Shadow Play Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  One: Foresight Saga

  Two: That’ll Do, Pig

  Three: Arose By Some Other Name

  Four: Ubi Caritas

  Five: Sausage Roll

  Six: Never Say Leather Again

  Seven: Feeling the Force

  Eight: Moor Often Knot Used

  Nine: I’m Always True to You, Darling, In My Fashion

  Ten: Press for Service

  Eleven: The Name of the Roads

  Twelve: Winsome, Lose Some

  Thirteen: In Which We Swerve

  Fourteen: Conservation Piece

  Fifteen: The Road Goes Ever On And On

  Sixteen: Nemesis, Exodus

  Seventeen: Playing Through

  Eighteen: E Pluribus Unum

  Recent Titles by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles from Severn House

  The Bill Slider Mysteries

  GAME OVER

  FELL PURPOSE

  BODY LINE

  KILL MY DARLING

  BLOOD NEVER DIES

  HARD GOING

  STAR FALL

  ONE UNDER

  OLD BONES

  SHADOW PLAY

  Novels

  ON WINGS OF LOVE

  EVEN CHANCE

  LAST RUN

  PLAY FOR LOVE

  A CORNISH AFFAIR

  NOBODY’S FOOL

  DANGEROUS LOVE

  REAL LIFE (Short Stories)

  DIVIDED LOVE

  KEEPING SECRETS

  THE LONGEST DANCE

  THE HORSEMASTERS

  JULIA

  THE COLONEL’S DAUGHTER

  HARTE’S DESIRE

  COUNTRY PLOT

  KATE’S PROGRESS

  SHADOW PLAY

  A Bill Slider Mystery

  Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  This eBook edition first published in 2017 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2018 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD

  Copyright © 2017 by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.

  The right of Cynthia Harrod-Eagles to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8751-1 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-865-1 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-928-2 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  ONE

  Foresight Saga

  Where roads and railways cross old established ground, there are bound to be odd triangles left over, too small or too ill-favoured for development. This one was bounded in steel, concrete and noise, by the railway, Wood Lane and the A40 flyover.

  Along one side of the plot was a motor repair workshop, occupying some old wooden buildings that seemed once to have been stables – three loose boxes, what had probably been the tack room, and a larger structure with big double doors, perhaps formerly a fodder store, now fitted out with a lube-pit and car lift. Beyond them were two crude concrete garages with up and over doors. Above the door of the tack room, now the office, was a board bearing a name painted in faded, peeling letters: E. Sampson.

  On the side bounded by the high steel security fencing of the railway, two ancient, derelict car-body shells lurked under a vigorous overhang of buddleia. Rosebay willow herb and cow parsley, ghostly now at the season’s end, sprouted through a muddle of metallic debris in the corner beyond them. It must have looked quite festive in midsummer.

  Access to the yard was down a narrow track off Wood Lane, running between windowless rail depot buildings. The first few yards were tarmac’d, but beyond that it was bare earth. After several days of rain, track and yard alike were sodden and muddy.

  The SOC unit had laid boards for safe passage, but multiple feet had muddied these too. Detective Sergeant Atherton picked his way delicately like a cat through broken glass, grumbling. He was wearing rather natty grey shoes. Detective Chief Inspector Slider, a country boy by birth, always had wellingtons in his car boot. He stepped more confidently, but he grumbled too.

  ‘No CCTV cameras, no overlooking houses, no passing traffic or pedestrians. That means no witnesses.’

  ‘Lots of tyre tracks,’ Atherton offered.

  Slider would not be comforted. ‘Too many. Let’s hope deceased is clutching a scrap of paper with the name of the murderer on it.’

  Atherton nodded. ‘It’s always wise to write the name of your worst enemy on your cuff before going out. That’s foresight.’

  Slider smiled reluctantly. ‘Cuff! You dear old-fashioned thing.’

  The man who had found the body was squat and swart, probably in his fifties, though so weathered it was hard to tell. His expression was dour, his mouth a hard line, and he spoke tersely, in a roughened voice, never making eye contact, giving the impression that he did not often have call to communicate with other members of his species.

  He was dressed in workman’s dungarees, liberally streaked with oil and mud, over a chunky green sweater with a surprisingly cheery motif of red reindeer and white snowflakes. Slider suspected it had not originally been bought for him. The elbows were worn through, revealing some kind of grey undergarment. His hands, scarred and broken-nailed, were swollen and stiffened by hard work into the appearance of wooden clubs. Still, they were nimble enough while constructing a skinny roll-up, which he inserted into his prow and lit. It clung there, smoking sulkily, waggling as he spoke.

  ‘Mr Sampson?’ Atherton enquired. It didn’t do to make assumptions.

  Sampson scowled, nodding minimally. He poked his tongue out of the opposite side from the roll-up and removed a shred of tobacco from it.

  ‘What does the “E” stand for?’ Atherton wanted to know.

  ‘Eli,’ he acknowledged, with a look that said, Go on, then, make something of it. Give me an excuse.

  With regard to the corpse in his yard, he was sullen. ‘I don’t know nothing about it,’ he said. ‘Ask me, someone’s playing a joke on me.’

  ‘A joke?’ Slider said, pained.

  ‘Trick, then. Having a go at me. Tryna get me into trouble.’

  ‘Do you know who he is?’

  ‘Never seen him before in me life.’ He brooded a moment, then added, gratis, ‘He’s not from round here.’

  ‘How do you know that, if you don’t know him?’ Atherton asked.

  ‘Look at his close,’ he said succinctly.

 
Slider admitted he had a point. The corpse was wearing a good-quality charcoal wool overcoat over a two-piece black suit and white shirt, tieless and open at the neck. His shoes were black leather, highly polished. His dark, grey-speckled hair, kinky like wire wool, was cut short. He was clean-shaven and gave off a faint aroma of expensive aftershave.

  ‘Dressed up like he’s going up the West End,’ said Sampson.

  ‘How long have you had this place?’ Slider asked.

  ‘Been here twenty year,’ said Sampson. ‘Ask my satisfied customers.’

  It was his way of offering his credentials. Slider did not really suspect him of having put the body there. To call the police would be a bold double bluff, but it was rare even among professional criminals to find anyone willing to try it. On the whole they liked the more basic defence of being as far from the scene as possible. Being a good twenty miles away at the time was a lot simpler than arguing, ‘If I was guilty, I wouldn’t have called you, would I?’

  That didn’t mean he didn’t know the deceased, or have anything to do with the death, of course.

  He answered Slider’s questions tersely, resentment bristling in every word. His business was servicing and repairing cars, his clients the unlucky souls who did not have the luxury of a warranty. The cars were mostly old bangers and rust-buckets, which he kept limping along for the owners, who relied on them for their own precarious livings. He was here most days, working, or tinkering about with his own motors – he bought old MGs and restored them as a sideline. He had been here until six last night, give or take, and had arrived at seven this morning to find the unwelcome visitor lying in the mud at the side of the yard.

  ‘Took you long enough to call it in,’ Atherton remarked. It was logged at seven twenty.

  ‘Didn’t know what to do. I knew you lot’d look at me suspicious. As if I’d plant a body in me own yard!’

  ‘Did you touch him, or move him?’ Slider asked.

  ‘Never went near him,’ Sampson said, ‘only to see he was dead and not drunk or whatever. I could see he was dead all right, without touching him. So I went in me office and had a fag while I thought what to do. I was shook up. Then I rung you lot.’

  He hadn’t seen any strangers hanging around lately. And the only people who’d been in his yard in the last week had been his customers coming and going, all people known to him. ‘Why’d anybody come down here, unless they was looking for me?’ he said logically.

  Another point, Slider allowed. The opening to the track was unobtrusive, and didn’t look as if it led anywhere but behind the blank warehouses.

  A tube train rattled past, down in the cutting beyond the security railings. Overhead, the sky was grey and messy, like wet dishrags, but too high for rain. The wet spell was passing over. ‘You’re pretty isolated here,’ Atherton remarked, glancing about.

  ‘That’s the way I like it,’ Sampson said. ‘I like me own comp’ny.’ He glowered at the police and the SOC crowd infesting his space. He jerked his thumb towards the corpse. ‘What was he doing here, that’s what I want to know.’

  ‘That’s what we all want to know,’ Slider said.

  ‘He never brought no motor in,’ Sampson observed. ‘That one’s mine,’ he pointed to a beat-up Ford Focus which he’d parked in one of the garages, ‘and that one I’m working on.’ He indicated a frail-looking Cortina, practically a museum piece, which was in the shop. ‘So what’d he do, wander in here drunk?’ he concluded irritably.

  Slider beckoned LaSalle over and left him with Sampson, while he followed the boards across to where the forensic pathologist was kneeling beside the body. The SOC unit had laid tarpaulins around it, and Freddie Cameron had the protective suiting on, but he still looked less than happy. ‘Mud,’ he said by way of greeting as Slider reached him. ‘I hate mud. Slipped off the damn board walking up here, now I’ve got wet knees. And I’m particularly fond of these trousers.’ He looked penetratingly at Slider’s wellies. ‘Foresight is a lovely thing.’

  Hear a new word and you’ll hear it again within the day, Slider thought. ‘I never leave home without them,’ he said.

  ‘Smug bugger!’

  ‘How did he die? He looks peaceful enough.’ The corpse was supine, arms to his sides, and his clothing was not torn or disordered.

  ‘Broken neck,’ Cameron said, pointing out the unnatural angle of the head. ‘I don’t know if there are any other injuries – that will have to wait until I’ve got him back and stripped.’

  Slider studied the face. A man in, he guessed, his mid to late fifties; a firm face, naturally sallow, and weather-tanned; a strong fleshy nose and chin, large ears with big earlobes. A face of resolve, he thought: someone who knew what he was doing, a businessman, perhaps – a small trader. The clothes were nice but he didn’t have the air of a mogul.

  Cameron went on: ‘There are no defence wounds.’ He lifted a hand. ‘Well-kept fingernails. Doesn’t look as though we’ll find a handy skin specimen of the assailant under them.’

  The sleeve tipped back a little with the movement, revealing a handsome watch. Cameron caught Slider’s glance. ‘Patek Philippe,’ he said. ‘Very nice. The sort you don’t own, you just look after it for the next generation. Still showing the right time.’

  Atherton leaned closer to examine it. ‘It’s a Calatrava,’ he concluded.

  ‘Expensive?’ Slider asked.

  ‘They start about five thousand. Connoisseur’s choice,’ Atherton said. ‘Not your usual swank-pot’s show-off job. Interesting.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem as if robbery from the person was the motive, then,’ said Slider.

  ‘You say that,’ Freddie Cameron answered, ‘but all his pockets are empty.’

  ‘How empty?’ Slider asked.

  ‘Completely. Not a sausage. No wallet, cash, keys – not even a handkerchief. And what gentleman goes out without a hanky?’

  ‘We don’t know that he was a gentleman,’ Slider said, ‘watch or no watch. But I take your point. In any case, we know he didn’t walk in here. Look at his shoes.’

  ‘Good quality. Leather soles,’ Atherton observed.

  ‘But no mud,’ Cameron said.

  ‘Quite,’ said Slider.

  Hart, coming up behind them, caught the exchange. ‘Someone could a’ driven him here, then whacked him.’ She jerked a thumb backwards towards Sampson. ‘Laughing Boy over there, maybe. He looks tasty. And his is the only motor here.’

  Slider shook his head. ‘There’s no mud on the soles of the shoes,’ he said. ‘So he couldn’t have stepped out of a car, even if he was driven here. He couldn’t have moved anywhere in this yard under his own motive power without getting mud on the soles.’

  ‘So he was dumped?’ Atherton concluded.

  ‘That would be my guess. Killed somewhere else, pockets emptied, driven here and bundled from the car.’

  ‘But why dump him here?’ Hart asked, staring around.

  ‘Ah, now you’re getting onto the expensive questions,’ Slider said, shaking his head. ‘The Christmas and birthday questions. I’m not sure you can afford ’em.’ He turned to Freddie. ‘Time of death?’

  ‘Between twelve and twenty-four hours ago, give or take,’ Freddie said. ‘Rigor’s well established. Sometime yesterday, in all probability.’

  ‘If Sampson’s telling the truth, he has to have been dumped here between six last night and seven this morning,’ said Slider.

  ‘That’s OK, time-wise,’ said Freddie.

  ‘But of course, he could have been killed earlier than six, and stashed somewhere else first, then moved after dark.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ Cameron agreed. ‘Right, I’m ready to roll. I take it you’ll want fingerprints, since there’s nothing else to identify him by? OK. I’ll take a DNA sample and do the teeth as well. And I’ll report again, as soon as I’ve done a full inspection.’

  ‘So what now?’ Atherton asked as they turned away.

  ‘A quick word with Bob Bailey,’ sa
id Slider, ‘and then we might as well get some breakfast.’

  He talked to Bailey, the Scene of Crime chief, about tyre tracks. ‘If you can work out which was the latest one, before Sampson drove back in, it might help.’

  ‘Won’t be able to tell you more than the make. But I’ll take a cast if there’s anything clear,’ he said. ‘Course, it won’t help until you get something to compare it to, but …’ And he shrugged.

  Then Slider led the way back down to Wood Lane where all the official wheels were parked.

  ‘Breakfast, where?’ Atherton asked, when they reached the department car. ‘There’s nothing round here.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ said Slider. ‘Chummy had the good taste to get himself dumped only yards from one of the best eateries in West London.’

  ‘More foresight?’ And then he stopped to look around disbelievingly. ‘I find it hard to believe. What’s the name of this gourmet establishment?’

  ‘Sid’s,’ said Slider.

  Sid’s was in the centre of the flight of shops between the Westway and Du Cane Road.

  ‘Been here donkey’s years,’ Slider said. ‘It’s an institution.’

  ‘So is a mental hospital,’ Atherton countered.

  ‘Don’t be sniffy until you’ve tried it.’

  It was an unglamorous place, an old-fashioned transport caff, surviving through the nostalgia and dogged loyalty of the many commercial drivers who passed up and down Scrubs Lane. The original Sid was now in his eighties, and the heavy lifting was done by various children and grandchildren, but he was generally to be found stationed behind the griddle, flat cap on his head, cooking the endless relays of the famed all-day breakfast. His frying of an egg was poetry in motion.

  But when Slider and Atherton went in, the griddle was manned by one of his sons, Young Barry, a tall, fleshy man in his fifties. ‘Ullo,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Long time no see.’

  The counter was being tended by Barry’s daughter Tiffany, while Mrs Sid, a mere spritely seventy-nine, did the rest of the cooking.

  ‘Ooh, look who it is. I ’ope we’re not in dutch,’ Mrs Sid said jocularly.

  Tiffany was lively, with platinum hair and a lot of teeth, and was very popular with the customers. ‘I hear you got a bit o’ trouble up at Jacket’s Yard,’ she said.