Blood Sinister (27 page)

‘But that was—’

‘A woman’s thumb, yes – but not Phoebe Agnew’s.’

‘Wiped clean?’ Atherton said. Slider nodded. ‘Who would do that, except for the murderer? But it doesn’t make sense – if the murderer had been and gone, why would a woman go and flush the loo? And what woman?’

They looked at each other for a moment. ‘I have an idea’, Slider said unwillingly, ‘that I really don’t want to follow. It occurs to me that there’s someone else, apart from Prentiss and Medmenham, who’s been lying to us from the very beginning.’

‘Loyal little wifie?’ Atherton said, screwing up his face at the idea.

‘She said Prentiss had told her Agnew was dead on Friday morning; but he seemed not to know about it when we spoke to him on Friday afternoon. We assumed he was lying, but if he didn’t kill her, he was probably telling the truth. In that case, how did she know Agnew had been murdered?’

‘Yes, and what about that business of her referring to the way the body was left?’ Atherton said eagerly. ‘If Prentiss didn’t do it, he couldn’t have told her – so how did she know?’

‘She might possibly have learned that some other way,’ Slider said, being absolutely fair, ‘though in that case why shouldn’t she have said so? But then why was she so keen to give Prentiss an alibi?’

‘Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was trying to cover herself. If she was his alibi, he would be hers.’

Slider shook his head. ‘That doesn’t make sense. If Prentiss didn’t know he had to cover her, he would tell a different story – as in fact he did.’

‘Maybe she hoped she could get to him before we did, to coach him.’

‘Still no good. When their stories did finally agree – after they’d had time to collude – it still didn’t cover her for the necessary time. He was at Colehern’s flat, but where was she? At home and unaccountable.’

‘Hmm,’ said Atherton. ‘But why should she want to kill her best friend? And would that little slip of a thing be strong enough to strangle a big woman like Agnew – especially when she had a bad back?’

‘Probably not – unless Agnew was really drunk. I don’t know. There’s something there, I’m sure, but I don’t know what. Mrs Prentiss has been acting strangely from the beginning.’

‘Well, both Prentiss and Piers said she’d been depressed. Maybe it’s nothing more than that. Unconnected irrationality.’

‘Maybe,’ said Slider. He got up, picking up his papers. ‘I’ll see you later,’ he said vaguely.

‘You haven’t finished your sausage,’ Atherton protested.

‘Hmm?’ Slider said.

‘Stick it behind your ear for later,’ Atherton suggested. ‘Okay,’ Slider said, evidently too preoccupied to understand what was being said to him.

Eltham Road had a Saturday quiet about it, the sleeping cars of the at-home workers lining the kerbs with an air of having their eyes shut tight. Do not disturb. Slider had to park dangerously near the corner, but there wasn’t much traffic about. He just hoped no boy-racer in a BMW came round it too quickly.

Atherton was, even now, probably, driving down to view his wonder-horse; Slider was on his own, without his usual sounding-board. The idea that had been growing on him over the past eighteen hours seemed so far out he could have done with a sceptical audience to tell him whether he was cur-dog hunting, or on a scent.

The house opposite Phoebe Agnew’s flat was one of the unmodernised ones, shabby and dirty-curtained. The January light was as pale and sticky as aphid’s milk, but the man who answered the door of the area flat blinked up at Slider like a purblind pit-pony. He was tiny, collapsed together by age, and wrinkled like a relief map of the Himalayas.

‘I’m Detective Inspector Slider from the Shepherd’s Bush police,’ Slider said carefully and clearly, holding up his ID. ‘Can I come in and talk to you?’

It took a while to sink in – you could almost see the
wait
symbol in his eyes as his underpowered computer struggled to boot up – but then he smiled a pleased, shy smile of tea-stained china teeth, and said, ‘Oh yes, that’s right, come in, thank you very much.’

The door opened straight into the sitting-room. The room smelled of paraffin, and had a superficial, smeary warmth that did not quite mask the cavernous dank chill underneath. There was a variety of grubby rugs covering the floor, a pair of sagging
brown armchairs bracketing the fireplace, and a Utility sideboard bearing an ancient radio with a chipped plastic dial. A small television stood on a square plant stand with barley-sugar legs, and there was a gateleg table against the wall with an upright chair on either side of it.

Clutter fouled every surface, heaps of old newspapers mouldered in corners, and on the mantelpiece sheaves of letters and bills spouted from behind a square electric clock whose art-deco face had a peach-mirror frame which dated it to the 1930s. The fabric had worn off its flex, and the bare wires showed through, dangling down the side of the fireplace to the unreconstructed Bakelite plug in the skirting.

The paraffin heater was milk-bar green, chimney-shaped, and stood on the hearthstone. The old man saw Slider looking at it, and said, ‘Bit pongy, is it? I don’t mind the smell o’ parafeen meself. Some do. It’s a nice, clean smell, to my mind, like the smell o’ tar or queer soap. Any road up, it works out cheaper’n the electric.’

‘It takes me back,’ Slider said. ‘We had them at home when I was a boy.’ It hadn’t been the smell of the paraffin he had been sniffing warily, but of the old man himself. His grey flannel trousers were much stained, and the various layers of clothes on his upper body – vest and shirt and knitted waistcoat and jumper and cardigan – were all grubby and food-spotted; his thin hair, carefully combed back in a Ronald Coleman, looked as if it hadn’t been washed for weeks. He smelled terrible; but he stood alert as a pre-war pageboy, ready to spring into action, clearly pleased with Slider’s presence, as though it were a social visit.

‘Make you a cuppa tea, sir?’ he said next.

Slider didn’t want to think what might lurk in the kitchen regions. ‘No, thank you. That’s very kind, but no,’ he said firmly. ‘I just want to talk to you about—’

‘That lot opposite,’ he finished for him smartly. ‘Hanythink I can do to ’elp, I’m most willin’. One o’ your gentlemen ’as been here already.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Slider said. He thought the old boy would enjoy a bit of formality to make him feel important, so he took out a notebook and flipped it open. ‘It’s Mr Singer, isn’t it?’

‘Singer, that’s right, sir, like the sewing-machine. Albert Singer. Won’t you sit down, sir?’

The upright chairs looked less lethal, but Mr Singer was gesturing towards one of the fireside models, and Slider resigned himself and sat, keeping to the front edge so as not to have to lean back into its sinister embrace. The old man hovered attentively until Slider was down, then murmured, ‘Thank you very much’, and placed himself nippily in the other, hitching at his trouser legs as he sat until the pale, spindly shins gleamed above the grey socks and crimson bedroom slippers.

‘Now, Mr Singer, concerning Thursday night last week—’

‘Yessir, Thursday night, that’s right,’ he interposed eagerly.

‘You mentioned that you saw a woman behaving strangely.’

‘That’s right,’ Mr Singer said, fidgeting with pleasure. ‘I mentioned it to the gentleman as come before, only ’e wasn’t too int’rested in a woman, wanted to know about a man.’

Slider nodded. That was DC Cook, on loan from Ron Carver’s firm, who hadn’t had the patience to probe further.
Did you see a man? No? All right. No, we’re not interested in a woman
. The resentment of having to work on some other firm’s case, plus an old man like a troglodyte living down a smelly hole, had sent him skipping over this piece of evidence like a stone on a pond. Cook’s ingrained training, however, had ensured that he made a bare note that Singer had said he saw a woman acting suspiciously, for which Slider could now be thankful.

‘I ’ave to say I never pertickly noticed a man,’ Mr Singer went on. ‘I mean, there’s people up and down the street all day, any number of ’em. I couldn’t say one way or the other about any pertickler man. But this woman stuck in my mind.’

‘I’d like you to tell me about her,’ Slider said. ‘Do you remember what time of day it was?’

‘Course I do! Thursday night it was, about twenty to nine. I ’ad
The Week in Westminster
on, an’ I was waitin’ for nine o’clock to turn over to the Weld Service. Listen to that a lot, I do, the Weld Service. They talk proper, like the old days on the BBC – not like the modern lot, can’t hardly understand a word they’re saying. Gabblin’ and funny accents. I don’t mind a Jock or a Paddy or the rest of ’em,’ he added fairly. ‘Met a lot of them in the Services, in the war. They’re all right. But
not on the BBC, to my mind. Oughta talk proper on the BBC.’ He paused, lost. ‘I ferget where I was.’

‘It was twenty to nine—’

‘Oh, yes. Thank you very much. Well, like I said, I’m waitin’ to turn over for the news hour at nine, see.’ He looked anxiously at Slider. ‘This is how I know what time it ’appened, you understand?’

‘Yes, I understand. Please go on,’ Slider said.

‘Right,’ Mr Singer said, reassured. ‘Well, I’m not reely listenin’ to
The Week in Westminster
, see, an’ I’m standin’ at the winder lookin’ out.’

‘It would have been dark outside,’ Slider said.

The old man nodded approvingly at his quickness. ‘That’s right, sir. What I do, sometimes, is I ’ave the curtains closed, an’ I stand atween them an’ the winder, see? Cuts off the light. I can see out, but no-one else can’t see me.’

‘Why would you do that?’

‘Oh, just lookin’. No ’arm, is it? Weld goin’ by, sort o’ style.’ Slider nodded. ‘Anyway, I see this woman. She’s standin’ by the pillar at the top o’ my steps, leanin’ against it, sort of, looking at the ’ouse across the road.’

‘The house where the murder happened?’

‘That’s right,’ Singer nodded. ‘Ten minutes, it must o’ been she stood there, just lookin’. Ever so still, she stood. Unusual that. People fidget about, mostly, when they stand, but she stood stock still, just like a soldier.’ It had plainly impressed him, for he paused to replay the image in his mind.

‘And what happened next?’ Slider prompted after a moment.

‘Well, something must of ’appened, because she like stiffens, as if she’s seen something; then she moves away from the pillar a little bit and looks down the road, like she’s watching somethink. She stays lookin’ in that direction for a bit. And then she goes back to watching the ’ouse. An’ after about anover five minutes, she starts across the road.’

‘Could you see that from down here?’ Slider asked.

‘Well, sir,’ the old man said, leaning forward and hitching again at his trousers in his eagerness – they were practically up to his knees now – ‘I can’t see the road, that’s true, because of the angle and the cars, but I
can
see the door of the ’ouse opposite, on account of it’s up the steps. And I see her go up
to the door and go in. Try for yourself,’ he added on a happy thought.

Slider went to the window. The area wall straight ahead hid the road but, yes, he could see two thirds of Phoebe Agnew’s front door. Probably the old man, given his lack of height, would only see half of it, but it would be enough to see the head and shoulders of a person going in.

‘Can you say more exactly what time that was?’

‘Well, sir, no,’ Mr Singer said regretfully. ‘Not exactly. But near as I can say it would a’ bin between ten to and five to. It wasn’t long afore the wireless give the time at nine o’clock, and I ’as to turn over.’

‘You didn’t see the woman come out?’

‘No, sir. I left the winder, see, when I turned over for the news hour, and then I never went back. But she never come out afore nine.’

Slider nodded. ‘Well, that’s very helpful, Mr Singer, thank you.’

‘Thank
you
, sir. Glad to ’elp.’

‘Now, can you describe the woman to me?’

He shook his head sadly. ‘I couldn’t see her face – too far away, and she ’ad ’er back to me most o’ the time. But I’d say she was young. Slim. Short ’air—’

‘Light or dark?’

‘Dark,’ he said certainly. ‘She ’ad trowsis on, but not them jeans, dark ones. And proper shoes, not them trainers. She looked like a lady,’ he added. ‘Y’know what I mean? Not one o’ these modern girls, all bits an’ pieces, hair like a rat’s nest an’ no manners.’

Slider nodded. ‘I think I know what you mean.’

‘An’ she stood still as a soldier. I’ll never forget that.’

‘One last thing, Mr Singer – do you live here alone?’

‘Yes, I do, sir, since the wife went. Passed on nearly ten year ago. I manage all right but—’ He looked round as if suddenly struck by his surroundings, and gave a little, deprecating smile. ‘I dunno what she’d think o’ the way I keep the place. But it’s not in a man’s nacher to be tidy, is it, sir? That’s what I reckon. Wimmin are nachrally tidy. Looking after us, an’ tidyin’ up, it’s in their make-up. That’s why they’re no good at inventin’ things. There wouldn’t be no jet engines nor motor cars nor anythink if
it was left to them, ’cos they only see what’s in front of their eyes, an’ as soon as a man makes a mess, they wanna tidy it up. But you can’t make somethink without makin’ a mess, now can you? It ain’t reasonable. That’s why you never get no wimmin inventors.’