Orchestrated Death (21 page)

She evinced impatience. ‘None at all. I’ve told you before, Inspector, I knew nothing about her personal life. I suggest you
ask some of her musician friends.’

Slider thanked her, and collected Joanna and escaped by a side-path. So it hadn’t been the aunt’s flat – that disposed of
that possibility. But something had been said today – something, sometime, by somebody – that was important, and he just couldn’t
bring to mind what it was. A bell had been rung in the back of his mind, but it was too far back to be of any help. He left
it alone, knowing his subconscious would throw it back to him sooner or later, and returned his attention to Joanna.

Martin Cutts had just asked her if she would go with him to the nearest pub for a pint. She replied with a shake of the head
and a single graphic glance towards Slider; at which he grinned, kissed her easily on the lips, said ‘See you Wednesday, then,’
and left.

‘It’s half past two closing out here,’ she said. Her voice sounded so strange that Slider glanced at her, to find that she
was grey with cold and misery and within an inch of tears. He hurried her to the car, wanting to get them away from this place,
wanting, absurdly, to take Anne-Marie with them too. She had been a musician as well, and even if no-one had loved her, she
had once known the companionship of pubs and the easy kisses of Martin Cutts. The contrast was too harsh – it seemed cruel
to leave her behind.

In the car he put on the heater and the blower and drove as fast as the rain would allow back towards the sanity of London.
As the car warmed up, Joanna revived.

‘Well,’ she said first, ‘so that’s that. Not my idea of a funeral. When I go, I want hundreds of people crying their eyes
out, and then going off and getting good and drunk and saying what a great person I was.’

‘Yes,’ said Slider comprehensively.

‘A proper service in the church, too, with candles and hymns and the real words out of the Prayer Book. Not that second-rate,
poor man’s substitute; that New Revised Non-Denominational Series Four People’s Pray-in, or whatever the bloody thing’s called.’
She glared at him, and suddenly cried out, ‘It isn’t fair!’ and of course she wasn’t talking about church services. But he
was glad, in a way, that it hadn’t been the old-fashioned service, because the familiar words would have reminded him of Mam’s
funeral. They always did, when he heard them on television or in a film, and still they made him cry. Funerals above all reminded
you that there was no going back, that every day something was taken from you that you could never have back.

After a while she said in a small voice, ‘When I die, will you promise to see that I’m buried properly, not like that? And
I’ll promise the same thing for you.’

‘Oh Joanna,’ he said helplessly, and took her hand into his lap for comfort.

When they reached Turnham Green, however, she revived with the suddenness of youth. ‘I’m starving. Do you know what I fancy
– a hamburger! A proper one, not a McDonald’s. Shall we go to Macarthurs?’

‘I can’t,’ he said relunctantly. ‘I’ve got to go to the station. There’s a mass of things to be done, and the meeting to prepare
for, I’m sorry.’

‘Some love affair this is,’ she said, but jokingly, making it easy for him.

‘I’ll try and call in later, on my way home. If I can’t, I’ll phone anyway.’ She looked so forlorn that he offered his own
particular foothold of comfort. ‘Don’t worry, we can’t lose each other now. We can’t stop knowing each other.’

She gave him an impish grin, ‘Count your chickens! Don’t forget once I start working again you’ll have two impossible schedules
to coordinate!’

‘Look at this, guv,’ Atherton said, bouncing his Viking length through the open door of Slider’s room. ‘Anne-Marie’s bank
statement – and very interesting reading it makes.’

‘Midland Bank, Gloucester Road branch?’

‘I expect she opened it when she was at the Royal College,’ Atherton said wisely. ‘Though with her swanky connections, you’d
think it would have been Coutts from birth.’

‘But she never had any money of her own before, did she?’ Slider spread out the pages. ‘Well, the totals are pretty modest.
No money here for buying Stradivariuses.’

‘No, but look here, last August – see? Sundries, three thousand pounds.’

‘Is that her pay from the Orchestra?’

‘No, that shows up as salary – look, here, and here. But sundries, bloody sundries, is what they call deposits, cash or cheques,
made by post or over the counter. And it’s gone in no time – four big cheques to cash. Spent it. She must have had expensive
habits.’

‘No sign of the repayments on the bank loan Joanna mentioned?’

‘Oh, that was paid off a long time ago. Look, this is more interesting. Go back a bit further, and what do you find. A big
sundry here, five K, one for four here, five again, six and a half here. Roughly every month she pays in a big lump sum and
then whips it out in cash. Now what do you make of that?’

‘Could she have spent it all? Maybe she had a savings account.’

‘Nothing’s turned up. Maybe she played the market, or put it on the ponies. But I’m not so interested in where it went as
where it came from. Do you know what I think?’

‘Tell me,’ Slider said indulgently.

‘I think she was blackmailing somebody. Or some bodies.’

‘And whoever she was blackmailing got fed up and killed her? Have you gone off your Thompson theory, then?’

‘Not necessarily. It could be him she was blackmailing.’

‘My Uncle Arthur could stick his wooden leg up his arse and do toffee-apple impressions,’ Slider said mildly.

Atherton grinned reluctantly. ‘Oh well, you’re not the only one who can have a hunch, you know. There was something very sinister
and unloveable about that young woman. I’m going to keep my eyes open.’

‘You do that. Here’s something to rest them on – the report on her car.’

‘Blimey, the lab really pulled its finger out on that one, didn’t it? What did they find?’

‘Nothing out of the ordinary, except that on the front passenger seat there were traces of a white powder –’

‘A white powder!’

‘Behave yourself. A white powder which on analysis proved to be pyrethrum and –’ he consulted the report – ‘piperonyl butoxide.’

‘Come again?’

‘It’s an insecticide with pretty general application. Kills fleas, lice, bedbugs, earwigs, woodlice and so on. Freely available
from any garden shop, or Woolworth’s – you might find it in any household. Poisonous if you ate enough of it, and can irritate
the eyes and nasal tissues if you throw it about or inhale it.’

‘It irritates my brain tissues,’ Atherton said crossly. ‘What’s the use of that? She could have bought a tin of it at any
time, for any purpose, and spilt some on the seat. Where does that get us?’

‘Nowhere. Except that we didn’t find a tin of anything like that in her flat. But the other thing was more interesting – also
found on the passenger seat, but down the crack between the seat and the back.’ He handed over a small square of paper which
had originally been folded into four,
but had since been crushed and creased and dirtied by its sojourn down the seat cushion. Opening it out Atherton saw that
it was a sheet from a note-block, the sort of small pad you keep by the telephone. On it, written at a steep angle, as it
might be by someone gripping the telephone receiver between chin and shoulder to leave both hands free, was the word
Salomon,
and a telephone number.

There was an instant of painful blankness, and then Atherton exclaimed, ‘Saloman! Saloman of Vincey’s!’

‘You know who he is?’

‘Vincey’s of Bond Street, the antiquarian’s. Saloman’s their expert on violin bows. Andrew Watson, the bloke at Sotheby’s,
mentioned him when he was looking at the Stradivarius. Is this Anne-Marie’s writing, do we know? I suppose we can find out.
Did she consult him? It’s a lead, anyway, and we’ve precious few of those.’

Slider smiled at his excitement. ‘Leads have a habit of fizzling out on closer inspection. I’ll leave this one to you – you’re
getting to be the violin expert around here. By the way, someone ought to drop in at The Dog and Scrotum and have a chat with
Hilda and the regulars. I know they all said they didn’t see Anne-Marie that night, but that was the official line. A comfy,
private chat ought to get the truth out of them, one way or the other. I suppose,’ he added uncon-vincingly, ‘as it’s more
or less on my way home –’

‘Bollards,’ Atherton said sweetly. ‘You know very well you don’t go home that way any more. I’ll do it, guv – you shove off
to love’s young dream.’

‘That’s awfully good of you, old chap,’ Slider said gravely. ‘I thought you didn’t approve.’

‘If you see enough of her, you might get bored. Anyway, you know Hilda fancies me. She’s more likely to come across for me
than for you. It’s my fresh young face and youthful charm – she can’t resist ’em.’

Slider shuddered. ‘What about the gatekeepers at the TVC?’

‘Beevers did ’em. One of them thinks he remembers that she didn’t get into the car, just went up to it and then ran back as
if she’d forgotten something.’

‘A note under the windscreen wiper, perhaps, telling her
to meet the murderer at the pub?’

‘Not if the murderer was Thompson.’

‘You know what I think about that,’ Slider said.

‘Maybe she just fancied somewhere different for a change. You can make too much of something, you know.’

Slider met his eyes, and a great number of warnings passed in both directions, which neither was likely to take heed of.

‘Hey,’ said Joanna, sitting up and looking down at him in the leaping firelight.

‘Hmm?’ One side of his body was too hot, the other icy from the draught under the sitting-room door; the floor was hard under
his shoulder blades, the rug itchy under his buttocks. All the same, he would have preferred not to have to move for several
more hours. Sleep had been in short supply lately.

‘You sleep on your own penny,’ she said. ‘You’re supposed to be amusing me.’

‘I just did,’ he murmured without opening his eyes. He felt the roughness of her hair and a brief pressure on his penis as
she bent to kiss it.

‘Sex is all very well, but I want you to talk to me as well.’

He groaned and rolled onto his side, and propped his head minimally with hand and elbow. ‘What?’ he said.

‘You look so sweet and ruffled,’ she grinned at him. ‘Innocent.’

‘You look like a dangerous wild animal,’ he said. ‘Most people look vulnerable when they take their clothes off, but you’re
just the opposite. You look as though you might eat me.’

‘I will if you like,’ she offered equably.

‘A drink first. All very well for you women – it takes it out of us men.’

‘You women! Spoken from the depths of your vast experience, I suppose!’

‘You don’t have to have a baby to be a gynaecologist,’ he said with dignity.

She rose fluidly to her feet. ‘Can you drink gin and tonic?’

‘Does a monkey eat nuts?’

Left alone, he sat up and turned his other side to the fire. He looked around him and wondered at the sense of peace and comfort
that this room gave him. He had never, to his memory, sat on the floor in his own house, though he used to in the early days
of his marriage when he and Irene had had their little flat. But at home he couldn’t in any case have sat on the floor by
the fire, since there was neither fireplace nor chimney. This room was neither smart nor elegant, nor even particularly clean,
but it was a place where you could do nothing in perfect peace, a room that demanded nothing of you, imposed nothing on you.

A clinking sound heralded Joanna with a large glass in each hand. Ice cubes floated and bumped like miniature icebergs, lemon
moons hung suspended, beaded with silver bubbles, and the liquid gleamed with the delicate blue sheen of a bloody large gin.
The aromatic scent of it wafted sweetly to his nostrils.

‘Lovely,’ he said inadequately. She folded down beside him, and held her glass at eye level.

‘Aesthetically pleasing,’ she acknowledged.

‘You’re such an animal. It’s all pleasure with you – pleasure and comfort.’

‘Any fool can be uncomfortable.’

‘But what about duty and responsibility?’

She turned her head to rub an itch on her nose against her shoulder, something he couldn’t imagine Irene ever doing.

‘Those too. One fits them in, you know. But one’s first duty is to oneself.’

‘All right for you. You don’t have a wife and children.’

‘Oh, these wives and children!’ He looked irritated, and she went on, ‘Well, if you can’t make yourself happy, you aren’t
likely to have much success with anyone else, are you? What use would I be to you if I were unhappy?’

‘If everyone thought like you –’ he began, but she gave convention short shrift.

‘Everyone doesn’t. The whole point is that the philosophy of irresponsibility is only safe in the hands of the morally trustworthy.
So drink your nice drink and don’t worry about it. It takes a great deal of practice to become a dedicated hedonist.’

‘In other words, you don’t want to discuss it.’

‘Uh-huh,’ she concurred, leaning forward, her glass held clear of their bodies, to kiss him. She slid her tongue into his
mouth and he was amazed to feel his instant reaction. Blimey, lad, he addressed his organ inwardly, you’re pretty lively for
your age. Doing yourself proud, aren’t you? He reached behind him blindly for somewhere safe to put his glass so as to free
his hands, and the phone started to ring.

Joanna removed her tongue from his mouth. ‘“Time watches from the shadow. And coughs when you would kiss”.’

‘Shall I get it? It’s probably for me.’

But she was already up. ‘I should have put the answering machine on.’

It was O’Flaherty, starting his week of nights, and fresh from his day off with an assumed and expansive outrage. ‘It’s gettin’
to be a bloody trial trackin’ you down, Billy me darlin’. I even rang The Dog an’ Bloody Scorpion, till Little Boy Blue said
I’d find you in Flagrante Dilecto, and I said to him, I said, that’s a pub I never even heard of –’