Wilding, but admired him on the side. On the one hand said he was too strict with Zellah and maybe that was what led her into trouble—’
‘Trouble as in . . .?’
‘Oh, getting murdered – and on the other hand said she wished she could be strict like that with
‘You did well, getting all that out of her,’ Slider said.
‘It wasn’t hard,’ said Connolly. ‘She wanted to talk.’
That wasn’t what Slider had meant: people can talk all they like but the listener had to be hearing them. He was liking Connolly more all the time. ‘What did she think about Mrs Wilding?’
‘Didn’t like her. Too much of a chav for her taste.’
So that was where Chloe got the idea of ‘chavvy blood’, Slider thought.
‘She hinted,’ Connolly went on, ‘that Mrs Wilding was her husband’s secretary once, and they’d had an affair, and Mr Wilding left his first wife for her. Seemed to think that was a bit beyond the pale. What bothered her was not so much the affair, but the secretary thing.’
‘Too much of a cliche?’
‘Yes, sir, something like that. It made Mrs Wilding too common to mix with the likes of the Paulsons and Cooper-Hutchinsons. I thought it was interesting,’ she added, ‘that she didn’t seem to think Mr Wilding was tainted with the same brush.’
‘I can clear that up for you,’ Slider said, wincing at the mixed metaphor but letting it pass. Nobody was perfect, after all. ‘Chloe revealed to me Mrs Wilding’s cardinal sin, and the source of her chavviness.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Apparently, she’s fat.’
Connolly whistled. ‘Janey, dice loaded against her, or what?’
SEVEN
Fair Words Never Won Fat Lady
The fair was not open until the afternoon, but as it was school holidays, there were quite a few kids hanging around already. The coffee stall was open, and the hamburger-and-hotdog stand had fired up for the vital dispensing of hot grease. The air was redolent with the particular mixture of diesel, burned fat, rancid onions, trampled grass and sawdust that was a quintessential part of childhood dreams. It was Paradise – if you could stand it.
Some of the fair people were engaged on routine maintenance of the rides, others on cleaning and household chores, though some caravans still had their curtains drawn, indicating a lie-in after the late night. The side panels were off the merry-go-round, and a knot of fascinated juvenile idlers was gathered round two pairs of oily overalled legs sticking out from under it. The horses, frozen in mid-leap, flared their crimson nostrils in their eagerness to get galloping again; the cockerels strode out on their strong, ridged legs like Road Runner.
‘Yeah, what is it wiv them cockerels?’ Hart asked in wounded tones. ‘I never got that. What’s the connection?’
‘It’s one of those sweet, insoluble mysteries of childhood,’ Atherton told her. ‘Don’t breathe on the magic.’ A man was tinkering with the pipe organ, and it sounded an asthmatic note or two, mournful and joyous as a steam locomotive. ‘This must be one of the few go-rounds that still has a proper organ, not just recorded music,’ he said, betraying his enthusiasm.
Hart looked at him with fake fondness. ‘You big kid. You love all this. For two pins you’d be begging ’em for a ride.’
‘My good woman, it costs a lot more than two pins these days. Come on, stop gawping. We’ve got a job to do.’
The fair people were already doing a good job of ignoring the hangers-about, and somehow managed to ignore Atherton and Hart even more intensely because they were police, narrowing eyes that were already narrowed and turning away faces that were already averted, like cats punishing an errant owner. Sometimes their questions were answered by a grunt, more often by complete silence. When words were forthcoming, it was, ‘Don’t know nothing about that.’ They were armed with photos of Zellah and of Mike Carmichael but could hardly get anyone to glance at them, let alone recognize the faces.
The first proper response they got was at a snack stall, presently closed up, where a stocky man in shirt- sleeves and braces was around the back, spanner in hand, connecting up a new Calor gas canister. He had a cigarette clamped in his mouth, a cap clamped down over his head, and two days of white stubble sprouting from the whole lower half of his face. He stopped and straightened when they addressed him, though it seemed more to stretch his back than for their benefit.
But then he rolled the fag to the other side of his mouth, glared at them through narrowed eyes, and said, ‘Why don’t you piss off, copper?’
It was the friendliest thing anyone had said to them. Atherton felt pleased and encouraged. ‘Just look at this picture and tell me if you saw her here,’ he said beguilingly.
The man grew angry. ‘Is that the girl that got murdered? Why d’you come asking
‘Take it easy, mate,’ Hart said, letting her accent slip a little further towards the of-the-people end of the spectrum. ‘We don’t fink you had anyfing to do wiv it. Course we don’t. We’re just trying to work out where she was Sundy night. We fink she might’ve been here, thass all. It ain’t no grief for you. Did you see her? Have a look at the picture, go on.’
He squinted unwillingly sideways at it, and then, as Hart urged it at him with little pushes, took it, looked once properly, and then thrust it back at her as if unwilling to be caught holding it.
‘Might have been here. Lotter people here Sundy night.’
Hart glanced at Atherton. In these-people speak, that was a yes. ‘We reckon she might’ve been here wiv her boyfriend. This is him.’ She held out Carmichael’s picture. He didn’t touch that one. He removed the cigarette from his mouth and spat out a shred of tobacco on to the grass. ‘That who you reckon done it?’
‘Yeah,’ Hart said, and Atherton let her. If it took the heat off . . .
‘I seen her. She was wiv a bloke. Coulda been him. Never saw him proper.’
‘Thanks. That’s great. What was he wearing, d’you remember?’
He shrugged, and turned back to his barrels. He muttered something, and Hart bent forward, ‘Say again?’
‘Rifle range,’ he mumbled. Then he turned back sharply and glared at them. ‘Sod off. I got work to do.’
The man at the rifle range was just taking the covers off, in between stretching, yawning, scratching himself, and trying to light a roll-up that would not catch. He was younger than snack-stall man, lighter skinned, with greasy mouse-brown hair and a puggy, cockney face. ‘Cor, you ain’t ’arf stirred up a few people,’ he said as they approached. He was not exactly friendly, but did not seem to be suffering from the same congenital hostility as the others. ‘They don’t like your sort round here.’
‘We noticed,’ Atherton said.
The man shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t care. I ain’t one of them. Pikey bastards! They keep themselves to themselves. I’m a gayjo to them, even though my dad was in fairs forty years, and I’ve had the stall twenty. You can’t ever be one of them unless you’re born in one of the families. Fuckin’ gyppos. Well, they can keep it. I don’t care. I’m as good as they are. I make me money and stay out of it. You looking for that girl that was killed?’
‘That’s right. This is her. Did you see her?’
‘She was here all right. Pretty girl. Couldn’t miss her. Having a great time, she was. Screamed her head off on the waltzer and the atomic rocket. Having too much of a good time, if you get my drift.’
‘Showing off? Drunk?’
‘Both, I reckon. She was with this bloke. He was showing off as well. Took her on the dodgems, show her what a great driver he was. Banging into everything. Danny on the dodgems had to warn him. Had a couple of goes on my range. Not a bad shot,’ he conceded with professional grudgingness. ‘I let him win a teddy bear for her. Do
