Necrocrip (8 page)

‘This is one thing you won’t get in Chicago – a dismembered body in a fish and chip shop.’

‘Most unhygienic.’

‘That’s just what I said. When am I going to see you?’

‘I was going to ask you that,’ she said.

‘I could probably manage to drop in later. I’ve got to go to South Acton. But I suppose you must be tired,’ he said wistfully. ‘You’ll want to sleep.’

‘I’m jetlagged to hell, so I mustn’t sleep until bedtime or I’ll never get my clock right. Come whenever you like.’

‘I’ve waited two weeks to hear you say that.’

THE WHITE HORSE WAS OPEN
all day, but that was the best thing you could say about it. It was a large 1930s building occupying a corner site, and its original individual bars had been knocked into one vast open-plan office inhabited at all hours by a muted selection of nondescript men in ready-made suits, whose precise function in life was impossible to determine. Some of them had portable phones and some of them didn’t, but all of them ought surely to have been at work, or why did they look furtively towards the door every time it opened?

Slider could never fathom the reasoning behind building Shepherd’s Bush nick right opposite a Watney’s pub. As he said to Cameron, ‘It reminds me of the busload of American tourists travelling along the M4 past Windsor, and one says to another, “They must have been mad to build the castle so close to the airport.” ‘ He stared sadly into a half pint of Ruddles, which was the nearest thing they had to real ale in the White Horse.

Freddie Cameron was a gold watch man, so it didn’t trouble him. He hitched his dapper little gluteus maximus into a more central position on the bar stool and asked, ‘Why is it only in London pubs that you get these things? Most uncomfortable invention. They wouldn’t stand for them up north.’

‘Our bottoms are different from theirs,’ Slider said. ‘Surely you’ve heard of the London Derriere?’ He looked at the bar menu. ‘Are you having a sandwich?’

‘No, thanks, I haven’t time. I’ve got to get across to Harlesden by two o’clock for a PM on that immolation case.’

Slider, who had been toying with the idea of a toasted ham sandwich, changed his mind. ‘So, what can you tell me about the Fish Bar victim?’ he asked instead. ‘Apart from the fact that he’d completely gone to pieces, of course.’

‘Young Atherton’s been a rotten influence on you,’ Cameron said sternly. ‘Deceased was male, about five foot seven; slender – weight around ten stone; sallow-skinned; probably dark haired to judge by the body hair – of which there was very little, by the way. No scars or peculiarities.’

‘Age?’ Slider asked.

‘I put him at first at twentyish, going by the skin and muscle tone, but now I think he was probably older. From the skull sutures I’d say he was nearer thirty. But probably he was young-looking for his age.’

‘Have you found a cause of death?’

‘Almost certainly a single heavy blow to the back of the neck at the level of the second and third vertebrae.’

‘Battered to death,’ Slider murmured, somewhat against his will. Still, better out than in.

Freddie didn’t flinch. ‘Death would have been instantaneous,’ he corrected stalwartly. ‘Fracture of the spine and rupture of the spinal cord. It was torn about two-thirds of the way across. An expert blow, I’d say – or a damned lucky one.’

‘And then the cutting up?’

‘With very sharp instruments, as I said before,’ Freddie went on. ‘I’ve taken the fingerprint, by the way, of the one finger we had, and sent a copy over to you but I don’t think it’ll help you much. Deep frying didn’t improve it.’

‘Yes, I got it, thanks. I wish it had come with a photograph, though.’

‘Someone’s done a good job on the head,’ Cameron admitted gloomily. ‘Scalp and face both removed, and the bits we’ve found of the face are no help at all.’

‘You can’t put them together again?’

‘Diced,’ he said succinctly. ‘Couldn’t do anything with ‘em except make a shepherd’s pie. Chummy was taking no
chances. The scalp and hands are missing, as you know. Oh, we haven’t got the eyes, either. But he had a fine set of gnashers. I suppose you want the Tooth Fairy to have a look at them?’

That was the forensic odontologist. ‘Yes, please. We’ll see what comes of that. If it doesn’t lead to an identification, I suppose it’ll be a job for Phillips at UCH.’

‘The medical illustrator?’ Cameron raised his eyebrows. ‘Is it that bad, old boy? Won’t chummy come across?’

‘He’s sitting on his hands and keeping his knees tightly together.’

‘So what’s gone wrong with the old Slider Interview Technique?’

‘Look at it from his point of view,’ Slider said. ‘If he’s gone to all that trouble to hide the identity, he’s not going to tell us just for the asking who the corpus is. And until we know who, we can’t prove Slaughter even knew him, let alone topped him—’

‘And chopped him. I can’t get over that name –Slaughter!’ Cameron said, shaking his head.

‘He’s obviously banking on the body-work for his salvation. But if we can present him with an identification, I think he may fold up and admit the murder. Otherwise we’ve a long hard road ahead of us.’

‘Have you charged him yet?’

‘Barrington’s toying with the idea, but I can’t see how we can, yet. I’m not too worried about that. If we let him go and he does the off, it’s all evidence on our side. And he might just do something really stupid. He doesn’t,’ he added, ‘seem the brightest to me.’

Freddie studied Slider’s expression. ‘That puzzles you?’

‘It does, rather. There’s an inconsistency in it all.’

‘Human beings aren’t machines. Besides, what’s so bright about committing a murder and getting yourself taken up for it?’

‘He was all we had,’ Slider shrugged.

‘That’s exactly what I mean. Not very clever, setting things up with yourself as the only suspect, is it?’

‘That’s true,’ Slider said. He smiled. ‘How you do comfort me, Freddie!’

‘Can’t have you brooding, old bean,’ Cameron said kindly.

The ‘maisonette’ in Acton was in fact only the upper floor of a dismal turn-of-the-century terraced cottage which should never have been divided in the first place. The short front garden had been concreted over, and the concrete was stained and cracked, sprouting tufts of depressed-looking grass and a few defiant dandelions. The front gate and most of the front wall were missing, and there were only stumps in the ground where the railings that had once divided it from next door had been sawn off, probably during one of the scrap-iron-for-victory drives of the Second World War.

The bricks of the front elevation were blackened with the soot of ages, the paint was peeling off the window frames, and the battered front door had been painted in that one shade of blue which evokes no emotional response at all in the human soul, and which presumably goes on being produced by paint manufacturers through sheer force of habit. Slider trod carefully up the uneven path and rang the bell, setting off a fusillade of barks from somewhere inside.

The occupants of the lower floor were at home. Inside the street door was a tiny hall, about three feet square, with a door straight ahead – across the stairs, of course –and another to the left, leading directly into what had been the best parlour of the original house. Slider was invited in with an eagerness which suggested their lives were yawningly lacking in incident. They sat him down on a sagging sofa upholstered in much-stained orange-and-brown synthetic tweed, pulled the dog off him, and offered him tea.

The room smelled of old tobacco and old carpets and damp and dog. As well as the sofa there were two equally repulsive armchairs, a coffee table decorated with overflowing ashtrays, a large television set, and a clothes horse on which a wash was drying – a faded blue tee-shirt and a vast quantity of grey underwear. Perhaps to help the
drying process, the two-bar electric fire was on, making the room stiflingly warm and bringing out the full, ripe bouquet of the various smells. On the television Michael Fish was demonstrating the action of an occluded front, and from another room came the sound of disc-jockey babble from a radio. The dog, denied the sexual gratification of Slider’s leg, walked round in short circles by the door, barking monotonously.

‘It’s about Peter upstairs, is it?’

‘Do you take milk and sugar?’

‘ … some bits and pieces of rain, working their way slowly across central areas …’

‘No, no tea, thank you.’

‘D’you smoke at all? Chuck us the fags, Bet. Ta, love.’

‘… tending pretty much to fizzle out, really, by the time …’

‘Shut up, Shane! Ooh, can’t you put him out in the kitchen, Garry?’

‘Sorry about this, he gets a bit excited. C’mere you stupid bastard!’

‘ … not nearly as much as is needed, I’m afraid, particularly in the south east…’

‘I could make you coffee instead, if you like?’

The dog suddenly hairpinned itself and sank its teeth into an itch at the root of its tail.

‘No, really, thank you, not for me,’ Slider said into the decibel vacuum. ‘I had a cup just before I came out. I wonder if you’d mind turning the television off, just while we talk?’

They looked at each other a little blankly, as though the request had come out of left field, barely comprehensible.

‘I’ll turn it down,’ Garry said at last, coming to a management decision.

‘Only it’s
Neighbours
in a minute,’ Bet added anxiously.

The dog finished with its tail and resumed barking, standing still now and staring at the ceiling in a way that suggested it was really going to concentrate this time on making a good job of it. Garry turned the sound down on the television and Michael Fish mouthed silently from behind the glass, sweeping one hand with underwater
slowness to indicate the Grampians.

‘Oh take him out, Garry. Shut him in the kitchen for a bit.’

The closing of the kitchen door muted both dog and deejay, and in the blessed near-silence which followed, Slider asked his host and hostess about the upstairs tenant.

‘He’s a nice boy, Peter – quiet, you know,’ Bet offered. ‘He’s not been here long. There was that couple before—’

‘Pakis,’ Garry mouthed, nodding significantly at Slider. ‘Not that I mind,’ he added hastily, ‘but they had this baby, cried all the time. And then there was the rows – you never heard nothing like it, all in Swahili or whatever it is—’

‘You can hear everything down here,’ Bet said with breathless emphasis. ‘It’s as thin as paper, that ceiling. Even anybody walking about, let alone shouting at each other.’

‘And the smell of them curries morning noon and night’

Slider intervened before they got too carried away. ‘So how long has Peter Leman been living there?’

‘Oh, it’s – what—?’ They looked at each other again.

‘Three months? About that.’

‘Four months. Febry, it was. That’s when he came.’

‘Febry’s three months.’

‘Nearly four. It was the beginning of Febry.’

‘Do you know where he lived before?’

Garry shook his head sadly, as though loath to deny Slider anything. ‘Not to say exactly. Well, Bet talked to him more than me. Did he say where, Bet?’

‘No-o,’ Bet said reluctantly, ‘not really. Not inasmuch as
where,
so to speak. But I think it was somewhere in London. He speaks like a Londoner, anyway.’

‘What does he do for a living, do you know?’ Slider asked.

‘Unemployed,’ Garry said tersely. ‘Well, who isn’t these days?’

‘Well he has just got himself a casual job,’ Bet qualified. ‘Evenings behind the bar at the Green Man, on the corner. He only started there last week. But Fridays and Saturdays he helps out at this fish and chip shop, doesn’t he, Garry?’

‘You’d think they’d be the busiest times at the pub,’ Slider said.

‘Oh, he said about that,’ Garry said eagerly. ‘He said they asked him to do Fridays and Sat’days, and the money would’ve been better, but he couldn’t let these other people down. But if you ask me, he’s scared it might get rough.’

‘Well, he’s only little,’ Bet said defensively, as though it had been an accusation. ‘I don’t blame him. He isn’t much bigger than me, and some of them kids that go in there of a weekend – you know, lager louts and that—’

‘Doesn’t want to spoil his face,’ Garry grunted disparagingly.

‘Well he is a nice-looking boy,’ Bet said.

‘What does he look like? Can you describe him to me?’

But
Neighbours
had come on, and Bet’s attention slithered resisdessly to the screen. Garry answered distractedly, watching it sideways. ‘Well, he’s a short bloke, about five-six or seven, I s’pose. Dark hair.’

‘Thin or fat?’

‘Slim. But he’s fit. I see him jogging and that, sometimes. He’s like, athletic, you might say.’

‘Clean shaven?’

‘What, you mean, like, does he have a beard? No, nothing like that.’

‘Age?’

‘I dunno really. He looks about twenty-five. Good-looking bloke, like Bet says. Smiles a lot. He’s got nice teeth,’ Garry added.

Slider thought of Freddie’s words:
he had a fine set of gnashers.
So far it was looking good. ‘Does he have any friends? Anyone that visits him here?’

‘He has a girlfriend,’ Garry said. ‘What’s her name, Suzanne.’

Bet came to, dragging her eyes away from the screen. ‘I don’t think she’s his girlfriend, Gow,’ she said earnestly. ‘I think she must be his sister. Only I’ve never spoken to her,’ she explained to Slider, ‘but I see them come in together sometimes, and she doesn’t sort of act like a girlfriend.’

‘And when did you last see him?’ Slider asked quickly, now he had her attention.

‘Well, I see him go out Monday, to the pub. About half-past
five that’d be,’ she said doubtfully.

‘Did you see him come in again?’

‘No,’ she said regretfully.

‘But we heard him,’ Garry added proudly. ‘He come in about – what would it be—?’

‘Half-past eleven?’

‘Nearer quarter to twelve,’ Garry corrected. ‘We heard him bang the door and walk upstairs. Then we heard him, like, walking about up there.’

‘Was he alone?’