Shallow Grave (18 page)

All of which was both true and untrue in about equal proportions. He looked across the table at his boss, who wore an almost visible aura of sappy contentment whenever he was with Joanna, despite all his other troubles; and he wished he had Bill’s courage simply to admit he needed to love and be loved. Bill could acknowledge not just to the world but to
himself
‘that he was not complete without Joanna; the idea terrified Atherton. If the integrity of his shell were once breached, what chaos might not come flooding in?

He cleared the plates and went out to the kitchen for the main course – chicken breasts with lime and bay on a bed of polenta, with mangetouts and baby carrots – and as he laid it all out he suffered a brief spasm of revulsion for the whole performance. Was not this dilettantism a denial of life? Who was he doing it all for? What was the point? But he took himself firmly in hand and dismissed such barbarous thoughts, marched the plates in by the scruff of their necks. When cast away on a desert island,
always
dress for dinner.

The other two – thank heaven – had changed the subject. ‘So what’s this committee meeting you’ve got to go to tomorrow?’ Slider was asking Joanna.

‘Just the usual shinola, I expect. In the old days it used to be all about not letting enough women into the orchestra. Now women are accepted, it’s all about what they ought to wear. Long black or long coloured? Patterned or plain? The LSO is anti-sleeveless; the LPO won’t allow tails.’

‘Eh?’ said Atherton.

‘For women,’ she explained. ‘The arguments are endless.’

‘So that’s what concerns you all in the nineties? Do you want to finish up the Macon, Bill, or go on to the red?’

‘Oh, red, thanks.’

‘Joanna?’

‘I’ll have another splash of white, thanks. No, clothes are just on the surface. The deep concern is one none of us wants to look in the face.’ She sipped and replaced her glass. ‘I think there’s a move afoot to get rid of some of the older players.’

‘Because they’re no good?’ Slider asked.

‘Good God, no! Because the marketing men think concert-goers only want to look at dewy youth. They think grey hair
and glasses put the punters off. And for all I know they might be right,’ she shrugged.

‘Surely music-lovers can’t be that shallow,’ Slider protested.

Atherton looked at him with amusement.
‘You
say that, with all your experience of human nature?’

‘I’ve heard comments about Brian Harrop, our second trumpet,’ Joanna went on. ‘I think they’re trying to get him out. He plays like an angel, but, hey, he’s bald on top and white round the sides and wears half-moon glasses on the platform. Who wants an old giff like him?’

‘Eat your nice din-dins,’ Atherton said sympathetically.

She picked up her knife and fork, but passion drove her on. ‘I know what it’s really about. They want to bring in Dane Jackson, who was Young Musician of the Year last year, because he looks like Nigel Kennedy, and he can do all that fast-fingering, pyrotechnic stuff they teach in College now. Never mind that he can’t actually make a nice
sound
on the thing. They don’t teach that any more.’

‘Careful, dear, you’re sounding bitter,’ Atherton said.

‘Why shouldn’t I? All these kids coming out of College have got technique to die for, they can play things most of us couldn’t get near, but they’re not orchestral players. They don’t know how to fit in and, what’s more, they don’t want to. Brian knows every piece in the repertoire and a thousand that aren’t, he knows how to get the right sound at the right moment, and he can adapt to any first trumpet’s playing so that they sound like one. Dane Jackson loves himself first, the music a poor second, and the ensemble way down the list. If he plays in a Mozart symphony, he’s going to make sure what you hear above all else is Dane Jackson.’

‘But if it’s what the audience wants,’ Slider said doubtfully, ‘I suppose it has to be. They’re the ones buying the tickets.’

‘I can’t argue with that,’ she said abruptly, and addressed herself to her chicken.

‘You agree?’ Slider said, surprised.

She grinned over a forkful. ‘I didn’t say I agreed, I said I couldn’t argue with it.’

‘Let’s pick up the phone, here, and dial for Ronnie Real,’ Atherton said expansively. ‘We’re talking what’s Now. And Now is about Image. Youth is Cool, and Cool is where it’s at. Okay?’

‘You think you’re joking,’ Joanna snorted. ‘You should hear them at the meetings!’ She sighed. ‘They’re all so bloody earnest and humourless, that’s the worst thing. When I think of some of the old characters who were around when I first started playing—’

‘Here it comes,’ Atherton said to Slider. ‘Anecdote Alert!’

‘Another Bob Preston story,’ Slider agreed.

‘Well, why not? I feel like a treat,’ she said defiantly. ‘We were doing a recording of the Capriccio Italienne, and of course there’s that really fiendish cornet bit in it: fast, A-transposition and full of accidentals.’ She da-da’d the phrase, and Atherton, at least, nodded. ‘Anyway, every time we got to it, Bob fluffed it, and finally after about five takes the conductor looked across and said sarkily, “First cornet, would you like me to take it slower for you?” Bob says, “No, actually, could we do it a bit faster, please?” The conductor looks amazed. “But could you play it faster?” he says, and Bob says, “No, but it’d be a shorter fuck-up.”’ She sighed. ‘I loved that man!’

Atherton fetched the pudding, and they got on to discussing the case.

‘I think Porson’s right to let him go,’ Slider said. ‘The old man may be a bit strange, but he knows his onions. Being held by us was probably just enough punishment to keep Andrews comfortable. Being all alone in the house – the house he built for her – may work on his guilt and bring him to the point of remorse where he has to confess.’

‘But he didn’t kill her at home, did he?’ Joanna said.

‘We didn’t find anything to show that he did,’ Slider said. ‘The trouble is, if he didn’t kill her in the privacy and comfort of his own home, where did he do it?’

‘In the cab of his pickup is the next best bet,’ Atherton said. ‘But it could equally well have been in the long grass or round the back of the bike sheds. We just don’t know.’

‘Not on a hard surface,’ Slider said, ‘or the back of her head would have been bruised or abraded. Of course, since she was found lying in the earth, the presence of earth or grass on the back of her clothes and hair wouldn’t tell us anything.’

‘But wherever he killed her,’ Joanna said, ‘how did he transport the body? I suppose if the handbag was in the pickup, it suggests the body was too.’

‘It could be. But that’s another problem: why didn’t the neighbours on that side of the house hear the pickup driving up?’

‘Oh, come on,’ Atherton objected. ‘Who pays any attention to the sound of traffic? Your brain edits it out.’

‘But the sound of crunching gravel—’

‘Well, he’d be nuts to drive it over the gravel,’ Atherton said impatiently. ‘He’d park it on the road.’

‘He’d
still have to walk over the gravel – and with a body over his shoulder,’ Slider said. ‘Surely they’d hear that? It’s the point of gravel – it’s an alarm system.’

‘Couldn’t he have got to the terrace any other way?’ Joanna asked.

‘Up through the garden,’ Slider said.

‘But that would mean crossing someone else’s garden first,’ Atherton said. ‘There’s a footpath at the end of the row, but there’s three houses between it and the Rectory. That’s four fences to get the body over. Of course it’s possible, but would anyone?’

‘Where does the footpath go to?’ Joanna asked.

Slider raised his eyebrows. ‘To the railway footbridge. But of course, good point! From there he could have got onto the railway embankment, which runs parallel with the gardens: only two fences, and cover in between. Maybe we oughtn’t to get too hung up on the pickup.’

Atherton cocked his head. ‘Time for a general appeal for witnesses, do you think?’

‘We haven’t enough manpower to extend the house-to-house much further,’ Slider said, ‘and Porson’s already burbling about budget restraints. Yes, maybe it’s time to ask him to go public. But on a limited scale – local television, perhaps. We don’t want sightings from Aberdeen and Abergavenny clogging up the system.’

‘Why don’t
you
ever do the TV appeals?’ Joanna said, slipping a hand on his thigh under the table. ‘It’d be a feather in my cap having a celeb for a lover. Your handsome face all over the silver screen—’

‘Not in these trousers,’ Slider said firmly. ‘I’m a private man and I intend to stay private. Det sups get the big money – they can have the exposure as well.’

‘Mr Modesty!’

Atherton was still musing. ‘What I can’t understand is why he retouched the makeup. It seems to me that, if Freddie’s right about that, it’s a point against its being Eddie. If he was going to bury her in concrete, it wouldn’t matter what she looked like.’

‘It is odd,’ Slider acknowledged. ‘Maybe the oddest thing about the whole business.’

‘But, to my mind, it’s only her husband who
would
do a thing like that,’ Joanna said. ‘Why would anybody else care what she looked like? It’s a strange, obsessive kind of thing to do. I can imagine him plotting the murder, carrying it out, and then brooding over the body – you know, like those chimps that won’t be separated from their dead babies and keep on licking and grooming them.’

‘I see your reasoning,’ Slider said. ‘But is he obsessive in that way?’

‘Don’t ask me, I’ve never met the bloke,’ Joanna said. ‘But if he says he loved her, and she was a bad hat, maybe that was enough to make him obsessive.’

‘How much of a bad hat we’ve still to discover,’ Slider said, and looked towards Atherton. ‘You know, I’m wondering if there wasn’t something between her and Meacher. Given the way she was with Potter, her other boss – and the availability of empty houses to do it in.’

‘Eddie says Meacher sometimes asked her to work at weekends, and he obviously didn’t like it,’ Atherton agreed cautiously.

‘Maybe that was just an excuse. I got the feeling Meacher was keeping something back from me, and he’s never come in with the list of where he was that afternoon. There’s something about that man I don’t like.’

‘I thought it was everything about him you didn’t like,’ Atherton said. ‘The ordinary bloke’s hatred of the man of style and taste—’

‘None of your sauce,’ Slider countered. ‘You forget I have it in my power to retaliate. There are jobs and jobs, and I’m the one who gives ’em out. For instance, Andrews’ pickup had an oil leak – left stains on the ground where it was parked. Now that might give us a clue as to where it was on Tuesday night.’

Atherton rolled his eyes. ‘No! Mercy! You want me to go and investigate every oil patch in west London? I don’t have the stomach for it! I don’t have the trousers for it!’

‘Well, just watch your lip, then,’ Slider warned. ‘And go and get my coffee. Can’t you see I’ve finished?’

Atherton jumped up, cowering, grabbed the plates and shuffled out, one shoulder hunched and his left leg dragging.

Joanna replaced her hand on Slider’s thigh. ‘I love it when you’re masterful,’ she said, batting her eyelids. ‘Would you like to sleep with me tonight?’

‘I’ll think about it,’ he said lordly-wise, but his smirk gave him away.

Morning streamed into Slider’s office to fidget with his hangover and remind him that nothing worthwhile was ever had without payment. They had been drinking brandy late into the night, and he was beginning to think brandy didn’t agree with him. Certainly morning had come too soon and was being far too loud about it. Still, at least the windows were decently grey again, now that the awful cleanliness of the Barrington era had worn off. Det Sup Porson had a proper respect for crud. Dirty windows saved on net curtains.

He was talking to Atherton when Mackay came in with the long-promised cup of tea.

‘You took your time,’ Slider grumped.

‘Sorry, sir. I got sidetracked,’ he said, putting the cup down without taking his eyes from the typesheet in his hand. Slider sighed and patiently poured the slops back into the cup and found a paper hanky to wipe the cup’s bottom. ‘I left yours on your desk, Jim,’ Mackay said.

‘Safest place,’ Atherton said.

‘The thing is, guv,’ Mackay went on, ‘it’s these phone numbers. Mrs Andrews’ car phone. On the Tuesday she made two calls to a number that turns out to be David Meacher’s mobile. The first was a short one at one fifty-five – lasted only thirty-five seconds. The second was a long one – nineteen minutes. Cost her a small fortune – or would’ve,’ he corrected succinctly. ‘That was at eighteen thirty-one.’

‘Half past six in people-time,’ Atherton translated.

Slider reflected. ‘Well, there’s no reason she shouldn’t phone
her boss, I suppose. I wonder where she was, though, and why it couldn’t wait until she got home? Any others?’

‘Well, I dunno if it means anything, but about half past five she phoned a number that turns out to be the vicarage of the vicar that does the church in St Michael Square.’

‘The Rev. Alan Tennyson,’ Atherton said.

‘That’s right. Well, we know she was very inty at the church, so there’s nothing funny about that, but I did wonder—’