Fell Purpose

EIGHTEEN

How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Ring You Back

Slider idled back to the station, through the home-going traffic, allowing his thoughts to disconnect in the hope that a lot of small things that were bothering him would join forces and present him with a petition.

O’Flaherty was the duty sergeant. ‘Ah, Billy, me boy, dere y’are!’ he said largely. His ‘Simple Man o’ the Bogs’ act, begun years before as a defence mechanism, had become a mere mannerism now. ‘Someone waiting to see you.’

‘That’s what they’ll put on my tombstone,’ Slider said.

‘Well, now,’ Fergus said, leaning on the door frame as one settling in for a bunny, ‘in a very real an’ metaphysical sense that’d be true.’

‘This is not the moment to convert me to Catholicism. Can we have the unreal and non-metaphysical news first?’

‘Ye’re a disappointment to me, darlin’,’ Fergus said with a fat sigh. ‘I could ha’ given it to Atherton, but I thought y’d be grateful, and y’d see me right for it. I only need another five conversions now to get me sainthood.’

‘I’ll convert later,’ Slider said, ‘though why you should care whether I’m analogue or digital . . . Who’s waiting for me?’

O’Flaherty gestured into the shop, and Slider peered round the door, to see a brace of teenagers sitting on the bench, looking resigned.

‘I think it could be your Snogging Couple,’ Fergus said. ‘Now isn’t that worth something?’

Slider patted his pockets. ‘I’d give you a Hail Mary but I’ve left my wallet upstairs.’

‘I can make change for a Paternoster,’ Fergus said hopefully. ‘Ah, you CID types are all tight. Short arms and long pockets. Where d’yiz want Janet and John?’

‘Stick them in an interview room.’ Slider sighed. ‘I wish you had given them to Atherton. I’ve got a lot to think about.’

‘He’s out. Ah, go on, take ’em! Me instinct tells me they’ve somethin’ to say. And they did come in of their own free will.’

‘If it’s the Snogging Couple, they should have come in days ago,’ Slider grumbled. ‘Oh well, I’d better talk to them, I suppose. They won’t have anything to tell me, of course. Just want to be noticed.’

‘Don’t we all?’ Fergus said.

‘I thought as a Catholic you were always being noticed.’

‘Glad to see y’ haven’t lost y’ sense a humour, darlin’,’ Fergus said, and went off to fetch the witnesses.

The Snogging Couple – for so it turned out to be – were Chantelle Watts and Tyler Burton. She was a meaty, pallid girl with straight fair hair, spots on her chin, an outsize bust and a stud in her eyebrow. He was slim, remarkably unpierced in any dimension, and had the thick black hair and tan skin that suggested Italian heritage. He looked a lot younger than her, though that may have been the effect of his slightness against her bulk, and the world-weary air that she felt suitable to the present situation.

‘My mum said we oughta come in,’ Chantelle said, when the introductions and social niceties had been got over. ‘She said there might be a reward.’

‘I’m afraid that’s not likely to happen,’ Slider said. ‘But you are doing the right thing in coming forward. That should be reward enough, to know you are helping.’

This idea wandered about the ether looking for a home, but evidently found Chantelle’s environment inhospitable. After an extensive gape she said, ‘What, you mean there’s no money in it?’

‘No one has offered a reward for information – yet. But I tell you what, I’ll make a note of your names and everything you tell me, and if there’s a reward offered later, you’ll be in line for it.’

Tyler, who seemed to be marginally the sharper tack of the two, jumped in while she was still construing this, and said, ‘I don’t want me name in the papers. Me dad’d kill me if he knew I was round ’ere. He don’t like us talking to the fuzz.’

‘Why don’t you just tell me what you know,’ Slider said patiently, cursing Atherton’s absence, Fergus’s instincts, and the lack of tea in his bloodstream, ‘and we’ll see how it goes. You saw something on Sunday night, did you?’

It took a degree of coaxing and carefully designed questions to extract the story, though after the first few sentences they were not unwilling to talk. Being noticed by a policeman was better than not being noticed by anyone, which was their usual fate. It was just that they had no idea how to string two sentences together – indeed, stringing words together was almost beyond them. Their real linguistic skill lay at the phoneme level. Chantelle could have snorted and grunted for Britain.

The story, as Slider painstakingly reconstructed it, was that they had been ‘messing around’ together most of Sunday, having met at Chantelle’s house in the afternoon, watched a film on telly, eaten some frozen pizza (though not, Slider was relieved to hear, until after it had been microwaved by Chantelle’s mum) and then, when the film was over, had become bored enough to heave themselves out of the sofa and go out in search of some mates.

That, he managed to work out, was about six o’clock. They had gone to a friend’s house, hung about there for a bit, then they and the friend had ‘gone down The Fairway’, where there was a patch of open green in front of the houses where they and their peers generally ‘hung about’. They had loitered around there for some time, ‘having a laugh’, which meant, as Slider knew, gossiping, teasing and insulting each other, texting and phoning other friends on their mobiles, and playing electronic games on the same. There were about ten of them, ranging in age from Tyler, who was just fifteen, through Chantelle who was sixteen, to a youth called Dean Scraggs who was eighteen but ‘a bit daft’, and therefore not welcome with any of the older gangs.

Finally some householders had objected to the noise and had come out to tell them to clear off, and having become bored with the scene, they obliged. They had wandered down to East Acton Lane, shedding a couple of bodies on the way, and fetched up at the Goldsmith’s Arms, where they had hung about outside while Dean Scraggs went in and bought two pints of lager. He brought them out and they shared them between them, standing on the pavement, where a number of other clients were enjoying the warm evening.

Eventually they had got noisy and drawn attention to themselves, and the publican, worried for his licence, came out and told them to clear off. There was another patch of green at the junction of East Acton Lane and Friar’s Place Lane, and they had hung about there for a bit, then wandered back the way they had come, losing more of the group. At the off-licence on Western Parade they had had a whip round and accumulated enough for Dean to go in and buy a bottle of cider. The remaining six of them had gone up to Old Oak Common and sat on the grass and drunk the cider and ‘had a laugh’ until it and the cigarettes had run out, at which point the other four had departed.

The recitation of this emptiness would have depressed Slider if he hadn’t heard it so many times before, and if it hadn’t seemed to be leading to something he needed to know.

‘What time do you think that was?’ he asked. ‘When the others left?’

Chantelle shrugged, but Tyler said, ‘It musta bin about eleven, summing like that. Cos when I texted Bazza it said eleven-fifteen on the phone, and that was after.’

This generation, Slider reflected, told the time more often by their mobiles than by watches. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘What happened next?’

Alone together, the couple had chatted a bit and texted some friends, and then had grown amorous. They had started ‘snogging’, but after a bit they got annoyed because there were so many people coming past, and some of them tutted, and some of them stared, and Chantelle ‘lost it’ and mouthed off at them. Tyler didn’t want to get in a fight because he was more interested in Chantelle’s jugs and the prospect of investigating her knickers, so he proposed that they move round behind the council changing-room block. In its shadow, and concealed from the road, they would have a bit of privacy. And there they stayed, preoccupied with each other, until the girl had come along.

Chantelle, who had had her back to the wall, had seen her first across Tyler’s shoulder, coming across the Scrubs from the direction of the fair. She was carrying her shoes, and looked ‘pissed off’.

‘Was she crying?’ Slider asked.

‘Nah. But she might’ve been crying before.’ An effort of thought dredged up a detail. ‘She ’ad, like, mascara under here.’ She pointed under her eyes. ‘Like it’d run.’

‘What did she do next?’

The girl had passed by, and at this point Tyler had first seen her, going past the building and down towards the edge of the common, where it joined the pavement and the road. He described her as blonde, about his age, wearing a mauve top and a black skirt, and agreed she was carrying her shoes. She had stood around a bit, and then come back towards them.

‘She’d def’nitely bin crying,’ Tyler said. ‘You could see she was upset.’

‘I was gonna give ’er a mouf-ful,’ Chantelle admitted. ‘I mean, can’t a person get no privacy? But Tyler’s a softy.’

‘So she comes up and says she’s sorry for disturbing us,’ Tyler took up the story. ‘She had, like, this posh voice.’

‘Snobby cow,’ Chantelle said with automatic viciousness.

‘But it was manners, Chant, to say sorry an’ that,’ Tyler urged. Chantelle sniffed and rolled her eyes, unwilling to be convinced. ‘Anyway, she says – this girl says – she’s left her mobile at home, and can she use mine to make a call.’

‘I says no. Bloody cheek! Who’d she think she was?’ Chantelle interrupted.

‘But she said she’d pay for the call,’ said Tyler. ‘She says she needs to call someone to pick her up.’

‘She said that?’ Slider’s ears pricked with interest. ‘Did she say who? Her dad, maybe?’ But she was so close to home she could have walked it easily. Yet where else could she be taken at that time of night? Perhaps she wanted to speak to him out of earshot of her mother. Of course, she didn’t know Wilding had been out all evening – although he might have gone home by then: his timings under interview had been very vague.

‘No, she never said,’ Tyler answered. ‘I said go on then, and give her my phone, and she made a call.’

‘Did you hear anything of what she said? Anything at all?’

‘Nah, she took it and walked off a bit, and turned her back.’

‘I said to ’im you wanter watch she don’t nick it,’ Chantelle contributed.

‘She never wanted to nick it, Chant. She just wanted to call somebody. Anyway, she brings the phone back and says thank you, all posh, and offers me money. A two-quid piece it was. I said forget it.’

‘I told you he was a softy. I’d’ve took it.’

‘Well, she was upset,’ Tyler excused himself. ‘She weren’t on long.’

‘I’d’ve still took it. Snobby cow.’

There was a pause. ‘So what happened next?’ Slider asked.

Tyler and Chantelle had gone back to their kissing. Glancing that way from time to time, Tyler had seen the girl sit on the grass and put her shoes on. Then she stood by the side of the road as if she was waiting for someone. After a bit, a car came past, and Tyler had seen her perk up, as if she recognised it. It had gone past and stopped under the bridge, and she had hurried down to it, and got in.

‘What sort of car was it?’ Slider asked, mental fingers crossed.

‘It was a Ford Focus,’ Chantelle said. ‘I know, because my dad’s got one.’

‘What colour?’

‘I dunno. Black I think. I never see it proper till it was under the bridge, an’ it’s dark under there.’

‘Could it have been dark blue?’ Slider asked.

‘Coulda bin,’ Chantelle said after thought. ‘A right dark blue, though.’

‘Did you see the registration number?’

She was scornful. ‘What am I, a kid? Car numbers? I ’ad better fings to fink about.’

Slider turned to Tyler, and tried to give him a man-to-man, women-don’t-understand-these-things look. ‘You didn’t happen to notice the registration number, did you?’

‘Well,’ Tyler said, with deep reluctance to rupture the bond. ‘No. I never. I didn’t know it was important.’

‘Of course not,’ Slider said comfortingly. ‘But even if you remember part of it, it would help. A couple of letters?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I never looked at it. But it weren’t a Focus, it was a Toyota Corolla.’

‘Shut up! It was a Focus,’ Chantelle said hotly. ‘D’you fink I don’t know me own dad’s car?’

‘Honest, Chant, it was a Corolla. They look the same from the back,’ he added placatingly. He looked at Slider. ‘Honest.’

‘What colour?’ Slider asked, his mind on tiptoe.

‘It was black, but that new black that’s, like, a bit blue. Sapphire Black they call it, but it looks blue sometimes, if you catch it that way. I see it as it come past, under the lights. But it was dark under the bridge.’ He glanced at his mate, obviously afraid of a handbagging for contradiction. Chantelle looked as though she could pack a punch. Her chubby fists were connected to meaty arms, and decorated with enough cheap rings to constitute a knuckle duster.

‘Did you see who was in the car as it went past?’ Slider asked next.

‘Nah, but I see him later when he got out,’ Tyler said.

‘Yeah,’ Chantelle took over, sensing the glory bit was coming, the bit that might earn the reward. ‘Tyler says she’s got out the car again, this girl, so I looks over there, and she’s like, running across the grass, or, like, half-running, cause her heels were, like, sticking in.’

‘Was she crying?’

‘Yeah, she might’ve been.’

‘I see her put her hands up to her face,’ Tyler said. ‘Like this.’ He mimed wiping his eyes. ‘And then I see this man get out the car and go after her.’

Slider breathed a breath of pure happiness. ‘So you got a look at him? Can you describe him to me?’

‘Well,’ Tyler said, exchanging a glance with his beloved which broke Slider’s heart. ‘See, the thing is, when I see him get out, I says to Chantelle, “That bloke’s getting out the car,” and she says, “Bloody ’ell, it’s like Piccadilly Bleeding Circus, let’s go ’ome”.’

‘I was fed up of being stared at, and all these people around,’ she defended herself. ‘If him and this girl was going to ’ave a row, I’d ’ad enough. I says to Tyler, “Let’s go”.’

‘She, like, pulls me arm, so I turned the other way, and we went,’ Tyler said unhappily, realizing he had blown his chance of fame. ‘So I never really got a look at him. He was tall, though,’ he added eagerly, offering a crumb.

‘Anything else?’ Slider asked. ‘How old?’

They both shook their heads. Tyler said, ‘Not young. I mean, he was a grown-up. I dunno how old.’

‘Like me? Older? Younger?’

‘I dunno,’ Tyler said, and Chantelle shook her head again. Evidently the relative age of grown-ups was an esoteric business to them.

‘Was he dark-haired? Or fair?’ Slider persisted.

‘I dunno,’ Tyler said sadly. ‘I never got a real look at him. I just see him get out the car and then I turns to Chantelle and the next thing we went.’

There seemed nothing more to say. After a moment, Slider said, ‘I’ll need you to write down what you’ve told me and sign it. I’ll have someone come and help you with that. But tell me, why didn’t you come in sooner? Didn’t you read about the murder, or see it on the telly?’

They looked at each other. ‘I never fought about it,’ Chantelle said.

Tyler said, ‘This lady come round this morning and spoke to Chantelle’s mum, asking if she’d seen anyfing, an’ that, and her mum told Chantelle when she come in, and Chantelle told her mum about this girl and the bloke in the car, and her mum said we should come in. So Chantelle rung me up, and we come.’ He looked at Slider helplessly. Evidently doing your civic duty simply didn’t come into their thought processes. Police investigations and murders happened in another world, far removed from the one they inhabited. It was like the world of the telly, which was both real and unreal, pertinent and unimportant, in varying degrees and baffling combination. Most of all, Slider supposed, it was the world of the grown-ups, which was not only nothing to do with them, but never would be. Their self-absorption was developed to an evolutionary degree, like a giraffe’s neck or a narwhal’s tusk, the one immediately noticeable thing about them. Oh, brave new world, he thought, that hath such people in it.

Up in his office, Slider wrote on a piece of paper the reg number he had automatically noted from the car parked in front of Markov’s building, and called Connolly in.

‘Good work on finding the Snogging Couple,’ he said.

‘I didn’t think I had, sir,’ she said, puzzled.

‘The mother of half of it received a visit this morning from “a lady” asking for information about the murder. I assume that was you. She mentioned it to her daughter, the daughter admitted she had been there, and the mother propelled her and the boy in our direction.’

‘Oh, that’s good.’ She looked pleased. ‘And did they see anything?’

‘They did indeed. So well done. Your diligence paid off.’ He smiled at her. ‘Don’t let anyone tell you this job requires brilliance. Just dogged determination and the ability to ask the same question a thousand times and still listen to the answer.’

‘You make it sound so glamorous, sir,’ she said, greatly daring.

‘Changing your mind about joining us?’ he said.

‘No, sir. Is there a chance?’

‘A very good one,’ Slider said. ‘Meanwhile, I’ve got a job for you. A bit of research, and I need it asap.’ He gave her the slip of paper. ‘Find out who owns that car, the keeper’s address, how it’s insured, whether there’s any finance on it, involvement in accidents, outstanding tickets – everything you can.’

‘Is that the car under the bridge?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. That’s what I hope to find out.’

‘It’s like a French farce,’ Atherton said, when he came back from interviewing Mrs Wilding again, and Slider told him what the Snogging Couple had said. ‘You say they saw the murderer but didn’t see Ronnie Oates or Eden; Eden didn’t see them but saw the murderer; Oates didn’t see anyone but the victim. And presumably the murderer didn’t see anyone at all, or he wouldn’t have done it there and then. All of them popping in and out of doors on one small road within one small window of time, and just missing each other.’

‘Such is life,’ Slider said.

‘And death. So where are we now?’

‘I don’t think it was Wilding.’

‘Oh, don’t say that! I’ve invested so much in him. His wife now hates him so much for what happened she’s willing to swear he did it. And he’s softening up nicely in the pokey. Another couple of interviews and he’ll sing like a lark. Chantelle said it was a blue Focus. What more do you want?’

‘Tyler says it wasn’t, and I’d trust him about cars more than I’d trust her,’ Slider said.

‘He had his tongue down her throat at the time and his mind on lower things,’ Atherton said. ‘He was terminally confused. And I really, really don’t like Wilding.’

‘Never mind,’ Slider consoled him. ‘We’ve got a terrific new lead. As soon as we get Tyler’s mobile phone record back, we’ll know who Zellah phoned. And therefore, who came to meet her at the common.’

Atherton frowned. ‘But who would she call to fetch her apart from her father?’

‘I didn’t say “fetch”, I said “meet”.’

‘Classic misdirection,’ Atherton said, surveying his boss’s face. ‘You’re up to something. What do you know?’

‘Only what you know. I’m just putting it together differently.’

‘Aren’t you going to tell me?’

‘I’ve just got one more visit to pay.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘I won’t be long. You can go home. We can’t do anything until we get the various bits of information in – phone records and DNA results.’

Atherton pretended a sulk. ‘I’ll work it out for myself, you see if I don’t.’

‘I wish you would,’ Slider said. ‘It would give me a bit of confirmation that I’m not completely out to lunch.’

‘Hand me my dressing-gown, violin and the customary ounce of shag,’ Atherton said, ‘and I will bend my mighty brain to it.’

On his way down to his car, Slider had a thought, and diverted his steps to the lock-ups, signed himself in and had Mike Carmichael brought to him. He looked tired and much more frightened, the attitude, sulks and anger all dissolved. He had had plenty of time to think, and realized now, perhaps, how bad things looked.

‘Sit down,’ Slider said. ‘I just want to ask you something.’

‘When are you going to let me go?’ Carmichael demanded, but with more of a plea and less assurance behind it. ‘You can’t keep me here like this.’

‘Don’t let’s get into that again. What’s the matter? You’ve only been here a day and a bit. Aren’t they treating you well?’

‘I don’t wanna be here,’ Carmichael said, balling his fists with frustration; but it looked more as though he might burst into tears than lash out at Slider. ‘I’ve not done anything. I didn’t kill Zellah! I was . . . I was fond of her. She was all right, for a kid. And I hadn’t seen her for months, anyway. Why would I want to kill her?’

‘Take it easy, son,’ Slider said. ‘It won’t be much longer.’

‘What do you want to ask me? I’ve told you everything I know. I didn’t kill her.’

‘Was Zellah in love with you?’ Slider asked, abruptly, in the hope of surprising an answer out of him.

His eyebrows went up, but he thought about it. ‘I dunno. I guess – maybe. When we were going out, she was mad for me. It was a bit scary. But I liked her. She was so clever, and funny in a way, and good fun, but . . .’ He paused, thinking it out.

‘Vulnerable?’ Slider tried after a bit.

He looked up. ‘Yeah, I suppose. It was like – I dunno – like nobody had ever touched her before, or taken any notice of her.’

‘As if no one had ever loved her?’

He looked cautious at the use of the word. ‘Yeah, maybe. Sort of. But we never talked about love, you know. I never promised her anything.’

‘I didn’t suppose you had,’ said Slider.

He seemed to take that as a criticism. ‘She was just a kid! I was fond of her, but that was it. What do you want from me?’

‘Did she ever tell you she loved you?’

‘Yeah, but that was just talk. Anyway,’ he went on defensively, ‘she broke up with me. I didn’t dump her.’

‘But you would have.’

‘I don’t know. Probably, in the end. I mean, it wasn’t a lifetime commitment. It wasn’t like we were going to get married or anything.’

‘What did you think when she broke up with you? That she’d met someone else?’

‘That’s what Olly said. But I didn’t see her after that, not until that Sunday, so I didn’t know.’

‘We’ve got the records from her mobile phone, and she rang you up at the beginning of June – one phone call, after quite a gap. What was that about?’

He looked surprised and then puzzled, and then his brow cleared. ‘Oh yeah. I remember. She just rang me out of the blue. That was weird. I’d not seen her for a couple of weeks, then suddenly she rings and she’s, like, just sort of chatting. And I said d’you want to meet up, and she says no, that’s all over. She says she can’t see me any more. Well, I thought it was a bit cool, but I didn’t care, really. You know, I’d sort of moved on. So I said, whatever you like, babe. And then she says, “I’m happy now. I just wanted to be sure you were.”’

‘Those were her words?’

‘Fact,’ he said. ‘“I’m happy, I just wanted to be sure you were.”’

‘What did you think she meant?’

‘I don’t know. I tell you, she was one messed-up kid.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘I’d forgotten about that until you mentioned it.’

‘Did she sound happy?’

‘Yeah, now I think about it, she did.’ He frowned. ‘But that Sunday, she was different. I couldn’t make out what was going on with her, but I tell you one thing: she wasn’t happy. You know, I was angry yesterday that she got me into this. But now I just feel sorry for her. Poor little cow.’

Slider felt again that unwanted sympathy. Carmichael wasn’t the unmitigated villain he ought to have been in the circumstances.

‘There’s one other thing I wanted to ask you. While Zellah was at your flat, did she make a phone call?’

He thought for a moment and then said, ‘Yeah, she did.’

‘When, exactly?’

He frowned with effort. ‘We’d been talking. Then we cuddled a bit. Then when I tried to kiss her she pulled away. Then she went to the bathroom, and when she come out she said she had to phone someone. I said she knew where the phone was, and she went.’

‘Did you hear any of the conversation?’

‘No. The phone’s in the kitchen.’

‘You didn’t ask her anything about it?’

‘No. She used to have to check in with her dad now and then. I assumed that was what she was doing.’

‘So you don’t actually know it was her father she phoned?’

‘Why? Does it matter?’

‘Was it before or after the phone call that she said she wanted to go to the fair?’

He stared. ‘After. It was after. You mean . . .?’ He was thinking hard. ‘She phoned him – the other bloke – and that was when she made the date with him?’

‘I don’t know,’ Slider said. ‘It’s possible. When I get your phone records, we’ll see what number she dialled.’

His anger was returning, darkening his face. ‘She did that? Rang him up from my flat, while she was with me? The sly little bitch! She really played me for a fool!’

‘Oh,’ said Slider sadly, ‘I don’t think that’s what she was doing.’