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  ‘No, he didn’t. Well, he didn’t call me and I’m his backup. I don’t know if he called anyone else.’

  ‘It was you he was meant to call?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you weren’t worried when he didn’t?’

  ‘I wondered-I wasn’t exactly worried.’

  ‘What did you wonder?’

  She bit her lip. ‘I thought he might be skiving off. I was worried he’d get into trouble. They’d have told me if he’d rung in sick, you see, because I’d’ve had to call his customers, so I knew it wasn’t that.’

  ‘He’d done it before, had he? Skived off, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, when he was out of Town. More than once. He sort of went out on the spree, and drunk too much, and then couldn’t make it to his appointments the next day. He got a warning last time. I didn’t want him to get into trouble.’

  ‘He liked a drink, then?’

  ‘He was a social drinker, that’s all,’ she said defensively. ‘He had friends everywhere, people he’d worked with, or met through his work. Well, he’d been a salesman for years — he was in insurance before he joined Omniflamme – and when he met up with them, they’d go for a drink, and—’ She let the end of the sentence hang for him.

  ‘Yes, I see.’ He was getting a very clear picture of Mr Richard Neal, the Rep with the Quick Dick and the All-England capacity. ‘So there was nothing unusual in his telling you he was going to meet an old friend on Saturday?’

  She shook her head. ‘Except that he wouldn’t say who it was. Even when I asked him.’ She met his eyes urgently. ‘They’re saying he was killed in a hotel fire – is that true?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Atherton. He could see her thinking.

  ‘But if it was just a fire, just an accident, you wouldn’t be asking all these questions, would you? You think it was deliberate? That someone started it deliberately?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. Let’s say there were suspicious circumstances.’

  ‘What circumstances?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to tell you.’

  She stared, thinking hard. ‘This man he was meeting—?’

  ‘If you think of anything, anything at all, that might help us to find out who he is, it would be very helpful. We know Mr Neal didn’t go to Bradford, but we don’t know where he did go. It’s possible he said something to this friend of his.’

  She shook her head slowly. ‘I can’t think of anything. But it must have been an accident. It must have been. Nobody would want to hurt Dick. Everyone liked him. He had friends everywhere. Everyone liked him.’

  Apart from his predilection for getting drunk, and nibbling on forbidden sweetmeats, Atherton thought, he seemed to have been a regular little Postman Pat. Mr Popularity. If only I could have got on with people like that, I might have been a Commissioner by now – or dead, of course.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Talk to the Animals

  JUST BEFORE THE UNIFORM SHIFT change at two o’clock, D’Arblay appeared politely in Slider’s office.

  ‘Sir – could I have a word?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Slider liked D’Arblay. There was a pleasant modesty about him, though he must have been tough enough underneath, having survived his first six years in the criminal hothouse of Central. ‘What is it?’

  He seemed hesitant. ‘Well, sir, the Skipper said I should mention it to you, though I didn’t want to presume.’

  ‘Presume?’ Slider savoured the word. It was like something Joanna would say.

  D’Arblay looked uncomfortable. ‘I didn’t want it to look as if I was trying to tell you your job, sir.’

  Slider smiled. ‘Relax, lad. What’s on your mind?’

  ‘Well, sir, as the motel fire was on Sunday night, I wondered if you’d thought of asking Mrs Mason if she saw anything?’

  ‘Mrs Mason?’

  ‘Elsie Mason, the old bag lady, sir.’

  ‘Oh, Very Little Else, you mean. I never knew she had a surname.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ D’Arblay said seriously. ‘I always call her by it – she seems to like the bit of formality.’

  They taught them that in Central, Slider remembered. It sometimes paid off, especially if some really scuzzy wino was shaping up to give you trouble, to address them with formal politeness. A kind of benign shock treatment. Not that Very Little Else came into that category, of course.

  ‘She’s around that area on Sundays, is she?’

  ‘Yes sir. She walks along Goldhawk Road and Askew Road on a Sunday. I didn’t actually see her at the fire, but she’d be bound to have gone there once she heard the sirens – she’s very curious about anything on her ground.’

  ‘How reliable is she? I haven’t spoken to her for quite a time.’

  ‘Her memory’s sound enough, sir. She acts a bit dotty, but she knows what’s going on.’ He looked at Slider hopefully.

  ‘I see. Well, you did quite right to mention it.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. But it was the Skipper said I should come and see you.’

  Sergeant Paxman was not one to poach another man’s credit. D’Arblay had had a good thought, and he’d let him run with it; and D’Arblay was handing the credit straight back to his skipper. It was touching about those two.

  In fact, Slider had forgotten Very Little Else. She was one of the better known characters on their ground, a tiny creature, only four foot eight tall and thin as an adulterer’s excuse. She dressed always, winter and summer, in a black coat, black boots, and a black felt hat, with, of course, the tastefully matching accessories of black teeth and black fingernails.

  She was unusual for a bag lady in that she only ever toted one bag, whereas most female tramps collected more and more junk all the time. There was one in South Kensington, for instance, who now had to push a stolen supermarket trolley to carry all her bags; and another who lived under the bridge where the M4 crossed Syon Lane, who had accumulated so much stuff she could no longer move about at all. The last time Slider had passed she had even acquired a sofa and a matching armchair. He firmly expected to see a standard lamp and a sideboard next time he drove by.

  Very Little Else, however, travelled light. She walked her ground in a methodical way, stumping along muttering to herself with her one bag clutched tightly in her right hand, while her left gesticulated an accompaniment to her monologue. When Slider had first come to Shepherd’s Bush, she’d had an old Turkish-patterned carpet bag, but that had gone the way of all flesh. Now it was just a plastic carrier, which only lasted a few weeks before having to be replaced. No-one had ever fathomed out where she slept, or what she lived on, but she was popular with the beat coppers because she was no trouble. Slider thought they probably all slipped her a few bob every time they met her.

  Since D’Arblay evidently got on with her, perhaps he should get him to interview her about the motel fire. He glanced out of the window. On the other hand, the sun was shining out there, muted by the dust of ages on the window panes, but inviting. ‘Any idea where she’d be today?’

  ‘Somewhere between White City and East Acton, sir.’

  ‘Ah. Thank you, D’Arblay.’

  It was one of those sunny afternoons when suddenly the world slows down to continental pace. The pavements smelled like hot skin, the tar of the roads softened benignly, pigeons got serious about each other wherever there was a patch of balding urban grass. In the row of shops opposite the park in Bloemfontein Road, suddenly-genial shopkeepers propped their doors wide and dreamed of the subcontinent they’d left behind them. Windows stood open everywhere, and the air was exotic with the fragrance of spices and frying garlic. Outside the post office, two scrawny single mothers folded their arms and chatted, forgetting for once to slap and scold; and in a pushchair by the door a happy baby mugged old ladies for smiles.

  It was here that Slider finally came upon Very Little Else. He spotted her turning the corner into Bryony Road, and going into the park through the gate by the bowling-green. He parked the car further up the ro
ad and went back to look for her, and found her sitting on a bench with her back to a warm privet hedge, blinking in the sunshine like a dusty black cat, and fumbling to open a packet of baby’s rusks which she held in her lap.

  The grass around her feet had bloomed as if by magic into a flock of hopeful pigeons, but she didn’t seem to have noticed them, nor to care that her fingers slid again and again over the well-sealed packet-end without making any impression. She seemed to be quite happy just sitting there, and Slider felt it would have been a shame to disturb her, except that in the past he had found her not averse to a spot of company.

  ‘Hello, Else,’ he said, positioning himself so that his shadow fell across her face and she could see him clearly. He stood still to let her get a good look at him, and she examined him carefully, frowning as she sought through her mental files for recognition. ‘Don’t you remember me?’ he said after a minute.

  ‘Yore a pleeceman,’ she said definitely, and then shook her head disappointedly. ‘My memory’s not what it was. I used to know you all once. But you keep changing every five minutes. Can’t keep up with you no more. Which one are you, then?’

  He sat down beside her, and she peered at him from closer quarters. The sun shone into her face. There was a bloom of age, like blue algae, over the brown of her irises, and it seemed to him that there was grey dust in the deep seams of her wrinkles. He wondered how old she was. Probably not more than sixty, though it was always hard to tell. Once people parted with the normal comforts and concerns of civilisation, they came to look both older and younger than their age.

  ‘Yes, I know you now,’ she announced. ‘Mr Slider, ain’t it? Yore the one who got his eyebrows burned off. I ain’t seen you about lately.’

  ‘I don’t get out on the street as much as I’d like to. How are you, Else? You’re looking fit.’

  ‘Gotta keep fit, ain’t I? No – one else’ll look after me.’ She examined him keenly. ‘Yore puttin’ weight on. See it round yer chin. Been on good grazin’, aintcher?’

  ‘I don’t get the exercise you do, walking all day.’

  ‘Got a girl, ‘ave yer?’ she asked astutely, and chuckled. ‘Wass that advert they useter do, for evaporated milk? Comes from contented cows.’

  He felt he should distract her from that train of logic. Her scrabbling fingers caught his eye. ‘Here, let me open that for you.’

  She looked down at the packet in her hand blankly, having evidently forgotten all about it. Like magic it disappeared, whisked into her bag as though it had never existed. Stolen, he thought. Did she actually steal it from a baby? Lifted it out of a pram, as like as not. But her need was probably greater than the baby’s.

  ‘Wanted a cuppa tea,’ she complained, with a natural association of ideas, ‘but the caffy’s shut.’

  ‘The cafe’s been closed down for years, Else,’ Slider said, wondering if D’Arblay was wrong about her memory.

  But she looked indignant. ‘I know that! Whadjer think, I’m going sealion?’

  ‘No, not you, Else. You’ll see us all out.’

  ‘Sharp as a bell,’ she said severely.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Slider said, ‘because I wanted to ask you something.’

  ‘Didn’t think it was a social call,’ she said, looking away from him across the grass. Girls were beginning to come out of the school, strolling across the park in pairs, all wearing short, tight skirts, white ankle socks, and black rowing-boat shoes. They all looked so alike, it made Slider feel dizzy, and he looked away.

  ‘You want to know about the fire, I s’pose,’ she said suddenly, without looking at him.

  He was surprised. ‘Why d’you say that?’

  ‘Man got killed, didn’t he? Pleece gotter investigate. You’re The Man up Shepherd’s Bush now, aintcher, now Mr Raisbrooke’s gone. What happened to him, anyway?’

  ‘He retired,’ Slider said automatically. With her deductive powers, he thought, she should have been a detective. ‘Did you see the fire, then?’

  ‘I was there,’ she agreed, between relish and pride. ‘I watched the firemen. Gor, it was a good one! Went up like a bombfire. They never had no chance of puttin’ it out, I could see that ‘fore they ever got there. I stopped all night, watchin’. It was lovely! Just like the war,’ she said happily, ‘and no bleedin’ ARP wardens to tell you to clear off out of it, neether.’

  ‘Were you round that way before the fire started? Did you see anyone going in, or coming out?’

  Her gaze sharpened again. ‘Which one you interested in?’ Silently he gave her the photograph of Neal, blown up from a snapshot provided by Mrs Neal. She studied it. ‘Is he the one what died?’

  ‘Yes. Did you see him at the motel that night? Or parking his car, perhaps? He had a red car, sporty, parked it in Rylett Road and walked down. Maybe he had someone with him?’

  ‘Na, I never see him there,’ she said. She looked up from the photograph and eyed Slider speculatively, and then smacked her lips softly. ‘I could go a cuppa tea, though. You got your car with yer, Mr Slider?’

  He was wary. He had nothing but goodwill towards the old girl, but she wasn’t what any man would choose for a travelling – companion. Even upwind he could smell her. ‘What’s this about, Else?’

  ‘It’s a dry sort a day,’ she said dreamily. ‘F’you could give me a ride up the Acropolis, they don’t mind me there. Some places they won’t serve the likes of me.’ She handed the photograph back. ‘Nice sort a face, ain’t it? ‘Ansome.’

  ‘You didn’t see him at the motel, you said?’

  ‘Seen him somewhere else,’ she said blandly. ‘Can’t think where, though.’

  ‘If I give you a ride in my car, do you think you might remember?’

  ‘Wasn’t long ago, neether. Mighta been Satdy or Sundy,’ she said with a sweet smile. ‘Real thirsty sort a day, ain’t it?’

  ‘Come on then,’ said Slider resignedly. If he was going to get rolled, at least it would only be for the price of a cup of tea.

  She sat very upright in the bucket seat with her bag clutched in her lap, and looked about her with evident delight on the short journey down Bloemfontein Road and along Uxbridge Road to the Acropolis Cafe. She loved riding in cars, and Slider found her pleasure rather touching. In the course of her long life she had been in so few of them that the experience still had all the childhood sharpness of novelty.

  Outside the Acropolis he pulled up and went round to the passenger side to let her out. He delved into his pocket and pulled out a handful of loose change, saw there were a couple of pound coins amongst the silver, and held out the whole fistful to her. He knew from experience it would give her more satisfaction than a note.

  She accepted the bounty gravely in her cupped hands, and then bestowed it into various pockets. Slider waited patiently until she looked up again.

  ‘Satdy it was,’ she said, suddenly business – like. ‘Dinnertime. I see him go in the George and Two Dragons. He—’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘You know.’ She seemed impatient of the interruption. ‘Up the Seven Stars. I was sittin’ on the wall oppsit. He was in there a long time. Havin’ his dinner, most like. I could see the back of ‘is ‘ed through the winder. Noddin’, like he was talkin’ to someone. Then he comes out and I see him go up Gorgeous George’s. He meets a girl there.’

  ‘How d’you know? Did you see the girl? Could you describe her?’

  But she only chuckled and turned away. ‘You ask Gorgeous George,’ she said, stumping towards the cafe door. ‘He knows all about it.’

  There was a complex road junction where Askew Road, Goldhawk Road and Paddenswick Road all met, which of late years had been turned into a free public bumper-car ride by the simple addition of two mini-roundabouts. A large pub called The Seven Stars and Half Moon dominated the scene, and had given its name to the whole area.

  Gorgeous George was the local Arthur Daley, a blond and handsome South African who had a second – hand car lot
in Paddenswick Road and conducted various slightly dubious business deals on the side. Slider had thus decoded two thirds of Else’s cryptic message, but The George and Two Dragons eluded him. That had to wait until he got back to the factory and asked Bob Paxman. He was custody sergeant on the late relief, and Slider found him in kitchen making himself a cup of Bovril.

  ‘Oh, that’s the pub, The Wellington, on the corner of Wellesley Road,’ he answered Slider at once.

  ‘Why on earth—?’

  ‘It’s only been called The Wellington since they tarted it up. That was in 1965 – 150th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. Some clever sod at the brewery noticed that Lord Wellington’s name was Wellesley before he got made a duke, so they changed the pub name while they were refurbishing.’

  ‘The things you know,’ Slider said admiringly.

  Paxman looked wary, wondering if he was being razzed. ‘They had a grand reopening on June the whatever it was, day of the battle,’ he went on, committed to his story now. ‘Gave away free drinks. We got called out twice before nine o’clock – fights in both bars. Silly buggers.’ He snorted and shook his head, and then remembered the point of the story. ‘Anyway, before that it was called The George and Dragon. It was run for years and years by a little bloke called George Benson, with the aid of his large wife and his even larger mother-in-law. Hence—’

  ‘Ah, I see!’

  ‘Some of the older locals still call it The George and Two Dragons.’ The round brown eyes rested on Slider with ruminative enquiry. ‘Are you going to follow up what Little Else said?’

  ‘Don’t you think she’s reliable?’

  Paxman scratched the curly poll between his horns. ‘She’s given us some useful stuff in the past, but she’s not getting any younger. And of course if it came to anything the CPS would never accept her as a witness.’

  Slider shrugged. ‘At the moment I’ve got nothing to lose. And circumstantially it sounds all right. It was sunny on Saturday round lunchtime, and there’s a low wall opposite The Wellington – the wall of the park – where she might sit to enjoy the sunshine. And the second-hand car lot is just up the road, virtually next door to the pub. She could have seen him go in there without changing position.’