Fell Purpose (21 page)

‘Did you see that girl while you were walking over the Scrubs?’ he asked. ‘The one that screamed?’

‘The one with the rude knickers,’ Ronnie said, and chuckled. ‘No, she wasn’t there. She’d gone before I left.’

‘How d’you know that?’

‘Everyone’d gone. They was closing down when I left. I don’t like it when they turn the lights off.’ He frowned, but hadn’t the vocabulary or brainpower to describe why he didn’t like the lights going out. Slider could imagine. The glorious, bright, multicoloured gorgeousness of the fairground depended on its lights. When they went off, there was just wood and canvas, dullness, drabness, blown rubbish, and the dark of night creeping in.

But more importantly, Slider thought, they were getting something like a timing now, which was always difficult with a man like Ronnie, who had neither watch nor sense of time. ‘So you stayed at the fair until it shut down?’ he said. ‘You stayed all the time until they put the lights out?’

‘Yeah,’ said Ronnie. ‘I didn’t like it when they put the lights out. The dodgems man told me to clear off,’ he remembered suddenly. ‘So I cleared.’

What had the fat lady said in Atherton’s report? It was near two o’clock when her son got to bed. So the fair probably shut around one in the morning, maybe half-past. Ronnie was walking across the Scrubs between one and one-thirty-ish, and Zellah died some time before two o’clock. And he had seen her at the fair and thought her a dirty girl, the sort like that Wanda Lempowski who let him do things if he gave them money.
But he didn’t have any money
. And Zellah was not, in fact, a dirty girl.

‘So when you got across the other side of the Scrubs,’ Slider said, ‘what did you do?’ The blank look again. He couldn’t answer non-specific questions. ‘You didn’t go straight home, did you?’

‘Nah.’ He looked sly again. ‘Sometimes you see people round there. I like to watch ’em. Once this couple broke into the changing rooms, and I watched ’em through the window. And people in cars.’

‘Was there a car there that night? Under the railway bridge?’

‘Nah. There wasn’t nobody. Everyone’d gone home. But I found a thingy there, under the bridge. One of them things you wear on your porker. A fresh one,’ he added with a relish to which Slider managed not to react. Ronnie sat back complacently, and then a vague look of unease came over him. ‘You won’t tell my mum?’

‘We won’t tell her anything,’ Slider said warmly. ‘Promise. We’re all men together here, aren’t we?’

‘Yeah. All men. Women don’t understand. My mum don’t like all that stuff. She gets cross with me if I talk about it.’

‘So what happened then, Ronnie?’ Slider said, easing him back to the scene. ‘After you found the thingy under the bridge. Did you see that girl?’

‘Yeah, I see her.’

‘Was she walking home, like you?’

‘I dunno.’

‘What was she doing when you saw her?’

‘She wasn’t doing nothing.’

‘Did you ask her if she was walking home?’

‘She w’n’t
walking
,’ he said, as if Slider should have known that. ‘I told you, she was asleep.’

‘Asleep?’

‘Yeah, she was lying in the bushes, asleep.’

‘What were you doing in the bushes?’

‘I went to see if there was any more thingies. People do it in the bushes, and they leave ’em around. I see her lying down. I was gonna show her my porker, but my mum said I mustn’t do that no more. So I come away.’

‘Did you go right up to the girl?’

‘Nah, I never.’

‘How did you know she was sleeping, then?’

‘Well, she was lying down.’

‘If you didn’t go right up to her, how did you get hold of her handbag?’

‘I never,’ he said. ‘I never touched her.’

‘We found her handbag in your room, Ronnie. Under your pillow. A nice pink one. You must have taken it from her.’

He stared at Slider for a long, congested moment, and then another light bulb flickered in his head. ‘I found it.’

‘Found it where?’

‘I dunno. I just found it.’

‘Now, Ronnie,’ Slider said, stern but fatherly, ‘you’ve got to tell me the truth. Otherwise I might have to tell your mother.’

Ronnie looked alarmed. ‘No, don’t tell Mum. I won’t never do it again. I promise.’

‘What did you do to that girl, Ron? You can tell me. Tell me the truth and I won’t tell your mum.’

‘I never done nothing to her.’

‘You squeezed her neck, didn’t you? Like you did to Wanda?’

‘No, I never done
that
,’ he objected. ‘I just looked a bit. At her legs.’

‘You squeezed her neck until she fell asleep, and then you took her bag.’

‘I never. I found it. Finders keepers, my mum says.’

‘Where did you find it?’

‘I dunno. It smelled nice so I took it. I put it under my pillow for in the night.’

Slider had a depressing vision of Oates masturbating over the smell of Zellah’s handbag. But they were no further forward.

‘Tell me about squeezing her neck,’ he said.

Ronnie looked sulky. ‘She told me to. She said I could if I give her money.’

‘No, not Wanda, the other one. After the fair, on Sunday. The one in the bushes. Tell me about squeezing her neck.’

‘I never. I never touched her.’

‘What did she say to you?

‘She was asleep.’ He paused, searching the airwaves for inspiration. ‘I see her knickers, though. On the chairoplanes. She had them dirty-girl knickers on.’

And so the world turned.

In the end, it was Slider who tired first. Ronnie, with no apprehension and no sense of time, could keep it up all day if necessary, but Slider, being carbon-based, wore out. Ronnie was taken back to his cell – pleased to have been given the pack of ciggies – and Slider climbed wearily to his office, with Hollis beside him.

‘We’re not going to get it out of him yet,’ Hollis said. ‘He’s too cunning.’

‘Cunning as a jar of chutney,’ Slider said. ‘I’ve had more intelligent exchanges with my shirts.’

‘He’s out of the shallow end of the gene pool all right,’ said Hollis, ‘but he’s just clever enough to stick when he gets to the dangerous bit. He’s not bright enough to make up a story. He just says he don’t know or he can’t remember.’

‘Unless he really doesn’t remember. Defensive amnesia.’

‘I’m sure there’s something there,’ Hollis said thoughtfully. ‘Something he doesn’t want us to know. But whether it was killing the girl or not . . .’ He shook his head.

‘On the face of it, it could have been the way he said,’ Slider agreed. ‘She could have been already dead, and he took her bag as a souvenir. But then why does he deny going right up to her? And what was he doing in the bushes that he won’t tell us?’

Hollis screwed up his face. ‘Well, guv, what’s his favourite hobby? Say he saw her already dead and got excited, gave himself a hand shandy on the strength of it. He’s told his mum he won’t get Horace out except in the bathroom, so he doesn’t want to tell us in case we tell her.’

‘It’s possible,’ Slider said. ‘All too depressingly possible.’

‘And he picked up the bag as a souvenir, but doesn’t want to say he took it from her body because that’s part of what he’s ashamed of.’

‘It makes sense. Unfortunately.’ They reached their floor. Slider paused. ‘On the other hand, it makes just as much sense that what he’s hiding is the murder.’

Hollis shrugged sympathetically. ‘We’ll have another go at him later. Maybe we can walk him up to it gently and get him to cough.’

‘Maybe,’ said Slider.

‘Or we could pretend this is the seventies and beat it out of him,’ Hollis said blandly.

‘Eh?’

‘Just joking, guv.’

Porson was not pleased. ‘He’s leading you round the Marlborough bushes. Where do we go from here? The clock’s ticking, you know, Slider. Sooner or later we’ll have to get him a lawyer, and then there’ll be no getting anything out of him. His brief’ll scream diminished responsibility and that’ll be that. Have we got enough to charge him?’

‘He’d still have to have a lawyer,’ Slider pointed out.

‘But at least we wouldn’t be on the clock.’ He lifted a hand and used the fingers for points. ‘We’ve got his usual
modus bibendum
, he admits following her around at the fair, he admits he was on the spot at the right time, and he’s been found with her handbag.’

Slider shook his head. ‘We could charge him but it’s not enough for a case.’

‘On what we’ve got, a jury would go for him like buttered teacakes.’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ Slider said. ‘A good barrister would point out that everything we know could equally be explained by what he says being true. He could just as easily have found Zellah when she was already dead. Unless we can prove he was lying – if someone actually saw him doing something to the body. Or if we got anything off his clothes—’

‘Well, get on with that, anyway. Meanwhile, keep at him. A confession would solve all the other problems.’

‘I’m just giving him a rest, sir, then I thought I’d let Hollis have a shot. He knows him pretty well.’

‘Hmm. Does Hollis think he did it?’

Slider hesitated. In spite of everything, he had the feeling that Hollis had doubts. ‘He doesn’t think he didn’t,’ he said at last, and for a wonder Porson accepted that without comment.

When he got to his room, Connolly was there, fresh as a daisy and twice as tasty.

‘I had a crack at the barman at the North Pole, sir. Name of Dave Beswick. He knows Ronnie by sight – apparently he goes in there quite a bit. Your man says he’s never any trouble, sits over a couple of pints, doesn’t talk much. Beswick didn’t realise who he was until he saw the arrest on the telly with the mugshot. He never knew Oates had a past. Remembers the Acton Strangler case, but didn’t put the two together. Why was he called the Acton Strangler, anyway, when he was from East Acton?’ she diverted.

‘More euphonious,’ Slider said. ‘Like the Boston Strangler. The East Acton Strangler just doesn’t cut it.’

‘Does sound a bit culchie,’ she agreed.

‘What does this Dave Beswick think of Oates?’ Slider asked.

‘Only that he’s a quiet bloke, no trouble, sir. Thought he was a bit of a denser, that’s all.’

‘Did he give you any times?’

‘He said Oates went in about ten o’clock. They’d got extended hours for the Bank Holiday weekend, so closing time was midnight. Oates made two jars last till then. Didn’t speak to anyone while he was there, apart from Beswick, and then only to order the bevvies. Not much of a gas, your man,’ she added, with a cocked look at Slider.

‘Oates says he didn’t see Zellah when he went back to the fair after the pub, and we’ve got her having a quarrel and walking off about midnight, so it’s possible she had already gone at that point. He could be telling the truth.’

‘Does it matter, sir?’ Connolly asked. ‘After all, we know she wasn’t killed at the fair. Whether he followed her or went on his own, we know he was on the scene where she
was
killed.’

‘True. But with someone like Oates you need all the confirmation you can get of anything he says. It’s the only way to filter fact from fantasy.’ He frowned, going over the interview again in his mind.

‘So – what now, sir?’ Connolly asked, after a moment’s sympathetic silence. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Re-interview anyone from the canvasses who said they saw anything, and see if they can identify Oates at the scene, and if so, get some times.’

‘Righty-o.’

‘Anything useful from the people ringing in?’

‘Not yet. The ones that seem genuine are people who saw Oates at the fair, but that doesn’t get us anywhere. The rest just seem like over-excitement.’

‘There’s a lot of it about. Keep fielding them, anyway. And you can go and see anyone from the canvasses you think is promising. Do you know where Sergeant Atherton is?’

‘He went to Ladbroke Grove to check the surveillance team, then he was going to interview the Wildings’ neighbours.’

‘Right.’

‘Are you going to have another go at Oates, sir?’

‘I’m going to let Hollis have a crack at him,’ Slider said. ‘I’m going to see a man about a horse.’

‘Sir?’

‘And a still life, and a whole series of nude women.’

‘Sounds like fun,’ she said uncertainly. You never knew with the CID geezers when they were joking and when they were serious.

‘Fun? I don’t know,’ he said. ‘How do you tell when a person is waving and when they’re drowning?’

‘You have me there, sir.’

‘It’s all right. You weren’t meant to understand,’ he said.

ELEVEN

Ars Longa, Vita Sackville-West

M
arkov, the art master, lived in a smart new block of six flats in Bravington Road, a run-down area now being renovated, which, being on the far side of the railway and the Harrow Road, came under the title of Kensal Town, though it was only a stone’s throw from Ladbroke Grove, and resembled it in style and demographic.