Kill My Darling (6 page)

The hard winter had taken its toll on the road surfaces, and in Reservoir Road, the approach to the Lido, there were potholes you could find lost tribes in. Slider bumped and manoeuvred his way carefully down to the car park. Despite the early hour, there was quite a crowd there already. Some, all, or more of the people they had spoken to yesterday must have contacted the press, because they were out in force; and the residents of surrounding streets had followed the flashing blue lights for a good morning gawp. It was only lucky it was Monday and a school day, or there'd have been no getting through them.

Barriers were in place and the car park was being kept clear for the police and associated vehicles. Two local bobbies were manning the access, and Slider had to tell them who he was. Ruislip fell within Hillingdon, a different part of the Met altogether.

But Porson was there – good grief, did the man never sleep? – gaunt as the first Duke of Lancaster, swathed in his Douglas Hurd-style greenish greatcoat, the folds of which were so voluminous a Bedouin could have kept his entire family in there, and several of his favourite horses as well. He was talking to his Hillingdon counterpart, Det Sup Fox, known down the ranks as Duggie. Slider had thought for a long time his name must be Douglas, but in fact it was Clifford. But Fox was a very large man in all respects and had, apparently, noteworthy man-breasts.

He also had the coldest eyes Slider had ever encountered. Slider could feel the frost creeping across his skin as the chilly grey orbs took him in, analysed him and filed him, probably under No Action Required. The Syrup swung round to see who was being freeze-dried, and his eyebrows went up in a greeting that was effusive by comparison.

‘Ah, there you are. I've just been telling Mr Fox that you know this area like the back of your onions.'

Fox looked pained. Not everyone could cope with Porson on an empty stomach.

‘He's very kindly going to hand the case over to us.'

‘Very kind, sir,' Slider said with an irony so deep Beebe couldn't have reached it.

‘We've got more than enough on our hands as it is,' Fox said – though, given that Heathrow Airport was in his ground, that was probably no more than the truth. And then, perhaps feeling he had been ungracious, he said, ‘After all, you've done the preliminary work, and the investigation will mostly fall in your ground – tracing the last movements and so on. Makes sense for you to handle it. We'll hand over as soon as you've got enough men here. Of course, Fred,' he added to Porson, ‘we'll give you any help we can. Can't promise you any warm bodies, I'm sorry to say.' He looked about as sorry as a lottery winner. ‘But smoothing the path, local knowledge and suchlike. Just ask. But as you say, your man here knows the ground . . .'

‘We'll manage. Thanks, Cliff. Appreciate your corroporation,' Porson said with dignity.

Slider left the mighty to confer at their exalted level, and went to find someone lowly to talk to. He spotted one of his own, DC McLaren, on the far side, nearest the woods, conferring with a Hillingdon detective, Pete Remington. He headed that way. There was something odd about McLaren that he couldn't put his finger on. Also he would have wondered how McLaren had got here first, given that he didn't live out this way, but he had other things on his mind.

In response to his terse question, McLaren filled him in. ‘She's in there, guv.' He nodded towards the woods behind him. ‘Not far in, but off the path. Fully dressed, shoes and all.' Shoes often went missing when a body was moved. ‘Looks like she was whacked on the head and strangled.'

‘Who found her?'

‘Local man, sir,' Remington answered. ‘Name of William McGuire. Walking his dog early this morning – dog led him to her.' It was funny – or perhaps not – how often this was the case. Without dog walkers, Slider wondered, how many bodies would remain undiscovered? ‘He lives in Lakeside Close,' Remington went on. This was one of the little cul-de-sacs off Reservoir Road. ‘He was very shaken up. As it was close by, we sent him home with one of our uniforms – Patsy Raymond. No sense keeping him standing here in the cold.'

‘Quite right,' Slider said. ‘I'll talk to him later. I'd like to see the body first.'

‘We had the photo you sent out,' Remington said, ‘and there's no doubt it is her. That's why we got right on to you.' He cleared his throat. ‘Sorry it turned out this way,' he offered. ‘It's always a bugger when a young woman goes missing, but you always hope . . . Well, anyway.'

Slider nodded to the unexpected sympathy, saw Remington look at something over his shoulder, and turned to see the firm's wheels, Freddie Cameron's Jaguar, and Atherton's car bumping into the car park in careful convoy. And a short way behind them, even more welcomely, the tea waggon. Someone early on the site must have sent out the ‘teapot one' call sign as a first priority. Slider had left breakfastless, and last night's supper had not had much staying power: the sight gave him the first comfort of that cold morning. And it made him realize what it was that had been odd about the look of McLaren: for perhaps the first time in his life, he wasn't engaged in eating anything.

She was lying on her back in the litter of dead leaves and other natural debris, half under a bush a short distance from the path. It looked as if some attempt had been made to hide the body, but not much of one. As soon as anyone strayed this way – as they well might if their dog suddenly dashed off excitedly – they would have seen it: it wasn't covered in any way. Was the murderer scared off, or had he sickened of the whole business by then? He could have gone a lot further from the car park and done a lot more concealing. For the matter of that, there were other woods in the general area that were more dense and less frequented – though on the other hand, they didn't all have easily accessed car-parks. If you were shifting a body by car, that was a consideration. Of course, she may have walked into the woods on her own two feet and been killed here. Probably that was more likely. If you were intending to hide a body, you would surely go a bit further from civilization.

She was dressed in a black skirt-suit over a sapphire blue jumper, and a thick grey wool reefer jacket; flat black shoes and opaque black tights. Because her clothes were all present and correct, it was unlikely she had been sexually assaulted: as the forensic pathologist, Freddie Cameron said, it would be a particularly obsessive and bonkers killer who would put his victim's clothes carefully back on after death. It was-difficult, too – as with trying to get your tights back on in a swimming pool changing room. ‘So I'm told,' he added hastily as Slider's eyebrow went up.

The strangling had been done with a silk scarf, presumably her own – it was Indian-patterned in shades of blue, purple and bottle-green – and the scarf was still in place round the neck, but there was no sign of the swelling or reddening that usually accompanied strangulation.

‘A pretty half-hearted effort,' Freddie said, easing the silk away from the neck to look underneath. ‘In fact, I'd say it was for show only. It's hardly marked the skin. It was the whack on the head that did for her, pound to a penny.'

Slider was grateful for any small mercies. When you've seen enough of them you can be objective about dead bodies, but you never stop
minding
. He was glad of a seemly corpse, quietly composed: her eyes were closed, her mouth just a little open, her head naturally over to one side; no signs of struggle or convulsion. One hand was resting on her chest, the other was down by her side; there were dead leaves in her hair, which was thick and heavy, and fell back from her face on to the moss beneath her head. He recognized the face from the photograph Swilley had brought back, but of course this was not Melanie Hunter, just the fleshly envelope that had once housed her. She had departed, permanently; how, was what he had to find out.

Freddie was demonstrating to him now the wound to the skull, slipping his hand under the neck to turn the head with professional skill but still, somehow, a gentleness. ‘See, here – the parietal bone is completely fractured, just above the junction with the occipital. I'd say just one blow, but a pretty hard one. Death would have been almost instantaneous.'

‘So there wouldn't necessarily be much blood?' Slider said.

‘Maybe, maybe not. Scalp wounds can bleed a lot in a short time. But there's nothing here, under the head, just a smear or two. Of course, the body must have been moved – she wouldn't have fallen on her back like this from a blow to the back of the skull – so there may well be some more blood somewhere else, either in the immediate area, if she was killed here, or wherever she was killed.'

‘Or in the car that was used to move her,' Slider finished.

‘Well, quite.'

‘Time of death?'

Freddie pursed his lips. ‘It's hard to say, in this cold weather. The cold tends to slow down the processes. There's still some rigor in the limbs, so perhaps less than three days. Between two and three days. You've got her disappearing when?'

‘So far, the last she was seen was on Friday night.'

‘Well, that would work. Friday night or early Saturday morning. But you know, old dear, that anything over eight hours and it's just guesswork.'

Slider nodded, and stared away through the trees, getting the lie of the place, the impression of light and shade, the undergrowth and open spaces. The forensic boys would do a fingertip search of the immediate area, in case something had been dropped or there were footmarks or fabric threads or anything that might identify the murderer. Why here? he was wondering. Why not further in? Perhaps she was too heavy to carry. She was not a tall girl, and was lightly built, but the dead weigh more than the living. Hard to tell in this sort of woodland if she was dragged. The ground was too hard to take impressions. It was horribly cold here, out of the little warmth the sun could give; numbingly cold. Slider could see his breath rising before him, and his fingers and the tip of his nose were aching.

Breaking his reverie, Atherton, beside him, said, ‘It looks as if there's been some digging – just there.'

‘Probably the finder's dog,' said Bob Bailey, the Crime Scene Manager.

‘It's an animal, all right,' Freddie said. ‘But I think it's more likely a fox. There's some damage to the fingers of this hand.' He raised the hand that was lying among the leaves by her side. ‘A bit of gnawing's gone on. I suppose it was too cold and hard actually to remove them. And the left ear's been bitten, too, the one that was nearer the ground – though those teeth are smaller. Too small for a dog or fox. Stoat, maybe.'

Slider heard their voices as if at a distance, echoing a little in the empty woodland air. Further off he could hear a murmur of talk from the people gathered in and around the car park; far away, in the country quiet, a crow was yarking monotonously. And the dogs shall eat her in the portion of Jezreel, he thought. An undeserved fate – but wasn't it always? Otherwise it wouldn't be murder.

‘Well?' said Atherton as they made their way back over the safe-route boards. ‘What do you make of it?'

‘Nothing, yet,' Slider said. ‘Just the usual questions. Why her? Why here?'

‘There is one thing that leaps to mind.'

Slider frowned at him. ‘You couldn't make it leap a bit higher, I suppose?'

‘One blow to the head – the same way Ronnie Fitton killed his wife.'

Slider sighed. ‘Well, I suppose he's got to look like a tasty suspect. Certainly the press will see it that way as soon as they find out who he is. But what reason would he have to kill her? The only person he's ever killed is his wife.'

‘Sexual jealousy,' Atherton said. ‘The strongest motive of all. He could have been brooding about her for years, while she's been going out with Hibbert, who is not worthy of her.'

Slider shook his head. ‘Then he'd kill Hibbert, surely.'

‘No, no. He'd make sure of his Precious – put her beyond the greasy Hibbertian fingers for ever.'

‘You're not serious.'

‘On sheer propinquity alone,' Atherton said.

‘Hibbert propinks just as well.'

‘If not more so,' Atherton admitted. ‘What now?'

‘We go and talk to the bod who found her. By the way,' he added, as they crossed the car park and the tea van reminded him, ‘what's wrong with McLaren? When I got here this morning, he wasn't eating anything.'

‘I noticed that,' Atherton said. ‘He has been off his nosebag, lately. And there are no food stains down his front – in fact, I think that's a new tie.'

‘It's unsettling,' Slider said.

‘You're right. I'll do a bit of detective work when I've got a minute.'

‘We've more important things to do. Don't waste any time on it,' Slider cautioned.

‘No, no,' Atherton reassured him. ‘I'll take the short cut. I'll ask him.'

William McGuire lived in Lakeside Close, the fancifully-named cul-de-sac that led off Reservoir Road on the side further from the Lido, and was therefore not on the lakeside, even had the Lido been a lake. The house was a tiny little Victorian railway worker's terraced cottage, a typical two-up, two-down yellow-brick, slate-roofed doll's house that only a greedy developer could have thought worth splitting, and then only in a serious housing shortage. McGuire had the downstairs remnant, for which ‘maisonette' was an overgenerous description. It was a bed-sitting room opening straight off the street, with a kitchen at the back and a bathroom crammed between the two. The only advantage it boasted was the garden, twelve feet wide and fifteen feet long, but as McGuire was plainly no gardener, and it ended in a British Leyland hedge that had been allowed to grow to twelve feet high, it had nothing but underprivileged grass in it, and had no view but the tops of the trees in the woods behind.