Game Over (2 page)

‘I knew about the wife being killed because I knew about Feyderman. But if you’re really interested in his Ys—’

‘Thank you, I’ll pass. It doesn’t
look
as though there’s a female resident,’ Slider said.

‘Only one of the bedrooms seems to be occupied,’ Bailey supplied. ‘One’s made up like a spare room and the other’s a study.’

Slider nodded, and looked at last at the body. He had remembered Stonax in context now, a tall, lanky figure often to be seen wearing a flak jacket against a background of baked earth and battered cement houses in some Middle-Eastern hot spot. Or in a suit before the White House; a view so familiar it always looked two-dimensional, like a movie flat.

Though his accent had been neutrally English, he’d had the thick, unruly black hair and very white skin of a certain kind of Scot. He’d had brown eyes, it turned out: Slider couldn’t have said from seeing him on television. They were staring now, fixed and expressionless, like those of a very superior stuffed toy. Some people in death continue to look like real people, but Stonax, perhaps because he had been famous, looked like a model of himself, a waxwork. In the white expressionless face the lines of humour and character seemed oddly irrelevant, as though they had been marked in the wax with an orange stick after death. His skull had been smashed at the left temple by a tremendous blow, but because he was lying supine the blood had run backwards into his hair, leaving his face unsullied, but gluing the back of his head to the carpet.

He was fully dressed in business suit, shirt, tie, socks and shiny shoes, as if he’d just got back from work.

‘Robbery?’ Slider said thoughtfully.

They were joined in the doorway by Jerry Fathom, who had just arrived. He was a new DC sent to them to replace Tony Anderson – away on secondment so long he had been seconded right out of their world and up to the SO firmament. Fathom was young and keen, a tall, meaty lad with fidgety eyes and a rather petulant mouth. He was so new Slider hadn’t yet found out what he was good for. This was the first murder since he’d joined the firm, and as he stood at Slider’s shoulder, Slider could hear his breathing. He hoped he wasn’t going to throw up, or Slider would get it right down the ear.

But it seemed it was excitement rather than nausea that was making Fathom’s heart pound. ‘Looks straightforward to me,’ he said in the sort of voice that’s meant to impress someone. Slider could imagine him in a pub telling girls about his job. ‘Some crackhead doing the place over, looking for cash or something to flog. Householder comes home and surprises him. Bosh.’

‘Felonius interruptus?’ said Atherton.

‘Wallop,’ Fathom agreed importantly.

‘Very tidy crackhead,’ Atherton pointed out. ‘Nothing seems to have been disturbed.’

‘Well, maybe he’d only just started,’ Fathom offered generously.

Slider turned his head, though not his eyes, to the new boy. ‘Look at the door,’ he said. ‘No sign of forced entry.’

Fathom was not put off. ‘Chummy could’ve stolen the keys. Or the vic could’ve lost ’em.’

Slider winced at the abbreviation ‘vic’ which the younger officers all picked up from American cop shows. They so desperately longed to be cool, but it was hard without a gun at your hip.

‘Or maybe he picked the lock,’ Fathom concluded.

‘A very tidy crazed crackhead with unusual skills, then?’ Atherton suggested.

‘Well, it didn’t have to be a crackhead,’ Fathom conceded at last. ‘Could have been any sort of burglar. Do we know what’s missing?’

Atherton winced at the ‘we’. ‘There’s plenty of door-to-door to be getting on with. Every flat in the block will have to be canvassed, for starters. Hart will tell you where to go.’ Fathom removed himself reluctantly and by inches.

‘He’s right, of course,’ Slider said when he’d gone. ‘The lack of door-forcing doesn’t rule out burglary. There’s any number of possibilities. Chummy could have followed Stonax into the building and caught up with him before he’d closed the door. Or he could have rung the doorbell and pushed his way in.’

‘No sign of a struggle,’ Atherton said.

‘Quite. I think he was let in,’ said Slider.

‘You think Stonax knew him?’

‘Or had a reason to let him in – meter reader or something. But there’s more to it than that.’

‘How so?’

‘The way he’s lying, supine. He was struck from the front. If he’d let the man in it would be natural for him to be walking away and be struck from behind.’

‘Perhaps he was struck as soon as he opened the door,’ said Atherton, though the answer to that presented itself to him as soon as he said it.

‘But then he’d be lying closer to the door. No, he walked away, and then turned back. Why? And why was nothing taken but what was in his pockets? If it was straightforward robbery, why not take more?’

Atherton looked round the room and shrugged. ‘Your basic thief doesn’t want to be burdened with objay dee. And we don’t know yet that nothing else
was
taken.’

‘True,’ said Slider.

‘One thing,’ said Atherton, ‘the place is so tidy it ought to be easy to spot any gaps.’

‘Yes,’ said Slider. There was something about the economy of despatch that made him feel uneasily that it was a professional hit. It would have been extremely lucky for an opportunist amateur to have found the precise spot on the skull where a single blow would kill. And if it was professional, what was he after? A stolen-to-order painting or other artefact? Or was it something like bonds or valuable documents? ‘Do we know if he had a safe?’ he asked.

By the time Slider had inspected the rest of the building, to get the lay of the land and to look for access, exits, security cameras etc, the doctor had arrived and was on his knees beside the body. It was not Wasim, however, but his old friend Freddie Cameron, the original Dapper Doctor. Cameron was the forensic pathologist, but was not averse to a bit of police surgeon work, especially when it was a case that was going to come to him anyway. He liked to see the body in situ and to get to it before anyone else fouled the pitch.

‘Ah,’ he said, looking up with satisfaction as Slider appeared in the doorway, ‘the old firm, back at the usual stand.’

‘Hello, Freddie. How’s tricks?’

‘All serene, old boy. How’s Joanna? Are you a father yet?’

‘No, seven weeks to go yet. And she’s fine, or as fine as you can be in those circumstances.’ It seemed odd to Slider to be discussing cheerful life in this place of death, with Stonax still lying where he had fallen, still dead. ‘She says it’s like being a ventriloquist’s dummy, only you’ve got the whole ventriloquist inside, not just his hand.’

‘I’m still waiting to be invited to the wedding,’ Freddie said sternly. ‘I hope you’re not going to be adding to the statistics.’

‘I’ve been
trying
to get married,’ Slider said, wounded. ‘Arranging a wedding between a policeman and a musician is like trying to push a balloon into a milk bottle.’

‘Well, stop trying to arrange it and just do it,’ Freddie suggested helpfully. ‘You know who
this
is, don’t you?’

‘Ed Stonax, the TV bloke.’

‘Bingo. Strange how different a body looks when you’ve seen it on the telly in life.’

‘I was thinking the same thing. Anything to tell me? I assume it was the blow that killed him?’

‘It certainly looks that way. The bones of the skull are crushed here. It was a very violent blow, with something small but heavy, and rounded in profile, like a nice old-fashioned lead cosh. With a good right arm behind it, it could have been something small enough to conceal in a pocket.’

‘And given that it’s to the left temple, it looks like a right-handed blow?’

‘Unless the murderer’s a tennis ace,’ said Freddie. ‘Possible, but unlikely. Professionals don’t generally swipe their victims backhand.’

‘You think it’s professional, then?’

‘Either that, or a lucky guess.’ He stood up. ‘I’ve bagged the hands, but I don’t think they’ll yield anything. There’s no sign of a struggle or any defensive wounds. Eyes open. I think he was taken by surprise and felled before he even knew it was coming. The why of it, I leave to you.’

‘Time of death?’ Slider asked.

Freddie glanced automatically at his watch. ‘I’d say it was four to six hours, so that would put it between five and seven this morning.’

Slider’s eyebrows went up. ‘This morning? We were assuming it was last night. He’s fully dressed, as if he came home from work and it happened then.’

‘Well, these times are not precise as you very well know, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that long ago. He must have been on his way to work,’ said Freddie.

‘You’re just giving me problems,’ Slider said. ‘Burglars, as a race, are not early risers.’

‘There’s always the exception,’ said Freddie. He looked at Bob Bailey. ‘Right, if it’s OK with you, I’ll take him away.’

‘Yes, OK. We’ve got everything,’ said Bailey.

Freddie’s assistants laid the bag down and with trained knack lifted the body easily, despite its size, across and on to it. Something moved on the carpet.

‘What’s that?’ said Slider.

Bailey picked it up and held it out for Slider to see. It was a biro, an ordinary, amorphous, cheap biro, white with a black top and no cap, the sort that charities send you in begging envelopes in the hope that you’ll use it to write them a cheque. The body had been lying on it.

‘I’ll dust it for prints,’ Bailey said. ‘You never know.’

‘If there are any, they’ll only be Stonax’s,’ Slider said. ‘Although I wouldn’t have put him down as a cheap biro man. I’d have thought he’d have a gold Mont Blanc.’

‘Maybe it’s chummy’s?’ said Bailey.

Maybe – and how lovely it would be, Slider thought, to get a clear and perfect lift of the murderer from it. But life was never than easy. ‘Send it off anyway, Bob,’ he said. ‘There may be something else on it that will help.’

Porson, their Detective Superintendent, arrived as Slider was preparing to leave.

‘Chuffing Nora, it’s bloody madness out there,’ he complained, stamping into the vestibule, his vast ancient coat swirling about him like a cloak. As he came to rest, Slider noticed that one of his shirt collar points was curling upwards, there was a shiny grey stain of what looked like porridge on his tie, and a ghostly line of dried shaving-soap along his jaw. When his wife was alive she would never have allowed him to leave the house in a less than perfect state of hygiene. Slider wondered if he was having difficulty coping.

‘Bloody press are going bezique,’ Porson rumbled on. ‘Just because it’s one of their own. Always the same when a journo gets hit. You’d think the world revolved around ’em.’

‘He wasn’t a journo any more, sir,’ Slider pointed out.

‘What does that lot care?
And
he was telly, as well – that makes him a god. Telly
and
BBC. They’re going to be all over us like a cheap rash. I’ve had a word with that Forster woman at Hammersmith and she’s going to co-ordinate the TV coverage.’ Mo Forster was the new Press Officer for the area.

‘Does that mean one of us will have to go down to the publicity suite and do an interview?’ Slider asked, feeling depressed. Porson hated doing it as much as he did, but Porson had the rank to get out of it.

Porson’s face didn’t soften – it was built like a bagful of spanners and softening wasn’t an option – but there was a sympathetic gleam in his eye as he answered. ‘No, laddie. Mr Palfreyman’s doing all the fronting. Too important to be left to the likes of us to mess up. In fact – ’ he almost smiled – ‘I’ve been given a pacific injuncture to pass on, that we’re to avoid talking to the press at all costs.’

‘Thank God for that,’ Slider said.

Palfreyman, head of the Homicide Advice Team, had been busily empire-building ever since he came to Hammersmith, and the chance to be the face on the screen in a big case like this must have set him drooling.

‘Thank Him all you like,’ Porson said shortly, scowling. ‘But don’t forget that what Mr Palfreyman wants to be remembered for is solving the case. He doesn’t want to be up there looking like a prat, being questioned about a cock-up. So if anything goes wrong it’ll be my gonads in the cross-hairs. And when I say mine, I mean yours.’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘Right. As long as you know.’ The massive eyebrows resumed normal position. ‘You know me, laddie. Threats are water off a duck’s bridge to me. But this case is going to have a searchlight on it all the way. What’s the story so far?’

‘There isn’t much yet. No forcible entry, no ransacking. Deceased killed with a single blow to the head, pockets emptied and watch removed. I think it’s meant to look like robbery from the person.’

‘Only it’s not?’

‘Of course, it could be. We haven’t had a chance yet to see if there’s anything else missing.’

‘But this bloke moved in high places, probably pissed off some arsey people, and it could be a hit?’

‘Yes, sir. There are things about it that don’t sit right with me.’