Death Watch (7 page)
It was some time before Jacqui Turner had recovered enough for him to get her back to specifics. With the fourth tissue in her hand, she answered his questions dolefully and docilely, as if she had no more fight in her.
‘When did you last see him?’
‘On Friday. He came in to the office at about five to do his paperwork, and then we went to Crispin’s for a drink and
something to eat.’
‘That’s the wine bar in Ealing, is it?’
She nodded. ‘We went there a lot. I live at Ealing Common, so it was handy for my place. He lives in – lived in Pinner. Oh, well, I suppose you know that.’
‘So you had a meal and some wine—?’ He left a space for her, but she didn’t correct him or add anything, so he went on, ‘And after that, what?’
‘He went back to my place.’
‘For coffee and brandy?’
‘Whisky, if you want to be particular. I don’t have any brandy. Dick’s a whisky drinker.’
‘Did he smoke?’ Atherton asked through natural association.
‘Like a chimney. They all do.’
‘They?’
‘All the salesmen. It goes with the job.’
‘I see. And after the coffee and the whisky—?’
She met his eye defiantly. ‘We made love, of course.’
‘Of course. And what time did he leave?’
‘I don’t know exactly. About ten, I think.’
‘And when did you next expect to see him?’
‘Well, normally it would have been on Saturday. We always had lunch together on Saturdays, unless he was away, and Sundays he spent at home. And Monday he was supposed to be in Bradford and Leeds for two days, so I suppose it would have been Wednesday. I’d have spoken to him, though – they have to ring in every day.’
‘But you didn’t, in fact, see him on Saturday?’
‘He said he couldn’t because he was meeting someone.’
‘Did he say who?’
She shrugged, her lower lip drooping. He saw that they had quarrelled about it. ‘He just said an old friend.’
‘He didn’t mention a name? Or where he knew him from? Anything about him at all?’
‘He said he’d got to meet an old friend he hadn’t seen for years, and that’s all he said.’
‘What was his manner when he told you that? Was he worried, apprehensive, disappointed, bored?’
‘He sounded pleased,’ she said sulkily, ‘as if he was looking forward to it. He was sort of grinning to himself, as if he had some stupid secret he wasn’t going to let
me
in on.’
‘I see,’ Atherton said sympathetically. ‘So from that you gathered that it wasn’t a business meeting?’
‘If you want to know,’ she said, turning her annoyance on him, ‘I thought he was meeting some old mate of his and they were going on the piss together, to some stupid club or something, probably with topless waitresses or something pathetic like that. Or maybe it was a dirty film – some man-thing, anyway.’
‘Did he often do that sort of thing?’
‘Oh—!’ Her anger ran out of places to go. She sighed and said, ‘You know what men are like when they get together. They’re just like little boys. All the salesmen are like it when they get together. They drink and tell dirty jokes and – oh, you know.’
‘Was he particularly interested in blue movies?’
She looked faintly puzzled. ‘What do you mean? All men are, aren’t they, when they get the chance? He didn’t have a collection of them, if that’s what you mean. If you want to know, he’d always sooner be doing it than watching it.’
‘Did he like doing unusual things?’
She actually blushed, though whether with embarrassment or anger he wasn’t sure. ‘That’s not what I meant. No, he didn’t. And why are you asking me questions like that? What’s going on? What’s it got to do with you how he spent his spare time?’
Spare
time was the mot juste, Atherton thought. ‘I assure you I’m not asking questions out of idle curiosity, Miss Turner,’ he said with reassuring formality. ‘You say that he normally telephoned the office when he was away on business. Do you know if he did, in fact, call on Monday?’
‘No, he didn’t. Well, he didn’t call me and I’m his backup. I don’t know if he called anyone else.’
‘It was you he was meant to call?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you weren’t worried when he didn’t?’
‘I
wondered-I
wasn’t exactly worried.’
‘What did you wonder?’
She bit her lip. ‘I thought he might be skiving off. I was worried he’d get into trouble. They’d have told me if he’d rung in sick, you see, because I’d’ve had to call his customers, so I knew it wasn’t that.’
‘He’d done it before, had he? Skived off, I mean.’
‘Yes, when he was out of Town. More than once. He sort of went out on the spree, and drunk too much, and then couldn’t make it to his appointments the next day. He got a warning last time. I didn’t want him to get into trouble.’
‘He liked a drink, then?’
‘He was a social drinker, that’s all,’ she said defensively. ‘He had friends everywhere, people he’d worked with, or met through his work. Well, he’d been a salesman for years — he was in insurance before he joined Omniflamme – and when he met up with them, they’d go for a drink, and—’ She let the end of the sentence hang for him.
‘Yes, I see.’ He was getting a very clear picture of Mr Richard Neal, the Rep with the Quick Dick and the All-England capacity. ‘So there was nothing unusual in his telling you he was going to meet an old friend on Saturday?’
She shook her head. ‘Except that he wouldn’t say who it was. Even when I asked him.’ She met his eyes urgently. ‘They’re saying he was killed in a hotel fire – is that true?’
‘Yes,’ said Atherton. He could see her thinking.
‘But if it was just a fire, just an accident, you wouldn’t be asking all these questions, would you? You think it was deliberate? That someone started it deliberately?’
‘We don’t know yet. Let’s say there were suspicious circumstances.’
‘What circumstances?’
‘I’m not at liberty to tell you.’
She stared, thinking hard. ‘This man he was meeting—?’
‘If you think of anything, anything at all, that might help us to find out who he is, it would be very helpful. We know Mr Neal didn’t go to Bradford, but we don’t know where he
did
go. It’s possible he said something to this friend of his.’
She shook her head slowly. ‘I can’t think of anything. But
it must have been an accident. It
must
have been. Nobody would want to hurt Dick. Everyone liked him. He had friends everywhere.
Everyone
liked him.’
Apart from his predilection for getting drunk, and nibbling on forbidden sweetmeats, Atherton thought, he seemed to have been a regular little Postman Pat. Mr Popularity. If only I could have got on with people like that, I might have been a Commissioner by now – or dead, of course.
JUST BEFORE THE UNIFORM SHIFT change at two o’clock, D’Arblay appeared politely in Slider’s office.
‘Sir – could I have a word?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Slider liked D’Arblay. There was a pleasant modesty about him, though he must have been tough enough underneath, having survived his first six years in the criminal hothouse of Central. ‘What is it?’
He seemed hesitant. ‘Well, sir, the Skipper said I should mention it to you, though I didn’t want to presume.’
‘Presume?’ Slider savoured the word. It was like something Joanna would say.
D’Arblay looked uncomfortable. ‘I didn’t want it to look as if I was trying to tell you your job, sir.’
Slider smiled. ‘Relax, lad. What’s on your mind?’
‘Well, sir, as the motel fire was on Sunday night, I wondered if you’d thought of asking Mrs Mason if she saw anything?’
‘Mrs Mason?’
‘Elsie Mason, the old bag lady, sir.’
‘Oh, Very Little Else, you mean. I never knew she had a surname.’
‘Yes sir,’ D’Arblay said seriously. ‘I always call her by it – she seems to like the bit of formality.’
They taught them that in Central, Slider remembered. It sometimes paid off, especially if some really scuzzy wino was shaping up to give you trouble, to address them with formal politeness. A kind of benign shock treatment. Not
that Very Little Else came into that category, of course.
‘She’s around that area on Sundays, is she?’
‘Yes sir. She walks along Goldhawk Road and Askew Road on a Sunday. I didn’t actually see her at the fire, but she’d be bound to have gone there once she heard the sirens – she’s very curious about anything on her ground.’
‘How reliable is she? I haven’t spoken to her for quite a time.’
‘Her memory’s sound enough, sir. She acts a bit dotty, but she knows what’s going on.’ He looked at Slider hopefully.
‘I see. Well, you did quite right to mention it.’
‘Thank you, sir. But it was the Skipper said I should come and see you.’
Sergeant Paxman was not one to poach another man’s credit. D’Arblay had had a good thought, and he’d let him run with it; and D’Arblay was handing the credit straight back to his skipper. It was touching about those two.
In fact, Slider had forgotten Very Little Else. She was one of the better known characters on their ground, a tiny creature, only four foot eight tall and thin as an adulterer’s excuse. She dressed always, winter and summer, in a black coat, black boots, and a black felt hat, with, of course, the tastefully matching accessories of black teeth and black fingernails.
She was unusual for a bag lady in that she only ever toted one bag, whereas most female tramps collected more and more junk all the time. There was one in South Kensington, for instance, who now had to push a stolen supermarket trolley to carry all her bags; and another who lived under the bridge where the M4 crossed Syon Lane, who had accumulated so much stuff she could no longer move about at all. The last time Slider had passed she had even acquired a sofa and a matching armchair. He firmly expected to see a standard lamp and a sideboard next time he drove by.
Very Little Else, however, travelled light. She walked her ground in a methodical way, stumping along muttering to herself with her one bag clutched tightly in
her right hand, while her left gesticulated an accompaniment to her monologue. When Slider had first come to Shepherd’s Bush, she’d had an old Turkish-patterned carpet bag, but that had gone the way of all flesh. Now it was just a plastic carrier, which only lasted a few weeks before having to be replaced. No-one had ever fathomed out where she slept, or what she lived on, but she was popular with the beat coppers because she was no trouble. Slider thought they probably all slipped her a few bob every time they met her.
Since D’Arblay evidently got on with her, perhaps he should get him to interview her about the motel fire. He glanced out of the window. On the other hand, the sun was shining out there, muted by the dust of ages on the window panes, but inviting. ‘Any idea where she’d be today?’
‘Somewhere between White City and East Acton, sir.’
‘Ah. Thank you, D’Arblay.’
It was one of those sunny afternoons when suddenly the world slows down to continental pace. The pavements smelled like hot skin, the tar of the roads softened benignly, pigeons got serious about each other wherever there was a patch of balding urban grass. In the row of shops opposite the park in Bloemfontein Road, suddenly-genial shopkeepers propped their doors wide and dreamed of the subcontinent they’d left behind them. Windows stood open everywhere, and the air was exotic with the fragrance of spices and frying garlic. Outside the post office, two scrawny single mothers folded their arms and chatted, forgetting for once to slap and scold; and in a pushchair by the door a happy baby mugged old ladies for smiles.
It was here that Slider finally came upon Very Little Else. He spotted her turning the corner into Bryony Road, and going into the park through the gate by the bowling-green. He parked the car further up the road and went back to look for her, and found her sitting on a bench
with her back to a warm privet hedge, blinking in the sunshine like a dusty black cat, and fumbling to open a packet of baby’s rusks which she held in her lap.
The grass around her feet had bloomed as if by magic into a flock of hopeful pigeons, but she didn’t seem to have noticed them, nor to care that her fingers slid again and again over the well-sealed packet-end without making any impression. She seemed to be quite happy just sitting there, and Slider felt it would have been a shame to disturb her, except that in the past he had found her not averse to a spot of company.
‘Hello, Else,’ he said, positioning himself so that his shadow fell across her face and she could see him clearly. He stood still to let her get a good look at him, and she examined him carefully, frowning as she sought through her mental files for recognition. ‘Don’t you remember me?’ he said after a minute.
‘Yore a pleeceman,’ she said definitely, and then shook her head disappointedly. ‘My memory’s not what it was. I used to know you all once. But you keep changing every five minutes. Can’t keep up with you no more. Which one are you, then?’
He sat down beside her, and she peered at him from closer quarters. The sun shone into her face. There was a bloom of age, like blue algae, over the brown of her irises, and it seemed to him that there was grey dust in the deep seams of her wrinkles. He wondered how old she was. Probably not more than sixty, though it was always hard to tell. Once people parted with the normal comforts and concerns of civilisation, they came to look both older and younger than their age.
‘Yes, I know you now,’ she announced. ‘Mr Slider, ain’t it? Yore the one who got his eyebrows burned off. I ain’t seen you about lately.’
‘I don’t get out on the street as much as I’d like to. How are you, Else? You’re looking fit.’
‘Gotta keep fit, ain’t I? No – one else’ll look after me.’ She examined him keenly. ‘Yore puttin’ weight on. See it round yer chin. Been on good grazin’, aintcher?’
‘I don’t get the exercise you do, walking all day.’
‘Got a girl, ‘ave yer?’ she asked astutely, and chuckled. ‘Wass that advert they useter do, for evaporated milk? Comes from contented cows.’
He felt he should distract her from that train of logic. Her scrabbling fingers caught his eye. ‘Here, let me open that for you.’
