Death Watch

Book 2: Bill Slider Mystery

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Genres: Police Procedurals; Mystery

Synopsis

'An outstanding series' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

A Bill Slider Mystery

The lot of the working copper is getting harder: new regulations, regular rousting by the top brass, a budget tighter than a Victoria corset and a DC who thinks he's in a John Le Carré novel makes it a trying time for Detective inspector Bill Slider.

Then when a noted womanizer dies in mysterious fire in a sleazy motel and the whole of his murky past comes to light, Slider begins to question whether this was suicide... or murder.

And that's not the only thing Slider is questioning. As soon as he's solved the motel mystery, Bill is going to have to put his own house in order...

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

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 224

Sample

It was a grey and dismal day, arriving, after the manner of London buses, immediately behind two others precisely similar. The last thing Slider felt he needed on such a morning was a fire.

A fire when it was alight and glowing in a fireplace was a delightful thing, of course. Slider’s memory immediately offered him a beguiling image of Joanna, naked and rosy on the hearthrug, and he put it sadly aside. A fire when it was out, and had been where it shouldn’t be, was an entirely different thing. It was nasty and depressing, and probably the dirtiest thing in the known universe, with the possible exception of Dirty Donald, the vagrant drunk who lived under the railway bridge in Sulgrave Road.

Atherton was on the spot already – of course – exquisite as a cat, in pale grey trousers and grey suede shoes, his long bony hands thrust into his pockets in a way that would make a tailor feel faint. He was singing under his breath, a sad little policeman’s ditty entitled ‘If This is Life, My Prick’s a Bloater’. He managed to make it sound quite cheerful.

‘I don’t know why you’re so happy,’ Slider said. ‘Those trousers are going to be ruined.’

‘That’s all right – I never liked them,’ Atherton said easily. ‘’Orrible morning, isn’t it, Guv?’

‘I hate fires,’ said Slider. A nosegay of disgusting odours assailed him, and he shivered like a horse that smells pigs. Every man has his particular vulnerability: Atherton, for instance, couldn’t bear the dirty-bodies-and-old-piss stink of winos, and since his first day in the Job had gone to extreme lengths to avoid having to arrest them. As a matter of fact, he’d never really liked having to arrest anyone, and during his brief time in uniform he’d earned the nickname of The Gurkha, because he took no prisoners.

For Slider, anathema was the smell of carbonised everyday life. He stared resentfully at the sodden ruin before him. ‘Why on earth would anyone want to open a motel in the Goldhawk Road?’ he demanded of the morning.

‘I suppose it isn’t that far from the M4,’ Atherton said helpfully, though he knew it wasn’t really a question.

The main building was an Edwardian pub/hotel, built on the site, it was said, of an old coaching inn called the Crown and Sumpter. A natural phonic confusion, aided perhaps by the prevalence of tuberculosis in the area between the wars, had blighted its popularity and it had never thrived.

In the late sixties a single-storey extension in the New Brutalist style had been added on a bomb-site at the back, and the Crown Motel had been born. Since then it had changed hands several times with ever-declining fortunes, gaining no very savoury reputation on the way.

Then in ’85 it had been bought by a chain, completely refurbished, renamed The Master Baker Motor Lodge, and apparently settled down into moderate respectability, despite the inevitable popular corruption of its name to The Masturbator.

The ancient history Slider had from Sergeant Paxman, a grizzled thirty-year veteran who had served his whole career at Shepherd’s Bush nick, and knew every inch of the ground. Paxman – known inevitably as Pacman because of the way he chewed the heads off erring PCs – had been on duty last night when the fire was reported, and had not yet gone off when Slider came in.

‘Of course, when I say respectable, that’s not to guarantee anything,’ Paxman added. He had a large, handsome face, round, rather blank eyes, and tightly curling hair, and needed only a pair of horns and a ring through his nose to complete the resemblance to a Hereford bull.

‘A fair amount of naughtiness still goes on. The local toms use the annexe, and the better class of gay men meet each other there. You know, the respectable married ones on their way home from the office, popping in for a spot of illegal parking before they go home to the wife.’

‘I suppose it is quite handy for the tube,’ Slider said absently.

Paxman’s brown eyes became stationary as he wondered how far that was a joke. He had never really got to grips with Slider, whom he thought a strange man. ‘But we don’t get any trouble from them, as you know,’ he resumed, giving it up. ‘The management runs a tight house, and we’ve never had so much as a disturbance there in two years.’

‘What about this fire?’

‘I’ve heard nothing yet. They did have a dodgy fire back in seventy-five or ‘six. Insurance scam. But the present owners are making ends meet all right, and they’ve not long done it all up inside, so there’d be no reason for them to torch it.’

Thus forearmed, Slider faced Atherton. ‘So what have we got?’

‘The fire started some time before two this morning. A passer-by saw the flames and raised the alarm at ten to two, but it had taken a good hold by then. You can see it started in the end cabin – number one – and by the time the FS got here they couldn’t get near it. It wasn’t until the fire was out that they were able to get inside, and then they found the body. That was about half past six.’

‘Perfect timing,’ said Slider. The CID’s night shift ended at six in the morning, and the early shift didn’t come on until eight. Between six and eight, the Department was unmanned. ‘Who was on last night? Hunt, wasn’t it? He’ll be sorry to have missed the fun.’

DC Hunt, having passed his sergeant’s exam – mirabile dictu – was deeply anxious to catch top brass eyes, to secure himself a posting.

Atherton grinned. ‘Oh, but he didn’t! When the word went out that there was a corpus, Hunt was still in the canteen having breakfast. He volunteered, the twonk!’

Slider shook his head disbelievingly. ‘The man’s sick. Sick. Well, we’d better go and take a look, I suppose. I’ll talk to Hunt later.’ A cruel thought occurred to him. ‘I could make him exhibits officer. That’d keep him out of trouble.’

Atherton smiled approval. Ensuring ‘continuity of evidence’ was a painstaking, time-consuming and largely boring part of an investigation. Just what he’d have wished for Hunt himself. Trouble was, Hunt’d probably like it.

The annexe stuck out at right-angles from the back of the hotel, a single-storey building divided into ten cabins in back-to-back pairs. Numbers one and two, the furthest away from the main block, were almost completely destroyed; those nearer the hotel were progressively less damaged, ending with nine and ten, smoke-damaged and wet but intact.

The senior fire officer on the spot was the Divisional Commander, Carlton by name. He was waiting for them in front of cabin number one in the manner of the mountain not coming to two very minor Mahomets. He was a big man, standing square and capable amid the destruction in his yellow helmet and unshakeable boots.

‘… And summoned the Immediate Aid, of London’s Noble Fire Brigade,’ Atherton chanted appreciatively. ‘God, those uniforms are sexy! Who’d be a copper?’

‘Morning,’ Carlton said with a spare smile as they reached him. There was sometimes a faint hostility between firemen and policemen – more especially since their pay structures had parted company to the former’s disadvantage. Carlton had often been vocal on the unpalatable fact that the police were nominally in charge of any multiple-service incident, which could theoretically mean a two-year PC giving orders to a twenty-year fireman. On the other hand, members of the CID deplored the way firemen burst onto a scene with their axes, boots and hoses and utterly fucked up the evidence before they could get at it. It was as long as it was broad.

‘Hullo, Gordon,’ Slider said pleasantly. ‘Rotten start to the day – though I suppose it’s all routine to you. What’ve you got for me? It looks as though it was a pretty fierce blaze.’

Carlton’s face took on animation. ‘This place was a death trap. It was an inferno waiting to happen. I’ve been saying so for years.’

‘It’s got its fire certificate, hasn’t it?’

‘Oh yes – for what that’s worth! It’s got the right number of exits and extinguishers. It’s also got about eighteen layers of paint on everything, inflammable furniture, ceiling tiles, insulation – you name it. We tell them, but they won’t listen. And while the Government won’t move to ban these materials, what can we do?’

Slider nodded deferentially. ‘Is it all right to have a look now?’

‘It’s safe enough,’ Carlton conceded, half unwilling to be charmed, even by Slider, whom he almost liked. He glanced at Atherton’s trousers and shoes and brightened. ‘You’re not dressed for it, lad. Those’ll be ruined.’

Atherton gave him a smile of piercing sweetness. ‘A policeman’s lot, I’m afraid,’ he said with dainty ruefulness.

Carlton shot him a suspicious look and led the way in.

‘Don’t you know better than to torment a man with a large chopper?’ Slider murmured as he and Atherton followed.

‘Whoops. Sorry.’

‘Have you ever done a fire before?’

‘Not a fire with a body,’ Atherton admitted.

‘You won’t enjoy it,’ Slider promised.

Slider had been with the old C Division at the time of the Spanish Club fire in Denmark Place, where thirty-seven people had died.

‘Which was the worst fire I’ve ever seen or ever want to see. The bodies were lying in heaps. It took us weeks to identity them all. Anything else is a picnic by comparison.’

‘Baptism of fire?’ Atherton suggested.

Slider didn’t smile. He looked around him with distaste. The cabin had been virtually destroyed. The roof had fallen in, too, which made it harder to recognise any of the component parts. A lovely job for the boys from The Lab.

‘The body’s over here,’ said Carlton. ‘From the layout of the other cabins – they’re all identical – we know this was where the armchair was. You can see some fragments of it. Part of the frame, you see, here, and a castor, and this looks like a bit of webbing. He was probably sitting watching the telly – that’s over there. Having a last cigarette perhaps. Maybe dropped off, set light to the chair with the stub, and – voom.’

It must have been a pretty comprehensive voom, Atherton thought. He was no tyro when it came to bodies, but even he had to pause for a moment or two to get used to the sight of this one. There was a whole range of unpleasant smells, too. He was reminded of the story of The Legend of Roast Pork. It gave you a whole new perspective, he thought, on the barbecue.

The victim was male, naked, and badly charred, particularly in the lower half – the feet and lower legs were burned through to the bone. Atherton knew from his reading that the action of fire on the extensor muscles sometimes caused the body to contract into what was called the ‘pugilist position’, a grotesque parody of an old-fashioned prize-fighter’s pose, like Popeye squaring up to Bluto.

The legs of this body were drawn up into a crouch, but the arms did not seem to be so affected: they were twisted, one under the body and one out to the side, but not contracted. The upper front part of the body was less badly burned than the rest, which perhaps was what you’d expect if he was sitting up in the chair; and probably his mother might have recognised him, but Atherton wouldn’t have cared to have to ask her.

‘Has it been moved?’ Slider asked.

‘No. That’s the position we found it in, but of course we shifted a lot of stuff off it,’ Carlton said. ‘It was pretty well buried when the ceiling came down. By the time we got here, the place was an inferno. Fortunately the other cabins were empty, bar seven and nine at the other end, and the occupants of those were accounted for.’

Slider crouched down and stared at the body in silence, his forearms resting on his knees, his hands relaxed; still as a countryman, he might have been watching for badgers for anything he showed. Carlton regarded him for a moment, and then said, ‘Well, duty calls. If you need me, I’ll be outside.’

‘Yes, thanks, Gordon,’ Slider said absently, without looking up. He was puzzled by the arms, firstly that they had not contracted like the legs, and secondly that the underside – soft side – of the forearms was more badly burned than the topside, which was the opposite to what he would have expected. In most normal postures the underside of the forearms rested against the body and was therefore partly protected.

And there was something else. ‘What do you make of this?’ he asked Atherton at last.

It was a brownish mark around the front of the neck, just below the Adam’s apple. ‘You see the way the head falling forward has protected this part of the neck from the fire. Round the back the skin is too badly burned to see anything.’

‘A ligature mark?’ Atherton said. ‘Possibly, I suppose. Couldn’t be the mark of his collar, could it, Guv?’

‘I don’t think so. See the texture of it, with these diagonal ridges? Rope, more likely. We may find some of it amongst the debris they moved off him. Pity the ceiling’s come down. There must have been some sort of pipe up there, or an air duct or something.’

‘You think he hanged himself?’ Atherton frowned.

‘I don’t think he was watching telly.’

‘Suicide, then? But what about the fire – an accident? The condemned man enjoyed – no, that doesn’t work, does it? I can’t see anyone putting a rope round his neck with a fag still on. Perhaps he’d put it down half smoked, and then kicked the ashtray over in his convulsions. But would anyone hang themselves before finishing their cigarette?’ He had never been a smoker, and therefore couldn’t judge the niceties of the ritual.

‘The fire worries me,’ Slider admitted. ‘But look, d’you see here?’

He took a biro out of his pocket and pointed at the side of the head. Atherton stooped. There was a shred of something adhering to the charred and brittle hair. Several shreds of something.

‘It looks like melted plastic.’

‘Yes. A melted plastic bag, wouldn’t you say?’

Atherton straightened. ‘Belt and braces, you mean. Well, they do, don’t they, suicides, like to make sure?’

‘Hmm.’ Slider got up carefully and straightened himself, and stood looking down at the body with an unseeing frown. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said at last.

‘I don’t think you’re meant to,’ Atherton said gently.

‘Is the photo team on the way?’

‘Yes, and Doc Cameron, and forensic. I don’t expect they’ll be here for at least an hour, though, given the traffic.’

Slider smiled suddenly.

‘Then we might as well go and have some breakfast. I could do serious structural damage to a sausage sandwich.’

Atherton turned his eyes resolutely from the body. ‘Fine by me. D’you want to talk to Hunt first?’

That at least made Slider shudder.

‘Not on an empty stomach,’ he said.

Hunt, despite having been up all night and at the scene since six forty-five, still looked perfectly neat and tidy, as if his clothes had been painted on; and since he had lately grown a beard, he didn’t even appear unshaven. He had always been a great one for going by the book, a spit-and-polish man, and as nearly stupid as it was possible to be and still get into the Department; but since passing his exam, he had added keenness to his other vices.

As Atherton put it in technical language to WDC Swilley, ‘He was always a paper-tearing prat, but now he’s a total pain in the arse.’

‘Bound to get on, then,’ said Swilley, nodding wisely. ‘Next thing you know, he’ll be rolling up the leg of his John Collier and doing funny handshakes.’

Hunt was in the motel manager’s office, which they had requisitioned, when Slider and Atherton got back from breakfast.

‘I interviewed the night clerk, sir,’ he told Slider smartly. ‘Deceased arrived last night at eleven fifty-five, and signed the register in the name of John Smith. I think that was probably a false name, though.’

With anyone else, it would have been either a joke, or cheek. Slider had the depressing certainty that Hunt meant it. ‘Alone?’

‘Yes, sir. He paid cash, and the address he gave was a company one – Taylor Woodrow at Hanger Lane – but I’ve called their personnel department, and they don’t have a John Smith working there.’

‘What about his car?’

‘I thought of that,’ Hunt said proudly. ‘Apparently he didn’t put down a car registration number, and the clerk didn’t ask. There’s no car outside the cabin, but he could have parked out on the street somewhere. There are plenty of parked cars around. Or of course he might have arrived on foot, or from the tube station, or by taxi. Just because it’s called a motor lodge, doesn’t mean you’ve got to come in a car.’

‘Really? I would never have thought of that,’ said Slider. Hunt didn’t blush. ‘So we have no idea who he is?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Nobody recognised him? What about the people staying in seven and nine?’

‘The clerk says he’d never seen him before. The other guests were woken by the hotel staff telling them to get out because of the fire. They both say they didn’t see the deceased at any point, but I haven’t taken detailed statements from them yet.’

‘All right, you can get someone started on that now. Who else is here?’

‘PC D’Arblay – he was first on the scene. It’s his beat. And Jablowski’s just arrived, and Mackay’s on his way.’

‘All right, you and Jablowski can make a start, and Mackay can help when he gets here. Get on with it, then.’

It was the mark of the man that he almost saluted. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, departing. D’Arblay passed him in the doorway.

‘Photographer’s here, sir,’ he said.

‘Right, I’m coming,’ said Slider. He turned to Atherton. ‘When you’ve a minute, you might ask the night clerk whether our man asked for number one, or was given it.’

‘Righto, Guv.’ It was a small point, but it might be telling. A man bent on self-destruction might well seek the privacy of the furthest cabin from the main building.

‘I hope we find his wallet in there somewhere,’ Slider said as he turned away. ‘Otherwise we may end up having to do a PNC on every parked car in the Bush.’

Joanna came into his office at a quarter to two.

‘Just got back?’ Slider asked astutely, seeing she was carrying her violin case. His powers of detection were razor sharp today. ‘How was your rehearsal?’

‘Awful. More than ever I ask myself if it can be a coincidence that conductors and blind men both use white sticks.’ She leaned across the desk and kissed him. ‘How has your day been? I gather you’ve been having some excitement.’

‘How do you gather that?’

‘I’ve just been talking to Flatulent Fergus downstairs. You lucky mugs! A fire and a corpus already, and it’s still only lunchtime!’

‘You’ve missed out the best bit,’ said Slider bitterly. ‘We had a flying visiting from Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Head.’

‘Yes, O’Flaherty told me. Known to his friends as God. Deus ex machina was what Fergus said.’

‘I suppose he came in a car.’

‘And what did he want?’

‘What do brass always want? To make trouble, of course. And with Dickson not here, that dropped him straight onto my neck.’

‘Was it a routine roust, or something to do with the fire?’

‘Oh, the fire. He wanted to make sure I understood he’d like it to be a suicide.’

Joanna wrinkled her brow. ‘Why would he want that?’

‘Because suicide isn’t a crime, and we’re getting near the end of the budget period, and murder enquiries are very expensive.’

She stared. ‘You’re not serious?’

‘Top brass have to worry about things like that. It’s one of the reasons I never wanted higher promotion.’

‘But – he’s not asking you to fabricate the evidence?’

‘No, of course not. He doesn’t really know what he’s asking. He’s like a kid saying “I wish I had a train set,” on the off-chance that there really is a Father Christmas. Perhaps if he says he’d like it to be suicide, it might just turn out to be that way.’

‘You don’t like him, do you?’ she said shrewdly.

‘Oh—’ He began automatically to shrug it off, and then paused, realising that it didn’t matter what he said to Joanna about a senior officer. Head was tall, well-built, handsome in a thick sort of way, with curly hair and blue eyes and the sort of firm-featured looks that simply cry out for the stern glamour of uniform. He was younger than Slider, by far less experienced, several ranks above him, and thought he knew best. But it wasn’t even any or all of that. There was just something about the way he didn’t listen, the way he made it known that he knew he didn’t have to listen, that got up Slider’s nose.

‘I don’t like being loomed over,’ was all he said, however.

Joanna looked at the puckered brow under the soft, untidy hair, and said, ‘You don’t think it is suicide?’

The brow cleared and he smiled at her ruefully. ‘I don’t think anything yet.’

‘Open mind and closed mouth?’

‘Until Freddie does the post, and I get the forensic report, I’ve got nothing to think with.’

She knew him better than that. ‘Just a vague feeling of unease, then?’

‘I don’t like fires,’ he admitted. ‘We haven’t even ID’d the poor bastard yet.’

‘How will you go about that?’

‘Oh, we’ve got various lines to try. We’ve started the house-to-house, and Atherton’s downstairs with the night porter from the motel, putting together a photofit. We’ll match that up against Missing Persons for a start, and if that doesn’t yield anything we can circulate it in various ways. As a last resort we can go on the telly. But ten to one someone’ll report him missing, if they haven’t already. Most people have a slot they fit into, and it’s noticed when they go astray. And we can check on all the parked cars in the immediate vicinity, to see if there’s one unaccounted for.’

‘It looks as though you’ll be pretty busy, then?’ she asked carefully. Slider felt the habitual stillness of caution creep into his bones.

‘I’m afraid I won’t be able to come to your concert tonight,’ he said, watching her mouth. With a woman it was from the line of the lips that you could best judge how close you were to critical mass. ‘There’ll be too much to do.’

‘What time d’you think you’ll finish?’

He shrugged. ‘It could be any time. Two, three in the morning. Maybe not at all.’ She was taking it very well. He offered her the consolation prize. ‘I’ve already told Irene I won’t be back at all tonight, so if I do find I can knock off for an hour or two, can I come and wake you up?’

When she smiled, her face lit up like Harrods on Christmas Eve. She was his own personal Santa’s Grotto – and full of goodies with his name on them. ‘Yes, please,’ she said.

The night clerk from the motel looked haggard. He was Roger Pascoe, an Australian, twenty-three years old, travelling round the world by working in hotels, bars and restaurants – anywhere they were desperate for staff. He’d just had a hectic season as a barman in Miami: Canadians, down for the winter, drank like sinks when released from their own draconian liquor-laws. He’d come to London for a rest before going to Europe for the summer.

He’d deliberately chosen a quiet job in an out-of-the-way spot, and expected to be reading a lot of novels through the nights, sleeping through the days, and saving a great deal of money. What he hadn’t expected was strife of this order. A registration clerk who allowed a suicidal guest in to torch himself and destroy the entire building would be about as popular with future potential employers as a fart in a phone box.

‘No, he asked for number one,’ he said to Atherton. ‘At least, he said could he have the end cabin, the furthest away one.’

‘You didn’t find that surprising?’

Pascoe rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘Why should I? I didn’t know he was going to top himself. He could have any one he wanted. He could have ’em all, for all I cared, as long as he paid.’

‘Was that before or after he signed in as John Smith?’

‘Christ, I don’t know! After, I think. What does it matter? You think I should have asked him for his ID, asked him what he was up to? My bosses wouldn’t agree with you. He paid cash up front, he could do what he liked in there.’

‘Your bosses wouldn’t want their premises to be used for illegal purposes,’ Atherton suggested mildly.

‘Going with a prozzie isn’t illegal.’

‘Is that what he was doing?’ Atherton said, interested.

Pascoe looked wild. ‘Oh look, mate, I been up all night. Don’t lay traps for me. A lot of blokes bring tarts back there, and mostly they don’t want anyone to know. Married blokes, you know? It’s not my business. I’m not the Archbishop of Canterbury.’

‘But you said this man was alone?’

‘He came in alone. I don’t know who he might have had waiting for him outside, do I?’

‘True.’ Atherton smiled a little. ‘Take it easy, guy. I just want to know what you know. Did he seem as though he might have a girl waiting for him outside? Did he seem excited, nervous – what?’

Pascoe looked away, remembering. ‘He’d been drinking. He wasn’t drunk, but I could smell it on him. He was – I don’t know how you’d put it. Happy? A bit lit up? Not sad or depressed, anyway. Yeah, he could have had a girl waiting for him. Or a bloke.’ He gave Atherton a serious look. ‘We get a lot of the other sort in, you know.’

‘Yes, I know. Did he seem that way to you?’

Pascoe shrugged. ‘You can’t tell. I wouldn’t have said so, but he didn’t mince in and call me duckie, for what it’s worth. He was just a middle-aged bloke in a suit. If I’d known he was gonna fry himself I’d have taken more notice.’

‘All right. And you don’t know if he had a car? You didn’t hear a car pull up? He didn’t mention a motor at all?’

Pascoe shook his head numbly. ‘You can’t see outside from my desk. I already told your mate all this, the one with the beard. Why can’t you get it from him?’

‘Because I want you to tell me. You might just remember something else, something you didn’t tell him.’

‘What, like th. . .