Gone Tomorrow (20 page)

‘I’m impressed,’ she said. When he returned from putting on the CD, she said, ‘Have I told you the story about the Jewish lady in New York, who took her son to the Carnegie Hall? She went up to the box office and asked if they had any tickets for the Isaac Stern concert. The ticket man said no, they were sold out weeks ago. So she says, “How much would they have cost if you had any?” and he said, “I’m afraid the cheapest seat was eighty-five dollars.” And the lady whacks her kid round the ear and says, “Now will you practise?”’

Slider laughed, easing himself in under the tray. ‘D’you want to try the cheese now, or shall we do a little more practising of our own.’

‘The night is young,’ said Joanna. ‘Let’s see how we get on.’

It was much later, after both food and practice, when they were lying in each other’s arms talking in a desultory way that she said out of a brief and relaxed silence, ‘I’m glad we’ve got this time together, Bill, because there’s something important I want to discuss with you.’

His scalp prickled at the words and the tone of her voice. ‘Oh yes?’ he said helplessly.

‘I don’t know if you’ve guessed what it is. Oh, damn it, I suppose I’d better just come to the point.’

Here it comes, he thought, and would have given anything
to put it off. It was another man thing, dislike of this woman thing of always wanting to ‘have things out’.

‘Go ahead,’ he said, bracing himself; and the telephone rang again.

‘Oh, bloody Nora,’ Joanna said. ‘What is it with your telephone? Have you got a symbiotic relationship going with it?’

‘Sorry,’ he said, reaching for it.

It was Nicholls, and sorry was the first word he said, too. ‘Sorry to interrupt your evening in paradise, but we’ve got an emergency.’

‘It had better be good,’ Slider said. ‘Or rather, it had better be bad.’

‘Oh it’s bad,’ Nicholls assured him. ‘Herbie Weedon’s dead, and it’s not natural causes. Can you come right away?’

‘Shit,’ said Slider, not for the first time in his career.

‘He didn’t turn up at the meeting place,’ Atherton said, looking unexpectedly pale.

‘Which was?’

‘Shepherd’s Bush station – the Hammersmith and City line. I was supposed to get a ticket and wait somewhere discreetly until he came through the booking hall, then follow him and get on the train with him. It was his usual ride home. Sit or stand next to him and he’d give me the information under cover of the train noise, but not to look at him or appear to know him, and not to react to anything he said.’

‘He really was cautious. Where did he go to on the train?’

‘Ladbroke Grove station. He lived in Lancaster Road.’

‘That’s only two stops. He couldn’t have had much to tell you.’

‘Maybe it wouldn’t have taken long. Maybe it was just the name you’ve been wanting. Anyway, I waited about twenty minutes past the time and then rang his office, but there was no answer. I thought maybe he’d had some business come in or he just thought better of it, so I gave it up, but as I was walking back to the nick – I was still parked in the yard—’

‘Of course.’

‘—I passed the building and there was a light on in the Golden Loans window. The street door was on the latch so I went up. The office door was unlocked too. And there he was.’

There he was, thought Slider, and he was not a pretty sight. Herbie Weedon was still sitting in his chair behind the vast and cluttered desk, where he had lived so much of his life, and from which he was not parted even in death. When the forensic teams had finished and the mortuary van came for
him it was going to be hell’s own job getting him out, like prising an enormous crab from its shell.

There had been little struggle: a few papers scuffed to the floor, that was all. Maybe he’d tried to get up: Slider imagined him putting his hands on the desk top, grunting as his breath shortened, trying to push himself to his feet. But they’d have been between him and the door, so even if he got upright, where could he go? No, more likely he’d have tried to talk his way out of it. Not the physical sort, Herbie. He must have talked his way out of – and into – a lot of things in his life.

It didn’t work this time. The red and purple face Atherton had described so graphically was congested, the little bloodshot eyes bulged like those of a stuffed toy, and round his neck was a thick iron chain with a padlock hanging from it like a pendant, resting on his chest, as if they’d made him Lord Mayor of some very industrial city. The marks in the swollen flesh of his neck exactly matched the links of the chain. There was no doubt he had been strangled with it.

‘Though it probably wouldn’t have taken much,’ Atherton said. ‘He wasn’t exactly in peak condition.’ He felt not only royally pissed off at having been cheated of the information he was to have had, but ridiculously sorry about Herbie. Ridiculous because Herbie had been an old villain, and there was no doubt he had caused much misery in his time; but there was something about this penned and helpless death that disturbed him. Herbie’s eyes were open. He had seen it coming, like the stalled ox awaiting the blunt end of the butcher’s axe.

‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised,’ Slider said, interrupting his thoughts, ‘if this were the missing lock and chain from the park.’

‘Good heavens! Do you think so?’ Atherton played up.

‘They wanted him found,’ Slider said. ‘They left the lights on deliberately. And the street door on the latch. I think this –leaving the chain like this – is their idea of a joke. Like leaving Lenny sitting on the swing in the playground. Taunting us.’

‘In which case,’ Atherton said, ‘they’d have to have known he was meeting me, and what he was going to tell me. How would they know that?’

‘Not necessarily. They might have seen him as another weak link and the timing was coincidental. On the other hand they might have tapped his phone. Or overheard him. Or got it out
of him with threats. Or he might have told someone else what he was going to do, and they grassed him.’

‘I can’t see him doing that.’

Slider shrugged. ‘One thing’s for sure, we know there’s some powerful business behind it somewhere. Organisation like this doesn’t exist unless someone’s making a healthy profit.’

‘Your Mr Big?’

‘It’s looking that way.’

‘A Mr Big with a sensayuma,’ said Atherton, looking again at Herbie Weedon. ‘What’s work if you can’t have a laugh?’

‘I could do without it,’ Slider said.

Joanna caught up with them again in the canteen for breakfast.

‘You look tired.’

‘Didn’t get any sleep, did we?’ Slider said. Are you having the full house?’

‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Makes a change from endless bread and jam. What kind of a breakfast is that, I ask you? It’s no wonder we always beat them in wars. I mean, Napoleon’s Old Guard –
café au lait,
two croissants and a dab of apricot jam; British Grenadiers – porridge, kippers, ham and eggs, sausages, toast and tea. No contest.’

While forking in the big fry-up – or scrambled eggs on toast in Atherton’s case – they told her about the new developments.

‘So now we know where the lock and chain went,’ Slider concluded, ‘but not how it got there.’

‘Presumably whoever killed Lenny took it away with them,’ Joanna said.

‘But why?’

‘Maybe they were going to strangle him with the chain the same way they killed the old man, and then as it happened they used the knife instead.’

‘Then why take the chain away?’

‘Forgot they were carrying it, perhaps,’ Joanna offered. ‘You can do that in the heat of the moment.’

‘Or maybe they were going to use it to incriminate somebody,’ Atherton said. ‘I don’t see that the chain and padlock are very important, except that they suggest the same person did both murders. Or at least they were ordered by the same person.’

‘What, the big boss?’ Joanna said. ‘Have you started believing in him now, then?’

‘There’s been another development,’ Atherton said. ‘Another witness – of sorts.’

‘Why of sorts?’

‘She didn’t see much.’

A woman working late at the BBC Television Centre had been leaving via the back gate into Frithville Gardens in a taxi at about two o’clock on Tuesday morning and had passed two men walking down the road, in the direction away from the park gates. She hadn’t seen them coming out of the park, but they looked suspicious types to her. They were both wearing dark glasses, baseball caps, blouson-type leather jackets and dark trousers, and had given her the impression of being young and of muscular build. One was talking on a mobile phone. The other had something thrust into the front of his jacket. The woman, Elly Fraser, had said he was ‘sort of supporting it with his hand as if it was heavy’. It was what had attracted her attention in the first place.

‘The chain?’ Joanna suggested.

‘Might be. The bad news is that she’s sure she wouldn’t be able to recognise them again. Only got a glimpse – dark glasses etcetera. And they might not be anything to do with it, of course.’

‘Or they might,’ said Slider, ‘especially as Lenny was seen talking to two similar characters earlier that evening. But the chain definitely suggests the two murders are linked. And the unfunny joke in each case was a warning to anyone else who might think of talking. Whoever he is, he’s got a tight hold on his people.’

‘But was Herbie Weedon one of his people?’ Atherton said. ‘I definitely got the impression he was an independent operator.’

‘Doesn’t matter, does it? If he’d ever done any business, if he’d merely rubbed shoulders with this big boss socially, he was going to tell you who he was, so he’d have to be silenced.’

‘I wonder why he wanted to tell,’ Joanna said.

‘Get rid of a rival, maybe. Or pure public-spiritedness.’

‘Please!’ Atherton protested. ‘Not while I’m eating!’

‘I’m serious,’ Slider said. ‘Herbie Weedon was obviously as straight as a pig’s tail, but there’s villainy and villainy. You often find that people like him resent it when someone a lot worse than them comes clodhopping over their patch and—’

‘Giving criminality a bad name?’ Joanna finished for him.

‘I suspect Herbie stopped at murder,’ Slider said, ‘and thought other people should too.’

‘Well, it’s all academic now,’ Atherton said. ‘And it leaves us an idea short of
Mastermind.’

‘We’ll have a look through Herbie’s house,’ Slider said, ‘though I’m not hopeful of finding anything. I tend to agree with you, I don’t think he was actually working for them—’

‘—and if he was they’ll have been there before us, like they were with Lenny.’

‘It occurs to me,’ Joanna said, ‘that if that was a gang punishment killing as you’re suggesting, it might explain why they didn’t take the money.’

‘Then what did they go through his pockets for?’ Slider asked.

‘His keys,’ she said. ‘So they could let themselves in at his house.’

‘You’re brilliant,’ Slider said.

‘I have my moments,’ she said, fluttering her eyelashes at him.

‘If I can interrupt the love fest, where does it leave us?’ Atherton said. ‘Sonny Collins won’t talk, and everyone else can’t talk.’

‘There’s Everet Boston,’ Slider said. ‘We’d better try and get to him before they do.’

‘And what about Lenny’s girlfriend?’ Joanna said. ‘She must know something about what was going on.’

‘Yes, but it’s a case of
cherchez la femme.
She’s gone AWOL,’ Atherton said.

‘But Everet seemed to know her from somewhere,’ Slider said. ‘I think he’s got to be our lead to her as well. He’s definitely next in the big black chair.’

‘Looks like I won’t be seeing much of you,’ Joanna said.

‘I’m sorry,’ Slider said. ‘This had to happen just when you manage to get over for a few days.’

‘Ah well,’ she said philosophically. They scraped back their chairs and got up. ‘I’ll push off. I’ve got dirt to scratch and eggs to lay.’

He gave her a grateful look. She would not burden him with her needs, even though she wanted to have a Serious Talk with him and had been twice baulked. ‘You’re a gentleman,’ he told her.

She smiled at the compliment. ‘Ring me when you can,’ she said, and left them.

‘You know what the definition of a gentleman is?’ Atherton said conversationally as they headed for the stairs. ‘Someone who knows how to play the piano accordion, and doesn’t.’

‘I wonder why they always play one of those things in the background of films set in Paris.’

‘Shorthand,’ said Atherton. ‘Like onions, berets and bicycles.’ They both had things to keep the mind away from.

Atherton staggered into Slider’s room, his hands over his face. ‘The shining! The shining!’ he moaned.

Slider looked up from the paperchase with bare interest. ‘Jack Nicholson. Too easy. And if you’ve got time to play charades—’

‘No, no,’ Atherton said, resuming normal service, ‘you’re way out. It was the light of his countenance that dazzled me.’

‘His who?’

‘Him what sent me to summon you unto his presence. I am not that light—’

‘Now you’re getting blasphemous,’ Slider warned.
‘Who?’

‘Detective Chief Superintendent Palfreyman has descended from the clouds and wishes to bless you.’

‘Oh Nora! That’s all I needed.’

Palfreyman was the head of the Homicide Advice Team, whose decision it had been in the beginning to leave Lenny Baxter’s murder with them rather than give it to the overstretched SCG. The arrival of the HAT car followed the discovery of a corpse as summer follows the swallow, but Slider was not pleased to be revisited. It was never good news when top brass got interested in what you were doing. They were lucky at Shepherd’s Bush to have Porson as their Det Sup, for he was old-fashioned enough to see his job as standing between his men at the sharp end and the demi-gods at Hammersmith – those blessed ones whose exalted rank and sheer weight of salary left them with nothing much to do all day but think of ways to make the working copper’s life more burdensome. Their previous Chief, Richard (or ‘God’) Head, had vaulted from their shoulders clean to the stars, otherwise known as SO19, the firearms unit at Scotland Yard, where he
could deploy troops and shout ‘Go! Go! Go!’ into a radio mike to his heart’s content.