Blood Sinister (38 page)

So that, thought Swilley, was the origin of the stance against abortion. She could imagine a hot-blooded girl like Phoebe Agnew, an intelligent girl, flying into a rage at the tactlessness of this man, flying to the defence of the sister who had worked to put her through school. ‘So what happened?’ she asked.

‘In the end I persuaded him to let Phoebe stay until after Christmas. It was a dreadful time, though.’ Understatement of the year, thought Swilley. She could imagine it. ‘Then I helped her get into one of those mother-and-baby homes, in Nottingham. The baby was born in March 1970 and they arranged for it to be adopted.’ She stopped again, staring at the illuminated plastic coals of the electric fire in the imitation Adam fireplace. ‘She came to see me just after she’d signed the adoption papers. It was in the daytime, when Nigel was at work. She cried and cried and cried. I’ve never seen anyone cry so much. And then she stopped and blew her nose and said, “Well, that’s that.” And she started talking about Vietnam.’ She shook her head. ‘She never spoke about it from that moment onwards, and I don’t think she ever cried again, for anything. At least, I never saw her. She just put it out of her head. I never understood how she could do that. And then Nigel came home and she got up and left. Not a word of thanks to him for all he’d done for her. She went off, and we didn’t see her for a couple of years.’

‘Do you know where she went?’

‘To America, to join the anti-Vietnam movement. She was there until her visa ran out. Then it was back to Chile, I think, and then – oh, I forget. She was always off somewhere. She used to phone me sometimes, but that was all. She lived on a commune in Wales for a while, I think. She was such an embarrassment to Nigel. I sometimes half think she did it deliberately to annoy him.’

She said it idly, as if she didn’t mean it, but Swilley wondered if she hadn’t hit on a truth, or at least a part of it. A life spent not just protesting against man’s general inhumanity to man, but against Nigel Cosworth’s specific inumanity to the Agnew sisters.

‘Eventually, of course, she settled down – or at least, she became a bit more respectable. Once she was established as a proper journalist and started to get famous, Nigel took to her a bit more, and she started visiting us again. Of course, he disapproved of her subject matter a lot of the time. Well, most of the time, if I’m honest. But she was very well thought of in her own circles, and he respected that.’

I bet he did, the nasty snob.

‘I can’t say they ever liked each other, but they were polite
to each other – for my sake, I suppose.’ She looked up. ‘And now she’s dead. Do you know who did it?’

‘No,’ said Swilley. ‘I’m afraid we don’t yet.’

Mrs Cosworth sighed. ‘Nigel says it must have been one of her hippie friends. That living the way she did, it’s only surprising it didn’t happen before. He said—’ She stopped.

‘That it served her right?’ Swilley suggested. She had a fair picture of the sort of conversation that went on between the Cosworths regarding the sister-in-law.

Mrs Cosworth didn’t answer directly. ‘He’s a good man,’ she said. ‘He’s just of a different generation. He never understood Phoebe. Well, frankly, neither did I. She was my own sister, but I never understood how she got to be so hard. She never seemed to have any feelings for anyone. She never married, you know, despite being so beautiful. Nigel said she wasn’t like a woman at all, so it wasn’t surprising no-one would have her; but it’s my belief that plenty wanted her, she just didn’t want them.’

‘What about the father of the baby?’ Swilley asked. ‘Did she want to marry him?’

‘She never said anything about him. I asked, of course, but she wouldn’t even tell me his name. I never knew from that day to this who it was. Nigel said’, she added, seeming to have lost some of her protective reserve about her husband, ‘that she probably didn’t know herself.’

Nigel, thought Swilley, was just a total peach.

According to the Nottingham police, the mother-and-baby home had closed down in 1975.

‘It’s interesting,’ Swilley commented to Slider. ‘There’s just this window of about ten years when hundreds of thousands of babies went for adoption. Before that girls didn’t have sex, or the boys married them. After that, they knew about contraception, or they kept the babies themselves.’

It had been a privately run home, but the premises it used were council-owned. In the absence of any other information, it was to be assumed that the records would have gone back to City Hall and stored somewhere there; but it would be a long job, as preliminary enquiries proved, to find anyone who knew where they were precisely, or would even be willing to
look. The other way would be through the County Courts, or the Central Register, almost equally time-consuming.

‘Does it matter, boss?’ Swilley asked, when she came to report failure so far. ‘I mean, what’s the baby got to do with anything?’

Slider got up and walked to the window, and Atherton shifted over to make room for him. The short afternoon was fading, and the yellow of shop lights made the grey seem greyer. ‘It occurred to me, you see,’ he said, ‘that the weirdest thing about her last day was that supper. This woman who hated cooking and lived a gypsy life in a reconstructed student bedsit. Who would she cook chicken casserole and tiramisu for? She even went out and bought a cookery book for the occasion. Who is the only person in the world who cooks for you, apart from your lover or wife?’

‘Your mum,’ Atherton said, getting there.

Swilley stared. ‘You think she’d somehow traced her kid and invited him round for a nosh?’

‘I can’t think who else she would go to the trouble for. Lorraine Tucker said she was flushed and excited when she met her with an armful of groceries that day. And she tidied up the flat, which everyone says she never did, not even for a lover. If she wasn’t in love, what else could it be?’

Swilley nodded slowly. ‘It makes sense, I suppose. But how would she find out?’

Atherton came in. ‘She researched. She was used to doing research, she knew how to go about it. And who had she been researching for the past six months?’

‘Richard Tyler,’ Slider said. ‘A junior minister at the amazingly young age of twenty-eight. Which would mean he was born in 1970.’

‘If we—’

‘I did,’ Slider anticipated. ‘I phoned Mrs Brissan. March 1970, she said, according to the Parliamentary
Who’s Who
.’

‘A lot of people must have been born in March 1970,’ said Swilley. ‘Was he adopted?’

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t say.’

‘It would be a large size in coincidences,’ Atherton said.

‘Maybe not so very large,’ Slider said. ‘When girls gave up their babies for adoption in those days, they were asked if they
had any stipulations about the adoptees – religion or particular interests or whatever. And the stipulations were followed when possible. Phoebe Agnew might well have stipulated that her child must go to politically conscious parents. It was the biggest thing in her life, then as later. And since she was an intelligent white girl, there would have been a lot of competition for her baby, so the agents would have been able to be choosy.’

‘Okay so far,’ Atherton said cautiously.

‘Tyler’s father comes from an old Nottinghamshire family, and his parents lived at Stanton-on-the-Wolds, which is less than ten miles from Nottingham. And Richard’s the only child. If they couldn’t have children of their own, and applied to adopt, they’d have filled Phoebe’s requirements perfectly. I know it’s all speculation, but it fits.’

Atherton wrinkled his nose. ‘You think she started doing the biography as an excuse to find out if he was her son?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Slider said. ‘Why should she ever begin to wonder if he was? No, I would suspect it was the other way round. He was her biography choice because he was hot. Then, as she went into his background, she started to have her suspicions.’

‘Another long coincidence?’

‘Not coincidence – concurrence,’ Slider said. ‘People with the same interests tend to end up in the same place. Tyler was brought up by a political family, so he went into politics. That’s natural. And he had the talent – that might be hereditary. Phoebe Agnew was a political creature and ended up in the same general circle, which is not, after all, such a large one that everyone doesn’t know everyone else. And then she picked on Tyler for sound commercial reasons. Not coincidental at all, when you think of it – inevitable, rather.’

‘She might also have been attracted to him without knowing why,’ Swilley said. ‘I read an article that said you are naturally attracted to people who look a bit like you.’

‘Explains a lot about incest,’ said Atherton. ‘Does he look like her?’

‘I’ve never studied him closely enough to find out. That’s the thing about recognising people. You have to know what you’re looking for before you see it,’ Slider said.

‘But I don’t see how it helps us,’ Atherton sighed. ‘Why should
anyone kill her for being Tyler’s mother? And what about Piers? Where does he come into it?’

‘Besides, boss,’ Swilley said. ‘I’ve just thought – it couldn’t have been Tyler she did supper for, because Medmenham said when he spoke to Piers on the Thursday evening, he said his new lover had been with him all day and had only just left.’

‘Yes, he did say that,’ Slider said. ‘But I’ve looked at the notes on our interview with Piers, and he told us that Tyler left on the Thursday morning. I wonder whether he told Piers to say he was there all day, in case he needed an alibi. But Piers was such a plonker he forgot by the time we came to see him.’

‘What would he want an alibi for?’ Atherton said. ‘We know whoever ate the meal didn’t kill her, because Josh Prentiss was there afterwards.’

‘He might just not want anyone to know she was his mother. She wasn’t exactly an asset, was she?’

‘I don’t know – eminent, prize winning journalist, all the right political connections—’

‘But with a wild past, a scruffy lifestyle, and in any case not as eminent and respectable as his parents. And some people still think there’s a stigma about being adopted,’ said Slider.

Norma shook her head. ‘I can’t see her telling, if he didn’t want her to. Why would she?’

‘Are you kidding?’ Atherton said, ‘It would be a bombshell for her biography – certain best-sellerdom.’

‘Yes, but she wouldn’t sacrifice her own kid for money like that.’

Atherton snorted, and Slider intervened calmly. ‘Still, he might want to keep any contact between them to a minimum, and it would probably cause comment if it was known he had been at her house. I can see how he might want that kept secret.’

‘I suppose clearing up who ate the meal would be a help to us, even if he wasn’t the murderer,’ Atherton said. ‘What are you going to do, guv?’

‘Ask him, I suppose,’ said Slider. ‘If I’m right about this, and it was him she cooked supper for, he might have some other information that would explain the connection between the two murders.’

Atherton boggled. ‘You’re going to ask Richard Tyler –
the
Richard Tyler – if he’s the illegitimate son of Phoebe Agnew?’

‘Why not?’

‘Lions’ den time,’ Atherton said. ‘Sooner you than me.’

It took a long time to get hold of Richard Tyler. Given the difficulties Slider had already caused by his pursuit of Giles Freeman, he felt he ought to clear it through Porson before he tackled him. He told Porson he just wanted to talk to Tyler about Piers Prentiss – background stuff, to see if he said anything that could suggest a connection between the two murders. He said nothing about any of the other possibilities he was pondering. If they were put up front, he’d never get an interview at all.

Everyone else had gone home by the time the phone rang with his permission. Tyler would see him that evening in his private office at the House. Slider received the news without joy. He had spent the waiting time making other enquiries and piecing things together, and for the last half-hour had been sitting alone and thinking, and his thoughts had brought him only darkness. He collected up his papers, shoved them into a folder, and went out. It was getting colder, as forecast. He looked up automatically to see if the sky was clearing, but of course in the middle of Town, with the street lights, you couldn’t see the sky at night. Clouds or stars, they were equally hidden. The weather was what happened – you weren’t allowed to predict it.

He was shown into Tyler’s office at exactly nine-thirty. Tyler was standing behind his desk, talking on the telephone while with the other hand he flicked through a pile of papers. His eyes registered Slider and he nodded, and freed his hand to gesture to the large leather chair on the other side of the desk, without breaking the rhythm of his speech.

Slider had a few moments to study him. The general look of Tyler was familiar to him from newspapers and the television
screen, but of course in the flesh people have details to be taken in which make them quite different, close up, from their image. The rather long, smooth, pale face, and the dark brown hair slicked back with gel were what he knew, together with the exquisite suiting and elegantly dashing silk tie. What was new was that he was much taller than Slider had expected, and broad at the chest – Slider had gained an impression of slenderness from the TV, but Tyler was quite well built, and what he had taken to be padding in the shoulders was all him. The television also didn’t do justice to the remarkably beautiful, luminous hazel eyes, or the firmness of the wide, narrow-lipped mouth. He had read descriptions of Tyler as ‘feline’ but that didn’t really cover it. Feral, he thought; and ruthless. He was apparently very popular with women, and Slider could see why: he’d provide a safe but exciting ride, and look very, very good to be on the arm of.