Killing Time Read online

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ Joanna said, heading straight for him. ‘They said I’d find you here.’

  Nicholls, you die for this, he thought, stuttering to his feet. ‘Oh, hello, Joanna. Er, this is Irene. Irene, this is Joanna, a friend of Jim Atherton’s.’

  Joanna’s smile solidified, and he saw her nostrils flare. Irene said, ‘How do you do?’ nicely, and Joanna repeated her words and even her intonation, while her mind plainly worked furiously behind her mask. Slider’s head felt as concrete as her expression; he couldn’t think, he couldn’t cope. He looked from Joanna, in white jeans, a Greek cotton tunic and sandals, her rough hair held off her face with a pair of sunglasses, to Irene, neat and polished in a suit with matching accessories and a proprietorial smile, and wanted to be anywhere but here, the further away the better.

  It was Joanna who spoke at last – it seemed like several suspicious hours later, but it must have been almost instantly, because Irene was still looking social and pleasant. ‘Yes, they told me you’d be here and that you could tell me the latest on Jim. How is he?’

  ‘Pretty much the same. I saw him yesterday. They say he’s improving slowly.’

  ‘Is he allowed visitors yet?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He’s asleep most of the time, but if you telephoned the hospital I’m sure they’d let you know. Have you got the number?’

  He thought he was doing pretty well but she shot him a look of fierce impatience and said, ‘Yes, of course. Well, I won’t interrupt your lunch any longer. I was just passing. Goodbye,’ to Irene, and with a whip-flick glance at Slider, ‘it was nice neeting you.’

  When she was gone, Irene said, ‘Is that Atherton’s latest girlfriend? She doesn’t seem his usual type – not glamorous enough. And she’s a bit old for him, isn’t she?’ She chattered on for a bit, until she realised he was too quiet, and said, ‘Are you all right? You look a bit pale.’

  ‘A bit of a headache, that’s all,’ he said.

  She was all concern. ‘Do you want to go? Shall we forget lunch? You must be careful, after a crack on the head like that. Look, shall I get you a taxi to take you home? Where are you staying at the moment, anyway?’

  That was one question to head her away from. He pulled himself together. ‘No, no, I’m fine. Let’s have a look at the menu. They do quite good grub here. No, really, I’m all right. I wouldn’t drag you all this way and not give you lunch.’

  He couldn’t wait to get back to the shop and talk to Nicholls; but Nicholls wasn’t there. Paxman was on duty, a broad, solid man with a congested face and slow eyes, whose tight curly hair gave him more than a passing resemblance to a Hereford bull.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ he said. ‘Did your friend find you?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Slider said with tight irony. ‘Where the hell is Nicholls?’

  ‘He’s gone to court. He left a message where you were, if your friend asked.’ Paxman always referred to Joanna as ‘your friend’. He disapproved of extra-curricular activities, but there was no malice or guile in his face. Plainly he thought he had done what was required. Slider thanked him and went away with an inward whimper. Some days were like this, with a high likelihood of precipitation, dark brown variety; and it wasn’t over yet.

  Joanna’s car was there when he got home, but she had only just arrived: it was still warm and ticking. Her bag and fiddle were dumped on the hall floor, and she was in the kitchen, still in her coat, reading her mail while waiting for the kettle to boil. Oedipus was on tiptoe, his tail straight up, winding himself back and forth around her lower legs. When Slider appeared he started towards him, but got sidetracked by the kitchen table, whose legs he caressed in lieu. He had settled in very well, but they still didn’t dare let him out, for fear that he’d try to find his way back to Atherton’s flat across ten miles of London traffic. It meant a good deal of dirt-tray cleaning-out, of course, but they shared the burden between them. Slider was a New Man.

  Joanna turned and raised an eyebrow at him. Enigmatic, he thought. Could go either way. The fact that she had fallen in with his deception at the pub had puzzled him all day. Did it mean she loved him so much she would spare him any embarrassment, even at the cost of her own dignity; or that she had given up on him and cared so little it was no longer important?

  ‘Are you going to throw plates?’ he asked meekly.

  ‘Nah. Too expensive.’

  She was not going to be angry. A tidal surge of relief. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said abjectly. ‘It was so stupid. I just don’t know what came over me. I panicked, I think.’ She was regarding him with suppressed humour; a sort of exasperated, what-am-I-going-to-do-about-you expression. He could never prejudge what would tickle her sense of the ridiculous. It made life interesting, at least. ‘I’m really sorry,’ he said again for good measure.

  ‘Well, it was me who told you not to tell her in the first place,’ she said. ‘I suppose I’ve only got myself to blame. Though I didn’t expect you to go on denying me for ever. And so automatically, the moment I appeared – like Simon Peter on speed.’ And then she laughed. ‘Oh, your face, though, when I came up and spoke to you!’

  He didn’t think it was terribly funny, though he managed a polite smile. ‘Well at least you and Irene have met now. It gets the first time over with.’

  ‘What d’you mean, first time?’ she said suspiciously.

  ‘Well, you’re bound to have to get to know each other in the long run. It would be nice if you could be friends—’

  ‘Oh my God, no!’ she shuddered. ‘Don’t say that. There’s something very weird about men who want to get their wives and their mistresses together.’

  ‘You’ve known many such?’ he asked coolly.

  ‘By association. In the nature of things, my female friends have mostly been musicians. And equally in the nature of things, female musicians tend to have to go out with married men, because that’s all there is. All that’ll put up with their lifestyle, anyway. Inevitably comes the day when the bloke arranges accidentally-on-purpose for the completely unexpected, surprise-surprise, what-else-could-I-do meeting between the two women he’s poking. And then the self-satisfied dingbat stands back and gets some creepy thrill out of seeing them talking to each other.’

  ‘It wasn’t my idea,’ he said, hurt.

  She put an arm round his neck and kissed him casually. ‘I know. I absolve you of malice aforethought. You’re a gent, really. Just don’t ever talk about Irene and me becoming friends.’ She released him and turned to reach for the teapot as the kettle switched off. With her back to him she said, ‘And if there is another accidental meeting, don’t deny me again, will you?’

  That was the important bit, the bit she couldn’t look at him for. ‘Definitely not,’ he said. ‘Scout’s honour.’ He watched her making tea, knowing there was more to come.

  ‘I was jealous,’ she said at last. ‘And I don’t like myself when I feel like that.’

  ‘I suppose it’s quite flattering really,’ he said lightly. ‘To think you love me that much.’

  She gave him a quick glance. ‘It didn’t feel much like love. I wanted to kill her. And then, when she was mashed to a pulp, to kill you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘For having been married to her. It drives me crazy that whatever happens in the future, I can’t change that. She’s had you for all those years, and I can’t wipe that out, run the film back and erase it. It’s a horrible thing to feel that sort of possessive fury. It makes you understand axe murderers. Only obliterating you would have given me relief. Of course, I wouldn’t do anything about it, but that only makes it worse, because I know I wouldn’t, and that just adds frustration to all the other seething acids.’

  She was serious, and he had to be careful not to say the wrong thing and offend her. But he couldn’t help feeling all the same that it was flattering. It might not have felt much like love to her, but he was glad to know, after some of the things that had happened, that she cared that much about him, when he had so
metimes wondered whether she couldn’t take him or leave him. He touched her on the shoulder, and she turned into his arms. He held her, and felt her relax against him. Then at last he kissed the top of her head, and put his lips against her ear, and murmured tenderly, ‘I want to obliterate you, too.’

  It was not until much later, when they were in bed together, that she brought the subject up again. ‘What was she doing there, anyway? Irene.’

  ‘She wanted to see me, to check I was in one piece. She was upset that no-one had told her I was in hospital.’

  ‘So you asked her to lunch?’

  ‘She more or less asked herself.’

  After a silence, Joanna said, ‘What did she really want to see you about?’

  ‘Why should there be another reason?’

  ‘I’ll put it another way: what did she really want to see you about?’

  ‘I think she wants us to get back together,’ he admitted. There was no way round that.

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  He waited for more, and then said, ‘She feels guilty and uncomfortable, and the children are unsettled, and since she knows the house hasn’t been sold, she thinks it would all be so much easier if we just let bygones be bygones and slid back into the furrow.’

  ‘Rut.’

  ‘That’s what I told her.’

  ‘I bet you didn’t. I know you, Bill Slider. I bet you avoided the whole issue.’

  ‘It wasn’t really an issue. She didn’t ask outright, only hinted at it. I didn’t take up the hint, just changed the subject. So that’s that. She’ll know it’s not on.’

  ‘She won’t. Women will always believe what they want unless you tell them otherwise in words of one syllable. Have you never heard of being cruel to be kind?’

  ‘I feel sorry for her. And guilty. She thinks the whole break-up is her fault.’

  ‘You aren’t thinking of it?’ she asked warily out of the dark. ‘Going back to her?’

  ‘Not in these trousers.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  He thought honesty might reassure her. ‘It was realising that she wanted us to get back together that finally convinced me I could never do it.’

  ‘Finally? So you had been considering it?’

  ‘Well, obviously it had crossed my mind on the odd occasion.’

  ‘Which occasion?’

  ‘When you’re being unreasonable and cruel. When you’re away and I think of you frolicking in seaside towns with abandoned musicians.’

  ‘I’m never unreasonable.’

  ‘I notice you don’t say you never frolic,’ he said suspiciously.

  ‘I have to keep some mystery. How else can I allure you?’

  ‘Allure isn’t a verb,’ he objected.

  He felt her smile against his neck. ‘I miss Atherton, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘He is going to get better?’ she asked like a child wanting reassurance. Are there bears under the bed? But Atherton was real. The best he could manage was, ‘It’ll be a long job.’

  There was a long silence. He thought she had gone to sleep, but then she said, ‘Did Irene recognise me?’

  ‘Recognise you?’ He searched the files. ‘Oh, you mean from that concert?’

  ‘You practically introduced me then.’

  ‘No, I’m sure she didn’t.’ He re-ran Irene’s words and expressions. ‘She said you weren’t Atherton’s usual type. Not glamorous enough.’

  ‘Cheeky mare,’ Joanna said sleepily. A little while later she was asleep. Slider lay wakeful for some time, his mind jumpy with the unaccustomed stimulation of being back to work. He slept at last, but fell into a nightmare in which he was stalked through the White City Estate by a sweating, knife-wielding Gilbert. If only he could get back to the station he’d be safe, but the blocks of flats proliferated all around him, identical, confusing, every door and corner a possible ambush point, and he couldn’t find his way out.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A Fit of Peaks

  The shout came on Wednesday, at a time when Slider, who wasn’t going in early, was still in bed.

  ‘A nice murder for you,’ said Nicholls, who was on earlies. He pronounced it murr-durr.

  It was a dead body in a flat on the White City Estate. Listening to Nicholls’ sealskin-soft Atlantic coast accent, Slider was reminded that the Anne-Marie Austin case had begun just this way, with all its consequences to his private life. Only then, of course, it had been Irene asleep beside him, and she hadn’t woken, as Joanna just had, sitting up to look at the clock.

  But the flat in question was Busty Parnell’s, and the dead body was Jay Paloma’s. Busty had arrived home from spending the night away to find the front door open, the keeper of the Yale lock hanging loose from one screw; and inside, Jay Paloma dead in a welter of blood.

  Slider’s guilt chip had already been overworked with regard to Atherton, and now threatened to go into overload. The poor little bastard knew what he was talking about after all. He had been frightened with a cause. Slider should have done something: his guilt nagged him as he listened to Nicholls with another part of his brain. But what could he have done? Blimey, it had happened so quickly, he could hardly have got him an armed guard for his door even had he wanted to. In the time available, there was nothing he could have done, nothing the system would have let him do, to prevent this. But it didn’t change the fact that Paloma had come to tell him he was afraid for his life, and now he was dead. It was breast-beating time, whichever way you sliced it.

  ‘Are you there, Bill?’ Nicholls asked into the silence.

  ‘Oh – yes – I was just thinking. I saw him on Monday, you know. The victim. He knew it was coming.’

  ‘Chrise, no. That’s a bugger,’ Nicholls commiserated. ‘And you with your overactive glands.’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Your compulsion to be responsible for everyone’s troubles. Global Mammy Syndrome. Ah well,’ Nicholls comforted him, ‘this’ll keep you busy for a while. Nothing like being run off your feet for keeping your mind off things.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Slider shortly.

  ‘What is it?’ Joanna asked as he put the phone down.

  ‘A corpus,’ Slider said, pushing Oedipus off his legs and getting out of bed. He turned back to kiss her. ‘I shan’t be back before you go to work. Have a good day.’

  ‘You remember I’m on at the Festival Hall tonight?’

  ‘So you are. Well, I’ll see you when I see you, then.’

  ‘Good luck,’ she called as he headed for the bathroom.

  By the time Slider got there, Busty had been taken away in hysterics, with WPC Asher to lean on, which was one comfort. Hollis was waiting for him.

  ‘I suppose he is dead?’ Slider asked, without hope.

  ‘In spades,’ Hollis said. ‘Hart’s inside.’

  The flats on the White City Estate had all now been modernised to within an inch of their lives, with double glazing, central heating and solid wood doors – the glass panels in the originals having been a gift for felons. But of course no-one locks their door on the mortice when they are at home, and judging by the size and singularity of the footmark on the door, the murderer had been a very large and powerful man, strong enough to kick the door open at the first blow.

  The flat seemed tidy and clean. In the kitchen everything was put away, except for two coffee mugs, a saucepan and a plate with a knife and fork lying on it, which were sitting in the sink. Slider examined the evidence. Scrambled eggs, he concluded. On toast. The bathroom was likewise tidy with hand towels neatly folded and bath towels stretched to dry along the shower rail. The bedrooms were tidy with the duvets straightened on the beds. He could tell which was Busty’s by the collection of cosmetics spread out on the dressing-table, which was larger than the collection in Jay’s room; and by the brown-and-red silk Noël Coward dressing-gown flung across his bed and the leather mules on the floor by its hem.

  Only in the sitting-room did disorder reig
n, and even there only in one small area. The television was on with the sound turned low. On screen a bunch of people with demented expressions were talking non-stop over the top of one another, mugging at the camera, and prancing about a set done out with huge cut-outs in primary, not to say dayglo, colours. Someone at TV headquarters had evidently decided that only the brain-damaged and the under-fives watched television at that time of day, and for all Slider knew they could be right.

  An armchair near the television had been turned over backwards, and Jay Paloma lay sprawled half out of it, cruelly illuminated by the bright sunshine from the window. His head had been beaten to crunchy red-and-yellow breakfast cereal. He was wearing a chambray shirt, jeans and moccasin slippers. The front of the shirt was liberally soaked in blood, which was not surprising because his face had been stoved in by a mighty blow across the bridge of the nose. There were no apparent other injuries, and his clothing was not torn or disordered, his shirt still tucked into his trousers and his slippers still on his feet.

  Hart, at Slider’s side, turned her head away quickly, swallowing with a clicking sound.

  ‘Feeling sick?’ Slider asked. She made an affirmative sound. ‘Is this your first time?’

  ‘No, sir, I’ve felt sick before.’

  He gave her points for trying. ‘First murder?’

  ‘Not the first, but the messiest,’ she said.

  ‘You never get used to it,’ he told her from the depth of his own present misery. ‘You just have to learn to keep your stomach detached from your eyes. Now, using your eyes, what do you think happened here?’

  She looked around, grateful to have her attention taken from the corpse. ‘He doesn’t seem to have put up much of a fight. None of the furniture’s out of place, apart from the one chair.’ There was another armchair, placed opposite the first, both of them facing the television on a slant, and between the two, but set back so that only the end of it was within reach, was a coffee table on which stood a whisky bottle – White Horse, almost empty – and an empty glass, an ashtray with five cigarette ends in it, and an untidy pile of papers and magazines. Back against the wall was an elderly sofa of the armless couch type, covered with what was nowadays known as a ‘throw’ in a vaguely Polynesian pattern of mutually hostile colours – not so much a throw as a throw-up, Slider thought. Against the wall nearest the door was a large and ugly sideboard in pale highly-varnished oak with bulbous legs, dating, judging by its style, from the nineteen-fifties. On it was a collection of framed photographs, mostly black and white, of Busty and Jay in their separate high moments: Jay with Jeremy Haviland in a dinner suit; Busty with a celebrity so blurred it could have been David Nixon or Richard Nixon for all Slider knew; Busty in a lineup of Windmill girls; Jay in an Arran sweater against a wild sea from a knitwear catalogue – and so on. Some of the frames were as old as the photos. Slider touched one gently and its wonky foot slithered on the highly polished surface and collapsed.