Shallow Grave (19 page)

‘Whether she asked for spiritual advice?’

‘It wasn’t a long enough call for that – four minutes. But seeing as it was the day she died, she might have said something to him that would give us a hint.’

‘Quite right,’ Slider said. ‘We’ll look into it. Anything else?’

‘She phoned the First And Last just before eleven o’clock. Ten fifty-five, to be exact, one minute fifty seconds. I wondered if she spoke to Eddie. Maybe that was when he arranged to meet her somewhere, wherever it was he killed her.’

‘The barman said it was after eleven that Eddie came in,’ Atherton reminded him. ‘After closing-time, which was why he refused him a drink. But I suppose he could have got the time wrong.’

‘Or the pub clock could be fast,’ Slider said. ‘It’s a thought, anyway. What about Meacher’s mobile?’

‘Nothing that strikes the eye, guv,’ Mackay said, ‘except—’ He hesitated. ‘Well, I dunno if it’s anything to do with anything, but he did make a call to the Target Motel that morning. At half past eleven.’

‘Half past eleven? He was still in the office at that time, wasn’t he?’

‘Well, that’s what I wondered. If he used his mobile instead of the office phone, maybe he didn’t want anyone to hear what he was saying. And it being a motel, naturally I thought—’

‘That his call had naughty purposes,’ Atherton concluded. ‘It’s shocking the effect the word “motel” has on people.’

‘Well, why don’t you pop round there and find out?’ Slider told Mackay. ‘No, no, don’t thank me. I like to reward virtue. Meanwhile,’ he said to Atherton, ‘I think you may pay a visit to the parish priest, and see if you can get any more information about Mrs Andrews and her little proclivities.’

‘Pretty large ones, from what I’ve heard,’ Atherton said,
unfolding his long body from the window-sill like a hydraulic arm. ‘What about a Meacher follow-up?’

‘I’ll do that,’ Slider said. ‘I need the fresh air.’

Meacher’s office was womanned by a very smart, well-preserved female in her forties who was very nearly pretty. Her hair was dyed blonde, but very nicely, and her makeup was perfect, except that she had eaten off her lipstick leaving only the outliner, which gave her rather a clownlike look. A lipstick-stained coffee cup on her desk completed the story, and the stale-laundry smell of instant coffee on the air suggested to the trained mind that she had only just finished it and hadn’t yet had time to renew the lippy. It was easy when you knew how, Slider told himself, and asked her for the boss.

She replied, with a clipped smile and an authoritative voice, ‘I’m sorry, he’s at the other office today. Can I help you?’

‘You must be—’ Slider sought memory for the name. ‘Liz – I’m sorry, I don’t know your other name.’

‘Liz Berryman,’ she admitted, looking a query.

‘Detective Inspector Slider, Shepherd’s Bush CID.’

‘Oh! Yes,’ she said, and her face became grave. ‘About Jennifer, I suppose. That was a terrible thing. I suppose it was murder?’

‘We’re treating the death as suspicious,’ Slider said cautiously. The eyes behind the mascara were watchful and intelligent. ‘I suppose you didn’t know her very well?’

‘Oh, I knew her all right,’ she said bitterly. She looked down, and then up again as though coming to a decision. ‘I suppose you know about her and David?’

Slider sat down in the chair on the other side of her desk with an air of settling in for the spill. ‘Funnily enough, that’s what I was going to ask him about when I came here.’

‘If he’d tell you. It’s supposed to be a big secret. But
I
’ll tell you if he won’t.’ She translated his waiting expression as an enquiry into her motives. ‘I don’t owe him any loyalty on that score. What loyalty did he ever show me, or anyone? And they were both married people. Besides, it’s everyone’s duty to help the police, isn’t it?’

‘I wish everyone thought so,’ Slider said. ‘So Jennifer and David Meacher were having an affair, were they?’

‘If that’s what you want to call it,’ she said sourly.
‘He
tried to keep it a secret at the office, but
she
was always brushing up against him, and saying things no-one else was supposed to understand. She was always calling him, too, when it wasn’t her day on. She’d disguise her voice sometimes and pretend to be a client if it was me answered the phone, but I knew it was her, all right. I expect she did the same thing at his home. Her sort always do. I pity his poor wife.’

‘But Mr Meacher said that you and she were never here at the same time,’ Slider queried.

‘That was the basic principle, but our times overlapped, so as to make sure the office was always covered. And she did extra hours when we were busy. And, of course,’ she added harshly, ‘she liked to hang around after I arrived talking to David and looking sideways at me to see if I’d noticed.’

‘Why would she do that?’ Slider asked mildly.

She glowered at him. ‘Why don’t you just come right out and ask me? I’ve got nothing to hide, though David seems to think I have. But I wasn’t the one who was married. I was perfectly entitled to do whatever I wanted, especially given—’ She stopped, biting her lips angrily.

Slider was there at last. ‘It used to be you,’ he said. ‘He dropped you for Jennifer?’

She coloured. ‘There was no dropping about it! He wanted to go on seeing me as well, but when I found out about Jennifer I told him there was no way I was going to share, let alone with that vulgar, brassy – well, tart’s too good a word for her. He wanted to have both of us. That’s when I got out – and I was right to.’

‘But you were already sharing with his wife,’ Slider said, though he had guessed what came next. Oh, Lord, what fools we mortals be!

‘He promised to marry me. I would never have started it otherwise. He said he was going to leave her, that he was only waiting for the right time to tell her. But when he took up with Jennifer, I realised what a fool I’d been. He never meant it. It was just what he said to get me into bed.’

‘Well, at least you’ve realised it now,’ Slider said encouragingly. ‘Some people never see the truth, even when it’s under their noses.’

She didn’t answer that, only stared broodingly at the computer screen, alone with her thoughts. And Slider thought, Yes, she’s discovered the truth, but she’s still here, working for him. Why is that? Just to be near him? Still in love with him, in spite of everything? What
was
it about some men?

‘So when did it start between him and Jennifer?’ he asked.

Miss Berryman’s attention snapped back into place. ‘Oh, right from the time she first came to work here. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t
why
he gave her the job – so as to have more opportunities for it.’ She looked into Slider’s eyes as one coming to the worst and barely credible thing. ‘They used to do it in the clients’ houses, you know. The ones we had keys for. On their beds. God knows what would have happened if they’d got caught.’

Slider wondered for a moment whether the two-timing Meacher had known he was being two-timed by Jennifer. What a pair they were! ‘And yet,’ he said aloud, ‘you wouldn’t have thought she was his type. I wonder what he saw in her.’

‘Oh, I understand she was fabulous in the sack,’ Miss Berryman said, in a hard voice. ‘As for her, she thought David was worth a mint, and she couldn’t wait to get her claws into him. She’d have found out!’

‘Found out what?’

She looked at him with narrowed eyes. ‘I do the invoices, and I know how to get into his accounts on the computer. The business is on the rocks. If his wife doesn’t bail him out again, he’ll go bust. Well, serve him right, I say. I know I’ll lose my job if he folds, but it’d be worth it just to see that smug look wiped off his face.’

‘His wife has money, has she?’

‘Oh, she’s rich as Croesus. That’s why he’ll never leave her. I learned
that
the hard way.’

Instructive, Slider thought, out in the street, though it didn’t get him much further forward. So Jennifer was making the beast with two backs with Meacher, who had previously been bonking Liz Berryman. And what price now the little fluffy one he’d seen the other day – what was her name? – Caroline? Meanwhile, Jennifer was Doctor Dolittling with Jack Potter on the side, and who else? Oh, brave new world, that had such people in it. He
should have known Meacher was a villain. Any man who’d sell an Aston to buy a BMW couldn’t be all good.

In his car, he dialled the number of Meacher’s Denham office, but all he got was an answering-machine in Meacher’s voice.

‘I’m sorry we can’t come to the phone right now, but if you’ll leave your telephone number and any short message, we’ll get back to you.’

Slider put down the receiver with irritation. Why ‘right now’? Was there some other, less immediate sort of now during which the telephone might possibly be answered? And why ‘get back to you’? The phrase had such overtones of hardship dauntlessly overcome, conjuring images of the faithful family dog, accidentally left behind, struggling mile after mile over unfamiliar terrain to find its way home to the masters it adored. Get back to you, indeed! Slider knew perfectly well that his dislike of David Meacher was in essence irrational; but the mark of maturity, he always felt, was the ability to sustain irrational prejudices with grace and dignity. He made a few more telephone calls, and then rang Joanna.

‘Fancy a trip out into the countryside?’

‘You mean now? As opposed to finishing the pile of ironing I’ve just started, hoovering the sitting room, cleaning the bath and putting in a solid hour’s practice? That’s a hard one to call.’

‘I’ve got to go out to Denham to interview a bloke, and there’s a really nice pub in Denham village – the Kestrel – where they do toasted bacon and tomato sandwiches. I thought we could meet there for lunch.’

‘What beer do they do?’

‘Marston’s and Brakspear’s, if memory serves.’

‘You’re on.’

‘You’re not working today, are you?’

‘Just that committee meeting at six.’

‘Hedonist!’ he said.

The Denham office of David Meacher Estate Agents turned out to be a wooden hut standing all alone beside the bypass between a garden centre and a timber yard. Traffic thundered past, bypassing for all it was worth, and four lanes and a central reservation divided the hut from the pavement on the other
side where there was a row of shops, a pillar-box, houses, and pedestrians. However cheap the hut was in terms of rent and rates, it was unlikely to pay its way in walk-in trade, Slider thought, as he parked in the lay-by. The hut had two shop windows and a door in between. The windows were filled with cards advertising houses for sale, but half of them had ‘sold’ stickers across them, and they all looked very yellow. A hecatomb of dead flies lay inside on the window-sill, and the door had its blind pulled down and a ‘closed’ notice hanging from a suction hook. There was a hand-written notice stuck to the inside of the glass of the door, instructing interested parties to contact the Chiswick office; but this, too, Slider noticed, was yellowed with age and exposure to sunlight. Without any hope, he banged on the door, but there was, as he expected, no answer.

He returned to his car. The lay-by was tenanted by a flower-seller, a young man in cut-offs and teeshirt perched on a camp stool reading a paperback, guarding a green-painted barrow displaying the indestructible flowers of the roadside: long-stemmed rosebuds that would never open, multi-headed chrysanthemums whose petals would fall off in one shattering lump ten minutes after you bought them, and the sort of scentless carnations that looked exactly the same whether they were alive or dead. The lad looked up as Slider approached, but not with any expectation of making a sale. Slider wondered how he – or whoever employed him – could possibly make a living. Who bought these joyless objects, which could not merit so exuberant a title as ‘blooms’? Someone going to the funeral of an office colleague, perhaps, cramming it into a working day between meetings? A businessman with sweat rings under the arms of his striped shirt and fear of discovery in his heart, hurrying to a clandestine lunch with his mistress in one of those tomb-like exurban Italian restaurants, where the food is frozen in individual dishes for ease of microwaving, and the coffee is reheated from day to day?

‘Know anything about the estate agents there?’ Slider asked. The young man shook his head. ‘Has anyone been in there this morning?’

‘Never seen anyone go in there,’ he said.

‘You here every day?’

‘Mostly.’

‘What time is it usually open?’

He shook his head again. ‘Never seen it open.’ He eyed Slider keenly. ‘Police?’

Am I that obvious? Slider thought. ‘I’m looking for the owner,’ he said.

‘I think they’ve closed down,’ the young man said. ‘It’s been shut up like that since I been coming here. Never seen anyone go near it. You only got to look at the weeds.’

Slider looked back, and noticed, sure enough, the ragwort and dandelions growing up between the cracks in the pavement and between the pavement and the hut’s wall. This was a pavement that never knew the touch of human foot. People drove into the garden centre and the woodyard, or parked briefly in the lay-by for the flower-seller’s wares and then drove off again.

‘Thanks,’ Slider said. It was all Hatton Garden to a hatful of mice that this man had no trader’s licence, but Slider had no wish to appear ungrateful, and besides, he reckoned the lad had already devised his own punishment. He got into his car, thought for a moment, looked at his watch, and then in his notebook for Meacher’s home address. If he wasn’t there, at least there might be someone who knew where he was.