Gone Tomorrow (5 page)

‘Except that with that gate, you wouldn’t be doing any nipping. Climbing carefully would be the order of the day. And if he was running away from a homicidal Eddie he’d make better time sprinting along the road. Eddie must have been right behind him, and he’d have been able to grab him before he got over the gate.’

‘You don’t know that. Anyway, fear lends wings. Stuffed full of adrenalin, he might have nipped.’

‘Fear would have had to lend him a lot of luck, too, not to have torn his clothes on those pointy bits. Anyway, if he did climb over the gate he will have left his fingermarks on it somewhere, so we’ll soon know.’

‘As will Eddie. Unless they were wearing gloves.’

‘Yes, a wise man always puts gloves on to have a fight outside a pub.’

‘I get the feeling,’ Atherton said with dignity, ‘that you aren’t taking my suggestions seriously.’

‘Oh, did you mean me to?’ McLaren appeared in the doorway. ‘Yes, what is it?’

McLaren looked pleased with himself. ‘Guv, I’ve had a nibble!’

‘Must we discuss your sex life?’

‘The betting shop just up the road – corner of Loftus and Uxbridge Road. They recognised the mugshot
and
the tattoo.’

‘Betting shop? That was a good idea of yours. What made you think of it?’

McLaren writhed slightly. ‘Well, I didn’t exactly – I was just passing and I thought—’

‘All right,’ Slider said hastily. If McLaren had gone in to place a bet while on duty Slider didn’t want to have to know about it just now. Later, when all this was over …‘So they recognised him.’

‘Yeah, they said he used to be a heavy punter until about a year ago. In every day, got through a shitload o’ money. Then he just stopped coming. They reckoned he either gave it up or went elsewhere.’

‘It took brains to work that out,’ Atherton commented.

‘Did they give him a name?’ Slider asked.

‘Said his name was Lenny. They called him Unlucky Lenny. Said he was so unlucky, if Liz Hurley had triplets, he’d be the one on the bottle. He was a foul-mouthed, violent bastard an’ all, they said, but he lost so much money with ’em he was worth keeping. When he stopped coming in they didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry.’

‘Lenny what?’

‘Dunno, guv. That’s all they knew, Lenny. But they said he was local – lived somewhere local.’

‘All right, it’s a start, I suppose. You’d better get someone to go round all the other betting shops in the area, see if he changed allegiance.’

‘I can do it,’ McLaren offered.

‘I wouldn’t put you in temptation’s way,’ Slider said kindly. ‘Tell Anderson, will you? He’s a steady chap.’

‘As long as you don’t send him to B&Q,’ McLaren said darkly, departing.

‘So now we’ve got two people to look for,’ Atherton said. ‘The pony-mad Lenny and the woman-mad Eddie. Both local and neither with a surname.’

‘Sonny Collins said Eddie was a regular. I think there’s a case for someone going into the Phoenix tonight to see if he comes in. No, not you,’ he anticipated. ‘It’s got to be someone who fits in at a dump like that. Better be Mackay, I suppose.’

‘I won’t tell him you said that.’

The full report came in from Freddie Cameron, but he had nothing to add to what had been said at the post-mortem. ‘The weapon was a two-edged, non-serrated blade, about five inches long and not more than three-quarters of an inch wide, and with very little taper. The blow was given with sufficient
force
to leave bruising where the hilt or cross-guard struck the skin. However, it does not follow that great
strength
was needed: if the point of the weapon were sharp enough it would penetrate the skin relatively easily and the rest of the blade would follow without effort. I would estimate from the clean edges of the wound that the point in this case was sharp.’

Slider put down the report and imagined the blade. Straight and double-edged like a dagger, but only three-quarters of an inch wide. It sounded like a flick-knife. Add that to the pockets being searched and the money left and it began to sound very much like a gang or professional killing. And if there was one thing that depressed Slider more than another it was gang killings.

He read on. The blood smear on the right inside pocket. No hope of anything from that, it was too small for a fingerprint. Inkstain on the inside bottom of the same pocket. Well, people did carry Biros about, though none was found on the body.

The phone rang.

‘Hullo,’ said Joanna. ‘I’ve been ringing you at home. Wasted calls are expensive from Frankfurt, you know. What are you still doing there?’

‘We’ve had a murder.’

‘Oh dear. I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘You sound as if I said I’d got a headache.’

‘I should think you have, figuratively.’

‘Especially as the corpse is still unidentified. It’s hard to find out who dunnit when you don’t know who they dunnit to.’

‘Still, you oughtn’t still to be there. It’s a quarter to nine, you know.’

‘I’ve got a man out in a pub, trying to track down a drinker who was seen with deceased. It’s a rough pub and I want to be on hand if he gets into trouble.’

‘You’re a loony,’ she said affectionately. ‘What’re you going to do if he does, rush round and punch noses? That’s a job for uniform.’

‘I suppose so,’ he said reluctantly, and then, ‘I do miss you!’

‘Me too,’ she said briefly.

There was a silence, through which he heard a distant clash of voices. ‘Where are you?’

‘Backstage. We’ve just finished the first half. Beethoven fourth piano concerto. Sigmund Manteufel.’

‘First half? You make it sound like a football match.’

‘With a soloist like him it was like a football match.’

‘What was the score?’ he asked.

‘Beethoven four, Manteufel nil. So now it’s the interval. Wolfie’s getting me a drink. I wish you were here. Even gin and tonic loses its savour.’

‘How d’you think I feel? Going home to that empty flat—’

‘Ah, now I know the real reason you’re still there at this hour. Are Jim and Sue back?’

‘Just. I spent the night there once while they were away,’ he confessed. ‘On the sofa with the cats. Couldn’t face going home to that big empty bed.’

He heard her sigh. ‘Bill, you don’t make this easy for me.’

‘Who said I wanted to?’ he answered, but he put a smile in his voice, not to pressure her too much.

‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘There’s a queue waiting for the phone, and the interval’s only twenty minutes. You do know why concert intervals are only twenty minutes, don’t you?’

‘Tell me, tell me,’ he said obediently.

‘So you don’t have to retrain the violas.’

‘I love you,’ he said.

‘I love you too.’

‘Phone me tomorrow.’

‘If I can get to a phone.’

‘And watch out for that Wolf person.’

‘Don’t worry, Wolfie’s not that sort of girl.’

‘Ha!’ he said. ‘You forget, I’ve met him.’

It wasn’t really, he thought as he put the phone down, that he was jealous or didn’t trust her. His fear was that she could live without him much more easily than he could without her; and that if she got used to being away from him, she might eventually fall for someone else, especially if someone else was a musician. It was a thing that happened all too easily among people whose jobs isolated them from the rest of humanity, like musicians and policemen. You fell for someone you worked with, however unsuitable they were in every other respect, because they understood your way of life. They knew what you were talking about.

This job Joanna had taken with the Orchestra of the Age of the Renaissance was a permanent position, though she had taken it for the moment on a six-month trial. It was a very good job for her, too good to have turned it down – and not just from the money point of view: it was prestigious, and artistically satisfying as well. But could they continue their relationship on the basis of seeing each other once a month? Could that even be said to be a relationship?

He suddenly realised that he was very hungry – absolutely ravishing, as Porson might say – and that he was doing no-one any good sitting here by the phone, Mackay least of all. Nicholls, who was the uniformed sergeant in charge of the night relief, knew all about it and could be trusted to send in the infantry if there was any trouble – and why should there be, after all?

There was an all-night café under the railway arch next to Goldhawk Road Station where the taxi drivers noshed. Taxi drivers always knew the good places. He had a sudden, golden vision of sausage, egg, chips and beans, tea and a slice, and his mouth watered. Atherton would shudder with horror at the thought, but Atherton had Sue. A man whose love was in
Frankfurt needed the comfort only a greasy fry-up could provide.

Morning brought disappointment. Mackay had manfully done his duty and consumed four pints of deeply indifferent beer, but no-one who might be Eddie had shown up, and the other drinkers with whom he had managed to scrape up a conversation had shown blank incomprehension when presented with the names Eddie and Lenny or the suggestion that there had been a fight.

‘I don’t know whether they clocked me for a copper and that shut ’em up, or they’re just naturally stupid,’ he said. ‘Bit of both, I expect. I couldn’t push it too hard or ask too directly or the barman would’ve clocked me and that would’ve been that. Maybe if I went in a few more times, built up a pattern, they might open up.’

‘I hate to put anyone’s innards through that punishment, but it might be necessary,’ Slider said. ‘Hold yourself in readiness. Anything from anyone else?’

It all added up to a big, fat zero. ‘Nobody jumped at the mugshot or the tattoo,’ Norma summed up. ‘And my snouts deny all knowledge.’

‘Tattoo parlours in the area turn up blank,’ said Hollis, ‘but that’s not surprising. There’s no reason it had to be done locally. He could have had it done in Brighton on a day trip for all we know.’

‘Nothing from the other betting shops in the area,’ Anderson reported.

‘Don’t you think that
is
surprising?’ Atherton said. ‘Does a betting man just give up like that? McLaren’s source seemed to be suggesting he was a heavy and regular punter.’

‘Smokers give up. Alcoholics even. Why not a gambler?’ Swilley said.

‘I know it’s possible,’ Atherton countered, ‘but is it likely?’

‘There’s offshore betting these days on the Internet,’ McLaren put forward.

‘Bit sophisticated for Laddo?’ Atherton suggested.

‘We don’t know how sophisticated he was,’ said Swilley.

‘He had that swanky watch and that expensive jacket,’ Hollis put in.

‘Yes, what about that jacket?’ Slider said. ‘Any chance of tracing it to its source?’ He looked at Atherton. ‘You’re the one who knows about clothes.’

‘I don’t recognise that brand name,’ Atherton said. ‘I doubt whether it was from this country, and if it was sourced abroad we’d never track it.’

‘Have another look at it,’ Slider said, ‘and see what you can do. What else?’

‘The door-to-door has come up with nothing so far,’ Hollis said. His was the unenviable task of overseeing the reports. ‘The usual crop of mysterious strangers but nothing that looks like our man. Trouble is, that park isn’t overlooked from anywhere in summer, when the trees are covered with leaves.’

‘Except from the BBC building,’ Swilley said.

‘Only from the very top, which is a long way off for recognising anyone, even say someone was bothered looking; and even then, you can’t see into the playground.’ He met Swilley’s raised eyebrows and added, ‘Yes, I did go in and try. What did you think I was doing down there all day?’

‘So our hope really is from someone who happened to be passing when Lenny went into the park,’ she said.

‘Or when – to stretch a point – someone carried his body in there,’ Atherton added. ‘What about the people living in Frithville Gardens?’

‘Nothing so far,’ Hollis said, ‘though there’s still some doors to knock on. Trouble is, it was late and most people are in bed by half past eleven.’

‘What an indictment of the most exciting, frenetic, cosmopolitan city in the world,’ said Atherton.

‘Did you turn up anything on the CrimInt?’ Slider asked him.

‘Nothing to put in the diary.’

Slider rubbed his hair up the wrong way in frustration. ‘I can’t believe this bloke’s never been in trouble before. Maybe we’ll get a nibble from one of the other boroughs. Meanwhile, everybody keep asking around. Not just your snouts, but anyone you’ve ever had contact with who’s local, or knows the area. Don’t forget that the park is less than half a mile away, and Frithville Gardens is the next road along from here. It won’t take the press long to start asking why we can’t get a handle on a murder right in our own back yard.’

‘I don’t see why that’s supposed to make it easier,’ Swilley said indignantly.

‘Police-bashing is their favourite sport,’ Slider said. ‘When has logic ever come into it?’

It was time, Slider thought, to follow his own advice and talk to a few of his contacts. It was something he had to do in person. In the Job, a man’s snouts are sacrosanct; generally they would not talk to anyone else in any case. He had already tried a few phone calls to his usual informants, with no result. Now it was time to spread the net wider.

He bethought himself of One-Eyed Billy, a small-time thief who had latterly managed to pull himself together and go straight. He lived in one of the tiny Victorian terraces in Ethelden Road, but this time of day he ought to be at work; or rather – he checked his watch and registered with routine surprise that it was lunchtime already – in the British Queen having a pint of Bass and a pork pie. This, indeed, was exactly where Slider found him, sitting up at the bar with the paper folded open at the racing pages, pie and pickle part consumed, pint glass usefully almost empty, down to a golden half inch at the bottom and a white line like soapsuds marking the level before his last swig.

‘Hello, Billy. What is it?’

He looked up sharply, registered Slider’s presence and the absence of anyone at his shoulder, and answered the nod in the direction of his glass. ‘My usual, ta very much. Pint o’ Bass.’