Shallow Grave (2 page)

‘And presumably his hole,’ Atherton suggested.

‘That’s right,’ McLaren said, with a world of significance. ‘He got here very early this morning – earlier than usual – but, bad luck for him, the lady of the house was up even earlier and found the body before he could concrete her in. The plastic sheet was apparently pulled right over, bar a corner that’d blown back, when she found it. It was like it is now when I got here.’

‘Householder’s name?’

‘Mrs Hammond. Lives here with her old dad. Norma’s inside with ’em – I picked her up on my way here.’ He gestured towards the uniformed constable, Defreitas, guarding the body. ‘Daffy’s got all the gen about Andrews. He lives round here.’

‘On a PC’s salary?’ Atherton said disbelievingly.

‘Well, not on the estate
as such,’
McLaren admitted, ‘but only just round the corner. Woodbridge Road. Anyway, he knows this geezer Andrews.’

‘All right, let’s have a look,’ Slider said. He went over to the hole and hunkered down. The victim was lying on her back. She had not been tumbled in, but laid out carefully as though in a coffin, decently composed, her clothes straight, feet together, hands folded one on the other. She was a slim woman in her thirties with well-cut blonde hair (helped, to judge from the roots, but not by all that much), wearing a short-sleeved, fitted dress of navy cotton with a red leather belt, bare legs and strappy leather sandals. She had full make-up on, rather on the heavy side, Slider would have thought, for a woman as attractive as she must have been; and her finger- and toe-nails were painted red to match the belt. Her eyes were closed, and there were no obvious marks of violence on her. She might have been fresh from the mortician’s parlour.

‘Expensive scent,’ he said. Even after however long it was lying out in a trench, it had lasted well enough for Slider’s sensitive nose to catch it. He felt her hand: it was cold and stiff.

‘Expensive jewellery,’ Atherton said, looking over his shoulder. She was wearing a wedding-ring and an engagement hoop with five large diamonds, a sapphire and diamond dress ring of more expense than taste, a rather nice gold watch and three gold chains of varying thickness around her neck. ‘I wonder why he didn’t take them off? The rings and the watch at least. Shame to bury them in concrete.’

‘He says he didn’t do it,’ Defreitas offered.

‘Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?’ Atherton said.

Slider stood up. ‘Things must be on the up in the building trade.’

‘It’s a good area for it,’ Defreitas said. ‘Lots of work – quality stuff, and no trouble about payment.’ Something about his voice made Slider look up, and he noted that Defreitas seemed upset.
He was pale, and there was a rigidity about his expression that suggested he was holding himself firmly in check. His cheek muscles trembled with the effort of control, but he went on steadily, ‘Eddie’s been doing all right for himself. Just built himself a big new house, down the end of Woodbridge Road. Corner of the main road. Fourways, it’s called.’

‘Yes, I know it,’ Slider said. He had passed it often over the months while it was being built in what had been the back garden of a big Edwardian house: the Curse of Infill. He had noticed it because it had irritated him that it was called Fourways when it was on a T-junction, not a crossroads.

‘Supposed to be really smashing inside,’ Defreitas said. ‘Built it for her.’ He moved his head slightly towards the body, but without looking at it. ‘Her name’s Jennifer.’ He stopped and swallowed a couple of times. Some men couldn’t bear a corpse, even such a seemly and undamaged one as this.

‘Take it easy, lad,’ Slider said. ‘You’ll see worse in a long life.’

Defreitas swivelled his eyes towards Slider and then away again. He was a good-looking youngster, with brown eyes and a lean face and the sort of vigorous, slightly fuzzy tight brown curls that look like pubic hair. ‘I know, sir. But it’s different when it’s someone you know, isn’t it?’

‘What do you know about Jennifer Andrews?’ Slider asked.

‘She works – worked – part time for David Meacher – you know, the estate agent? – and she did part time at the pub, too. The Goat In Boots, I mean,’ he added conscientiously, ‘not the Mimpriss Arms.’ That was the estate’s own pub, built at the same time as the houses: draughty and uncomfortable, an overblown, over-quaint thing of pitch-pine and vaulted ceilings, like the fruit of an illicit union between a village hall and a tithe barn. ‘The Mimpriss is a bit rough sometimes. The Goat’s where the nobby people go. It’s got a restaurant and everything. You know, a posh one –
nouveau cuisine
and all that.’

‘How well do you know Andrews?’ Slider asked.

‘Just to say hello to,’ Defreitas said. ‘I’ve seen him in the Goat sometimes. He seems a nice bloke. I’ve heard people say he’s a good builder.’

‘You drink in the Goat?’

He seemed embarrassed by the implication. ‘Well, I used
to mostly go to the First And Last in Woodbridge Road, but they’ve got music there now and a lot of young kids come in. The Goat’s nice and quiet, more like a village pub. Local people like it quiet. They don’t like the Mimpriss – lets the tone of the estate down, they say.’

‘They’re not going to like having a murder here, then,’ Atherton observed.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Defreitas said. ‘A murder like this—’ He swallowed again. ‘It’s quite a toney crime, really. They’ll all want to be in on it.’

‘No trouble getting them to talk, then?’ Slider said.

‘Getting ’em to stop, more like,’ Defreitas said succinctly.

‘Doc’s here, guv,’ McLaren called.

Out in the road Slider could see reinforcements arriving and the photographer’s van drawing up too. A group of onlookers was gathering on the pavement. ‘Get some crowd control going,’ he told McLaren. ‘And we’d better get Andrews back to the shop before the press arrives.’

‘When murder comes, can the
Gazette
be far behind?’ Atherton enquired rhetorically. ‘D’you want me to take him? I can have a crack at him while he’s still warm. He’s obviously number one suspect.’

Slider turned to look at him.

The morning sun shone on Atherton’s face, illuminating the fine, deep lines, that looked as though they’d been grooved with an etching tool, and the indefinable bruised look that Slider associated with people who have been gravely ill. Atherton had not long been back at work, after an extended leave during which there had been doubt as to whether he would come back at all. His knife wound had been slow to heal; and there was the psychological wound as well. But Atherton was not the only one affected by the incident. For some weeks Slider had been obliged to consider the prospect of carrying on in the Job without Atherton, and to face the unwelcome realisation that he didn’t want to.

That touched more than vanity. It was dangerous to be dependent on someone else in that way, and Slider had always thought of himself as self-sufficient. In a long career as a policeman he had made many working alliances and had had some very good partnerships, but he had never allowed himself
to become attached to any colleague as he had to Atherton in the past few years. Atherton’s wounding and long sick-leave had forced him to realise how strong that attachment had become, and it scared him a little. He had coped with losing his wife and children to Ernie Newman, a man who could have bored for England; had coped – just – with losing his new love, Joanna, before he got her back again. But those traumas were in the social side of his life, and early in his career he had learned to keep the two sides separate. The Job was much the larger part of his existence.

It was not just that Atherton was a good bagman – anyone competent could learn his ways and fill those shoes; it was that he helped him to keep a sense of proportion about it all, something that got harder as time went on. Oh, he could do the job without Atherton, of course he could; it was just that, when he thought about it, really got down to it and looked it in the face, he felt an enormous disinclination to bother. Perhaps he was war-weary; or perhaps it was just the fleeting years. They were none of them, the Boy Wonder included, what they had been. But he had felt that if Atherton didn’t come back, it would be time to empty his Post Office savings book and go for that chicken-farm in Norfolk.

Well, the boy was back; but looking fragile. Only yesterday Porson, the new detective superintendent who had taken over from Little Eric Honeyman, had stopped him on the stairs and asked him how Atherton was ‘shaking out’. It was one of those maddening Porsonisms: it was obvious what he meant, but how did he get there? Did he think he was saying shaping up, shaking down, or working out? Or had he in mind even some more obscure metaphor for settling down, like Atherton shaking dusters out of the window, or shaking a pebble out of his shoe? Porson used language with the neatness and efficiency of a one-armed blind man eating spaghetti.

Slider had answered him optimistically; things were quiet and there was nothing even a fragile Atherton, given his gargantuan intellect, couldn’t cope with. But now here they were with a murder shout, and who knew where that might lead? If there was any likelihood of rough stuff, Slider had already determined, he would make sure Atherton was kept well away from it. But the trouble was, these days, you couldn’t necessarily predict the
direction the rough stuff would come from. You might knock on any ordinary door and meet Mr G. Reaper in the shape of some crazed crack-head with half a Sabatier set clutched in his germans. And that was the worry, of course, that would wear you down. It was one thing to go into a known dangerous situation, with your body-armour, back-up and adrenaline all in place. But the creeping anxiety that any closed door and street corner, any routine roust, sus or enquiry, could suddenly turn bad and go for your throat, was unmanning. Slider wished he knew how Atherton was feeling about that; but Atherton had not brought up the subject, and Slider would not touch on it uninvited.

Atherton had noted his hesitation, and now said, with dangerous patience, ‘I don’t think he’ll turn nasty, but if he does, I’m sure Willans will protect me.’

Now the pressure was on Slider not to seem to be coddling Atherton, so he agreed. And then, of course, because Atherton had put the thought in his head, he started wondering whether Andrews would turn violent after all. This friendship business was a minefield, he thought resentfully, and went to meet the doc.

It was not, however, the duty police surgeon, but Freddie Cameron, the forensic pathologist, in all his splendour.

‘What’s this – short of work?’ Slider asked.

‘I’m actually nearer than Dr Prawalha,’ Cameron explained. ‘I don’t mind, anyway: if I’m going to be doing the doings, I’d just as soon see everything for myself while it’s untouched.’

‘You don’t need to apologise to me,’ Slider said, ‘except for looking so disgustingly brown.’

‘It was only Dorset,’ Cameron protested. ‘The Madam’s got a sister in Cerne Abbas. Lovely place, as long as you don’t suffer from an inferiority complex. What have you got for me?’

Slider took him to the trench. In accordance with procedure Cameron pronounced life extinct, but offered no suggestion as to the cause of death. ‘There’s nothing at all to see. Could be drugs of some sort, or even natural causes – heart, or a stroke. Can’t tell until I get her on the table. Presumably she died elsewhere and was transported here?’

‘Unless it was suicide and she took the precaution of lying
down neatly in her grave first. And then covered herself with the tarpaulin.’

‘Those questions I leave to you, old dear,’ Freddie said, and shook his head. ‘Don’t like this sort of case. Too much room for error.’

‘Dead men don’t sue,’ Slider comforted him. ‘Can you give me an approximate time to be working on?’

‘Well, she’s cold to the touch and stiff, but there’s still some warmth in the axilla. It was a warm night, wasn’t it? And she’s been sheltered down this hole. Could be six to eight hours. Could be more. Probably not less than six.’

‘Late last night, early this morning, then?’ Slider said.

‘Is that enough to be going on with? I’ll have a better idea from the temperature, but I don’t want to do a stick here when I’ve no idea of the cause of death. You never know what evidence you might be destroying. Do you know who she is?’

‘She’s Jennifer Andrews, wife of local builder Edward Andrews.’

‘He the one who dug the hole?’ Freddie asked. ‘Ah, well, there you are, then.’

‘Here I am then where?’ Slider asked, resisting the obvious.

‘Whoever put her in here took the trouble to lay her out nicely,’ Freddie said. ‘So presumably it was someone who cared about her.’

‘Could be remorse,’ Slider pointed out.

‘Comes out the same.’ Freddie shrugged.

‘Get on with your own job, Sawbones, and leave the brainy stuff to me.’

Cameron chuckled. ‘You’re welcome to it.’

A small door from the terrace let Slider into a coats lobby sporting an array of wax jackets, waterproofs, overcoats, shapeless hats, walking sticks, a gardening trug, a fishing basket, rods in a canvas carrying sheath, green wellies, muddy shoes and an extra long canvas-webbing dog-lead. A narrow door with opaque glazed panels gave onto a loo, an old-fashioned one with a high seat and a stout pipe going up the wall behind it to the overhead cistern. That would give you a healthy flush, he thought. A third door passed him into the house. Here was proof that the Georgian elevation was only skin deep: he was in the beamed hall of a fifteenth-century house, going right up
into the roof-space. Some Victorian, during the Gothic revival, had added a massive oak staircase going round three sides of it, and an open gallery on the fourth providing access to the rooms on the upper floor, giving it a sort of baronial-hall look; but the wood of the beams was silvery and lovely, and it worked all right.