Fell Purpose

TWENTY

You Must Remember This; A Kiss is Still a Coordinated Interpersonal Labial Spasm

Tufnell ‘Tufty’ Arceneaux, who described himself as ‘The Bodily Fluids Man’ with more than a coincidental accuracy, rang Slider as soon as he was at his desk in the morning. ‘Bill, old chum!’ he roared (everything about Tufty was larger than life). ‘How’s the world treating you? How’s the wife? How’s the nipper?’

‘He’s great fun,’ Slider said. ‘He’s just started crawling.’

‘That’ll be useful training for later life! Especially if he wants to get on in the police force.’

‘We’re not allowed to call it that. It’s the police service now.’

‘Makes you sound like a lot of bloody tennis players.’

‘How’s Diana? Is she enjoying the job?’ Tufty’s wife had recently gone back to work in an advertising agency.

‘Loves it. A prank a minute. They’ve just taken on a new product, Galaxy-type chocolate bar called Destiny. She put up a whole folder, artwork and everything, with the slogan “It’s the Destiny that shapes our ends”. Did it with a straight face,’ he concluded admiringly.

‘They’ll sack her if she’s not careful.’

‘Oh, no, they love her. All the others are under twenty-five. She’s the only one who can spell. Anyway, I’ve pulled every digit out of every orifice, done the impossible, and got all your analyses done.’

‘All of them? That’s amazing,’ Slider said. ‘I thought I’d have to wait until Monday at least.’

‘What are you talking about? I’ve had them since Tuesday.’

‘I know you had the first ones on Tuesday, but Freddie only sent the foetal tissue on Thursday.’

‘I can do it in thirty-six hours when I have to. Come to think of it, I’ve done it for thirty-six hours when I’ve had to, but that’s another story.’

‘Well, I’m very grateful.’

‘Special service for my old and bestest chum. Fact is, when the foetal tissue came in, I thought there’s no point in the one lot without t’other, so I got on with it without waiting for you to fast-track. Now, if that doesn’t warrant an invite to dinner with you and your charming mate, I don’t know what does.’

‘Absolutely as soon as I’ve got this case sorted out, we’ll do it,’ Slider said, thinking doubtfully of how easy it would be to fit Tufty’s large frame and its even more enormous appetite into Joanna’s small sitting room, where the only table was.

‘Excellent, old chum-bum. Nosh-date, potential, duly noted in the almanac. Now, regarding your samples – the foetal tissue does not match the profile you gave me from the records – Michael Carmichael? God, what a name!’

‘Carmichael is not the father?’

‘Not in those trousers. Have you got anyone else you want me to check it against?’

‘Not yet, but I hope to very soon.’

‘Ah, a hot suspect in the offing, eh?’

‘What about DNA from the tights and the chain?’

‘Couldn’t get anything from the tights, just a few of the victim’s own skin cells. But there was a trace of blood and a few cells on the chain. I managed to work it up, and we have a match between that and the foetal DNA. Whoever cut his hand on the chain was also the baby’s progenitor. I’d say father but it doesn’t seem a very fatherly act to kill the mother, now does it?’

‘Not when I was a boy scout. Thanks, Tufty. That’s a great help.’

‘Let me know when you’ve got something to match it against, and I’ll put it through on the express till. Five items or less. You’ve got room in your basket. Well, back to the grindstone. Dyb dyb, old horse.’

‘Dob dob,’ Slider responded absently, his mind already on the next thing.

Porson was late in, having gone to Hammersmith first, straight from home, and he was still inhaling his first mug of coffee when Slider arrived at his door.

‘Good news, sir,’ he said.

‘I’m up for that,’ Porson said.

Slider told him about the DNA typing, and went on, ‘And we’ve just had the phone records back, for Carmichael’s home phone and Tyler Burton’s mobile. The number Zellah called from each was the same. It was Alex Markov’s.’

Porson put down his mug so sharply a slurp of coffee sprang over the rim. ‘Bloody hell, that’s a relief,’ he said, giving himself away completely.

‘That’s how I felt, sir,’ Slider admitted. A theory’s all very well, but one is as good as another until you get something solid to back it up. ‘And we’ve got a good possibility the car under the bridge was his. Same make and colour, anyway, though it’s a pity we haven’t got a reg number.’

‘Plus he lied to you about not having a car,’ Porson added, dragging a handkerchief from his pocket and mopping the spilled coffee with it. His wife was dead and he did his own laundry now, Slider reflected. ‘Right, how do you want to proceed?’

‘I need to get a DNA sample from him so I can check it against the foetus and the sample from the chain,’ he said.

‘You could arrest him,’ Porson said, stuffing the handkerchief back into his pocket. ‘You’ve got enough to be going on with.’

‘I’ve been thinking about it, sir,’ Slider said, ‘and I’d like to get him to come in voluntarily, get him relaxed and then catch him unawares. I think with the right handling we could get a confession out of him, and that would make things much easier.’

Porson nodded. ‘I’m all for that. But how are you going to get him to come in?’

‘I think I know how,’ Slider said.

‘Well, go to it, laddie, and best of luck. It’d be good to get this cleared up today. Mr Wetherspoon was asking me questions this morning. He’s got a new protégé he’d like to parachute into a front-line unit for experience. If it comes our way I want to refuse, but I need a bit of leverage to fight it off, and a quick result in the hand is worth a nod to a blind horse.’

‘Absolutely, sir,’ said Slider. ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘I know, laddie. You always do,’ said Porson.

‘How are you going to get him in?’ Atherton asked.

‘Stop breathing down my neck. I have a plan.’

‘A man with a plan: Panama.’

‘Right. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll eat my hat.’

‘It was a canal!’

‘Stop burbling, it’s ringing. Hello? Mr Markov? It’s Detective Inspector Slider here. Shepherd’s Bush police station. You remember I called on you – yes, that’s right. Oh, coming along slowly. These things take time. Mr Markov, there are just a couple more questions I’d like to ask you. It’s just a small thing, but it’s as well to get these things cleared up. Well, I wondered if you could pop into the station here this morning? If you wouldn’t mind. Yes, I could come out to you, but,’ he lowered his voice, ‘I assume your wife is there, and I would hate to disturb her. There are some aspects of the case I’m sure you’d prefer not to expose her to. Quite. There’s no need for her to be involved in any unpleasantness. Everything said here will be confidential. Indeed. Yes. Thank you so much. I’ll expect you shortly, then.’

He put down the phone and smiled like a cat. ‘He thinks I’ve cottoned on that he and Zellah were making the beast with two backs. He’ll come in to explain it away somehow.’

‘Devious and unscrupulous,’ Atherton said. ‘I like it!’

Markov looked as though he hadn’t slept much for days. He had shaved for the occasion and put on clean clothes, but his skin was slack with too much alcohol, and there were bags under his eyes. The eyes themselves were bloodshot, and his nose was red around the nostrils and kept running. ‘I think I’m getting a cold,’ he said, to excuse the constant need to sniff and wipe. ‘These summer colds are the devil – worse than the winter sort, I always think.’

‘Yes, very nasty,’ Slider said in a friendly way. ‘And so unfair, somehow. One feels far more put upon.’ He gestured Markov into a seat in the interview room, and went round to the other side of the table. ‘Can I offer you tea, or coffee?’

‘No, thank you. I wouldn’t mind some water, though.’

Slider had him brought a small bottle of mineral water and a plastic cup, and sat with hands relaxed on the table in front of him while Markov unscrewed the cap, poured some water and drank it. The action and Slider’s demeanour were working on him. The wariness with which he had entered had evaporated. He obviously thought that he was going to be able to talk his way out of whatever was coming.

‘Well, now,’ Slider said, with a comfortable smile, ‘I expect you’re wondering what all this is about. It’s quite a small thing, but I do need to have it cleared up. It’s about your wife’s car.’

‘Oh yes?’ Markov said. He frowned, as if he were trying to remember what, if anything, he had ever said about the car.

‘You did say that she cycled to work?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then I wonder why you didn’t report it missing on Sunday night.’

‘Missing?’

‘If you knew she hadn’t taken it, it must have been stolen, mustn’t it?’

‘It wasn’t stolen,’ he said, looking puzzled. ‘It was there this morning.’ A blush spread through his waxy face as he remembered he had previously repudiated all knowledge of a car. ‘Oh! I mean – when I said before . . . it was . . . I didn’t . . .’

‘You said you didn’t own a car. Quite.’

‘It was the truth,’ he protested.

‘Yes, I know – your wife owns it. What I want to know is, what was it doing under the railway bridge at Old Oak Common on Sunday night?’ Markov looked absolutely stumped, his face rigid, his eyes stationary. ‘We know your wife was at work on Sunday night. You can’t work in an intensive-care unit without having plenty of witnesses to the fact. You, on the other hand, were at home, with no one to vouch for you.’

‘I was at home all evening,’ he blurted. ‘I was working on a painting. I can’t help it if there was no one else there.’ He thought so hard you could hear the creak. ‘Maybe a joyrider took it, and then brought it back.’

‘Did you drive here today?’ Slider asked. Markov’s eyes flitted about, looking for escape. ‘We know that you are insured to drive it. Did you drive it here today? Is it downstairs?’

‘Well . . . yes,’ Markov admitted, like someone swallowing a too-large lump of steak.

‘Then we’d like to have a look at it, if you don’t mind. Do some tests.’

‘What sort of tests?’ he asked faintly.

‘Forensic tests. Whoever took the car will have left traces of themselves – hair, skin cells, sweat and sebaceous oil on the steering wheel and so on. You can’t get into a car without leaving DNA behind. Everyone who was ever in it will be there.’

‘You’ll find my DNA in there,’ Markov said in a dry voice. ‘And Steph’s.’

‘Of course we’ll have to eliminate those. We could start with yours – if you’d be so kind as to let us take a buccal swab.’ He brought out the kit. Markov was sweating now, but he still couldn’t see where this was going. ‘You’d have no objection to that, would you?’

‘Well, I—’

‘Thank you. This won’t take a moment.’ It was done in seconds. ‘Thank you,’ Slider said. ‘And if we could have the car keys . . .?’

Markov handed them over. Atherton handed them and the swab to the constable outside the door and returned to his seat. Markov’s eyes flitted between them anxiously.

‘Of course,’ Slider said amiably, ‘the other traces we’ll find in the car will be Zellah’s, but we already have her DNA typed, so we’ll recognise those.’

‘Zellah? She . . .’ He stopped.

‘You won’t try to pretend she was never in your car, I hope,’ Slider said lightly. ‘You were having an affair with her.’ Markov only stared, helpless as a rabbit before headlights. ‘Quite clever to try to make me think she was a lesbian,’ he went on conversationally. ‘Throw me off the scent. Unfortunately, there was too much evidence the other way. Including the sad fact that she was pregnant.’

Markov went so white Slider thought for an electric moment that he might throw up. ‘You said – my wife – you implied she needn’t know. That’s why I came here. You won’t tell her?’

‘I won’t tell her you were having an affair,’ Slider said, ‘but I think she’s going to find out anyway. Your DNA will match the baby’s, and when that’s added to all the other evidence we have against you, we will be charging you with Zellah’s murder. I think your wife is bound to hear about that sooner or later, don’t you?’

Markov’s mouth opened and shut a few times, but he didn’t seem to be able to get any words out. At last he said, ‘I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t. You’ve got it wrong. It wasn’t me.’

‘Let me see your hands,’ Slider said.

Markov’s hands were on the table, balled into fists. He looked at them as if he didn’t know what they were, and lay them flat, palm down. Slider reached across the table, took hold of a forefinger of each, and turned them over, palm up. Across the palm of the right hand was a thin, faint red mark, the healing scar of a long but minor cut. ‘How did you do that?’ he asked.

‘I – I cut myself by accident. With a palette knife. Grabbed the wrong end. I’d had a glass of wine or two,’ he added with an attempt at a light laugh.

Inventive, Slider thought. Even at this stage. He shook his head and said, ‘You cut it on the chain around Zellah’s neck. We have a DNA sample from that, too, and it will match yours, just as the foetal tissue will. I think, Mr Markov, the time has come for you to tell me everything. We know you killed her, you see. We have all the evidence we need to charge you. There is just this one window of opportunity for you to tell your side of the story, mention any mitigating circumstances we might not know about. Now’s the time to talk. Otherwise, it’s premeditated murder of the worst kind, and nothing will save you from the full penalty of the law.’

To his surprise, Markov began to weep. ‘I didn’t mean to! It was a mistake! An accident! I never meant to hurt her! You don’t understand. It wasn’t my fault.’

They were tears, Slider decided, of self-pity. Under-standable, but not very noble. He thought of Zellah, and wished her nemesis had been a bit more of a man, even though that would have made his job harder.

‘I never meant things to get out of hand,’ Markov said, his hands folded round a mug of tea as if it were a cold day. He was shaking a little. ‘I mean, I teach pubescent girls all the time, and they all fall in love with me. Well, most of them. It’s the whole art-master thing. I could have had dozens of them if I was that way inclined. But I’m no Humbert. But Zellah . . . Zellah was different. She was . . .’ He paused a long time, thinking, and then drew out his handkerchief and wiped his nose. It was still leaking, though whether from the recent tears or last night’s snow, Slider couldn’t tell.

‘She had a talent,’ he resumed at last. ‘It wasn’t just in drawing. She was brilliant academically, and she had a real feeling for music, painting, dance – everything. There was something about that girl – an artistic spirit. And she was beautiful. I don’t mean just physically. She was remote, shut away, like a frozen princess on an ice mountain, waiting for the prince who could ride his horse to the top and rescue her.’ He wiped his nose again, and then looked sharply at Slider, coming down to earth with a bump. ‘I don’t mean I ever intended to do anything about it. I’m an artist. I can look without touching. It all came from her side. She threw herself at me.’

‘And you and your wife weren’t getting on.’

‘We haven’t been for a long time,’ he said with a sigh. ‘We should never have married. Steph and I – well, we’re not right for each other. She’s too practical; I’m too romantic. And – well, there are money troubles. The mortgage is hefty, and I’m maxed out on my credit cards. I’ve got an overdraft, too. Painting in oils is expensive. Steph refuses to understand that. Of course, when I sell something, I pay the loans off.’

‘So, like many a man whose wife doesn’t understand him, you started an affair,’ Slider said.

Markov looked sulky. ‘I told you, that was her idea. She was crazy about me. I could take it or leave it.’

‘But you took it,’ Slider said. ‘Your wife working shifts made it easy for you to fit it in.’ Markov wanted to protest, but Slider waved that line away. ‘What happened on Sunday?’

‘I hadn’t seen her for a while. It wasn’t so easy for her to get away in school holidays. It must have been over a week – two weeks, probably. I was hoping, actually, that she was cooling off. You see, much as I liked her, I was afraid of Steph finding out. She owns the flat, you see. She could make it very awkward for me. If there was a divorce, I’d lose everything. I wouldn’t even have a roof over my head. OK, I’ve got the teaching job, but it’s part-time, and it doesn’t pay much, and if I took a full-time job I wouldn’t have time to paint.’

‘And you have an expensive drugs habit, and your wife’s income helps pay for that,’ Atherton said neutrally.

Markov looked at him resentfully. ‘It’s all right for you to sit in judgement over me. You don’t know what an artist suffers. The pressures,’ he put his hands to his head, ‘are unbearable sometimes. I need cocaine to be able to relax—’

‘Let’s get back to Sunday,’ Slider interrupted. He didn’t want to go off on the drugs line again. ‘You hadn’t seen Zellah for a while, and then suddenly she telephoned you. Oh yes,’ he added, ‘we know about that. Telephone calls are all logged, you know.’

‘Oh,’ he said blankly. ‘Well, yes, she phoned me and said she wanted to see me. Could she come over, she asked. Steph had gone to work, fortunately. But I was doing a bit of painting and I didn’t want to break off. I said I was busy. She said it was really important and she must see me. So I said OK, I’d meet her later. We agreed ten o’clock, in the fairground opposite the North Pole.’ He moved restlessly. ‘I was thinking this might be a good opportunity to break up with her, and it would be easier in a crowded place like that, where she couldn’t make a fuss.’

‘Good thought,’ said Slider drily.

‘But when I met her, she started talking about us, and our relationship and all that sort of thing, and how much she loved me, and next thing she was asking me when I was going to leave my wife for her.’

‘Amazing.’

‘I’d never said anything to her about that! Never so much as mentioned marriage! Well, I didn’t want a scene, so I tried to put her off gently, but she wouldn’t change the subject. Went on and on about it. Eventually I got fed up and, well, lost my temper a bit, and we ended up shouting at each other. And then she tells me she’s having a baby.’

‘How did you react to that?’

‘I was dumbfounded. I mean, we’d always used a condom. I said I didn’t see how she could possibly hold me responsible for her condition. I said she must have been seeing someone else. She started crying. She said she loved me, and that there wasn’t anyone but me. She said condoms weren’t always reliable. She begged me to leave my wife and marry her. She said her father would kill her otherwise. I said I was sorry for her but there was no question of it. It went on like that for a bit. We’d walked right to the back of the fair by that time, where the caravans and lorries are. Finally she rushes off in tears, runs away across the Scrubs.’

‘Why didn’t you follow her?’

‘I didn’t want to get into it all over again. I thought she’d calm down and just go home in the end. She was heading in the right direction. I didn’t want any more trouble.’ He seemed to see something in Slider’s face and went on, self-exculpatory. ‘I was angry, if you want to know. I knew if I went after her there’d be an even worse row. I thought it best to go home. I’d . . . I’d had a few drinks during the evening.’

‘Drinks?’ Slider queried.

Markov looked at him, and then shrugged. ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter now. You know about it anyway. All right, I was a bit wired. I’d had a couple of lines. I generally do a bit when I’m working. It helps clear my mind, gives me an edge.’

‘I see. And what happened then?’

‘Well, I was still angry when I got home. And worried. I paced about a bit. I had a couple of stiff drinks, to bring me down. And then she phoned again. She said she was at Old Oak Common, and she couldn’t go home because she was supposed to be staying over with friends that night. She said if she went home at this time of night when she wasn’t expected, it would all come out, and her father would kill her and then come after me. She wanted me to pick her up and drive her to her friend’s house. I didn’t see any way out of it, so I went.’

‘She was waiting by the side of the road when you went past,’ Slider said. ‘You drove on under the bridge and stopped, and she came and got in.’

Markov blinked. ‘How do you know?

‘There were witnesses.’

‘I didn’t see anyone.’

‘Never mind, they were there. Go on.’

‘Well, she got in, and I asked where did she want to go. She started crying again, and said she only wanted to be with me, begged me to marry her. I said I wasn’t going to listen to all that again. I said I wasn’t going to marry her, and she’d better get used to the idea. I told her she should have an abortion. I even offered to help her pay for it. She stopped crying, as if it was turned off with a tap. She looked at me.’ He paused, and shivered unconsciously. ‘I’ve never seen such a look on anyone’s face. I wish I could have painted it. She said she’d never have an abortion. And then she said, in this horrible, hard voice, that I’d have to marry her because she was going to tell my wife.’

‘Ah,’ said Slider. That was the last section of the jigsaw. He had wondered what it was that had triggered the final rage.

‘The blackmailing little trollop!’ Markov said, angered all over again at the memory. ‘She was going to ruin everything! And when I’d just offered to help her! She jumped out of the car and ran across the grass. I went after her. I shouted at her to stop, but she didn’t. I caught up with her and grabbed for her, but I only got the chain of that thing round her neck. It broke – cut my hand – but it jerked her off balance. I think the heel of her shoe broke. Anyway, she stumbled and I caught her arm. She turned round to face me. We were right on the embankment by then. She said nothing I could say would change her mind. Either I could tell my wife or she would, but one way or the other I was going to marry her. And so . . .’ He stopped. He didn’t seem to want to go on. He looked at Slider almost in appeal.

‘And so you killed her,’ Slider said unemotionally.

‘I didn’t mean to!’ he cried. ‘I was just so mad at her! I didn’t know what I was doing. I thought of the trouble she was going to cause me, how she was going to ruin my whole life. And Steph, too, she didn’t deserve that. She was blackmailing me! All that talk about love was rubbish! All she wanted was marriage, and she didn’t care who she destroyed to get it. I was so mad, I just . . . I just . . . well, before I knew what was happening she was dead. I didn’t mean to, I swear it. I didn’t mean to hurt her. Something came over me. If I could take it back, I would. I never meant to hurt her.’

The appeal was blatant now, and tears started to leak from his eyes again.

Slider looked at him without pity. ‘If you didn’t mean to hurt her, why did you take a pair of tights with you?’

‘What?’ He looked dumbfounded.

‘You strangled Zellah with a pair of tights. They weren’t hers, and I doubt you drive around with a pair of women’s tights in your pocket. So you must have taken them with you for the purpose of killing her. Which means it was premeditated murder.’

He stared, whitening. ‘No,’ he said in a whisper of a voice. He must have read his fate in Slider’s face, because he began crying in earnest now. ‘I’m sorry!’ he gasped through the tears. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’m sure you are,’ Slider said. Sorry for yourself, he added inside his head.

They got enough of everything done by the end of the day to go for a celebratory drink in the British Queen. Emily joined them, and Joanna came, bringing the baby, so they sat out in the garden. It was a warm evening, the threatening storm having passed over without breaking. The landlord brought out a platter of sandwiches, pork pies and scotch eggs, the low sun flickered through the trees, there was a blackbird singing nearby. It was all very pleasant. George got passed around from hand to hand and had the time of his life. Everyone wanted to pet him, and he held court like a confirmed bon viveur, half a ham sandwich in one hand and somebody’s biro in the other, munching and conducting by turns.

Slider leaned tiredly against Joanna on the only bench with a back, and let the others talk. Atherton and Hart led the way in telling the story to her and Emily, though Atherton generously called on Connolly to add a sentence or two.

She had the last word of the story. ‘The tights were his wife’s, of course. She kept a spare pair in the car because she laddered so many at work. When Zellah jumped out to do a legger, she must’ve hit the storage bin yoke with her knee – it fell open and the tights fell out. He was so mad at her by then he picked them up and – well, enda story. We found the wrapper from the tights under the driver’s seat. Shoved it there when he got out the car, and didn’t shift it afterwards, the eejit. Don’t know if he was too stupid, too upset – or maybe just a stone mentaller who thought he could get away with anything.’

Hart blew crumbs, waving her sandwich urgently. ‘That third thing.’

‘I think he was in such a blind panic he was on automatic,’ Hollis said. ‘Otherwise he’d have taken the tights away with him, or tried to hide the body. He just killed her and ran away.’

‘And put the whole thing out of his mind,’ Connolly finished, ‘and hoped it’d go away.’

Atherton said. ‘He’d just offered to pay for Zellah to have an abortion, but his only money was his wife’s. A prince among men.’

Slider reached for his pint. It was time for the toasts. ‘To all of us,’ he proposed. ‘Good work, everybody. We did it!’

Atherton proposed the next one. ‘To the criminal – without whom police work would be merely theory.’

Then Connolly said, ‘To the boss – sir – Mr Slider.’

‘The guv!’ the others roared, and drank with gusto.

‘Oh shucks,’ Slider said.

‘They love you, you fool,’ Joanna said.

‘Shups,’ said George, who had arrived back with him at that moment, passed over from Hart.

‘He’s a bit damp,’ Hart explained, half apologetically.

‘Like the guv’s eyes,’ said Joanna, laughing. ‘Let’s have another round. I’m up.’ And to the polite protests, ‘It must be my turn by now.’

Connolly turned to Hart when she’d gone. ‘D’y’know what I’m going to tellya? That one,’ she jerked her head in Joanna’s direction, ‘is one smart ban.’

In bed that night, Joanna said, ‘You’ve hardly spoken about her. Is she bothering you so much?’

‘Who?’

‘Don’t be a mug. Zellah, of course.’

‘Yes, she bothers me. I keep thinking about her, so lonely, her parents fighting over her like two dogs over a juicy bone. She was desperate for love, trying to fit in with the other girls, trying to be what Mike Carmichael wanted, then finding what she thought was her soul mate in Alex Markov. She told Frieda he really understood her.’

‘Poor kid.’

‘Yes, she was just a kid, in spite of everything. And then that last day, pregnant, alone, desperately afraid, not knowing what to do or who to turn to. I can’t help thinking she knew all along Markov was going to let her down. She couldn’t have known he was going to kill her, though.’

‘Do you think she really loved Markov?’

‘Of course it was a fantasy. But yes, she loved him. That was what it was all about.’ He thought of that poem. The thrush, sobbing in darkness. How lonely, how utterly alone she had felt herself. She had thought Markov was her sunlit freedom. Poor little sap. ‘She gave him what he wanted – sex – in exchange for what she wanted – warmth. Just to be touched, held. Not to be alone.’

‘Well, she wouldn’t be the first woman to do that. In fact, I’d think it’s probably how most relationships go. Sex in exchange for a cuddle.’

‘That’s a comforting thought.’

‘Strange how she repeated her mother’s past. Fell for a married man and got pregnant. Subconscious copying, I suppose. But what a hellish life she must have had, with a father like that.’

‘He did his best for her, according to his own lights. It’s all anyone can do.’

‘What will happen now?’ she asked after a moment. ‘Will Markov go down?’

‘Yes, the tights will do for him as surely as they did for Zellah. If only he’d used his hands, he might have claimed it was a momentary lapse. But the tights made it premeditated; malice aforethought. His fell purpose.’

‘He’ll get life?’

‘Which means twenty years. Out in fourteen. Still young enough for a new life. Even to start a family. It’s the Wildings who get the real life sentence.’

‘What will Mr Wilding do now, I wonder?’

‘I don’t know. We’ve taken the possibility of revenge away from him. I’ve managed to convince him it wasn’t Carmichael. And he can’t get at Markov, because we’ve got him banged up. All he had left to keep him going was the determination to kill the person responsible.’

‘Then I suppose he’ll kill himself,’ Joanna said.

‘That’s not my problem,’ Slider said after a moment.

‘Then stop sounding as if it is. You won, you fool. What do you think that drink at the pub was all about?’

‘You can’t ever win in a situation like this,’ he said. ‘That poor child. She was just a little girl.’

Joanna folded him close to her. She knew he was close to crying. ‘You avenge them, the wronged dead. They’re lucky, the ones who have you. Don’t you know that? They can lie quiet. You’ve done what she needed. She won’t walk tonight.’

After a bit he sighed, and she felt him relax. Time to come back to earth. ‘You forgot to phone your father again,’ she said.

‘Oh hell,’ he muttered. ‘Remind me to phone him tomorrow, without fail.’

‘I understand congratulations are in order?’ Mr Slider said.

‘How did you know that?’ Slider said, sitting out in Joanna’s pocket handkerchief of a garden with his Sunday morning coffee, while George sat on the grass nearby, considering what to eat – grass, stick, stone, worm? It was all so tempting . . .

‘Joanna told me yesterday. She rang to say you’d broken the case and probably wouldn’t have a chance to ring me.’

‘I’m sorry. You know how much there is to do.’

‘I know. It didn’t matter, anyway, son. I’ve gone ahead and done it.’

‘Done what?’

‘Sold the cottage. Well, you said you didn’t mind.’

‘It was your decision,’ Slider said, but he feared that his father, old and commercially innocent, might have been rooked. He wished he had waited until Slider could help him. ‘I hope you got a decent price for it,’ he said anxiously.

‘Don’t worry. Your old dad’s not so green as he’s grass-looking. Listen, Bill, there’s something I want to ask you. But I want you to promise to say no if you feel that way. There’ll be no hard feelings. You just be honest with me.’

‘Dad—’

‘No, let me say my piece. I bin practising,’ he said with a smile in his voice. ‘I know you and Joanna are looking to move, and I was wondering whether we couldn’t throw in together, and get a place a bit bigger, with room for me. A granny-flat or whatever they call it. I don’t need much – just a bed-sitting room with a gas ring, and a bathroom.’

‘Oh, Dad, it would be lovely, but—’

‘I wouldn’t be underfoot, don’t you think that. You wouldn’t even see me unless you asked to. But I’d like to be closer, now I’m getting on a bit. And, see, I could stop in for the gas man, that sort of thing. And I could babysit for you any time, if you wanted to go out. I’d be on hand, like. And what I thought was, if I give you the money right off, I only got to live another seven years, and you wouldn’t be hit with those old death-duties when I do pop off.’

‘Dad, it would be wonderful,’ Slider said, desperate to stop him, ‘but we could never afford a place big enough. We can’t find anything we can afford even for us.’

‘I’d be putting in my money, you know.’

‘I know, but what you could get for the cottage just wouldn’t be enough in London.’

Mr Slider chuckled. ‘Oh, I got a fair bit for it. A tidy bit. I sold it to a developer, you see.’

‘A developer?’

‘That’s right, son. It seems the government’s told the County Council they’ve got to build six thousand more houses in Essex, and the only way they can do that is on greenfield sites. Well, my bit of land’s handy to the main road, and there’s the lane all the way up to the cottage, with the sewage and water and electric already laid on. And it’s not conservation land or prime farmland. So it’s ideal.’

Slider felt breathless. ‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ he managed to say.

‘I told you, I’m not so green as you think. Once they approached me and made an offer, I said I’d think about it, and I went and did a bit of homework. Talked to the planning officer at the council, had a look at some other plans, spoke to a solicitor. The developers offered me two hundred and fifty thousand for the cottage.’

‘Two hundred and fifty?’ Slider was pleasantly surprised. It was a lot for that little place, and it was all clear profit – no mortgage to pay off. Despite himself, his brain went instantly into calculation mode. A quarter of a million was far too little for anywhere round here, of course, but it was a handsome deposit in anyone’s language, and say he and Jo could get a hefty mortgage, and they looked further out – a lot further out . . .

Mr Slider said, chuckling again, ‘Ah, but that’s just for the cottage. Near on four acres I got there. They could put sixteen executive homes on that, or twenty-four luxury dwellings. I took advice and asked ’em for one and a quarter million, and we settled in the end on one-point-oh-five. What that oh-five was about, don’t ask me! But it makes one-point-three altogether. That’ll be enough to get somewhere with a little annexe for me, won’t it? If you want me, that is.’

Slider found his voice at last. ‘For the chance of a live-in babysitter? Are you kidding?’

‘And don’t forget house-sitting,’ Mr Slider said calmly. ‘I read an article about it in the paper. If you have someone living in your house when you go on holiday, you can get a reduction on your insurance. Now that’s most important, son.’

Helplessly, and perhaps even with a touch of hysteria, Slider began to laugh.