Blood Sinister (20 page)

‘If you want to say something, say it,’ Slider suggested.

She looked away. ‘You know I don’t gossip. But I know how you feel about Jim and Sue. I like Sue myself. And I happen to know Jim was out with Tony Hart on Sunday night because I saw them together.’

‘Oh,’ said Slider.

Hart was a WDC who had been on loan to his firm a while back, at which time Atherton had seemed to have a thing going with her. He was now in what was supposed to be a steady relationship with Joanna’s friend and colleague, Sue Caversham; but Atherton had always been a serial bonker, and nothing had been more surprising than the idea of him settling down with one woman. How Atherton ran his private life was his own concern, of course, but Slider couldn’t help knowing that if Sue was made unhappy, it would upset Joanna. Equally, though, he couldn’t run his firm on that basis.

‘Well, that’s none of my business,’ he said.

Swilley gave a faint shrug. ‘If he’s not at home, d’you want me to ring round for him?’

‘No, leave it,’ Slider said. ‘How are you getting on with checking Medmenham’s story?’

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I sweet-talked the local boys into doing it. That wine bar, Ramblers – they call it Benders. Heart of the Essex gay scene, but fairly up-market. They don’t have any trouble there. Anyway, Prentiss and Medmenham are well known, and the staff confirm they were in there on Thursday from about ten right through to closing at half past eleven.’ She looked enquiringly at Slider. ‘It doesn’t rule out one of them going back to London in the early hours but …’

‘But it’s unlikely, unless they’re involved in a deep plot. At least we can interview Piers Prentiss with a bit more confidence. What’s that in your hand?’

‘First report on the latents from Agnew’s flat,’ she said. ‘The prints on the whisky glasses belonged to Prentiss and Agnew, but the wineglasses and cutlery and the edges of the plates had all been wiped clean.’

‘Yes, Lamont told me that at the flat.’

‘Oh. Well, they’re still going through the lifts – there were a hell of a lot, as you know – but they’ve found two lots that don’t belong to Agnew, Medmenham, Prentiss or the girl upstairs. One set was on the edge of the unit the hi-fi stands on, left hand, half a palm and four fingers, as if he’s leaned on it while he’s doing something with his right.’

‘Changing the music or pouring coffee?’ Slider suggested.

‘Could be. Oh, and we’ve checked with Records and it’s not Wordley’s either.’

‘Well, he’s smart enough to wear gloves if he’s there for felonious purposes. What else?’

‘Fabric smudges on the front door and the lounge door, as if they’d been held by a gloved hand, or through a handkerchief,’ Norma said promptly. ‘Someone trying to let himself out without leaving a mark. But, boss, if whoever ate dinner with her was trying to cover his tracks, doesn’t that rule out Prentiss? He didn’t mind leaving his marks on the whisky glass.’

‘Maybe he just forgot the whisky glass.’

‘Yes, but I mean, he didn’t deny he’d been at the flat, so why should he mind if it was him ate the meal?’

Slider frowned in thought. ‘I don’t know. Unless he didn’t want it to be known that he was there earlier – something to do with the time of death, maybe.’

‘His wife says he didn’t leave home until after half past seven—’

‘If we can believe anything she says.’

‘But if she was telling the truth,’ Norma persisted, ‘it fits with him saying he left home at a quarter to eight, and if he got to Colehern’s at half past eight, the window he could have been at the flat’s too small for him to’ve eaten the meal. He could still have killed her, but he couldn’t have got outside a casserole and trifle job as well as all the rest.’

Slider rubbed his head. ‘I wish we could have checked his stomach contents on Thursday. If Prentiss wasn’t the one who ate the supper, then he must have come after the eater, because he said the kitchen was stacked up with dirty plates, and the only ones that were in there were the casserole and tiramisu lot. Which means the eater couldn’t have been the murderer or Agnew would have been already dead when Prentiss got there. But if the eater wasn’t the murderer, why did he try to get rid of his finger-marks?’

‘God knows,’ Swilley said. ‘This is the nuttiest case I ever worked on. But we know
someone
else was there at some point because of the tissue under the nails and now the rogue fingerprints on the unit.’

‘But we don’t know that that was the murderer, or even that it was the person who ate the supper,’ Slider concluded. ‘Someone not connected with the meal could have leaned on the unit for
some reason. And she could have slightly scratched someone by accident.’

Swilley nodded. ‘And also, whose was the condom, if it wasn’t Prentiss’s? And why does Prentiss still insist he didn’t have sex with Agnew?’

‘You identify the questions all right,’ Slider said. ‘I wish you’d identify some answers as well.’

‘Well, maybe the murderer had nothing to do with the meal at all. Maybe he came after both the eater and Prentiss had been and gone, and for some reason he fiddled about with the cutlery and things, and then realised what he’d done and went round wiping anything he might have touched.’

‘Why would he touch the cutlery?’

‘Maybe Agnew asked him to help her clear up. Maybe it was all still on the table. He helped stack it and carry it out to the kitchen, murdered her, and then had to wipe his traces away.’

‘Very obliging murderer,’ Slider said. ‘Why didn’t he murder her first and save himself the trouble?’

‘Maybe he didn’t mean to kill her. He did it on an impulse, and then got in a panic, tried to remember what he might have touched.’

‘I suppose that makes more sense. Faking the rape scene looks like panic. But Prentiss said the dishes were already in the kitchen.’

‘Well, listen, boss,’ Norma said eagerly, ‘it could still be Prentiss. Suppose he went round there for a shag. They’re having a drink afterwards and he sees all the dirty plates still lying about, and blows her out for being a slut. They clear up the stuff together, but he goes on nagging and the row develops and he loses his rag and murders her. Then he thinks, shit, I’ve got to cover my tracks. He wipes everything he can remember touching, chucks old Aggers on the bed and ties her wrists, puts his gloves on to let himself out because he’s clever enough to think of that. But then, when you come round asking questions, he remembers he didn’t wipe the whisky glasses, so he makes the best of a bad job and says yes, he was there, but only for half an hour and a drink – knowing that we’ll find that out anyway.’ She looked at him hopefully.

‘I love it,’ he said. ‘It explains everything except why he keeps denying the semen.’

She shrugged. ‘Denied it to start with because he thought it made him look too tasty. Now he’s stuck with it and doesn’t know what else to do.’

‘And the skin under the nails, and the other fingerprints?’

‘You said yourself they might be nothing to do with it. Someone who called earlier, nothing to do with anything. Might not even have been the same day.’

‘But if the skin was still there under her nails at the time of death, it would mean that she hadn’t washed her hands since. Okay, she lived in a tip, but she didn’t strike me as a dirty person.’

He remembered suddenly a witness from another case, one Sandal Palliser, saying there were untidy people who were personally clean, and dirty people who were models of tidiness: that tolerance of one did not necessarily mean tolerance of the other.

‘Yeah,’ said Norma. ‘Well, I dunno.’

Slider caught an echo. ‘You said there were two sets of alien finger-marks?’

Norma roused herself from thought. ‘Oh, yes. The other set was on the flush handle of the loo – points to you, guv.’

‘I have my uses,’ Slider said modestly. ‘Are they the same as the others?’

‘No. It’s a right thumb, and Bob Lamont says it’s a woman’s – very small, anyway.’

Slider frowned. ‘This gets worse.’

‘So she had a female visitor,’ Norma shrugged.

‘Yes, but if the thumb-mark isn’t overlaid, it means no-one used the loo after that, so it must have been late in the day.’

‘You don’t think the murderer was a woman?’

‘I wouldn’t have thought a woman was strong enough to strangle Phoebe Agnew, unless she was a very big woman.’

‘And it was a very small thumb.’

Slider shook his head in frustration. ‘There must have been a lot of coming and going all within a small space of time.’

‘Like a bleedin’ French farce,’ Norma assented. ‘Well, there’s a stack of statements about people seen in the street, from the door-to-door and volunteer witnesses. Maybe some of them will come good.’

‘We can hope,’ Slider said.

‘Meanwhile, where do we go from here, boss?’ ‘I think we go and see Prentiss’s brother,’ said Slider. ‘But first, I’ve got some phone calls to make, and I’ll have to bring Mr Porson up to speed. Do me a favour, will you?’ He pushed the plastic cup away from him in distaste. ‘Get rid of this and bring me some proper tea from the canteen. I can’t think with my tannin levels dropping like an express lift.’ ‘Cuppa rosy. No prob,’ said Norma obligingly.

Atherton was not at home. Slider hesitated, and then rang Sue. As soon as she answered he wished he hadn’t called, because if Atherton was out on the pull, there was nothing he could say to her that wouldn’t drop him in it.

But while he was agonising, she said easily, ‘If you’re looking for Jim, he isn’t here.’

‘Oh, right,’ Slider said.

‘Hasn’t he turned in to work?’

‘Well, he’s a bit late. I just wondered …’ Slider said vaguely. ‘I expect he’s on his way.’

Unexpectedly, she chuckled. ‘You’re such a rotten actor. It’s one of the nice things about you.’

‘What do you mean?’ he prevaricated.

‘He’s been off tom-catting somewhere,’ Sue said, still in that amused voice. ‘You know it and I know it, and you’re wondering whether you’ve got him into trouble, while at the same time feeling sorry for me.’

‘It would be a bold man who felt sorry for you.’

‘Hmm. Well, I suppose you mean that for a compliment. But you might as well know, Jim and I had a big row on Saturday, so he’s punishing me. I did the shopping, you see, and I got the wrong sort of ham and ruined his quiche. It was in a packet instead of on the bone – a heinous crime, apparently.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Slider.

‘He was mad as fire,’ Sue said. ‘It was quite funny, really.’

Slider worried she wasn’t taking her sin seriously enough. We all have our little ways, and a man’s vanity can reside in many places. Kick him in it, and you’re socking around for a smack in the puss. He said cautiously, ‘Well, he can be a bit pernickety, but after all, he is a very good cook.’

‘That’s praising with faint damns, all right,’ Sue said, and
Slider recognised it as an Atherton phrase. Language mutation was one of the signs of a real relationship, and obscurely he felt better about them.

She went on, ‘Anyway, the bloody old ham was just the surface excuse. Underneath, it was the same old row rehashed. You know, the one about commitment?’

‘Oh,’ said Slider cautiously. It was a word no man liked to hear, even applied to someone else. Like ‘castration’, just the sound of it made you cross your legs and fidget.

‘I want us to move on a stage and he’s hanging back. So we quarrel. That’s what it’s really about.’

‘He’s been on his own a long time,’ Slider said.

‘So have I. It isn’t easy for me, either. Believe me, I understand the problem. But—’ She hesitated. ‘Seriously, Bill, I am a bit worried about him. I know he’s squeamish about the idea of settling down, and we fight a lot, and that’s healthy. And we have ways of punishing each other, and a lot of the time it’s half in fun. But underneath I think he’s under a lot of strain. Have you noticed it at work?’

Slider felt uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking. He was only just learning to discuss himself with Joanna; discussing Atherton with Sue was a breast-baring too far. Besides, he was Atherton’s boss as well as his friend, and he couldn’t discuss his performance at work behind his back. ‘Well,’ he said, trying to think of a way not to answer.

But Sue answered for him. ‘This gambling, for instance. You must have noticed. I think it’s a sort of lashing out. He likes wine too much to waste it by getting drunk, and I won’t let him upset me with the threat of other women. So what’s left? I think the gambling is him saying, look, I’m being bad. He’s doing it to spite me.’

‘Why should he want to do that?’ Slider said robustly. Why did women think everything a man did was because of them?

‘Oh, because I’m there. Like Everest.’ It was another Atherton expression. ‘He’s wound up tight as a watch spring and it has to come out somewhere, and I’m just handy. But I really am worried,’ she went on. ‘He’s getting through a lot of money, and now there’s this buying a racehorse thing – had he told you about it?’

‘He did mention something about it.’

‘He’s going to put all his spare into it, and I’m sure it’s a scam.’ She sounded quite different now, not amused, but chilled and anxious. ‘I just know he’s going to get really burnt, and I don’t know how he’ll cope. I wish there was something you could do.’