Blood Lines

Book 5: Bill Slider Mystery

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Genres: Police Procedurals; Mystery

Synopsis

'An outstanding series' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

A Bill Slider Mystery

With his on-off lover Joanna away with work, Detective Inspector Bill Slider almost welcomes a call-out to the BBC TV Centre at White City. Roger Greatrex, celebrated music critic and opera aficionado, appears to have topped himself - only minutes before he was due to appear live on a quiz show.

But there are signs that the body has been interfered with, and Slider suspects murder. One fellow panellist is known to have quarrelled violently with Greatrex. two members of the production team have motives, and nobody in the building has a proper alibi.

Slider is under pressure to make an arrest, and all his instincts are at odds with the evidence. But a dangerous killer is on the loose, and could kill again...

Praise for the Bill Slider series:

'Slider and his creator are real discoveries'
Daily Mail

'Sharp, witty and well-plotted'
Times

'Harrod-Eagles and her detective hero form a class act. The style is fast, funny and furious - the plotting crisply devious'
Irish Times

Release date: September 1, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 224

Sample

In the canteen queue Detective Inspector Slider came up behind DI Carver.

‘Hullo, Ron. You look as if you’ve been up all night.’

Carver, a balding man with a perpetual grudge, grunted. ‘Had a call-out last night.’

‘Must have been something serious to get you out of bed,’ Slider said blandly. The night shift in the Department consisted of one DC, who called up a DS in the case of something he couldn’t handle. Only really serious crime warranted telephoning the Ops DI, who was likely to be just a teensy bit tetchy if disturbed for what he regarded as trivia. ‘The big one, was it? Murder? Armed robbery?’

Carver looked a snarl. ‘Attempted burglary. Big house in Stamford Brook.’

‘Oh, bad luck,’ Slider said with brimming sympathy. Ron Carver had sometimes said things about him behind his back. ‘Open window, opportunist thief?’

‘The window was shut, as a matter of fact,’ Carver corrected loftily. ‘Bloody sash window,’ he added savagely. ‘Child’s play – two seconds with a five-bob penknife. It don’t matter how often you tell ’em, they won’t fit locks. And it’s not as if this one couldn’t afford it – she was loaded.’

‘Much missing?’

‘Nah, she frightened him off.’ He glanced sideways at Slider and began to unbend. One couldn’t waste a good story, after all. ‘She didn’t reckon he was after her Renwahs. Oh no. And she was ready to defend her honour to the hilt – literally. Gilbert says she come to the door brandishing a bloody great knife. Sacrificial dagger, apparently, real Abraham and Isaac job, souvenir of Tel Aviv.’

‘Sharp?’

‘As a lemon. Apparently, she’s sat in the lounge in the dark thinking about going to bed when she’s heard the window going up in her bedroom, so she’s grabbed the knife off the coffee table, tiptoed in, and there’s chummy on the drainpipe with his leg over the sill. Well, she reckons that’s not all he wants the leg over – though to look at her you’d think it was more hope than fear – so she’s only gone for him, hasn’t she? Hacked him in the leg with this bloody pig-sticker, and he’s gone. Near as damn it fell off the bloody drainpipe – first-floor window and a concrete strip at the bottom. But anyway, he shins down and has it away across the garden, and she’s straight on the dog to us. Keeps the number on her phone pad – reckons it’s quicker than nine-nine-nine.’

‘A doughty female,’ Slider commented.

‘I haven’t told you the best bit yet,’ said Carver. ‘Benny Cook feels it’s his duty to warn her about the consequences, should chummy have broke his leg or his neck falling off her drainpipe. So he says, “You really mustn’t go about hacking at people’s legs like that, madam,” and she comes back like the Queen Mum, “Young man, I was aiming for his genitals.”’ Carver’s haughty falsetto was worth coming in early for, Slider thought.

Carver went off with his breakfast into the guv’nors’ dining-room, but Slider preferred to mess with the ORs, and exchanging friendly nods with some of the sleepy night relief just coming off, who had stayed for a cuppa and a wad, he took his tray to a window table. A few moments later his bagman, Detective Sergeant Atherton, appeared beside him, dunking his teabag at an early morning andante. ‘How long have you been here?’ he asked.

Slider looked up. ‘Who’s Prime Minister? Pass the tomato sauce before you sit down,’ he said.

‘Dear God!’ Atherton stared unwillingly at Slider’s tray: two fried eggs, double fried bread, sausage, bacon and tomato, tea an’ a slice. ‘I see you’ve plumped for the Heartburn Special,’ he said. ‘Last train from St Pancreas.’

Slider chuckled. ‘You’re such a gastro-queen. How did you ever come to be a copper?’

‘I was switched in the cradle by gypsies,’ Atherton said, sitting down opposite him. ‘Why are you breakfasting here? Oh, of course, Joanna’s gone down to Glyndebourne.’

‘She left early to miss the traffic. And she’s got a couple of morning orchestra calls, so she’s staying down tonight and tomorrow,’ Slider said, trying to sound indifferent about it. But the fact was, sleeping in her bed in her flat when she wasn’t there made him feel uneasy. He anticipated restless nights. ‘What’s your excuse?’

‘I’m not early in, I’m late out,’ Atherton said, extracting his teabag by the tail, like a drowned mouse, and laying it carefully in the ashtray where it would later infuriate the smokers.

‘With?’

‘One Nancy Gregg. A little blinder. Met her last week on that house-to-house in East Acton.’

‘What about Sue?’

‘Sue?’ Atherton said as though it were a word in Urdu, of meaning unknown to him.

‘Sue Caversham, violinist, friend of Joanna’s,’ Slider reminded him drily. ‘I thought you and she were a big thing.’

Atherton sipped, at his most superb. ‘No commitment has been made on either side.’ And then, ‘She’s down at Glyndebourne as well, you know. You can’t expect a healthy, red-blooded young male suddenly to become celibate. We ’as urges, guv.’ He dropped into a whine. ‘I dunno what came over me. It’s all a blank. Summink must of snapped—’

‘Yes, yes, I get the picture.’ Slider folded a piece of wonder-bread and carefully mopped up tomato sauce. Atherton watched him in dilating horror. ‘So, did you hear, Mr Carver’s firm had a sleepless night?’

‘Yes, I was talking to Hewson about it,’ Atherton said. Hewson was the DS on call. ‘Modest bit of excitement. He quite took to the intended victim – told me she had balls.’

‘Surely not?’

‘She’s one cool dame. You’ll be able to meet her later on if you like. She’s coming in to see if she can pick anyone out from the mugshots. Apparently she caught a glimpse of chummy’s boat, though it was dark, of course, and it all happened quickly. Hewson isn’t too hopeful, but it would be nice to nail one of our persistent offenders.’

‘Did she actually wound him?’

‘Apparently. There was blood on the blade of the knife,’ Atherton said. ‘Even if she can’t pick anyone out, it might be worth tugging a few of our best customers and see if anyone’s limping. A known section-nine-er with a matching cut on the thigh ought to be convincing enough even for the CPS.’

‘And how would you propose discovering this cut? Ask them to take their trousers down?’

‘That is one difficulty,’ Atherton admitted. ‘Not least because there’s a few who’d agree to. Still, I understand Mr Carver intends putting the word out on the street that the villain ought to sue this woman for assault.’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t believe anyone’d be daft enough to come forward. It means putting his hand up for burglary.’

‘It never does to underestimate the stupidity of the criminal,’ Slider said. ‘I remember the time One-Eyed Billy got nicked because he took a stolen Magimix back to Currys to complain one of the attachments was missing.’

‘I never know whether to believe your stories,’ Atherton complained. ‘And I’ve never understood why he’s called One-Eyed Billy, when he’s got two perfectly good ones.’

‘Because his father was called One-Eyed Harry,’ Slider said, serene in the knowledge that he could only add to his own legend. ‘It’s like a family name. Harry’s wife was always known as Mrs One-Eye. It was perfectly respectful – everyone liked her. When she took her teeth out she could fold her lower lip right up over her nose. Broke the ice at parties.’

Atherton felt it was time to raise the tone. ‘Reverting to the subject of that break-in last night, the lady in question, interestingly enough, is someone you’ll have heard of quite recently: Christa Jimenez.’ Seeing Slider’s blank expression, he added, ‘She sang in that Don Giovanni you went to at Glyndebourne.’

‘Oh? Which one was she?’

‘Donna Elvira. Don’t you know? Don’t tell me you slept through it all!’

‘Of course I didn’t,’ Slider said indignantly. ‘But I’m not an opera buff, the names don’t mean much to me. She was the dame with the very low-cut dress, right?’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Atherton said drily. ‘I haven’t seen the production.’

‘You haven’t missed much,’ Slider grumbled. Joanna was playing in two operas down at Glyndebourne this year, and orchestra members were allowed to bring two guests each to the pre-dress-rehearsal. Though there were many who’d have given their eye teeth for the privilege, and Slider was not unappreciative, it was still small compensation for the amount of time she had to spend away from him. Besides, though he didn’t like to admit it in front of Atherton, he wasn’t all that keen on opera – especially a modern, minimalist production which offered him nothing to look at while he listened. ‘If I’d paid seventy-five pounds for a ticket,’ he said in sudden wrath at the thought, ‘I’d have expected at least some nice scenery and costumes, or my money back.’

Atherton didn’t quite keep his smile under control. Slider gave him a suspicious look, and he straightened his face. ‘It did have terrific reviews,’ he mentioned, ‘from some very serious critics.’

‘You think I’m a philistine,’ Slider said, a little ruffled. ‘But I don’t believe those critics really like all that modern stuff. They just pretend to so as to make themselves superior to the rest of us. Anyway, they get paid to sit through it. Something that’s put on for the public, and paid for by the public, ought to aim at pleasing the public.’

‘Ah, there you have the whole dilemma of arts funding in a nutshell,’ Atherton said. ‘Well, I’d better go and have a shave and change my shirt. Mustn’t be late for work, must I, especially now we’re short-handed. I wonder if we’ll ever get a replacement for Beevers.’

Detective Sergeant Beevers had left three weeks ago. Slider said, ‘Who ever would have thought of him entering the Church?’

‘It’s only a Baptist ministry,’ Atherton said.

‘Snob! A priest is a priest is a priest. But I’d have thought Beevers was in The Job for life. It isn’t as if he had any outside interests—’

‘Except the Church.’

‘Well, yes, obviously. But if it had been one of the others, now – take Norma, for instance—’

‘I’ve often taken Norma in my dreams,’ Atherton said tenderly, ‘but I’d never dare try it on in real life.’

There was a moment’s reverent silence. Woman Detective Constable Kathleen Swilley was blonde, athletic and slim – every man’s erotic dream. She could also shoot the eyebrows off a fly at fifty paces and packed a punch like an army mule, and because of her machismo was generally known as Norma. She hated her given name so much she didn’t even mind.

Atherton sighed, coming down to earth, and stood up. ‘I suppose one of these days we’ll get a new super, too. That’ll be something to look forward to. Not that Mr Honeyman’s any trouble.’

Since Detective Superintendent ‘Mad Ivan’ Barrington had committed suicide, they had only had a night watchman at the crease: Det Sup Honeyman, working out his time until retirement and hoping for a quiet life.

‘I hear McLaren’s started a book on who we’ll get,’ Slider said.

‘He says that according to the grapevine – alias his mates at Kensington – nobody’s very anxious for the job. With the last two supers dying in harness, they reckon Shepherd’s Bush is a poisoned chalice. That’s why we’ve had the night watchman so long.’

‘They’re a right bunch of Hans Andersens down at Kensington,’ said Slider. ‘Obviously now Mr Honeyman’s here, they aren’t going to replace him until he retires, and he won’t have done his thirty years until next month.’

And a man on the brink of completing his thirty in an increasingly dangerous profession was not going to do anything to risk his life, health or reputation, which was why Eric Honeyman was ‘no trouble’ almost to the point of catatonia; but out of respect for the chain of command, Slider didn’t say so aloud. ‘I don’t suppose it’s possible ever to stop coppers gossiping,’ he complained, pushing back his chair and standing up, ‘but it’d be nice to break McLaren of the habit of phoning Kensington twice a day for fresh rumours. But he just doesn’t seem to take to training.’

‘Hit him with a rolled-up newspaper,’ Atherton suggested, following him to the door.

Slider had stayed on at the end of the shift, clearing desultory bits of accumulated paperwork and trying to rearrange his ‘pending’ pile into stuff he was likely to do something about eventually, and stuff he was hoping would simply die of old age. Even as he tried to be conscientious about it, part of his brain knew that he was sitting at his desk because it was preferable to deciding what to do tonight. Ain’t you got no home to go to? enquired a thread of song ironically. He had the key to Joanna’s place, ten minutes away in Turnham Green, but despite his shaving gear in the bathroom it was still Joanna’s place and not home, especially when she was not in it. When she was there it was a dear and familiar haven; without her it seemed as cosy as a 1950s seaside boardinghouse.

The ex-marital home in Ruislip, from which his wife and children had decamped, he had never loved even when his family lived there. It was now fulfilling a secondary role as an albatross hanging round his neck. The idea was for him and Joanna to buy a place together once he had sold the albatross and paid Irene her half; but with the housing market suffering from clinical depression, even the estate agent had passed from cautiously jaunty to defensively evasive. All the same, a good number of his possessions were still stored there, and he supposed if he were stopped by the police, it would be the address he would give as his. It was where Irene thought he still lived: she didn’t know about Joanna yet.

But he only went there when constrained; which left staying at work as the only alternative. It made him realise how few friends he had. Detective Inspector was a lonely sort of rank. Too much blokeing with the lads undermined authority; and in any case, he’d never been fond of football. Socialising above his station was even more out of the question: he was not ambitious enough either to ingratiate himself with his seniors, or to be welcomed by them as an aspirant. Besides, up there in the stratosphere internal politics and golf were the reigning interests, and he’d never really got the hang of intrigue. As to golf, he had met many golf-club members during his years of living in the suburbs. Most of them were dull, and many of them were called Derek.

Atherton was his only close friend. Atherton had no ambition and no nagging doubts about himself, so Slider had nothing to prove to him and nothing to fear from him. His intellectual curiosity made him the ideal partner at work, and his hedonism ditto at play. Moreover, Atherton liked Slider, and made it plain enough to reassure without embarrassing a solitary man with the usual difficulties of his age group in expressing his feelings.

In the feelings department, Joanna had been an earthquake to Slider. She had burst in on a lifetime’s reserve and obedience to duty with revolutionary ideas about one’s duty to oneself and the nature of happiness. She had turned his life upside down, and he had to admit he hadn’t made a very good job of coping with it. Coming alive at his age was worse than pins and needles, and it was hardly surprising if he had periods of reaction, especially when she was not there to reassure him. But the boats were burned now, anyway. Irene had run off (well, sauntered off) with another man, taking the children with her, so there was no way back into his old life. A life with Joanna, some time in the future when everything had been sorted out, glittered like the distant prospect of the Emerald City. He told himself everything would be all right; it was the limbo of the present that was so uncomfortable.

‘Sir? Mr Slider?’

Slider looked up, coming back from a great distance to find standing in his open doorway a man about whom much was familiar: a strong, fleshy, broad-bottomed man in a brown suit which original cheapness and subsequent hard wear had rendered shapeless, especially about the overworked pockets. He wore an off-white shirt with the sort of tie men choose for themselves, and thick-soled shoes scuffed at the toe and worn down at the heel. He wore a large, elaborate but cheap metal-braceleted watch on his right wrist, and a large, plain gold signet ring on the third finger of his right hand. The first and second fingers of his left hand were amber cigarette holders. He had detective written all over him.

He was in his mid-to-late thirties, dark-haired, dark-eyed and moley; his lower face had the bluish shading that went with really black hair and white skin.

‘DS Mills, sir,’ he said helpfully when Slider failed to respond.

‘What does the DS stand for?’ Slider asked. ‘Dark Satanic?’

‘Detective Sergeant, sir,’ Mills corrected, deadpan.

‘Are you being funny, lad?’

‘No, sir. Would you like me to be?’

Both men broke into a grin, and Slider got up to stretch out his hand. ‘Good to see you, Mills. How are you?’

‘I thought for a minute you didn’t remember me,’ Mills said gratefully. ‘It’s a long time since the old Charing Cross days.’

‘Ten years at least, I should think. So you made your stripes? Well done! And what are you doing here?’

‘I’ve just transferred from Epsom.’

Slider raised his eyebrows. ‘Nobody told me. I’ve been a sergeant short for three weeks. I thought I was never going to get a replacement.’

Mills looked embarrassed. ‘Oh, no sir, I’m not for you. I’m joining Mr Carver’s firm tomorrow, but when I heard you were here I thought I’d drop in as I was passing and see if you remembered me.’

Carver had been agitating for extra manpower for months, but he hadn’t actually lost anyone. If anyone ought to have got Mills, it was Slider; but Ron Carver was on the square. Slider swallowed his disappointment and his paranoia. The ways of the Met were passing strange but there was no future in pissing into the wind.

‘How are things in Epsom?’ he asked instead.

Mills made a face. ‘Quiet. Except on Saturday nights. You know what these outers are like, sir.’

‘Ah well, you won’t get bored here.’

‘I’m from Shepherd’s Bush originally,’ Mills said. ‘I mean, I was born here.’

‘Were you? I suppose someone has to be.’

‘We lived in Oaklands Grove,’ Mills confided. ‘I’ve been walking about the last couple of days, though, and the place has changed a good bit. I passed where the Congo Church used to be, and it’s gone!’ He sounded quite indignant. ‘It’s a block of flats now. I used to go to scouts in the church hall there when I was a kid.’

‘Got any family here?’

‘My mum, she’s in sheltered in Hammersmith. And my auntie lives in Ormiston Grove.’

‘Sir Robert Mark would have a fit,’ Slider murmured. It had been that great man’s contention that detectives should not get to know their ground too well, or corruption would inevitably set in, struggle how one might. ‘Are you staying with her?’

‘No, sir. I’ve got a temporary place just round the corner, Stanlake Road. I’ll be looking for a flat a bit further out once I’ve got settled.’

‘Well, I’m sure you’ll be a great asset to Mr Carver, even if you do have to relearn the geography. I wish you were joining my firm. I’ve lost a DS, and the holiday season’s always a problem. Have you had your holidays?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Rhyl, sir.’

Slider was unable to think of a single thing to say about Rhyl. Possibly no one ever had. ‘You haven’t taken up DIY, have you?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘No sir,’ Mills said with faint surprise.

Slider was relieved. ‘Better steer clear of DC Anderson, then,’ he advised. ‘He’s just built his own sun-lounge extension.’

‘Thanks for the warning, guv,’ said Mills grinning.

The White Horse wasn’t much of a pub, but it was open all day and the nearest to the police station, so it received more patronage than its efforts to please deserved. Slider pushed open the door of the saloon bar and a friendly fug embraced his head, an all-senses combination of cigarette smoke, cherry-coloured nylon carpeting, the smell of institutional gravy and the pinging and gurgling of a fruit-machine. Along the bar in front of him was a row of broad dark-blue serge behinds topped with a variety of anoraks and leather jackets: B Relief must have been on overtime. He imagined he could hear the steady sound of sucking, as when a team of plough horses, just turned out, nudges up to the water-trough.

One of them, alerted perhaps by the unnaturally fresh air that had wafted in with Slider, turned his head, and then smiled welcomingly. ‘Hullo, sir. I’m up – can I get you one?’ D’Arblay said. The others looked round as well, and their expressions were not wholly unwilling, but Slider felt shy of imposing himself upon them. They had been sucking in grateful silence, and if he joined them they’d have to make polite conversation.

‘Oh, thanks, you’re very kind, but I’m going to get something to eat,’ he excused himself.

‘You’re a brave man, sir,’ said Elkins, his moustache heavy with froth like a hawthorn bush in May. Before them on the bar were four opened packets of Pork Scratchings. Courage is all relative, Slider thought as he made his way to the food counter.

Mein host was a tall, fat, cold-eyed man who resented the fact that the coppers from across the road didn’t like his pub, and got his own back by making them feel as unwanted as possible. Slider’s request for food pleased him because it gave him the chance to disappoint.

‘At this time of day? You must be joking. I can’t keep kitchen staff hanging about just on the off-chance.’

‘A sandwich, then,’ Slider said as firmly as he could on an empty stomach. The landlord’s face registered a brief struggle. He hated customers, and especially policemen, but their constant presence on his premises meant he had very little trouble from drunks or vandals. Besides, policemen spent well. His overall aim was to make them feel miserable without actually driving them away; compromise was sometimes necessary.

‘Only rolls,’ he said at last.

‘Two ham rolls, then,’ said Slider.

‘No ham. Only cheese.’

‘I see you studied at the Hobson school of catering,’ Slider said politely. ‘Two cheese rolls, then; and a large scotch. And a packet of crisps,’ he added, throwing caution to the winds. What the hell? You have to splurge sometimes.

‘What flavour?’ the landlord asked with the light of battle in his eye.

‘Vanilla,’ said Slider, staring him down; and after a moment he walked off, thwarted. The food, when it came, was as miserable as it could be rendered, the sort of rolls that were soft on the outside and hard on the inside instead of the other way round, scraped over with margarine instead of butter, with one thin square of processed cheese in each, whose four corners, poking outside the circumference, had gone hard and greasy from exposure. When Slider opened the rolls to inspect them, he found as a final insult a single wafer-thin circlet of tomato stuck to the marge in each, damp, anaemic and smelling of old knives.

And the crisps weren’t crisp. Slider ate and drank almost with a painful pleasure, a sense of supping life’s dregs, after which things could not possibly get worse. As if to prove the point, the landlord approached, and said with offensive indignation, ‘Phone call for you.’ Slider made his way round the bar to the public telephone at the other end, and could only think it must be Irene; if it was business or Joanna they’d have used his bleeper.

It was Joanna. ‘You forgot your bleeper again, didn’t you?’

‘I left it on my desk,’ he discovered.

‘So I’ve been told. Luckily someone saw you go across the road, or I’d have had a long search. What on earth are you doing there?’

‘Making myself suffer. Nothing’s any fun without you, anyway. Where are you?’

‘At the Trevor,’ she said through a blast of background hilarity. ‘Can’t you tell?’

He thought of the Trevor Arms, the nearest pub to Glyndebourne, the one the orchestra always patronised. He thought of a pint of Harvey’s – mahogany nectar – and the house ham, egg and chips – the greatest trio since Schubert.

‘What’s the weather like?’ he asked, hoping for relief.

‘Terrible,’ she said cheerfully. ‘It’s pissing down. I do feel sorry for the punters, all togged up and nowhere to go. If it doesn’t stop by the interval, they’ll all have to squeeze into the marquee for their picnics.’

‘What you might call loitering within tents,’ Slider said.

‘What? I missed that, there’s so much noise here. What’s it like there?’

‘Noisy.’

‘The weather, I mean.’

‘Oh – terrible. I don’t know, really. Not raining, I don’t think.’

‘Darling, what’s the matter?’ she asked anxiously.

He searched for some succinct way to tell her, but the distance between them was too great, and the line wasn’t good enough for delicate expositions. ‘It’s Thursday,’ he said. ‘I’ve never really got the hang of Thursdays.’

‘Oh,’ she said, wanting to get to the bottom of it, but feeling, like him, that the effort over the phone was too exhausting. ‘Well, only another one and a half horrible Dons, and then it’s lovely Traviata. You’ll like that – frilly dresses and damask drawing-rooms. You will come to the pre-dress, won’t you?’

‘If I’m off, of course I will.’ He thought of telling her about the singer whose house was broken into, but he couldn’t remember her name. While he was hesitating she went on.

‘I’ve got some good news.’

‘Yes?’

‘The BBC’s going to do a television recording of the Don, and we’re being booked for it. Best of all, they’re not just taping a performance down here. It’s going to be a studio recording. That means nine sessions.’

‘That’s wonderful.’ He roused himself to enthuse: he knew what that meant to the finances. Then he frowned. ‘Nine three-hour sessions? But the opera’s only about three hours long, isn’t it?’

‘That’s my detective, scenting the anomaly,’ she said, and he heard her smile. ‘The running time’s about two hours fifty – depends a bit who’s conducting. But you’re only allowed to record twenty minutes of finished product per session.’

‘Why?’

‘Union rules, silly. We’ve got. . .