Killing Time (11 page)

‘Do you have any idea what?’

Benny smiled apologetically. ‘No. I’m afraid that’s just supposition. No evidence. I shouldn’t have said anything, really. I didn’t come here to speak ill of the dead, just to assure you that you can cross Val off your list of things to check. I took her to her sister’s and brought her back, and there she was the whole time, so she couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with it.’

Slider raised an eyebrow, Atherton-style. ‘You don’t know that, do you? Unless you were with her the whole time, you don’t know that she didn’t go back to the flat at some point.’

‘But she—’ Benny looked absolutely dumbfounded, and searched Slider’s face for information, his brows buckled with perplexity. ‘But you can’t think that! You can’t think
she
killed him! Not Val. It’s not possible. Surely you don’t believe she had anything to do with it?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ Slider said, amused at the little cabbie’s protectiveness, ‘I don’t. I was just pointing out the limits of your evidence. You’re very fond of Val, aren’t you?’

‘I am fond, yes. Yes, I can use that word. I’ve always liked and respected her, and we’ve been friends a long time now—’

‘More than friends, perhaps?’

Benny’s sallow face darkened a shade with – embarrassment? Anger? ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said stiffly.

‘Don’t you?’

‘I don’t see,’ he said slowly, his face clearing and cooling, ‘that it’s any of your business. I came here to help, and I don’t see why I should put up with impertinent questions about my private life. If that’s the way you treat responsible citizens who try to help you—’ He began to rise.

‘I beg your pardon,’ Slider said. ‘I didn’t mean to be impertinent.’ Lovely word! ‘It’s just that every and any detail can help to fill in the picture, even when it doesn’t have a direct bearing on the case. When you’re groping in the dark for the light switch, even the position of a chair can help.’

Slider wasn’t sure the metaphor really meant anything, but it seemed to do the trick with Benny the Brief. He got off his high horse with one bound, and was smiling again, and affable.

‘Of course, I understand. You’ve got a difficult job to do – and a most unpleasant one, as I’m well aware. I’ve had enough friends in the police force to know that. Well, anything I can do to help, don’t hesitate. And I hope my bit of information’s been some use to you.’

Yes, that accounted for the rapid dismount – he wanted to be the one man with the discernment to understand the Copper’s Lonely Destiny. There were people like that, fascinated by everything to do with the Job and longing to be associated with it in some way, outsiders who wanted to be inside. Sometimes they were invaluable and sometimes they were a pain in the neck. Slider was not yet sure which Benny the Brief would turn out to be, but his mother had always told him not to look a gift horse in the teeth.

Busty was staying in a hotel – a large Edwardian house at the near end of Hammersmith Grove. There was a short terrace of them: red brick with white copings, black-and-white chequered front path, stained glass panels in the door, elaborate wooden porch with pinnacles and poker-work which put Slider in mind of Hansel and Gretel. They all had names, the sort of names of which Edwardians were so fond, which almost meant something but not quite – Hillsleigh, Holmcroft, Endersby – and all, being too large to accommodate the modern idea of a family, had been turned into hotels. Busty was in The Hillsleigh, suffering from a mixture of shock and frustration, unable to face going to work, unable to go home, trapped in the lethargy of bereavement.

She welcomed Slider’s visit as a relief. ‘Is this social, or business?’

‘Bit of both, really,’ he said. ‘Business mostly, though, I’m afraid. I want to ask you some more questions.’

‘Would it be against the rules to take me for a drink or something?’ Her haunted eyes pleaded. ‘Just to get me out of here? This place is driving me up the wall.’

Slider glanced round at the awful institutional cheapness of everything in the reception area: the lozenge-patterned carpet designed to repel both stains and the eye; the bland floral wallpaper and framed prints calculated not to trip the taste circuits in any way whatsoever; the furniture intended to discourage sitting around. There were imitation parlour-palms which just failed to look like the real thing, standing in plastic pots in plastic Versailles tubs. Even the decorative bark mulch was plastic and almost exactly the wrong shade of brown, though Slider noticed someone had stubbed out a real cigarette in it. It was probably
the most exciting thing that had ever happened in here. Poor old Busty would never stand a spell in Holloway, Slider thought, if one day here could drive her to distraction. ‘Come on, then,’ he said.

They went to the Hope and Anchor across the road, and Busty asked for a gold watch. Slider got her a double to save time, and himself a Virgin Mary, and they settled into a dim corner. The pub was of the same vintage as the houses across the road, and had apparently used the same interior designer. It was not much of a change, but it seemed to satisfy Busty, who sighed with contentment even before the Scotch touched her lips.

‘I want to talk to you a bit more about Maurice,’ Slider said. ‘And I want you to be honest with me. Nothing you can say can harm him now, but it may help me to find who did this terrible thing. Do you understand me?’

Busty gave him a wide-eyed look. ‘I got nothing to hide.’

‘Don’t try and stuff me, Busty. Hiding things from the police is second nature. And I’ve known you a very long time. But now you’ve got to go against nature and tell me everything. What was Maurice mixed up in?’

‘Nothing that I know about.’

‘I’ve had the hint from the Pomona Club that he’d been meeting someone in there a couple of times a week. Dark corner, private conversation. Now who would that be?’

‘I don’t know. Probably a customer trying to pick him up.’

‘The boss says this bloke wasn’t a ginger.’

Busty looked scornful. ‘Billy Yates? What does he know?’

‘Yates said the bloke was a professional, and he looked like trouble. Maybe a drug dealer.’

‘He ought to know,’ Busty muttered resentfully.

‘Did Maurice drug?’ Slider asked.

She kept her eyes on her glass, but she looked a little shaken. ‘No. Never. He didn’t like drugs.’

‘What about poppers?’

She blinked. ‘I dunno. Maybe then. I dunno. No, I reckon not. He hated drugs, Mr Slider. He got quite airiated about it. Said he’d seen too many good people go bad that way. He said—’ She stopped abruptly.

‘He talked to you about it a lot, did he?’ Slider put in smoothly. ‘Was he getting it for you, Busty? Was that what he was talking
to this man for? You persuaded him to get you a little bit of white, just a spot for when you had the blues, or after work when you were really knocked out?’

‘No,’ said Busty.

‘Against his better instincts, because he loved you. You wheedled him. He had the contacts and you didn’t any more. Just a little spot of snow to get you through, who could that hurt? Everyone knows it’s not addictive.’

‘No,’ she said stonily.

‘And now it’s come back on him, and you feel so guilty—’

She flared. ‘No! I tell you
no!
I don’t do that any more. Not since I’ve been sharing with Maurice. He hated it so much, he talked me out of it. He said we had better things to do with our money. We were saving up, Mr Slider, I swear to you. I could show you the savings book. The Halifax down the Bush. Saving for our retirement. So we could get out. He
hated
drugs. That’s why—’ She changed track. ‘He wasn’t buying drugs for me, I swear my Bible oath he wasn’t.’ But her face was as miserable as an abandoned dog’s, and Slider took her sentences and repieced them.

‘Who for, then, Busty? That was why he’d been feeling down, you were going to say. He hated drugs but he was buying them for someone. Why?’ He studied her face. ‘For the money. He was paid a commission, wasn’t he? He was the intermediary and they made it worth his while, and the commission went into the savings account. He was doing it for both of you.’ She was silent, staring into her glass. ‘He was buying drugs for someone who could afford to pay him well, but who couldn’t get them for himself. Maybe couldn’t risk being seen buying them. Was it this friend of his, the VIP boyfriend he went to see on Monday?’

She looked up, a quick flicker of a glance. Surrender. ‘I don’t know who he is. That’s the truth. Maurice never told me his name or anything about him, except that in his position he couldn’t afford any scandal. So Maurice got the stuff for him. He wasn’t going to. He said no at first but – but—’ Her mouth turned down with misery. ‘I persuaded him.’ She started to cry. ‘I said if he didn’t get it, someone else would, and we might as well have the money as someone else. He didn’t like it, but I persuaded him. He did it for us. And now—’

Slider handed over a handkerchief and she bubbled and
hitched into it for a while. When he judged she was back on line, he said, ‘So how did it work? He got the stuff in the club, and then what? Brought it home?’

She nodded. ‘That was another reason he didn’t like doing it. He said it was putting me at risk. I told him not to be so daft. No-one knew it was there. And it was only for a few hours. He tried to arrange it so he always took it to his friend the next day. He didn’t like it hanging around.’

In case Busty succumbed to temptation, Slider thought. He changed direction. ‘He didn’t go to work on Tuesday evening, did you know that?’

‘No.’ She seemed genuinely surprised.

‘When you left on Tuesday morning, he was intending to go in, was he?’

‘He didn’t say he wasn’t.’

‘He wasn’t ill?’

‘No.’

‘But you said he was upset because of this quarrel with his friend on Monday.’

She hesitated. ‘Well, to tell you the truth – he was at first, when he was telling me about it. Getting it off his chest, sort of. But then he like cheered up. Started talking about the plan – you know, to get a place in Ireland.’

‘You said you’d been talking about it on Sunday?’

‘Yeah. He said on Sunday we nearly had enough, and he reckoned he could get hold of the rest of what we needed. But Tuesday morning he said it was all settled. All we’d got to do was find the place. He was even chatting to Benny about it, telling him where he was going to start looking for a place and everything.’

‘So he’d got some more money on Monday, had he?’

She hesitated. ‘He didn’t say so.’

‘But on Sunday he said he only needed a little more, and on Tuesday he said he had enough. So it sounds—’

‘Yeah. Maybe. I dunno about that. All I know was, he was talking like it was all settled. “Val,” he said, “we’re going to do it.” He was really cheerful about it. Just like a little boy,’ she added with a sentimental look.

‘So when you left, he seemed in normal spirits.’

‘S’right,’ she said, but then frowned. ‘Only – I been thinking
– he mustn’t of been quite himself, leaving them dishes in the sink. He always washed up straight away after himself. Very tidy, Maurice was, tidied up as he went. Nearly a fetish with him.’

‘A late supper?’ Slider suggested.

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But you said he was sitting watching telly when it happened. He wouldn’t normally sit down to watch without doing the washing up first.’

‘Yes, your tame cab driver told me Jay was a diligent housewife,’ Slider said. ‘He came to see me this morning.’

‘Benny did? What for?’

‘Oh, to confirm your alibi.’

‘Confirm my—? Cheeky sod! But I suppose he meant well. I should’ve let him know – he was supposed to be picking me up We’nsday harpass five to take me to work, only it completely slipped me mind to cancel him.’

‘Understandable.’

‘I suppose he went round and saw all the cops there, and heard about it then. What did he say?’

‘Oh, he just confirmed the times you gave me. He mentioned that Maurice opened the door to him.’

Busty gave a little snort of laughter. ‘I don’t expect he was best pleased. He’d have hoped to catch me alone. He’s sweet on me, you see. Always turning up early, he is, wanting to chat. He even proposed to me a few weeks back.’

‘Proposed marriage?’

‘Yeah. His wife died about six months ago – cancer – and I will say he had the decency to wait a bit before proposing. But I’ve known a long time he was sweet on me. Maurice said – joking really – that I ought to accept, to give me security, but I wouldn’t want to be married, at some man’s beck and call night and day. You can refuse a customer,’ she said, ‘but refuse a husband and you’ve got hurt feelings for days after.’

‘So you turned down the offer of matrimony?’

‘Yeah, course. I told him I’d promised to stay with Maurice. Not that he really took it in. He still hangs round me just the same, hoping I’ll change me mind. Poor Old Benny. I’ve known him for years, and he’s been good to me, but the fact is, even if I wanted to get married, I couldn’t get fond of him that way. He’s a funny old duck; and my God, his plates don’t half pen! That’s one thing about Maurice, you could eat your dinner off him –
and drink your tea out of his shoes. Of course, being a dancer he’s always been dead careful about his feet—’ The tears welled up again as the present tense tripped her up.

Slider deflected her. ‘So as far as you knew, Maurice was going to work as usual? And he didn’t say he was expecting a visitor?’

‘A visitor?’

‘There were two whisky glasses in the front room. One on the coffee table and one down beside the chair.’

She thought about this, and shook her head. ‘He never had visitors at home.’

‘That you knew about,’ Slider amended, and she looked disconcerted, but continued to shake her head in denial. ‘His friend wouldn’t have visited him there?’

‘Not him! Too risky.’

‘Was there anyone at the club he was friendly with? Anyone on the staff?’

‘Not that I know about. He never mentioned anyone.’

Slider sighed inwardly. The trouble with someone like Busty was that you never really knew when you’d got to the bottom layer. She probably didn’t even know herself when she was concealing things. It was just instinctive with people like her to give nothing away that you weren’t certain the other person already knew.