Dear Departed (34 page)

Her lips twitched, but she kept her countenance. ‘Nothing would induce me to say anything behind his back that I would not say to his face.’

‘Fine, then tell him to his face tomorrow. For now, come and have a drink – a gin and tonic to brace you for the tube journey home.’

Slider could only look on in admiration as Atherton worked his magic, and then followed them back to the pub like a younger brother tagging along. This time they took seats away from the door, round the corner. Lucinda Gaines-Harris, for such was her name, accepted the offer of a gin and tonic, and while Atherton chatted her up, Slider observed with interest her struggle to keep her face disapproving and not to show that she was rather enjoying the adventure of something that didn’t happen every day or to everyone.

‘I bet he’s tried to get off with you,’ Atherton said, with almost girlfriendish sympathy.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I know the type. It must be galling for you. Where did you go to university?’

‘Cambridge. Chemistry,’ she said, flattered that he had guessed she was a graduate.

‘So how did you end up here?’

‘It was the best I could do,’ she said. ‘I get paid more this way than I could as a lowly researcher or a lab-rat, and I have my mother to support. Of course, if I were a man, I could go up the executive ladder. But I don’t have back-scratching privileges, so that’s out.’ She had loosened up enough to swig back her G-and-T like a man, and Slider hastened to get her another before the mood was broken. When he returned with it, she said, ‘I hope you aren’t thinking of getting me drunk, because it won’t work.’

‘Absolutely not,’ Atherton said. ‘I bet you could drink me under the table. I was just being hospitable.’

‘So, what do you want to know?’ she asked, apparently abandoning pleasure for business. She glanced at a gold watch on a slim wrist. ‘I can’t be too long, because of Mother.’

Atherton got down to it. ‘On Wednesday last week, what time did he get to the office?’

‘Eight,’ she said. ‘He’s always in at eight, when he’s in the office. Of course, sometimes he goes to other offices, or to meetings elsewhere, or to one of the plants. But when he’s here, he’s in at eight.’

‘Did you actually
see
him at eight that morning?’

‘Oh, yes, certainly. In fact, he was already at his desk when I came in at eight.’

‘When he comes and goes, does he have to go through your office?’

‘No, there’s another door to the corridor through his bathroom, which leads off his office. But in the morning he usually comes in through my office and I give him the mail and any messages.’

‘I see.’ Well, that knocked him out from being First Murderer, said Atherton’s glance to Slider. Only Superman could have got from the park to the office, with a change of clothes thrown
in, in the maximum possible allowance of ten minutes. Pity, really. It would have been nice to de-smug him. ‘And can you cast your mind back to the day before, to last Tuesday? He said that you knew he had an appointment to meet Miss Cornfeld.’

‘Yes. Well, he pretty well had to tell me, because I’d have to cover for his absence if anyone called.’

‘Did he tell you what the meeting was about?’

‘I’m not sure if I should tell you that.’

‘He told us it was about the takeover – wanting her to find out how her father stood on it,’ said Slider.

She looked relieved. ‘Oh, well, that’s what he told me, too. But it had to be a secret meeting. Rather dangerous if anyone found out and suspected collusion.’

‘The meeting was at ten o’clock?’

‘Yes. He left at five to. He said he was meeting her in Trafalgar Square.’

‘Isn’t that rather public for a private meeting?’

‘That’s what I said, but he said it was safer in the open because you could see people approaching – they couldn’t creep up on you and overhear. I think he saw that in some spy film or other,’ she added, with a sneer.

‘And what time did he come back?’

‘It was about ten to eleven.’

Slider was surprised. ‘He told us it was only a brief meeting.’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know about that. I suppose he may have gone somewhere else afterwards. All I know is that I heard him come in at that time. He went in through the bathroom and banged the door very noisily. I went straight in to give him his messages and he was stamping about in an absolute temper.’

‘What about?’

‘I don’t know. I said, “Is everything all right?” and he said, “Not now, Lucinda. Leave me alone. I’ll buzz when I want you.”
So I put the messages down on his desk and went out. When he buzzed for me I went in and he was quite calm again, and he didn’t mention anything about it, so naturally I didn’t ask. It wasn’t my business.’

‘So you’ve no idea what put him in a temper?’

‘None at all.’ She hesitated. All I can tell you is that when I went in – the first time – I heard him mutter something like,

“Thank God there’s a few days left” or “There’s still a few days” – I can’t swear to the exact words. But he never mentioned it again.’

‘How did he react when he heard about Miss Cornfeld’s death?’

‘I’m not sure when he did first hear. I heard about it on Thursday evening on the news, when the name was first given. The next morning at the office I said something to him about how dreadful it was, and he seemed already to know then, because he said, “Yes, it’s tragic,” or something like that.’

‘Did he seem very upset?’

She thought. ‘Yes, I’d say he was. He was very quiet and thoughtful all morning, quite absent-minded. Brooding, almost, you might say. In the afternoon he went off to the plant in Bedford so I didn’t see him again that day.’

‘The plant – is that where the drugs are manufactured?’

‘Some of them. Bedford’s the secure plant for the restricted pharmaceuticals. It’s only a small place.’

‘Does he go there often?’

‘Oh, from time to time. He was there last Monday, as it happens, but that was unusual. It was for the opening of the new lab block. Some local bigwig cutting the ribbon, and the press were there, and there were drinks and so on afterwards, with the Health Minister looking in.’

‘A big do like that, that date must have been known well beforehand,’ Slider said, the germ of an idea twitching in the depths of his brain.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘To get a cabinet minister you have to book months ahead.’

‘Did you go with him?’

‘Certainly not. A frightful waste of time, those things, but useful publicity, I suppose, which is why he had to go. In any case, his wife was there if he wanted his hand holding. I’m not obliged to do it, thank God. Oh, look at the time. Is there anything else, because I really ought to get going? Mother frets if I’m more than half an hour late.’

‘Just one last question,’ Slider said. ‘The proposed acquisition of Cornfeld Chemicals. Is there anything – odd or unusual about it?’

‘I don’t think so. In what way?’

‘I don’t know,’ Slider said ruefully. ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’

‘Well, I haven’t heard anything. It’s all still very secret – has to be, until the offer’s made public, or the shares would go haywire. But as far as I know, it’s a simple purchase.’

‘Thanks,’ said Slider, and stood up to pull out her chair for her as she made getting-up movements.

She gathered her belongings, and at the last moment paused and said to Slider, ‘You think she was killed because of something to do with the takeover?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But all murders come down to money or passion in the end, don’t they?’

‘I don’t know anything about it,’ she said, ‘and I hate gossip, but I suppose it is murder after all, so I ought to tell you. There was talk a couple of years ago that there was something between him and that girl.’

‘He had an affair with Chattie?’

‘I don’t think it amounted to that. Just a brief fling. For a few weeks there were a lot of phone calls, and he went off for long lunches without saying where he was going, and – well, all the signs of an affair. He’s had them before – and since – so I know the symptoms. It may not even have
been
her. I mean, the calls were, but maybe not the lunches and so on. I don’t know. It was just what the rumours said. But if it was her, there’s been nothing since. The calls stopped, and as far as I know he hasn’t seen her until that meeting last week. So you see,’ she looked from one to the other, ‘it might not have been the takeover at all. I just thought you ought to know.’

They thanked her again, and escorted her to the door. When she had walked away, Atherton said, ‘For someone who didn’t want to betray her boss, she certainly let her hair down.’

‘Chattie, an affair with Cockerell?’ Slider mourned. ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘Rather a lapse of taste,’ Atherton agreed. ‘But we know she liked to have it large, and he’s not without his attractions. I fancy even Miss Gaines-Harris has yearned for a slice of that particular beefcake at some time in the past – and didn’t get one, which is why she’s so ready to shop him.’

‘Stop with the psychology. You’re making me dizzy.’

‘Seriously, when I said I bet he made a pass at you, she didn’t
say he did and she didn’t say he didn’t. So I reckon he didn’t. Hell hath no fury, et cetera. Anyway,’ he went on, ‘at least if Chattie did have a fling, it was a brief one. Presumably she fell in a weak moment and got out of it as quickly as possible.’
‘I’m not comforted,’ said Slider.

‘It’s me!’ Slider called as he let himself into the narrow hall.

‘Hi! I’m in the kitchen,’ Joanna called back.

It was every man’s dream, he supposed, to come home from work and find his beloved safely in the kitchen. He extended his sensitive nostrils and identified onions, garlic – tomatoes – some kind of herb. After a day of sensual deprivation he fancied something rich and tasty. And a good meal, too. He picked up his mail, which she had left for him in a pile on the edge of the hall table and went to find her.

She was at the stove, stirring a pot. Hallelujah! It was going to be Bolognese sauce.

‘Yum,’ he said, kissing the back of her neck.

‘Me, or dinner?’

‘Both. Always,’ he said, opening envelopes. Bill, begging letter, you have been preselected to own one of our platinum credit cards (where were they going to go after platinum – titanium? Green kryptonite?), bill, bill …

‘I’m doing a proper
ragù,
with chicken livers,’ she said, ‘since I have time. Do you want it over short pasta, spaghetti, or baked in the oven?’

‘It would break Garibaldi’s heart if we had it over anything but spaghetti.’

‘Why Garibaldi?’

‘Wasn’t he the father of modern Italy?’

‘Dunno,’ she said. All I know is he made the biscuits run on time.’

He wasn’t listening. He was reading the letter he’d just opened. He frowned. ‘What’s this about a scan?’

She turned and craned her neck to read it, and then snatched it from his hand. ‘Don’t read my letters!’

‘It was in my pile,’ he protested.

‘Since when have you been “Dear Ms Marshall”?’

‘I didn’t read that bit. I opened it without looking. I assumed you’d sorted my stuff out from yours.’

‘You’ve no right to read my letters.’ Her face was a little flushed, though that might have been the heat of the stove.

He looked at her carefully. ‘Jo, what is it? It says you’re refusing to have a scan.’

‘It’s none of your business,’ she said, stuffing the letter into her pocket with an angry, careless gesture.

‘Well, it is, really,’ he said gently, not to annoy her. ‘It’s my baby too.’

‘You’re not the one who has to carry it and bear it and feed it. Ultimately it’s my responsibility.’

‘I can’t help being a man,’ he said. ‘I know you have the hardest part, but we’re having this baby together, and it’s my responsibility too. You both are. Why are you refusing a scan?’

She turned her face away, pretending to be concentrating on the sauce. ‘They don’t like it, you know. Babies. They try to get away from it. You can see on the monitor. I went with a friend a couple of times, and you can see the babies hate it.’

‘But it doesn’t harm them, does it?’

‘How do we know? It doesn’t do any immediate, obvious damage, but who knows what it’s really doing to them?’

He took her arms and turned her to him, against resistance. ‘Darling,’ he said, ‘what’s wrong? What’s really the problem?
Surely this scan business is simply routine? Why are you so against it?’

‘People managed perfectly well in the old days. My mother had ten children without ultrasound, or any of the other horrible machines they rig you up to these days.’

‘People in the old days had their legs cut off without anaesthetic,’ he said. ‘What’s the real reason?’

‘You haven’t thought it through. They scan to find out if the baby’s defective.’

‘Yes. Isn’t that a good thing?’

She met his eyes with resolution. ‘And if it is defective? You
know what comes next. They offer you an abortion. Are you prepared to take that decision? Because I’m not. I hate abortion. I would
never
have an abortion. But what if they say the child’s terribly damaged in some way, so that it wouldn’t die, but live on in some terrible condition?’

He didn’t answer for a moment. No, he hadn’t thought about that before, and now he did, he saw the gravity of it. To choose life or death, death or tormented life, for your own child? And how much worse for the mother, with the child actually growing inside her, part of her in the way it could never be for the father?

‘There are other reasons,’ he said. ‘They could find something that could be corrected in the womb. It could save the child from being born with a defect.’

‘Do you think that makes it easier?’

He saw then that she was really afraid, and close to tears. He pulled her against him and held her close, cradling her head, and she pressed in, needing his strength.

‘Darling,’ he said, ‘don’t worry. There’s nothing wrong with our baby. Everything will be all right. It’s going to be healthy and normal.’

‘You don’t know that,’ she said, muffled by her chest.