Orchestrated Death (9 page)

‘Righto, guv,’ said Hunt.

‘Also I want him to get Mrs Gostyn in to make a statement and see if she can help us put together a photofit of this Inspector
Petrie.’

‘Okay, sir. Anything else?’

There was, but not for his ears. ‘Is Nicholls on the desk? Put me through to him will you?’

To Nicholls he said, ‘Listen, Nutty – will you ring Irene for
me, and tell her not to wait up. I’ve got a lot of interviews to do, and I won’t be back until very late.’

‘Sure I’ll tell her,’ he said, but with the end of the sentence clearly open for the unspoken words
but she’ll not believe it.

‘Thanks, mate.’

‘Okay Bill. Cheeroh. Be careful, won’t you?’

That, thought Slider, was like telling a man about to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel not to get his feet wet.

‘Tell me about that last evening,’ he said over the profiteroles.

‘We were on until nine-thirty at the Television Centre. We packed up –’

‘Did you finish on time?’

She smiled. ‘You bet. Otherwise they have to pay us overtime. We’re fierce about that. We packed up – that would take five
minutes or so – and then I’d arranged with a couple of the others – Phil Redcliffe and John Delaney and Anne-Marie – to go
for a drink.’

‘Which pub did you use?’ he asked, having a sudden dread that it would be The Dog and Scrotum, which after all was the nearest
pub to the TVC.

‘We always go to The Crown and Sceptre – it’s Fullers, you see,’ she said simply, and he nodded. For a beer-drinker, it was
that simple. ‘As I was going out, Simon Thompson asked me if I was going for a drink, and I said yes but Anne-Marie was coming,
and he said in that case he didn’t want to come, and that delayed me a bit –’

‘Why didn’t he want to come if she was going?’ Slider interrupted.

‘They’d been having a bit of trouble.’ She grimaced. ‘Look, I don’t want you to make too much of this, but I’ll tell you about
it, because
someone
will, so it had better be me. I told you Anne-Marie and Simon had been together on tour?’

‘Yes, you did. Do you mean they were having an affair?’

‘Oh, it didn’t really amount to that. Being on tour is sort of like fainlights –’ She demonstrated the crossed fingers of
childhood games. ‘It doesn’t really count. People sleep
together, go round together, and when they get back to England, it’s all forgotten. Anne-Marie and Simon were like that, except
that after the last tour in October, to Italy, Anne-Marie tried to carry it on. Simon didn’t like that because he’s got a
permanent girlfriend, and Anne-Marie –’ She paused. ‘Well, she got a bit funny about it. She insisted that Simon had been
serious about her, that they had decided to get married, and that now he was trying to get out of it.’

‘Did you believe her?’

‘I don’t know. There must have been something in it, surely? Simon said she was just making it up, of course, but then he
would, wouldn’t he? He started saying all sorts of nasty things about her, that she was unbalanced and so on, but I don’t
know what the truth of it was. Anne-Marie just gave it up after a while and left him alone, but he made a great performance
out of not having anything to do with her – changing tables in the coffee-bar if she sat down near him, not going for a drink
with a group of us if she was included – that sort of thing.’

‘I see,’ Slider said encouragingly, hoping that he would. ‘How did she seem to you that last day? Did she seem in her normal
spirits?’

‘I didn’t notice really, one way or the other. She’d been a bit quiet since that trouble with Simon – a bit low, you know,
withdrawn. As I said, I never thought she was a particularly happy person, and that could only make it worse.’

Slider nodded. ‘So you spoke to Simon Thompson, and then what? You went out to your car?’

‘Yes. We were all in separate cars, of course. Phil and John had already gone, and with Simon stopping me – oh, and I talked
to John Brown as well about something, the fixer, so I was the last one out. Anne-Marie had rushed off when she saw Simon
coming. She left her car outside, you know in that narrow bit to the side of the main gate where the Minis and small cars
are parked.’

‘Yes, I know. Did she drive a Mini?’

‘No, she had a red MG – just about the one thing in her life she really loved, that car. Anyway, as I came out, she was just
running back across the yard towards me. She said she was glad she’d caught me, and why didn’t we go to The Dog
and Sportsman instead. That’s another pub, along the –’

‘I know,’ Slider said. I knew it, he thought flatly. I should never have drunk on my own manor.

Joanna eyed him curiously. ‘Well, it’s a horrible pub, and in any case Phil and John had already gone. I said so, and she
seemed quite put out, and tried to persuade me to go to The Dog, just the two of us, but I didn’t want to, and in the end
she just left me and went back to her car. I went to The Crown and Sceptre, and of course she never showed up. I don’t know
if eventually she did go to the other pub, or if she – if they –’ She stopped.

‘Did she say why she wanted to go to the other pub?’ Slider asked, not without sympathy.

‘No. She didn’t give any reason. I’ve wondered since whether, if we’d gone with her, she might not have been killed. Do you
think she could have known something was going to happen to her?’

Slider was thinking. ‘At what stage did she change her mind? She was going to The Crown with you? She knew that’s where you
planned to go?’

‘Oh yes, we always went there. And when she left the first time, when she went out to her car, she knew that’s where we were
going. In fact I think when she went past me as I was talking to John Brown she said something like “See you in there”.’

‘So something happened to make her change her mind when she was outside, going to her car. Did she speak to someone in the
car park?’

‘I don’t know. When I came out she was already running back towards me. The men in the gatehouse might have seen something.
There are always two of them on duty, and they’d have been able to see her car from their windows.’

‘Yes,’ Slider said, and made a note:
Gatekeepers!
and
Ask Hilda.
He looked up. Joanna was staring at him unhappily. ‘What is it?’

‘Maybe she was afraid, and wanted us to come with her for protection. Maybe if we’d gone with her –’

Slider felt compelled to offer her some comfort. ‘I don’t think it would have made any difference. I think it would just have
happened some other time.’

Her eyes widened as she considered the implications of this. ‘I don’t think that helps very much,’ she said.

The eating and drinking were over. He paid, and they walked out into the street. ‘It was a good meal,’ he said. ‘I like Italian
food.’ He remembered Anne-Marie like touching a mouth ulcer he’d forgotten.

‘You mind, don’t you,’ Joanna said. ‘About Anne-Marie. Why do you? I mean, all murder is dreadful, but you must have seen
some horrible cases in your time, worse than this. Why is it different?’

He wanted to ask how she knew, but was afraid of the answer. Instead he said, ‘I don’t know,’ which was unoriginal, but true,
and she accepted it at face value.

‘I can’t feel it much – not continuously. She still doesn’t feel dead to me. She was so young, and I always thought her rather
silly – not a particularly capable person. Vulnerable. It seems almost like cheating to kill someone so easy to kill.’

They stood looking at each other on the pavement. Now the moment had come, he didn’t know how he could possibly ask her. He
had no right to. He had nothing to offer – he could only take. But how, otherwise, were they ever to move from this spot?
He looked at her helplessly.

‘Can you be struck off, like doctors, for fraternising with witnesses?’ she asked lightly. She had seen his trouble, and was
doing the job for him, making it easy for him either to go on or to go away. He knew how generous that was of her, and yet
still he blundered.

‘I’m married,’ he said – blurted – and he actually saw it hurt her.

‘I know that,’ she said quietly.

‘How do you know?’ Now he was simply delaying, evading.

She shrugged. ‘You have the look – hungry. Like a man with worms, you eat but it doesn’t satisfy you.’ She looked at him consideringly,
and he was aware painfully that he had put this distance between them, that it was all his fault. ‘I even know what she looks
like,’ she went on. ‘Pretty, very slim, smart. Keeps the house spotless, and hasn’t much sense of humour.’

‘How can you know that?’ he said uneasily.

He saw her suddenly tire of it. She had placed everything at his service, and he had been too weak and cowardly to do the
right thing, one way or the other. She hitched her bag onto her shoulder and said, ‘I’d better be going. Thank you very much
for supper.’

Leave it be, let it go. Don’t ask for trouble. Life is complicated enough as it is.

‘Where do you live?’ he gasped. One last breath before going under, one last grasp at the straw. She would say north or south,
anything, not west, and that would be that. Let God decide. Yet if she said west, what then? She turned back the little she
had turned away, and it seemed an effort, and she looked at him doubtfully, as if she were not sure whether to answer him
or not.

‘Turnham Green,’ she said at last, with no inflection at all.

He licked his lips. ‘That’s on my way,’ he said in a voice like fishbones. ‘I live in Ruislip.’

‘You can follow me,’ she said, ‘if you promise not to book me for speeding.’

His stomach went away from him like an express lift and he nodded, and they walked towards their cars, parked nose-to-tail
down the side street. Even in his extremity he told himself he was not committed yet, that it would be perfectly easy for
him to lose her on the cross-town drive. But of course she knew that too, and it was too late, by several hours at least.

The drive back to Chiswick was long enough for Slider to think of everything and fear everything several times over. It was
close to twenty years since he had made love to anyone but Irene, and it was a long time – he paused – good God, was it really
over a year? – since he had made love even to her. Large-scale social and moral considerations jostled for space in his cringing
mind with mute and ignoble worries about custom, expectation, performance, and even underwear, to the point where desire was
suppressed and he could no longer think of any good and sufficient reason to be doing what he was doing at all.

And yet still he followed her, almost automatically, keeping the taillights of her Alfa GTV just two lengths ahead of him,
copying her lefts and rights like a colt following its dam, because doing anything else would have involved him in a decision
he was no longer capable of making.

They stopped at last, parked, got out of their cars. Hollow excuses formed themselves inside his head, and if she had spoken
to him or even looked back at him, he would probably have babbled them and fled. But she had her door key ready in her hand,
opened her front door and went in, leaving it open for him, without once looking round, and so he simply followed, as if the
moment for making the absolutely definitely final decision had not yet arrived.

Afterwards he wondered how much of his state of mind she had guessed and was making allowance for. Inside the hallway of her
flat she was waiting for him. She had not put on the lights or taken off her coat. She had simply put down her bags on the
floor, and as he entered the half dark of the passage she put her arms round him inside his coat and lifted her mouth to be
kissed.

Slider went tremblingly to pieces. No questions to ask and none to answer. He pulled the female softness against him and was
kissing her ravenously, and her mouth and tongue led him with the lightness of a familiar dancing-partner. She moved her pelvis,
and he could feel his erection like a rock between them, and he felt distantly, ridiculously proud. She broke off from kissing
him at last, but it was only to lead the way into her bedroom beyond, which was lit dimly by the glow from a streetlamp outside
– just light enough, and not too much.

There was the bed, a big double, covered by a counterpane. She went round to the far side and sat on the edge with her back
to him and began to take off her clothes with neat, economical movements. So they were really going to do it, part of his
mind said in amazement. He was glad she was letting him undress himself. His state of mind was so far gone he was no longer
sure what he’d got on, or whether he could get it off without fumbling stupidly. By the time he was down to his underpants
she had finished, and slid gracefully in under the sheets and looked at him calmly from the pillows.
He pulled in his stomach and took off his pants. The air felt cold on his skin, but his erection felt so huge and hot he half
thought it would warm up the room, like an immersion heater. What a ridiculous thing to think, he rebuked himself; but he
must have smiled, for she smiled in response and pulled back the covers for him.

After all his fears, it was all so beautifully simple. He lay down beside her, feeling the whole length of her against his
body warm and delicious; and before he could start wondering what she would expect of him by way of preliminaries, she drew
him onto and into her so easily that he sighed in enormous relief, as if he were coming home. Being in her was both exotic
and familiar in such piercing, blissful combination that he knew it could not last long. But it didn’t matter – there would
be time for everything later. He turned his mouth, nuzzling for hers, and as they connected he felt her lift and close on
him, and that was it. He let go gratefully and flooded her as though all of his life he had been saving up for this moment.

Close and far away he heard her sigh ‘Ah!’ And then they were drifting out together into dark water, clean and complete as
if newborn. A long time later she kissed his cheek and lay her face against his neck, and he slid over onto his back and took
her in his arms, with her head on his shoulder, and it felt very good. He wanted to tell her he loved her, but he couldn’t
speak: everything was too vivid, as though all his nerve endings were exposed, and the difference between pleasure and pain
was slight. He needed to be silent for a while, to discover whether this new and perilous existence could be sustained.