Hard Going (6 page)

He made Joanna go to bed as soon as she got home from the concert, and took her up a mug of Ovaltine.

‘Oh, Daddy!' she simpered, fluttering her eyelids, but he could see how tired she was. They were too much, these long days and the strain of trying to be perfect in a fiercely competitive world; but he had expressed his doubts already, and could not press them without disrespecting her right to self-determination. He got on the bed beside her with his own mug, and she opened the batting – to keep him, he guessed, from saying the things he had just decided he mustn't.

‘So how did it go? What's it looking like?'

‘It's looking like a long haul.' He told her some of the details.

‘The housekeeper, obviously,' she said at the end of it. ‘All you need is a motive.'

‘All!'

‘Well, you know what I mean.'

‘In any case, motives are usually the feeblest of things. It could be something as small as him telling her off about not cleaning something properly. How would you ever find that out? And any forensic evidence about her is automatically out of play because she had every right to be there.' He sighed. ‘I don't see this one coming in quickly.'

She sipped, and then as he drew breath to speak she got in first. ‘What about your dad's escapade today? Isn't that intriguing?'

‘I'm more amazed than intrigued. Kate voluntarily went to an art gallery? Which Tate was it – Original or New Improved?'

‘The Modern,' Joanna said, ‘so I expect she'd heard of it somewhere on the “cool” spectrum. I'm more intrigued that he wanted to inflict them on his girlfriend.'

‘Which one was it?'

‘Oh Bill,' she said reproachfully, ‘it's been Lydia Hurst for ages. Lydia from the Scrabble club?'

‘Oh,' he said, recalibrating. ‘Do you think it's serious?'

‘Introducing your grandchildren?' Joanna said. ‘I think it's a senior's version of taking her home to meet the parents.'

‘He's not brought her to see us yet,' Slider complained.

‘Doesn't want to frighten her off, maybe. This was a toe in the water. If she survived the children intact …' She shrugged.

‘Well, it'll be nice for him to get married again, I suppose,' he said, wondering what was the appropriate reaction – wondering, indeed, what he felt about such a notion. His mother had died so long ago, and his father had lived an almost monastic life in the farm cottage where Slider had been born, until his recent move to a granny-flat attached to their new house. In all those years he had never seemed to want female companionship, and the only woman Slider had heard him speak about was his mother. Then, suddenly, transported to Chiswick, he had blossomed out into a new social life, and the zimmer-dollies had been all over him.

‘I don't know if they'd get married or just live together,' Joanna said, slightly shocking Slider, who was old-fashioned about such things – well, anyway, about one's own father living in sin: the rest of the world could do as it pleased. ‘But either way, we have to consider how it might affect us.'

‘How could it affect us?' he asked, puzzled. ‘You don't think his flat is big enough for two?'

‘Who says they'd even live there? She may want him to live in her house. Or they might want a new place entirely. And wherever they end up, don't you think it's certain to mean he's not available, at least on the old basis, for babysitting?'

Now Slider saw it.

She went on, ‘We've been spoiled, having him here and on tap at any time of the day or night. He cancels his plans at the last moment for us, stays on when we're late back, and never a word of complaint.'

‘But he loves doing it. He loves having time with George.'

‘Whether he does or he doesn't, we've become dangerously reliant on him. And what about when the new baby comes? He's not getting any younger, and two is a lot more than twice the work of one, especially when one of them is about to hit the terrible twos. I just don't think we can afford to blithely assume everything's going to go on the same way.'

He saw all the problems lined up ahead, along with the delicate emotional minefields through which a way would have to be picked. His dad, of course, would protest that he loved taking care of his grandchildren, and being of the polite generation he would say it whether it was true or not – which was the problem with extreme politeness. It was hard to know where you stood. On the other hand, the suggestion that he was not up to the task might hurt his feelings; while on yet another hand the assumption that he was automatically free to babysit as if he had no private life of his own could mine yet another rich seam of hurt and resentment.

But what Slider saw most immediately was that Joanna was already tired and fraught and the last thing she needed was to start worrying about childcare this far ahead of the game.

‘We'll sort something out,' he said. ‘Don't start worrying about it at this stage.'

She looked at him sidelong. ‘Have you any idea what childcare costs these days? Even if there
were
childcare to cover our particular set of fractured circumstances. Neither of us works a nice tidy nine-to-five.'

‘We'll work it out,' he said firmly. ‘People do, all the time, all over the world. Even if it's a juggling fest. It's worth it, isn't it?'

There was a brief pause during which his blood ran cold. He was afraid she was going to say,
we should never have had this baby
. In the end what she said was not much better. ‘Worth it, even if it means I have to stop playing? Because that's the bottom line, isn't it? My career isn't as important as yours.'

‘I've never said that.'

‘But that's what it'll come down to. I'll have to give up playing and take a job that will fit round the childcare.' She made a grimace. ‘Giving violin lessons in the sitting room.'

He managed not to say that lives went through different phases or that lots of people enjoyed teaching and found it rewarding. ‘We're a long way from that point yet,' he said instead, ‘and we may never reach it. If Dad and Lydia do get together, they might
both
really like babysitting, have you considered that? Two for the price of one.'

She shook her head at him. ‘Oh Bill! What is all this chirpy Dalai Lama optimism? “Everything'll be all right, everything'll be fine!”'

‘It will be. Trust me,' he said. ‘Never trouble trouble, till trouble troubles you.'

She began reluctantly to smile. ‘Jiminy Cricket, that's what we should call you.'

‘No, that was conscience – a different sort of getting into trouble.'

She put her mug aside and turned to him. ‘Well, why don't we try that sort instead, just for a change? I'm already pregnant, you can't make things worse. Enjoy the free ride while you can.'

He put his own mug down and kissed her tenderly. ‘Nothing about this is trouble,' he said, hand on her bump. The world he inhabited by day was a variously unpleasant and hostile place, and Joanna was his tranquil garden of refreshment. But she might not want to hear that just now, so he used his lips without words instead.

Morning brought Bob Bailey, calling in himself with the fingerprints. This was not kindness or especially good service, more that he was running a campaign of trying to get into Connolly's pants. He was recently separated and keen to get back in the saddle. He wasn't a bad-looking bloke – though not as good-looking, according to the women in Slider's firm, as he thought he was – and evidently reckoned he had a chance with Connolly, despite her undisguised hostility.

Slider's door was open and he heard the exchange from the CID room. Bailey's opening gambit was straightforward. ‘Where's the lovely Rita?
Lovely Rita, meter maid
,' he warbled. ‘When are you going to give me that date?'

Connolly managed to be quite robust without raising her voice. ‘Go out with you? What are you, headless? I wouldn't date you if it was gold plated.'

‘Ah, come on. I'm not talking about a cheap date. I'm ready to spend money on you. Anywhere you like. You can name your place.'

‘And you can feck right off with yourself,' Connolly returned firmly. She crossed Slider's vision as she went out of the room.

Bailey appeared in Slider's doorway.

‘There are baboons with more subtle mating rituals,' Slider said, glaring at him. ‘How many times does she have to say no?'

Bailey was unabashed. ‘She'll come round. Persistence pays.'

‘Not if you call her a meter maid. She'll deck you, and I for one will cheer.'

‘I like a girl with spirit,' he said with a mixture of lust and sentiment.

‘Well, I won't have you harassing my staff.'

‘Asking a girl out isn't harassing.'

‘It is in the workplace,' Slider warned, and saw it sink in. Bailey was a civilian and not under his command, but employment law applied to him just the same.

Bailey became brisk and professional. ‘Right, I've got the lifts for you. The place is very clean – that housekeeper does her job all right – so there aren't as many marks as you might expect. A lot of marks and smudges up the staircase wall and the handrail. Marks on the desk that may be the victim's. Recent marks in the kitchen look like a woman's, so probably the housekeeper's. And a lot of marks on the door of the Murder Room.'

‘Can we not call it that,' Slider intervened in a pained voice.

Bailey shrugged. ‘Whatever. Study, if you like. Like I said, madam housekeeper cleans and wipes, but nobody polishes up a door, do they? Now the doorknob's been wiped clean, both sides, but on the edge of the door there's quite a few marks, and about shoulder height there's a fresh thumb and all four fingers which are over the top of anything else, making them the latest. Like this.' He demonstrated the position on Slider's office door.

Slider got it. ‘He gripped the door to steady it while he wiped the doorknobs?'

‘In my humble opinion,' said Bailey with an unhumble smirk.

‘So,' said Slider, ‘if they were left by the murderer, he didn't wear gloves, but having done the deed, tried to cover himself by wiping the weapon where he'd held it, and the door knobs. He managed to think that far, but not far enough.'

‘It's a fair assumption,' said Bailey.

It wasn't as much as that. Anyone could have gripped the door by the frame in the act of closing it, and the fact that there were no marks over the top of these didn't give any evidence about when they had been made. But it was something. And if they came up with a match in records …

‘It's a lead,' Slider allowed. ‘Possibly.'

Bailey shrugged at such parsimony. ‘I thought you'd be happy.'

‘I'm ecstatic,' said Slider.

Bailey trickled out, hoping for Connolly to come back. ‘Contents of the safe and the desk are on their way. And I've brought the diary and address book, and his wallet.'

The phone rang. It was Cameron to say that he had nothing yet to add to yesterday's conclusions. Death had been caused by the blows to the head: three of them, forceful and probably delivered rapidly given the small spread of the injuries – which by the way matched the superficies of the bronze statuette, so there seemed no doubt it was the murder weapon.

While Cameron was talking to him, Slider saw, through his open door, Connolly come back in, and beckoned to her. She came in and waited until he finished the call, then said, ‘Did you want something, boss?'

‘Yes – is Bailey annoying you?'

‘No, boss. He's just an eejit.'

‘I can give him a formal warning.'

‘God, no – no need. I can take care of it.'

‘I won't have you harassed.'

She grinned. ‘I know some fellers who wouldn't be long putting manners on him for me, if need be. I've only to ask.'

‘Now I'm wondering whether he needs protection from you,' Slider said.

‘Female of the species, sir,' she said, and went perkily out, leaving Slider feeling better about her.

Nicholls, the relief sergeant on duty downstairs, rang through. ‘Bill, there's a bloke come in, says he's a friend of your deceased. Says he was supposed to have seen him last night. Any use to you?'

‘Could be,' Slider said. ‘Might be a chance to get a handle on the man, maybe even some leads. We don't even know the next of kin yet.'

‘Shall I put him in an interview room?'

‘What's he like?'

‘Like a 1950s BBC newsreader.'

‘Better not, then. Might fry his circuits. Can you have someone bring him up here?'

‘Will do.'

T
he man who was escorted upstairs by a uniformed officer was one Reginald Plumptre. He spelled it for them carefully. ‘But it's pronounced “plumter”. Most people try to make me a plum tree,' he added with a shy whimsy.

He was tall and thin, what Slider's father would have described as ‘a long drink of water'. He appeared to be in his sixties, or perhaps older – it was harder to tell these days, when old people were so much more active. He was bald on top but had good thick linings all around at ear level, making it look as if he'd stuck his head in a bowling alley ball-polishing machine. He was wearing a conventional grey suit and a red tie, both of which seemed to have seen long service, but his cufflinks and watch looked quietly expensive and he spoke with an RP accent. Slider put him down as one of the army of office workers who had retired on good pensions before the bottom fell out.

‘I'm Detective Inspector Slider, and this is Detective Sergeant Atherton. How can I help you, Mr Plumptre? Won't you sit down?'

Plumptre hesitated, looking at Slider but not at him, his eyes absent with some suppressed agitation. ‘I have to ask you first,' he said, ‘is it true? I saw something in the paper – I can't believe – it seems too … Is Lionel really dead? Someone killed him?'