Dear Departed (2 page)

‘I don’t know any prostitutes. How dare you suggest it?’ Bates said, advancing grimly. Slider backed a step to encourage him.

‘You used to know poor Susie, in the Biblical sense, anyway. Then one day you got carried away and killed her. Stuck her full of needles, had her, broke her neck, and chucked her in the Thames.’

‘You’re mad!’ Bates said. Outside the team slipped the pass card into the magnetic lock and it gave a faint but unmistakable clunk. Bates’s eyes flew wide as he realised the trap. He yelled, ‘Norman!’ and his small but rock hard fist shot out at Slider’s face.

Without the adrenaline he’d have been felled, but all those flight-or-fight impulses he had been resisting in the last five minutes came to his aid now. He jerked his head aside so fast that he ricked his neck and the fist shot past his head, grazing his left ear. In the same motion, Slider ducked in low and flung himself at Bates, grabbing him round the middle, and Bates, thrown off balance by the missed punch, was just unstable enough to stagger backwards and go down, hitting the floor with Slider on top of him as the rest of the team burst in through the two doors simultaneously.

From the next room there was thumping, crashing and shouting as the bodyguard put up a vigorous resistance. For a moment Bates writhed viciously, but then he suddenly seemed to see the futility, or perhaps the indignity of it, and became still. With his teeth bared, he hissed at Slider, ‘You’ll regret this. I’ll see you regret this, you pathetic moron. You don’t know
what you’re meddling with. You’re in over your depth. You’re nobody!’

‘Well, at least I’m not a murderer,’ Slider said. He knew he ought not to provoke the man, but he couldn’t help it. That fist had taken skin off his ear, and his neck hurt.

‘You can’t prove a thing against me,’ Bates said, utterly assured.

‘Oh yes I can,’ Slider said blithely. ‘Poor old Susie got washed up. We found her.’

It was impossible for Bates to pale, but his eyes widened slightly. ‘You found her?’

‘Yup. Got the body, got the semen, got the DNA. You’re nicked, mate.’

A policeman’s life, he thought afterwards, holds few moments so beautiful as seeing an arrogant, vicious, self-satisfied criminal crumple in the face of what he knows is the inevitable. Slider got to his feet, and as Bates began to struggle up, he began his victory chant.

‘Trevor Bates, I arrest you for the murder of Susan Mabbot. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence …’

Bates wasn’t listening. He stared at Slider as though burning his image into his brain. ‘I’ll get you for this,’ he said.

‘… anything you later rely on in court,’ Slider finished. And suddenly he felt very tired, as all the adrenaline got bored with this part of the proceedings and went off somewhere else to look for a fight.

It is an immutable law, formulated by the eminent philosopher Professor Sod, that you will always wake up early on your day off. It was six a.m. when the alarm in Slider’s head went off. He woke in his customary violent fashion, with a grunt. He rarely managed a controlled re-entry: usually he hit consciousness like a man being thrown out of a moving car.

Joanna wasn’t there. He listened for a moment, then got up and padded into the kitchen. She was standing by the sink drinking water, staring out of the window into the small oblong of rough grass and blackberry brambles she called a garden. Since her pregnancy had begun to show, she had stopped wandering about in the nude. In an access of modesty she had taken to wearing a loose white muslin dress by way of a
dressing-gown. As it was almost but not quite completely transparent, it was far more erotic than nakedness, but Slider hadn’t told her that. He just hoped that she didn’t answer the door in it when he wasn’t there. The postman didn’t look as though his heart would take it.

He slipped his arms round her from behind and rested his chin on her shoulder. ‘All right?’ he murmured.

‘Hmm,’ she confirmed.

‘Couldn’t sleep?’

‘Not since half past four. Why are you up, anyway? We were going to lie in and cuddle.’

‘Hard to do when you’re in the kitchen,’ he pointed out. ‘Shall we go back to bed?’

He felt her hesitate, and knew what was coming.

‘I’m hungry.’

‘You’re always hungry. It’s just your hormones.’

‘My hormones and I go everywhere together. Why don’t the three of us have breakfast? It’s such a beautiful morning, too good to waste lying in bed.’

He detached himself from her back. ‘I thought pregnant women were supposed to feel extra sexy,’ he complained.

‘You’ve got to fuel the engine,’ she said.

She fried bacon and tomatoes and made toast while he got a shave out of the way, and then they ate and talked.

‘Fried tomatoes are definitely a seventh-day thing,’ Slider said. Joanna had a theory that God had done all His very best creations on Sunday, when He was at leisure. A large amount of food seemed to get into her list: toasted cheese, raspberries, the smell of coffee.

‘It’s such a long time since we did this,’ she said happily. ‘I don’t even remember when you last had a day off.’

He had only known since May that Joanna was pregnant. She had given up her job with the orchestra in Amsterdam and was back home permanently, looking for work for the next few months. With the baby due in November, she could work until about the end of September – if she could get the dates. She’d had no luck so far. Still, it gave her a chance to look for a place for them to live. Her tiny flat had one bedroom, one sitting room, a small kitchen and a breathe-by-numbers bathroom – adequate for them but tight for them plus baby.

Being an old-fashioned kind of a bloke, he was determined they should get married before the baby was born. And before they got married they had to announce everything to their respective families, something which work had made impossible for him. But now, with the debriefing and writing up of the Bates case done at last, he had two days off. Tomorrow he and Joanna were going to spend the day with his father – his only relly – and today they were going down to Eastbourne to see her parents. Slider had never yet met them, and was nervous.

‘What if they don’t like me?’ he asked.

She was good at catching on. ‘They’ll like you. Why wouldn’t they?’

‘Debauching their daughter, for one. Getting you pregnant before marrying you.’

‘My sister Alison was born only six months after the Aged Ps married.’

‘Really?’

‘Mum mellowed one night when Sophie and I took her out for a drink for her birthday, and confessed. She was a bit shocked the next day when she remembered. She swore us to secrecy, so don’t say anything. Apparently the others don’t know.’

‘Except for Alison, presumably.’

‘I wouldn’t even be sure of that. She may not have put two and two together. She was always good at ignoring inconvenient facts.’

Slider reached for the marmalade. ‘Tell me them again. I haven’t got them straight.’

‘Doesn’t matter. You aren’t going to meet them all.’

‘You know me. I like to do my homework.’

‘All right. Alison’s the eldest, then the three boys, Peter, Tim and George.’

‘They’re in Australia?’

‘No, only Tim and George. They all emigrated together but Peter came back.’

‘Oh, yes, I remember now.’

‘Then Louisa and Bobby, then me, then the twins that died, then Sophie.’

‘What a crowd. It must have been nice, growing up with so many people around you.’

‘I’m sure you got a lot more attention,’ said Joanna.

‘But you don’t have much backup when you’re an only child. No insurance. When Mum died there was only me and Dad, and when he goes …’

She reached across and squeezed his hand. ‘You’ll still have a wife, an ex-wife and at least three children.’

He began to smile. ‘At least? What are you trying to tell me?’

She looked casual. ‘Oh, well, I just thought if you’re going to fork out all that money for a marriage licence, you might as well get your money’s worth.’

He inspected her expression and was thinking they might go back to bed after all, when the phone rang. Joanna met his eyes. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, looking a question and a doubt.

He felt a foreboding. ‘It couldn’t be. They wouldn’t. Not on my day off.’ But he knew they could and would. Detective inspectors had to be available for duty at all times, and since they didn’t get paid overtime it was easier on the budget to call them rather than someone who did.

He got up and trudged out to the narrow hall (Never get a pram in here, he thought distractedly) and picked up the phone. It was Nicholls, one of the uniformed sergeants at Shepherd’s Bush police station. ‘Are you up and dressed?’

‘This had better be important,’ Slider growled.

‘Sorry, Bill. I know it’s your day off and I hate to do it to you, but it’s a murder.‘

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

‘Came in on a 999 call. Female, stabbed to death in Paddenswick Park. Looks as though the Park Killer’s struck again.’

‘Why can’t Carver’s lot catch it?’

‘They’re knee deep in that drugs and prostitution ring. The boss says you’re it. I’m sorry, mate.’

‘Bloody Nora, can’t people leave off killing each other for two minutes together?’ Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Joanna had come out into the hall. At these words she turned away, and the cast of her shoulders was eloquent. All right, on my way.’

Joanna was in the bedroom. She looked up when he came in and forestalled his speech. ‘I gathered.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘I know. Can’t be helped.’

He could tell by her terseness that she was upset, and he didn’t blame her. ‘You’ll explain to your parents?’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘Will you still go?’

‘No point. I’ll call it off,’ she said shortly, passing him in the doorway.

He rang Atherton – DS Jim Atherton, his bagman – and got him on his mobile at the scene.

‘You don’t need to hurry. Porson’s got everything under control.’

‘Hell’s bells. What’s he doing there?’

‘He was in the office when I arrived at a quarter to eight. I don’t think he’d been home.’

Porson, their Det Sup, had recently been widowed. Slider wondered whether he was finding home without his wife hard to cope with.

‘The shout came in about a quarter past eight,’ Atherton went on, ‘and he grabbed the team and shot over here. He’s already whistled up extra uniform to take statements, and the SOCO van’s on the way.’

‘So what does he need me for?’ Slider asked resentfully.

‘I expect it’s lurve,’ Atherton said. ‘Gotta go – he’s beckoning.’

So it was away with the cords and chambray shirt, hello workday suit and Teflon tie. Blast and damn, Slider thought. Any murder meant a period of intensive work and long hours, but a serial murderer could tie you down for months. If it was the Park Killer, there was no knowing when he’d get a day off again.

The traffic had built up by the time Slider left the house, and he had plenty of leisure to reflect as he crawled along Bath Road. The Park Killer had ‘struck’ – as the newspapers liked to put it – twice before, but not on Slider’s ground. The first time had been in Gunnersbury Park, the second only a month ago in Acton Park. On that – admittedly meagre – basis it looked as though he was moving eastwards, which left room for a couple more possible incidents in Shepherd’s Bush before he reached Holland Park and became Notting Hill’s problem. Slider wondered what could be done to hasten that happy day. The very thought
of a serial killer made him miserable. The idea that any human being could be so utterly self-absorbed that he would kill someone at random simply as a means of self-advertisement was deeply depressing.

It was part, he thought, as he inched forward towards a traffic light that only stayed green for thirty seconds every five minutes, of the modern cult of celebrity. To get on the telly, to get in the papers, was the ultimate ambition for a wide swathe of the deeply stupid. And the newspapers didn’t help. This present bozo had killed two people, and already he had a media sobriquet. No wonder he had killed again so soon. He had a public to satisfy now. He was a performer.

To be a celebrity act, of course, you had to have a trademark, and the Park Killer’s bag was to kill in broad daylight in a public place full of passers-by – people walking dogs, people going to work, people jogging, roller-blading, bicycling. The newspapers had been full of wonder (which the killer probably read as admiration) as to how he had managed not to be seen. Paddenswick Park fitted this MO. It lay between Goldhawk Road to the north and King Street to the south, and was not only a cut-through but was well used by the local population for matutinal exercise and dog-emptying. Morning rush hour was the PK’s time of choice. If nothing else, Slider reflected, it slowed down the police trying to get to the scene.

By the time he reached the area, he had plumbed the depths. To add to the stupid senselessness of every murder, in this case there would be all the problems involved in liaising with the Ealing squad – how they would enjoy having to share with him the fact that they had got nowhere! – not to mention dealing with the inevitable media circus. It looked as though it would be a close-run thing whether he would get to marry Joanna or draw his pension first.

The park and a large section of Paddenswick Road, which ran down its east side, were cordoned off. Atherton was standing in the RV area behind the blue-and-white tape; he came over and moved it for Slider to drive through. Within the area were several marked police cars, Atherton’s and the department wheels and the large white van belonging to the scene-of-crime officers. Inside the park gates he could see that all the people who had been on the spot when the police arrived had been
corralled, with a mixture of CID and uniform taking their basic details.

Though Slider kept a low media profile, some of the reporters recognised him and shouted out to him from where they were being kept at bay beyond the cordon. They only had one question, of course. ‘Is it the Park Killer?’ ‘Do you think it’s the Park Killer?’ A nod from him and they’d dash off, click together their Lego stock phrases, and every paper and bulletin would have the same headline:
PARK KILLER STRIKES AGAIN.
Slider ignored them.