Killing Time (17 page)

‘You will, Oscar, you will. The improvement from last week is amazing. Once they take those drains out—’

‘Talking of drains, how’s the case coming along?’

‘We’ve got a suspect, one Jonah Lafota. Ever heard of him?’

‘No.’

‘Figures. He’s got no record, damn him. And we’ve got no evidence against him.’

‘So what makes him a suspect?’

‘The fact that he’s very big, and whoever kicked in Paloma’s door had big feet, and an eye-witness says the kicker was very tall; and that he works for Billy Yates.’

‘But you’ve got some fingerprints?’ Atherton said. ‘Then ask him for a set to compare. You’ve got him either way, then.’

‘We’d be delighted to ask him, but we don’t know where he is.’

‘Can’t you ask Yates?’

‘Yates says he sacked him a week ago. Yates has a pleasant knack of sacking people just before they become notorious. We tried the address Yates gave us from his records, but of course Jonah wasn’t there. We’re watching the place, and we’ve put out word that we want to speak to him. So we’re just on hold as far as that goes.’

‘Yates must be feeling pretty uncomfortable, if he’s got rid of this bloke so quickly. What reason did he give for sacking him?’

‘He says Jonah came to work improperly dressed. No tie and a dirty shirt. He never gives warnings or second chances.’

‘Nice man.’

‘It’s convenient, if you want to dissociate yourself quickly from anything that niffs a bit.’

‘Yes, but you can’t do that too often and retain your tinglingfresh aroma,’ Atherton said. He studied Slider’s face. ‘What is it in particular that’s bothering you about Yates?’

Slider hesitated; but it was so natural to confide in Atherton, and Atherton had been there all through the Cate business. ‘This is in confidence,’ he said. Atherton nodded, and he told him the story of Maroon, Cosgrove and Barrington.

Atherton whistled soundlessly. ‘Old Andy Cosgrove? Who’d a thunk it?’

‘Yes, even I hadn’t expected that one. But – well, you know the temptations.’

‘None better,’ Atherton smirked.

‘The worrying bit is the question of why Barrington told him to drop it.’

‘You believe this Mahogany?’

‘Maroon.’

‘Whatever. After all, she’s only a tom, and you can’t believe everything they say.’

‘She’s pretty straight,’ Slider said. ‘She’s one of the old sort, not like some of the foul-mouthed little bitches you get nowadays. I think as far as this particular business goes, she’s telling the truth.’

‘As she knows it.’

‘Yes, that’s the trouble. Barrington’s dead and Cosgrove’s in a coma, and who else would know what, if anything, either said to the other?’

‘Well, you can’t go tramping in asking people like Honeyman or Wetherspoon if Barrington was in league with the villains,’ Atherton observed. ‘In fact, I don’t see that you can ask anyone on Barrington’s side. What about Andy Cosgrove? Who would he be likely to confide in?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Slider said. ‘The trouble is, you get a bit solitary and autonomous being a community cop. No regular partner, no-one you work with, and if this was a secret investigation anyway—’

‘Did he have any close friends?’

Slider shook his head. ‘Not in the Job.’

‘What about his wife?’

‘Ah, what? I don’t know if he was used to confiding in her, but I wonder how likely it was that he’d chat to her about investigating the death of the addict sister of his prostitute mistress? And given that she’s pregnant and spending all her time at his hospital bedside, I hardly like to ask her.’

‘Well,’ said Atherton comfortingly, ‘the Cosgrove case isn’t your baby. Why not hand what you’ve been told over to Mr Carver and let him worry about it?’

‘Hmm. I suppose I must in fairness tell him what Maroon said. But if it was Jonah that killed Paloma, the cases must be connected.’

‘I don’t see why. You don’t know it was Jonah whacked Cosgrove. You haven’t the slightest evidence or indication. And Cosgrove might not even have spoken to Barrington. He might just have told Maroon that to fob her off.’

‘How clear and simple you make everything seem,’ Slider complained.

‘It’s lying here with a brain untrammelled by the daily grind. If you bring me all your evidence day by day, I’ll solve the case for you without ever setting foot outside my own bed.’

‘Thank you, Mycroft,’ said Slider.

‘Well, if I’ve got all the brains, it stands to reason you can’t have any.’

‘But you’ve got the looks, too,’ Slider objected.

‘You’ll have to settle for Miss Congeniality,’ Atherton said kindly. But suddenly he was exhausted. Slider saw it come over him. It was frightening to see the colour and animation drain so abruptly from his face.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Just tired,’ said Atherton, as though a longer sentence would have been beyond him.

‘I’d better go and let you sleep. Shall I call a nurse?’ Shake. ‘Anything you want?’ Shake. ‘All right. I’ll try and get in tomorrow, but even if I can’t make it, Joanna will come.’

He was almost at the door when he heard Atherton say sleepily, ‘How’s my cat?’

He turned back. ‘He’s fine. Eating like a horse. Well, eating horse, probably. Seriously, he’s settled in very well. Misses you, though. He’d come and visit, but they don’t let in anyone under eleven.’

‘He’s fourteen,’ Atherton murmured, his eyes almost shut.

‘I’ll bring him next time, then, if I can find his birth certificate. They won’t pass him otherwise. He doesn’t look a day over nine.’ No response. Slider looked gravely at his colleague’s white face for a moment, and then went quietly out.

On the way home, Slider got out of the car at the phone boxes on the corner of Chiswick Lane and phoned Tidy Barnet.

‘Can you talk?’

‘Hang on.’ A pause. ‘Right, all right. You got my message?’

‘Thanks, Tidy. It was the goods. Unfortunately it was the
goods on the wrong lorry. I’m not doing Cosgrove, I’m doing Paloma.’

‘No names, Mr S. Not over the dog,’ Tidy winced. ‘You was lookin’ for a certain party what smacked a certain iron ’oof, right? Well, the way I ’ear it, this certain other party from Wales, right? was the one what done it. Word is, it was a accident, party from Wales was elephant’s trunk, right? Only meant to put the frighteners on ’im. Whacks ’im a bit too ’ard, and lo and be’old instead of frightened ’e’s brown bread. But that’s who it was all right, right?’

‘So I’m looking in the right direction?’

‘Right as ninepence.’

Now all I’ve got to do is prove it, Slider thought as he hung up. And find out what the hell is going on. Jonah – party from Whales, he thought further, with a derisive snort, as he climbed into his car. Tidy was a card all right. Right?

Slider was just coming out of the men’s room when he met DI Carver about to go in. ‘Ron, have you got a minute?’ Carver grunted, which might have meant yes or no, and left Slider to follow him in. ‘It’s about the Cosgrove case. Is there any improvement, by the way?’

‘Nah. He’s still unconscious.’ Carver turned on the tap and began washing his hands. ‘It’s over a week now. If he doesn’t come out of it soon, they’ll transfer him to the coma wing, and you know what that means. It’s poor Maureen I feel sorry for. That woman’s a miracle, sits by his bed hour after hour talking to him, in case he can hear her. How she copes with that and two kids as well!’

‘I thought you ought to know, some information has come my way, about something Andy was apparently involved in,’ Slider said. Carver made no reply. He began scrubbing his nails vigorously, and Slider gathered he was being aggressively uninterested in what Slider had to say – a warning off from his territory. Carver had been born with a grudge, and defended it jealously against any encroachment from the mellowing of age or the operation of human kindness.

Slider raised his voice over the ablutions, and recounted what Maroon had said. Before he could finish, however, Carver interrupted him.

‘Look, Bill, Andy’s a good cop, one of the best, and I don’t think this sort of muck-raking is going to help him get well, do you? It’s well out of order, to my mind, to gossip about him when he’s flat on his back fighting for his life.’

Slider felt for a foothold. ‘I’m not muck-raking, Ron, I’m bringing information to your notice that might help you find out who attacked him.’

Carver turned off the tap and straightened, meeting Slider’s eye angrily in the mirror. ‘Oh are you? Well thank you very much, but when I need your help I’ll ask for it. I happen to know all about his affair with Brown already. It was all over a long time ago, and considering what poor Maureen is going through at the moment, I don’t think it will help her to drag it all up again!’

Slider repressed the desire to smack Carver in the puss, and sought out his most conciliatory tones. ‘Ron, I’m not trying to tread on your toes. You didn’t let me finish. Maroon apparently asked Andy to investigate something for her, and if he did start asking questions it could have made him unpopular in certain quarters.’ He gave Carver the details, leaving out any mention of Barrington, and was glad to see that Carver was listening intelligently.

When he finished, Carver said in a tone that was at least meant to be reasonable, ‘Right. I see. Well, thanks for the info, Bill. I’ll certainly take it on board. But if I were you, I wouldn’t put too much credence on what a tom tells you.’

‘You haven’t heard that he
was
asking questions, then?’ Slider said, disappointed.

‘I told you, him and Brown was ancient history. He wouldn’t put himself on the line for her. If she had any real information, he’d have passed it up to us in the proper manner, and since he didn’t, you can take it as read he knew there was nothing in it. It was just a tom’s grudge-talk. You said yourself she had it in for this pimp. No, Andy would have just said something to soothe her, that’s all, and kept his distance. With Maureen in pod again, he’s not going to do anything risky, is he?’

Slider nodded, unconvinced. ‘Right you are,’ he said. ‘But if anything does come up, if you do come across anything that seems to bear on that line of investigation, you will let me know?’

‘What’s your interest in it, then?’ Carver asked, without agreeing that he would.

Slider said the wrong thing. ‘It’s Paloma. I’m beginning to get a feeling that the two cases may be connected.’

Carver gave him his most boiled look. ‘Oh, I doubt that. I doubt that very much.’

‘All the same, I’ve had word from one of my snouts—’

‘You’ve got your sources and I’ve got mine,’ Carver said. ‘Let’s leave it at that, shall we?’

‘But if—’

‘I’ll pass on anything I think you ought to know,’ Carver said, heading for the door. ‘Rest assured about that.’ The door sighed closed behind him.

‘Bastard,’ Slider said quietly, but with feeling.

There was excitement in the CID room. A lift had been taken off the front door of Jonah Lafota’s flat, and now the comparison with the whisky-bottle print had come back positive.

‘It’s enough to bring him in, isn’t it, guv?’ McLaren pleaded. He had been watching the flat and felt he was due some reward for the boredom.

‘How close is the agreement?’ Slider asked.

‘Sixty per cent. But that’s because lift off the door wasn’t much cop. With a proper set of prints off him, we can get it perfect.’

It was the first thing that even approximated to real evidence. ‘You’ve still got to find him,’ Slider pointed out.

Hart, who had just come in, said, ‘Are you talking about Jonah?’ She advanced to the middle of the group and grinned sassily. ‘I know where he is.’ When the clamour died down she said, ‘I got it off a source of mine, that he’s got this girlfriend called Candy that he’s very hot with at the moment. Candy Williams, supposed to be a bit of a looker—’

‘Looker, did you say, or hooker?’ McLaren interrupted.

Hart made a rocking motion of her hand. ‘She calls herself an actress, but basically she’s done soft porn, magazines and films, and she’s also worked for Yates. Table dancer. She’s got a flat in that new block down by the river by Hammersmith Bridge – Waterside Court, I think it’s called.’

‘They’re luxury flats,’ Anderson said. ‘The knocking business must be good.’

‘Anyway,’ Hart concluded triumphantly, ‘apparently Jonah’s been shacked up with her ever since Yates sacked him.’

‘Who’s your source?’ Slider asked.

She turned to him, lowering her eyelashes demurely. ‘I can’t reveal my source’s name. Fair’s fair, guv. He’s my snout.’

Slider gave her a long look. He suspected she had been hanging round Garry from the Pomona in defiance of his orders. He was going to have to have a heart to Hart with her on the subject as soon as they had time.

‘All right. Give me five minutes to have a word with Mr Honeyman—’

‘Oh, guv, talking of Mr Honeyman,’ McLaren said, ‘before I forget, the card’s on your desk for you to sign. There’s just you left, unless you want Jim Atherton to sign it as well.’

‘I think he should, don’t you?’ Slider said. ‘I’ll take it with me, then, the next time I go and see him.’

While Slider talked, Honeyman listened at first eagerly, then with growing doubt. ‘Oh dear, it’s not very much, is it? I was hoping you’d manage to clear this one up really quickly.’

A quick result on a murder case would be a lovely final flourish on Little by Little’s career. Slider stole a glance at his amazing Robert Robinson hairdo and his heart softened.

‘I know we haven’t got much, but Lafota looks good. One of my snouts has positively fingered him. Once we arrest him we can search his drum, take samples, pin him down. I think we can bring it home, sir.’

Honeyman raised hopeful eyes and wagged his tail. ‘You think so? All right, but bring him in voluntarily if possible.’

‘If possible,’ Slider conceded.

Honeyman sighed. ‘If Billy Yates wants to make difficulties—’

‘Mr Yates seems to be trying to distance himself from Lafota, sir,’ Slider comforted him. ‘Could I have a word with you about something else? Something rather – delicate?’