Body Line (18 page)

A lot of anger there, Slider thought with interest. Yet he stayed with her. Was it perhaps that the anger towards her he couldn’t act on had found a displacement activity in anger towards Rogers? Amanda treated him pretty shabbily, if what he was saying was true, and he was obviously hurt and jealous that she had chosen Rogers instead of him. Perhaps at some level he believed that if Rogers was really completely out of the way, i.e. dead, she might finally commit to him? But that would mean a Frith solo murder, not a Frith-effected, Amanda-designed murder. Which did not explain Amanda’s lies and evasions. Or his, Slider’s, conviction that she
knew something about it
.

‘So let’s get this straight,’ he said. ‘On Monday morning you left home at – what time?’

‘The usual time. I always leave around six. Horses wake up early, and morning stables are the hardest work of the day. There’s always a lot to do.’

‘Around six? Can you be more specific?’

‘Well, not really. I wasn’t watching the clock. But the radio was on in the bedroom when I went in to say goodbye to Amanda – she dozes to it in bed – and they were still doing the news, so it was probably just a few minutes after six.’

‘And you went – where?’

‘Straight to Sue’s house in Ruislip. It wasn’t worth going to the stables first, because she was coming in from Dubai at six fifty-five that morning. She’s a cabin attendant with BA. Well, I got to her place about a quarter to seven and she arrived about eight.’

Atherton pushed pad and pencil across to him. ‘Write down her name, address and telephone number,’ he said.

Frith looked alarmed. ‘You can’t just go and ask her! My God!’

‘You mean she won’t confirm your alibi?’ Atherton said.

‘No, I mean she’s married.’

‘So it
is
an affair,’ said Slider.

‘Well, if you want to be technical about it,’ Frith said sulkily. ‘It’s hard enough for us as it is, what with her schedule and her husband’s. He’s an exhibition contractor, so he’s away a lot. And we can’t go to my place because I don’t really
have
a place. I sold my house to buy the stables, and though there’s a flat there I have to let the staff use it and live in Amanda’s house because property’s so expensive out there. So when Sue’s coming back she rings me and if Terry’s going to be away we meet at her house, and if he’s not we go to this hotel. Well, it’s not ideal, but she won’t leave Terry, and in any case I can’t leave Amanda – she’s got so much money tied up in my stables, she’d make me sell up if all this came out, and then I’d be ruined.’ He shook his head as if his life had suddenly passed before his eyes in all its glorious panoply. ‘It’s a mess,’ he muttered.

No argument there, Slider thought. ‘So what it comes down to,’ he summed up, ‘is that your alibi is that you were meeting someone, but you won’t tell us who or where.’

‘I know it sounds stupid,’ he began.

‘At least,’ said Atherton.

Slider pushed his chair back. ‘If you’re adamant you won’t tell us—’

Frith looked apprehensive, but he stuck to it. ‘I
can’t
.’

‘Then there’s nothing more to say. But I urge you to think carefully about it. Until we can eliminate you from our enquiries you remain a suspect.’

‘But I didn’t do anything!’ Frith protested.

‘You can just help me on one thing.’ Frith looked receptive. ‘You’d known David Rogers for quite some time. What was his connection with Suffolk?’

‘Suffolk?’ said Frith.

‘Yes – it seems he went there regularly. Did he work at a hospital there?’

‘Not that I know of,’ Frith said. ‘But I hadn’t kept up with him, so I don’t really know what he did. Except—’ Something seemed to occur to him. ‘Maybe that was where he kept his boat?’

Slider remembered the photograph in Rogers’s bedroom. ‘He had a boat?’

‘He’d taken up sport fishing in recent years. Bought a boat. Amanda said he was quite a bore about it.’ He shrugged. ‘No worse than golf bores, I suppose. These big consultants all have their rich-man’s hobbies,’ he concluded sourly.

‘You were a bit easy on him,’ Atherton complained to Slider as they trod up the stairs together. ‘The blighter’s taken Amanda’s money and protection, yet he’s banging a trolley dolly behind her back. I almost feel sorry for the Sturgess-type. But you didn’t force him on his alibi. Which in any case isn’t really an alibi,’ he continued, ‘because he says he was alone in his car from just after six until a quarter to seven, and alone in the dolly’s house from a quarter to seven until eight. Virtually two hours unaccounted for. Enough time to drive to Shepherd’s Bush, shoot David Rogers in the head, and drive back to Ruislip.’

‘The killer didn’t drive back to Ruislip. He drove to Stanmore.’

‘Oh, yes. I’d forgotten.’ He thought a bit. ‘But that’s still enough time, out to Stanmore, back to Ruislip, two hours. Easy. And even if it were an alibi, we can’t check it unless he gives us the name and address.’

‘Can’t we?’ Slider said serenely. ‘How many flights from Dubai do BA have that arrived at six fifty-five on Monday morning? And how many of the cabin crew on that flight are called Sue and live in Ruislip? We get her details from BA and check with her. And if she doesn’t exist, we’ll nick him for obstruction.’

‘You’re devious,’ Atherton said admiringly.

‘Maybe I am, and maybe I’m not,’ said Slider.

NINE

Who Dares Whinge

W
hen they walked into the CID room, Emily was there, sitting on Norma’s desk, chatting. Atherton sloped up to her and they greeted each other with studied nonchalance.

‘’Lo.’

‘Wotcher.’

‘’Right?’

‘Uh. You?’

‘Young love!’ Norma said sourly. ‘Can you go and mate on someone else’s desk?’

‘You’re not the same since you had that baby,’ Atherton complained, and added in his Michael Caine voice, ‘You gone all milkified, girl.’ He turned to Emily. ‘When did you get in?’

‘Couple of hours ago. I came to take you out to lunch,’ Emily said. ‘Or have you eaten already?’

‘We had a sandwich, but that was hours ago. A witness lunch. They never satisfy, somehow. You always want another an hour later.’

‘Witness or sandwich?’

‘Both.’

‘No second lunches,’ Slider decreed. ‘We’ve got work to do.’ He cleared a space on the edge of Atherton’s desk, perched and said, ‘Report time. Gather round.’

The troops gave him their attention. McLaren gave as much as he could spare from giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a cheese and pickle sandwich. It looked as though the sandwich wasn’t going to make it.

Slider went over the Frith interview and his possible, though partial, alibi. ‘The good thing is that Amanda Sturgess has been provoked into giving a false alibi. She says Frith was home until she left at a quarter past eight, while he says he left at six. The bad thing is that even if the air hostess checks out, it still gives him time to have gone to Stanmore and get back to Ruislip.’

‘Boss, I don’t understand,’ Connolly said. ‘If the murderer was Frith, and his alibi’s in Ruislip, why would he go to Stanmore at all?’

‘To give back the number plates?’ Mackay hazarded. ‘Maybe he only rented ’em.’

‘Better for Embry if he didn’t give ’em back,’ Hollis said. ‘Then he could claim they were stolen.’

‘But he didn’t report ’em stolen,’ McLaren said. ‘Didn’t want to draw attention to the number.’

‘I don’t understand about the number plates anyway,’ Connolly complained. ‘Why bother with real ones? I mean, why not just make up a number?’

It was Norma who explained. ‘Because you might pick a number the traffic division is looking out for. The patrol cars have on-board ANPR. The last thing you want coming away from a murder is to have the traffic cops on your tail because the number’s in their computer for an uninsured driver or unpaid parking tickets. With a genuine scrapped car you can be sure nobody’s looking for it.’

‘And it’s not that easy to get number plates made, anyway,’ Hollis added. ‘The suppliers and manufacturers are heavily regulated. Any hint o’ wrongdoing and they’d be in a shipload of trouble.’

‘I’m thinking, guv,’ McLaren began, and spoke on resolutely through the woo-hoos. ‘Maybe he was taking the shooter back. We know
that
was rented. The plates he could dump any time, but he’d need to get rid of the shooter right off.’

‘You’re thinking the armourer is in Stanmore?’ Slider asked.

‘I’m thinking Embry
is
the armourer. He looks well fit for it.’

‘Something to take on board,’ Slider said. ‘Well, now, someone will have to check Frith’s alibi, such as it is, which means getting hold of this Sue person. Swilley, I’d like you to do that. I trust your instincts. Get on to it as quickly as possible, before he has time to feed her any lines.’

‘Right, boss.’

‘How did you get on with Amanda Sturgess?’ Hollis asked.

‘Was that today? God, it seems like a week ago,’ Slider said. ‘She’s still holding out, admits talking to Rogers but only recently and says it was general chit-chat. But then one of her staff, Angela Fraser, followed us out and volunteered that she was another Rogers girl.’

‘That was the witness lunch,’ Atherton put in.

Slider went over what Angela Fraser had said. ‘It tends to confirm what we already suspected, that there must be other women out there who knew Rogers – or had been known by him. But with the two we know about, at least – Fraser and Aude – he’s been playing it very cagey. Neither of them knows where he worked or what he did, beyond his being “a doctor”. Aude said he worked at a hospital in Stansted, which we know wasn’t true. And Fraser said he went to Suffolk once a week.’

‘Suffolk?’ Hollis queried.

‘That’s a new one,’ said Mackay. ‘What did he go there for?’

‘Somebody has to,’ said Norma, screwing up her face. She hated ‘the country’ with a townie’s pure fervour.

‘We did put it to Frith,’ Slider said, ‘and he suggested it may be where Rogers kept his boat. Apparently he’s recently taken up sport fishing as a hobby.’

‘Huh. All right for some,’ said McLaren. ‘Wish
I
had time for a hobby.’

There was a brief silence as everyone stared at the famously indolent McLaren. Slider, baffled, said, ‘You have enough time to make your own
coal
.’

McLaren looked wounded. ‘Hardly sit down, time I’ve finished.’

Slider left it. ‘Now, two things seem to be emerging from this morning’s work. One is that Amanda Sturgess had a great deal more contact with Rogers than she’s admitted to. And her relationship with Frith is a complicated one. He’s financially in hock to her, and resents it, and also spits venom when Rogers is mentioned.’

‘Which is good for us,’ Swilley said, ‘if we’re thinking Frith might be the murderer.’

Slider nodded. ‘Also, whatever it was that Rogers did for a living, he kept it very secret.’

‘That’s three things,’ Atherton objected.

‘Glad you’re still awake. With regard to the third thing,’ Slider went on, ‘we don’t seem to be able to get a handle on it, and I have a feeling that it would help if we knew more about this trouble he got into. I get the sense that things changed then – certainly personally, but surely professionally as well. Possibly if we knew what happened we could get closer to what he’s been doing lately. I want the details. The real, inside story. It’s another of the things Amanda won’t talk about, and anything she won’t talk about naturally interests me. But it’s going to take some research.’

Emily spoke up. ‘Oh please, let me!’

Slider had forgotten she was there. He looked doubtful. ‘It’s police work.’

‘Well, it isn’t really, is it? Not the beginning part, anyway. Searching the archives, finding out who was there at the time, tracing them, getting them to talk about it – that’s investigative journalism. It’s the sort of thing I do all the time. And I’m good at it.’

‘She is,’ Atherton agreed. ‘But what about your Irish story?’

‘Done. Wrote it up last night, finished it on the journey this morning, filed it before I came here,’ Emily said triumphantly. ‘I have to do a piece for the Sundays, but I can fit that in easily – it’s mostly rehashing. Please let me.’

‘But what will you get out of it?’ Slider wondered. ‘I can’t pay you.’

‘Money isn’t everything. I’m interested. I want to know what happened as well. And when it’s all over – who knows, it could be a story, or grounds for an article. Nothing is ever wasted,’ she concluded.

It was one of Slider’s own maxims, the reason he listened so patiently to Everyman’s rambles. ‘You’d have made a good detective,’ he said.

When the others returned to their desks he called McLaren back. ‘Not you.’

McLaren looked helpful. ‘Want me to get you a cuppa from the canteen?’

‘No,’ said Slider. ‘Well, yes, actually, but that’s not why I called you. Tell me about this morning – the wrecking yard.’