Body Line (17 page)

‘Well, yes, but he’d just say, “Oh, nothing, sorry,” and change the subject.’

‘How long had this “thinking” been going on?’

‘About two or three weeks, I suppose. Maybe longer.’

‘Can you pinpoint anything that might have started it?’

‘Not really,’ she said slowly, working back in her mind. ‘Except – well, he used to go to this place in Suffolk.’

‘What place?’

‘He didn’t say. You see, if we went out on a Tuesday, we’d go back to my place, but he hardly ever stayed the night because he said he had to get up really early, like crack of dawn, on Wednesdays to go to Suffolk. I just thought it was another hospital he worked at. Anyway, this Tuesday night – Tuesday before last – when he got out of bed, he came back to kiss me and said he wished he didn’t have to go. I said, well don’t, then, and he said he wished he never had to do that damned journey again, and for a minute he looked really—’ She sought the right word. ‘Really
bleak
. I thought he just meant that he wished we were living together, but I’m thinking now maybe he was talking about this Suffolk job. Because when he left he said he wasn’t sure about next week because things might be changing in his life. He said, “There’s a big decision to be made, and it could change everything.” Well, I thought he was talking about him and me. But maybe he meant this job. Anyway, the next week we met the same as usual, but it was from then, now I think about it, that he was in this funny mood.’ She looked at them anxiously. ‘He was definitely worrying about something. Do you think he knew what was going to happen? Was someone threatening him?’ Her eyes filled again. ‘I can’t bear to think he had that hanging over him, and didn’t tell me. He was too much of a gentleman to put something like that on me. Always wanted to protect me. But I could have taken it. I might have helped him.’

Slider handed over more napkins and said, ‘Are you sure he never said anything about where he went in Suffolk? Or why he went? The name of the hospital. Did he mention a town? Or tell you about his journey? You know – “there were roadworks on the A45”, or “the traffic was terrible through Saffron Walden”. Anything like that?’

‘No. He didn’t talk about driving or traffic or dull stuff like that.’

Definitely a man in a million, Slider thought. Where two or three men are gathered together, there shall routes be discussed. How could any red-blooded male drive regularly to Suffolk and never so much as mention the Army and Navy roundabout, necessity of avoiding, the Thetford bypass, difference made by, or the little-known short cut that shaved ten minutes off the Royston to Bury leg?

He changed tack. ‘You said you met him at the office. Did he often call in?’

‘No, I think I’ve only seen him there three or four times since we opened. I suppose
she
scared him off. But he rang her up sometimes. Nora answered the phone and put the calls through to Amanda, and I’d hear her say, “It’s David Rogers for you.”’

‘How often?’

‘Oh, not often. It’d be once a month or less – except this last few weeks. Then it was a couple of times a week.’

‘You didn’t ever hear anything that was said?’ Slider asked without hope.

She shook her head. ‘They weren’t long calls, and you could tell they made her mad, because she’d slam the phone down, and once I went in with some typing straight after and she had a face like thunder for a second before she hid it. I thought maybe he was trying to soften her up for him and me moving in together. But maybe—’ She looked at them with pitiful and failing hope. ‘I suppose it probably wasn’t that? I suppose it was this trouble he was in?’ Slider didn’t answer. ‘But why would he talk to her about it and not me about it? I thought he loved me.’

‘That was a sickening spectacle,’ Atherton commented when they were alone again, heading back for the car.

‘I like liver sausage,’ Slider said. ‘And no one asked you to watch me eat it.’

‘No, I was talking about that apparently normally intelligent woman deluding herself that a once or twice a week no-strings-attached bonk equates to true love and a happy-ever-after settlement. She didn’t even know where the man worked or what he did, for crying out loud! She’d never met any of his friends, never been to his house, and when he said he wanted their relationship kept secret she went along with it. What a complete and utter pap-brained loser!’

‘Don’t sugar-coat it,’ Slider advised. ‘Say what you really mean.’

Atherton enumerated on his long fingers. ‘So we know Amanda was talking to Rogers. That whatever it was was making her angry. That he had been worried about something lately. And then there’s this Suffolk business.’

‘Does it occur to you that Suffolk might just have been his excuse not to stay the night?’

‘Did it occur to you? What an unkind thought.’

‘On the other hand, if it was an excuse, why Suffolk? It seems a bizarre choice. He could have made it somewhere much further away, to be on the safe side. Or at least more exotic, to impress her. Catching a plane to Brussels, say – got to be at the airport at the crack, got to go home and pack a bag.’

‘And what about all this apocalyptic stuff? Big decision to make and everything could change?’

‘It sounds to me as if he was planning to dump her.’

‘Yes, that’s what I thought, too. Some rough beast of a big excuse was slouching towards Acton to be born.’

‘On the other hand, he did end up dead,’ Slider said, ‘so there could have been something going on. I’m inclined to think Suffolk might be genuine, just because it sounds so dopey as an excuse.’

‘But what was he going there for?’ Atherton asked. ‘On evidence so far, it was probably only another woman.’

As they came in from the yard, Nicholls popped his head out from the front shop. ‘Oh, Bill’

‘Nutty’ Nicholls, the handsome Scot with the lustrous accent from the far north-west, was one of the uniformed sergeants. He had a much-loved wife and a large family of daughters, which gave him a certain vibe that had every female he encountered wanting to nestle against his heart and tell him things. He also had a fine voice and was a leading light of the Hammersmith Police Players. His singing range was so wide that, in their latest production for charity, he had just been chosen to play Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz
, because he could sing it better than any of the female members. That he accepted the part was a sign of his confidence in himself. Not every man was so comfortable in his sexuality he could wear a pinafore dress and a long-blonde-plaits wig when there was any chance of colleagues seeing him. The Players only did four performances and the whole run was already a sell-out. O’Flaherty, another sergeant and Slider’s old friend, had assured him that he’d heard Nutty sing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ in rehearsal and ‘it had me heart scalded, so it did’.

They paused, and Atherton said, ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’

Nutty was un-phased. ‘Mock away. My back’s broad.’

‘But I hear you have a tiny waist.’

‘What is it, Nutty?’ Slider intervened.

‘At last, a sensible man. I will talk to you,’ said Nicholls. ‘There’s someone waiting to see you.’

‘To do with the Rogers case?’

‘Name of Frith, if that means anything to you. I put him in Interview One. I gave him tea and biscuits, but he looked at me like Bambi’s mother, so I think you should see him before he finishes the Hobnobs, or he might leap away into the forest.’

‘Is that your next production?’ Atherton asked with feigned interest.

‘We’re saving a part for you,’ Nutty assured him seriously. ‘You would do very well as Thumper. It is typecasting, really.’

Frith was on his feet when they went into the room, like someone just making up his mind to leave. Slider could smell the sweat through the aftershave – the new sweat of fear, must be, since it was not particularly warm out today, and the interview room, whose radiator hadn’t worked in weeks, was positively cool.

He looked sharply at Slider and Atherton, and said, ‘You’re the people who came to the house, to tell Amanda.’ It was not clear whether he thought that was a good or a bad thing.

‘Detective Inspector Slider and Detective Sergeant Atherton,’ Slider reintroduced them. ‘Won’t you sit down, Mr Frith. You wanted to speak to me?’

He sat, but only on the edge of the chair, as if retaining the right to leave at any moment. His eyes tracked from one of them to the other, and they were so large, and with such long lashes, that had they been dark instead of blue, Slider might have thought Nutty’s comparison valid. But Frith was a big man, bigger up close, and particularly in this confined space, than he had seemed out in the high-ceilinged hall of Amanda’s house: not especially tall, but muscular, and his face was lean and firm, and his shoulders were big, and his hands looked powerful. No, on second thoughts, there was nothing cervine about him. If he was nervous, it would not lead him to panic. He had twice won Badminton, and Slider knew enough about riding to know controlling half a ton of horse at speed over the toughest course in the world was not an option for the weak-minded or panicky.

Frith opened the campaign by attack. ‘You’ve been asking questions about me,’ he said. ‘And I’m guessing that the woman who’s been quizzing my staff and buying them drinks is one of yours. Sarratt is a small village, and in villages word gets round pretty quickly. So before you completely ruin my reputation and my business, I want to know what you mean by it.’

Slider drove the ball straight back down the wicket. ‘In the course of a murder investigation, many people are asked many questions. Why should it bother you?’

‘You asked my groom where I was on the morning David Rogers was murdered. That’s not just any question. That’s asking for an alibi, and that must mean you suspect me of something.’

‘Innocent people don’t need alibis,’ he said blandly.

‘Exactly,’ said Frith with some triumph.

‘Innocent people also don’t tell lies to the police.’ Which was not true, of course: people lied to the police all the time, about everything, for no apparent reason, or for reasons so inadequate as to make them seem like perfect imbeciles. But as Frith seemed to want to do a bit of verbal fencing, Slider obliged him, and was gratified to see him redden – whether with anger or shame he didn’t know, but at least it was discomfort.

‘I haven’t lied to you,’ Frith said, his voice hard. ‘In fact, as far as I am aware I haven’t been
asked
any questions, so how could I?’

‘You haven’t lied to
me
,’ Slider agreed amiably, ‘but you have lied about your whereabouts on Monday morning. You told your staff you were going to Archers, the feed merchant, but you weren’t there. Which means you were missing all of Monday morning, a time we are naturally interested in. So if your presence here means you have decided to come clean—’

‘Come clean?’ Frith said indignantly. ‘I’ve got nothing to come clean about! Now look, I don’t like your tone—’

Slider cut through the bluster. ‘There’s a simple way to resolve this. Just tell me where you were on Monday morning, and there’s an end to it.’

Frith maintained an angry silence, but he was not meeting Slider’s eyes any more. He seemed to be thinking, calculating. Wondering what he could get away with, Atherton thought.

‘Look,’ he said at last – the language of capitulation.

‘I’m looking,’ Slider said when the pause grew to long.

‘All right,’ said Frith, raising his eyes again. ‘I’ll tell you where I was – not that it’s any of your damn business, but I can see this won’t go away otherwise. But I want your word that this doesn’t go any further. That – well, you won’t tell anyone.’

‘Anyone?’

‘Amanda. That you won’t tell Amanda.’ His eyes shifted again. ‘You see, I was with someone. Well, a woman.’

Oh, not that one, Atherton thought wearily. Had he already primed whoever-it-was to back him up, or was he just hoping?

Interesting, Slider thought: it didn’t seem that Amanda had spoken to him yet about their visit this morning. That was a lucky thing. He might be able to get something out of Frith before they compared stories.

‘You’re seeing another woman?’ he said. ‘Who is it?’

Frith was looking both angry and embarrassed now. ‘It’s someone I’ve been seeing for a while. Well, Amanda and I aren’t married. Her decision. She says once bitten twice shy. It’s a bit insulting really – I mean, I’m not David. But I don’t want to go into that. The fact of the matter is that she likes to keep her independence. She has her own job, her own friends. She always says we’re not joined at the hip just because we live together. We’re two separate people. So there’s no earthly reason why I shouldn’t see someone else. The trouble is,’ he concluded with a short sigh, looking down at his big, strong hands, ‘I know she wouldn’t see it that way. We’ve known each other for a long time, and I know her pretty well. If she found out there was another woman she’d go completely bananas. So I’m asking you – very strongly – not to tell her.’

‘You’re having an affair?’ Slider said, hoping to goad him.

‘It’s not an affair,’ Frith said indignantly. ‘I keep telling you, Amanda and I aren’t married. I asked her for the first time when we were both seventeen, and I’ve asked her God knows how many times since. But she went off and married that oaf David. And look where that got her. I could have made her happy, but she decided she wanted that – that
obvious
bastard. I know he’s dead and all that, but it doesn’t change what he was. And when they separated, it was
her
came looking for
me
. I said then I’d marry her when she got divorced and she ummed and ahhed about it, but once the divorce came through she said she didn’t want to risk it again. This whole arrangement is her idea. She wants to keep her options open, just like she did when we were kids, always looking over her shoulder in case something better came along. I’ve actually heard her introduce me as her
lodger
. I’m just the stopgap. But she likes to keep a firm hold on her possessions, which means that
she’s
free to look around, but
I’m
not.’