atherton said.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Excremental.’

Slider studied him from the doorway. ‘You look like the Pompidou Centre.’

‘And Honeyman sent a basket of fruit,’ said Atherton, looking at the thing which lurked horribly in a corner, covered in brittle polythene and topped with one of those vast pale mauve bows beloved of florists.

‘Honeyman’s an idiot,’ Slider said, fetching a chair to the bedside. ‘Can’t you give it to the nurses?’

‘They won’t take it. They keep saying I’ll want it later, when the tubes come out. I keep telling them by then it’ll be pure penicillin.’

‘Maybe that’s what they mean. Can I get you anything before I sit down?’

‘Yeah. Wet my lips, please.’ There was a container of saline
solution and a crock of baby buds for the purpose. Slider performed the task neatly. ‘You’d make someone a great wife,’ Atherton said, to cover for the variety of emotions it made him feel.

Slider sat and made himself as comfortable as possible, wondering who they used as a model for these moulded chairs.

‘How’s Jo?’ Atherton asked.

‘Fine. Busy.’

‘And you?’

‘Ditto. We had a shout. That’s why I didn’t get in to see you yesterday.’

‘You don’t have to come in every day.’

‘I do,’ Slider said shortly. Atherton hadn’t the energy to argue with him. He knew Slider blamed himself for the knife wound, because he hadn’t let Atherton in on his thought processes, and therefore laid him open (ouch, change metaphor) left him vulnerable to the momentary mistaken identification which had let Gilbert get his blow in. Atherton had even, in his worst moments of despair, blamed Slider himself; but the truth was that it had all happened so quickly, even if he had found himself faced with a complete stranger when the door opened he wouldn’t have seen the knife coming. But Slider felt responsible, and visiting every day was one small way of making it up. And Atherton liked to have him visit. It broke up the day a bit.

‘Nicholls came yesterday,’ Atherton said.

‘He knew I wasn’t going to make it. Did he tell you they’ve started getting the bill together for Mr Wetherspoon’s charity concert for Children in Need? Nutty’s going on in a fright wig and sequins singing “Hey Big Spender”. He’s billed as Burly Chassis.’

Atherton smiled painfully. ‘Don’t. It hurts to laugh.’

‘Sorry.’

‘When’s that coming off?’

‘The concert? September some time.’

‘Maybe I’ll be out for it, then.’ Atherton sounded so doubtful that it seemed better to both of them for the subject to be changed. ‘Tell me about the shout.’

‘The shout?’ Slider’s mind was elsewhere and he sounded vague. ‘Isn’t it that painting by Munch?’

‘Give the man a coconut,’ Atherton said, secretly rather
impressed by Slider’s knowledge. ‘Not
The Scream –
the shout. Your shout.’

‘Oh! Oh, it was a corpus. In a flat on the White City Estate.’

‘Blimey, not again,’ Atherton said. Slider told him about it. Atherton did not know Busty Parnell, and was faintly amused at Slider’s seedy Soho and showbiz connections. What a Bohemian past his boss had had! He had heard of
Hanging Out in the Jungle,
of course – everyone had – and of Jeremy Haviland’s suicide; but to Atherton it was Theatre History, it was like talking to someone who had actually met Flo Ziegfeld.

‘Well, you’ve got enough there to be going on with,’ he said. ‘Seedy connections, mysterious lover, poison pen letters. You won’t be bored for a week or two.’ His voice cracked, and he licked his lips.

Slider looked at him carefully for a moment. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing. Why?’

‘Hey, it’s me. What’s the matter?’

Atherton hesitated, and then, with a hollow sense of helplessness he admitted, ‘I’m afraid.’

‘You’re entitled,’ Slider said.

Atherton shook his head slightly. After a while he went on. ‘I’ve never been scared before. Not like this. When a bloke pulls a knife on you—’

Slider nodded. ‘The adrenalin kicks in. Afterwards you think, “Shit, he might have killed me.“’

‘Afterwards. Not before. That’s the difference.’ He turned his head a little on the pillow, looking towards the shadows. ‘It only happened to other coppers. Now it’s us.’ He licked his lips again. ‘Aren’t you scared?’

It was what Slider had been trying not to think about. But he owed Atherton that, at least. He looked it in the face and said, ‘Yes. Shit-scared. I don’t want to end up a notch on some stupid scumbag’s belt.’

‘So – what, then? Why go on?’

‘The odds are on our side.’

Atherton closed his eyes.

Slider thought. Yes, the odds were on their side. But the odds were shortening all the time; and anyway, that wasn’t it. So what, then? He couldn’t do anything else, wasn’t trained for anything
else. But that wasn’t it either. It was what had made him take the job in the first place, that made him stay with it. An inability to do nothing. There were those who, seeing two kids smashing up a telephone kiosk, hurried past, and those who had to protest. His body might have its own views, but his soul sickened at the stupidity and waste of crime, and if he didn’t do something, his bit, to stop it … It wasn’t exactly that he couldn’t stop caring. That was perfectly possible, something he was on the edge of every day. It was that he couldn’t stop caring whether he cared or not.
That
was the very, very bottom line.

He opened his mouth to share this revelation with Atherton, but Atherton was asleep again.

Freddie Cameron’s bow tie of the day was claret with pale blue diagonal stripes, a bright spot in a dark world. Thunder clouds had come up, and an unnatural, yellowish twilight outside made the strip-lighted pathology rooms seem unnecessarily glaring. Slider introduced Hollis, and Freddie shook his hand.

‘Permanent fixture?’

‘I hope so.’ Hollis looked around. ‘Nice set-up you’ve got here. Last time I went to a post there was water running down the walls and the corpse was the warmest thing in the room.’

‘High Victorian?’

‘Low farce,’ Hollis corrected, and Cameron smiled.

‘I know what you mean. Well, there’s still a good few of those dear old mortuaries around. You wait till you’ve attended an exhumation in one. That’s when your faith is really tested.’

Slider looked around, missing the usual crowd that hung around post mortems. ‘Where is everybody?’

‘Holiday season,’ Freddie explained.

‘Surely not?’ Slider said. ‘They can’t all be away at once.’

‘Tell you the truth, old boy, pathology isn’t the draw it used to be. And no-one specialises in forensic pathology any more. When my generation’s gone, I don’t know who’s going to cut up your corpses for you. You know we’ve lost our only forensic odontologist, don’t you?’ Slider had heard that the Tooth Fairy, as he was called, had gone to Dublin, where, thanks to the EC, the livin’ was easy. ‘I tell the students, being a pathologist is a grand life. Easy hours, no stress – and dead men don’t sue. Bodies may pong a bit, but it beats being called out in the middle
of the night to deliver someone’s baby. But they don’t listen. To tell the truth, I think they see too many simulated messy corpses on the telly to sustain the thrill. The romance has gone out of it.’

‘What you’ve got,’ Slider said wisely, ‘is
Weltschmerz.’

‘I thought that was a kind of German sausage. How is Atherton, by the way?’

‘I hope that’s a non-sequitur. He’s coming along slowly, but it’ll be a long job. The wound has to heal from the inside outwards, so it has to be kept open.’

‘Ah,’ said Freddie wisely. ‘That must be a trial. Keeps it always before him, so to speak. How’s his morale?’

‘Shaky. But he’s still very weak.’

‘Is he allowed visitors? I might pop in and see him, if you think it’d cheer him up. Is this radiant female looking for you?’

Slider turned. ‘Oh, yes, she’s my new DC, a temporary loaner, though if I’m nice to her she might persuade them to let her stay.’

‘You should have let her off this post, then,’ said Freddie the chivalrous. He could never shake himself of the old habit of regarding women as delicate and lovely creatures to be protected and pampered, despite the fact that one of his daughters was a country vet and the other rode a Triumph Bonneville to work. ‘Shall we begin?’

The body was stripped, and lay pale and faintly shiny on the PM table, like something made of high-quality plastic, an illusion aided by the teen-doll perfection of his figure. In life Jay Paloma had been lean and flat-bellied, and, apart from the nest of pinkish-blond curls at the root of the penis, entirely hairless. Even the legs were smooth – presumably the result of hours of agony with hot wax. Because of the leanness, the genitals looked unusually large by contrast, a curious effect Slider had noticed before. He wondered the Government didn’t stress that point in its efforts to get the nation to lose weight. It would have had more effect than the health argument.

Freddie spoke into the microphone. ‘The body is that of a male, apparent age thirty-five to forty years old, well-nourished, of medium build. Height—’ He and his assistant measured. ‘Height is five feet nine inches. Put that into Napoleons, will you, Carol?’ he added for the typist. All metric measures were
Napoleons to him, just as all foreign currencies were washers. He stubbornly refused to be embraced by Europe.

‘No sign of drug usage, no needle marks or tracks. Apart from the injuries to the head and face, which I will come to later, no apparent wounds, abrasions, or bruises. No surgical scars. Estimated time of death – now where did I put my notes? Ah yes. When I first examined the body at the scene of the crime, at – ah – 7.15 a.m. on Wednesday, it was cold to the touch and rigor mortis was present in the upper limbs, the trunk and the lower limbs as far as the ankles, but there was still some flexibility in the toes. There was post mortem staining present in the dependent parts of the body. The ambient temperature was 17.2°C and the body temperature 33°C. That was a liver stab, by the way. I avoided rectal testing because of the nature of the deceased’s inclinations. The body temperature at 9.30 a.m. was 32.5°C. I estimate that the time of death was between fifteen and eighteen hours before my first examination at 7.15, that is between 1.15 and 4.15 p.m. on Tuesday.’