Fell Purpose

FIFTEEN

Whores de Combat

The fish and chips definitely came under the category of Things That Sounded Like A Good Idea At The Time. The Chizzick Chippy – as they had taken to spelling themselves lately for inscrutable Lebanese reasons – did a rock and chips to die for, and during the short hours of the night Slider thought he was going to.

As Atherton had bought Emily a poke of chips to keep them company, it was natural for Slider to offer a drink to go with, and he happened to have some bottles of Marston’s Pedigree in the kitchen cupboard. By the time Joanna got back they had settled in for conversation. She wasn’t sleepy yet and wanted a beer too, and chip envy drove her to propose making herself a toasted cheese sandwich. Naturally Atherton, who cooked even better than he made love (according to his CV) jumped up chivalrously and offered to do the making. Pretty soon it was toasted cheese all round, which on top of the fish and chips was like signing a pact never to sleep again this side of the Apocalypse (which took place later in Slider’s large intestine).

They talked about the case of course, and the sad and interesting news that Zellah had been pregnant.

‘Maybe that’s why she suddenly wanted to see this Carmichael bloke,’ Emily said. ‘To persuade him to help her. Pay for an abortion, if nothing else.’ She looked round at them. ‘She must have been terrified, poor thing. Think of having to face a father like that, or having him find out! And from what you’ve said she wouldn’t have any money, or access to any. I don’t know whether she knew Carmichael was a drug dealer—’

‘I don’t know either,’ Slider said. ‘But it would have been apparent that he had a reasonable amount of money, anyway. His own flat, a very expensive motorbike . . .’

‘And she must have thought at least that he was cool and streetwise, the sort of person who would know how to arrange it.’

‘That’s a very good point,’ Joanna said. ‘Who else could she turn to?’

‘But she hadn’t rung Carmichael on her mobile since the beginning of June, and assuming for the moment that means she wasn’t seeing him, why would she think he’d believe it was his baby?’ Slider said. ‘And if it wasn’t, why would he help her?’

‘Well,’ said Joanna, ‘as to point one, how would she know how far along she was if she hadn’t seen a doctor? OK, she must have missed periods to suspect she was pregnant, and maybe she bought one of those kits at a chemist and tested herself, but she might not have been savvy enough to work it back to an exact date. She might have thought it was him, or at least thought it was possible. As to point two . . . I’ve forgotten what point two was.’

‘Why would he help her?’ Atherton supplied.

‘Oh. Well, as I said before, who else could she ask? If you’re desperate, you don’t worry too much about motivation. You just yell “help!”’

‘Carmichael’s the one I’d go to,’ Emily said. ‘In her situation,’ she added, intercepting Atherton’s look. ‘What did he say about it?’

‘Carmichael? About the pregnancy? We haven’t spoken to him about it yet,’ Slider said. ‘He didn’t mention it to us, which is odd, because it would make a much better reason for them to have had a big row, especially as he’s claiming he hadn’t been out with her since May, which would mean it wasn’t his.’

‘Maybe he chose May as the cut-off point for that very reason,’ Joanna said.

‘Maybe,’ Slider agreed. ‘But as a story it still makes more sense than this stuff about her meeting someone else, making a second date after the one with him.’

‘That,’ Joanna said, finishing the last crusty corner of her sandwich with obvious relish, ‘is so lame it might just be true.’

‘Anyway,’ Atherton said, ‘once we’ve got the DNA typed we can prove it was his baby, and then we’ve got him.’

‘Have you?’ Emily said.

They exchanged a long look; the sort that passes between people who have talked together so much they know each other’s thought processes.

‘I take your point,’ Atherton said. ‘We don’t all kill our firstborn. Even if it was Carmichael’s baby, it doesn’t mean Wilding didn’t find out and decide in a Biblical rage that Zellah had to die.’

‘Poor old Bible,’ Emily said. ‘It does get a bad press. Did she keep a diary?’

‘Not that we’ve found,’ Slider said. ‘But I suppose her father might have destroyed it.’

‘It’s just that it’s usual to mark in your diary when your period’s due . . .’

‘Don’t add more complications, please.’

‘I’m sorry to have to say it,’ Joanna said, ‘but in a small house like that, he may have been aware anyway that she hadn’t had a period for a couple of months. A period’s not an easy thing to keep secret when you share a bathroom.’

‘Yucky, but true,’ Atherton consented. ‘Well, we’ve got to find him first. And then of course there’s still Ronnie Oates, the Acton Strangler.’

‘I thought you’d ruled him out,’ Emily said.

‘Not at all. You can never be sure that someone irrational didn’t do something irrational, especially when his account of what he was doing is irrational,’ Atherton said. ‘And when you know he was on the spot. And has a predilection for seeing ladies wearing their tights round their necks. But then, who doesn’t? On which note,’ he stood up, ‘I think I’d better take you home.’

‘You give me so much confidence in my personal safety,’ Emily assured him.

‘Sometimes I’m ashamed to be a man,’ he said. ‘But if I switched now, I’d have to buy a whole new wardrobe.’

There was nothing like standing in for a major acid manufacturing plant to make you feel glad about being woken up early by a crying baby. He could have kissed little George – in fact he did, and whisked him away to change his nappy and make his breakfast. While he was busy, he heard Joanna go to the bathroom, and a few moments later she came into the kitchen, looking a little bleary, but ready to do her duty.

‘I’ll take over, if you like.’

‘I didn’t want you to wake up. I tried not to disturb you,’ Slider said.

‘Are you kidding me? It was like sleeping with a harpooned octopus in its dying throes. What was it? Indijaggers?’

‘Fish and chips, Marstons and toasted cheese.’

‘Sounds elegant to me.’

‘Not at that time of night.’

‘You always told me you could eat nails.’

‘That was then. This is now. I hate to mention it, but I’m not twenty-two any more.’

She slipped her body against his. ‘Now he tells me.’ They kissed. ‘Give me that spoon,’ she said when they untangled themselves. ‘You’re doing it all wrong. The food goes in through the mouth, not the nostrils.’

‘Now she tells me.’

‘Go and have your shower. I’ll make you breakfast with my other hand, show you how we women multi-task.’

He groaned. ‘Not breakfast. Please, never mention food to me again.’

‘Don’t be daft. I’ll make you some nice plain porridge, and you’ll feel better for it.’

She was right, of course. She always was. The porridge soaked up the molten asphalt in his stomach, and allowed him to take a couple of aspirin to clear his head; after which, though it was still early, he was ready to go in to the office and tackle the rest of the paperwork while it was still quiet, and before it drove him to despair.

‘I get to feel more and more like a faithless bureaucrat,’ he said, kissing her goodbye.

‘You know who’s a really sinister character that you haven’t investigated yet?’ Joanna said, following him to the door. ‘This rich banker type, Oliver what’s-his-face.’

‘Oliver Paulson.’

‘If you say so. From what you’ve told me, he seems to have known all the protagonists, but you’ve never asked him a single question.’

‘Only because we haven’t got round to it. He works in the City so he’d have to be an evening interview.’

‘If he was a suspect you’d go right to his office and winkle him out.’

‘But why should he be a suspect?’

‘He’s a mega-rich banker,’ she said in a logic-for-the-simple tone. ‘Everyone hates those. Like estate agents in the old days. Maybe it was his baby.’

He patted her shoulder. ‘You just keep thinking, Butch. That’s what you’re good at.’

‘I could think you under the table any day.’

In the quiet of his office without the phone ringing, he got through the leftover paperwork in record time, and felt chipper enough to go down and see Carmichael, to see if he could catch him off balance.

Carmichael was not happy. ‘You can’t keep me here,’ he fumed. ‘You’ve got nothing on me. You got to let me go. I know my rights.’

‘There’s the little matter of the drugs we found in your place,’ Slider reminded him.

His face fell like a lift in a disaster movie. ‘You said you were forgetting them.’

‘I may still do. If you co-operate fully.’

‘I co-operated! You bastard!’ He let loose with a mouthful.

‘Hey! Enough of that,’ Slider said. ‘Watch your lip. My people have to check your alibi, such as it is, which all takes time.’

‘What d’y mean, “such as it is”? I’ve told you—’

‘Yes, you’ve told me, but you haven’t given me anything concrete to cover the hours during which Zellah was killed. And you didn’t tell me,’ he added sternly, ‘that she was pregnant.’

Carmichael’s face was a picture. His mouth opened, but nothing came out. Messages worked across his eyes, trying to connect up with something in his brain. At last he managed, ‘But she . . . Pregnant? She never . . . It’s nothing to do with me!’

‘Come on,’ Slider said encouragingly. ‘You can’t tell me she didn’t tell you that. Isn’t that the whole reason she suddenly wanted to see you?’

‘No!’ he said strenuously. ‘She never said a word! I swear! Anyway . . .’ More mental conflict. ‘She couldn’t have been. Not by me.’

‘Don’t make me give you the talk your father should have had with you. The one where a girl and a boy do certain things together in the privacy of his flat.’

‘But I mean . . . why wouldn’t she tell me, if she thought it was mine? Anyway, I hadn’t seen her for months. How far on was she?’

‘Look, son,’ Slider said, avoiding that one, ‘a simple DNA test is going to establish that it was your child. Now, if you really didn’t know she was pregnant, I can see it’s going to be pretty upsetting to think you killed the baby along with her—’

‘I didn’t kill her! Why won’t you believe me? And if it was mine . . .’ Something occurred to him. His eyes widened. ‘I bet that’s who she was going to see afterwards – some other bloke she’d been banging. Going the rounds to see who she could palm the kid off on.’

‘Is that what the row was about?’ Slider asked smoothly. ‘She told you she was pregnant and you told her she was on her own? No use coming to you? You wouldn’t even pay for an abortion?’

He shook his head, suddenly thoughtful. ‘She would never have done that,’ he said. ‘She was, like, very religious. She’d never have had an abortion.’

‘What, even though she was terrified of her father? If it was a choice between telling him, and getting rid of it . . .’

‘No. You didn’t know her. She would never have done that,’ he said, quiet now. ‘And she didn’t tell me. I swear. If she had, I would have . . .I’d have helped her. I’d . . . I’d like a kid. I mean, I wouldn’t have wanted one right now, for choice, but if that’s how it had to be . . . I’d have helped. If it was mine. I’d have looked after her.’

‘You have a softer side to you, I see,’ Slider said, poking him for the reaction.

His face grew bitter. ‘Yeah, that’s a big laugh to you lot, isn’t it? Comes from the Woodley South, so he’s no good. Mother’s a smack-head prostitute, no dad, brought up on the street. It’s a big laugh someone like me would want a clean life and a family. Split your sides, why don’t you?’

‘Don’t come all pious with me, son. Clean life? You sell drugs,’ Slider reminded him.

‘To rich kids, who are going to buy them anyway. If they didn’t get ’em from me, they’d get ’em from someone else. At least I don’t rob ’em, or cut the charlie with something worse. Anyway, it’s not like they’re street junkies robbing old ladies for a fix. It’s just what they do to relax in the evenings after work, instead of having a drink. What’s the difference from that and selling booze in a pub?’

‘Selling alcohol isn’t illegal.’

‘And that’s your answer, is it?’ he said bitterly.

Actually, it was, but it didn’t help his present campaign, so he sidestepped the argument. Instead he said, ‘It makes much more sense that she told you she was pregnant, you had a row about it, she walked off, and later you met up again, had another row, and in the heat of the moment you strangled her. Come on, isn’t that really what happened? I know you’ve got a temper. She went on and on and on about it, just wouldn’t stop yacking, and then she started crying – they always turn on the waterworks to get their own way, don’t they? You suspected anyway she was trying to shove the kid off on you when she’d been seeing someone else, and when she started to get hysterical and make a scene – well, anyone would snap. Isn’t that what happened? Come on, you can tell me. Get it off your chest.’

No line had ever so singularly not worked. Carmichael looked at him, utterly unmoved, still thinking things out. Then he said quietly, ‘I bet you it was her dad. If he found out – well, he’d kill her. Literally.’

Slider sighed. ‘And after that he’d kill you. It’s lucky for you that you’re in here where it’s safe.’

Carmichael turned his face away, stony with something that Slider was horribly afraid was sorrow of some kind. He really didn’t want to like Carmichael, even the slightest bit. On the other hand, he found himself fairly convinced that he hadn’t known Zellah was pregnant, though quite where that got him he wasn’t sure.

As he was passing through behind the shop on his way back upstairs, Nicholls popped his head out and said, ‘Oh, Bill, there you are. There’s a guy wants to see you about the Wilding case.’

‘Did he ask for me by name?’

‘Officer in charge. But I think he’s pukka. Looks like a cit.’

Slider sighed. ‘All right. Shove him in . . . what’s empty?’

‘This time o’ day? All of them. Have number two – no one’s thrown up in that since the weekend.’

‘Always grateful,’ Slider said.

He was not sure, when he first caught sight of the man, that Nicholls’ description was accurate. He looked more like a nutcase than a cit, though Slider had to confess that that was mostly because the man was wearing shorts, and he had a pathological suspicion of grown men who wore shorts in urban areas. He was tallish, scrawny, in his forties, with scanty hair and, as if to compensate, a large beard, above which an all-weather tan matched the brown of the sinewy legs exposed between shorts and sandals.

‘The name’s Eden,’ he said briskly, extending his hand towards Slider.

Slider never liked touching members of the public if he could help it, and used his own hand to gesture the man to a seat, avoiding the contact.

‘Detective Inspector Slider. What can I do for you, Mr Eden?’

‘They tell me you’re the person in charge of the case – the murder – that poor girl on Old Oak Common? I thought it was my duty to come forward, though I don’t know whether my information will be of any help or not.’

‘You have information about Zellah Wilding?’

‘Yes, if that’s her name. At least, I suppose it was her I saw. On Sunday night.’

‘Why didn’t you come forward before now?’ Slider asked sternly.

The man bridled. ‘I’ve been away for a few days. I went away early on Monday and I’ve only just got back.’

‘How come you didn’t hear about it? Don’t you watch television or read the newspapers?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, sounding annoyed, ‘I’ve been walking in the Lake District, camping out, and no, I don’t read the papers when I’m away. I like to commune with nature and get away from civilization. And I must say I don’t like your attitude. It’s only when I saw the police tape round the area and my neighbour told me what had happened that I heard about it, and I thought perhaps my information might be useful to you. But I can go away right now if you’re going to talk to me like that.’

‘Please tell me what you know, Mr Eden. Whether you think it’s important or not. You say you saw Zellah Wilding on Sunday?’

‘I tell you, I don’t know if it was her,’ he said, unmollified. ‘I was coming home late on Sunday night. I’d been to see a friend for supper, and we’d sat talking longer than I realized, and I only just got the last train. I walked home from East Acton Station – I live in Braybrook Street, on the corner of Wulfstan Street?’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Well, I wasn’t really noticing anyone consciously, you understand, because I was thinking about my holiday, and thinking I’d better pack before I went to bed as I had to get up so early, and how I ought to set both alarm clocks, because I’m a sound sleeper, and I wasn’t going to get much sleep as it was because I was so late.’

‘Yes, I understand. Go on. What did you see?’

‘Well, when I turned into Braybrook Street there was a young girl sitting on the grass on the other side of the road, putting her shoes on. A girl in a very short skirt and one of those tops that leaves the middle bare.’

‘Did she have a pendant round her neck?’

He considered. ‘Yes, I think so. Some kind of ornament, some dangly thing. Anyway, she put her shoes on, then stood up, and just stood there, as if she was waiting for someone. She looked across at me as I came along, and I looked away – avoiding her eyes, you see, so I didn’t get a really good look at her. I took her for a prostitute, if you must know,’ he added, blushing again, ‘and I wanted to make sure she didn’t come over and bother me. Because they can be very nasty, especially if they’re drunk. Foul mouthed, you know. I don’t like bad language.’

‘Did she look drunk?’

‘I can’t really say. I didn’t stare at her. She looked the sort that might be drunk. Blonde hair, and those very high heels, and the skimpy clothes, like I said. Anyway, just then a car went past me, and she looked at it and started walking after it. It slowed down, and stopped under the railway bridge, and she went up to it.’

‘Did she run?’

‘No, just walked quite quickly, tottering on those heels, you know. When she reached it the door opened and she got in.’

‘Did you see who was in the car?’

‘Well, no. I wasn’t really looking, you see. I got the impression it was a man.’ He screwed up his face as if that would help memory. ‘In my mind it’s just a shape inside the car, but a bigger shape than if it was a woman. A tall man, probably. That’s all I can say.’

‘All right. So she got in the car, and it drove off?’

‘No,’ he said, sounding annoyed. ‘I didn’t say that. It didn’t drive off. She got in, and it just stayed there, under the bridge. It’s dark there, because there’s no street light nearby, so I thought it was another of those kerb crawlers. We had trouble that way a while back, people picking up prostitutes and doing it in their cars under the bridge. Disgusting! And leaving their condoms lying around afterwards for anyone to see! I complained to the police, if you want to know, and we had a patrol car come round at night for a couple of weeks and eventually they moved on, the girls did. That was back in the spring. It’s been all right since then. So I thought, hello, it’s starting up again. Which was why, when I went upstairs to my bedroom, I looked out of the window to see if the car was still there.’

‘And was it?’

‘Yes, it was. I was quite upset about it, I can tell you, thinking we were going to have all that trouble again, those foul-mouthed girls shouting things at you as you went past, making fun of you, throwing those things in the garden. One of them put one through my letter-box once, because I’d told her to clear off. Made me feel quite sick, having to deal with it. And once you’ve got them hanging around, the drug dealers come next, and your life isn’t worth living. So that’s why I was looking out from behind the curtain, with the light off, so they wouldn’t be able to see me. The car was still there, and as I watched, the door opened on the passenger side again and she got out – the same girl.’

He looked at Slider for encouragement.

‘Yes?’

‘And she sort of stumbled away from the car – trying to hurry, you know, over the grass, but in those heels – and she put her hands to her face, as if she was crying. Or she might just have been rubbing her eyes, of course, but given what happened later, maybe she was crying.’

‘What did happen later?’ Slider asked.

He stared. ‘Well, she was murdered, wasn’t she?’

‘You saw that?’

‘No!’ He was indignant. ‘You said she was murdered, not me.’

‘Please, just tell me what you saw,’ Slider said patiently.

‘Well, that’s all,’ Eden said reluctantly. ‘I stopped watching then. I mean, I wasn’t that interested. I didn’t know she was going to be murdered, did I? It wasn’t my fault.’

‘Of course not,’ Slider said soothingly. ‘Nobody said it was. You saw her get out of the car and run away—’

‘She didn’t run, really. Just sort of – hurried, but clumsily. Those heels . . .’

‘Quite. And did you see the man get out and follow her?’

‘No. I told you, I stopped watching. I’d only looked out to see if the car was still there, and she happened to get out at that moment. I didn’t want to see any more. I pulled the curtains and went to bed. In the morning the car was gone, of course, and I didn’t see her. I understand she – her body – was hidden in the bushes. But I left very early, and of course I turned the other way out of the house, towards the station, so I wouldn’t have been looking in that direction anyway.’

‘Can you tell me anything about the car? Make, colour, registration number?’

He looked regretful. ‘I’m not very good on cars. I don’t have one myself – never taken the test, as a matter of fact. I prefer walking, and trains for long distances. Much more rational mode of transport. The car is the curse of modern society in my opinion. All I can tell you is that it was medium sized – not a Mini, for instance, and not one of those Chelsea Tractors, either. Just an ordinary car – a saloon, do you call them? It was dark blue, I think. I didn’t notice the number plate, I’m afraid.’

‘Well, thank you,’ Slider said, with an inward sigh. ‘That does help. Can you give me an estimate of the time this happened?’

‘Well, as I said, I got the last train to East Acton, which got in just before one o’clock. You could look it up if you wanted to be absolutely accurate. It’s only a few minutes to walk home from there. Then when I got in, I pottered around a bit, got some things together, laid the table for my breakfast, so it might have been a quarter past or twenty past one when I went upstairs. Maybe half past one. I don’t think it could have been later than that.’

‘Right,’ said Slider. Given that they knew she had died before two o’clock, the moment when she stumbled from the car was probably the beginning of the last scene, and unfortunately the audience had drawn the curtain on it. ‘Did you see anyone else about on your walk home?’

‘Only the other people who got off the tube with me. I think there were three or four – half a dozen, perhaps – but they scattered outside the station. No one else came in my direction. Oh, there was a couple standing by the council sports changing rooms – you know that concrete block on the edge of the common?’

‘Yes, I know. A couple?’

‘Well, a youth and a girl. Kissing, and – you know, fondling each other.’

‘Could you describe them?’

‘Certainly not,’ he said. ‘I most definitely didn’t look in their direction. I just caught sight of them out of the corner of my eye. Once when I accidentally looked at a couple doing that, the boy came over and was very rude and aggressive, asking who I was staring at and threatening to “punch my lights out”. And I hadn’t even been looking at them, just glanced in their direction and away again. As if I would look! There’s nothing to interest me in human beings acting like dogs on heat, I can assure you! There’s all too much of it around. So I made very sure not to look at them.’

‘Were they still there when you looked out of your bedroom window?’

‘I don’t know. I couldn’t have seen them from my window because they were at the other end, on the side away from the road. I could only see them coming from that end. There always seems to be someone doing that sort of thing around the changing rooms,’ he added with a burst of annoyance. ‘Why they have to go there I can’t think. And if it’s not couples it’s groups of youths in those hooded tops, smoking and drinking lager and making a noise. I feel quite threatened sometimes, and it must be worse for my neighbours, some of whom are quite elderly. But the police don’t seem to want to do anything about it.’ He had red spots of indignation on his cheeks now. ‘Well, perhaps now there’s been a murder they’ll take our complaints more seriously. There was a time when, if you rang the police, they came round. Not any more.’

Much as Slider sympathized with people like him whose lives were made hideous by gatherings of youths, he didn’t want to get into that. He had one last question to ask.

‘So apart from the young couple kissing, did you see anyone else hanging around? A funny-looking little man perhaps?’ He described Oates.

‘No, no one else. Just the couple by the sheds, and the girl further along putting her shoes on.’

‘And I suppose you don’t know who the young couple are?’

‘Well, I’d have said so if I did,’ he said, with indignation again. He seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of it. ‘I have the feeling I’ve seen them around locally, but I couldn’t say more than that. As I said, I try not to look at people on the streets late at night. It doesn’t pay. But they likely would be local, wouldn’t they, at that time of night and on foot?’

‘Very likely. Oh, you weren’t passed by a motorbike, I suppose? Or did you hear one going round the streets nearby?’

‘No, not that I noticed. But there’s so much traffic all the time, I might not necessarily hear it if there was one. It’s a sound you learn to shut out. That’s one of the reasons I have to get away from time to time, to the wilderness, just me and nature in all its primitive glory. With my little tent and my backpack, I can go where I please, and get right away from so-called civilization. It restores me. I don’t think I could cope otherwise.’

Which was all well and good, Slider thought afterwards as he went away, for those not actually fighting in the front line. But at least now he had a more solid time; and he knew that the car under the railway bridge was involved. Which looked rather like eliminating both Carmichael and Ronnie Oates.

And that left Wilding, damn it.