Gone Tomorrow (39 page)

‘But I was afraid. I told him to forget about it, but then my conscience wasn’t easy.’

‘Well, you did the right thing, Bernie, and I’m grateful to you. To both of you. And I’ll make sure there’s a little something for you both to say thank you.’

‘Oh, no, that wouldn’t be right,’ Bernie said gravely. ‘Not a reward for doing your duty.’

‘I’d like to give you something anyway. There’s nothing wrong with that. You didn’t do it for the money, so it’s quite all right.’

‘Well,’ said Bernie, but less doubtfully.

‘Now I want you both to come with me to the station, and we’ll take down what Sam saw in writing, to make it all official. And then I’d like you, Sam, to sit and look at some pictures and tell me if any of them look like the lady you saw. Can you do that?’

Sam looked sly. ‘Can I have a Coca-Cola if I do?’

‘You can have the back of my hand if you don’t do as you’re told,’ Bernie said fiercely, and Sam collapsed like a pricked balloon. You could have blown Bernie away with a puff of wind, and Sam was twice his weight at least; but in the minds of both of them Sam was still nine years old and in short trousers.

‘The house with the weeds,’ Mad Sam had said, and Slider, having been up and down Frithville Gardens often enough in the past week, had no difficulty in identifying it. One house on the left-hand side going up (the side opposite to where Blind Bernie and Mad Sam lived) had been empty for some time and was boarded up and semi-derelict. Weeds had sprung up with mongrel vigour from the small patch of earth on the side of the area, ragwort and grass was sprouting from cracks in the steps and windowsills, and the gutters were gay with buddleia so that the house looked as if it was wearing an Ascot hat.

Atherton looked with distaste down the area, which was choked not just with weeds but with rubbish, carelessly discarded tins, bottles and fast-food boxes, and the inevitable skeleton of a pushchair. The rate of attrition of children’s buggies was so abnormally high, he thought, it was something to bear in mind when looking for shares to invest in.

McLaren was equally unimpressed. ‘You want me to go down there?’

‘Well, I’m not trousered for it,’ Atherton said.

‘And there’s got to be some advantage to my higher rank,’ Slider added. ‘If it’s not that, I can’t think what else it can be.’

‘You’re breaking his heart,’ Atherton warned. ‘Come on, Maurice, you’re the one who’ll feel most at home among all those KFC cartons.’ He nudged McLaren towards the steps. ‘Be careful, though. There might be rats.’

‘Not at this time of day,’ Slider intervened. ‘Get on with it.’

McLaren donned his gloves and descended gingerly. It was fifteen minutes before he straightened up and said, ‘I think I’ve got something.’

‘I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,’ Atherton murmured.

McLaren was clambering back up. He displayed his booty: a paperknife in the shape of a stiletto, sharply pointed and narrow, double-edged, and with a blade about five and a half or six inches long.

‘Probably a souvenir of Toledo,’ Atherton commented.

‘It’s still got blood on it,’ McLaren noted happily.

‘And with any luck,’ Slider said, ‘fingermarks.’

‘It’ll take time to get it processed and get a match on either,’ Atherton observed.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Slider said. ‘Mad Sam picked her photo out without the slightest hesitation.’

‘Mary Coulsden, aka Teena Brown,’ McLaren said with satisfaction. ‘Well, at least we know we’ve
got
her prints on record, so we’ve got something to match the fingermarks with, when we get ’em back.’

‘But if Teena killed Lenny, what does that do to our lovely house of cards?’ said Atherton. ‘Doesn’t it all come tumbling down?’

‘No, no,’ Slider said distractedly, ‘it all makes perfect sense.’

‘All we’ve got to do, of course, is find her,’ Atherton mentioned.

‘I think,’ said Slider, ‘that I know where she is.’

Sassy Palmer was dressed this time when she opened the door – not in the red dress but in a pair of mauve Lycra leggings and a tight, low-cut top of ocelot-printed cotton.

‘Not a-bloody-gain,’ she said with enormous, theatrical exasperation. ‘I already spent half me Sunday down the cop shop. Can’t you buggers leave me alone?’ She eyed Atherton professionally and slipped abruptly into her Harlem persona. ‘How you doin’, honey? I hain’t seen you befo’.’

‘I’m sorry to have to bother you again,’ Slider said, slipping his foot into position, ‘but I’d like a word with your sister.’

‘My—?’ Sassy’s eyes narrowed as she recollected. ‘She’s not here. She’s gone.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Slider said.

‘Yeah,’ Sassy assured him earnestly. ‘She was only stoppin’ over the one night. She lives up – up Birmingham,’ she added inventively.

Slider looked at her sadly and kindly. ‘The game’s up, Sassy. I know Teena’s here. I smelt her scent when I was here before. She wears
Paris
and yours is
My Sin.
Come on, love. We’ve got the evidence now, and we have to take her in. But you know I’ll be gentle with her. Better me than somebody else.’

‘You always say that,’ Sassy complained, but she seemed near to tears.

‘You’ve been a good friend to her,’ Slider said, laying a hand on her wrist. ‘Come on, be a good girl and let’s get this over with.’

She seemed to consider resisting, but then to realise it was pointless. She did not, however,
let
them in: Slider had to push her gently out of the way, understanding that it was her way of salving her conscience.

They could see through the open door that the kitchen and living room were empty. Atherton looked in one bedroom, Slider in the other. There was a sharp cry and a scuffle, and Slider reversed hastily and ran to help Atherton, who was holding Teena Brown by both wrists while she screamed at him in a mixture of anger and fear.

She was wearing a white teeshirt and a pair of pink pedal-pushers, and her pretty face was drawn and exhausted with fear and distress. ‘Let me go! Let me go!’ she cried. ‘I ain’t done nothing! You don’t understand!’

‘Yes, I do,’ Slider said. ‘Calm down, Teena. Stop struggling – you’ll only hurt yourself. I know what’s been going on. I know you killed Lenny, and I know why. It’s all over now.’

She stared at him a moment and then burst into tears, and feeling the struggle leave her, Atherton released her so she could sit down heavily on the bed behind her and sob into her hands. Behind Slider, Sassy was swearing softly and continuously under her breath, but she made no move to intervene.

Slider had hardly ever been sorrier than when he began, ‘Mary Christina Coulsden, otherwise known as Teena Brown, I arrest you for the murder of Lenny Baxter. You do not need to say anything …’

‘Hullo. Am I disturbing you?’

Slider looked up sharply. Joanna was standing in the doorway of his office, her overnight bag slung over one shoulder, her
handbag over the other. It took him a moment of wondering what was strange about her – apart from her actual presence here – before realising that she did not have her fiddle case in her hand. It didn’t look natural, somehow.

‘I got tired of having my phone messages ignored,’ she added, seeing his brain was still catching up, ‘and since I haven’t got any work to do until Wednesday morning I thought I’d hop on a plane and come and see how you’re doing.’ She cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘Say something, even if it’s only “bleh”.’

‘Joanna,’ he said.

‘Well, that’s a start. At least you recognise me.’ She crossed the room and he stood up hastily, sending a plastic dispenser cup tumbling to the floor, where it bounced hollowly but fortunately drily. Then his arms were round her, and she was pressing against him, warm and real and full of the usual interesting bumps.

When he released her she smiled and pushed him gently backwards and said, ‘Sit. You look fit to fall down.’

‘I feel it. What time is it?’

‘Nearly seven. When did you last go home?’

He thought. ‘Saturday night,’ he said.

‘You do realise it’s Monday night? No wonder you’re tired.’

‘Everything’s happening,’ he said. ‘We’ve made an arrest on one murder and we’re about to make an arrest on another, and what with one thing and another—’

‘Yes, I get the picture. That accounts for why you haven’t picked up your messages.’

‘You could have called me on my mobile,’ he said.

‘I’d have loved to,’ she said drily, ‘but it’s turned off.’

‘Oh yes,’ he said vaguely, ‘I did that to stop it ringing.’

‘That’ll do it,’ she agreed. ‘Have you eaten anything?’

‘Not for – oh, years and years,’ he said, managing to smile.

‘Come and eat, then. You can spare the time for that. Even Wellington took time out at Waterloo for a snack.’

‘Station buffets can be handy.’

‘They haven’t knocked the cheek out of you then,’ she noted, taking his hand and tugging, gently but insistently, like a child.

The canteen was quiet, and they took a corner table well out of earshot of anyone else. ‘You’re right, of course,’ he said, unloading his tray. ‘I’m famished.’

‘And the brain needs food to operate properly,’ Joanna said. He’d chosen the all-day breakfast, heavy on the beans; she had a piece of quiche and some salad. She wasn’t really hungry, but knew he wouldn’t eat if she didn’t. She talked inconsequentially while he stifled the first urgent pangs; then, when his fork-work slowed below warp speed, he told her about the case, and about Mary Coulsden.

She had always admired her cousin Everet, the slick, streetwise, ineffably sophisticated yet kind cousin Ev, her hero and icon of naughtiness. When he had introduced her to Lenny Baxter, she was predisposed to like him, as she would have liked anyone Ev recommended to her. But Lenny was handsome and well-built, smartly dressed, appeared to have money, and was generous with it. He had an air of edgy dangerousness that was missing from the more familiar Ev, which thrilled her; and he had charm, too, something that of course could not be known to anyone who had only ever met him dead.

She fell instantly into infatuation with him, and after only a few dates was ready to move out from her parents’ home and into his.

‘She was finding life at home too stifling anyway,’ Slider said. ‘A lively youngster with old parents, and church-going parents at that. All children want to rebel at some point.’

‘I bet you never did,’ Joanna said.

‘I grew my hair long in 1968,’ he mentioned.

‘Ruat coelum!’
she said, but he didn’t understand her pronunciation. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, things seemed all right at first for her with Lenny. She found him exciting, she liked spending money, smoking and drinking, and going about with him and his wicked friends to the sort of places she knew her parents would disapprove of. She was in love with him and thought he was in love with her. The first shock was in the course of a drunken party when he proposed to share her with two of his friends. She was drunk too, and rather excited by the wickedness, and went along with it, but the next morning she felt bad about it. She told Lenny she would never do anything like that again. Lenny told her not to be so narrow-minded and that it was just a piece of fun – and Lenny, after all, must know best.’

‘Yes, I can see how it would have gone,’ she said. ‘I bet he made fun of her parents’ religion.’

‘How did you know?’

‘Figures. Religion isn’t cool these days.’

Not long after the incident at the party, Lenny told her he wanted to ‘lend’ her to Ken Whalley in return for the key to the park.

‘She argued about that one; but he pressed her, saying old Ken was harmless and it would all be over in seconds. Then he was offended and said he’d thought she loved him and why wouldn’t she do this one little thing for him. In the end he wore her down, and she did it.’

‘What a bastard,’ Joanna said.

‘Yes. Of course, she began to realise in the end that he
was
a bastard, and to guess that he didn’t really love her. But if ever she got close to rebelling he’d charm her back again and tell her he loved her and buy her a present.’ He shook his head at it. ‘I’ve noticed time and again that women don’t seem to care how badly a man behaves, as long as he
says
he loves her. And vice versa – they’ll leave a good and loving man because he doesn’t use the words often enough.’

‘We’re so shallow and fickle,’ Joanna said, and he managed a troubled smile.

‘Sorry. All generalisations are false—’

‘Including that one,’ she finished for him.

So the truth was that Teena, who had first been mentioned to Slider as the tom Lenny lived with, was not a prostitute in the proper sense. It was all at Lenny’s instigation, sometimes for money – as time went on and his affairs became more involved, always for money – but there was another motive which Teena, from her innocent upbringing, only ever sensed and never clearly understood. Lenny
liked
lending her; he liked having her in company, and he liked to watch other men having her. She didn’t like it, felt besmirched and humiliated by it, but Lenny’s hold over her was absolute. She quickly learnt about his temper, and that the air of dangerousness which had thrilled her – and still did – was in fact the leading edge of a real violence. So out of fear and infatuation she stayed with him. Life was at least more exciting with him, and where else, after all, could she go? Certainly not back home. Lenny offered her soft drugs, and she
relied on them more as time went on to soften the edges of her world and lend an air of unreality to the things her childhood conscience still told her were wrong.

She had no idea he was in money trouble, though she knew he spent freely and was losing money on the horses. Still his ‘business’
interests seemed so wide and varied she assumed they would cover his lifestyle. But as his money troubles got worse, and he got himself into more of a muddle, his temper grew worse and she grew more afraid of him. Sometimes now she wanted to get away from him, but the one time she had hinted at leaving him he had grabbed her by the neck and said if she ran away he would find her and kill her. It was what men like him said, and not all of them meant it, but she believed it. Who would take the risk that he didn’t? It was what accounted, said Slider, for so much abuse of women.