Fell Purpose

was back.’

‘Well, we can’t deny it now,’ Porson said. ‘And the vultures’ll have a field day with this. It’ll be all over the evening papers. “Acton Strangler strikes again.” I’ve had to ask for more uniform to guard that old bat as well. Why couldn’t you take him quietly? What’d you have to send a squad car for?’

‘Ronnie likes riding in them. He likes the lights. It was a way to get him in without a fuss.’

‘It was a way to alert the world and his wife that we were there!’ Porson stared at the screen in disgust for a long moment, and then straightened his shoulders. ‘Well, we might as well get all the queue-doughs we can out of getting a quick result. There’s no other pleasure catching a nasty little Herbert like him. He’s a sausage roll short of a picnic, that one, and the press are going to go to town on why he was wandering the streets in the first place.’

‘It wasn’t our fault he was let out,’ Slider pointed out.

‘Maybe not, but the public thinks we ought to be watching all these nonces all the time. It’ll be our fault he was let to kill again.’

‘He’s never killed before.’

‘Are you just going to stand there correcting me? Go and put a case together. He was seen in the area, he does it with tights, and you’ve got the handbag. What more do you need?’

The old man was unusually irritable, Slider thought as he escaped – but he took little pleasure in catching a brainless, hopeless, useless little git like Ronnie either.

He went the short way to his room through the CID room, entering in time to hear McLaren say to Connolly, ‘Here, Rita, here’s a good one – what do you call that useless piece of flesh at the end of a penis? Ronnie Oates.’

Connolly didn’t react. She was on the telephone, and looked up as Slider appeared and said, ‘He’s just come in. Sir, it’s Sergeant Atherton for you.’

‘I’ll take it in my room. McLaren, get me a cup of tea, will you?’

‘Anything with it? They got bread pudden up there today.’

Slider’s stomach groaned. It was a long time since the sausage sandwich. ‘All right, I’ll take a slab. Thanks.’ He looked at Connolly. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Going through the canvasses again, for anything that could be Oates, sir.’

‘Good. Find out who the Oateses’ neighbours are. They’ll have to be interviewed, in case they saw him go out or come in. One of them filmed him being arrested, so we can assume an interest.’

‘Right, sir.’

Atherton sounded elated. ‘Well, we found it, and it wasn’t easy. When Chloe Paulson said Ladbroke Grove, obviously she was talking generically about the area, not the road itself. There was one likely shop on Ladbroke Grove, right opposite the station, but the flat above it was untenanted. We asked the proprietor about other similar shops nearby, and she said there was one in Portobello Road, so we went down there. In fact there were three operating in the general area of retailing mystic crap to mugs, but it wasn’t any of them. Finally we found it on the KPR near the junction of Talbot Road. Man in the shop recognised the photo, and the second-floor tenant confirmed the bloke in the flat below was called Mike, and nodded to the photo as well. But there was no answer from his door – of course.’

‘Where are you now?’

‘Outside. I came out to ring you. We saw on the pub television that you’ve arrested Ronnie Oates.’

‘What were you doing in the pub?’

‘Relax. We went into the Castle to ask about more tarot-type shops, and they had the telly on.’

‘Is that all you went in for?’

‘And for Fathom to use the loo. You are suspicious. Anyway, the point is, do you still want to tug Mike Carmichael now you’ve got Oates? Lawrence said you’d found Zellah’s bag in his room, so it looks pretty conclusive.’

Slider had been thinking about this ever since Hollis rang in. ‘Yes, I think so. He was with her all the last evening and they had a row. We’ve got to construct as full a case as possible. And if Ronnie was at the fair, he might have seen him hanging around watching her. Also,’ he added, ‘he ran away, and he’s given us a lot of trouble to find him.’

‘We haven’t found him yet – only his drum.’

‘Exactly. I want to inconvenience him at the very least.’

‘Attaboy! Take him in, keep him hanging around, harass him and put the wind up him for dealing.’

‘You’ve got to catch him first. Start Fathom and Mackay on obbo. You can come back here and organise the rota.’

‘Are you off out again?’

‘In a while. I’m going to call on Mr Wilding.’

‘You’re still going to do that? Even though you’ve got Oates?’

‘I’m being thorough,’ Slider said.

‘I know you,’ Atherton said. ‘You just want to poke about in Zellah’s room.’

‘That’s being thorough.’

‘No, that’s being weird.’

‘Thank you. I’ll remember that come annual assessment time.’

Slider had forgotten about the media circus he had been warned was gathered around the Wildings’ door. It was probably much less than it had been – a lot of them would have beetled off to the Oateses’ when that news broke – but there were enough who would hang on like grim death in the hope of a ‘personal touch’ interview, a good photograph of a grief-stricken face at a window, or the now traditional tearful parents’ appeal to anyone who knew anything to come forward. It was part of the loathesome apparatus of a murder investigation, the way the media would demand, on behalf of ‘their’ public, that certain things would be done, and be done the way they had made sure was expected.

His arrival caused a stir among the waiting hounds. Cameras were raised, pencils flexed, questions shouted. He rarely now had to make statements to the press – it was usually done in the media suite in Hammersmith by a team trained for the job – but of course they all knew who he was. It was their business to.

‘Have you made a breakthrough?’

‘Any comments on the arrest?’

‘Is Ronnie your man?’

‘Have you come to tell the Wildings about it?’

He passed through them without comment and without meeting any eyes, and they didn’t make too much of a fuss, because he was known for being tight-lipped and they were resigned to getting nothing out of him. They crowded forward instead to see if they could get a good grief-shot when the door was opened. But the constable on the door – it was D’Arblay – rang the bell for him, the door was opened a crack, and he sidled through without seeing who was on the other side.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Wilding, without noticeable enthusiasm. ‘Can’t you do anything about them?’ he demanded at once, with a gesture towards the front gate.

‘We’re doing all we can,’ Slider said. ‘We’re keeping them to the pavement outside.’

‘We’re prisoners in our own house,’ Wilding said angrily. ‘We can’t go out. We can’t even look out of the window. There was a man on next-door’s roof yesterday, photographing the garden. I went out to dig some potatoes and I had to come back in again without them. He started shouting questions. Do you want us to starve to death? My wife can’t go out to buy food – we’re living on what’s in the freezer. Why can’t you make them go away?’

‘I’m afraid we don’t have the power to,’ Slider said. ‘It’s a free country and we have a free press. We can keep them off your premises, but the road outside is a public right of way.’

‘Free country! What freedom do we have? We’re supposed to be the victims here, but it’s us who are being punished, hounded by those brutes, locked up here day and night. The only freedom is for murderers, let out of prison so they can go on murdering other people’s children!’

So they had heard about Oates. He supposed they were bound to be watching television, confined to the house as they were.

‘This man, Oates,’ Wilding went on. ‘Why was he let out to kill again?’