Death Watch (The Bill Slider Novels) Read online

  About the Author

  Cynthia Harrod-Eagles was born and educated in Shepherd’s Bush, and had a variety of jobs in the commercial world, starting as a junior cashier at Woolworth’s and working her way down to Pensions Officer at the BBC. She won the Young Writers’ Award in 1973, and became a full-time writer in 1978. She is the author of over sixty successful novels to date, including thirty volumes of the Morland Dynasty series.

  Visit the author’s website at www.cynthiaharrodeagles.com

  Death Watch

  The lot of the working copper is getting harder, what with the PACE Act, the PLUS programme, and other life-threatening initials issued by the Home Office without a health warning. Add to that the regular rousting by top brass like ‘God’ Head and ‘Madarse’ Maguffy, a budget tighter than a Victorian corset and a DC who thinks he’s in a John Le Carré novel, and it makes for a trying time for Detective Inspector Bill Slider.

  But when a noted womaniser dies in mysterious circumstances in a sleazy motel and the whole of his murky past comes to light, Slider begins to question whether the game is worth the candle. Right is right, and indivisible. As soon as he’s solved the motel mystery, and found out what the Neary boys and Gorgeous George are up to, Slider’s going to have to start putting his own house in order …

  Also by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  The Bill Slider Mysteries

  ORCHESTRATED DEATH

  DEATH WATCH

  NECROCHIP

  DEAD END

  BLOOD LINES

  KILLING TIME

  SHALLOW GRAVE

  BLOOD SINISTER

  GONE TOMORROW

  DEAR DEPARTED

  GAME OVER

  FELL PURPOSE

  BODY LINE

  The Dynasty Series

  THE FOUNDING

  THE DARK ROSE

  THE PRINCELING

  THE OAK APPLE

  THE BLACK PEARL

  THE LONG SHADOW

  THE CHEVALIER

  THE MAIDEN

  THE FLOOD-TIDE

  THE TANGLED THREAD

  THE EMPEROR

  THE VICTORY

  THE REGENCY

  THE CAMPAIGNERS

  THE RECKONING

  THE DEVIL’S HORSE

  THE POISON TREE

  THE ABYSS

  THE HIDDEN SHORE

  THE WINTER JOURNEY

  THE OUTCAST

  THE MIRAGE

  THE CAUSE

  THE HOMECOMING

  THE QUESTION

  THE DREAM KINGDOM

  THE RESTLESS SEA

  THE WHITE ROAD

  THE BURNING ROSES

  THE MEASURE OF DAYS

  THE FOREIGN FIELD

  THE FALLEN KINGS

  THE DANCING YEARS

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 978-0-748-13319-2

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1992 by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  Hachette Digital

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.hachette.co.uk

  This book is dedicated to Gordon Barker, for all his kindness and patience in putting me straight about The Job.

  Gawd bless yer, sarge. The Met are wonderful!

  Contents

  About the Author

  Death Watch

  Also by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  CHAPTER ONE: London’s Noblest

  CHAPTER TWO: Dutch Courage, French Leave

  CHAPTER THREE: Stolen Tarts

  CHAPTER FOUR: Talk to the Animals

  CHAPTER FIVE: Kicking the Puppy

  CHAPTER SIX: Haddocks’ Eyes

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Brighton Belle

  CHAPTER EIGHT: Rather Grimm

  CHAPTER NINE: The Snake is Living Yet

  CHAPTER TEN: Candlewax and Brandy

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: A Fish by Any Other Name…

  CHAPTER TWELVE: Strangling in a String

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Dear Dead Days of Long Ago

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: O’Mafia

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Best Eaten Cold

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Half Some Sturdy Strumpet

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Not Even a Bus

  Author’s Note

  I WAS BORN AND BROUGHT up in Shepherd’s Bush. Most of the places mentioned in this book are real, but all the characters are fictitious.

  There is, of course, a real Shepherd’s Bush Police Station, but I think I ought to explain that I have never set foot in it. This is not out of any disrespect for the men and women who work there, but purely so that no-one could possibly say that any of my characters was based on a real person.

  I could have invented a police station and its ground, but I’ve never felt the Bloggs Lane, Anytown convention was very convincing; and besides, it’s much more fun this way.

  I have done my research at quite a different police station. If anyone feels they recognise a policeman of their acquaintance in these pages, it can only be because coppers after all really are much the same the Met over – thank God!

  CHAPTER ONE

  London’s Noblest

  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 eighty-five 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 queers meet each other there. You know, the respectable married men 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.’