Blood Sinister (18 page)

‘Go on.’

‘Well, she’d done a delicious chicken and rice dish for lunch – she really is a super cook – and at that point I thought, what the hell, the poor love probably needs the company, stuck here alone all day with nothing to do, so I gave in and we had an excellent bottle of burgundy with it. She was being as entertaining as she knew how – chatting and laughing. She has immense charm when she wants to use it. Anyway—’ He hesitated, and looked down at his hands. ‘Anyway, after lunch she – we – we went to bed.’ He was silent a moment, and Slider didn’t prompt him. ‘It was the first time for a couple of years. She said she hadn’t been a good wife to me lately and she meant to make it up to me in the future.’

Another silence, and he looked up unhappily. ‘It put me in a difficult position. I mean, I’d got used to the way things were, and I was quite happy with my arrangements. The last thing I want to do is to hurt Noni, and I do love her – there couldn’t be a better wife – but the fact of the matter is—’

‘You don’t fancy her,’ Atherton suggested.

‘It’s not that,’ he said defensively. ‘I want you to understand. Maria and I – I’m deeply involved with her. I can’t give her up. But I knew I’d feel bad about it if Noni and I were also – if we
were lovers again. And there was her mental state to consider – Noni’s. I’ve told you she’s been very depressed. If she was making an effort to come out of it, and I rejected her, or she found out about Maria after I – oh,’ he finished, goaded, ‘you must
see
!’

Slider nodded. ‘So with all these worries about your wife on your mind, you decided the best thing was to pop out and visit a couple of your mistresses.’

Prentiss reddened and half rose. ‘Look, I don’t have to take this sort of abuse!’

‘Oh, I think you do,’ Slider said. ‘You invite it, it would be rude not to take it.’

Prentiss was so shocked by this response he hardly knew what to say. ‘Do you think this is funny?’ he said at last, incredulously.

‘No,’ said Slider, fixing him with a hard stare. ‘I’ve seen the body of Phoebe Agnew. I don’t think there’s anything remotely funny about it. So please sit down and stop blustering. I’m trying to get at the truth.’

Prentiss subsided, but he looked angry and disconcerted. ‘I don’t understand you at all. I’m here voluntarily. I’m doing my best to help you, but I can walk out of here right now and leave you to stew in it, and I will do if you don’t start showing me a bit of respect and common courtesy. You’re a public servant. And you must know I’m a man of influence. Do you want me to make a complaint against you? Don’t you value your career?’

‘Let’s not talk careers, Mr Prentiss,’ Slider said. ‘Let’s remember why we’re here, and what I already know. Now, tell me what happened after you made love with your wife.’

He breathed hard, but answered after a moment. ‘I fell asleep. When I woke up it was half past six. I was annoyed because I hadn’t done all the work I’d planned to do, and I’d told Maria I’d be round at eight. I jumped up to go and shower, and Noni asked where I was going. She said, “You’re not going out, are you?” I said I had to, and she got upset. She felt that after what had happened I ought to stay with her. She asked me who I was going to see and said I should cancel it and I got angry and said it was Government business and she ought to know by now what was important, and she said did that mean
she
wasn’t important – well, you know how women go on. Before
I knew what was happening I was in the middle of a row. The last thing I wanted to do was quarrel with her, especially—’ He hesitated.

‘Especially given where you really were going,’ Slider suggested. ‘She made you feel guilty and that made you angrier.’

He shrugged. ‘You know what women are like,’ he said again. ‘I will say that was one thing about Phoebe. She never behaved that way. She had a mind more like a man’s. That’s why I went to see her, really. When I was in the car and starting off for Maria’s, I decided to call in on Phoebe and ask her advice about the situation. I didn’t know what to do about Noni, and I thought Phoebe could give me an impartial view.’

‘Did you tell your wife you were going to call on her?’ Slider asked.

‘No, of course not. I told you, it was spur of the moment. I didn’t think of it until I was driving off.’

Atherton spoke. ‘But your wife told me today that you said you were going to call in on Phoebe and asked her if she wanted to send any message.’

‘That’s not true.’ Prentiss shook his head in a goaded way, and drew again on the cigarette. It was burning too quickly, and the glowing lump of tobacco at the end detached itself and fell, landing in the untouched and cooling coffee. Prentiss looked down in vague surprise, and then reached for his lighter. ‘I don’t know why she said that,’ he mumbled through the lighting operations.

‘I think I do,’ Slider said. ‘She was trying to protect you as a loyal wife would. Trying to make us believe your relationship with Phoebe Agnew was innocent.’

‘But it
was
innocent.’

‘Don’t forget’, Slider said, ‘that we know differently.’

It was the early hours of the morning when Slider got home. The streets were empty, shiny with incipient frost, the sky black without feature behind the yellow street light. The houses looked two-dimensional and unreal. It was a bleak time of day, and winter sunrise was too far off to inject a ray of hope.

The streets were parked both sides as far as the eye could see: everyone was at home and accounted for. He had to cruise to find a space several streets away, and then walk back. The parked cars seemed to be sleeping too, tucked in snugly at the kerb; he imagined a windscreen eye half-opening as he passed and then drooping closed again.

He turned a corner, into a better-off street. The security conscious owners had fitted intruder lights, and because the front gardens were so short, he set them off from the pavement, like a row of bathchair colonels on the promenade waking one after the other: ‘What? What? What?’ He yawned as he walked, and yawning made him shiver. Oh, for bed, for the blissful sleeping heat of Joanna’s body, for that wonderful moment when you check out of your brain and slip child-naked into the warm black waters of oblivion!

She woke as he came into the bedroom. ‘Huh? Wasser time?’ she muttered.

‘Sshh! Just after four. Go back to sleep.’

‘Huhnn,’ she said. He pulled off his clothes and slid in under the covers, cold as a stone, hesitating to touch her. But she reached behind her and pulled him against her scorching flesh, draping her legs over his and rubbing his cold feet with her warm ones. Sighing, he sank into her back, and thought that
this was probably the most inexpressibly wonderful sensation life could afford.

Five minutes later she said, ‘Can’t sleep?’

‘How could you tell?’

‘I can hear you thinking.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you. Go back to sleep.’

‘No, it’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’m awake now.’ She rolled over to face him, and he went onto his back, taking her on his shoulder – their talking position. ‘You’re very late. Is it the case or another woman?’

‘What would I do with another woman?’

‘Remind me in the morning and I’ll draw you a diagram. So what’s happened?’

‘We brought the prime suspect in for a little chat,’ Slider said. ‘We’ve matched the semen in the vagina to his blood type, and his Westminster boss has blown his alibi.’

‘Oh, good. You arrested him?’

‘No, he was just helping us with our enquiries. It’s not always the best idea to arrest them. Once you do that, you’re on the clock and all sorts of rules apply.’

He told her of the long interview with Prentiss, in its various stages. ‘While we were talking to him I sent Hollis round to see Maria Colehern, and she confirmed that Prentiss had been there on Thursday night at the time he stated. Not that that was any surprise – if your mistress won’t back you up, who will? But Hollis liked her. He believed she was telling the truth.’

‘But?’

‘It doesn’t help him,’ Slider said. ‘He seemed terribly relieved and grateful when she backed him up, but it doesn’t help him at all. She can’t be his alibi if we don’t have a definite time for the murder, and if he’s the murderer he ought to know that.’

‘Don’t you think he’s guilty?’

‘Yes, I think he’s guilty as hell, but I can’t make up my mind if he’s playing a long game, or just stupid. He doesn’t
seem
stupid, but if he wanted an alibi, why didn’t he use his wife? She tried to give him one, but her evidence is so compromised now we can’t take her word on anything. Why did he say from the beginning he was at Agnew’s flat just for the half-hour? If he was going to deny the rest – including having sex with her – why not deny it all?’

‘Maybe he knows someone saw him,’ Joanna said. ‘Or maybe he doesn’t know whether she told anyone he was coming, so he’s trying to cover all eventualities.’

‘Yes,’ said Slider, ‘you could be right there. And of course it has worked to an extent. It’s tied our hands. We know he was there and he admits he was there but that doesn’t prove that he murdered her.’

‘Even with all his lies?’

‘His lies suggest he had something to hide, but that’s not enough,’ Slider sighed.

‘So what does he say he was doing there?’ Joanna asked.

Slider told her what Prentiss had said about his visit.

Phoebe Agnew hadn’t seemed surprised to see him. ‘Phoebe was the sort of person you could just drop in on,’ Prentiss explained. ‘She never minded. Liked it, in fact. It wasn’t as if she was the houseproud sort who needed advance notice so that she could put her best foot forward. Well, you’ve seen her place. It was always a tip – like a student bedsit. In fact, in some ways she still lived like a student. She never minded what time of the day or night it was, she was always ready for a drink and a chat.’

Phoebe, he said, had got the whisky bottle out straight away, and he’d accepted a glass and told her his problem over Noni and Maria.

‘She seemed in a bit of an odd mood, though,’ Prentiss said. ‘Distant. Distracted, maybe. At times she hardly seemed to be listening to me. To tell you the truth, I think she’d had a lot to drink,’ he added, ‘and she was putting away the whisky at an alarming rate. She refilled her own glass and offered me a top-up before I’d taken more than a sip or two. And after that I saw her fill up a couple more times.’

‘Are you saying she was drunk?’ Slider had asked him. A woman sleepy with drink would struggle less when she was strangled, of course.

‘Not really. She always could hold her drink like a man,’ Prentiss had said, ‘but she has been drinking more heavily these last few weeks. I had words with her about it at New Year – asked her if she realised how much she was getting through. She told me to mind my own damn business. Anyway,’ he went on, ‘on Thursday night when I’d told her my problem she didn’t
say anything, just sat there sipping at the blasted whisky, so I asked her if she’d been listening to me. I said, “Just say if I’m boring you and I’ll go.” And she flared up and said, “Oh, stop being such a prima donna! You think the world revolves around your penis!”’

‘It was brave of him to tell you that,’ Joanna commented.

‘I think he was telling us how exasperating Agnew could be,’ Slider said, ‘and inviting our sympathy for murdering her.’

‘Go on,’ Joanna said. ‘What did he say next?’

‘He said it had suddenly occurred to him that maybe Agnew was starting the menopause too, and that that was what was making her irritable and irrational. So he decided to be patient and kind with her, because she couldn’t help it, poor cow.’

‘Patronising bastard!’ Joanna exclaimed. ‘What d’you mean, starting the menopause
too
?’

‘He’d wondered if his wife’s odd moods were partly from the same cause, because she and Agnew were the same age.’

‘How you men do harp on about hormones!’

‘Never mind the “you men” business,’ Slider said sternly. ‘Anyway, Prentiss said he asked Agnew very kindly and calmly if there was something bothering her, and she said, “I’ve got a problem that makes yours pale into insignificance.” So naturally Prentiss asked her what it was, and she said, “I wish I could tell you, but I can’t.” Prentiss pressed her a bit, said surely she could tell him, he was her oldest friend, and hinted that with all his friends in high places he might be able to help her.’

‘Sensitive,’ Joanna said. ‘Doesn’t miss an opportunity for self-aggrandisement.’

‘Well, he said that Agnew just snapped at him, “You’re the last person who could help me with it.” So he shrugged and let it go.’

‘And what about his own problem? Did he get her advice?’

‘No, he said she seemed to think it was trivial and irrelevant. She said, “You get yourself into these things, try thinking how the other people involved feel”, which he said annoyed him because that was exactly what he was doing, trying not to hurt either the wife or Maria Colehern.’

‘It’s a bugger when women don’t recognise a compassionate, self-sacrificing man when they see one,’ Joanna agreed. ‘So did you believe all that?’

‘Oh, yes, there was too much detail for him to have made it all up; and his annoyance with Agnew showed through clearly, which is presumably not what he would have wanted. I can see him losing his temper because she didn’t understand him and kept claiming her own problems were worse. And I suppose it explains why he persists in denying he had sex with her: he thinks being her lover makes him more likely to kill her than being a detached platonic friend.’