Blood Sinister Read online

  ‘Do you know where she was or what she was doing in that time?’

  ‘I imagine she was involved in some protest or other – she was always marching and demonstrating. I don’t know where in particular. She didn’t live anywhere permanently at that time. When she came back to London it was just the same, just lodgings, and sleeping on other people’s floors. She was still a student at heart.’

  A touch of disapproval? Swilley wondered. The materialist’s contempt for the idealist? ‘You didn’t agree with her ideas?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t want you to think that,’ Mrs Prentiss said hastily. ‘Of course Josh and I are convinced socialists, always have been. But Phoebe was always much more radical than either of us. I was always willing to sign petitions and make donations, but I never went in for direct action the way she did. I was more interested in my career. And Josh had doubts about some of her pet causes. She was rather hot-headed, and sometimes she didn’t examine the issues before jumping in. She was so passionate about things. She and Josh used to fight like cat and dog about some of her ideas – but it never touched their friendship. That goes too deep to be affected by a difference of opinion.’

  Swilley nodded encouragingly. ‘It sounds marvellous, a friendship like that. So did you see a lot of each other?’

  ‘Oh, you know how it is,’ Mrs Prentiss said, looking faintly embarrassed. ‘Marriage, children, careers – there never seems to be enough time for getting together with your old friends, does there?’

  Swilley declined to party. ‘How often did you see her?’

  ‘I suppose – about half a dozen times a year. But we talked on the phone a lot,’ she added hastily, as though her dedication had been questioned. ‘There was never any sense of being apart, however long it was.’

  ‘When did you last see her, can you remember?’

  ‘She saw the New Year in with us. We had a little dinner party – just family. Our children both made it home, for a wonder. Josh and me, Toby and Emma, Josh’s brother Piers, and Phoebe.’ She looked at Swilley. ‘We counted her as family. The children used to call her Aunty Phoebe when they were little. Toby’s twenty-two now and Emma’s twenty. They have their own lives, of course, so we don’t see so much of them. He’s a company analyst for an investment firm. Emma works for a magazine group – followed Phoebe into journalism, you see. Phoebe helped her get the job. She always loved my two as if they were her own children.’

  Swilley accepted all this patiently, thanking God she was not the sort of woman who had to define her life by her husband and children. ‘At your dinner party, did Phoebe seem in her usual spirits?’ she asked.

  Mrs Prentiss frowned in thought. ‘Oh, yes, I think so. I mean, she always had a lot on her mind, but she didn’t talk about anything out of the ordinary. She chatted to the children about their lives, argued with Josh about the Government, had a flaming row with Piers – but that was par for the course.’

  ‘What was that about?’

  ‘Oh, goodness, I can’t remember. Something political – the homosexual age of consent, was it? I think it might have been that. They were always arguing – it didn’t mean anything. I mean, actually, Phoebe argued with everyone.’ She opened her eyes wide. ‘I don’t want you to think there was any malice in it. It was late in the evening and they’d both had a lot to drink so instead of just debating they started shouting at each other. But Josh told them to shut up because it was nearly midnight, and when Big Ben struck everybody kissed everybody else and it was all forgotten.’

  ‘Did she usually drink a lot?’ Swilley asked.

  ‘Well, she was a journalist,’ Mrs Prentiss said. ‘She always was what I’d call a hard drinker, though I’ve never seen her drunk since our student days. I don’t mean she was an alcoholic.’

  ‘But?’ Swilley prompted. Mrs Prentiss looked enquiring. ‘You sounded as if you were going to say “but”.’

  ‘Oh.’ A pause. ‘It’s just that the past few months I’ve thought she was drinking more than usual. She doesn’t get drunk, but once or twice when she’s come over we’ve sat talking and she’s just gone on drinking, long after I’ve had enough and—’ she gave a little, nervous laugh, ‘frankly, long after I’ve wanted to get to my bed.’

  ‘Do you think the heavier drinking was to do with some problem she had?’

  Again the hesitation. Mrs Prentiss gazed towards the dark window, which showed only a reflection of the lighted room, nothing beyond. ‘I wondered whether she had something on her mind that she wasn’t telling me about. She’s been – less lively and cheerful these past few months. More thoughtful. But then,’ she turned the direct, dark eyes on Swilley frankly, ‘there’s her age to consider. The Change is not easy for anyone.’

  Too genteel, Swilley thought impatiently, to use the m-word. ‘You must all be about the same age,’ she suggested.

  ‘Phoebe and I were just two months apart. My birthday’s February the eighth, and hers is April the eighth. Josh was born in June, but the previous year.’ She emptied her glass with a sudden movement. ‘I’m talking too much, aren’t I? I’m forgetting why you’re here. You don’t want to know all this stuff.’

  ‘It all helps to build up the picture,’ Swilley said. ‘She never married?’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Prentiss. ‘It never seemed to be something she wanted. Her career and her political interests filled her life. I asked her once, when we were in our thirties, if she wasn’t worried about the biological clock ticking away, if she didn’t want children before it was too late, and she said, “I can’t think of anything I want less than a husband and family.”’

  ‘But she had boyfriends, presumably?’

  Mrs Prentiss shrugged. ‘Men always wanted her – she was so beautiful and exciting. She had affairs from time to time, but they were just casual. Even when we were younger, men were just an add-on in her life. Her career was everything.’

  ‘I’m wondering, you see, who would have had a reason to kill her,’ Swilley said. ‘Do you know the names of any of her recent affairs?’

  ‘No. I don’t think she’s had anyone recently,’ Mrs Prentiss said. ‘The last one I know of was last summer, a man she saw for a couple of months. But she came to a garden party of ours in August alone, and said she’d got fed up with him, and she hasn’t mentioned anyone since.’ She looked straight into Swilley’s eyes; she sat very still, enviably free from the human propensity to fidget, her hands folded together, back straight; revealing her distress at the murder of her friend only by a certain rigidity in her shoulders and face.

  ‘Would she have talked about it more to your husband, perhaps? I understand he dropped in on her at her flat sometimes.’

  Mrs Prentiss eyed her tautly. ‘Why shouldn’t he? It was a three-way friendship. There wasn’t anything underhand going on. Josh and Phoebe were friends in just the same way that Phoebe and I were.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting anything,’ Swilley said blandly, ‘but it’s interesting that you jumped to that conclusion.’

  Mrs Prentiss flushed. ‘It isn’t the first time suggestions have been made. We live in a tabloid world.’

  Swilley gave a faint shrug. ‘At any rate, your husband was probably the last person to see her alive. He visited her yesterday evening.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ Mrs Prentiss asked sharply.

  ‘We have a witness,’ was all Swilley would give her.

  ‘Well, your witness is wrong,’ Mrs Prentiss said firmly. ‘Josh was here all yesterday evening.’

  ‘Then how do you account for his car being parked in her street?’

  She didn’t even break stride. ‘It wasn’t there yesterday, I can assure you. Your witness must have seen another Jaguar. They’re not exactly rare.’

  ‘You’re quite sure your husband was here all evening?’

  ‘All evening and all day as well. He was working from home yesterday. He never left the house at all. Surely’, she said, her eyes widening, ‘you can’t be trying to sugges
t that Josh had anything to do with it? That would be ludicrous. He loved Phoebe as much as I did. Please don’t say anything like that to him: it would break his heart.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ Swilley said calmly. ‘A witness said he was at the flat yesterday and we have to check that statement. You must understand that. There’s no need for you to get upset.’

  ‘My best friend is murdered, and there’s no need for me to get upset?’ Mrs Prentiss cried hotly. ‘I suppose it’s all in a day’s work to you, but you can’t expect the rest of us to be so completely callous. And then to accuse my husband of being the killer!’ Her voice shook.

  ‘Mrs Prentiss, if he visited her, she might have said something to him that would help us, that’s all we were wondering. Nobody’s accusing anybody of anything.’

  ‘Well, if that’s what you want to know, why don’t you ask him?’

  ‘Oh, we will,’ said Swilley.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mallard imaginaire

  The bitter cold didn’t last long. By next day a normal English winter had reasserted itself: mild, overcast, with a fine prickling drizzle from a blank and whitish-grey sky.

  Hollis, updating the whiteboard, said, ‘You’ve chosen a right funny time o’ year to get married, Norma. You’ll want to get the plastic wedding dress and white wellies out.’ He was the other detective sergeant on Slider’s firm, an odd-looking man with bulging green eyes, a ragged moustache, and a strange, countertenor voice with a Mancunian accent. His oddities made him a successful interviewer: people were so mesmerised by his face and voice, he got things out of them without their noticing.

  Norma shrugged. ‘Least of my problems. I’m just hoping this murder doesn’t turn out to be a sticker. I’ve got enough on my plate without that.’

  ‘Lots of nice overtime to pay for all the booze we’re going to drink at the reception,’ Mackay pointed out.

  ‘If you think any of you lot are getting invited you’ve got a screw loose,’ Norma said brutally.

  ‘If you think we’ll get paid for the overtime, ditto ditto,’ Hollis added.

  There was a brief and electric silence. Budgetary restraints had curtailed quite a few investigations recently, and much unpaid overtime had been worked, not without grumbling.

  Atherton, a folded-open newspaper in his hands, looked up. ‘Don’t say that, Colin. Please don’t say that. I dropped a packet yesterday on Maurice’s three-legged pony. Shy Smile!’ he said witheringly, with a glare at McLaren.

  McLaren shrugged, his mouth full of pastry. ‘I never said she’d win,’ he bubbled flakily. ‘I said she’d walk it.’

  ‘So she did, while the other horses ran gaily past her,’ Atherton said bitterly. ‘I’ve got to recoup my losses. Anybody got any tips for Lingfield Park?’

  ‘Never mind the bloody racing,’ Mackay said impatiently. ‘What about this overtime thing? I can’t afford to work for nothing. I haven’t paid for Christmas yet.’

  ‘And I’ve spent a packet on timber,’ said Anderson, the DIY fanatic. ‘Ever since I gave the wife a nice bit of tongue-and-groove in the kitchen, she wants it all over the house.’

  ‘Must we discuss your sex life first thing in the morning?’ Swilley complained.

  ‘Overtime or not,’ Hollis said, ‘if we don’t clear Agnew up in short order, the press’ll string us up by the goolies. It’s in all the broadsheets today. She wasn’t just one of theirs, remember, she was anti-us, so they’ll be watching us.’

  ‘Talk about feeding the hand that bites you,’ said Atherton.

  ‘We shouldn’t have to investigate it at all,’ McLaren said resentfully. ‘She spent her life slinging mud at us and chumming it up with the slags we put away – serves the cow right if one of ’em turns round and offs her. Why should we care? Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.’

  Norma made fierce shushing gestures at him. Porson had come in, with Slider behind him, and was standing just inside the door, his vast eyebrows drawn down in a frown like hairy venetian blinds. ‘Irregardless of who she was,’ he announced into the sudden silence, ‘I expect my officers to give of their best at all times. Whether the victim is male or female, black, white or tangerine, straight or as crooked as a bottle opener, it’s irrevelant to me. In my department everyone goes Club Class. Do I make myself crystal?’

  There was a dutiful murmur of agreement, which evidently only went skin deep with some of them. Hollis asked a question that was on everyone’s mind.

  ‘Sir, are we going to take this case all the way, or is it going up to AMIP?’

  Porson didn’t seem to want to be cornered. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of Peter Judson of AMIP to get that very point straightened into, but he’s been proving a bit illusory so far. However, the ball is certainly on our plate for the time being.’

  The troops stirred Hollis like a gentle breeze in a wheatfield. ‘Only, I can see a scenario, sir, where we do all the work, and then AMIP jump in at the end and claim the credit.’

  Porson frowned. ‘Yes, well, I don’t want to get bogged down on hypotheoretical points—’

  ‘But sir—!’

  ‘Now, you know me, lads,’ Porson said firmly, lifting his hands. ‘I don’t mince my punches. I promise you, Mr Judson will get short shift from me if he tries to prevassilate over this one. In the mean time,’ he looked round from under threatening eyebrows, ‘let’s just get on with the job we’re paid to do. It’s in the papers this morning, so we’ll all be under the telescope from now on.’

  ‘Sir, what about overtime?’ said Mackay, his credit card statement writ large all over his face.

  The eyebrows went up and down a bit, and then Porson said, ‘I shall do everything I can on the renumeration front, I promise you that. But we’ve got a result to get, and I don’t want superfluous attitudes undermining our professional reputation. When push comes to the bottom line, the Job is about service. I think you all know what I’m talking about.’

  It made a good exit line, but it left a roomful of muttering complaint. They all knew what he was talking about. He was talking about unpaid overtime again.

  ‘It’s like everything in this bloody Job,’ Mackay grumbled. ‘All the money goes on show, so there’s nothing left for getting on with the bloody job.’

  Even Hollis, usually silent and loyal, joined in. ‘Queen Anne front and a Mary Ann back. We haven’t even got enough wheels.’

  The troops were slumped in various dispirited attitudes around the room, like marionettes waiting for Slider to pull their strings. ‘Right, boys and girls,’ he said briskly, ‘let’s get on with it. In the case of Phoebe Agnew—’

  ‘Slagnew,’ McLaren corrected bitterly.

  Slider paused. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know you’re sore about some of the things this woman wrote in life—’

  ‘Like, all of them,’ Anderson agreed.

  ‘But she’s dead now, and it’s our job to find out who did it. So I’ll say it again slowly for the hard of thinking: it doesn’t matter who she was or what she did, the law is the law for everybody. Anyone who thinks differently can come and see me afterwards with his P45 in his hot little hand and we’ll have a chat about it. Savvy?’

  There was an unwilling mutter of agreement.

  ‘Right,’ Slider said. ‘Let’s go. Phoebe Agnew was forty-nine, unmarried, lived alone in a rented flat—’

  ‘Why?’ Atherton said. ‘She must have been making plenty.’

  ‘Not everyone wants to own property,’ Norma argued. ‘And we’ve been told several times that she had a mind above material comforts.’

  ‘I’d like to know, though,’ Hollis put in, ‘what she did spend her money on. If she didn’t have a fancy pad or a lot o’ Nicole Farhi suits, it begs the question. I’d like to see a fat savings book.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t?’ said Mackay.

  ‘Okay,’ Slider said, ‘that’s one thing to look for amongst her papers. But it’s probably not important. Robbery from the person or the premi
ses does not seem to have been the motive. She had a visitor, on the evidence of both neighbours – Lorraine Peabody and Peter Medmenham. Medmenham saw Josh Prentiss’s car parked nearby at about eight p.m., and Prentiss admits he was there between eight and eight-twenty or thereabouts, but denies having been there earlier.’

  ‘Neither witness actually saw a visitor earlier,’ Hollis pointed out. ‘Peabody heard music and the street door banging at around seven, and Medmenham says Agnew said the visitor was there at six forty-five and wouldn’t let him in; but she might’ve not wanted Medmenham in the flat for some other reason.’

  ‘True,’ Slider allowed. ‘But as against that there’s the meal. Could Prentiss have eaten a two-course dinner in half an hour?’

  ‘Why not?’ said McLaren.

  ‘Not everyone’s in your class, Maurice,’ Swilley said kindly.

  ‘I don’t see the problem,’ Anderson said. ‘Prentiss admits he was there at eight, and we haven’t got an exact time for the murder, so what does it matter whether he was there earlier or not?’

  ‘What matters,’ Slider said, ‘is finding out what happened. Prentiss lied to us at first about having been there at all. Then he admitted he was there, but only for twenty minutes. He denies having had sex with her—’

  ‘But sex with her was had,’ Atherton completed for him.

  ‘And as an added complication, we’ve got two different versions of where he was on Thursday. He says he was at home until around seven forty-five, at the Agnew flat eight to eight-twenty, and at a meeting with Giles Freeman in Westminster from nine until after midnight. But his wife says he didn’t leave home at all that day.’

  ‘We know his wife was lying about some o’ that, because we know he was at the flat,’ Hollis said.

  ‘Also,’ said Swilley, ‘she said Prentiss told her about the murder yesterday morning—’

  ‘Whereas he put on a good show of not knowing about it when we interviewed him yesterday afternoon,’ Atherton finished.

  ‘Well, there’s no mystery about why he’d lie,’ Hollis said, ‘but why would she? To protect him?’