Blood Sinister Read online

‘I haven’t got as far as suspecting anyone yet. You may have been the last person to see Miss Agnew alive. I’d like to know about that.’

  ‘I haven’t seen her for weeks!’ Prentiss protested.

  Slider felt Atherton beside him quiver with pleasure. ‘You went to see her yesterday,’ he contradicted firmly.

  The lion’s eyes widened. ‘What makes you say that?’ he asked with careful neutrality.

  Slider only smiled gently. ‘You went to see her yesterday,’ he repeated. ‘Now, would you like to tell me about it, or shall we continue this conversation elsewhere?’

  With another stare, Prentiss swung the swivel chair round so that he was facing the window, and left Slider his back to look at for a long moment, while he marshalled his thoughts, perhaps, or reorganised his face. When he swung back, he was in control again, but he looked grave, and suddenly older.

  ‘I don’t know what all this is about,’ he said. ‘Please, tell me the truth. Phoebe was my oldest and dearest friend. Is she really dead? She was really murdered?’

  ‘I’m afraid she was,’ said Slider.

  ‘Dear God,’ said Prentiss.

  Slider pressed him. ‘Please answer my question, Mr Prentiss.’

  He swallowed and licked his lips a few times, seeming to come to a decision. ‘I did go to see her yesterday,’ he admitted, ‘but I don’t know how you knew. It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing – I dropped in on her on my way somewhere else. I was there less than half an hour, and she was fine when I left her. I don’t know any more than that.’

  ‘Give me some times,’ Slider said.

  ‘I don’t know exactly, but it would be about eight o’clock. I mean, I must have got there about eight and left about twenty, twenty-five past.’

  ‘I see,’ said Slider in troubled tones. ‘You’re quite sure about that?’

  ‘I’ve just said I can’t be exact, but that was about the time.’

  ‘The problem is, you see,’ Atherton joined in, ‘that she told a witness yesterday morning that she was expecting a visitor, and we have witnesses to the fact that there was someone there with her between six-thirty and seven. Now you say you called without warning and not until eight o’clock.’

  ‘That’s right.’ He paused, frowning with thought. ‘It must have been someone else,’ he concluded. ‘She must have had another visitor.’

  ‘Did she say, when you saw her, that she’d had a visitor?’

  ‘No, but – well, if it wasn’t me, it must have been someone else, mustn’t it?’

  ‘Where were you for the rest of the day – at work?’

  ‘No, as it happened I was working from home yesterday. I do that sometimes to get away from the phones.’

  ‘How did Miss Agnew seem to you?’ Slider asked. ‘Was she in her normal spirits?’

  ‘I don’t know – yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Do? We chatted about this and that. I had—’ Something seemed to strike him.

  ‘You had what?’

  ‘I had a drink,’ he said slowly.

  Slider smiled inwardly. He’s remembered the whisky glass, he thought. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Phoebe had one as well,’ he said in that same distant tone. And then he snapped back to normal. ‘Anyway, that’s all I can tell you. She was perfectly all right when I left her.’

  ‘Where were you on your way to, when you called in?’

  He hesitated. ‘I was going to a meeting.’

  ‘At that time of night?’ Atherton asked.

  He looked lofty. ‘A ministerial meeting. The business of government is not nine-to-five. As you probably know, I am the Government’s special advisor in inner city development.’

  ‘Yes, I did know that,’ Atherton said. Slider was glad at least one of them read the newspapers. ‘And who were you going to see?’

  ‘Is it any of your damn business?’ Prentiss snapped, getting some spine back.

  Slider took it up. ‘Well, yes, I’m afraid it is. You must see that, as you were with the deceased at such a crucial time, we have to check your story. I’m sure you wouldn’t expect us to do otherwise, given that Miss Agnew was your friend.’

  A pause. ‘I went to see Giles Freeman,’ he said at last. ‘Does that satisfy you? I’m sure’, he added with heavy irony, ‘you’ll accept the word of a Secretary of State, won’t you?’

  The words not on a bet jumped to mind, but Slider went on, ‘What was your relationship with Miss Agnew?’

  ‘I’ve told you, we were old friends.’

  ‘Were you lovers?’

  Prentiss burst to his feet. ‘Look, I’m tired of your damned impertinent questions! My best friend is dead, don’t you understand that? Can’t you imagine how I must feel?’

  Slider was unmoved. ‘Nevertheless, I have to ask you, were you lovers?’

  ‘No, we were not!’

  ‘You were just good friends?’

  ‘Perhaps your imagination is so limited that you can’t conceive of a man and a woman being friends, but that’s not my problem!’

  Slider stood up. ‘Thank you for your frankness, Mr Prentiss. I do have to ask you if you will come to the station and let us take your fingerprints and a blood sample for comparison.’

  ‘For comparison with what?’ he snapped.

  ‘We need to eliminate any traces you may have left around the flat,’ Slider said evenly.

  He looked shaken. ‘And if I refuse?’

  ‘Then I should wonder whether you had something to hide. I know that if my dearest friend had been murdered, I’d want to do everything I could to help bring the murderer to justice.’

  ‘I don’t need you to lecture me on the duties of friendship,’ Prentiss said, but after a moment he added, ‘When do you want me to come?’

  ‘As soon as possible. Now, if you can. We can give you a lift back with us.’

  ‘No, I’ll go in my own car, thank you,’ Prentiss said.

  ‘Is that the XJS?’ Atherton asked with car-spotting eagerness. ‘Dark blue? Reg number something-FRN?’

  ‘Yes,’ Prentiss said, slightly puzzled. ‘You like Jags?’

  ‘I like all cars,’ Atherton said.

  ‘So, Mr Prentiss, are you coming now?’ Slider asked.

  ‘I’ll follow in five or ten minutes. I’ve some things to clear up here first.’

  When they were out in the car park, Atherton gave a soundless whistle. ‘Quite a set up. The rent of that place must really hurt. Then there’s the Jag – and he was wearing some serious cash. His suit looked like a Paul Smith.’

  ‘Paul Smith?’ Slider queried.

  Atherton smiled kindly. ‘Like Armani, only more so. Cutting-edge stuff.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Slider said humbly. ‘So, bank account left aside, what did you think of him?’

  ‘Guilty,’ Atherton said. ‘Lied straight off about having seen her. Nervous, evasive, falling back on the old lofty arrogance to try and get out of answering awkward questions.’

  ‘He’s an architect. Maybe he can’t help being arrogant.’

  ‘Still, given she was his best friend, shouldn’t he have been more surprised and upset that she was dead?’

  ‘Maybe he is, but doesn’t show it,’ Slider said.

  ‘Don’t be perverse,’ said Atherton. ‘You’re just seeing both sides, as usual. You think he did it.’

  ‘His story may be true. Why shouldn’t she have had two visitors?’

  ‘It’ll be true just as soon as he’s phoned his old friend Giles Freeman to give him the script, which is what he’s doing right this minute, by the way.’

  ‘Perhaps. But I can’t stop him without arresting him.’

  ‘Ah, yes, and he’s not a person to arrest unless you’re sure. Too many friends in high places.’

  ‘What is he, a dustman?’

  ‘Laugh it up, guv,’ Atherton warned. ‘It doesn’t stop at Giles Freeman, you know – though that’d be bad enough. Freeman’s one of the Com
ing Men and doesn’t like anyone to get in his way. But more than that, the Freeman set has the key to Number Ten. In and out like lambs’ tails.’

  ‘You terrify me,’ Slider said.

  ‘You’re a political ignoramus,’ Atherton told him affectionately. ‘How do you manage not to know all these things?’

  ‘I don’t get time to read the papers.’

  ‘That’s dedication.’

  ‘Apparently Prentiss didn’t either – or not the Standard, since that’s the only place it appeared.’

  ‘Her name wasn’t mentioned in that anyway,’ Atherton pointed out.

  ‘True. But wouldn’t you have thought someone would have phoned him and told him? He must know plenty of journalists, and the word must have got round by now.’

  ‘Maybe they don’t like him. All right, what now?’

  ‘Back to the factory. With any luck, Norma will have got something from his wife that we can work with.’

  In the car, Atherton said, ‘What about the tying up, guv? Do you think it was a sex game that went wrong? Do you see him as the bondage, S&M type?’

  ‘There’s no point in wondering until we find out if the finger-marks and semen were his.’

  ‘How much d’you want to bet?’ Atherton said.

  ‘I’m not a betting man,’ Slider said. He glanced at his colleague sidelong, wanting to ask him about the horse-racing thing, and then deciding it was none of his business. Lots of people gambled. It wasn’t a crime.

  Campden Hill Square was on a hill rising steeply from the main road, with a public garden in the centre graced by massive plane trees. Fog now draped their bare branches like cobweb, and made fizzy yellow haloes round the street lamps. The steepness and the narrowness of the houses gave it a Hampsteady feel to Swilley. The houses looked unstable, as though they might topple like dominoes and send two hundred years of architecture rumbling out into the Bayswater Road in a lava flow of bricks and slates. And good riddance, in her view. She had as much respect for old London architecture as the Luftwaffe.

  The door of Prentiss’s house was opened by a small, slender woman. In the gloom of the unlit hall she lifted her eyes to Norma’s height with darting apprehension. Her brown eyes, thick dark hair and very white skin reminded Swilley of a lemur.

  ‘Mrs Prentiss? I’m Detective Constable Swilley of Shepherd’s Bush CID. May I come in and talk to you?’

  She said it in her most pleasant and unthreatening tones, but Mrs Prentiss seemed to be struck breathless and wordless. She moved her lips and made an uncompleted gesture of her hands towards her chest, as though her lungs had sprung a leak. Swilley, afraid she was going to faint, reached out and held her elbow. ‘Hang on, love. Sorry if I startled you. You’d better sit down.’

  But Mrs Prentiss shook her off and turned away to lean against the banister of the steep, curving staircase, which was all there was in the hall, apart from a glimpse through an open door of a dining-room. The hall was papered in dark green, a William Morris print Swilley just about remembered from her childhood. It was worn in places, and gave an air of shabby gloom that Swilley had come to associate with a certain sort of wealthy person, as if they felt themselves to be above anything as mundane as refurbishment. It was what she would have expected in a place like Campden Hill, and she had no patience with it.

  The impatience now spread to Mrs Prentiss, who she felt was time-wasting, and she said firmly, ‘P’raps you could do with a brandy. Tell me where it is and I’ll get you one.’

  Mrs Prentiss lifted her head. ‘No, I’m all right now. Would you like to come upstairs to the drawing-room?’ She led the way, walking with a peculiar, rigid gait and holding on to the banister carefully. ‘I’ve put my back out,’ she said, evidently feeling some explanation was due.

  ‘Backs are bastards,’ Swilley acknowledged with bare sympathy. ‘How did you do it?’

  ‘It’s an old problem. Comes and goes,’ said Mrs Prentiss.

  The drawing-room, on the first floor, ran the full depth of the house from front to back, with folded-back doors in the middle. The double room was panelled, had two vast marble fireplaces, and was furnished with large and well-used antique pieces. The panelling had been painted in the dull greyish-green that the National Trust had vouched for as authentic eighteenth century; the drops of the chandelier had that dim lustre, like slightly soapy water, that proved them original; and even Swilley’s uninformed and unappreciative glance could tell that the paintings on the walls hadn’t been bought or sold in a very, very long time. There was real money here, old-established money, the sort that took no notice of fashion. This room had probably not looked much different in all the years it had existed. Swilley couldn’t think how they could bear it.

  Mrs Prentiss crossed to a side table on which stood a tray of decanters and glasses. ‘I think I will have something. What about you?’ she asked with her back to Swilley. Her voice sounded strained.

  ‘No, thanks. Not on duty,’ Swilley said.

  Mrs Prentiss poured something brown – whisky or brandy – into a glass and threw back half of it, and only then turned to face her. ‘Please, won’t you sit down? I’m sorry I made such a fool of myself.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Swilley said, sitting down. ‘I suppose I can look a bit scary.’

  Mrs Prentiss lowered herself carefully onto one of the hard settles, opposite her, and sat on the edge of the seat, very upright, nursing the oversized tumbler in her lap. Everything about her seemed neat and complete, from her short-cropped, thick, shining hair to her slender, well-shod feet. Now, with the aid of light, Swilley could see she had the beautiful skin – colourless but glowing, like alabaster – that sometimes went with dark hair. Together with her small, symmetrical features it made her look unnaturally young, though she was obviously in her forties. No, not young so much as un-aged, out of step with the stream of time. A ruined child, Swilley thought unexpectedly: like something out of an old black-and-white film, the beloved but neglected only child, maintaining, in its well-stocked nursery, the exquisite manners that concealed a brooding sorrow. There was a feather of blue shadow under her eyes, as though she were very tired or unhappy.

  ‘It isn’t that,’ she said. She gave Swilley a searching look. ‘I suppose you’ve come about – about Phoebe?’

  ‘Oh, you’ve heard?’

  ‘My husband told me. He rang me this morning. I’m just so shocked.’

  ‘You’ve known her a long time, haven’t you?’ Swilley asked.

  ‘She was my oldest friend. We were at university together.’

  ‘Oh, really? Which one?’

  ‘University College, London. We were both reading English,’ Mrs Prentiss said. ‘We took a liking to each other the first day, when we were all milling about wondering where to go and what to do. You know what it’s like – if you’re lost, you always want to latch on to someone, so that at least there are two of you in the wrong place. Not that Phoebe was, for long. She always knew exactly what she should be doing. I tagged along with her, and after that we always hung around together.’ She smiled with an effort. ‘We used to sit on the sofa in the corner of the English Common Room in Foster Court all day, and make terrible critical comments about the other students. Phoebe was frightfully left-wing and radical, and they all seemed so conventional: tweedy sixth-formers, Young Conservative types. We thought we were being witty, but it got us a reputation. Some of the others called us Les Tricoteuses.’ She glanced at Swilley to see if she understood the French. ‘We didn’t mean any harm. To tell the truth, I barely understood half the comments. But Phoebe led and I followed.’

  ‘And how did your husband meet her?’ Swilley asked. ‘Through you?’

  ‘No, not really. Josh was at UCL too, reading architecture,’ she said. ‘We all met through Dramsoc – the Drama Society. I wanted to act – I’d been to stage school – so I joined it straight away, and Phoebe came along just for fun. Josh joined because – well, anyone who was anyone at UCL had to be in Dra
msoc.’ She smiled with faint self-mockery. ‘It was a hotbed of preening student poseurs, though of course one only realises that with hindsight. But anyway, that’s how we all met. We liked the look of him. He seemed much more sophisticated than the other male students. He had an air about him, of belonging to a larger world. What he saw in us—’ She shrugged. ‘Phoebe was stunning, of course – that gorgeous red hair and those eyes. Intelligent, too – she was a brilliant student. And so witty – that fabulous stream of words! Everyone was in love with her. I don’t know what she saw in me. I was dull and plain beside her.’

  If she wanted contradiction, Swilley thought roughly, she’d come to the wrong shop. ‘Who knows what friends see in each other? It just happens, doesn’t it, friendship?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Mrs Prentiss said. ‘It’s a kind of love, and love is unaccountable. At any rate, Phoebe had beauty and brains, though she wasted them, in my opinion. Josh had looks, brains, charisma, and a private income – quite the Golden Child. The only talent I ever had was for acting, and even that’s proved not to be such a huge talent. I don’t suppose you remember me in Des Res?’

  ‘I didn’t watch it. I think I may have seen a bit of one episode, but it’s not really my sort of thing.’

  ‘It wasn’t anyone’s sort of thing,’ Mrs Prentiss said bitterly. ‘Yet I suppose in a way it was the high point of my career. High point and death knell. Everyone thinks if you get a sitcom you’re made for life, but when it’s a stinker like that …’

  Swilley was not interested in a career post-mortem. ‘So at university you went around as a threesome?’ she prompted. ‘Or was it more two and one?’

  ‘We were a threesome. But when we graduated Phoebe sort of disappeared for a while, and that’s when Josh and I started to get close.’

  ‘Disappeared?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean mysteriously,’ Mrs Prentiss said. ‘I just mean we lost touch for a while. Three or four years, it must have been. I was in London, trying to get my career moving, and Josh was with a firm of architects, also in London, so we still saw each other. And in the end, of course, it was us who got married. When Phoebe reappeared, we became a threesome again, but with Josh and me the couple within it.’