Dear Departed 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

  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

  Copyright

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 978 0 7481 3327 7

  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 © 2004 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

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Author’s Note

  Shepherd’s Bush and White City are real places, of course, but this is a work of fiction, so if certain liberties have been taken with the geography, please don’t write and complain. None of the characters is based on a real person; and though there is a police station at Shepherd’s Bush, my Shepherd’s Bush nick is a made-up one, as are the Phoenix and the Dog and Sportsman pubs; which have no relation to any hostelry living or dead.

  In loving memory of Geoffrey Knighton –

  Hero, reluctant soldier, teacher, writer,

  critic and friend.

  “Life’s race well run, life’s work well done.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  open.guv.ok

  There is nothing quite like knocking on a strange door for getting a policeman’s adrenaline going. Slider stood in the hotel corridor, listening to the white noise of the air-conditioning and the interesting tattoo of his own heartbeat, and wondering if he was about to die.

  His mouth was so dry he had to pause a moment and manufacture some spit. The kevlar vest under his shirt made him feel hot and awkward, and the tape holding the wire to his flesh was making him itch. He’d had to borrow a jacket from a larger colleague to conceal the fact that he was protected. He looked, and felt, overweight and stupid.

  In front of him was an ordinary, typical hotel door, and behind the door was an extraordinary, untypical man, who, moreover, might well be armed, and had amply proved his willingness to kill. Robert Bates, alias The Needle, was being brought to book at last. He had been the subject of ongoing investigations by various CO departments of Scotland Yard, not to mention – because nobody ever did – MI5 and MI6.

  Slider’s path had crossed with his during the investigation of a murder, which, it turned out most disappointingly, Bates didn’t do. However, Slider had turned up a number of things Bates did do, including the undoubted murder of a prostitute whom Bates had used, tortured, and then dispatched. Because of the involvement of higher authorities, Slider had been warned off Bates, but such disappointments were commonplace in a copper’s life. Sooner or later, he had reasoned, The Needle would get his come-uppance. Then two days ago he had been summoned to the office of the area supremo, Commander Wetherspoon.

  ‘Ah, Slider,’ Wetherspoon said, tilting his head back so that he could look down his nose at him, ‘someone here who wants to speak to you, Chief Superintendent Ormerod of the Serious Crime Group Liaison Team.’

  Ormerod was a large and serious man, who towered over Slider and would have made two of him in bulk, and at least ten in conscious supremacy. He had a handsome, authoritative face, eyes like steel traps, and the smell of power came off him like an aura. This man was from the far, far end of policing, the place of hard deals done behind closed doors, of anonymous corridors, terse telephone calls, operations with code names and briefings with senior ministers where the senior ministers behaved quite meekly. It was as different from Slider’s place on the street as the Cabinet Room of Number 10 was from the checkout at Tesco’s. Slider felt faint just breathing Ormerod’s aftershave; and when Ormerod smiled, it was even more frightening than when he didn’t.

  Ormerod smiled. ‘Ah, Inspector Slider. Bill, isn’t it? I’m glad to meet you. I won’t waste time. Trevor Bates. You did some smart work on that case. I’m sorry you had to take a back seat, but very large things were at stake.’

  ‘I understand, sir,’ Slider said, since something seemed to be required.

  ‘We’ve got to the point now where we’re ready to arrest him, and we want you to be the one to do it.’

  ‘Me, sir?’ Slider couldn’t help it, though it made him sound like Billy Bunter.

  ‘Thought you’d like to be in on it,’ Ormerod said. ‘Sort of thanks for all your hard work.’

  ‘Consolation prize,’ Wetherspoon put in, and Slider was glad to see him quelled with a single look from Ormerod. Anyone who could quell Wetherspoon was a Big Monkey indeed.

  Also,’ Ormerod said, ‘we think you could be useful to us.’

  Ormerod explained. Bates was a high-powered criminal, and as sharp and cunning as a lorry full of foxes. It would be impossible to arrest him in his home, which was better defended than Fort Knox, and pretty hard anywhere else if he saw them coming. Bates often went armed, and usually had armed bodyguards around him.

  However, the day after tomorrow he was attending a business conference in a hotel in Birmingham, and staying
overnight, and was unlikely to be armed in such a place, especially as they had taken pains to fall back from him over the past few weeks and let him relax. He would not be expecting trouble, and though he would have an ‘assistant’ with him, for which read bodyguard, he would probably not be taking very heavy precautions.

  ‘All the same, we can’t take him in any of the public rooms, in case his goon gets rattled and starts loosing off,’ Ormerod said. ‘So we have to arrest him in his room at the end of the day. But we don’t want to go kicking the door in and provoking a shoot-out. We need someone to distract him. That’s where you come in. He knows you, you’ve spoken to him before, and he’s not afraid of you.’

  With the rind taken off, what Ormerod was saying was that Bates thought Slider was a pathetic dickhead whom he’d already outsmarted once. He would therefore be more likely to open the door to him. Bates was also tricky, smart and strong, and had an unhealthy liking for torture, knives and needles. And guns. The words ‘tethered’ and ‘goat’ had wandered through Slider’s mind, looking for something to link up with.

  Which was why Slider now regarded that anonymous hotel door with trepidation. If Bates opened it at all, it might be simply to shoot him, and he didn’t want to die. His pulse rate notched up another level as he raised his hand and rapped hard on it. The team was all behind him, he reminded himself. They had watched Bates to his room, watched the ‘assistant’ to his adjoining one, and were waiting just out of sight, listening to everything that came over Slider’s wire, ready for his signal. He hoped the wire was still working. He hoped they weren’t being deafened by his heartbeat.

  He knocked again. Bates’s voice – Slider recognised it, with a shiver – called out irritably from within. ‘Who is it?’

  Slider gulped. ‘Detective Inspector Slider, sir, Shepherd’s Bush. Could I have a word, do you think?’

  ‘What?’ Bates said incredulously. ‘Slider, did you say?’ His voice came again from just behind the door, and Slider guessed he was being examined through the peephole. He held up his brief. ‘I know you,’ Bates said. ‘What are you doing here? What the hell do you want?’

  ‘I’d like to have a word with you, sir,’ Slider said stolidly, Mr Plod to the core. ‘I’d like to ask you a few questions.’

  There was a click and a rattle, and Slider’s stomach went over the edge of a cliff as the door was flung open and he waited for the hot flash and burn of a bullet or a knife in the guts. The kevlar was a comfort but it didn’t cover everything.

  But he didn’t die. Bates stood there, lean, weirdly attractive, with his pale, translucent skin, clear grey eyes and backswept, shoulder-length fox red hair. He was still in his suit – three piece, exquisitely cut – but he had removed his tie and opened the top button of his shirt.

  ‘What the devil?’ he said, and looked Slider up and down with amused contempt. ‘You came asking me questions once before about some pathetic trivia or other. A leather jacket, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It’s a little bit more serious this time, sir, I’m sorry to say,’ Slider plodded. ‘Can I come in? I don’t think you want to discuss your private business in the corridor.’

  ‘I don’t intend to discuss my private business with you at all,’ he said. ‘What the devil are you doing here anyway? Do your superiors know you’ve come bothering me?’

  ‘I don’t need permission from anyone when I’m following up a case,’ Slider said, hoping he would take this to mean he was mavericking. Bates had not shut the door on him, apparently fascinated by the absurdity of this idiot policeman following him all the way to Birmingham. Ormerod had read him right: arrogance would be his downfall. Slider took the opportunity to walk past him into the room, noting with huge relief that there was no-one else in it. The goon was still in his adjoining room, the door of which was over to the left. One shout from Bates and he would come busting in, probably with a gun. Slider was not out of the woods yet.

  ‘I didn’t give you permission to come in,’ Bates said, sounding annoyed now.

  ‘This won’t take long, sir,’ Slider said. His voice shook slightly, but it probably didn’t matter. Bates would expect him to be nervous of a powerful man like him. ‘And it is rather important.’

  ‘More lost clothing? Or is it a lost dog this time?’ Bates sneered; but he walked away from the door, and it swung closed with a soft click. Slider cleared his throat, which was the signal. Nearly there now. Just a few seconds more. The team would be creeping towards the two doors, pass keys in hand.

  Slider turned towards Bates, so that Bates had his back to the door. Triumph was beginning to sing in his veins along with the adrenaline, a heady mixture. He felt drunk and reckless with it, and knew it was a dangerous state of mind.

  ‘It’s a bit more interesting than that,’ he said, and the change of his tone brought alertness into the hard grey eyes. Slider saw the nostrils widen as though Bates were scenting like an animal for danger. ‘It’s to do with a certain prostitute called Susie Mabbot. I’m sure you remember her, even among your many conquests.’

  ‘I don’t know any prostitutes. How dare you suggest it?’ Bates said, advancing grimly. Slider backed a step to encourage him.

  ‘You used to know poor Susie, in the Biblical sense, anyway. Then one day you got carried away and killed her. Stuck her full of needles, had her, broke her neck, and chucked her in the Thames.’

  ‘You’re mad!’ Bates said. Outside the team slipped the pass card into the magnetic lock and it gave a faint but unmistakable clunk. Bates’s eyes flew wide as he realised the trap. He yelled, ‘Norman!’ and his small but rock hard fist shot out at Slider’s face.

  Without the adrenaline he’d have been felled, but all those flight-or-fight impulses he had been resisting in the last five minutes came to his aid now. He jerked his head aside so fast that he ricked his neck and the fist shot past his head, grazing his left ear. In the same motion, Slider ducked in low and flung himself at Bates, grabbing him round the middle, and Bates, thrown off balance by the missed punch, was just unstable enough to stagger backwards and go down, hitting the floor with Slider on top of him as the rest of the team burst in through the two doors simultaneously.

  From the next room there was thumping, crashing and shouting as the bodyguard put up a vigorous resistance. For a moment Bates writhed viciously, but then he suddenly seemed to see the futility, or perhaps the indignity of it, and became still. With his teeth bared, he hissed at Slider, ‘You’ll regret this. I’ll see you regret this, you pathetic moron. You don’t know what you’re meddling with. You’re in over your depth. You’re nobody!’

  ‘Well, at least I’m not a murderer,’ Slider said. He knew he ought not to provoke the man, but he couldn’t help it. That fist had taken skin off his ear, and his neck hurt.

  ‘You can’t prove a thing against me,’ Bates said, utterly assured.

  ‘Oh yes I can,’ Slider said blithely. ‘Poor old Susie got washed up. We found her.’

  It was impossible for Bates to pale, but his eyes widened slightly. ‘You found her?’

  ‘Yup. Got the body, got the semen, got the DNA. You’re nicked, mate.’

  A policeman’s life, he thought afterwards, holds few moments so beautiful as seeing an arrogant, vicious, self-satisfied criminal crumple in the face of what he knows is the inevitable. Slider got to his feet, and as Bates began to struggle up, he began his victory chant.

  ‘Trevor Bates, I arrest you for the murder of Susan Mabbot. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence …’

  Bates wasn’t listening. He stared at Slider as though burning his image into his brain. ‘I’ll get you for this,’ he said.

  ‘… anything you later rely on in court,’ Slider finished. And suddenly he felt very tired, as all the adrenaline got bored with this part of the proceedings and went off somewhere else to look for a fight.

  It is an immutable law, formulated by the eminent philosopher Professor Sod, that you will always wake up early on
your day off. It was six a.m. when the alarm in Slider’s head went off. He woke in his customary violent fashion, with a grunt. He rarely managed a controlled re-entry: usually he hit consciousness like a man being thrown out of a moving car.

  Joanna wasn’t there. He listened for a moment, then got up and padded into the kitchen. She was standing by the sink drinking water, staring out of the window into the small oblong of rough grass and blackberry brambles she called a garden. Since her pregnancy had begun to show, she had stopped wandering about in the nude. In an access of modesty she had taken to wearing a loose white muslin dress by way of a dressing-gown. As it was almost but not quite completely transparent, it was far more erotic than nakedness, but Slider hadn’t told her that. He just hoped that she didn’t answer the door in it when he wasn’t there. The postman didn’t look as though his heart would take it.

  He slipped his arms round her from behind and rested his chin on her shoulder. ‘All right?’ he murmured.

  ‘Hmm,’ she confirmed.

  ‘Couldn’t sleep?’

  ‘Not since half past four. Why are you up, anyway? We were going to lie in and cuddle.’

  ‘Hard to do when you’re in the kitchen,’ he pointed out. ‘Shall we go back to bed?’

  He felt her hesitate, and knew what was coming.

  ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘You’re always hungry. It’s just your hormones.’

  ‘My hormones and I go everywhere together. Why don’t the three of us have breakfast? It’s such a beautiful morning, too good to waste lying in bed.’

  He detached himself from her back. ‘I thought pregnant women were supposed to feel extra sexy,’ he complained.

  ‘You’ve got to fuel the engine,’ she said.

  She fried bacon and tomatoes and made toast while he got a shave out of the way, and then they ate and talked.

  ‘Fried tomatoes are definitely a seventh-day thing,’ Slider said. Joanna had a theory that God had done all His very best creations on Sunday, when He was at leisure. A large amount of food seemed to get into her list: toasted cheese, raspberries, the smell of coffee.