Dear Departed (13 page)

She sat back now with her cup and sipped, looking at him steadily, not initiating anything. He gave it time, trying his coffee – very good – and the biscuit.

‘Good shortcake,’ he commented. ‘Did you make it yourself?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

He waited, but she offered nothing more. He set down his cup and said, ‘I am very sorry for your loss.’

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘And I’m sorry to have to bother you at a time like this, but I would like to talk to you about your daughter.’

‘Why?’ she said.

He had not expected that. ‘Because I need to know as much about her as possible,’ he said.

‘But if she was murdered by the Park Killer,’ said Stella Smart, ‘he would have picked her simply because she was there, not for any other reason. How can knowing about her help you find him?’ The eyes were like policeman’s eyes, he saw now: they not only looked, but saw. He had never met an author before. He supposed that noticing and deducing would be part of a writer’s trade too. An interesting new thought to come back to.

‘You’re very quick,’ he said. ‘I had better tell you at once that we don’t think she was one of the Park Killer’s victims.’

‘Why not?’

‘There were discrepancies in the method. I don’t want to go into that with you. But we think the murderer was trying to make it look like the Park Killer’s work.’

‘I saw the news last night. It gave the impression—’

‘Yes. We thought it might help us to let the murderer think we were fooled. But I believe she was killed by someone who knew her.’

She examined his face. ‘You must have ruled me out, if you’re telling me this.’

He had, in the first few moments. ‘I can see what she meant to you.’

Now she moved her eyes away, breaking contact. She could observe other people, but could not have her own feelings observed. ‘She was everything to me. She was all I had.’

‘What about …?’ He glanced towards the bookcase.

‘My work?’ she said, with a sour twist of her mouth. ‘Yes, I used to think it mattered a great deal. But that was while I still had Chattie. Now I can see it’s just a handful of dust.’

‘Tell me about her,’ he invited.

Her eyes became remote as she looked into the past. She sipped at her coffee. He saw as she put the cup back in the saucer that there was a slight tremor in her hands, and now he looked more closely, there were broken veins in the cheeks and on the nose that the careful makeup only just didn’t conceal. He wondered if she was a drinker.

She said, ‘She was a happy baby, with a wonderful chuckle. She walked and talked very early, and then she was running about and chattering all day long. That was when we nicknamed her Chattie. Everyone loved her. And she was clever, too, and musical. Did well at school, won a scholarship at eleven, sang in all the school choirs, took up the cello. After school she went to the Royal College, and I thought she’d be a musician, but she didn’t feel she had sufficient talent, though I thought she was wrong about that. Anyway, when she finished college she got a job instead. She worked for Regina Stein, the big music agency, for two years, and for a record company for another year, and then she decided to set up on her own.’

‘Solutions,’ Slider suggested.

Stella Smart’s mouth turned down a little. ‘Yes, that’s what she called it. I said she should have called it Dogsbodies.’

‘You didn’t approve?’

‘It wasn’t a matter of not approving. I thought she was wasting her talents and that she would never make a living out of it.’

‘Did you quarrel about it?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘We never quarrelled. You couldn’t quarrel with Chattie. She was too good-tempered.’

‘How did the idea of Solutions come to her?’

‘Oh, it was something she came across in America, and she liked the idea of the variety it would give her. She never wanted
to do a routine nine-to-five job. She helped a couple of musician friends to set up websites, and taught herself about that side of the business that way. She thought she’d have all sorts of clients, but with her background a lot of them have turned out to be musicians and, of course, they never seem to have any money. She has a struggle to get them to pay. And much of what she does is menial office work. It’s been four years, and she’s still only scratching a living. All that intelligence and energy and talent, and she’s doing people’s filing and writing their letters.’

She sounded angry and frustrated. Definitely a
casus belli
here, Slider thought.

‘How has she managed for money, these four years?’ Slider asked. ‘Did she have any other job, or source of income?’

‘How could she?’ she said sharply. ‘It took up all her time.’

‘Was there family money?’

‘No,’ Stella Smart snapped. Apart from some furniture and things left to me by my mother, I have only what I earn from my books, and that, believe me, is no fortune. You see,’ with a gesture of the hand, ‘what I am reduced to.’

‘Did you help her out with money?’

‘She wanted to do it all herself, with no help from anybody.’

‘What about her father?’

‘Chattie has nothing to do with her father. She feels the same way about him as I do. She hasn’t seen him for years.’

‘It’s just that she seemed to live quite a lavish lifestyle,’ Slider said delicately. ‘Lots of restaurants and theatres, nice holidays and so on.’

She looked at him with a faint, triumphant smile. ‘A woman can always enjoy those things without having money, if she knows how to attract men. Chattie never lacked for male company.’

‘Did you ever visit her house?’ he asked.

‘She lived in some ghastly slum in Hammersmith – all she could afford. She never invited me there and I never wanted to go. We met in Town, or she came here.’

Slider wondered now whether the mother had really known anything about her daughter’s life. Chattie might have had lots of dates, but she spent her own money as well; and the house was no slum. Either the mother was dissembling for some
reason, or Chattie had kept secrets from her. He tried another tack. ‘She was your only child?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought there was a sister, or step-sister?’

The face became stony. ‘Half-sister. Jassy is not my child, and I have nothing to do with her.’ Slider kept looking at her expectantly, and after a pause she sighed and said, ‘I had better tell you the story, or you won’t leave it alone. I met Chattie’s father at some ghastly party or other. We had an affair. He divorced his first wife for me. Later he met Jassy’s mother and had an affair with her, and left me for her. So I suppose you could say I was served right.’ Slider wouldn’t have dared. ‘There was a child from the first wife, too, another daughter, Ruth. So there are three half-sisters; but none of them grew up together.’

‘Presumably Chattie had some contact with them?’

‘None, as far as I know, with Ruth. She’s a lot older, a different generation. They had nothing in common. And Chattie never liked Jassy. She disapproved of her.’

‘But from what I’ve heard, Jassy lived with her for a while.’

‘Chattie’s too soft a touch. She never says no to anyone. Jassy leeched off her. The girl is a slut with no morals – just like her mother. Mother and daughter, they’re like those ghastly underwater things with suckers that simply attach themselves and live by draining the victim’s blood. I’ve never been beholden to anyone, and I’m proud of Chattie for making her own way and owing nothing to anyone.’

There was a great deal of food for thought here, and a lot of seething emotions under this Noddy roof, but he wasn’t sure where it was getting him.

‘I have to ask you this,’ he said. ‘Do you know of anyone who would have wanted to harm your daughter?’

‘No,’ she said decidedly. ‘Everyone loved her. She hadn’t an enemy in the world.’

‘What about jealousy as a motive?’

‘Lovers, you mean? I don’t believe that. She had a light touch. Yes, she always had men around her, but I don’t think she ever cared deeply for any of them. It was just fun – on both sides. She knew how to handle them. She learned that from me.’

‘Do you know of anything she might have been mixed up
in, any business interests she had other than Solutions, any money troubles?’

‘No, not at all.’ She looked at him shrewdly. ‘I take it that not everyone agrees with your assessment that it was not the Park Killer?’

Slider was startled. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘At first, when you came in, you said “we” all along, but then you said, “
I
believe she was killed by someone who knew her.”’

‘That’s very observant of you,’ he said.

‘People are my livelihood – how they look and what they say. If I did not observe, I couldn’t write.’ She looked around her, with the air of someone suddenly waking up; the animation drained from her face, and the blind, grieving look returned. Talking with him, she had forgotten, deep down where it counted, that they were talking about her daughter’s murder. Now she had reminded herself. ‘What does it matter, anyway?’ she said dully. ‘Find her killer, don’t find him. She’s dead, and she won’t be coming back.’

He took his leave. As he struggled into his mac, the book fell out of his pocket, and he picked it up and hesitated a moment, wondering whether it would please her if he asked her to sign it. But she looked at it, and when she met his eyes he saw that it would not be a good idea.

‘What did you bring that for?
Long Summer Days.
My latest success,’ she said, with bitter irony. ‘It’s waste paper. Throw it in the nearest bin. My daughter’s dead, my lovely, smiling daughter. It makes me sick to think I ever cared about anything else.’

The rain had cleared away, and the pavements were steaming in a Bangkok sort of way as Slider parked the car. His wet mac was making the car smell like old dogs, so he carried it in with him to dry out indoors. It must be hell on the tubes today, he reflected.

Stuff had bred on his desk in his absence, as usual. There was the preliminary report from Bob Bailey, and he pulled it out to read it first. There was nothing new. They had not found any blood other than that in the immediate vicinity of the body, which suggested the killing had taken place at that spot and without a struggle – but he already knew that. It also meant that the killer had not tracked the blood around and probably did not have much on his clothes; but Slider pinned his faith on a belief that you could not stab someone without getting blood on you somewhere. Blood from the bark next to the body had been sent off for DNA profiling and to be tested against the victim’s. Sweet wrappers and cigarette ends were being held pending instructions.

On another piece of paper was a message asking him to call Freddie Cameron. He dialled, and just as Cameron answered Atherton appeared in his doorway with a question on his lips. Slider held up a hand. ‘Freddie. What’s new?’

‘Ah, back from the jungle so soon? They told me you were in the wilds of Herefordshire this morning.’

‘Hertfordshire.’

‘A distinction without a difference. Well, old chum, I thought you’d like to know my official findings in advance of the written copy. It’s pretty much what we discussed at the post. In my opinion death was due to respiratory collapse, caused by a toxic substance at present unknown.’

‘So the stabbing had nothing to do with it?’

‘The wounds aren’t severe enough to cause death, and in any case wouldn’t account for the cyanosis and congestion. If she was conscious when it was going on, it might have contributed to shock, but she would have died anyway.’ He heard Slider’s silence and added, ‘My view, considering the blood patterns, is that she was probably unconscious when the blows were struck.’

‘Thanks,’ said Slider

‘Does it occur to you,’ Cameron said kindly, ‘that you’re too sensitive for this job?’

‘Pots and kettles, Freddie. What else?’

‘I found no puncture wound such as would be left by injection, and the stomach contents revealed no solid matter.’

‘Jogging on an empty stomach? Not the recommended way.’

‘What I meant was there were no tablet or capsule residues. But yes, you’re right, no eggs and B, no toast, no porage. Just a quantity of liquid. I’ve sent a sample off to the tox lab, along with blood, kidney, liver and vitreous humour –’

‘Sounds like a mixed grill.’

‘– but from here on we just have to wait. Those tox boys are in a different time zone from the rest of us.’

‘So she drank the poison?’

‘It would seem so.’

‘But how would she be induced to take it?’ Slider mused.

‘Not my province, thank God,’ said Freddie.

‘That never stops you having an opinion,’ Slider said. ‘How quickly would she lose consciousness?’

‘Depends what the drug was and how much was administered. But liquid would pass quickly into the small intestine and be rapidly absorbed from there. With one of the ultra-short-acting barbiturates she could be unconscious within a few minutes and dead minutes after that. And,’ he added, ‘it would have had to be quick, wouldn’t it, from the murderer’s point of view? Anything taking longer than a few minutes to induce unconsciousness would risk the victim calling for help or running away.’

‘It’s a good job she was stabbed, otherwise it could be suicide and we’d be even more hampered. I wonder the killer didn’t think of that.’

‘This strikes me as a very stupid killer.’

‘We’ll have to have the contents of the water-bottle tested, just to be sure.’

‘Done and done.’

‘All right, assuming she was drugged with a short-acting barbiturate, where would the murderer get the stuff?’

‘It’s not prescribed in this country and you can’t buy it legally. But there are lots of illegal pharmaceutical drugs about if you know where to go. You can buy them on the Internet these days. Or you can smuggle them in from places like Mexico or Hong Kong where they are prescribed. Or steal them from a hospital or warehouse. The field of possibilities’ – Slider imagined him waving a hand – ‘is enormous.’

‘Thank you so much,’ he said drily.

‘Don’t mention it,’ Freddie assured him. ‘As to the weapon, I’d say it was a very sharp, narrow, single-edged blade about seven inches long, with a cross-guard only on the cutting edge. So it could be a combat knife or a kitchen knife. I’ve drawn you a picture of the sort of profile. You’ll have the written report later today, when I’ve checked it for spelling mistakes. The man who invented the spellchecker should be shot. I’ll send it over in the bag.’