Kill My Darling (20 page)

‘To hide the fact that he was there,' said Atherton. ‘If we'd found the debris, we'd have got DNA out of the saliva traces and identified him as being at home when he was supposed to be at the wedding.'

‘But would he think of that? This is the man whose alibi was cracked at the first question,' Slider said.

‘You just don't know what he might think of. Or maybe he killed her first, then took it with him and ate it in the car,' Atherton said impatiently.

‘It'd have been well cold,' McLaren said scornfully. ‘He had to get rid of the body first.'

‘You know who else she could have bought it for,' Swilley said. ‘That she was friendly with. Who had time to get rid of the rubbish. And I bet he eats a lot of takeaways. And there's the money, too. If it wasn't in her purse, where was it?'

‘Most likely Hibbert took it,' said Atherton.

‘No,' said Slider. ‘She means Ronnie Fitton.'

TEN

The Son Also Rises

S
lider was holding down the fort at home that evening, as Joanna had a recording session, and for a wonder Dad had a date as well. Since selling up his home and coming to live with them, he had been available night and day, and Slider had often told him that he ought to go out more, get some interests of his own. It was said as a sop to Slider's conscience, not for his father's benefit, since he knew, deep down, that what his father liked best was being at home and looking after George; but it seemed that at last Mr Slider had heeded him and gone and joined a club. A Scrabble club, of all things.

‘I didn't even know you played Scrabble,' Slider had said.

‘Everybody plays Scrabble,' Dad had said. ‘T'isn't difficult. Anyway, it's company. Gets me out o' the house.'

Slider had started worrying on a whole new level. ‘Those dedicated Scrabble players can be peculiar people. Fiercely competitive. They know words all made up of Qs and Ks, and they're scornful of anyone who doesn't.'

Mr Slider had been untroubled ‘It's not like that in this club. All amateurs – just nice people wanting a quiet game. You wanted me to go out,' he pointed out.

‘I want you to be happy, though.'

‘Your trouble is you never have enough to worry about. You're an addict. Even when you got plenty, you keep looking for more. Anyway, if I don't like it I can always leave, can't I? I got to go once, because I told someone I'd give it a try.'

‘Oh? You've made a new friend?' Slider didn't know why he was surprised. It's just he never visualized his father outside the home, talking to anybody.

There was a gleam in Mr Slider's eye, as if he read this thought quite plainly. ‘Not deaf and dumb, am I? I see people in the street, talk to them in the supermarket. Quite a friendly old place, this. Anyway, you needn't worry about me. I had half an hour with the dictionary while my boy was taking his nap, and I'm all primed up.' He patted his forehead, as if it were a willing horse. ‘Quassia, quern, quincunx. Kukri, kowtow, kumis. Want to test me on the Js and Zs?'

It was odd, though, to see his father off and close the door, leaving himself in a silent house, empty except for George, asleep upstairs. He went up and had a look at him, just for the pleasure, then came down, feeling at a loss, and realizing how comfortable his life had been of recent months – always a fire lit and a meal ready when he came home, and sympathetic company to tell his day's experiences to. Ah well. He drifted into the kitchen, where his father had left him half a shepherd's pie in the oven, warming on a low light. There were vegetables, cut and ready to cook, but even as he looked at them he knew they were doomed to lie there undisturbed, and that when the moment came he would eat the shepherd's pie straight from the dish with a spoon. He was not a man who had been designed ever to live alone.

He thought he'd have a small malt whisky before eating, took time over choosing, and carried his Scapa into the sitting room. He intended to spend the evening doing some heavy reading and some even heavier thinking. He had the uneasy feeling he had missed something, or forgotten something – that someone had told him something important that he had put aside in his head and now couldn't lay his hand on. It was not unusual when he was involved in a complex case – probably just part of the way his mind worked – but it was uncomfortable all the same.

He decided to look at the paper first, while he drank his whisky, to see if leaving it alone would make the missing thing pop up of its own accord. That sometimes happened. He took a sip, put down his glass, took up the paper, read the first paragraph of the first story, and passed out, sandbagged by sheer exhaustion.

He woke an unknown time later with a stiff neck and a thumping heart as George's cry pierced the fog. He was on his feet and moving before he'd even opened his eyes, so he knew, as he hurried upstairs towards the sobbing, that it was the first cry he had heard. George was on his feet, clutching the side of his cot, his face contorted with grief and swimming with those great, fat, somehow extra glistening tears babies could produce as though their tear ducts were primed with glycerine. His hands went out with the familiar snatching gesture as soon as Slider appeared, and he swooped the boy up to his shoulder, felt the wet cheek against his neck, and the hands gripping his clothes with the ferocity of the bad dream that had wakened him. He was going through a phase of being woken by nightmares that he hadn't the vocabulary to explain, which was distressing to everyone.

‘Was it a bad dream?' he asked, holding the tight little body close.

Nod.

‘Never mind, it's all gone now.'

The hands clutched harder.

‘What was it about, do you remember?'

Shake.

‘Do you want to come downstairs with me for a bit?'

Nod.

So he carried him downstairs to the lighted room, where the fire had sunk, but was still giving warmth. He sat on the sofa and held George in his lap, and George stuck his thumb in his mouth and stared at the fire glow.

After a bit he unplugged and said, ‘Story, Daddy.'

Slider embarked on the story of the ugly duckling from memory, adding in extra characters and action to pad it out, to give George time to get sleepy again. When the boy finally dozed off, Slider stayed put, to make sure he was really down before moving him again. He sat with the lovely weight in his lap, staring at the fire and not thinking of anything in particular.

And that was how Mr Slider found them, both asleep, when he got back from his Scrabble evening. The smell of the forgotten shepherd's pie was strong on the air. Good job I put it on low, he thought, with a fond and exasperated shake of the head.

Despite not having done any industrial-strength thinking, it was probably a good thing he'd had that extra sleep, Slider reasoned the next morning, when he went in to work feeling rested and firing on all cylinders. He stopped off to talk to Paxman, the duty sergeant downstairs, who told him that the operation had gone off smoothly, and Ronnie Fitton was safely banged up in the cells awaiting his fate.

‘Did he give any trouble?'

‘No trouble at all,' said Paxman, a large, heavy-built man, with stationary eyes and tightly curly hair that gave him a faint resemblance to a Hereford bull. ‘Fact he seemed to be expecting it. Resigned. He got a couple of hours' kip once we'd processed him, and he's had a good breakfast, so he's ready for you any time.'

‘Any trouble with the press?'

‘Nah. Too cold for 'em to hang about all night on the off-chance. The one in the house across the road's the only one still around, and he missed his chance. Musta been cooping. The story's in the paper, but there's no picture, only of the forensics going in.'

‘Oh, they're in already, are they? Good.'

Slider was about to pass on, when Paxman retained him with a large, beefy hand on his arm. ‘Bill, are you sure about this one?'

‘Sure? I'm not even close. Why, what's up?'

Paxman shook his head slowly, as if goaded by flies. ‘I dunno. I've got a feeling about this geezer. There's something about him.' He waited for thought to develop. ‘He's too quiet,' he concluded, as if that was not really what he meant, but was the closest he could get.

‘He's the best suspect we've got,' Slider said. ‘And we had to do something.'

Paxman nodded. He understood that. ‘Just be careful. He could be trouble.'

‘What sort of trouble?' Slider asked.

‘I dunno,' Paxman said. ‘Wish I did. Just – be careful.'

‘I will. Thanks, Arthur.' Paxman was long on the job and old in the ways of men. Slider always took him seriously.

Slider had studied Ronnie Fitton's file, and there was much about him that did not fit the usual criminal profile, and some features that did. He was born to an ordinary working-class family in West Acton. His father worked for British Rail as a ticket collector and station attendant; his mother worked part-time on a supermarket checkout. They lived in a small terraced house, privately rented.

There had been another son, Keith, two years older than Ronnie. He had been killed by a train when he was fourteen: he and some friends had been trespassing on railway property and Keith and another boy were playing ‘chicken'. The other boy survived; Keith was killed instantly, tossed up on to the low embankment between the lines and the back gardens like a stringless marionette.

That must have had the hell of an effect on Ronnie, aged twelve, Slider thought. It was the sort of thing that could turn a boy to the bad, but it seemed to have had the opposite effect. Defence counsel at his trial had made much of the fact that after his brother's death he had never been in trouble, had worked hard at school and got three GCSEs, and had gone to a vocational college and got himself a trade qualification in graphic design. After working for various printing firms, he had ended up as manager of a sign-making company, earning a good salary. He had married a girl he had been dating for a couple of years, and bought a house in Northfields not too far from the business. Then, two years into the marriage, he had come home unexpectedly early and found his wife in bed with another man, and killed her.

It was the first break in the pattern of exemplary behaviour, and on the surface it was inexplicable. He had no history of violence: friends and neighbours agreed the couple had been on good terms and there was no suggestion he had ever raised a hand to her. But it was possible to imagine that he had been affected by the shock and horror of the brother's death – they had apparently been close – which had been brought upon him by his own wrongdoing. Had young Ronnie buckled down and behaved all those years, done the right things in the right order, and at least subconsciously expected his reward to be that his life would be blessed? – only to be betrayed by the person closest to him. Slider thought there could well have been deeply suppressed emotions – grief and rage – from the time of his brother's death which broke through in that moment of betrayal and caused him to lash out. The trouble was that he did not say of himself that he had snapped, lost his temper and lashed out. He had refused to say anything other than that she had deserved it, thus portraying it as a calculated act and not subject to mitigation.

What Slider came away with was a sense of a frightening degree of control, which in turn suggested a frightening amount of something underneath to need controlling. It would make him a dangerous man, as Paxman hinted. You would never know what he might do, or when he might do it. It was over twenty years since he had killed his wife; the safety valve on the pressure cooker might have reached its limits. And if it was Fitton who killed Melanie, it would make sense of the no-sexual-fassault aspect. It was love and betrayal that had sparked him to kill his wife. Had he loved Melanie? And had she betrayed him in some way? Not sexually: Fitton's would have been a secret and suppressed love, perhaps an idolization. She would only need to do something he regarded as betraying his image of her, something he thought beneath her.

Or, of course (he had to admit to himself) that fierce control could have been simply covering up a series of criminal deeds. He could have been a ‘right wrong'un' all along, but with the mental acuity not to get himself caught, and it was blackmail after all. One thing you could be sure of – good man or bad, he would not have wanted to go back inside.

Fitton seemed very calm. He sat in a relaxed attitude on the chair in the interview room, his lean legs in the paper overalls crossed, smoking a cigarette. His face showed nothing, not fear or apprehension or even interest in what was happening to him, but Slider felt that there was a point of carbon steel somewhere in the middle of him, like the tip of a whipping top. He might appear to be motionless, but that was only because he was spinning so hard.

Slider took his place on the opposite side of the table. Atherton came in behind him and sat by the tape machine. Fitton did not look at either of them. He took a drag on his cigarette and blew upwards, watching the smoke and the ceiling.

‘Cup of tea?' Slider offered.

Fitton shook his head.

‘Are they treating you all right?'

‘No complaints,' Fitton said.

‘You've had breakfast?'

‘Full house. You do a good one here.'

‘Thank you. I'll mention it to the Michelin inspector.'

Fitton gave no reaction to the pleasantry.

‘Have you had your phone call?'

‘I've got no one to ring.' He said it as a plain statement of fact, not an appeal for sympathy.

‘Solicitor?'

‘Don't want one.'

That was usually a bad sign – the guilty man calleth his brief when no man pursueth, as the proverb had it. But in Fitton's case you couldn't read anything into it. He hadn't wanted anything to do with his legal team the first time round, either. He seemed to have a robust contempt for the profession.