Dead End (9 page)

‘It’s still murder then,’ Atherton said. ‘That’s a relief. I didn’t want to be wasting my talents on a mere assault.’

On the way out Slider paused by Mackay. ‘Anything in his pockets?’

‘A handkerchief, a pencil stub and some loose change.’ He displayed the plastic bags. ‘Nothing interesting, guv.’

‘I thought at least he’d have the decency to be harbouring a signed blackmail demand,’ Atherton complained as they stepped out into the blessed fresh traffic fumes, ‘or a cassette recording of a death threat. Oh well.’

‘Life is never easy.’

‘You speak as one who knows. Will you drive or shall I?’

‘Such exquisite grammar,’ Slider marvelled. ‘You drive, dear. I want to think.’

‘Okay. Where to?’

‘Home, James. Back to the factory.’

‘So Radek didn’t have a heart problem,’ Atherton said a moment later as they took their place in the Fulham Palace Road traffic queue. ‘I wonder if Keaton made it up, or if he really believed it.’

‘I think he really believed it. My bet would be that Radek told him he had a weak heart in order to keep Keaton in line. Might even have pulled the old sudden spasm stunt in the middle of an argument he was afraid he was losing. Ill health can be a wonderful weapon, and heart’s the best of all. From what I’ve heard of him so far, it’s the kind of manipulative thing Radek would pull.’

* * *

McLaren called out to Slider indistinctly as they passed the door of the CID room – indistinctly because he had his face in a chicken salad bap about the size of a baby’s head. It looked like one of those circus acts where a man attempts to put his head in a lion’s mouth. Slider’s sympathies had always been with the lion in such cases.

‘Oh, guv, that woman phoned again,’ he managed to say.

‘What, Mrs Hislop-Ivory? Did you take her number this time?’

He looked blank. ‘She said you knew it.’

Slider snarled silently. ‘If I knew it, would I have asked you for it? Did she say what she wanted this time?’

‘Only would you phone her back. She sounded quite shirty about it,’ he added helpfully.

‘If she rings again, find out what she wants,
and get the number.
Do you want me to write you instructions?’

‘No, guv,’ McLaren said, spraying mayonnaise-soaked shreds of lettuce over his desk. ‘I’ll get it next time.’

‘And don’t you know Mr Barrington doesn’t like anyone eating in the office?’ he said.

‘He’s gone out,’ McLaren said simply.

Slider felt it was time to be stern. ‘That’s no excuse.’

‘Sorry, guv, but it was getting so late and there’s so much to do, I thought I’d better not stop. Only I’ve followed up that telephone number in Hong Kong—’ He paused seductively.

‘Where’s Mr Barrington gone?’ Slider asked, unseduced.

‘Press conference,’ said McLaren. ‘This phone number—’

‘Yes?’

‘Turns out to be the central tourist information office. And Beda was a girl who used to work there, only she’s moved on now. Confidentially, the office manager hinted she’d been on the game in her spare time – amateur, like – and that’s what she left to do, full time. More money in it.’

‘I suppose someone at the club tipped Radek off about her,’ Atherton said.

‘So why did he keep the number afterwards?’ Slider wondered. ‘Was she so important to him?’

‘Probably accidental,’ Atherton suggested. ‘Des Riley said he was in the habit of sticking bits of paper in the back of his baton case for safe-keeping and having a periodic clear-out, so probably that one just slipped the net.’

‘Anyway, guv, this bird at the tourist office knew about the club all right. A bit sniffy about it, she was – not the sort of place they recommend, she said. But it confirms what Riley said about Radek’s habits. D’you want it followed up any further?’

‘What else have you got on hand?’ Slider asked.

‘All the possible sightings of chummy. We’ve got the first lot of phone-ins sorted, and the most promising have got him proceeding up Addison Gardens and left into Richmond Way. So he could have been heading for the station.’

‘He could.’

‘He still had his hat on, and he was looking upset, according to one eye-witness,’ McLaren added with satisfaction. ‘So if he did go down the tube, someone’ll be bound to’ve clocked him.’

‘All right, stick with that,’ said Slider. He turned to Mackay, ‘Anything on the gun search?’

‘Nothing, guv. He must have kept it in his pocket. When’ll we get the ballistics report?’

‘Tomorrow, with any luck. But it’s not going to help us much until we’ve got a suspect. Keep plugging on.’ He turned to Atherton. ‘I think you’d better go and talk to Radek’s agent. You speak the lingo. It’s me for the daughter, I think. What do we know about her?’

‘Born 1950, went to Benenden School, very posh; has her own interior design business called Fenella, office in Hampstead, charges telephone numbers to tell the rich and shameless what colour to paint their dadoes. Married to a solicitor, Alec Coleraine of Coleraine and Antrobus, but uses her maiden name in business. And as you probably wouldn’t know, not being a
Hello!
man, she features quite a bit in the society columns. Knows everyone; does over the houses of the glitterati and gets invited to their parties as a consequence. Very smart, and I gather reading between the lines as hard as nails in the business way.’

‘Oh good,’ said Slider wearily. ‘She sounds just my type.’

At first Atherton took Kate Apwey, of Parker, Pool and Law, to be what he called a Victoria, meaning a good-looking, desperately smart, well-spoken but slightly daffy girl of the sort often found in publicity offices, who succeed without any particular abilities
largely by getting on well with people and knowing how to behave at promotional parties. She was certainly easy on the eye, well groomed, and talked in the obligatory rapid, lightly slurred, upper-class falsetto, full of ums and sorts-ofs and other aids to well-bred inarticulacy. Atherton, who loved language, wanted to strangle her within ten seconds of meeting her, and wondered what she was doing working in an agency at all, unless it be a branch of Jackson-Stops; but ramming his fists into his pockets and sticking it out, he discovered that there was more to her than met the eye, and supposed belatedly that there would have to be if she had been Radek’s agent for the last five years.

‘He’s a tremendous loss to us,’ she said brightly. ‘We’ve had him on our books for nearly eleven years now, ever since he sort of quarrelled with Holton and Watson, and he’s been um, very, very lucrative indeed. We handle everything for him – concerts, recordings, personal appearances, everything really. His workload is phenomenal. But I could book him ten times over for every date. Everyone wants him. He’s very big box-office.’

‘So tell me, why was he doing a concert at St Augustine’s Church? That’s a bit down-market for him, isn’t it? Surely they couldn’t have been paying him his usual fee?’

‘No, he wasn’t getting a fee at all – though I’m not supposed to tell anyone that. He didn’t want anyone to know. He said if anyone found out he’d be swamped with begging letters.’

‘He didn’t like doing charity work, then?’

‘Not at all. He hated it. He said no-one helped him when he had nothing, he had to look after himself, so everyone else could do the same.’

‘So why was he doing this concert, then?’

‘It was for his daughter,’ she said. The notion seemed to puzzle her. ‘She asked him to do it for the restoration fund, and he agreed. He said it was a once-only thing. It surprised me quite a bit, because it wasn’t really his style, if you know what I mean; but I suppose he wanted to please her. He did care about her, I suppose.’

‘That can’t be bad, can it? Did you like him?’

She hesitated over the answer to that. ‘Oh, well – he earns us so much money he’s entitled to be sort of particular. He makes his own conditions, sort of thing.’

‘Which are?’

She hesitated again. ‘He wanted me to um handle him personally. To be available all the time, you know? No substitutes allowed and no excuses.’ She reflected glumly for a moment. ‘It made it difficult for me to have any private life of my own. I mean, men friends are not sort of understanding when you’re called out at short notice at night to hold someone’s hand for them.’

‘But it was worth it to you?’

‘It was my job,’ she said snippily.

‘And you were glad to serve the cause of music?’ Atherton suggested smoothly. ‘To be handmaid to the great genius of the podium was enough reward for giving up your private life?’

She looked at him askance, and rather pink. ‘Um, not really.’

‘You did it for the money, then?’

Now she blushed. ‘Look, it’s my job, all right? He wanted me, and if I’d refused he’d have got me sacked, and I’d never have got another job as good as this one. And it wasn’t going to be for ever anyway.’

‘He wanted you, did he?’ Atherton said with bland interest. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise when you said he wanted you to handle him personally that you meant it literally. Lots of evening work, was it? Organ recitals, that sort of thing?’ He thought she would get angry, but though her colour remained high, she looked at him steadily.

‘What business is it of yours?’ she asked.

He reassessed her rapidly. ‘I apologise. But I have to know exactly how the land lay. And it’s better if I hear all about you
from
you, isn’t it? That way you can be sure I hear the truth.’ She stared at him, her brain evidently working behind her impassive eyes. ‘Did he ask you to sleep with him?’

‘Yes,’ she said after a pause.

‘And did you?’

A longer pause. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. It was difficult to tell what she felt about that.

‘For the money? Or to keep your job?’

She seemed to make up her mind about something. ‘Look, whatever he was in ordinary life, he was a great conductor, a world-class celebrity, and there’s something about a man like that. At the end of a concert, especially on a tour, when he’s
just come down off the platform and the audience is going mad out there, there’s a sort of atmosphere. I mean there’s a sort of, like, electricity about him.’

‘He was on a high, and the excitement transmitted itself to you. So when he asked you back to his hotel room you felt honoured to be asked.’

She looked at him doubtfully. ‘Sort of. How do you know?’

‘I love music. I go to concerts,’ he said. ‘I can understand that you might go willingly, at least the first time. Where was that, by the way?’

‘Frankfurt.’

‘And you went to bed with him.’

There was a long silence. He thought she might not answer, but suddenly it burst out. ‘It was horrible! He was so old, and he smelled, and the things he wanted me to do—! It was like you said at first, I was sort of excited, he was a celebrity. But it wore off, and then there I was in this hotel room with this horrible old man.’ She put her hands to her face, pulling the skin of her cheeks back with her knuckles. ‘Afterwards,’ she went on, ‘he gave me a lot of money, and said how good I was, and he’d tell my boss I was terrific at my job. Well, I wanted to get on. And anyway, I knew – I mean, it was obvious what he meant. He said he’d say I was so good he wanted me to look after him all the time—’

‘You thought he was hinting that if you refused him next time he’d tell them you were no good and get rid of you.’

‘It was no hint. He’d have done it all right,’ she said almost indignantly.

‘So you went on sleeping with him to order, to keep your job.’

‘It wasn’t often,’ she said in self-justification; and then, the horror returning to her eyes: ‘It was just – having it hanging over me. Not knowing when. But I was saving the money. And when I had enough—’ She stopped abruptly.

He waited to see if she’d go on, and when she didn’t, he said, ‘You said it wasn’t going to be for ever. What did you mean by that?’

She flicked an alarmed glance at him, and then looked away. ‘Nothing really. Well, I mean, he was an old man, wasn’t he? He couldn’t live for ever.’

‘You were hoping he’d die?’

‘No, not hoping. But sooner or later he’d have to, wouldn’t he? Or retire.’

‘You have a boyfriend?’ She nodded, either doubtfully or reluctantly. ‘Did he know about your relations with Radek?’

‘I never actually told him about – he knew I had to be with him at concerts and things – but he sort of guessed, or assumed. So I didn’t deny it. I mean, I wouldn’t have lied to him.’

‘He didn’t like it?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘You had rows about it?’

‘Sometimes. Steve loses his temper, but it doesn’t mean anything. I mean, he’s soon over it.’

‘Did he know Radek gave you money?’

‘We were saving up for a house,’ she said with wonderful inconsequence.

‘You and Steve were going to get married?’

‘Eventually. But I wanted to carry on working. I told Steve that. He understood that. My career is important to me.’

‘But you couldn’t go on sleeping with Radek once you were married, could you? And if you refused him, you’d lose your job.’ She didn’t answer, looking away from him, biting her lips. ‘But of a dilemma for you,’ he said warmly.