Fell Purpose

SEVENTEEN

You Can’t Tell a Buck by its Clover

Porson was encouraging. ‘Rhodes wasn’t built in a day,’ he said. ‘Give yourself time. Keep on at him and he’ll crack eventually. They always do. In his position he wants to talk, you have to remember that. Meanwhile, find that evidence. Confession is one thing, but you can’t make huts without straw.’

Straw huts? Slider thought. Or straw hats? Or was the old man thinking in a subliminal way of the three little pigs, one of whom built his house of straw instead of bricks? Boy, you wouldn’t want to get lost in Porson’s mind without a miner’s lamp and a ball of string!

‘So what have you got to go on?’ Porson asked in conclusion.

Slider pulled himself together. ‘We’ve brought his car in. It’s a Ford Focus – dark blue, so that’s all right – and we’re going to look for soil or grass from the murder site. There’s an outside chance we might get something from the tights or the necklace chain. And we’re looking for more witnesses. If we can find someone who saw his car’s reg number at or near Old Oak Common . . .’

‘Hmm,’ said Porson, evidently unimpressed. ‘Better get that confession. What about the other two? Can’t keep cluttering up the cells with old suspects. I take it you’ve gone right off them?’

‘I think we can rule out Oates, sir. He can’t drive and he has no access to a car. And his confession seems to be more to do with Wanda Lempowski than Zellah Wilding. The problem with him is his confession. If we let him go now he’s going to repeat it to the press ad nauseam —’

‘—and stir up a hermit’s nest, yes. Well, no need to show everyone our hand. You can hold him for another twelve hours, for his own good, but after that we’ll have to have a clear-out. What about Carmichael?’

‘I’m still not a hundred per cent happy about him. Haven’t managed to confirm his alibi so far, and it’s still possible he borrowed a car and that it was him at the Common with Zellah.’

Porson scowled. ‘I can’t keep giving bed and breakfast to everyone in West London. D’you think he’ll skip if you let him out?’

‘If he’s guilty, yes. I think he’d disappear and take a lot of finding. He’s streetwise and his business is highly mobile.’

‘And Wilding?’

‘If he’s guilty he’ll kill himself. And if he’s innocent he’ll kill Carmichael.’

Porson walked a few tempestuous steps up and down behind his desk. ‘Well, what do you want? Three suspects is two too many.’

‘Just a little more time, sir,’ Slider said, unhappily aware that this was not all he wanted. ‘I think it would help if we could establish who the father of the baby was. It would certainly give us more of an edge with Carmichael.’

Porson nodded, seeing the point. ‘All right. Fast-track the DNA test. I’ll authorise the expense. We’ll have to cut back somewhere, though. Can I send some of the uniform back?’

‘Yes, sir. I can manage with my own people.’

‘All right, get on with it, then. Time and tide gathers no moss.’

Slider trudged away.

On his way back to his office, Joanna’s words came back to him – that Oliver Paulson was the one character he hadn’t interviewed who knew everybody. Not that there was any reason to suspect Paulson had anything to do with it, but it was possible he might have some knowledge that would give Slider a fresh angle, or a new insight. He was desperate for either. Time was passing, and the old adage that you solved a murder in the first forty-eight hours, while less true than it used to be, still hung around in the back of a copper’s mind. And he felt no nearer to understanding Zellah. Someone must have known her. He didn’t suppose it was Oliver Paulson, but he might know someone who had.

A couple of telephone calls brought him a bit of luck. Paulson had been working from home that day (Slider had forgotten it was Friday); furthermore, he was actually there, not using the home-working day to get a start on a long weekend. Slider put a few things in train, and then took himself over to Lansdowne Crescent.

The semicircular street, together with its opposite half, Stanley Crescent, marked the position of the old horse-racing track, famous in the eighteenth century. The circular green which had been the centre of the racecourse had once been bisected by a lane which was hardly more than a dirt track. Now the dirt track had grown up to be Ladbroke Grove, a serious, tarmacked thoroughfare, and all that was left of the green was two little half moons of garden surrounded by railings, one for each of the crescents.

But these railinged gardens were a feature of nineteenth-century London which was highly prized in the twentieth, and added a significant number of thousands to the value of a property. Lansdowne Crescent was an 1850s terrace of typical Kensington houses in white stucco, with steps up to a pillared portico over a semi-basement. The Golden Rectangle architecture and big sash windows provided the grand and harmonious proportions that gave north-west London so much of its handsomeness, while inside the rooms were lofty, airy and ample.

The flat Oliver Paulson shared occupied the top three floors of the five-storey building, the ground floor and basement being a separate flat. Paulson and his friends therefore had the original drawing-room floor for their living rooms, and the original bedroom floors above, plus the servants’ rooms under the roof.

Most of the parking spaces were occupied, but Slider managed to find an empty Residents Only spot a few doors down, slipped in between a silver Mazda and a black Focus, and slapped his POLICE ON CALL notice on the dashboard in case of passing wardens. He found Paulson alone – the other flatmates still being at work. He was taking full advantage of the home-working day: he had evidently not shaved that morning, and was slobbing out in grey tracksuit bottoms with what looked like a coffee-stain on one knee, bare feet and an elderly T-shirt with the Hard Rock Café motif on the back.

He seemed a well-toned young man, arguing frequent trips to the gym, and his face and arms were expensively tanned. The family likeness to his sister was immediately obvious: he had the same undistinguished, slightly pudgy features, and a similar open-eyed, guileless look which hardly went with the traditional idea of a Master of the Universe, for all the evidence of high life around him.

But with friendly frankness, he immediately disabused Slider of the notion that he was one of those. ‘Oh, no, I’m just a back-room boy. A grubber. Analysis and research. I don’t do the risky, nuts-on-the-block stuff – though I do share in the bonuses, thank God!’ he added with a happy laugh. ‘Otherwise, how could I afford a place like this?’ He looked round at the wide, high-ceilinged, glamorous room as if he could hardly believe he was really here. ‘My dad thinks I’m such a fool, I must have got in by mistake. He keeps telling me to put away every penny I can, because they’re going to cotton on sooner or later that they hired the wrong bloke, and chuck me out!’

‘And do you?’ Slider asked, smiling. You could no more dislike this boy than slap a baby. He had to remind himself that in taking drugs, Paulson was a casual lawbreaker and therefore on the wrong side of the them-and-us divide.

‘What, save? Me? Are you kidding? Easy come, easy go, that’s me. I know it can’t last for ever. All the more reason to enjoy it while I can. Can I get you something? Coffee? Herbal tea?’

‘Nothing, thank you. I just wanted to talk to you about Zellah Wilding.’

The cheery face fell. ‘God, yes, that poor kid! What a rotten thing to happen. Do you know who did it yet?’

‘We’re working on that,’ Slider said. ‘Can we sit down?’

‘Of course. Sorry. Will over here do?’

There were two modern armchairs framing a low table in front of the French windows, beyond which was a narrow balcony with a wrought-iron railing, looking on to the crescent and its garden. They sat facing each other, sideways-on to the view. Paulson sat on the edge of the seat, leaning forward slightly, resting his forearms on his thighs, knees out, his hands dangling into the space between. They fidgeted with each other and with anything else that came into their orbit. This unrest, together with the pinkness of his eyes and the fact that he sniffed constantly, and frequently pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his nose, told Slider he had celebrated the night before, anticipating the fact that he didn’t have to go to the office today.

‘So what did you want to know?’ he asked, jiggling his knees.

‘It’s very hard to get an idea of what Zellah was really like. I thought you might give me your impression of her.’

‘I don’t do impressions,’ he said, giggling. ‘Though I’ve done a bit of amateur dramatics in the past.’

It was a good joke, but Slider did not want to encourage this state of mind. He made his face stern and said, ‘She is dead, sir.’

It was probably the ‘sir’ that dampened him as much as anything. ‘I’m sorry. I’m a bit nervous. Police, murder, that sort of thing. Poor old Zellah. She didn’t deserve that. I really did feel awful when I heard.’

‘She came here quite often, I believe?’

‘Oh, yes. Well, she was mates with my sister, Chloë, and her mate, Sophy?’ He looked at Slider to see if he knew, and Slider nodded. ‘The three of them used to come here a lot. Mostly on Saturday mornings. I didn’t mind. I’m fond of old Chlo. We’ve always got on. She was my favourite sister at home. And Soph – well, that girl’s a nutter. But she’s a laugh. Well, she and Zellah did ballet class together on Saturday mornings, and they used to come here afterwards to meet up with Chlo. Sometimes they’d go off together and do stuff, sometimes they’d hang around here, or I’d take them out to lunch if I wasn’t doing anything. It was a laugh. There were four of them at one time – this girl Frieda Mossman was one of the gang, but they dropped her for some reason. Some girly fight or other. I didn’t ask. After that, the three of them were even tighter. Sometimes they’d call round after school, as well. I wasn’t usually here, but Chlo had a key and let them in. She and Soph could have seen each other at home, but Zellah couldn’t have people back to her house, so it was somewhere for them to hang.’

Slider noticed that Zellah wasn’t ‘Zell’. ‘How did Zellah fit in with the other two? Was it an equal, three-way relationship?’ he asked.

‘Oh, Soph was the ringleader. She’s the noisy one. She’s a laugh, that girl! Zellah was the quiet one.’ He frowned in thought. ‘It was hard to make her out, really. She never seemed to say much. You couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Sort of . . . closed up, if you know what I mean. But you couldn’t push her around. I mean, Sophy’s the sort to walk all over you if you let her. Old Chloë was pretty much putty in her hands, but I’ve heard Zellah put her foot down. Just quietly, you know – no fuss – but that was it. If she said she didn’t want to do something, Soph couldn’t make her. And vice versa.’

‘Vice versa?’

‘If she wanted to do something, they couldn’t talk her out of it.’

‘Have you an instance in mind when they tried to talk her out of something?’

He looked uneasy, jiggling his knees faster, rubbing his nose, scratching his head. ‘Well, not really. Nothing in particular. Just . . . general observation.’

Slider tried a slightly different question. ‘What did she want to do that the others disapproved of?’

‘Oh, it wasn’t Chlo, it was Sophy. She didn’t like . . .’ He cast Slider an anxious look as he clammed up.

Slider took a punt. ‘She didn’t like Mike Carmichael?’

‘Oh, you know about him?’ It was only partly relief. The jiggling went on as he patently tried to work out how much Slider knew about Carmichael and his usefulness to society.

Slider sighed. ‘Mr Paulson, we have to have a frank conversation. I am involved in a murder investigation, and I can’t have it clogged up with lesser considerations. So let me just tell you that I know Carmichael was supplying you and your friends with drugs for your personal recreational use, and that I’m not concerned with that.’

‘You mean you’re not going to . . .? I mean, even if I were, you know – not that I’m saying I was – but you wouldn’t, you know, take it any further?’

‘Just answer my questions without holding anything back. If you are completely honest with me there will be no consequences for you or your friends over anything Carmichael has supplied you with in the past. Does that satisfy you?’

‘I suppose so,’ he said, though with a hint of puzzlement, as if he were trying to analyse the actual words of the treaty, in case they could be made to mean something different. Slider could see why Paulson’s father was surprised by his good job and large income. ‘So, what were you asking?’ Paulson continued at last. ‘I’ve forgotten where we were.’

‘Sophy objected to Mike Carmichael.’

‘She didn’t like him,’ Paulson said plainly. ‘She thought he was a drone. I’m afraid our Soph is a bit of a snob, and once she knew he came from a housing estate, that was him. So when Zellah was obviously smitten with him, Soph went at her like fury. Harsh words were said. Well, poor old Zellah’s background is a bit on the gnarly side, you know? Sophy was well out of order, some of the things she said. But they made up, the way girls do. And the upshot was that Zellah was going out with Mike and there was nothing anyone could do about it.’

‘Zellah met Carmichael here, I understand?’

‘Oh, you know that? Well, yes. They called round one Saturday, the girls, when Mike was here. They all liked him right away – even Soph, until she found out he was from the Woodley South – but you could see Zellah was struck all of a heap. Well, he’s a good-looking guy, and a smooth operator, and I don’t think Zellah had much experience with boys. One smile from him and that kid was toast.’

‘Didn’t that worry you?’

He looked puzzled, then it cleared. ‘What, you mean because Mike’s a . . . because of the . . .? No, Mike’s a stand-up guy. I like him. He’s a decent bloke. He wouldn’t give drugs to a kid like her. And you could see he liked her.’

‘Did any of the girls take drugs?’

‘No!’ he said, seeming shocked at the question. ‘I’m certain Chlo doesn’t, and I’m pretty sure Zellah wouldn’t – she was very strait-laced about some things. Sophy – well, she’s a savvy kid, and she doesn’t care what she does. But I reckon that’s more talk than action. They never took drugs here. And I don’t keep anything in the house, so they couldn’t have found anything by accident, I promise you that.’

‘You say Zellah was strait-laced about some things. What wasn’t she strait-laced about?’

‘Well . . .’ He looked uncomfortable. ‘She and Mike – I mean, she’s just a kid, but they weren’t just friends, if you know what I mean.’

‘You mean they were having sex,’ Slider said calmly. Odd that he was so embarrassed about it. Grown-up-ness seemed to exist in discrete patches in his generation.

‘Mike talked about it a bit,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I mean, not details, obviously, but he said she was really uninhibited. Wild in bed. He seemed a bit uneasy about it sometimes. I mean, he was obviously into her, but I think he thought she was a bit too into him, if you know what I mean. I mean, she was very young. It must have been a bit of a responsibility.’

‘Were Sophy and Chloë having sexual relationships as well?’

‘I doubt it. Chloë’s as innocent as the day is long. They talked about it a lot – honestly, sometimes they could make me blush, the way they talked about sex and boys and so on. But I think that was all bluff. Sophy wanted to sound like a hard case, and Chlo would do whatever Soph did. I’d bet they never went further than snogging. But then little Zellah, who wouldn’t say boo to a goose, steps right in and does the deed. No fuss, no muss. All the way. It’d make you laugh.’ But he didn’t laugh. He was thoughtful now. ‘I think maybe that’s partly why Soph was so mad about her and Mike – not just that Mike was lower class, but that Zellah had done what she didn’t dare to do.’

‘Do you think she disapproved?’

‘What, of the whole sex thing? Yeah, maybe she did. But she’d run her mouth so often about doing it and not caring that she couldn’t go back on it now.’ He looked at Slider propitiatingly. ‘You know what girls are like. Worse than boys for boasting and talking dirty. They egg each other on. It’d make a cat blush, sometimes, the things they say.’

‘Do you think Zellah was in love with Mike?’

He thought about it. ‘I think she was – at first, anyway. She was mad about him, and it wasn’t just sex. It must have been a lonely life for her, the way things were at home. But it was always hard to tell with Zellah what she really thought about anything. And of course she did dump him in the end.’

‘Ending it was her idea, was it?’

‘Well, according to Mike she just stopped phoning him. He couldn’t understand it.’

‘She didn’t give a reason?’

‘Mike never said. I think he was a bit miffed, so he didn’t like talking about it.’

‘Do you remember when that was – when they stopped seeing each other?’

He shook his head slowly. ‘I can’t say exactly. A couple of months ago, anyway. It’s not like I wrote it down in my diary, you know?’

‘Try to think. It may be important.’

He screwed up his face. ‘I can’t remember,’ he said at last. ‘Some time after Easter. They were still together in the Easter holidays, I remember that, because of all the planning that went on, for them to be able to see each other. So it was after that. Beginning, middle of May, maybe.’

‘But of course they may still have been seeing each other secretly,’ Slider threw in casually.

‘I don’t think so,’ Paulson said at once. ‘She was seeing someone else.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know who,’ he added, anticipating the question. ‘She was very secretive about it.’

‘She didn’t ever meet him at your house?’

‘No. I don’t know where they met. He must have had his own place. You see, when she was going out with Mike, I didn’t see her here so much, because she was meeting him at his flat. And when she broke off with him, she came here a bit more often, but not as much as before Mike. So I reckon she was seeing the new bloke at his place.’

Slider pondered this. ‘What did Chloë and Sophy think about the new boyfriend?’

‘I don’t think they knew about him. I think she was keeping him a secret from them. I never heard her talk about him.’

‘Then how do you know there was anybody?’ Slider said, frustrated.

He found this question difficult to answer. ‘I just know there was someone. She was in love. You could see it – that look they have, sort of dreamy and always thinking about something else. She was like that about Mike at first, but she wasn’t secretive about him – not with us, anyway. No, I’m certain there was someone. But it was a big secret.’

‘Why did it have to be a secret?’ Slider asked. He felt a sense of doom creeping up on him. Not a whole new person to investigate, not at this stage!

‘I don’t know. Maybe it was someone she thought Sophy would disapprove of. Maybe she just didn’t want to go through all that again.’ He stretched. ‘Anything else? ’Cause I’ve got a bit of work I ought to finish up, and I’m going out tonight.’

‘Just a couple more questions,’ Slider said. Because of the way he was sitting he had been staring, over Paulson’s shoulder, at an enormous painting on the wall over the fireplace, and it reminded him of something Carmichael had said. ‘I understand you know Alex Markov?’

‘Yeah, I’ve met him at parties and things. We’re not close mates or anything, but I know him.’

‘He’s another customer of Mike Carmichael’s, I understand.’

He looked cautious. ‘Well, I don’t know about that.’

‘Oh, come on, if you’ve met him at parties you must know he likes the same jollies as you. Anyway, Mike told me so.’

‘Well, why are you asking me, then?’ he said sulkily. ‘Yeah, he does a line or two. So what? Everyone does.’

‘More than a line or two?’

‘I’m not his keeper. But I’ve seen him get monged occasionally. Well, more than occasionally. What of it?’

‘Has he been here to your flat?’

‘Yeah, once or twice,’ he said reluctantly. Evidently Markov was not someone he wanted to have associated with his name – at least, not in front of a police officer. Slider found that interesting. He had been enthusiastic about Carmichael, who on the face of it was a far more dangerous acquaintance to admit.

‘Has he met the girls here?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think so. But they know him anyway – he’s a teacher at their school. He’s not like an ordinary teacher, though,’ he added quickly, in case Slider thought him uncool to hang with a member of the NUT. ‘He teaches art, and he’s an artist himself. The teaching’s just to pay the rent, you know. The painting’s his real career. He’s good. I bought one of his things once – that’s it, over there. Cool, isn’t it?’

The massive canvas, about six feet by four, was painted with two oblongs of different shades of red, which overlapped near the middle making a third shade. It dominated that end of the room, but cool was the last thing Slider would have said about all that redness.

‘I don’t know anything about modern art,’ he excused himself.

‘Well, I don’t either,’ Paulson confessed endearingly, ‘but I liked the colour, and the poor bloke was short of a bob or two and I’d just had a bonus, so I thought it couldn’t hurt. An original Markov – maybe it’ll be worth a fortune one day. Who knows?’

‘Why was he short of money?’

‘I don’t know,’ Paulson said with easy indifference. ‘Expensive lifestyle, I suppose.’ Slider thought of the flat, the skiing holidays, and above all the drug habit. ‘I don’t think the teaching pays much – it’s not full-time.’

‘There’s his painting,’ Slider suggested.

‘When he sells one. I don’t suppose it’s that often. Anyway, he told me once it was his wife who had to take out the mortgage in her name, because he didn’t have enough equity in his salary to cover the loan.’

‘Have you met her?’

‘No, they don’t really go around together. She’s a high-up nurse and she works shifts. To tell you the truth, I think they’re having problems. But I don’t really know. You’d have to ask him about that. All I can say is, I’ve never seen them out together. Why do you want to know about Alex, anyway?’

‘No particular reason. He was just mentioned in passing in a conversation. One last thing. Can you tell me what you were doing on Sunday night?’

He entirely failed to be alarmed by the question. He laughed. ‘When did you last see your father, eh? Well, let me see. I got home Sunday morning from a party about four-ish, went to bed, got up about midday, went down the pub with the others and met some friends. One of them’s married with a family and everything, and he invited us back to his place in Holland Park for Sunday lunch. Stayed there for the rest of the day. Then about nine we went on to a party in Clapham, at a friend of Jeremy’s. He’s my flatmate, Jeremy? Jeremy, Jamie, Ben and me share this flat.’

‘You didn’t come back here to change or anything?’

‘No, you want to keep away from the area when the Carnival’s on,’ he said. ‘That’s why we were glad to go to Gary and Stella’s for Sunday lunch. So then the four of us went on to this party in Clapham and stayed there all night. We came back Monday morning about ten-ish, got cleaned up, and then Ben and Jamie went to see their parents, and Jeremy and I went out to see a friend who lives in Hampstead.’

‘Did you drive there?’

‘Tube. I don’t have a car. I don’t think it’s worth it in London. The parking’s horrendous.’

This chimed with something in Slider’s memory and he stared at the big, red painting for a moment until it clicked. Alex Markov had said almost the same thing. ‘How did you get that painting home on the tube?’ he asked. ‘It must have been awkward.’

Paulson turned round and looked at it. ‘Oh, I didn’t. Alex delivered it.’

‘Still must have been awkward on the tube.’

Paulson looked puzzled. ‘He brought it in his car.’

‘I thought he didn’t have one.’

‘I don’t know,’ Paulson said with a broad shrug. ‘He came in a car, that’s all I know. Maybe he borrowed one.’

‘Maybe that was it,’ Slider said. He stood up to take his leave. The alibi, given freely and unhesitatingly, as from the depths of a clear conscience, was eminently checkable, so Slider wasn’t going to check it. He hadn’t suspected Paulson of anything anyway. He had only hoped he might have been around to see something. But that was out.

At the door, Oliver Paulson became serious again, remembering what it was all about. ‘I can’t believe poor little Zellah got murdered,’ he said. ‘Why would anyone do that? I read in the paper you’d arrested a serial killer for it, but if it was a serial killer, why would you come round here asking me about Mike? You don’t think he had anything to do with it?’

‘Don’t you think he’s capable of it?’ Slider countered.

‘Well, he’s got a bit of a temper on him. I suppose he’s had to fight his way out a few times, coming from the Woodley South. But I always thought he was a decent bloke underneath. I mean, I wouldn’t have introduced him to my sister otherwise.’

Ah, that was it, Slider thought. He was feeling guilty for having brought Mike and Zellah together in the first place. Or maybe there had been things said at home, by the parents.

‘When it comes to unregulated passions, anyone can be capable of anything,’ Slider said neutrally.

‘I suppose so,’ Paulson said, still troubled. ‘But I wouldn’t have thought Mike would do something like that. Was that why you were asking about him?’

He evidently meant to have an answer. Slider said, ‘I’m asking about everyone in Zellah’s life. Trying to find out what she was really like.’

‘Good luck with that,’ Paulson said shortly. ‘She was a hard one to know, that one. An enigma.’

A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, Slider thought, going back to his car. Perhaps, as with Russia, the key lay in self-interest. He just had to find what, in Zellah’s case, that had been.