Gone Tomorrow (24 page)

‘Not possible,’ Slider said firmly. ‘But if he should open the subject with me—’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ll tell him he’s not Peter Pan,’ Slider concluded. ‘Good God, there’s a parking space!’

‘Grab it, quick,’ she said, allowing the subject to be changed.

Later, sharing the bathroom basin for tooth-cleaning, she said, ‘I understand, really. He doesn’t want to stop chasing women because that will be the end of his merry days of youth. And he’s afraid of feeling too much for Sue because she can hurt him, where none of his casual dollies could.’

‘Are you sure he’s that deep?’ Slider said. ‘Maybe he just can’t help it.’

‘If that’s what you say about your friends, heaven help your enemies,’ she said, without heat.

He rinsed his brush and watched the water swirling away down the plughole. He wasn’t a bit sleepy now, and as personal problems were the flavour of the moment … In for a penny, he thought. Might as well get it over with.

‘You wanted to have a serious talk,’ he suggested.

She turned back in the bathroom doorway. ‘Oh that. No. Not now. I’m not in the mood.’

‘Is that good or bad?’ he asked tentatively.

‘Depends on your point of view.’

‘What are you in the mood for?’

‘No more talk,’ she said. ‘Let’s just go and have some really rampant sex.’

‘There are no two points of view about that,’ he said, following her and putting out the light.

During the morning one small piece of comfort in an otherwise unpleasant case arrived on his desk: the PM report on Herbie Weedon suggested that he had not actually choked to death. His neck, which Slider remembered as being about the same width as his head, had been so well-covered that the chain had dug in and restricted his breathing but had not actually stopped it altogether, and none of the delicate bones – the cricoid, hyoid etc – had been fractured. Perhaps, eventually, sufficient force would have been administered to achieve these effects but, in Freddie’s opinion, Weedon’s heart, which was in a shocking condition anyway, had given out before that happened. Why Slider should find any comfort in the fact that Weedon had died of heart failure rather than being strangled he didn’t know, but it seemed just marginally better. Not a ray of sunshine, precisely, but a small one up to them. Herbie had slipped under the net. They had not got him –
he
had got him.

Swilley interrupted his thoughts. ‘Guv, have you got a minute?’

‘Where would I get one of those?’ Slider asked.

Swilley took that for an invitation. ‘I think I may have something.’

‘Really? That was quick.’

‘Well, I don’t know if it is anything,’ she backpedalled, ‘but, look. I didn’t find any match for a girl with the name Boston—’

‘I didn’t really think you would,’ Slider said.

‘But I got onto Everet Boston’s old school, and they put me onto his old form teacher. He remembered Everet very well. A bright lad, but always in trouble. And when Everet’s mum was unavailable – which was often, because she was apparently a bad lot – they used to have to call in his auntie, a Mrs Angela Coulsden who lived in Wrottesley Road. That’s just round the corner from Furness Road where Everet lived with his mum. So I ran the name Coulsden through the records and came up with a Mary Coulsden, who had two minor busts a couple of years ago, one for underage drinking and one for shoplifting a
lipstick from Woolworths. Cautioned for both and nothing recorded against her since.’

‘Same address?’

‘No,’ Swilley said apologetically, ‘and the appropriate adult that was sent for was her dad, a Neville Coulsden. But the address was All Souls Avenue, which is only two minutes from Wrottesley Road. They could easily have moved.’

‘True.’

‘And Mary was the name on his tattoo.’

‘Which Doc Cameron says is fairly recent.’

‘And,’
Swilley concluded, as one coming to the fruitiest bit last, ‘when the store dick in Woolies nobbled her, she gave a false name to begin with. She called herself Teena Brown – spelt T, double e, n, a. Only gave her real name when they got her down the nick. Which was Mary Christina Coulsden. Maybe she didn’t like the name Mary,’ she concluded, looking at him hopefully.

‘So if she is the same person, she might still be going under the name of Teena Brown,’ Slider said. ‘Did you—?’

‘Yes, I checked, but there are no busts against a Teena Brown, spelt either way. But that doesn’t mean anything. She might have been careful, or lucky—’

‘Or Lenny Baxter might have been doing everything for her,’ Slider concluded. ‘Well, it isn’t much, but it gives us another line to follow up. Put the word out for a tom using that name, and see if you can find the parents. They might still be at the same address—’

‘The father is. He’s on the current voters’ register.’

‘Oh?’

‘No mention of Angela, though. He’s listed as living alone.’

‘All right. Go and see him. If it is the same, maybe the girl’s run home; or if she hasn’t, he might know where she might go to hole up. Good work, Norma. If this works out there could be a sainthood in it for you.’

She smirked. ‘Something like a golden ha-lo?’

‘Don’t you start,’ Slider said.

‘For you, Jim,’ Hollis called across the room. ‘Line two.’

Atherton took it. At first he thought he was getting an obscene phone call: there was nothing but heavy breathing. But when he said ‘Hello?’ again, there was an instant response.

‘Hello, hello, Mr Atherton? Sorry, I thought someone was coming in. It’s James Mason here – not the actor of course.’

‘I should hope not. Yes, Mr Mason, what can I do for you?’

‘I hope maybe it is what I can do for you,’ Mason said. ‘That leather jacket you brought to show me.’

‘Yes? You’ve had some thoughts on it?’

‘Better than that, I’ve seen its twin. One of my regulars came in this morning to bespeak a new suit. A very nice gentleman, and a very good customer. Appreciates fine cloth and good tailoring just as you do. I showed him that cashmere-mink cloth I showed you, and he said yes right away. Couldn’t wait. Of course, there will be enough there for two suits, if you should change your mind—’

‘Not at the moment, thanks. What about the leather jacket?’

‘Ah, well, he wasn’t wearing that himself, of course. A very good dresser, always, and never casual, not in town. Knows the value of matching the outer shell to the inner strength. We are what we wear. No, I don’t think I would ever see him in town in a leather jacket. There are places—’

It struck Atherton that Mason was more than usually rambling, and it sounded like nerves. ‘So who was wearing it, then?’ he asked with a hint of impatience.

‘His driver,’ Mason said. ‘He was waiting outside with the car – there’s no parking outside my shop, as you know – and while we were in consultation he came in and said that there was a traffic warden coming, and asked my gentleman if he was ready. My gentleman said he should drive round the block and come back. That was when I noticed the jacket. It was the same quality, the same cut and style, and the lining was the same – that very fine tartan wool in the shades of brown. I couldn’t see the label, of course, because he was wearing it.’

‘So you don’t really know—’

‘One moment please, Mr Atherton. There is more. I took my gentleman into the back to consult on the style of the suit –his measurements I have already, of course; those I did not need to take. Later the shop bell rang, and I put my head out just to see who it was. It was the driver come back. I said we would be a few moments longer, and he nodded. But he seemed to feel it warm in the shop, and he slipped the jacket off. That’s when I saw the label. It was the same.’

‘I see. That’s very interesting,’ Atherton said. ‘Did you say anything to either of them?’

‘No, indeed! For one thing, I did not know how important the jacket might be. To be making a fuss for nothing – and for another thing, I should not like to upset a very good customer by asking impertinent questions. Also—’

‘Yes?’

‘If it is a serious matter, I should not like to do the wrong thing. Perhaps you would not like me to ask anything. So I let it go, and I pondered. And now I have rung you.
Is
it important?’

‘I don’t know,’ Atherton said. ‘When I first came to you, it was a question of identifying someone—’

‘The dead person, yes.’

‘But we know who he was now. On the other hand, we still know very little about him. The jacket might be a lead. If your customer’s driver bought it from the same person, it might give us an idea of what he was up to. Do you have the driver’s name?’

‘Oh, no. I’ve never made for him,’ Mason said simply.

‘Then I had better have your customer’s name,’ Atherton said. ‘I notice you’ve been careful not to let it drop so far.’

Mason hesitated. ‘The thing is, my dear sir, that the gentleman is a very good customer of mine, and I should not like him to think I had been talking about him behind his back.’

‘I’ll be tactful,’ Atherton said. ‘All I want is the name and address of his driver. He can’t object to giving me that, surely?’

‘Oh, no. No, no. Of course not. No, any respectable citizen must want to help the police in any way they can, and he is a very respectable citizen.’ He sounded deeply doubtful.

‘Don’t worry, Mr Mason, I’ll treat him with kid gloves. What’s his name and address?’

‘It’s Mr Bates. Trevor Bates. And he lives in Aubrey Walk in Holland Park.’

‘He’s well-to-do, then.’

‘Oh yes, indeed.’

‘I’m not surprised you don’t want to upset him.’ He wrote down the full address. ‘Telephone number?’

‘It’s ex-directory,’ Mason said unhappily. ‘I
really
don’t think I can give you that. It would be breaking a confidence.’

‘All right,’ Atherton said, ‘I’ll manage. Thank you for telling me this. It might not turn out to be important, but you never know.’

‘My pleasure, my pleasure, sir. And if you would like to pop in some time, I should be extremely happy to make you a suit, or a pair of trousers—’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Atherton said. Never let it be said that he had broken a tailor’s heart.

All Souls Avenue was a wide road, once respectable but now brought low, blighted by traffic from having become a through route. The terraced houses were shabby, and most had been broken up into flats and rooms. Mr Neville Coulsden had a ground-floor flat in a three-storey house whose front garden had been concreted over and had its fences removed so that cars could be parked on it. A bile-green Fiesta sat inches from his bay window, two of its wheels up on blocks and a confetti of rust all around it. On the other side of the path were several hunks of rusting metal – car innards of some kind, Swilley deduced – and the gay multicoloured gleam of crisp bags and sweet wrappers blown behind and underneath them showed how long they had been there. The top-floor windows of the house were open and the beat, but not the melody, of heavy rock music issued forth past the dirty net curtains, as if someone up there were regularly whacking something springy with a wooden mallet.

Mr Coulsden opened the door to Swilley with a searching look and a rather flinching mouth. Expecting bad news, she thought. Inside his flat the music noise was both worse and better. The slight upper-register jingle perceptible outside, like change rattling in someone’s pocket, was here inaudible; but the regular thump was closer and more personal. Transmitted through the fabric of the house as a vibration, it seemed to assail the skin rather than the ears, like a physical threat.

‘Won’t you sit down? I’m sorry about that,’ he said, raising his eyes to the ceiling. He had a mild but musical West Indian accent. ‘It don’t do no good to hask. They just turn it up even more. Can I make you a cup of tea?’

‘No, thank you, nothing for me.’

Coulsden nodded gravely and sat down in the armchair opposite her, but well forward, elbows on thighs so that his hands hung over the space between his knees. He was a very big man, tall and bony, with large chalky-nailed hands and a massive head. He was neatly dressed in grey trousers and a white shirt open at the neck, a home-knitted sleeveless Fair Isle cardigan and tartan bedroom slippers. His close-cropped hair was quite white, so it looked like sheep’s wool, and his brown eyes were appropriately mild, but the overall impression was of a still strength, quietly contained and waiting – though for what?

The sitting room was tidy and clean, furnished with a hideous brown brocade three-piece suite with fringe edging, and one or two pieces of early MFI finished in wood-style veneer. The carpet was crimson cut-pile, the wallpaper patterned with brown and cream cabbage roses, the curtains grey with a yellow and turquoise zigzag motif. Spotless nets shut out the view of the rusting Fiesta and the migrating mastodons of buses and lorries beyond, and in front of them, on a small table, stood a fern in a pot, its fronds trembling to the rhythm of the Garage beat from above.

On the wall in one fireside alcove was a large framed print of the Sacred Heart of Mary, and on the narrow, low, tiled mantelpiece over the gas fire a tiny statuette of Pope John Paul II stood amid a collection of well-polished brass ornaments. There was a large, elderly television, Swilley noted, but no video recorder, and no books anywhere, no reading matter at all except for the
Radio Times
folded open on the set-top. There was an air of stillness about the flat, into which the disco thump intruded like an unpleasant menace, like the evil men starting to break down the door of your hiding place in one of those pursuit dreams. Stillness and emptiness and the unstoppable thud. How did he live here? It made Swilley shiver.

‘Thank you for letting me come and talk to you, Mr Coulsden,’ she began. And then – she had to ask. It was her job. ‘Is Mrs Coulsden—?’

‘My wife is dead,’ he said calmly, but the dry old lips trembled again. ‘Eighteen monts ago. We’d been married forty-five years. We married in Kingston the year before we came over. She was a wonderful woman. Forty-five years and never a cross word.’