Orchestrated Death (32 page)

‘So where do we go from here?’

Dickson looked at him carefully, and placed both his meaty fists on the desk top, making himself larger and squarer than ever.
Body language? Slider thought. Dickson wrote the book on it! ‘That’s the part you’re not going to like, Bill. I’m afraid you
don’t go anywhere: they’re taking the case out of our hands.’

‘Special Branch?’

‘They’ve got their own operation going on the Family. They know what they’re doing. Come on, there’s no use looking like that.
You must have expected it. I’m only surprised they left it with us as long as they did.’

‘And Anne-Marie?’ Slider’s lips felt numb.

‘Well, she’s a bit of a side issue really, isn’t she? Besides, she was one of their own operators. Obviously they knocked
her off when she started being a nuisance, and since they’ve cleaned up their own mess, you can’t expect our boys to get too
excited about it. There are bigger fish to fry, and Special don’t want us mucking about and treading mud all over their carpet.’

‘And Mrs Gostyn? And Thompson?’

Dickson shrugged. ‘Look, I know how you feel, but it’s more important to nail the blokes at the top than some two-by-four
local operator. If we go poking sticks up the network looking for the murderer, we’ll scare them into closing it
down and a lot of hard work’ll have been wasted. In any case, even if you could discover who murdered the Austen girl, it’s
seven to four on that he’s dead by now. They don’t tolerate failures, as you know, and anyone who draws attention to himself
is a failure. Ipso bloody facto. They’ll have topped him, no sweat.’

Slider merely looked at him, and Dickson replaced his fists with his elbows on the desk top and looked beguiling.

‘It’s not as bad as all that, come on. Instructions are to close the file officially. Thompson killed Austen and then committed
suicide, and the old lady was just an accident. That’s going on record, and it makes our figures very nice, I can tell you.’

‘Our figures?’ Slider repeated disbelievingly.

‘They’re letting us have the credit, officially, and since you did most of the slog, I’m putting it down to you, Bill. It
goes on your record. Earns you quite a few more Brownie points. You’ll be a Girl Guide in no time.’

Dickson sat back with an expansive smile, inviting Slider to look surprised, grateful, modest and hopeful in that order. The
implied promise was in the air: the promise Irene had longed for, for so many years, was dangled, a golden vision, just within
reach.

Slider stood up. ‘Will that be all, sir?’

Dickson’s smile disappeared like the sun going in. The granite showed through the red meat of his face, and his voice was
hard and impatient.

‘You’re off the case. That’s official, d’you understand? Forget it.’

As Slider passed the door of the CID room on his way back to his office, Atherton called to him, and he paused and looked
in blankly. Beevers was there too, sitting on Atherton’s desk reading a newspaper.

‘Was it the report on Saloman?’ Atherton asked ‘Did Dickson have anything?’

‘I never thought the old man would go for that schmucky Mafioso angle,’ Beevers complained. ‘He’s always so keen on a good,
solid money motive. Now I really think I’m onto
something there. I’ve been breaking my balls over John Brown and his boyfriend, and I think there’s something fishy about
them.’

‘Well we know that,’ Atherton said wearily.

‘No, something else, I mean. Did you know that Trevor Byers was up before the disciplinary committee of the BMA about eighteen
months ago? I can’t find out what for, yet –they’re as tight as a crab’s arse about stuff like that – but it would account
for why old Brown’s so fidgety. And if Austen had found out about it somehow –’

‘The case is closed,’ Slider said, stemming the flood. ‘Official, from the very top. We’re all back on traffic violations.’

‘Closed?’ they chorused, like Gilbert and Sullivan.

‘There are bigger fish to fry. Anything to do with The Family is for Special Branch alone. Hands off, do not touch. And Anne-Marie
has become an unimportant side issue.’

In the momentary silence that followed, Atherton noted how Slider always talked about Anne-Marie and never about Thompson,
as though the one were an intolerable outrage, and the other no more than he deserved. But he forbore to mention it. Instead
he filched the paper out of Beevers’ hand and opened it at the entertainments page.

‘Oh well, that’s that, then,’ he said. ‘At least we’ll have our weekends to ourselves again. I wonder if there are any good
shows on.’

‘And you can find out if your children still recognise you,’ Beevers said to Slider. ‘Anyone fancy a cup of tea?’

Slider shook his head without even having understood what he had been asked, and walked away. When he had gone, Beevers turned
to Atherton.

‘What’s up with him, then? Is he cracking up? I hear he took Norma to Birmingham for the day and never even laid a hand on
her knee. I mean, that’s not normal.’

‘Oh shut up, Alec,’ Atherton said wearily, turning a page.

Beevers looked complacent. ‘Detecting’s a young man’s job. I’ve always said so and I always will.’

‘Not when you reach forty, you won’t.’

‘These old guys can’t take the pressure, you see. They let things get on top of them. The next thing you know, old Bill
will start weeping over suicides and writing poetry. I always say –’

Oh stuff it!’ Atherton said, getting up. He flung the newspaper in the bin and walked away, but Beevers simply raised his
voice a little to carry.

‘You’re not so young any more either, are you, Jim? Time’s running out for you too, old lad.’

Left alone, Beevers picked the newspaper out of the bin, smoothed it out, opened it at the sports page, and began to read.
He whistled cheerfully and swung his rather short legs, which didn’t reach the floor when he was perched on a desk. If they
couldn’t stand the heat, he thought with his usual originality, they should stay out of the kitchen.

Slider went back to his office and did a bit of desultory tidying up, which soon degenerated into sitting at his desk and
staring moodily at the photograph of Anne-Marie. At the end of any case he usually felt a lassitude, a disinclination to work,
once the momentary excitement of the result wore off, leaving only deflation and paperwork. But this was much worse, because
he had no answers to the many questions, nothing to detract from the sense of injustice towards the victims.

The phone rang and he picked it up reluctantly. It was O’Flaherty. Even on the phone he sounded massive.

‘I’ve got it, I’ve got it,’ he chortled. ‘I’ve remembered who the little runt was. It was Ronnie Brenner.’

‘Half-inch Brenner? The bloke who used to sell hookey watches down the Goldhawk Road?’

‘No, no, not him. He emigrated – oh, it must be two years ago.’

‘Emigrated?’

‘To Norfolk. He’s gone straight, got a half-share in a chicken farm. Plays the trombone in the Sally Army band in Norwich.
He sent me a postcard, the cheeky sod. No, I’m talking about Ronnie Brenner: little feller, racecourse tout, bookies’ runner,
one-time unsuccessful jockey, tipster. You name it, he’s done it, so long as it’s to do with harses. He’s
always hanging about racecourses – Banbury and Kempton Park mostly, they all have their favourites. We’ve had him in on sus
a few times for hangin’ about stables with a pair of binoculars an’ a little book, but we’ve never managed to nail him for
anything. No previous, d’you see – that’s why I had such a job trackin’ him down in me memory. Sure, don’t you remember we
had a look at him for that doping business at Wembley in ‘88, but there was nothing on him.’

‘Wembley? I don’t remember. I think that was when I was away on holiday,’ Slider said with an effort. ‘I remember you all
talking about it when I came back. A bit of excitement in the silly season.’ His brain made a determined effort to catch up
with him. ‘But they don’t have horses at Wembley, do they? I thought it was football.’

‘The Harse of the Year Show, ya stewpot. Are you awake, son? The local lads pulled him in at Banbury for the same thing, and
he laid his hand on his heart and swore he’d never do a thing like that to man’s best friend. Touching, it was. There wasn’t
a dry seat in the house. Anyway, that’s who it is. He lives in Cathnor Road. Didn’t I tell you I never forget a shit?’

Slider’s tired brain was whirling with fragments of conversations, free-associating and making no sense. Atherton’s voice
said if you scoop up one little turd the world’s a sweeter place, and he tried to grab the words as they floated past. ‘No
previous … that doping business at Wembley… so long as it’s to do with horses … Banbury … Cathnor Road … never forget a shit…
if you scoop -’

‘Billy, are you there, for Chrissakes? Would you ever speak to me? It’s a lonely thing to be a desk sergeant and unloved.’

‘A lonely thing …’ Slider took his head in his hands and shook his brain. ‘Sorry Pat. I’m a bit tired. Thanks for the information,
but it’s come too late. The Austen case is closed – official, from the top. It’s gone up to Special Branch, so there’s nothing
more I can do about it. I’m off the case.’

‘So long as the case is off you,’ O’Flaherty said warningly. ‘Ah, don’t take it so hard, darlin’. In a long life you’ll see
worse injustice than that.’ Slider didn’t answer. ‘Brenner may have had nothing to do with it, but if I see him hangin’
around I’ll pull him in anyway. It doesn’t do to let the flies settle.’

‘Yeah, okay, thanks Pat,’ Slider said vaguely.

‘Listen, why don’t you go home, insteada roostin’ up there. Have an evening off for a change, while you can?’

‘Yes, I think I will.’

‘And if your wife calls, I’ll tell her you’re out on a case,’ O’Flaherty added drily.

Slider’s mind was not with him, and it took a moment before he said, ‘Oh, yes, I – yes, thanks. Thanks, Pat.’

‘And remind me to tell you some time,’ O’Flaherty said very gently, ‘what a stupid bastard you are.’

Slider collected his coat, and went out into the grey January afternoon.

The tall, shabby house on Cathnor Road had an air of long neglect and temporary desertion. Slider had been driving about,
he hardly knew where, for so long that it was now dark. He had often found before that driving had the effect of releasing
his subconscious mind to worry out problems in a way the conscious mind, being too cluttered, could not do; but this time
the only conclusion he had come to was that, off the case or not, he wanted to find out what Ronnie Brenner had been up to.

The house was divided into flats, and since it was dark there ought to have been lights in at least some of the windows, but
the building gave no sign of life as Slider passed it and parked a little beyond. He walked up the steps to the front door
where there was a variety of bells, none of them labelled. He pressed a few at random, and then stood looking about him.

Almost opposite him was the turning that led to the cul-de-sac where The Crown and Sceptre stood. Ah, yes, he thought, that’s
why Cathnor Road had been ringing bells in his mind. And talking of ringing bells, he pressed a few more, and stepped back
to look up at the windows. Almost at once he heard someone hiss from somewhere below him. A small and anxious face was craning
up at him from the area door to the basement flat, which was hidden under the steps on which he stood.

‘Mr Slider! Down here, quick! Come on, guv, quick as you like!’

The voice was hoarse with urgency, and he obeyed, running down the steps and then down the precipitous, dish-shaped flight
into the area. Ronnie Brenner stood half concealed by his door, which he held just enough ajar for Slider to get through.

‘’Urry up, guv, please. It ain’t safe,’ he whispered, and Slider went past him into the flat, his senses alert. Brenner took
a frightened and comprehensive look around outside, and then closed the door and chained it clumsily.

‘Frough here,’ he said, inching past Slider in the narrow, dark, malodorous passage and leading the way to the back of the
house. ‘We can’t be seen in here – nothink don’t overlook it.’

The room was a surprise to Slider. It was a living-cum-kitchen-cum-dining room, square, and well-lit from a window with a
Venetian blind over it. One corner was equipped as a kitchen, and the rest was furnished with a square dining-table with barley-sugar
legs, a shabby and almost shapeless sofa, two sagging armchairs covered in scratched and scarred leather, and bookshelves
along one wall. Though shabby, it was spotlessly clean, and smelled, unlike the passage, not of damp and rotting plaster,
but pleasantly of leather and neat’s-foot oil.

There were photographs of horses everywhere, framed and hanging on the wall, pinned along the edges of the bookshelves, propped
up on the table and the kitchen cabinet, cut out of newspapers and magazines and sellotaped to the fridge door and above the
draining-board. At a quick glance Slider could see that all the books on the shelves were to do with horses and racing, ranging
from serious turf and stud books to a row of Dick Francis novels in well-thumbed paperback. There was nothing surprising about
the room except its existence here, in the basement of a slum house in Shepherd’s Bush. Had it been transported, as it stood,
to the flat above the stables of a respected stud-groom, Slider would have found it entirely in character.

Turning to face his host, Slider remembered him now, and remembered him as harmless. He was small, undersized,
weakly-looking except for the whippy strength of his arms and hands, and the hard lines in his face which told of a lifetime’s
bitter and losing struggle with weight. He might once have been a handsome man, before the effects of deliberate starvation,
exposure to the weather, and a diet of gin and cigarettes designed to stunt him, had browned and wrinkled and monkeyfied him.
Under the brown he was at this moment very white, his features drawn and pinched with fear. Ronnie Brenner was plainly a very
frightened man.