Death Watch (8 page)

She looked down at the packet in her hand blankly, having evidently forgotten all about it. Like magic it disappeared, whisked into her bag as though it had never existed. Stolen, he thought. Did she actually steal it from a baby? Lifted it out of a pram, as like as not. But her need was probably greater than the baby’s.

‘Wanted a cuppa tea,’ she complained, with a natural association of ideas, ‘but the caffy’s shut.’

‘The cafe’s been closed down for years, Else,’ Slider said, wondering if D’Arblay was wrong about her memory.

But she looked indignant. ‘I know that! Whadjer think, I’m going sealion?’

‘No, not you, Else. You’ll see us all out.’

‘Sharp as a bell,’ she said severely.

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Slider said, ‘because I wanted to ask you something.’

‘Didn’t think it was a social call,’ she said, looking away from him across the grass. Girls were beginning to come out of the school, strolling across the park in pairs, all wearing short, tight skirts, white ankle socks, and black rowing-boat shoes. They all looked so alike, it made Slider feel dizzy, and he looked away.

‘You want to know about the fire, I s’pose,’ she said suddenly, without looking at him.

He was surprised. ‘Why d’you say that?’

‘Man got killed, didn’t he? Pleece gotter investigate. You’re The Man up Shepherd’s Bush now, aintcher, now Mr Raisbrooke’s gone. What happened to him, anyway?’

‘He retired,’ Slider said automatically. With her deductive powers, he thought, she should have been a detective. ‘Did you see the fire, then?’

‘I was there,’ she agreed, between relish and pride. ‘I
watched the firemen. Gor, it was a good one! Went up like a bombfire. They never had no chance of puttin’ it out, I could see that ‘fore they ever got there. I stopped all night, watchin’. It was lovely! Just like the war,’ she said happily, ‘and no bleedin’ ARP wardens to tell you to clear off out of it, neether.’

‘Were you round that way before the fire started? Did you see anyone going in, or coming out?’

Her gaze sharpened again. ‘Which one you interested in?’ Silently he gave her the photograph of Neal, blown up from a snapshot provided by Mrs Neal. She studied it. ‘Is he the one what died?’

‘Yes. Did you see him at the motel that night? Or parking his car, perhaps? He had a red car, sporty, parked it in Rylett Road and walked down. Maybe he had someone with him?’

‘Na, I never see him there,’ she said. She looked up from the photograph and eyed Slider speculatively, and then smacked her lips softly. ‘I could go a cuppa tea, though. You got your car with yer, Mr Slider?’

He was wary. He had nothing but goodwill towards the old girl, but she wasn’t what any man would choose for a travelling – companion. Even upwind he could smell her. ‘What’s this about, Else?’

‘It’s a dry sort a day,’ she said dreamily. ‘F’you could give me a ride up the Acropolis, they don’t mind me there. Some places they won’t serve the likes of me.’ She handed the photograph back. ‘Nice sort a face, ain’t it? ‘Ansome.’

‘You didn’t see him at the motel, you said?’

‘Seen him somewhere else,’ she said blandly. ‘Can’t think where, though.’

‘If I give you a ride in my car, do you think you might remember?’

‘Wasn’t long ago, neether. Mighta been Satdy or Sundy,’ she said with a sweet smile. ‘Real thirsty sort a day, ain’t it?’

‘Come on then,’ said Slider resignedly. If he was going to get rolled, at least it would only be for the price of a cup of tea.

She sat very upright in the bucket seat with her bag
clutched in her lap, and looked about her with evident delight on the short journey down Bloemfontein Road and along Uxbridge Road to the Acropolis Cafe. She loved riding in cars, and Slider found her pleasure rather touching. In the course of her long life she had been in so few of them that the experience still had all the childhood sharpness of novelty.

Outside the Acropolis he pulled up and went round to the passenger side to let her out. He delved into his pocket and pulled out a handful of loose change, saw there were a couple of pound coins amongst the silver, and held out the whole fistful to her. He knew from experience it would give her more satisfaction than a note.

She accepted the bounty gravely in her cupped hands, and then bestowed it into various pockets. Slider waited patiently until she looked up again.

‘Satdy it was,’ she said, suddenly business – like. ‘Dinnertime. I see him go in the George and Two Dragons. He—’

‘Where’s that?’

‘You
know.’ She seemed impatient of the interruption. ‘Up the Seven Stars. I was sittin’ on the wall oppsit. He was in there a long time. Havin’ his dinner, most like. I could see the back of ‘is ‘ed through the winder. Noddin’, like he was talkin’ to someone. Then he comes out and I see him go up Gorgeous George’s. He meets a girl there.’

‘How d’you know? Did you see the girl? Could you describe her?’

But she only chuckled and turned away. ‘You ask Gorgeous George,’ she said, stumping towards the cafe door. ‘He knows all about it.’

There was a complex road junction where Askew Road, Goldhawk Road and Paddenswick Road all met, which of late years had been turned into a free public bumper-car ride by the simple addition of two mini-roundabouts. A large pub called The Seven Stars and Half Moon dominated the scene, and had given its name to the whole area.

Gorgeous George was the local Arthur Daley, a blond and handsome South African who had a second – hand car lot in Paddenswick Road and conducted various slightly dubious business deals on the side. Slider had thus decoded two thirds of Else’s cryptic message, but The George and Two Dragons eluded him. That had to wait until he got back to the factory and asked Bob Paxman. He was custody sergeant on the late relief, and Slider found him in kitchen making himself a cup of Bovril.

‘Oh, that’s the pub, The Wellington, on the corner of Wellesley Road,’ he answered Slider at once.

‘Why on earth—?’

‘It’s only been called The Wellington since they tarted it up. That was in 1965 – 150th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. Some clever sod at the brewery noticed that Lord Wellington’s name was Wellesley before he got made a duke, so they changed the pub name while they were refurbishing.’

‘The things you know,’ Slider said admiringly.

Paxman looked wary, wondering if he was being razzed. ‘They had a grand reopening on June the whatever it was, day of the battle,’ he went on, committed to his story now. ‘Gave away free drinks. We got called out twice before nine o’clock – fights in both bars. Silly buggers.’ He snorted and shook his head, and then remembered the point of the story. ‘Anyway, before that it was called The George and Dragon. It was run for years and years by a little bloke called George Benson, with the aid of his large wife and his even larger mother-in-law. Hence—’

‘Ah, I see!’

‘Some of the older locals still call it The George and Two Dragons.’ The round brown eyes rested on Slider with ruminative enquiry. ‘Are you going to follow up what Little Else said?’

‘Don’t you think she’s reliable?’

Paxman scratched the curly poll between his horns. ‘She’s given us some useful stuff in the past, but she’s not getting any younger. And of course if it came to anything the CPS would never accept her as a witness.’

Slider shrugged. ‘At the moment I’ve got nothing to lose. And circumstantially it sounds all right. It was sunny on Saturday round lunchtime, and there’s a low wall opposite The Wellington – the wall of the park – where she might sit to enjoy the sunshine. And the second-hand car lot is just up the road, virtually next door to the pub. She could have seen him go in there without changing position.’

‘So you’ll be having a word with Gorgeous George, then.’ Paxman smiled slowly. ‘He’s a funny bastard. You heard about his latest scam? He sells a clapped-out Japanese car to a black bloke and charges him a fancy price because he says it used to belong to Nelson Mandela. This bloke meets a friend, boasts about it – turns out the friend’s also bought a car from Gorgeous George, same story. So they go round there to sort him out. A bit of a frackass ensues, and a neighbour calls us out. I send D’Arblay, who asks what’s occurring, and Gorgeous George gives him a wide-eyed look and says, “I never said I got ’em from Nelson Mandela. I said I got ’em from the Nissan main dealer.” What a funny bastard.’ Paxman drew a beefy sigh. ‘Almost makes you believe in God.’

Gorgeous George – Pieter George Verwoerd was the name on his well-worn passport – was in his office, for once, in his shirt sleeves, making a telephone call. It was one of those moments of sudden quiet that happen in London, when for perhaps five minutes it simply chances that no traffic passes, nor pedestrians, dogs or planes. Outside on the forecourt the used cars basked in the spring sunshine, innocent as seals on a rock; and a sparrow sitting on the roof gutter guarding a nest site said ‘Chiswick, Chiswick,’ over and over again like a demented estate agent.

Gorgeous George looked up as Slider came in. He said abruptly into the telephone ‘I’ll call you back,’ put the receiver down, and thrust his chair back from the desk to look up at Slider from a position of complete apparent relaxation.

He was a larger-than-life character, giving an impression of great size, though he was neither tall nor fat. His light hair waved vigorously, like someone trying to attract the attention of a friend on the opposite platform of the Circle Line tube at Bayswater. His eyes were hazel and lazily feral, his lips full, his chin firm. He had a large, healthy laugh, which revealed an inordinate number of strong white teeth. Women found him irresistible. Men found him difficult to resist. His passage through life had been littered with broken hearts and broken limbs.

He had been a game warden in his youth, so legend had it, and had got himself out of trouble on one occasion by staring down a lion so that it gave up the idea of eating him and simply walked away. It was also said that he had worked in a slaughterhouse, where he had learned how both to subdue and to execute the unwilling with the least exertion or damage to himself.

Both legends were in their own way typical of the man and the effect he had on people. It was certain that he understood animals, and was suspiciously lucky on the ponies, and that even previously one-man dogs would go up to him with love in their eyes and lay their lives at his feet. The sniffer-dog handlers at Heathrow Airport knew him very well indeed, and viewed him with considerable jaundice.

Slider knew he had a weakness for the man, and that he wasn’t alone in liking him, in spite of all suspicions. Gorgeous had so far got away with having some very disreputable acquaintances, and had never yet collected a record, though many visits had been paid him by various coppers, wanting to discuss cars with a tendency towards elective surgery, and orphaned consumer durables in search of a caring family environment.

‘Well now, to what do I owe the honour of this visit?’ he said at last.

‘I just fancied a chat,’ Slider said blandly, pulling a chair across and sitting down opposite him. ‘How’s it going, George?’

‘When did you ever just want a chat? I hope this is not
going to be a roust,’ Gorgeous said. He opened the box of twenty-five Wilhelms which was lying on the desk, extracted one, offered it to Slider, and then slipped it between his luscious lips. ‘Because’ he went on, the cigarillo wagging with the words, ‘I always think of you as the thinking man’s copper, and I should hate to see you wasting your time and making a fool of yourself.’

He struck a match and drew the flame onto the tobacco. A blue wreath of smoke rose towards the ceiling.

‘Your concern touches me deeply. But you should know better than me whether I’ve any reason to want to roust you’ Slider said.

‘My conscience is clear,’ he said, lazily smiling. ‘Much to my relief. I couldn’t fob you off like that blue-eyed boy of yours – what’s his name?’

‘Detective Sergeant Atherton.’

‘Yeah, that’s him. He came round here the other week asking me about funny money – as if I’d ever have to do with counterfeit! He took some convincing, too –
and
when I had a customer hanging around about to buy one of my specials. Lost me a perfectly good sale. They should use him on the recruitment posters,’ he added with assumed disgust. ‘He does for community relations what Icarus did for hang-gliding.’

‘You shouldn’t underestimate him,’ Slider said. ‘He’s a good copper.’

George shrugged, removed the cigar from his lips, and inspected the burning end with interest. ‘You shouldn’t send a boy out to do a man’s job,’ he said. ‘A boy with his mind on other things, as well – I saw him afterwards in The Wellington with his arm round a bird, looked like a plonk. Practically climbing inside her blouse, the eager little mountaineer.’

Slider laughed out loud, and George lifted his eyes to him. ‘That’s rich, coming from you!’

George grinned ferally. ‘Ah, but I don’t let it distract me from the real purpose of life.’

‘Which is?’

‘Making money,’ he said simply. ‘You got money, you
got power – and incidentally all the women you can eat. And, not to change the subject, what
do
you want?’

Slider produced the photograph of Neal. ‘I believe you know this man.’

Gorgeous George looked at it and handed it back indifferently. ‘Why should you think that?’

‘He was seen going into your premises on Saturday afternoon.’

‘Doesn’t mean to say I know him, does it? My premises are open to the general public.’

‘But he was here on Saturday afternoon?’

‘You’ve just said he was seen going in. What do you want from me? Reassurance?’

‘Did you see this man on Saturday afternoon?’

‘Nope.’

‘You’re sure of that?’

‘I couldn’t have seen him, because I wasn’t here on Saturday afternoon.’

‘Where were you?’

‘Well, as it happened, I had a business meeting with a financier in Newbury.’

‘At what time?’

‘Two o’clock, two-thirty, and three-fifteen.’

Slider grinned. ‘Business, eh?’

‘I came away fifteen hundred to the good. What would you call it?’