Body Line

FOURTEEN

Beauty in the Eye of the Beer Holder

‘You’d better go yourself,’ Porson said. ‘Normally I’d disignore this James Bond bollocks as so much fantasy, but given that the Aude female was offed as soon as she raised her head, we can’t afford to assume there’s no threat to the wife. Otherwise we ought to involve the local police, out of courtesy if nothing else. But the less people know about this the better. What about this Maricas?’

‘I think Rogers got lucky. I’d say he was a hundred per cent. It seems to me that Rogers picked him because he was the first solicitor he saw – the office is very eye-catching when you turn into that road—’

‘But what was he doing on that road in the first place when he lives in Shepherd’s Bush?’

‘It’s the first major turning off the main road when you’re coming from Stanmore,’ Slider said. ‘There’s got to be some connection with Stanmore, but if it isn’t the Cloisterwood, I don’t know what it was.’

‘Well, don’t raggle your brain about that now. The wife might know. She might know everything, in fact. What else have you got to follow up?’

‘Swilley’s going after the agency – trying to find out how it’s financed.’

‘You think that’s important? You still think Sturgess is involved?’

‘We haven’t got any other suspects. And the presence of a new wife makes her more interesting.’

‘The presence of a new will leaving everything to the new wife makes Sturgess less of a suspect,’ Porson pointed out.

‘If she knew about it. Rogers seems to have been at pains to keep it secret. And the old will left Sturgess everything.’

‘Point. Anything else?’

‘I want to have a look round Rogers’s house, see if I can find that safe.’

‘You’d better do that before you go and see the wife. Might be all sorts of things in there.’

‘Yes,’ said Slider. ‘I thought I’d go now, and go down to Southwold early tomorrow. Sunday’s a good day to catch people in.’

‘Good thought.’ Porson’s brows lowered themselves in thought over his eyes. It made Slider think of someone in a cave drawing the branches down to hide the entrance. His pronouncement eventually was, ‘Be careful. Rogers could have been a fantastacist, or he could have been involved with some foreign secret service, or industrial espionage, or smuggling. But whatever it was, they’ve shown themselves to be ruthless. Don’t dick about with your safety or the woman’s.’

‘I’ll be careful,’ Slider said.

But first, to the house in Hofland Crescent, where Slider and Atherton were met by their expert on safes and safe-cracking, Bill Adams, inevitably known as ‘Burglar Bill’. He was a big man with a big presence, shrewd eyes, and the hands of a surgeon, an analogy improved by the presence of a stethoscope poking out of the top of his kit bag.

‘But first we have to find it,’ Slider said, to curb his eagerness to get cracking. ‘It can’t be anywhere too obvious or Bob Bailey’s lot would have stumbled across it.’

‘Essence of a hidden safe,’ Adams said, ‘is that you don’t stumble across it. Though it’s amazing how often people choose the obvious places. There’s a sort of psychology that wants your friends to know you’re important enough to have one. It’s showing off.’

‘Well, our Dirty Doc was a whale on showing off,’ Atherton said. ‘Where do you recommend we start looking?’

‘Leave it to me,’ Adams said, with an air of rubbing his hands. ‘I like a challenge. Though it probably won’t be much of one.’

It was interesting to walk round behind him as he checked the usual places – peeping behind paintings, lifting rugs, examining cupboards. The dressing-room got him interested because there was a lock on the door – ‘Why would anyone want to lock up their suits?’ – but in the end he found it in the bathroom. The presence of a false wall was not in itself suspicious, he explained, because there were all sorts of pipes to be hidden, but this one was on the wrong side of the bathroom. The mirror over the basin was the sort that turned out to be a shallow cupboard containing medicines and spare razor blades; but the whole cupboard was further hinged and swung out from the wall, revealing the safe sunk into the space between the false wall and the brickwork.

‘Nice,’ Adams said. ‘Not seen that one before. And cute – your average burglar wouldn’t think of the bathroom.’

‘And private,’ Slider added. ‘If there was anyone else in the house – as there often was, Rogers being fond of female company – he could go in there and lock the door to access it without anyone wondering.’

‘Right enough,’ Adams said. ‘I hadn’t thought of that aspect.’

‘Now you’ve found it, can you open it?’

‘Oh yes,’ Adams said easily. ‘It isn’t a serious safe. Concealment was the real security. I’ll have it open for you in a brace of shakes.’ Shortly afterwards, a satisfying clunk having been heard from the door, Adams stepped back and said, ‘Be my guest.’

Slider hardly knew what he had expected to find in the safe, apart from a copy of the will. That, however, was not there: what was there was was money, cash, in fifties and twenties, bundled and held together some by rubber bands and some by paper sleeves.

‘Well,’ said Atherton appreciatively.

‘What’s your boy done – robbed a bank?’ Adams asked after a windless whistle.

‘I wish it were that simple,’ Slider said.

‘We did keep hearing that he paid cash for things,’ Atherton remembered. ‘So this was where he kept it. Got to be ill-gotten gains – you don’t keep your money in the house, unless you’re a barmy old lady with fourteen cats.’

‘Presumably he was paid in cash,’ said Slider, ‘for whatever it was he was doing. Or partly in cash.’ He removed the bundles, doing a rough count as he went. There was close on a hundred thousand in there.

‘Talk about your mad money,’ Atherton said. ‘So what now?’

‘We take it into safe keeping,’ Slider said. ‘Until we find out where it came from. If it isn’t dirty, the widow gets it. Look around for a bag, will you. There’s probably something in the dressing-room that will do.’ He turned to Adams. ‘Will you just check round the rest of the house, in case he had two safes? I’m going to have a walk round, in case there’s anything else of interest.’

Swilley was in his room when he got back, to report that she had made contact with Angela Fraser, who was ‘more than willing’ to help out.

‘She loves it that someone’s taking her seriously, poor cow,’ she said with scant sympathy. ‘She’s pretty sure she can get a look at the books on Monday. Amanda’s apparently not coming in, and she can do it when Nora goes to lunch and she’s alone in the office. I’ve told her to be careful, but I think she would have been anyway – she’s scared shitless of Amanda at the best of times.’

‘Does she know what to look for?’

‘Anything about how the place is financed, a list of donors, a rough idea of how much comes in and how much goes out, anything that Amanda draws personally.’

‘That should do it.’

‘And if she can get it into a conversation with Nora, she’s going to ask how the agency was set up, where the money came from.’

‘Good. And you’re liaising with her how?’

‘She’s going to ring me on Monday when she goes out for her lunch – she goes when Nora comes back.’

He got home late and tired to find a family game of Monopoly going on before the fire, with Joanna, Matthew and Kate on the floor and his father in the armchair, leaning forward to shake the dice on to the board.

‘What a wholesome picture,’ he said. ‘You look like an advert for Bournvita.’

‘What’s Bournvita?’ Kate asked.

‘It’s a chocolate biscuit,’ Matthew told her.

‘No, that’s a Bourbon,’ Mr Slider corrected. ‘Hello, son. Hard day?’

Slider nodded. Joanna had got up and came to kiss him, giving him a quick look of concern.

‘Yuk!’ Kate shouted. ‘Get a room, you two.’

‘Is that all the hello I get from you, brat?’ Slider said. ‘No kiss, no hug?’

‘It’s my turn next,’ she excused herself. ‘Come on, Grandad. Hurry up and move. You’ve landed on the Strand.’ She snatched up the dice even before Mr Slider had finished moving his boot. She was very competitive, whatever she played – and lucky. Slider could see she had the biggest piles of money in front of her, and would have betted that she owned Park Lane and Mayfair, which both sported threatening hotels.

Slider looked across at his son, who smiled his small, reserved smile, and said, ‘’Lo, Dad.’

Slider longed to hug him, or at the very least to brush the hair back from his brow. But Matthew was at the age when any physical contact or exhibition of affection was excruciatingly embarrassing and likely to be responded to with a shamefaced, ‘Gerroff!’

‘How’s it going?’ Slider asked him.

‘She’s winning,’ he said.

‘I bet she’s the top hat, as well,’ Slider said.

‘Yeah,’ said Matthew. ‘Miss Moneybags.’ And they shared a warming look of complicity.

‘Have you eaten?’ Joanna asked him.

‘Have you?’ he countered.

‘We waited a bit, but the children were hungry, so we ate about half an hour ago. I’ll get you something.’

‘Oh no!’ Kate wailed, looking up from landing on Community Chest and taking a card. ‘You can’t stop the game.’

‘I won’t be long,’ Joanna said. ‘You can take my goes.’

‘It’s not the same. It’ll spoil it!’

Slider remembered the passion of childhood for the moment in hand, the outrage that grown-ups didn’t care in the same way. ‘I can get myself something. You sit down and play.’

‘No, I’ll do the getting. You sit down and play, take over my hand,’ Joanna said firmly. She was right, of course. The children wanted to be with him – and he wanted to be with them, too, only he was tired and his head was full of the Rogers case and it was hard to summon up enthusiasm for Monopoly against that background. But he saw so little of them, he must make the effort.

‘As long as I don’t have to be the thimble,’ he said, sitting down.

Kate looked into the box. ‘You can be the battleship, Daddy. No one’s being that yet. And it’s your go next.’ Suddenly she gave him a dazzling smile, and reached over and pecked him on the cheek, and his heart melted. She so rarely handed out favours, and for a very different reason from Matthew – his was diffidence, hers was a liking to be in control. She was utterly self-absorbed and a manipulative little minx, which he supposed was par for the course these days, but it made such caresses as did come his way even more to be treasured.

‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ he said, smiling. ‘What was that for?’

‘It’s my birthday,’ she said. ‘Collect ten pounds from each player. Cough up, Daddy.’

When the game finally finished, Mr Slider went back to his own quarters and the children elected to watch television for an hour before bed. Slider finally got together with his beloved in the kitchen, where she did the washing up while he leaned against the wall watching her and having a small whisky, at her insistence, because she said he looked as though he needed it.

‘So what’s the bad news?’ she asked.

‘How do you know there’s bad news?’

‘Hey, it’s me,’ she said. ‘I can read you like a book.’

‘Probably not a best-seller,’ he said.

‘Best-sellers are overrated. You’re more like a much-loved classic you come back to again and again. You’re the Pride and Prejudice of husbands.’

He had to smile. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t you at least have made it something manly and full of testosterone-fuelled battles?’

‘What would a woman want with one of those?’

‘You have a point.’

‘So what’s the bad news?’ she reverted. ‘You have to work tomorrow?’

‘Got it in one. I have to go to Southwold.’

‘How long will that take?’

‘I don’t know. It’s about two and half hours to drive it. What happens then depends on what we find.’

‘We?’

‘Atherton’s going with me.’

‘Oh.’ She thought a moment. ‘Well, I half expected you wouldn’t be around. I thought, as it’s supposed to be nice tomorrow, we’d go and have a picnic in Kew Gardens, have a good run around, and look at the Steam Museum on the way back. I wonder if Emily would like to join us.’

He pushed himself off the wall, put his arms round her and kissed the back of her neck. She stopped washing up for a moment to turn her head to him. ‘What was that for?’

‘I can’t tell you how comforting it is that you don’t give me hell for having to work,’ he said.

‘What use would that be?’

‘No use. But some people would still give a person hell,’ he said. ‘Some people did.’

‘Silly. We don’t have enough time together as it is. Why waste it on hell?’

‘Wonder woman,’ he said, and let her go.

‘Is the case going to break soon?’ she asked. ‘Is that what the trip’s about?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I can only hope so.’

Kate appeared in the doorway, eyes everywhere. ‘Were you two smooching again?’

‘It’s only the second smooch of the evening,’ Joanna complained. ‘You make it sound like non-stop romance.’

‘Well it’s yukky when old people do it.’

‘I thought you were watching TV,’ said Slider pointedly.

‘Adverts,’ Kate said. ‘I’m hungry again. Is there any cake?’

Kate was always eating, and was as thin as a rake. Good genes – or a hyperactive metabolism. Or both. Irene was the same. Long may it last, Slider thought.

‘I could make everyone Bournvita,’ Joanna said. She and Slider exchanged an amused look.

‘I didn’t know you had any,’ Slider said. ‘Do they still make it?’

‘I’ve got hot chocolate. It’s much the same.’

‘Oh, yeah, hot chocolate,’ Kate said. ‘Cool!’

‘Not, it’ll be hot,’ Slider corrected.

Kate looked scornful. ‘You’re not a bit funny, you know,’ she said with imperishable dignity.

‘Southwold, the last posh seaside resort,’ Atherton said. ‘Houses here cost as much as in London.’

‘Didn’t I read somewhere that the government’s letting the coastal defences go?’

‘Yes, and they say the rivers on either side of Southwold will back up and refill the marshes and the town will become an island. At which point,’ Atherton said, ‘the townsfolk will probably rejoice. Well, we’ve got a nice day for it.’ The bitter north wind had dropped at last, and although it was overcast, at least it was dry. ‘It was nice of Joanna to think of inviting Emily to the picnic. She was a bit miffed that I was having to work.’

‘It’ll be nice for Jo as well,’ Slider said. ‘They’re going to play rounders after they’ve eaten, to wear the children out. It’s a bit like having dogs – now there’s no PT at schools you have to run them about until they’re exhausted at the weekend or they chew up the furniture.’

It continued overcast until they reached the turn-off for Southwold, which had its own microclimate: you could see a clear division in the sky all along the coast, grey to one side and blue to the other. The sea sparkled, deep blue, and the leaves were further along here, with the hedges greening and the oak already in olive-yellow curls. ‘I can see why people would want to live here,’ Slider said.

Atherton shuddered. ‘I’m with Norma on this one. There’s no life outside London.’ They were just entering the little town. ‘There’s Station Approach. Well, that was easy.’

Southwold had had a railway once, and at that time extra roads of late-Victorian and Edwardian terraced cottages and semis had been added around the ancient core of what would otherwise have remained effectively a village. A drive-past established that Rogers’s house was a semi in dark red brick, with a slate roof and bay windows on both floors, a typical 1890s house, solid and adaptable, of the type known as ‘London dog-leg’ which could be seen in suburbs all over the country.

Slider went past again and then found a place to park in the next street. ‘Did you see anyone about?’ he asked.

‘Anyone watching the place, you mean? No.’

‘All right. Let’s go. But keep your eyes peeled.’

Slider went alone up to the door, while Atherton stayed on the other side of the road, but there was no answer to his knock, and the place felt empty. He rejoined Atherton, looking at his watch. ‘It’s still church time. That might be where she is. I think we should wait for a bit and see if she comes back.’ There was a little scrap of green more or less opposite the house, with a bench, presumably for the convenience of people waiting at the bus stop there. They sat down. ‘Try not to look like a policeman,’ Slider said.

‘Try yourself,’ Atherton said. ‘I’ve got this.’ He pulled out a newspaper from his pocket and unfolded it.

‘Is that today’s?’ Slider said, surprised – they had started off early.

‘No, it’s yesterday’s. I haven’t read it yet. I thought I might have a chance to read it in the car, but it comes in handy now as a stage prop.’

‘As long as no one notices it’s yesterday’s.’

Atherton rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, please! Most people wouldn’t notice if their own leg dropped off.’

There were remarkably few people about, and very few cars, and it was pleasantly restful, Slider thought, sitting in the sunshine, which actually had quite a bit of warmth to it, and listening to the sparrows bickering in nearby hedges while Atherton read his paper. He leaned back and half-closed his eyes, hoping they looked like ordinary people. He saw no sign of anyone who might be a villain, no men sitting in parked cars or loitering purposelessly within sight of the house. He hoped there was not a more efficient and professional surveillance going on, but he doubted there would be. If they had been going to kill the wife as a risk, surely they would have done it at the same time as Rogers.

Fifteen minutes later a woman came along the pavement on the other side of the road, and Slider knew instinctively that it was their quarry, even before she slowed. She cast a nervous glance around, but it passed with hardly a hesitation over the man absorbed in his newspaper and the one dozing in the sun, and she stopped before Number 23 and reached into her handbag for her key.

‘It’s her,’ Slider said to Atherton without moving his lips. ‘Let me go first – don’t want to frighten her. Come over when I signal.’

Atherton observed with amused approval how Slider could move like a cat when he had to, was across the road in a flash and yet managed not to appear to be hurrying. The woman had her key in and the door was opening when Slider got up beside her, and Atherton saw her jolt with shock. But the guv was a very soothing and reassuring sort of bod. He was discreetly showing his warrant card, talking all the while, and the woman was looking at him with saucer eyes like a rabbit before a snake. Now she flicked a glance across at Atherton, nodded slightly; Slider gestured to him to come; and they went inside, leaving the door ajar for him.

They were in the hall when Atherton went in, shutting the door behind him. Slider was helping her off with her coat, he saw with amusement. Probably she had been at church. She wasn’t wearing a hat, but she had on a smart dress and coat, and plain, low-heeled shoes. She turned to look at Atherton with wide, anxious eyes.

‘This is my colleague, Jim Atherton,’ Slider said. Atherton proffered his warrant card, but she only glanced at it briefly: she had accepted Slider now, and therefore what came with him. She nodded to him, and turned her attention back to Slider.

She was quite a surprise to Atherton. He had expected a busty babe, if not a bimbo, or failing that, at least a sleek and high-powered beauty. This, after all, was the one of all the many that Rogers had actually married and wanted to leave everything to. But Helen Marie Aldous was nothing you would pick out in a beauty contest. She was not even terribly young – probably in her late thirties or early forties. She was around five-foot five, with an unremarkable figure – not fat, but solidly put together – and dark brown hair in the sort of practical, short, curled style that Atherton had heard Connolly describe as a ‘Mammy-hairdo’. As to her face, it was perfectly pleasant, but if the original Helen’s had launched a thousand ships, this one would have been looking at a couple of tugs and the Isle of Wight ferry, tops.

Mind you, he thought on further inspection, she might have gone up the shipping register a bit in better times. She had obviously been crying a lot recently, and not sleeping too well: her eyes were swollen and brown-bagged, and she wasn’t wearing any make-up. Her expression was doleful, and her pale mouth drooped at the corners, which made her look older. But even at her best she wasn’t going to be someone who turned heads. Had Rogers been drunk when he met her, or did she have other qualities which spoke to the man who so far, it had to be said, had shown the depth of a rapidly evaporating rain puddle when it came to women?

She was looking at Slider earnestly, as if ready to read the truth or otherwise in his face when she asked, ‘So it’s true then? He is – dead?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ Slider said with such gentleness even Atherton was touched. ‘I saw him myself.’

‘I wasn’t sure. There was just one mention in the paper, and then nothing. I thought it might be a trick. I suppose I didn’t want to believe it.’

‘I don’t know if it helps at all,’ Slider said, ‘but it would have been very quick. He wouldn’t have suffered. He wouldn’t even have known it was coming.’

She looked up at him consideringly. ‘No, I don’t think it does help. Not much. Not at the moment. But one day it might. All I can think of is that he’s not coming back. I’m never going to see him again.’ She stared at nothing for a blank moment, her face slack, her hands loose at her sides, and then came to life again, as though a faulty relay had reconnected. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘Thank you. That would be very welcome,’ Slider said. Atherton knew his methods: people with something to do with their hands talked more easily.

She led the way through the house. The stairs were straight ahead and the narrow hall dog-legged round them – hence the name for the style. There were two reception rooms on the left, one with the bay window to the front and the other with French windows to the back. At the end of the passage, straight ahead, was the original kitchen and scullery, which had been knocked together and had an extension added, to make one large kitchen-breakfast room. It was a very nice room, bright and sunny, with white walls and an oak floor, expensive modern fitments with granite work surfaces, and at the far end a large refectory table in the breakfast-room section, which had French doors on to the garden. A glance into the two rooms they had passed had shown them well furnished in an upper-middle-class taste. It was a comfortable house, the rooms were a good size, and it was no longer a surprise to Atherton that David Rogers had felt he could, at least partially, live here. It was certainly a lot more homelike than the Radisson Suites style of the Hofland Crescent house.

‘Can I help?’ Slider was saying.

‘No, I’m fine,’ Helen Aldous said. ‘Please sit down.’

Slider and Atherton sat at the table, one on either side, turning their chairs so they could face towards her, and she moved about, filling the kettle, putting it on, getting out teapot and tea caddy. ‘Do you mind mugs? And Earl Grey or builder’s?’

‘Mugs are fine,’ Slider said. ‘And builder’s, if you don’t mind.’

Atherton would have had Earl Grey for preference, but Slider always had his reasons so he just said, ‘Same for me.’

Slider, without even thinking about it, felt builder’s was the choice of the likeable and reliable man you could trust and tell things to. It seemed to work. She didn’t smile – she looked as though she’d never smile again – but she nodded as if in approval. Her movements about the room were brisk and capable. She didn’t slump in her misery, and Slider thought this was from old discipline. The way she walked and carried herself, the movements of her short-nailed hands, the awareness of her eyes – except in those pulled-plug moments of utter despair – all said ‘nurse’ to him.

‘Tell me how you first met David,’ he said. He wanted to get her talking while she was still busy with the tea-making, but he wanted it to be the easy stuff first. The more she told him before she got to the hard part, the more the hard part would flow.

‘That’s easy,’ she said. ‘He was a doctor and I was a nurse. We met at the Cloisterwood – that’s a private hospital in Middlesex.’

‘Yes, I know it,’ Slider said. His voice conveyed that there was nothing sensational at all in this revelation. ‘I didn’t know he worked there.’