One Under Read online

  ‘It’s a rotten business all round,’ said Nutty.

  ‘At least he done it tidy,’ said McLaren. ‘Didn’t make a mess for someone else to clear up.’

  Hollis had hanged himself – the favoured option, statistically, for men, and especially for policemen in a force that did not routinely carry arms. He’d taken some rope with him in a backpack and taken the Central line out to Epping Forest where he wouldn’t scare anyone, leaving a note at his lodgings and another in his pocket for the avoidance of doubt. Considerate to the last – if you could discount the suicide itself – was Colin Hollis.

  ‘Well, that’s something, I suppose,’ Nicholls allowed.

  They drove in silence for a while, and then Mackay said, ‘Guv, are we getting a replacement?’

  ‘Obviously, at some point.’

  ‘No, I mean, soon. Have you heard anything?’

  ‘No, but Mr Porson knows it’s urgent.’ Even allowing for the cuts the whole of the Met was having to make, Slider’s firm was understaffed for the area and the workload. Of course, the new borough commander mightn’t agree – Mike Carpenter was reputed to be a bean counter, who had got his promotion for his mastery of spreadsheets rather than operational prowess – but it was self-evident they couldn’t manage as they were.

  ‘Mr Porson’ll tell ’em,’ McLaren concluded. Their boss might be a strange old duck, and use language like a blind man swatting flies, but he was always ready to fight their corner.

  ‘How was it?’ Atherton asked.

  ‘Simply divine,’ Slider replied sourly.

  ‘I just asked. Don’t you want to know how I got on?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Nothing suspicious about it. He jumped. Definitely suicide.’

  ‘Good.’ Slider busied himself with what was on his desk, and after a brief pause, Atherton went away.

  Now he was alone with his thoughts. He felt terrible about Hollis, the goofy-looking Mancunian who was such a good policeman. Mild, efficient, encyclopaedic of memory, and with a wonderful talent for getting people to open up to him – perhaps because he was goofy-looking, so they saw him as unthreatening. Slider had known he had left the marital home – for a time he had surreptitiously camped out in the Department, to which Slider had turned a blind eye – but lately he had found himself lodgings and Slider had thought he was getting on with his life.

  The note in his room had said, ‘I’m sorry, but I just can’t go on. I’m really sorry if this makes trouble for anybody. I don’t blame anybody. I’m doing it off my own bat. I’m sorry.’ Three ‘sorrys’ in one suicide note. Well, that was Hollis.

  The note in his pocket had said, ‘This is a suicide. Nobody else is involved.’ And gave his name and address and an instruction to contact Slider. Which the Epping police duly did.

  Determined to end it, Slider thought. Like Atherton’s ‘one under’, he jumped. One at each end of the Central Line. But did either of them think about the people they left behind? They were safely out of the way; someone else had to clear up the mess. Including all the feelings, guilt or otherwise.

  The phone rang, breaking the unfruitful cycle, and Slider reached for it gratefully.

  ‘This is DCI Remington, from Uxbridge.’

  ‘Oh yes? Hello, Pete. Long time no see. How are things?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Same all over. Cuts. Targets. Initiatives. It’s not like the old days.’

  ‘Even the old days weren’t like the old days,’ Slider suggested.

  ‘Congratulations, by the way. How are you liking your promotion?’

  ‘Doesn’t seem to have made much difference,’ said Slider. As a new detective chief inspector he was barely fifty pounds a month better off. ‘I have more meetings with council officials, that’s about all.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Remington, with a smile in his voice. ‘Actively promoting police/community stakeholder engagement going forward.’

  ‘Yes, I had one of those memos,’ said Slider. That was the other difference – an increase in the amount of management-speak bollocks that landed on his desk.

  ‘Sorry to hear about your bloke – Hollis, was it? That’s a nasty one. You always wonder if you could have done something. But the truth is, you never can.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Slider, accepting the intended comfort. ‘What can I do for you, anyway – or is it social?’

  ‘We’ve got a hit-and-run victim – young girl. One of those country lanes out Harefield way. No ID on her, but her fingerprints have come back to someone on your ground.’

  ‘What’s the name?’ Slider asked.

  ‘Kaylee Adams – that’s Kaylee with a double e. Age 15. Address, 12 Birdwood House, on the White City Estate. You did her a couple of times for shoplifting.’

  Slider made a note of it. The name sounded vaguely familiar, though he wouldn’t have been involved in a shoplifting arrest. ‘What the hell was she doing out in Harefield?’

  ‘That’s what we were wondering,’ said Remington. ‘Anyway, we’re still at the scene, if you wanted to send somebody to have a look. Or if you’re busy, I can just copy you the reports when we’re done.’

  They were busy, of course, but not with anything interesting. So much of the Job now was social work, community liaison and general reassuring. Burglary, domestic violence and missing persons were the highlights. Last week a woman had dialled 999 because she couldn’t get her ten-year-old son to go to bed and he was screaming and throwing things at her. ‘I din’t know where to turn to,’ she sobbed theatrically to the uniformed officer who attended.

  As the PC related it in the canteen afterwards, with much exasperation, ‘Scrawny, undersized little kid, and she must have been four times his weight, but she still claimed she couldn’t control him.’

  ‘Give him four years and it’ll be our job,’ another officer had observed sourly.

  So the Harefield hit-and-run was a golden opportunity for Slider to get out of his train of thoughts, and out of the office, before some other shower of bumf urged him to do some blue-sky thinking in a real-time facilitation sense.

  Besides, it was an odd place to find a girl from the estate.

  ‘Thanks, I’ll be along,’ he said.

  Slider reached into his reserves of compassion and took Atherton with him.

  Harefield was at the far edge of the London Borough of Hillingdon. It was therefore under Metropolitan police jurisdiction, but it was something of an anomaly, a distinctly rural area of muddy fields, cows and horses, narrow winding roads, hedges and barns – though the latter had mostly been converted into garages or desirable residences. But there were still some working farms, sometimes straw on the road and often the tang of manure in the air. A stranger parachuted in would never have guessed it was part of London.

  The warren of narrow lanes was mostly unsignposted, but there was a patrol car parked half across the entrance to Thornbrake Lane, which was a bit of a giveaway. The uniformed officer was telling motorists that there was no through road for the present. Slider showed his brief.

  ‘Oh, yes, sir, DCI Remington told me you were coming. Down here and second on the left. That’s Dog Rose Lane.’

  Thornbrake was wide enough to have a dotted line down the middle, but Dog Rose – ‘Charming names they have in these parts,’ said Atherton – barely managed a lane in each direction. Middlesex was an area of the Old Enclosures, so all the lanes had sunk to some extent over the centuries. Dog Rose began claustrophobically between low banks topped by high hedges, but after the first bend the hedges dropped lower and jumped back behind a grass verge and ditch, giving a bit of light and air and a glimpse of damp green fields beyond grazed by a few rough-looking horses.

  They soon came to a number of cars parked on the verges. Beyond them, blue-and-white tape stretched across the road a little short of a sharp left-hand bend.

  ‘Looks like the crime scene,’ said Slider.

  ‘Crime?’ Atherton queried. ‘Jumping the gun, aren’t we?’

  ‘L
eaving the scene of an accident is a crime,’ Slider reminded him.

  Another uniform was standing guard with a clipboard. He checked them off and courteously lifted the tape for them.

  It was a nasty, blind sort of bend that the cautious driver would creep round. Beyond it things were well under way, with the Uxbridge detectives, the local SOC team, and the collision scene specialists all busy. A forensic tent had been erected in the middle of the road.

  Remington shook their hands. ‘You can see what would have happened,’ he said. ‘She must have been walking along the road here and chummy comes round the corner too fast. It’s a nasty bend, as you can see – local black spot – and the natives all drive like maniacs round these lanes.’ He gave a little shrug. ‘Think they’re immortal.’

  ‘Where was she found?’ Slider asked.

  ‘Down the ditch, just over there. Must have been sent flying when she was hit. Of course, the driver might not have seen her at all if it was night – felt the bump, thought it was an animal, didn’t bother to stop. Or else knew what he’d hit and panicked. No witnesses have come forward, unfortunately.’

  ‘Who found her?’

  ‘Dog walker, this morning. There’s been plenty of traffic down this road, but you wouldn’t have seen her, where she was, from a passing car. We’ve moved the body now,’ he added, gesturing to the tent, ‘but I’ve got some photographs of the position, if you want to see them.’

  Slider and Atherton bent over his screen and scrolled through. There was the general position – they could see exactly where, just up ahead, with an overgrown thorn sprouting from the hedge and throwing arched tendrils over the ditch. Then the girl – lying face down, but with her head slightly turned to the side, one arm under her, the other flung out, one knee bent, just as she might have landed from the brief, violent flight. She was wearing a leather jacket and a miniskirt, and her legs and feet were bare.

  ‘No shoes?’ Slider asked.

  ‘We found them further along,’ said Remington. ‘I don’t know if she was knocked out of them, or if maybe she’d taken them off and was carrying them. Has to be said they weren’t best suited for walking.’ He scrolled on, and showed them a photograph of the shoes lying in the long grass at the far side of the ditch – four-inch-heeled strappy sandals.

  ‘And you say you had no way to ID her? So no handbag?’

  ‘We haven’t found one yet. Of course, that may be why she was walking – say it had been nicked, and she had no money for a taxi,’ Remington said.

  His blue eyes were guileless. It was obviously natural to him to try to make sense of the world by supplying reasonable solutions to questions. And reasonable they were. It was only Slider who wanted there to be a mystery. Oh well, he thought, at least I’ve got out of the office for a bit, had a ride out into the country.

  ‘D’you want to see the body?’ asked Remington hospitably.

  TWO

  Starbucks Mater

  A police surgeon was making a preliminary examination – a woman called Gill Carstairs, whom Slider had met before once or twice. She was around forty, a strong, rather plain woman of whose private life, it seemed, nothing was known; an achievement in itself in a field where women were still numerically weak and the subject of much impertinent curiosity. What Slider remembered best about her from previous encounters were her large red hands, and her straight dark hair, pulled back in a bun or ponytail, but from which a single strand always slipped annoyingly forward over her face, making Slider long to get at her with a Kirbigrip.

  Today the former were hidden by gloves and the latter restrained by the hood as she knelt in the white Noddy-suit over the body. She looked up – a rather pale face and unexpectedly brown eyes – as Slider approached.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here? Aren’t you Hammersmith?’

  ‘She’s apparently one of my locals.’

  ‘Oh, I see. So she’s the one out of her comfort zone. Is she missing?’

  ‘Not that anyone’s reported. So far.’

  The body was lying on its back now, decently straightened out, revealing a pudgily young face with a wide nose and a full underlip, pink with hypostasis except around the mouth and nose. The upper lip had been pushed up by her face-down position, giving her a contemptuous sneer. Part of the left ear had been eaten and one of the toes had been nibbled.

  ‘Weasels, probably,’ said Carstairs. ‘Toothmarks too small for foxes.’

  The hair was long, slightly wavy, dark brown with artificial highlights. The jacket was open, under which she was wearing a cropped top in baby pink with a Hello Kitty design on the front, and below it a very abbreviated black leather skirt which movement had rucked up above her thighs to reveal lacy pink panties. The combination of nursery cartoon and hooker-wear was unsettling.

  Snugged in the middle of the gap between top and bottom, her belly button looked red and sore.

  ‘Navel piercing,’ Slider said, ‘with the ring missing. Could it have been torn off in the accident?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Carstairs. ‘If it had happened at the time of death, it would be a completely fresh wound. I’d say from the swelling it was at least some hours earlier.’

  ‘Had a quarrel with her boyfriend maybe,’ said Remington. ‘He pulled it out in the fight. She stormed off, forgetting her handbag, tried to walk home.’

  ‘When do you think she died?’ Slider asked.

  ‘Rigor’s almost completely gone,’ said Carstairs, her big hand gently feeling the jaw, ‘so you’d be looking at – what? – probably Saturday night, early Sunday morning.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Remington said. ‘Saturday night, out on a date. Probably a drunken quarrel with the boyfriend, she’s trying to walk home, maybe trying to hitch a lift, along comes chummy, going too fast in a dark lane, and – whammo.’

  Slider leaned closer. ‘I’m no expert,’ he said, ‘but those knickers look wrong.’

  Carstairs gave him an amused glance over her shoulder. ‘Knickers? Girls don’t wear knickers any more!’

  ‘Whatever it is, that reinforcing gusset should be on the inside, shouldn’t it?’

  Carstairs slipped a finger under the elastic and pulled them out to look at the inside of the cloth. Slider couldn’t help noticing that the pubic area was quite hairless, which in a girl of her age must mean waxing. Another disturbing image. ‘Quite right,’ said Carstairs. ‘She’s got them on inside out.’

  ‘She must’ve got dressed in a hurry,’ said Remington. ‘After the fight.’

  Carstairs continued with her slow examination, and Slider and Remington moved away a few steps.

  ‘So, seen enough?’ Remington asked. ‘I never thought you’d come out yourself. You must’ve been desperate for some fresh air,’ he added genially.

  ‘Well, when it’s one of your own …’ Slider said.

  ‘No mystery about it, though,’ said Remington. ‘Except what she was doing out here. I suppose we’ll have to find out who the boyfriend was. And the usual round of the garages and repair shops, try and find if chummy’s noticed the damage to his motor yet. It’ll be a long job,’ he sighed. ‘Unless he does the decent and comes forward. They often do, when they’ve had a chance to stew. Nothing here for you, anyway – unless you want to do the Knock?’

  ‘That would make sense, as it’s on our ground. We’ll take that off your hands for you,’ said Slider.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Remington. ‘Saturday night, eh? You’d wonder why nobody’s missed her yet.’ He mused a moment. ‘But she looks as though she might have been a bit of a handful. Anyway, I’ll let you know if anything interesting comes up.’

  ‘Same here,’ said Slider. He shook hands, and walked away to join Atherton, who had been talking to the collision scene officer.

  ‘No skid marks,’ Atherton reported. ‘No sign of hasty braking or accelerating. Either he didn’t know he’d hit her, or he just carried on regardless.’ He looked curiously at his boss. ‘What are we doing
here?’

  ‘I was bored with community liaising. Anyway, she comes from our ground. I told DCI Remington we’d do the Knock.’

  The breeze was bowling some dark-bellied April clouds across the sky from the northwest.

  ‘It’s going to rain on us any minute now,’ Atherton observed. ‘You know this area, don’t you?’

  Slider had lived in Ruislip – a village a few miles away – with his first wife. He knew what Atherton was really asking. ‘There’s a decentish little pub not far from here,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘And a man has to eat.’

  The Rose and Crown was wrapped in Monday quiet, but it had a log fire going. A couple of locals and a black Labrador had taken the table closest to it, and the air smelled agreeably of fresh burning wood, old wax jackets and damp dog. Slider and Atherton took a table where they could see the leaping flames, and ordered ham, egg and chips. With the small number of customers, the food arrived quickly.

  ‘There was something odd about it,’ Atherton said at last, having taken a long pull at his pint. ‘The edge of the ditch where the body was found wasn’t broken down or the grass flattened at all. You’d expect some sign of passage if she had rolled in. It looks as though she was thrown in a perfect arc.’

  ‘Well, that’s possible. If the vehicle was going fast and hit her hard enough, she would have just flown,’ said Slider.

  ‘But then, wouldn’t she have landed on her back?’

  ‘You think she was hit from the front?’

  ‘She was on the left side of the road, the driver’s left, I mean,’ Atherton said.

  ‘You’re assuming she was walking facing the oncoming traffic like a well-trained country person.’

  ‘No, I’m assuming she was heading towards London,’ Atherton said. ‘Trying to get home. Why would she have been walking further into the alien countryside?’

  ‘She might have been lost and not known where she was or which way was up,’ said Slider. ‘And people who don’t know any better are more likely to walk on the same side as they drive. But there was something odd about it, all the same. Her shoes. If the impact had knocked her right out of them—’