Gone Tomorrow (12 page)

‘But
why
would they go all that way round?’ Slider complained. ‘If they wanted to go into the park it would make more sense to climb over the gate only yards from where they were standing.’

‘Because if they climbed over someone might see them,’ Anderson suggested.

‘And we know there were no fingermarks on the gate to match Lenny’s, so we can assume they didn’t go over,’ Swilley said.

‘The fingerprint evidence doesn’t help at all,’ Slider said. ‘There was nothing clear on either gate, but it doesn’t mean some of the smears weren’t one of them, or both. But why would they go into the park at all?’

‘As I see it, guv,’ McLaren said, ‘Lenny runs off, climbs the gate to get away, meaning to run through the park and out that way. Cranston follows him, catches him up by the playground, they have another tussle, and he knifes him.’

‘Your brain’s come unstuck again,’ Swilley said impatiently. ‘Why would Lenny run away from Eddie? He’s already won the fight.’

‘All right,’ McLaren said comfortably, ‘Eddie runs away from Lenny, bunks over the gate in a panic, Lenny follows him to finish him off, corners him, Eddie’s got his knife out and – bang.’

‘It makes more sense that way,’ Hollis agreed.

‘Right,’ said McLaren, encouraged. ‘Then Eddie goes back over the gate and round to Carol Ann’s. Five minutes the lot.’

‘Why not through the park and out through the Frithville gate?’ Atherton asked.

‘The way I see it, he wants to get under cover as soon as poss,’ McLaren said. ‘Why would he go the long way round?’

‘Sometimes,’ Atherton conceded, ‘you almost sound like an intelligent life form, Maurice.’

‘I’m still not happy about all this climbing over gates,’ Slider said. ‘For one thing, there’d be some sign, surely, on Lenny’s clothes? And for another, if this was closing time there ought to have been people on the street.
Someone
would have seen them.’

‘Maybe they did and just aren’t coming forward,’ Atherton shrugged.

‘And another thing,’ Slider said, ‘Eddie said he’d seen Lenny in the Phoenix. Why did Sonny Collins say he’d never seen him before?’

‘You want a
reason
for Sonny Collins to lie?’ Atherton said incredulously.

‘And,’ Slider went on, ‘Eddie said that Collins said “Take it outside,
Lenny.”’

‘I refer the hon member to my previous answer.’

‘It looks straightforward enough to me, guv,’ Hollis said. And a right squalid little story it is. Nasty small-time lowlife preying off women. Benefit fraud, loan shark muscle-men. Two bits o’ scum squabbling over their miserable pickings like two dogs with a mouldy bone. And it ends like usual with one dead and one in the slammer where he belongs.’

‘What a poetic way you have of putting it,’ Atherton said.

‘The trouble is,’ Slider said, ‘that we haven’t got a shred of proof. Eddie doesn’t deny the fight, but that doesn’t prove he’s the murderer. We’ve no witness, no weapon, no timetable. All we’ve got is a motive.’

‘That’ll do it, nine times out of ten,’ Mackay said.

‘You know and I know the CPS won’t move without a cast-iron case, and so far this one’s as sound as a cardboard canoe.’

‘But it’s a start?’ McLaren pleaded.

‘It’s a start,’ Slider allowed kindly.

‘It’s more than that,’ Atherton said. ‘We started off this case with a sack of people who all had one eye, no surname and no address. I think we’ve worked wonders to get this far.’

‘Yes, well, now we’ve got to start finding some evidence,’ Slider reminded him.

‘What are we going to do with Carol Ann, boss?’ Swilley asked. ‘I think we’ll have to let her go pretty soon. She’s coming over all operatic. Dying duck in a thunderstorm.’

‘Ah yes, duck
à l’orage,’
said Atherton.

‘She can go any time she likes,’ Slider said. ‘She’s here voluntarily. I’d like to search her house though.’

‘They’ve had two days to tidy up.’

‘But we might spot what he used as a weapon, or there might be a bloodstain on something. It’s surprising what they miss.’

‘I don’t think she’ll agree,’ Swilley said doubtfully.

‘She will. There’s that video recorder, remember.’

‘You’ll have to rewrite your TV statement,’ Porson said.

Slider’s heart sank. ‘I was hoping I could get out of that, now we know Eddie’s and Lenny’s surnames.’

‘You don’t know Lenny’s address.’

‘Yes, but we’ve got a lead on that. His employer’s bound to have it.’

‘Fair enough. But you said yourself there’s got to be witnesses. I agree with you. All this fighting and climbing over gates – someone saw something, that’s crystal, but no-one’s come forward. Got to shake ’em up. Once the community starts turning a blind ear to crime, you’re walking down a thin blue line. I’m not having any part of my ground turned into a no-show area. Nothing emerged from the door-to-door?’

‘Not so far.’

‘Local TV news, then. That’s the ticket. And you’re the man. Nice sympathetic face. Not a crumbling old ruin like me.’ If it was a joke, he didn’t laugh, and Slider thought better of smiling, even sympathetically. Strike the wrong note with Porson and he could take your head off clean as a vole with an earthworm. ‘What do you want to do with Cranston?’

‘Now we’ve got his address, I’d like to search his drum. Either he can give permission or I can arrest him, whichever way he wants to play it.’

‘Not shouting, is he?’

‘Mute as a swan. Seems to have resigned himself.’

‘Don’t nick him unless you have to. Got enough to do without realms of paperwork.’

‘Right, sir,’ Slider said, grateful for small mercies.

‘All right, Bill,’ Porson said, suddenly kind, ‘better go and work
on that statement of yours, get yourself in the right frame of mind. You’ll be doing it over at Hammersmith, of course.’

‘Will I?’ Slider hadn’t expected that.

‘They’ve got a proper press suite all set up. And the press officer wants you there an hour beforehand to prepare you. Check your nose hair, give you electrocution lessons, that sort of thing.’ He surveyed his junior. ‘Had any lunch yet?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Thought you looked a bit fagged out. Go and get something to eat, and get your statement drafted. Your mind’ll work better on a full stomach.’

Slider, as he trudged off, wasn’t sure there’d be room for food with all the butterflies.

Golden Loans occupied one of those dusty-windowed offices above a hardware shop in Uxbridge Road. Access was via an extremely battered door which stood between the hardware shop and the deli next door. The smell of paraffin and salami competed on the air. The door was on the latch and pushed open to reveal a long and steep flight of stairs covered in green marbled lino which sported a collection of muddy footmarks that would have delighted the heart of a Holmes or early Wimsey. Since it hadn’t rained in over a week, it was plain that office cleaning was not high on the list of priorities.

At the top of the stairs was a half-glazed door through whose hammered glass it was perfectly possible to see the outline of the high toilet cistern and its dangling chain. No female staff then, Atherton concluded. The passage led back towards the front of the building and another half-glazed door on which the name in gold paint had been partly scratched off so that it now read GOI DEN L AVS. From the Bakelite doorknob hung a cardboard-and-string home-made sign on which was written in irregular capitals
KNOCK AND ENTER.

Atherton knocked and entered. The door swung only ninety degrees, stopped by the massive desk which dominated the room. Between the door and the wall to Atherton’s right was an empty patch of lino’ed floor about two feet square, but that was the only empty space in the room. There were two small, hard kitchen chairs against the right-hand wall, for customers, presumably – or applicants or supplicants or whatever the correct term was in
the loans-to-the-unthrifty biz. The rest of the room was filled with filing cabinets, a large metal stationery cupboard, a table cluttered with paperwork, the huge desk, and the man behind it.

Herbie Weedon was vast and almost shapeless: if it weren’t for his head you’d have been hard put to it to swear he was human. He seemed penned behind his desk like something dangerous, for the files and papers which covered the desk had stacked up in interlocking piles like a dry-stone wall, those furthest from him the highest, in teetering columns. He looked dangerous, but to himself more than the world: his blood pressure appeared to be well over into the red zone and almost off the gauge. His nose was spread, bumpy and purple, his eyes sunken and congested, his cheeks an aerial map of tiny red veins. His hair was sparse, as if it had been pushed off his skull by the terrifying forces within; his breathing filled the office, rivalling the traffic sounds from outside. He was like an ancient steam boiler with a jammed safety-valve, ready to blow at any moment. Yet by contrast his pudgy hands were pale and almost dainty, with well-kept nails. One rested on the desk top; the other was occupied with conveying a small thin cigar to and from his mouth. They looked as if they were quite separate entities from the rest of him: milk-white handmaids serving a bloated old sultan.

‘Mr Weedon?’ Atherton said gently, on the principle that one doesn’t shout in an avalanche zone.

‘The same,’ he wheezed. ‘Do for you?’ Behind the puffy lids the little dark eyes were as knowing as a pig’s. ‘Police?’

‘Is it that obvious?’

‘To me,’ Weedon said, pleased with himself. ‘When you’ve been in this business as long as I have … I’ve seen them all come and go. All sorts. Spot a copper a mile off.’

Atherton was upset by this. He knew what coppers looked like: cheap suits, big bottoms, thick-soled shoes. Had his standards slipped so far?

‘It’s the eyes,’ Herbie explained just in time for Atherton’s self-esteem. ‘Which nick are you from?’

‘Shepherd’s Bush. Detective Sergeant Atherton.’ He showed his brief but one of Weedon’s hands waved it away magnanimously.

‘Who’s The Man up there now? Can’t keep track since old
Dickson died. Great bloke was your Mr Dickson. Many a brandy and cigar we had together down at the club. University graduate he was not, but he was what I
call
a copper. There’s many a fine degree earned in the great School of Life.’

‘It’s Mr Porson now,’ Atherton said, hoping he wasn’t going to throw up. But he knew what Weedon was really saying:
I’m older than you, laddie, and I know important people. I can get things done.
And also,
You and I are on the same side of the law.
If he had ever supposed Golden Loans was a squeaky-clean outfit, he would have revised his opinion after that.

‘Porson? No. I don’t know him,’ Weedon said thoughtfully, accepting a suck of cigar from right-hand maid. ‘So what can I do for you this fine day? An advance against your salary? You wouldn’t be the first copper to come through that door for that. Shocking badly paid, you blokes. Wouldn’t do your job for all the tea in Wigan. Siddown, siddown.’ Left-hand maid waved Atherton to a kitchen chair. ‘Standing around like that, give me a crick in my neck looking at you. Make yourself comfortable. Smoke?’

‘Thanks, I don’t,’ said Atherton.

‘Very wise. I’m giving it up myself.’ He began to make a terrible noise and Atherton, who had almost sat down, almost leapt up again, his mind on resuscitation techniques. Then he realised Herbie Weedon was laughing at his own joke. The laugh ended in a racking, phlegmy cough that bounced his whole body, and left-hand maid dashed to his pocket for a handkerchief and tenderly wiped his face.

‘I’m interested in an employee of yours,’ Atherton said, thinking he’d better get the questions asked before it was too late.

‘Oh yes?’ gasped Weedon.

‘Lenny Baxter.’

The eyes sharpened. The breathing slowed. ‘Oh, yes,’ said Weedon in a very different tone. ‘What’s he been up to?’

‘He’s dead,’ Atherton said kindly. ‘I rather thought you might have noticed.’

Weedon smiled a little. ‘I might have, if he’d died in here. But as it happens, he hasn’t worked for me for a couple of months. He was one of my collection agents, but I had to turn him off. He was coming up short.’

‘You mean he was stealing the money he was supposed to collect?’

Weedon looked away towards the window and waved his cigar gently. ‘Oh, I don’t like to use a harsh word like that. He might have lost the money. He might never’ve
had
the money. It might have been stolen off him. But a collection agent who doesn’t deliver I don’t need. So I said thank you Lenny and bye-bye.’

‘And when was this?’

‘Like I said, a couple of months ago.’

‘From what I hear, he was still collecting much more recently than that. Like maybe last week or early this week.’

Weedon shook his head, quite unmoved. ‘Not for me.’

‘Did he collect for other people, then?’

The hands spread in a little gesture. ‘He was a freelance, he could work for anyone he liked. I didn’t enquire.’

‘I thought he was employed by you.’

The little eyes gleamed. ‘Self-employed.’ Aces over tens. Beat that. All the possible leverage of employment legislation down the tubes.

Atherton had no choice but to become the supplicant. ‘So what else was Lenny up to, Mr Weedon? You’re a sharp man. You must have an idea.’

Weedon leaned forward a little, and for a moment Atherton thought he was going to come across. But he said only, ‘It’s a big bad world out there, Mr Atherton, and full of dark deeds. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Lenny Baxter was into something too big for him and it turned round and bit him. He was a cocky sod and he thought he knew it all. But what that thing he was into might have been I can’t tell you.’

‘You must have a suspicion.’

‘Maybe I have. Maybe you have. But if it comes to guessing we can each guess for ourselves. Maybe Lenny Baxter had it coming. That’s all I can say.’ He blew out smoke and leaned back in his chair. Anything else I can do for you this fine day?’

Atherton sighed inwardly. Without some leverage he would not get any more out of this old trouper, and any threats he uttered would have to be well filled to work. No use just hinting Golden Loans was crooked. He acknowledged himself beaten. ‘Lenny Baxter’s address,’ he said.