Orchestrated Death (20 page)

‘So it’s quite possible that she wasn’t really working for her old orchestra, but simply putting that forward as a reason
for going up there.’

‘But why did she want to go up there?’

‘Why would anyone want to go to Birmingham?’ Atherton agreed. ‘But on the other hand, why put forward a reason at all? Why
not just go and tell no-one.’

‘Presumably,’ Slider said slowly, ‘on instructions.’

Atherton looked at him sidelong. ‘You still believe there’s a big organisation behind all this?’

He shrugged. ‘Otherwise, as you say, why give a reason at all?’

‘You don’t know yet that she didn’t go there to work,’ Joanna said.

‘Easy enough to find out,’ Atherton said. ‘I suppose that means you’ll be putting in another 728, Bill?’

What’s a 728?’ Joanna asked obediently.

‘Permission to leave the Metropolitan Area,’ Slider supplied. ‘We have to apply for it if we go out on police business.’

Atherton grinned. ‘It also means overtime, expenses, petrol money, pub lunches – no wonder the uniformed branch think we have
an easy life. And who will you take with you, he asked him innocently?’

‘Norma,’ Slider said promptly.

‘The hell you will!’

‘Who’s Norma?’ Joanna asked, still the obedient feed.

‘WDC Swilley,’ Atherton said with relish. ‘We call her Norma for obvious reasons. She’s good fun, drinks like a fish, swears
like a matelot – typical CID, in fact. But I don’t think it’s on, Bill. I can see the Super licensing you to trundle her off
in your passion-wagon for a fumble in the aptly named lay-bys. Stopping off for a pub lunch with Beevers or me is one thing,
but cock-au-van is going too far.’

The phone rang, and while Atherton was out of the room Joanna turned to lean on Slider’s knees and say, ‘Do you really think
Anne-Marie was involved with some big criminal organisation? It seems so unlikely to me.’

‘You prefer Atherton’s theory?’

‘There must be other explanations. But if it came to it, I’d prefer your theory to his.’

‘Why?’ he asked, genuinely interested.

‘Because you’re better looking than him.’

Atherton came back looking triumphant. ‘They’ve found Anne-Marie’s car. A forensic team’s going over it right now. Also the
report on Thompson’s car has come in. Nothing of great interest except some long, dark hairs. Very long, dark hairs.’

‘You said his girlfriend was dark,’ Slider said.

‘Short and curly,’ Joanna supplied, muted.

‘Where was the car found?’

Atherton’s triumphant smile widened a millimetre. ‘In a back street in Islington, about half a mile from where Thompson lives.
Within walking distance, as you might say.’

‘But surely,’ Joanna protested, ‘no-one would be so stupid as to abandon the car of someone they’ve just murdered so close
to their own home?’

‘You’d be surprised just how stupid most people really are.’

‘Who’s on duty – Hunt, isn’t it?’ said Slider. ‘Do you mind if I give him a ring?’

‘Use the one in the kitchen,’ Atherton said. Left alone, he and Joanna eyed each other cautiously, and then Atherton cleared
his throat. Joanna’s eyes narrowed in amusement.

‘I suppose you’re going to warn me off. You’re very protective of him, aren’t you?’

‘You know he’s married, don’t you?’

‘Yes. Yes, I know.’

‘Very married. He’s never had an affair before – he’s just not the type.’

‘Is there a type?’

‘He’s got two kids and a mortgage and a career. He’s not going to leave all that for you.’

‘Did I expect him to?’

‘I’m just warning you for your own good.’

‘No you’re not,’ she said evenly.

He squared up to her. ‘Look, any man can get carried away, and if he did leave home in the heat of the moment, it would be
disastrous for him. It would ruin him, and I don’t just mean materially. He’s one of the few really honest men I know, he
has a conscience, and the worry and guilt he’d feel about leaving his wife and family would ruin any happiness he might have
with you.’

She suppressed a smile. ‘You’re going very far, very fast. Isn’t that what’s called jumping to conclusions?’

‘The fact that he’s done it at all means it’s pretty serious. You don’t know him like I do. He’s not like us – he’s from a
different generation. He can’t take things lightly. And he’s very – innocent – about some things.’

‘Well,’ she said, and looked away, and then back again. ‘I think he’s old enough to make up his own mind, don’t you?’

Atherton rubbed the back of one hand with the fingers of the other, a nervous gesture of which he was unaware. ‘I don’t want
you to put him in a position where he
has
to decide. Don’t you see, once that happens he’ll be unhappy whichever way he chooses.’

‘I don’t see that I can help that,’ she said seriously.

Atherton felt anger rising, that she took it all so lightly. ‘You could break if off, now, before it goes any further.’

‘So could he.’

‘But he won’t. You know that. If you would just leave him alone –’

Now she smiled. ‘Ah, but he’d have to leave me alone, too. Have you thought of that?’

Atherton jerked away from her and walked to the fireplace, beat his fist softly on the mantelpiece. ‘You could discourage
him,’ he said at last, his back to her. He was afraid he would lose his temper if he looked at her. ‘You could do that.’

‘I could,’ she conceded. She looked at his tense back thoughtfully. ‘I still think, however, that it’s his business to decide
for himself, not yours or mine.’

He returned. ‘It just shows how much you really care for him! You have no scruples about destroying his life, do you?’

She looked at him carefully, as if wondering whether it was worth trying to make him understand. Then she said, ‘I don’t believe
that the status quo is the only workable configuration, or that maintaining it is necessarily the primary purpose of life.
Life is rich in possibilities, and on the law of averages alone, some of them are bound to be an improvement.’

Atherton said sharply, ‘You’ll make a lot of people very unhappy.’

‘I don’t happen to believe that happiness is the primary purpose of life, either.’

‘Crap!’ Atherton said explosively. She shrugged and said no more.

In a moment Slider came back. ‘I think I’d better take you home,’ he said. ‘Things are about to hot up.’ He glanced from her
to Atherton. ‘Were you two quarrelling?’

‘Discussing,’ Atherton said carefully. ‘Our views on a number of things are very different.’

‘Nonsense,’ Joanna smiled. ‘We were quarrelling over you – trying to see which of us loves you best.’

Slider grinned, not believing her. ‘Who won?’

‘I think it was a draw,’ she said, and was rewarded by a brief and quirky smile from Atherton.

* * *

In the car he said, ‘What were you talking about while I was on the phone?’

‘He was trying to persuade me to give you up.’

‘Oh!’ He sounded dismayed. ‘What did you say?’

‘That you were old enough to make up your own mind.’ It was not entirely what he wanted to hear, as she knew very well.

He sighed. ‘Why do things have to be so complicated?’ he said helplessly, like so many before him.

‘That’s how life is. Easy, but not simple.’

‘All right for you to say it’s easy,’ he said resentfully.

‘But it is. One always knows what the alternatives are.’

‘Perhaps I haven’t got your courage.’

‘It’s not a matter of courage.’

They stopped at the lights. ‘Don’t be so tough. What is it a matter of?’

‘Approach, I suppose. Like pulling off a plaster. There’s the inch-by-inch approach. Or you can give one good rip and have
done. You always know at the beginning what the end will be, so I always think you might as well – just jump.’

He looked at her, feeling so much and so complicatedly that he couldn’t articulate it. The lights went green, and he started
off again automatically, without being aware of it.

‘All the same,’ she said after a moment, ‘don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can’t cope and I can.’

He glanced at her, perplexed. ‘But you can cope with anything,’ he said.

‘Oh yes, I know,’ she said wryly. ‘That’s the trouble. That’s what will finish me in the end.’

He wanted to protest that he was not Atherton, that he did not understand riddles; but he found that – and of course – he
did. The love he felt for her, knowing its way better than he did, was fierce and tender in such mingled proportions – a cross
between ravishing and cherishing – that he felt scoured, shaken, emptied out; and, with that, curiously strong, like a man
who had been on a fast. Forty days and forty nights. Stronger than her – and how was that possible?

They arrived at the house. He wanted to make love to her, to sink into her and never surface again. She was the warm precinct
of the cheerful day that he never wanted to leave.

‘Will you come in?’ she asked when he didn’t move.

‘No, I must go home.’

‘And you said you didn’t have courage.’

She sat quite still for a moment or two, and then as she began to move he said, ‘You know it’s Anne-Marie’s funeral tomorrow.’

‘No, I didn’t know. Are you going to it?’

‘Privately, not officially. Would you like to come with me?’

‘Yes. I’d like to go. In all this it’s so easy to forget about her.’

She looked at him seriously to see if he understood what she meant, and of course he did. He touched her face with the tips
of his fingers, and then kissed her – on the mouth, but like a benediction.

‘I’ll pick you up,’ he said.

But even forewarned, he hadn’t expected the funeral to be so depressing. It turned warm during the night and began to rain,
and it went on raining dismally all day, and was so dark that eleven in the morning seemed like four in the afternoon. Added
to that there were hardly any mourners, which made everything seem somehow worse. Of course, she had had no relatives apart
from the aunt, but Slider had expected there to be friends, people from her past life, though he could not have said who they
might be. As it was, Anne-Marie Austen’s home life was represented by Mrs Ringwood, attended by her housekeeper and Captain
Hildyard, the solicitor, and an old man who seemed to be Mrs Ringwood’s gardener; from her working life there was only Joanna,
and Martin Cutts.

‘I expect others would have come if it hadn’t been short notice,’ Joanna said without conviction.

‘Sue Bernstein phoned Ruth Chisholm in case anyone from up there wanted to come, but it looks as though no-one could make
it,’ Martin Cutts said.

‘I suppose it’s too far for them,’ Joanna said.

‘Nonsense. Birmingham is closer to here than London.’

‘Oh. Well, probably they’re working today,’ Joanna said unconvincingly.

The service was distressingly bald and devoid of spiritual uplift to Slider, who liked his church High or not at all, and
could never get over the feeling that the modern translation of the Prayer Book, by being so ugly, was sacrilegious. There
was nothing, in fact, to take his mind off the fact that Joanna was seated on the further side of Martin Cutts, and that when
she started crying Cutts put his arm round her and she rested her cheek on his shoulder. Slider hated him, with his ready,
slippery ease of showing physical affection. Why couldn’t I ever have been like that? he wondered resentfully. What Cutts
gave and received so easily cost him so much pain and effort.

The committal at the graveside was brief, and as soon as was decently possible everyone hurried away to seek shelter. Slider
found himself accosted by Mrs Ringwood, with Captain Hildyard looming supportively at her shoulder.

‘I’m surprised to see you here, Inspector,’ she said. ‘Are you the official police presence?’

‘No, ma’am. I’m here in my private capacity.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Private capacity? What could that be? You weren’t a friend of my niece, were you?’

‘No, ma’am. But I do feel very much involved in the case – enough so to wish to pay my respects.’

‘How refreshing to learn that you chaps have room for human feelings,’ Hildyard put in, smiling yellowly behind his moustache
to show that it was a joke, though his eyes were as boiled and glassy as ever. They swivelled round to stare at Joanna. ‘And
you, young lady – were you a friend of our poor, dear Anne-Marie?’

Joanna seemed upset, almost angered by the look and the words. She stared at his tie, avoiding his eyes, and said brusquely,
‘I shared a desk with her in the Orchestra. What about you? I never heard her mention you as a friend of hers.’

It sounded rude, challenging, and Hildyard’s eyes seemed hostile, though he spoke evenly enough. ‘I’ve known the poor child
since she was tiny. Being so much of another generation from her, I hardly like to claim I was a friend, but I know she looked
on me with trust and affection. It’s the privilege, perhaps, of my profession to win a place in the
hearts of our young clients. Many’s the time I’ve popped in to attend to her pony’s colic or her puppy’s worms, and believe
me there’s no surer way to win a child’s love.’

‘Perhaps you’d like to come back to the house for a glass of sherry,’ Mrs Ringwood said abruptly to the air in general. Slider
was reminded of his Latin lessons at school, when he had learned to construct a sentence that ‘expects the answer
no.’
Mrs Ringwood’s inflection had just the same effect.

‘No thank you, ma’am. I have to be getting back to London,’ Slider said, and by a turn of his body managed to place himself
alongside Mrs Ringwood on the gravel path, which was only wide enough for two. Hildyard was forced to drop back beside Joanna.
‘By the way, Mrs Ringwood,’ he went on, lowering his voice and approaching her ear under the umbrella, ‘did you ever visit
Anne-Marie in Birmingham, after she joined the Orchestra there?’

‘Certainly not. Why should I want to visit her?’

‘You never went to her flat?’

‘I had no reason to.’

‘So you’ve no idea what sort of place it was? Whether she rented it? Whether she shared it with anyone?’