One Under Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles From Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One: Two Under

  Chapter Two: Starbucks Mater

  Chapter Three: Coupe and Contrecoup

  Chapter Four: Adams Family Values

  Chapter Five: But She Was Too Young to Fall in Love

  Chapter Six: Wake Duncan With Thy Knocking?

  Chapter Seven: From the House of the Dead

  Chapter Eight: The Wife of Bach

  Chapter Nine: Coffee and Donors

  Chapter Ten: Reading Between the Lies

  Chapter Eleven: The Micawber Approach

  Chapter Twelve: Elephant’s Child

  Chapter Thirteen: End of the Line

  Chapter Fourteen: Call Girl

  Chapter Fifteen: Noli Me Tangere

  Chapter Sixteen: Billingsgate on a Warm Day

  Chapter Seventeen: More Clubbing Than the Inuit

  Chapter Eighteen: Slouching Towards Kensington

  Chapter Nineteen: And Besides, The Wench Is Dead

  Chapter Twenty: It Was Al All the Time

  Recent Titles by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles from Severn House

  A RAINBOW SUMMER

  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

  The Bill Slider Mysteries

  GAME OVER

  FELL PURPOSE

  BODY LINE

  KILL MY DARLING

  BLOOD NEVER DIES

  HARD GOING

  STAR FALL

  ONE UNDER

  ONE UNDER

  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.

  This first world edition published 2015

  in Great Britain and 2016 in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

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

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2016 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD

  eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2015 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

  Harrod-Eagles, Cynthia author.

  One under. – (The Bill Slider mysteries)

  1. Slider, Bill (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  2. Police–England–London–Fiction. 3. Cold cases

  (Criminal investigation)–Fiction. 4. Murder–

  Investigation–Fiction. 5. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  823.9’2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8556-2 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-665-7 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-719-6 (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

  Two Under

  A suicide is a detective sergeant’s shout. Fortunately for Atherton, who was ‘it’ that Monday, the British Transport Police did the immediate graft. Unless there turned out to be anything suspicious about it, he was only required to attend, in both senses of the word, and write a report afterwards.

  Shepherd’s Bush has an Underground station at either end, one serving the Hammersmith and City Line and the other the Central. It was at the Central station that what was called – in the arm’s-length language beloved of policemen – the ‘incident’ occurred. The BTP, like all railway people, called it a ‘one under’.

  ‘Eastbound platform,’ said the BTP sergeant, Jason Conroy, who met Atherton at the top of the escalators. The ticket gates were locked open; the entrance gates were locked closed, and outside a small crowd had gathered, five-eighths pissed off that they couldn’t catch their train, three-eighths hoping for some excitement in their lives, and a chance to capture something unusual on their mobile phones.

  ‘Where did he travel from?’ Atherton asked.

  ‘Oh, right here. He lives locally. Addison Way.’ It was a two-minute walk from the station. ‘Name of George Peloponnos. We got his wallet from the tracks. Various bits of ID, including this.’

  It was a laminated pass for a local government building. No one looks entirely human in an ID-card photo, but he was probably looking better there than in real life, after his argument with the business end of a speeding locomotive. The picture showed a man in his mid-forties with thinning, light-coloured hair over a rather large skull, a high forehead and a pleasant, mild, perhaps weak face.

  ‘I took a photograph of the body on my tablet,’ Conroy went on, ‘if you want to see it, but it’s not much help. His face got a bit messed up.’

  ‘Pity,’ said Atherton. It was Standard Operating Procedure to match the photo against the corpse – there were unfortunately many reasons a person could have someone else’s documents on him to trip the unwary. When there was any doubt about identification, it meant getting a partner or relative involved to specify other identifying marks – never a happy task.

  But Conroy said cheerfully, ‘No worries. We got it all on CCTV. He looks like the photo on the pass. It’s him all right.’

  ‘And did he definitely jump?’

  ‘Oh yeah. No doubt about it. D’you wanna see the MPEG? I haven’t edited the whole tape yet, but I’ve downloaded the jump.’

  Since the terrorist attacks, Transport for London – as London Transport had wittily renamed itself – had installed some of the best CCTV kit with the widest coverage in the business. Furthermore, Shepherd’s Bush station had been completely remodelled in 2008 when the vast new Westfield shopping centre had been built next door, so it had modern lighting too. Conroy cued up the video clip and turned his tablet for Atherton to see. There was the brightly lit eastbound platform. Conroy pointed to the tallish, lean figure in a dark overcoat waiting among the other travellers – not so many of them, since the rush hour was over. He was standing a little apart, staring straight ahead, his hands down by his sides clenching and unclenching. Then he turned his head towards the tunnel mouth, presumably hearing the train approaching, and the camera got a good view of his face. It certainly looked like the man on the ID card.

  Then 240 tons of 1992 BREL/ADtranz rolling stock hurtled out of the tunnel and it was all over.

  Atherton handed it ba
ck. He had jumped. Nobody had pushed him. So far so good.

  ‘Witnesses?’ he asked.

  ‘We’ve interviewed the people standing nearest him. Not that they were much help. As you could see, one was reading the paper and two of them were messing on their mobiles.’ He cued the video again and froze it just before the jump, and showed it to Atherton again. ‘There was this bloke,’ he said, pointing to a young-looking man standing with his hands in his pockets and the leads of an iPod protruding from his ears. ‘But he wasn’t looking.’ He was, indeed, staring absently in the other direction. ‘He says the first he knew, there was this scream, and the bloke with the newspaper stepped back on his foot and nearly knocked him over.’

  ‘Who screamed?’

  ‘Woman further down the platform. She saw him jump. The paramedics are treating her for shock. Do you wanna talk to her?’

  Carole Parkinson, sitting in a cramped little office behind the concourse, was sufficiently recovered to ensure that Atherton took down her first name correctly, ‘with an e’. Indeed, wrapped in a cellular blanket and clutching a mug of tea, she seemed more stimulated by the attention she was receiving than devastated by what she had witnessed.

  She was aged forty-six and was a waitress in a West End restaurant. She had been on her way to work at what was her normal time.

  ‘I’d just missed a train – it was pulling out just as I reached the platform – so there was no one else there except him. Well, I didn’t think anything about it, obviously. Didn’t really notice him or anything. But when I heard the train coming in, of course I looked that way, and I saw him jump.’

  ‘Did he jump, or could it have been a slip, or a stumble?’

  ‘Oh no. He jumped all right. Straight out in front of the train.’ She sipped. ‘Of course, it’s the driver I feel sorry for. When you think about it, it’s a selfish thing to do, kill yourself like that. That poor driver’ll probably never get over it. I mean, if you’ve got to do it, at least don’t involve anybody else. And then all these poor people—’ she gestured round her to indicate the paramedics and the BTP – ‘have got to clear up the mess.’ She shuddered delicately and sipped again. ‘Selfish,’ she concluded. ‘I wonder why he did it. Maybe he left a note.’

  She looked hopefully from Atherton to Conroy, but neither of them was interested in satisfying her curiosity. They turned away. Outside, Atherton looked at his watch.

  ‘Keeping you from something?’ Conroy enquired ironically.

  ‘You might say. I gave up a perfectly good funeral for this,’ said Atherton.

  There was thin April sunshine, but a brisk, chilly wind was blowing: not weather for lingering, though the cemetery was delightfully full of spring-green grass and trees just coming into bud, and there were daffodils everywhere, leaning and straightening in the breeze, on the graves and beside the paths.

  Porson had a cold, and looked terrible in the sharp wind and acid sunshine, his face raw and bumpy, pale where it was not reddened. But he was never less than a leader, and everyone naturally gravitated towards him as they exited the chapel. The sullen roar of the nearby A40 was the background to the tweeting and twirting of the birds. Rus in urbe, Slider thought. When it had first been established, Acton Cemetery had been on the far outskirts of London, and the traffic would have been horse-drawn.

  Joanna had her arm through Slider’s. She huddled down into her coat against the wind, and pressed close to him for comfort. She had cried during the meagre little service inside. She hadn’t known Hollis well, of course, but a quick imagination would always feel sympathy. And Slider couldn’t help being aware that this was about the due date for the baby that she had lost in December. If he was remembering it, she must be too. In fact, he hadn’t wanted her to come, though it was hard to put her off without mentioning the baby. But she had insisted – as worried about his state of mind, he supposed, as he about hers. She had been giving him covert looks ever since the news of Hollis’s suicide had come in. She thought he was a guilt junkie.

  Apart from the police contingent there were only about ten people there. They had made an awkward group in the chapel. Slider regretted the old days of the Book of Common Prayer, when at least you had always known what to expect. Nowadays at a funeral you were more likely to be ambushed by embarrassment than grief. But there had been no eulogies or ‘Fred would have loved this’ jokes, or inappropriate music. Slider had felt only sadness that Hollis’s life should have ended as it did, and be closed with such a paucity of ceremony.

  The clergyman who had officiated had already hurried away to his car, and the undertaker’s men had assembled the floral tributes in the porch of the little stone chapel. Hollis’s second wife, Debbie, a hard-faced blonde in what looked like a new black skirt suit and coat, and a small feathered black hat that would have been more appropriate for a wedding, was inspecting them along with the man she had thrown Hollis out for, a lean and professionally-coiffed bounder in a tight-waisted M&S suit. He was a technician at the King Edward hospital and a good few years younger than her.

  It was the first wife, Brenda, that Slider had known socially. She came towards him now, bareheaded, in a coat that had seen many seasons, her face worn and softened, as if eroded with cares. Beside her were the two children of the marriage, awkward teenagers of fifteen and sixteen, tall like their father, and with an unfortunate combination of their parents’ worst features. It was somehow all the more heartbreaking that Hollis’s children should be so plain. The boy, besides, had teenage acne and the girl was uncomfortably big-breasted and overweight. They looked so alike with only a year between them, one might have taken them for twins. They stood close together, supporting each other, and Slider had an image of them huddling that way for comfort while the marital split was going on. The girl’s nose was red, the boy’s lip trembled. They gazed out in bewilderment from behind glasses with NHS frames that did nothing for glamour.

  Joanna slipped her arm out of Slider’s to free him and hung back to talk to them. Slider took Brenda’s hand. ‘I’m so very sorry,’ he said.

  ‘It was nice of you to come,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘More to the point, how are you? Holding up?’

  She glanced at the children, and lowered her voice. ‘Colin was still supporting us. I don’t know how we’re going to manage. I suppose …’ Tears filled her eyes and she bit her lip and breathed out hard to control them. ‘I suppose the social services will help us out. Somehow. Eventually.’

  Slider felt helpless. ‘It’s a rotten business,’ he said. ‘I had no idea – none of us had any idea. I knew he was depressed, but …’

  Brenda nodded miserably. ‘Debbie …’ she began, but didn’t finish. There were no words adequate to the occasion. She looked around in a lost way. ‘Well,’ she said reluctantly, ‘we’d better go.’

  Debbie was now holding court, receiving the commiserations of the other guests and hogging Porson’s attention. She was the official widow. It was all about her. In the chapel she had passed Brenda and the children on her way to the front row and pointedly not asked them to join her.

  ‘I’ve taken those two out of school,’ Brenda concluded, as though it were not a non-sequitur. The boy was trying desperately not to cry. He had his father’s protuberant eyes, and would have his male-pattern baldness too, one day. The chubby girl put her arm clumsily round his shoulders, staring defiance at the world.

  Slider, turning his shoulder so they shouldn’t see, fumbled out his wallet. Brenda moved a hand to stop him. ‘Oh – no. You mustn’t.’

  ‘Please,’ Slider said urgently, in a low voice. He removed all the notes, folded them in his palm, and pushed them into hers. ‘It’s not much, but – buy them lunch, or something. Please.’ He’d taken out cash the day before, so there was about £160 there. ‘Please, Brenda. I don’t know how we’re going to manage without him. He was a good man.’

  It probably wasn’t exactly the right thing to say to the wife he had left for another, but they
had remained on civil terms, and he had always supported the children. And Brenda had come to the funeral, hadn’t she?

  She nodded, slipping the notes into her pocket, unable to speak, and turned away. She smiled brightly and crookedly to her tall, plain children and they walked off together. Slider wanted to say ‘Keep in touch’, but he knew they wouldn’t – and to what point, anyway?

  ‘Poor things,’ Joanna said. ‘Those poor children.’

  ‘If only anyone had known how far gone he was,’ Slider said. ‘I should have known.’

  ‘Don’t start that again,’ Joanna said. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’d better be getting back.’

  ‘Yes, we ought to go, too.’ She had come in her own car, as had Porson. Slider had brought McLaren and Mackay, with Nutty Nicholls representing the uniform side. Nutty and Fergus O’Flaherty had tossed for it. Paxman, the other sergeant, was a strict Christian and would not attend the funeral of a suicide on principle.

  Slider gathered his troops, and they walked with Joanna down to the gates. There was no car park, but plenty of roadside parking in the immediate area. At his car, Joanna said, ‘See you tonight,’ and left him to find hers.

  The four of them got in the car, glad to get out of the sharp wind. Porson was still talking to Debbie’s remaining group – or rather, being talked at by Debbie. They saw her lay a hand on his forearm, as if to stop him escaping.

  ‘She could have given Brenda some of the flowers,’ Mackay said resentfully. ‘Cow.’

  Nicholls, beside him, said, ‘She wouldn’t have wanted ’em.’

  ‘Still, it’s the thought,’ Mackay insisted.

  Slider was aware that Debbie was generally blamed for Hollis’s suicide. He had said many times in his life that suicides did the deed because of what they felt about themselves, not because of what anyone else did or didn’t do. It didn’t stop him feeling guilty, though.