Dead End (22 page)

‘Let’s get busy,’ he said.

Slider had meant to go straight to Joanna’s, but at the last minute he had an attack of nerves, and decided to call in at the station first for a wash and brush-up and a clean pair of socks. He was sorry to see Barrington’s car in the yard, and sorrier still to find a message on his desk summoning him to the presence as soon as he came in.

It struck him as he went in that Barrington was definitely showing signs of strain. There was something almost ragged
about his movements, and though his face was still as inexpressive as tufa, his eyes were no longer steady, but moved and shifted all the time he spoke.

‘You wanted to see me, sir? I was just going off.’

He expected to be asked about the progress of the case, but Barrington had other things of greater import on his mind.

‘You’ve just driven into the car park, I assume?’

‘Yes, sir.’ This was an odd tack. Slider began to fear the worst.

‘And did you notice anything?’ Slider was silent. A man does not lime his own twig. ‘Did you see my car there?’

‘Yes, I did notice it,’ Slider said cautiously. Should he add a word of praise? Jolly clean it looked too? I always wanted one of those myself?

‘And what did you notice about it?’

Slider lost patience. ‘Would you tell me what all this is about, sir?’

Barrington turned like a man goaded beyond endurance. ‘What it’s about, Slider, is parking! The cars in the yard are so badly parked that I was unable to get into my own space! I had to park half across the space next to it!’

Slider was still groping in the dark. The space next to Barrington’s was his. ‘That’s all right, sir. I just put mine on the end. It doesn’t matter.’

‘It most emphatically does matter, Inspector,’ Barrington said in cold rage. ‘What do you think the lines are there for? Do you think they were put there for people to ignore? It only takes one person to park carelessly, and everyone in the yard is affected. Suppose your car had already been there? What would I have done then?’

Slider declined to answer, looking at Barrington with a stark disbelief he was afraid he was not managing to mask.

‘Car parking space in the yard is at a premium. To be allotted a space is a privilege, and I won’t have the men under my command abusing privilege through sheer carelessness, indiscipline and sloppy behaviour!’ He began to walk up and down again. ‘I’ve told you before that carelessness in small things leads to carelessness in larger things. That’s where it all starts! Ignore the little faults, and where do you draw the line? The next thing you know, you have widespread corruption. I’ve seen it
happen before. It only takes one rotten apple to contaminate the whole barrel.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Slider said. ‘I understand.’ Barrington stopped pacing and glared at him, as if waiting for further answer. ‘I’ll have the cars reparked,’ he said soothingly.

The red seemed to dissipate slowly from Barrington’s stare. He straightened slightly. ‘Nonsense. There’s no need for that,’ he said, quite mildly for him. ‘Just make sure that the men are told to park straight in future. It’s pure inconsiderateness, and there’s no excuse for it.’

Slider agreed, and escaped. What the hell was going on with the Demon King these days? These furious attacks on trivia were like little bursts of steam escaping from the safety valve of a pressure-cooker; Slider wondered at how many pounds per square foot he would finally blow, and how much of a mess there would be to clear up. He didn’t fancy having Barrington all over the ceiling and down the walls. Maybe he ought to have taken the move to Pinner after all. And he hadn’t even told him about the new developments in the case – though that may have been all to the good. Tomorrow was Sunday; perhaps Barrington would have a nice day out on the golf course and come back refreshed on Monday and ready to cope with the petty annoyances of a murder case.

Then Slider remembered that he was on his way to see Joanna, and already late, and it concentrated his mind wonderfully.

Joanna opened the door to him, and she looked so dear and familiar and had been so long longed-for that all he could say was, ‘Aunty Em.’

‘This ain’t Kansas,’ she said forbiddingly.

‘Oh, don’t say that. I’ve had such a strange dream, and unfortunately you weren’t in it.’ She stepped back to allow him in, and he walked as so often before into her living-room, where the fire had been kindled long enough to have reached a cheerful red glow. The curtains were drawn and there was one lamp on in the corner, so that the shabby furniture gleamed and winked like conspirators out of the friendly gloom. It was all so different from the neat brightness of the Ruislip house. Here there might be dust in the corners, but the baggy chesterfield opened its arms to you like a dear old mum, and the house rule was that it was pleasure that came next to godliness.

She followed him in and he turned to her. ‘I’m sorry I’m so late. I didn’t mean to get off to such a bad start.’

She raised an eyebrow at the word ‘start’, but said, ‘It’s all right. You don’t need to explain – I’m an old hand at this game, remember.’

‘Which game?’ he asked nervously, thinking of Mrs Goodwin.

But she said, ‘Waiting for policemen.’

‘I’m not sure I like the use of the plural there, but still. I am sorry to have kept you waiting.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said again, patiently. She reminded him of Irene.

‘I wish you’d get angry with me. There’s a thin line between tolerance and indifference.’

Her eyes widened. ‘You want me to be waiting behind the door with a rolling pin? I think you’ve strayed into the wrong decade. And the wrong house.’

‘And the wrong play. Oh dear. I’m sorry. Let’s start again. Have you eaten already?’ he asked in a brightly social voice. ‘Do you want go to out somewhere?’

Wrong again. ‘What d’you think, this is a date? You came to talk, that’s all.’ She cocked an eye at him. ‘I suppose you’re starving.’

‘I seem not to have got round to lunch.’

‘Just as I thought. Sit down, then, take your coat off, and I’ll get you something.’

He watched her walk away from him. She was wearing her comfortable velvet Turkish trousers, which were so old the pile was all rubbed off the seams, and a loose, Indian-style crimped-cotton shirt of similar vintage. She was neither tall nor elegant; her feet were bare and her hair was untidy; and she seemed to him to contain every desirable quality. She was home, rest, sanctuary: the place where you were understood and welcomed, the place where you gave and received pleasure. He wanted to talk with her and eat with her and sleep with her and walk along all the sunset beaches in Hollywood with her – things he had never even considered wanting to do with any other woman. By their houses shall ye know them, he thought inconsequentially: designed for living in, his desired person, rather than for display. And desired, by golly – he was anxious to obey her hospitable parting instructions but wasn’t sure that he ought to remove his coat yet. He had a promising young erection under there. Don’t want to frighten the horses.

She was back very soon with a tray. ‘This will keep you going.’ She handed him a large malt whisky, and a plate on which reposed a pork pie cut into quarters. He had – as she knew of course – a passion for pork pies, especially proper ones like this with the dark, lean meat and the very crisp raised crust. And she then placed before him a jar of Taylor’s English mustard and a knife, and everything was perfect.

‘What a woman!’ he said. ‘How did you just happen to have a pork pie about your person?’

She sat down beside him. ‘I’m a very wonderful person. Cut me a tiny piece just to taste.’ He cut a piece, dabbed it in mustard,
and held it out to her, suddenly doubtful. In the old days he’d have put it in her mouth, but it seemed too intimate a gesture to be attempted without permission. It was unnerving for his brain to be getting all these conflicting signals. That’s how they gave laboratory monkeys ulcers.

She saw his difficulty. ‘For goodness’ sake,’ she said, then ducked her head and took the morsel from his fingers. It was a strangely diffuse exclamation and he wasn’t sure what she meant by it, but she seemed to know that too, because she said, ‘Old dogs and new tricks. With anyone else it would be a deliberate ploy to disarm me by pretending nothing had happened, but with you it’s just that you have no idea how to dissemble. Which is what makes you so dangerous.’ She was looking at him as she spoke, actually meeting his eyes for the first time, which did nothing to divert the flow of blood back to his head from the eager part of him that was desperately trying to point at her like a game dog; and in fact an unexpectedly game dog he was turning out to be for a man who had been contemplating solitary old age only yesterday. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her if they couldn’t just go straight to bed and sort things out that way, but she caught that thought on its way up too. ‘And this still ain’t Kansas,’ she added sternly, but she was trying to hold down a smile as she said it. She had never been very good at being angry, and positively pathetic at holding grudges.

‘So what made you late?’ she went on, turning sideways on and tucking her legs under her so as to face him. ‘I bet you’ve been with a woman. I can smell scent on the air.’

‘I’ve been comforting a very attractive divorcée who says she finds me very sympathetic. She’s younger than you are, too.’

Joanna grinned. ‘I’m younger than I am. This is something to do with the case, I assume?’

‘It would be more flattering to me if you didn’t immediately jump to that conclusion.’

‘I wouldn’t be interested in a man I thought even capable of entertaining the notion of a thought for another woman. Go on, tell me about the case.’

He would sooner have pursued the intriguing hint that she was interested in him, but he knew there was no help for it. He was not on safe ground yet.

‘She’s the secretary of Radek’s son-in-law, Alec Coleraine.
She’d been having an affair with him and now discovers he’s been two-timing her—’

‘Three-timing her, presumably, counting his wife,’ she said with horrible neutrality.

‘As you say. Anyway, contemplation of her wrongs was enough to tip her into telling me about something that’s been worrying her for some time. She suspected him of being less than a hundred per cent honest in his financial dealings, so I persuaded her to go back to the office and raid the filing cabinets.’

‘You dog,’ she said. ‘And what did you find?’

He told her about the Henry Russell trust. ‘All the papers were locked in Coleraine’s private cabinet, to which he alone holds the key – and no wonder. There’s been a steady sale of trust assets – shares, gilts, real estate – over the last two years, and no purchases, other than the three oil-paintings we know about, which he was careless enough to lose. I’ve taken down the share names and dates, and with a bit of research we’ll be able to find out how much money has gone, but even at a conservative estimate it’s got to be two million, given the paintings cost a million and a quarter.’

‘And where’s it all gone?’

‘Where indeed. Unfortunately the cheque-stubs and bank statements weren’t there, though Helena—’

‘Helena?’

‘You get friendly going through someone’s drawers together. Helena assures me the bank statements at least ought to have been there, because she’s seen him take them out on previous occasions. But we did find one dead cheque-book stuck in the crack at the back of the drawer, and it made interesting reading.’

‘Hang on a minute. If he kept all this incriminating evidence firmly locked away, how did you manage to get at it?’

He met her eyes limpidly. ‘I think in all his recent anxiety he must have left the filing cabinet unlocked. It’s easily done.’

‘Like fun he did. I suppose there was a coat-hanger lying about the office somewhere? Or had you brought your own?’

‘I can’t imagine what you’re suggesting,’ he said, shaking his head sadly.

‘It’s a good job I’m not wearing a wire. Anyway, tell me about this interesting cheque-book.’

‘Most of the stubs were uncontroversial. But quite a few had the amount filled in – and large amounts they were – but no payee.’

‘Sounds like belated caution. You think Coleraine paid the money to himself, then?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘I’m not in the business of thinking,’ she quoted him, and then slipped into Stan Freeberg. ‘I just wanna get the facts, man.’

‘The fact is that Coleraine’s been under severe financial pressure because of his no-good son, who sucks at the parental wallet like a newborn calf—’

‘I love your agricultural metaphors,’ she marvelled.

‘I’m a farm boy, remember. Also Helena told me that business has not been quite what it was because the old partner, Antrobus, had a lot of rich elderly clients who have now died, without being replaced by new ones. So his income was going down while his outgoings were going up.’

She had been thinking. ‘But wait a minute, if Coleraine had been defrauding the trust, wouldn’t it have been discovered? I mean, what about audits? Don’t they have to have them done, by law?’

He shook his head. ‘With family trusts, audits are carried out at the request of the trustee, whenever he thinks it’s necessary. The last one was done three years ago, according to Mrs Goodwin, and presumably showed up nothing unusual. The other trustee is a sort of sleeping partner who leaves everything to Coleraine because he, the other trustee I mean, is a layman and only knows about boats. So he’s not likely to ask for an audit, or want to look at the books.’