Body Line (13 page)

‘No, I trust you. So what does that leave us with?’

Hollis picked it up. ‘There was one car, with the last letter a W. It was an Astra, not a BMW, but it was in an RTA a couple o’ months ago and written off. Went to a scrapyard in Stanmore – Embry’s.’

It was a well-known ploy. Just as those wanting a false identity trawled churchyards for names of people who died in infancy but would have been the right age had they lived, so those wanting false number plates trawled scrapyards for dead cars of the right vintage.

‘It’s worth looking into,’ Slider said. ‘Let’s put that number through the ANPR. If we get a ping on a dead one, we’ll know we’re in business.’

‘Might get a picture of the driver, too,’ Atherton said. ‘Wouldn’t that be nice?’

‘It would be wonderful,’ Slider said, ‘if it were Robin Frith. But if it’s a complete stranger . . .’

‘Anyone can hire a professional killer.’

‘Yes, but tracing him back to the one with the motive is the good trick,’ Slider concluded.

The ANPR did its thing and the number of the scrapped car duly came up, striking joy into all hearts.

‘What you might call,’ Slider said, looking round at the happy faces, ‘a motorized transport.’ Given that the carcase belonging to the number was mouldering in its unmarked gave, it was the strongest indication that they were on the right lines.

‘The first ping is at the West Cross roundabout,’ Atherton enthused, ‘a few hundred yards from Masbro Road and the obvious way out of Shepherd’s Bush for anyone trying to get far, far away in as short a time as possible.’

The computer picked it up on the A40 at Hanger Lane, and then at Henley’s Corner on the North Circular, turning on to the M1. At Five Ways Corner, where the M1 and the A41 join, it was seen again, and at Apex Corner it was on the A41. The final ping caught it at the roundabout where the A410 joins the A41.

‘Nothing after that,’ Hollis said, ‘so it didn’t stay on the A41, or it would’ve been caught at the next roundabout, which is the M1 Junction 4.’

‘If he’d wanted to be on the M1 he wouldn’t’ve come off at Five Ways,’ McLaren pointed out.

‘So the assumption is he came off on to the A410, and since the car – or at least the number plate – doesn’t appear again, he must have gone to ground somewhere near there,’ said Slider.

‘The number hasn’t been noted anywhere since,’ Atherton confirmed. ‘Though we asked Hendon to keep a look out, in case it moves again.’

‘And by a strange and yet delightful coincidence, the first place on the A410 is Stanmore,’ said Slider. ‘Ladies and germs, I think we have our getaway car.’

‘Now all we have to do is find the driver,’ Atherton said. ‘It’s a pity the computer didn’t give us a good look at him.’

‘This is the best photo,’ Hollis said, ‘when he were stopped at traffic lights on the A410 roundabout, but it’s not clear. You can see it’s a man, dark-haired, with a dark top on.’

‘It
could
be Frith,’ Atherton said, leaning over the print. ‘Can’t tell for certain. He’s tall enough, and he’s got enough hair.’

Slider also looked. ‘Frith was very tanned. Doesn’t this man look a bit pale?’

‘Just the way the light works,’ Atherton said. ‘You can’t tell if he’s tanned or not. The more I look at it, the more it looks like Frith to me.’

‘Hmm,’ said Slider. ‘Not certain enough. Pity. We need to get Frith’s fingerprints to rule him definitely in or out. Unless Connolly establishes an alibi for him, I’m getting close to the point where I think we’ll have to pay another visit to Ealing Common – loath as I am to upset them needlessly – just so we don’t keep chasing our tails. But first let’s have a look at the scrapyard, take this photo, such as it is, along, see if someone who looks like this was hanging around there recently.’

‘Send McLaren,’ Atherton suggested. ‘He can talk cars for hours.’

Slider looked at his watch. ‘Too late tonight. They’d be shut by the time he got there. It’ll have to be tomorrow morning.’

Connolly was back from Hemel Hempstead, looking pleased with herself. Slider, Hollis and Atherton were still in the factory, Slider toiling over the paperwork, Hollis filling in rotodex cards and Atherton still trawling for information on either Windhover or the Geneva Foundation. The latter two followed her to Slider’s office to hear her report.

‘Archers is a big place, guv. I don’t know why, but I was expecting some little High Street seed merchant, pet shop sort o’ yoke. But it’s got a forty-foot frontage, and they’ve a grand big yard at the back for lorries, and a warehouse beyond like a barn. Me heart sank when I saw it, thinking it would be all impersonal; but they knew who Robin Frith was all right. There was this nice owl me-dad sort o’ feller – grey hair and specs – in a brown overall who turned out to be Mr Archer himself. I told him Robin Frith had recommended me to come there, and his face kind o’ lit up as if I’d mentioned his favourite nephew. Then it turns out he’s known Frith all his life, used to see him compete in juvenile classes when he was at Merridee’s – that’s the Chipperfield stable. His daughter was about the same age – Mr Archer’s – and they used to ride in the same competitions. It was gas, the way he was telling me all this! And when Frith bought Hillbrow he took his whole feed and straw order to Archers, so you can see why they like him.’

‘What reason did you give for asking about Frith?’ Slider wanted to know.

‘I said I was buying a horse and wanted to get an idea of feed and bedding costs, and that Frith had said Archers would treat me fair,’ Connolly answered. ‘But the way it was, I didn’t need an excuse. Mr Archer was only too happy to chat. He had me ear bent the moment I said the name Frith.’

It was Connolly herself, Slider thought. It couldn’t be coincidence that she kept falling in with people ready to tell her their entire life story without provocation. She was a real asset to the Department.

‘So anyway,’ Connolly went on, ‘I said I’d spoken to Frith on Sunday and that he’d said he was coming in to Archers on Monday and would tell them to expect me. But Mr Archer says Frith didn’t come in on Monday at all. So I say, maybe I got the day wrong. And he says Robin Frith hasn’t been to the shop in months. There’s no need, they know what he wants and he just rings an order through. I ask if he’s quite sure he didn’t come in, maybe someone else spoke to him, so he asks around and everyone agrees, Frith didn’t come in on Monday, and it would be a bit of an event if he did show up in person so they’d be sure to notice. Then the owl feller looks a bit worried and asks why I’m asking, and I shrug it off and say I must have misunderstood, but anyway I’ll definitely be coming to Archers for me feed, and that cheers him up and he forgets all about it.

‘So then when I get outside I ring your woman Andy to check with her that it was definitely Archers Frith said he was going to, because I’m there now, looking into feed for the horse I’m going to buy, and I want to be sure it’s the right place. So she says yes, it was definitely Archers, and he definitely said he’d be late in on Monday on account of going there first, straight from home. She knows it was Archers because he said Fred Archer had got some new kind of horse nuts in that he wanted to show him, that were going to be better and cheaper than his usual. And anyway, she says, that’s the only merchant he uses, and he goes in there every six or eight weeks to discuss things with Archer himself.’

She beamed around at them.

‘Beautiful,’ said Atherton.

‘It was grand,’ she agreed. ‘It has your man’s alibi destroyed. Did he think no one would check up, the eejit?’

‘Criminals
are
idiots,’ Atherton asserted. ‘This calls for a drink.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Time to pack up, anyway. Who’s for a pint?’

‘I’m your man,’ Connolly said. ‘Me mouth’s as dry as a nun’s growler.’

‘I don’t even want to think what that means,’ Atherton said. ‘Colin? Guv?’

‘I’ve still got some stuff to finish,’ Hollis said.

Slider shook his head. ‘Go with my blessing, children. I’ve got thinking to do.’

Thinking, among other things, that while Frith’s alibi had turned out to be laughably inadequate, a man didn’t need an alibi at all if he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Amanda had been less than honest with Slider, and now Frith had shown he was hiding something. They had become more interesting to him, not less – proving the truth of the old saying, that honesty was the best policy.

SEVEN

Fingers in Pies

S
lider was packing up to go home when Freddie Cameron rang again. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Apparently,’ Slider said gravely. ‘Was that all you rang to find out?’

‘Don’t get snippy with me, my lad, or I shan’t tell you what just occurred to me.’

‘Go on, then. I’ll buy it.’

‘I have a strong feeling that the reason I thought I knew the name David Rogers was that he was involved in a scandal some time back. Normally I don’t pay attention to scurrilous gossip, but when it’s a doctor that’s involved, the old antennae tend to twitch all on their own.’

‘Scurrilous, eh?’

‘If it was the same man. Something about furgling a female patient.’

‘That sounds like Rogers, from what we know of him. Could have furgled for England.’

‘Now, I’m not certain, mind,’ Freddie warned. ‘As I said, it’s a pretty common name. But worth checking on?’

‘Certainly. Thanks Freddie. Any idea
when
it happened?’

‘Sorry, old horse. A longish time, anyway. But it was in all the papers. Bit of a cause celeb at the time. You ought to be able to track it down. If it was him. And not Roger David or any of the other combinations.’

‘Right.’

A few minutes later, when he switched off his light, he saw there was still a light in the CID office next door, so he went out that way, and found Hollis still there, office-managering away at his desk. He looked up. ‘I’m just about finished, guv. Putting a coupla last things to bed.’

‘Fine. I’m just going home myself.’ Slider told him what Freddie Cameron had said. ‘The quickest way to get a handle on it might be to put Rogers’s fingerprints through the system. There may have been a criminal investigation at the time. If not, then it will mean trawling newspapers or going through the BMA, which will take a lot longer.’ These professional bodies were always reluctant to part with information, especially if the business had been hushed up. And if Rogers was still doctoring, it must have been. But if there had been a case, even if it had been dropped, his fingerprints would still be on record.

‘I’ll get on to it, guv,’ Hollis said.

‘No need to worry now. Tomorrow will do. Rogers isn’t going anywhere.’

And neither, Slider thought as he headed down the stairs to his car, was the case.

McLaren and Fathom went together to Embry’s scrapyard, in case of trouble, and they went early, in the hope of getting the owners to themselves. Stanmore was at the outer edge of London: the A410 – which bore various names along its length but was called the Uxbridge Road at that point – was like a boundary line, with near solid suburban street development below it, and countryside above. Here, on the map, lanes petered out like streams running into sand, and buried their ends in farms, woods, public open spaces, sports fields and the like. So there was plenty of room for a large scrapyard to be hidden behind a fringe of poplar trees – probably put in at the urging of the locals, because a scrapyard was not the most beautiful thing to have on your horizon.

As well as the trees, Embry’s yard was fenced around with twenty-foot high steel railings topped with razor wire. Behind lay an automotive Goodwin Sands. The wrecks, once gleaming with new paint and the hopes and desires of their owners, lay sadly rusting in rows and stacked rudely on top of each other, awaiting the stripping of their useful parts and the final appointment with the crusher on the far side. Appropriately, a crow perched on top of the crane was yarking in a desolate, Edgar Allen Poe sort of way as McLaren and Fathom got out of their car. Both being geezers to the core they did not notice the sad poetry of the place, and the only comment voiced was Fathom’s: ‘Wonder if I could get a dynamo here for me Dad’s old MG?’

Dogs began barking as they walked towards the hut which housed the office. One was a Rottweiler chained to a kennel at one end of the hut; the other was a Dobermann on a chain held by the man who emerged from the office, and stood just outside waiting for them. He was squat and neckless, with a boxer’s arms and shoulders, a squashed nose and pitiful ears. His brow was low, and made lower by his ferocious scowl, and he had an old scar down one cheek which had puckered slightly and pulled up one corner of his mouth into what looked like a cynical smile. All in all, a face a little girl wouldn’t want to kiss goodnight. The eyes under the scowl were cold and grey as lead, and they clocked McLaren and Fathom effortlessly as coppers.

‘What do you lot want?’ he asked, as unfriendly as his dog, which had given up barking for snarling.

‘Just a little chat,’ McLaren said. ‘You Embry?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘Come to do you a favour.’

Embry snorted. ‘Be the day!’

‘Reckon you’ve had a bit of trouble with theft.’