‘I don’t know yet. Were the boot marks oily too?’
‘No, we didn’t find any particular traces connected with them. I suppose he will have walked off anything coming up the stairs and along the corridor. Do you want me to try and trace them back? The carpet outside the flat doesn’t have much pile on it,’ he said doubtfully.
‘Well, you can have a look, but don’t knock yourself out. There’ve been too many people in and out.’
‘OK. Well, good luck. There’s a stack of press people here already. I got in early to avoid them but there’s a lot of media interest in this one.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ said Slider.
In the car on the way to the station, Atherton asked, ‘Why did your father leave the BBC? It seemed such an odd thing to do. I would have thought he was at the top of the tree there.’
‘It seemed odd to me, too,’ she said. ‘Until I took into account the change in the BBC culture. Dad had been there for ever, and he couldn’t stand the new regime. He felt – we both feel – that the news ought to be taken seriously. The Beeb kept dumbing it down until the Six was little more than a magazine programme and the Ten not much better. And he didn’t like the editorial control. He felt a journalist ought to be allowed to tell it the way it seemed to him. Well, of course, being Dad he didn’t keep his feelings to himself. He spoke out a little too frankly for the bosses, made himself unpopular, and was invited to leave.’
‘Sacked?’ Atherton asked.
She made a comical face. ‘Nobody’s sacked from the BBC. But they have ways of punishing you if you don’t go when you’re invited. He was ready to go, anyway. He was fed up with it, and wanted a change. He was at the top of his game and he didn’t think he’d have any difficulty in getting another job. And he didn’t. He started with the DTI the moment his notice at the Beeb ended.’
‘But why there?’
‘Oh, it was one of the government’s periodical recruitment drives of outsiders. Every now and then they have a spasm of thinking they need media savvy types with outside experience. And of course everyone had heard of Dad. The news that he and the Beeb weren’t on speaking terms any more filtered through and they were thrilled with the idea of having someone who knew the organisation from the inside but didn’t like it.’ She gave him a frank look. ‘They’re pretty paranoid about Auntie, you know.’
‘And did he like it there?’
‘He did at first. He said it was interesting seeing government from the inside, and quite exciting to be close to the seat of power. But he never thought much of Sid Andrew, and he got frustrated at the way things were done.’
‘Specifically?’
‘Oh, I don’t know really. He didn’t go into detail with me. I think he just felt too many things were happening behind closed doors. He was never a great one for conspiracy,’ she said with a wry smile.
‘Why did he choose the DTI?’
‘He didn’t – they chose him. He’d had a lot of experience covering industrial relations and disputes before he became a foreign correspondent, so I suppose they thought he’d speak their language. But mostly I think they just wanted to have the kudos of getting Ed Stonax of the BBC on to their books. I think he felt he was pretty under- used.’
She lapsed into silence and as he had to concentrate just then on the traffic there was a silence between them. When he could look again, he saw her staring at her hands, her head bowed. It was not a happy posture.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘do you mind talking about him?’
She roused herself from her reverie. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Talking about him helps me stop thinking about what’s happened. I can’t take it in, except in tiny flashes, and then it hurts too much. I just want to see him and talk to him about it, because he always had the best ideas about everything. Is that stupid? To want to talk to someone about who murdered them?’
‘Who would know better?’ said Atherton.
She screwed up her eyes in pain. ‘I hate that word. Murdered. I can’t take it. Not Dad! Not him!’
He reached across and touched her hand and hers folded quickly round his and hung on, as though for salvation. ‘We’ll be there soon. It’s the next turning. Do you want to go off and do other things? You’ve got a key for the house so you can come and go as you like.’
She squeezed his hand and then drew hers back. ‘I haven’t got anything else to do,’ she said. ‘And I want to help. I want to come in with you.’
‘All right, then,’ Atherton said, turning into Stanlake Road.
Slider looked surprised. ‘What’s come over you?’
‘I think you ought to know the answer to that, seeing you started with Joanna when she was a witness in the Austin case.’
‘And as I remember you thoroughly disapproved.’
‘And you said she wasn’t a material witness, which she wasn’t, only happened to know the deceased. Emily wasn’t even in the country. She’s just the victim’s daughter.’
‘All the same, at a moment when she’s in emotional turmoil—’
‘This is a moral objection, then, not a police procedural one?’ Atherton asked with his head up.
‘It’s not like you,’ Slider said.
‘No, it isn’t. And for the record, she came on to me. And I’ve no intention of letting her down. I’m extremely serious about her.’
Slider surveyed his friend’s face and was baffled. Atherton was a serial womaniser and he was so attractive to the opposite sex he had to fight them off with a plank. But to be bedding a woman when she’d only found out that day that her father had been murdered . . . When Emily Stonax was back in her right mind, she might well bring a complaint, and though Atherton hadn’t broken any specific rule it could be viewed as misconduct. As to including her in the investigation – would it make her more or less likely to want to sue if she saw the way the department operated? On the other hand, she might have useful insights to share. Joanna had been extremely helpful during the Austin case.
‘She can’t sit in on our meetings,’ he said at last. ‘But you can pass things on to her unless I specifically say you can’t. You’ll have to use your judgement about how much you want to tell her.’
‘She wants to help. She wants to be useful.’
‘Well, I expect she will be,’ Slider said.
‘Can’t we give her something to do? She says she’s very good at research. She must be, given her job.’ Slider began shaking his head halfway through this, and Atherton added, ‘I brought in my own laptop, so she wouldn’t have to use one of ours.’
‘If anything comes up that’s suitable, we’ll talk about it then,’ Slider said, standing up. ‘For now, I have a meeting to conduct.’
When everyone was assembled and more or less quiet, Slider began with the summary.
‘In the case of Edward Philip Stonax, BSc, PhD, DBA—’
McLaren looked up from his fried egg sandwich. ‘It’s not spelt like it sounds, then?’
Slider continued, but louder. ‘Ed Stonax was killed yesterday morning by a single blow to the head with something like a cosh. His pockets were emptied and his watch was removed – an expensive Rolex. We believe his wallet, credit cards and mobile phone were also taken.’
‘I’ve asked Mick Hutton to put a trace on the mobile,’ Swilley said.
‘Thanks. OK, so far it looks like simple robbery from the person. However, Bob Bailey found oily fingermarks – gloved – on a filing cabinet in Stonax’s office in the flat, and a file seems to have been removed from it – at least, there’s an empty hanging folder. So there may be another motive. One of the neighbours, Mrs Koontz, saw a motorbike courier leaving the flats at half past seven when she was walking her dog.’
‘Guv,’ said Hart, ‘how did she know he was a courier and not just any old bloke in leathers?’
‘Good question. Mackay?’
Mackay looked at his notes of the interview with Mrs Koontz. ‘She didn’t say he was, she just said he was a man in leathers and a dark helmet. He was carrying a large envelope, and he got on to a motorbike which had a white box on the back, and put the envelope in it. The box had a logo on it. So I assumed from that he was a courier of some sort.’
