Fell Purpose (13 page)

‘Zellah’s dead,’ he reminded her.

‘Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten.’ She seemed remarkably unaffected by it. ‘Well, I s’pose it doesn’t matter then. Yeah, she went all the way with Mike.’

‘How did that work, if he didn’t have a car?’

‘He’s got his own place. But she said she’d have done it anywhere with him. She was nuts about him. And the way she talked about it, she was really hot for, you know, sex. It was funny really, her being like that and her mum and dad being all proper and churchy. She told Sophy once the only reason she stayed with them was she wanted to finish school and she didn’t have any money so she had to.’

‘In that case, why did her father believe she really would leave?’

Chloë looked blank. ‘I dunno,’ she said at last. ‘I suppose she just kind of
made
him believe it.’

‘Through force of personality, you mean?’

‘Yeah, like that,’ Chloë said

‘So you and Zellah and Sophy go around together a lot?’

‘Yeah, we’re, like, mates. We’re tight. We’ve had, like, this gang since the fourth year. There used to be another girl as well, Frieda, Frieda Mossman, but she got all stupid when we started going out with boys, so we dropped her.’

‘You mean she didn’t approve?’

Eye-roll and jerk. ‘Couldn’t pull one herself, so she was jealous. Said she was saving it for marriage. Sophy said “nobody’s going to marry you, girl, so you might as well spend it while you can”, and she got all upset and, like, stormed off.’

‘That was pretty cruel, wasn’t it?’

‘Oh, Sophy doesn’t care what she says. She’s great. Frieda shouldn’t have been so sensitive. But she was a bit fat and she has this frizzy hair.’

Slider couldn’t decide if this was justification for the nastiness, or the reason for being over-sensitive. He was fascinated, though appalled, at this glimpse below the gleaming surface of these girls. In the kitchen he saw Connolly deep in conversation with Mrs Paulson, with Mrs Paulson doing the chin-work, but he could also see the coffee was ready and only needed pouring, so he had to get on.

‘Tell me about your brother,’ he said.

‘Which one?’

‘The one who lives in Notting Hill.’

‘What, Oliver? He’s cool.’

‘What does he do?’

‘He’s a foreign analyst for a firm of brokers. City stuff, you know. He earns shedloads of money. I mean, him and his mates are all making out like
bandits
! He shares this great flat in Lansdowne Crescent with these three other guys – you should see it! It’s gorgeous. And he wears these beautiful suits. Boss, Armani. Totally great threads. He had this girlfriend Tara who was actually an earl’s daughter. They’ve broken it off now, though. Sophy says Tara’s a dorky name, anyway. She says it’s, like, a name you give a pony. But Oliver never had trouble pulling girls anyway. He’s gorgeous looking, and he has, like, this great sense of humour.’

‘So how does he know Mike Carmichael? It seems an unlikely sort of friendship, given Mike’s background.’

The round face was innocent of guile. ‘Oh, I don’t think he knows him that well. He just lives in the neighbourhood. I think they met at a party of a mate of his.’

‘And how did Zellah meet him?’

‘Round Oliver’s. Zellah and Sophy used to go up Oliver’s on Saturdays after ballet class and I’d meet them there. I don’t do ballet. This one Saturday Oliver was taking us all to lunch. He does that sometimes. He’s great. And Mike was there, so he came with us. Mike’s all right,’ she added, free of charge. ‘Sophy doesn’t like him, but she’s a snob. Mike’s a laugh. I could see right off Zellah liked him. Sophy said that’s because of Zellah’s chav blood. It takes one to know one, she said. But I reckon she fancied him herself, Sophy did, only you could see it was Zellah he was into. It, like, pissed her off, Sophy, so she never had a good word to say for Mike after that. But I don’t think she would have gone out with him if he
had
asked her,’ she concluded, ‘so I don’t know what she had to get snarky about.’

‘Do you know Mike’s address?’

‘No, but I know he’s got this flat in Ladbroke Grove, over this cool shop that sells, like, tarot cards and joss sticks and mystic books and stuff. I’d love to have a flat over a shop. It’s so cool.’ She returned from her dream to ask, ‘Why d’you want to know about Mike? Zellah’s not seen him in months.’

‘Oh, we have to talk to everyone who knew her. You never know what you might find out.’

She observed him with interest. ‘You don’t think
he
killed her, do you?’

‘I don’t think anything yet. I have to gather the facts first. Why, do you?’

‘
Me
? I don’t even know the bloke. Well, hardly. It would be, like, cool, though, knowing a murderer.’

Slider ended the interview and excused himself. He could take, like, no more.

Slider was comfortable with Connolly beside him in the car. She exuded the same sort of confidence that Swilley always had, but with the addition of something of her own that was relaxed and easy, which made her good with distraught victims and agitated villains. Sergeant Paxman had the same sort of quality, only developed over a longer career than Connolly’s. Nicholls had described him as a tranquil stream, but Slider saw him more as a black hole into which all over-wrought emotions were sucked, leaving peace and quiet behind.

‘You’re not related to Sergeant Paxman, are you?’ he asked her now, idly.

‘No, sir. You don’t think I look like him?’

‘Hardly,’ he said, with a sideways glance.

‘I like him, though. I always like being on his relief. And . . .’

‘Go on.’

‘No, I don’t want to bang me own drum.’

‘Oh, don’t be coy.’

‘He said he’d be sorry to lose me if I did get into the Department.’ She turned a wistful face to him. ‘Do you think there’s a chance I could? I mean, there’s a vacancy, right enough?’

‘Because DC Anderson isn’t coming back?’ Anderson had been on secondment to an SO for over a year, and Slider had recently heard that it was being made permanent. It left him even shorter-handed than usual.

‘Yes, sir. And then, if Kathleen doesn’t come back . . .’

Slider had never heard anyone call Swilley ‘Kathleen’, and it took him a moment to realise who they were talking about. Everyone on his firm called her Norma because she was a better man than they were – so much so that she didn’t even mind the nickname. Odd to think of her now doing something so essentially womanly as having a baby. ‘Don’t you think she will?’

‘Oh, I haven’t heard anything,’ Connolly said, ‘but it must be hard to leave your baba every day. And then there’d be the late evenings and the weekends and everything. I can’t see how she’d crack it.’

‘Her mother lives nearby. I understand she’d take care of the baby.’

‘I didn’t mean physically. I meant how she’d crack it emotionally.’

‘So when you marry and have children you’ll leave the Job?’

‘I’m never going to get married. And I definitely won’t have kids,’ she said, with a sureness that intrigued him. ‘You’ve only got to look at Mrs Paulson to see where that carry-on leads.’

He wanted to know whether she didn’t think that would mean a very lonely future, but he couldn’t go probing into his people’s private lives. He’d had enough of that with Atherton’s serial involvements, particularly when he’d been dating one of Joanna’s friends and breaking her heart.

He said, ‘How did you get on with Mrs Paulson?’

‘I hardly needed to ask her anything – she was desperate to talk. Bored mental being a stay-at-home mammy. Mostly she went on about being worried about Chloë – the shock from Zellah being murdered and the fear that it would happen to her kid as well. She’s convinced it’s a serial killer targeting schoolgirls. She says that Sophy Cooper-Hutchinson’s the driving force of the group, and it was her led Chloë and Zellah astray. She’s sorry about Zellah. Thought Zellah was a good girl, couldn’t understand why the Wildings let her hang out with Sophy.’

‘If Sophy’s so bad, why does she let Chloë associate with her?’

‘I wondered that, sir – hinted around it as tactfully as I could. But it seems that the Paulsons and Cooper-Hutchinsons have been best pals for years, ever since their oldest sons were at school together. Joint family holidays, outings, dinner parties and all that carry-on. The children know each other from the cradle. So no criticism of the Cooper-Hutchinsons possible, and no way to keep the children apart. But I gathered that Mrs Paulson is a bit feeble, anyway, doesn’t feel she has any influence over Chloë, no right to tell her what to do. She was critical of Mr Wilding, but admired him on the side. On the one hand said he was too strict with Zellah and maybe that was what led her into trouble—’

‘Trouble as in . . .?’

‘Oh, getting murdered – and on the other hand said she wished she could be strict like that with
her
children. But then, she says, the Wildings have but the one kid, so it’s easy for them.’

‘You did well, getting all that out of her,’ Slider said.

‘It wasn’t hard,’ said Connolly. ‘She wanted to talk.’

That wasn’t what Slider had meant: people can talk all they like but the listener had to be hearing them. He was liking Connolly more all the time. ‘What did she think about Mrs Wilding?’

‘Didn’t like her. Too much of a chav for her taste.’

So that was where Chloë got the idea of ‘chavvy blood’, Slider thought.

‘She hinted,’ Connolly went on, ‘that Mrs Wilding was her husband’s secretary once, and they’d had an affair, and Mr Wilding left his first wife for her. Seemed to think that was a bit beyond the pale. What bothered her was not so much the affair, but the secretary thing.’

‘Too much of a cliché?’

‘Yes, sir, something like that. It made Mrs Wilding too common to mix with the likes of the Paulsons and Cooper-Hutchinsons. I thought it was interesting,’ she added, ‘that she didn’t seem to think Mr Wilding was tainted with the same brush.’

‘I can clear that up for you,’ Slider said, wincing at the mixed metaphor but letting it pass. Nobody was perfect, after all. ‘Chloë revealed to me Mrs Wilding’s cardinal sin, and the source of her chavviness.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Apparently, she’s fat.’

Connolly whistled. ‘Janey, dice loaded against her, or what?’

SEVEN

Fair Words Never Won Fat Lady

T
he fair was not open until the afternoon, but as it was school holidays, there were quite a few kids hanging around already. The coffee stall was open, and the hamburger-and-hotdog stand had fired up for the vital dispensing of hot grease. The air was redolent with the particular mixture of diesel, burned fat, rancid onions, trampled grass and sawdust that was a quintessential part of childhood dreams. It was Paradise – if you could stand it.

Some of the fair people were engaged on routine maintenance of the rides, others on cleaning and household chores, though some caravans still had their curtains drawn, indicating a lie-in after the late night. The side panels were off the merry-go-round, and a knot of fascinated juvenile idlers was gathered round two pairs of oily overalled legs sticking out from under it. The horses, frozen in mid-leap, flared their crimson nostrils in their eagerness to get galloping again; the cockerels strode out on their strong, ridged legs like Road Runner.

‘Yeah, what is it wiv them cockerels?’ Hart asked in wounded tones. ‘I never got that. What’s the connection?’

‘It’s one of those sweet, insoluble mysteries of childhood,’ Atherton told her. ‘Don’t breathe on the magic.’ A man was tinkering with the pipe organ, and it sounded an asthmatic note or two, mournful and joyous as a steam locomotive. ‘This must be one of the few go-rounds that still has a proper organ, not just recorded music,’ he said, betraying his enthusiasm.

Hart looked at him with fake fondness. ‘You big kid. You love all this. For two pins you’d be begging ’em for a ride.’

‘My good woman, it costs a lot more than two pins these days. Come on, stop gawping. We’ve got a job to do.’

The fair people were already doing a good job of ignoring the hangers-about, and somehow managed to ignore Atherton and Hart even more intensely because they were police, narrowing eyes that were already narrowed and turning away faces that were already averted, like cats punishing an errant owner. Sometimes their questions were answered by a grunt, more often by complete silence. When words were forthcoming, it was, ‘Don’t know nothing about that.’ They were armed with photos of Zellah and of Mike Carmichael but could hardly get anyone to glance at them, let alone recognize the faces.

The first proper response they got was at a snack stall, presently closed up, where a stocky man in shirt-sleeves and braces was around the back, spanner in hand, connecting up a new Calor gas canister. He had a cigarette clamped in his mouth, a cap clamped down over his head, and two days of white stubble sprouting from the whole lower half of his face. He stopped and straightened when they addressed him, though it seemed more to stretch his back than for their benefit.