Death Watch (17 page)
‘Yes, all right. I’ll send Polish down there to exercise her tact.’
‘Oh no, not Polish! I’m still working on her. How am I ever going to get her into bed if you keep sending her out of Town?’
‘Polish or no-one,’ Slider said firmly. ‘Make your mind up.’
‘Oh all right. Catriona Young isn’t a suspect, if you insist,’ said Atherton. ‘I’ve got something better for you, anyway. How would you like a man-eating woman with a violent and potentially jealous husband?’
‘Depends how attractive she is,’ Slider said judiciously.
‘She has a passion for mauve and purple – possibly to match her bruises – and appalling punctuation,’ said Atherton, and told them about the Collins complication.
At the end of it, Slider said, ‘Now I really am sorry for Tricky Dicky. Good God, the man was in every sort of trouble!’
‘Right! He had Jacqui Turner taking a job at his office and expecting him to marry her; Catriona Young with his firstborn son, refusing to marry him; his long-suffering wife forgiving him every time he came home; and the purple python with a stranglehold on his pod, threatenint
to tell his best friend all about it if he didn’t perform like a man. If only he’d humped for charity,’ Atherton said, ‘he could’ve made Bob Geldof look like Attila the Hun.’
‘He does, a bit,’ said Joanna.
‘It’s no wonder his commission had dwindled to nothing,’ Slider concluded. ‘The poor man could hardly have had time to go to work.’
‘Oh, that’s typical,’ Joanna said. ‘Pity the man, of course. What about all the women he was deceiving?’
‘The only woman he was deceiving was Turner – the others knew about him.’
‘And he wasn’t really deceiving her,’ Atherton put in. ‘She was deceiving herself. She knew he was married, after all.’
There was a short, appalled silence as each of them hoped neither of the others would make the connection; and Atherton hurried on, ‘And you’ve missed out one: presumably he was having to fit in the red-headed tart as well. He must have longed for death at times – it was the only way he’d get any sleep.’
Joanna struggled only for a moment, and then laughed. ‘You are an ‘orrible bastard, Jim Atherton!’
‘I aim to please. But look here, Guv, this is much more promising, isn’t it?’
‘I thought you wanted a woman for the murderer?’ Joanna interrupted.
‘That was just a joke. I can’t really see a woman killing poor old Neal, especially in such a revolting way. Screw the poor bugger to death, yes, but setting him up like that in that motel room – that was the work of a nasty twisted mind, and I’d be loath to think any woman could be so beastly.’
Joanna leaned across and patted him. ‘You’re a nice old-fashioned thing underneath, aren’t you? And quite ashamed of your snips and snails and puppy-dog tails, like all men. You all carry such a load of guilt about with you, it’s heartbreaking.’
‘In the case of Neal, he had plenty to feel guilty about,’ Atherton said, sidestepping the analysis. ‘Especially with
Petula Collins, his friend’s wife – maybe his best friend’s wife. I think we ought to look into it, don’t you, Guv? I mean, dear old sexual jealousy is a nice, comprehensive motive; and Mrs C says that Collins and Neal used to drink together at the Shamrock Club in Fulham Palace Road, which is not a hundred miles from the motel.’
‘Hmm. Beevers was right, then, about the club syndrome. But this isn’t a nice, comprehensible murder, don’t forget,’ said Slider. ‘Neal wasn’t shot, or knifed, or bludgeoned to death in the heat of an argument. And why would a jealous husband do the roping and wiring? That doesn’t fit in.’
Atherton would not be cheated of his prey. ‘No, it makes sense. Look, Mrs C hinted that Collins was a bit short-staffed in the men’s department. She also apparently nagged him about not providing her with the wordly goods, nagged him until he walloped her in fact – she had the remains of a black eye when I spoke to her. Then there’s his mate, Dick Neal, who not only lived in a gorgeous detached bungalow in Pinner, and whose wife is dripping in baubles and bangles, but who is known as the leading pork purveyor of the western world. When Collins discovers that said friend has had it in for him, as the saying goes, his rage might well be mighty. And what better revenge, having murdered said conjugal bandit, than to set him up for posterity as the lowliest and most pathetic sort of sexual inadequate?’
He drew breath, rubbing the back of his left hand with the fingers of his right as he viewed his own story with growing enthusiasm. ‘In fact, it’s the only answer that does make sense. If it wasn’t some form of exquisite revenge, then what
was
all that sexual strangulation set-up for? Because as a scent-thrower, it was a wash-out.’
Slider contemplated the scenario. ‘Then who was the red-headed tart?’
Atherton shrugged generously. ‘Just another bird he was jumping.’
‘And the man he met on Saturday? Who said someone wanted to kill him?’
‘Just another drinking-mate. We know he was well-known on that ground. Why should the Saturday meet be anything to do with anything? And it’s only Miss Young of the Agatha Christie fixation who says he was given a death-threat. Mrs Neal says he was perfectly normal on Sunday—’
‘I don’t think she’s a very noticing person. Or she may be deliberately un-noticing.’
Atherton waved a hand. ‘In any case, we know he had a phone call on Sunday, which he took in his study so that his wife shouldn’t overhear. Say that was Collins: “You’ve been screwing my wife. Do you want me to come over there and make a scene in front of Betty, or will you meet me and have it out man to man?” Neal says, okay, I’ll see you later in the Shamrock, or wherever, hoping to talk his way out of it and still drive up north to make his appointments the next day. They meet, have a few drinks, Collins lets Neal think he’s charmed him out of his righteous anger. They get pretty spiffed together, like old buddies. Then Time is called. Collins says, “Shame to spoil a good evening. I’ve got a bottle of good stuff in the car. What say we go somewhere and polish it off, and talk about old times.” But where can they go? Not to Collins’s house, with the wife-in-contention waiting up, probably wearing suspenders and black stockings and those knickers designed for three-legged ladies. Not to Neal’s house – Mrs N would want to know why he hadn’t gone to Bradford. And in any case, Neal is too bagged to drive all the way up there tonight. So they head for the motel, where Neal can sleep it off afterwards – or so he thinks. “You go in and book the room, old man,” says Collins, “while I get the stuff out of the car.” And that way, Pascoe only gets to see Neal.’
‘And what about Neal’s car?’ Slider asked, fascinated.
‘They leave it where it’s parked, because he’s too drunk to drive, and go in Collins’s. Collins drops Neal at the door, and parks somewhere out in the street. Afterwards, he takes Neal’s keys and goes back to bring Neal’s car a bit
nearer to the scene. It might look a bit odd if it was found miles away. He parks it in Rylett Road, and chucks the keys away down a drain somewhere on his way home.’
‘I have to hand it to you,’ Slider said when Atherton stopped. ‘When it comes to weaving fiction, you’re up there with the greats. Eat your heart out, Hans Andersen.’
‘It all holds together,’ Atherton said indignantly.
‘It does,’ Slider said. ‘It’s beautiful – but we haven’t investigated Collins yet. We’ve only got to discover that on the night in question he was guest speaker at the annual dinner of the Ancient Order of Buffaloes, and your coach is a pumpkin.’
‘His wife said he went out for a drink on Sunday night, she doesn’t know where,’ Atherton said triumphantly. ‘She doesn’t know what time he came back. And on Monday he went away on a business trip and she hasn’t seen him since. She was pretty narked about it, because it was her birthday on Monday, and he didn’t give her a present. Doesn’t that sound as though he had something on his mind?’
‘Men are always forgetting birthdays,’ Joanna pointed out. ‘It’s a secondary sex-characteristic’
‘And we still don’t know where he was on Sunday night,’ Slider said patiently. ‘He might have fifty witnesses to say he was in The Dog and Duck or The Froth and Elbow.’
‘All right,’ Atherton said with sweet reasonableness, ‘if we discover he’s got an alibi for the time, well and good. All I’m saying is that it’s worth looking into.’
‘It wasn’t all you said, by a long chalk,’ Slider said. ‘But you can have a look at Collins. It’s the best lead we’ve had yet.’
‘It makes more sense to me than suspecting any of the women,’ Joanna said.
Slider reached out and pulled a lump of her hair through his fingers. ‘Of course it does. And it has the virtue that it will engage Head’s attention, maybe long enough for us to find out what really did happen.’
She glanced at him, disappointed. ‘You don’t like the Collins theory?’
‘It’s not a theory, until we have some facts. And even as a
potential theory, it has its drawbacks.’ He sighed. ‘I wish I had Head’s capacity for self-deception, then I’d be able to believe Neal committed suicide, and all would be well. If it weren’t for that one piece of wire …’ He stroked Joanna’s head absently. ‘He certainly had enough reason to want to get out. His life was in a sodawful mess.’
Joanna kept very still, trying to listen through his hands to what he was thinking. He was a man with a conscience, and she was hoping hard he wouldn’t start to draw conclusions about his own situation from what he had discovered about Neal’s. She didn’t want to be given up, for however noble a reason. For his sake as well as hers, she would have to make sure that in the constant battle between his animal instincts for pleasure and self-preservation, and his better self, his better self didn’t get enough of an upper hand to make them all suffer.
THE SHAMROCK CLUB BY DAYLIGHT was a dismal place, with a false and improbable air, like any piece of theatre scenery viewed from the wrong side. There was a depressing smell of cheap carpet about it, old cigarette smoke, stale beer, and dead illusions.
It was a simple enough proposition: a wide, shallow basement room, with a bar running along the long side, opposite the stairs down from the street. There were toilets off to one side, next to the fire exit, and tables and chairs cramming all the rest of the available space, leaving only a pathway, one waiter wide, tracking from the bar past every table and back to the bar, in a sort of ergonomically-efficient one-way system. It was impossible to go even to the bog without passing the bar both ways.
There was no stage, nor even a sound system, for this was a serious club, dedicated to drinking and talking, without any frivolous notions of entertainment. It was a man’s club. There was no rule that said you couldn’t bring a woman in, but it would be a strange woman who’d want to come with you a second time. There was a ladies’ loo next to the gents, but it didn’t have
ladies
on the door – a subtle discouragement that would be enough for any but the most brazen female.
Behind the bar was the usual long mirror, reflecting the backs of the usual optics and the bottles stacked along the glass shelves. There was an unusually large collection of different whiskies, including twenty-three Irish, some of
which weren’t known by name to any revenue collector on earth. There was also a surprisingly wide range of cigarettes and cigars on sale, and – sop to the younger generation and frowned upon by the older regulars, by whom women had never been regarded as a source of pleasure – a display rack of condoms, tucked away at the end beside the rows of personal pewter beer-mugs.
Along the pelmet above the mirror was a string of coloured lights, sole gesture to festivity. The bulbs were green and red and blue, but so coated in nicotine from thousand upon thousand cigarettes that the colours were virtually indistinguishable from each other. And stuck to the ceiling over the door of the gents was a brown and ghostly piece of Sellotape, with a fragment of silver lametta still adhering to it, where the experimental Christmas decorations of 1985 had been taken down, never, owing to general apathy to the notion, to be restored.
Such daylight as there was came down from above through the glass pavement bricks, and down the stairs from the street door, which had been left propped open while cleaning and delivering went on. The former task was being performed by a tiny old lady in a green nylon overall, who was being towed back and forth across the stub-and-spillage-coloured carpet by an outsize industrial-strength Hoover. The chairs had been set up onto the tables with their legs in the air, but still it was taking all her concentration to avoid hitting anything, and she didn’t even notice Atherton cross her path on his way in.
A man’s spirits ought to have plunged at the first step into this dismal boozerama, but Atherton, whom nothing ever depressed, was wearing his David Attenborough look, which meant that even the most loathsome invertebrate he might come across down here would have the loveliness of discovery for him. To think people actually chose to come down here, he told himself in anthropological wonder – and in their leisure hours!
‘Help you, guv’nor?’ A figure had popped up from behind the bar, a tall, muscular Irishman with a bright
complexion, gingery, fluffy hair, and ears standing so nearly at right angles to his head that for a moment Atherton thought they were a joke pair.
He recovered himself quickly. ‘Shepherd’s Bush CID. Detective Sergeant Atherton.’ He presented his card. The barman took and scrutinised it, as hardly anyone ever did. He looked at Atherton intently as he handed it back.
‘Doesn’t look much like you,’ he commiserated. ‘Shepherd’s Bush, eh? D’you know Sergeant O’Flaherty?’
‘Yes, I know him.’
‘He used to come here a lot. Said we had the best pint east of Dingle.’
‘Pint?’
‘The Guinness,’ he elucidated simply. ‘Haven’t seen him for a while. Tell him hello from me when you see him. Say Joey Doyle says there’s one in the tap for him, any time.’
‘I’ll see he gets the message.’ Atherton took out the photograph of Neal. ‘Have a look at this, will you? I believe you know this man.’
