Fell Purpose

case.’

‘I can’t help feeling there’s something I’ve missed,’ Slider confessed

‘That’s just normal paranoia,’ Hart said comfortingly. ‘Everyone on the planet gets that. Don’t worry, some ’orrible snag will come up and blow the case to bits and you’ll have to put it back togevver against the clock with the big brass breathing down your neck, and everything will seem nice and normal again.’

‘Thanks, I feel better now,’ said Slider. ‘I’m going back to the factory.’

His room looked like a public place within the meaning of the act. There were so many people in it he couldn’t get through the door, and when enough of them spotted him and melted away to give him access, he found Joanna in there, with young George Slider sitting on the edge of his father’s desk holding court. With a rusk in one hand and a pencil in the other, he was waving his arms swoopingly at his fans, like Solti conducting Debussy, except that Solti, though equally bald, had never smiled so seraphically at an orchestra.

Joanna looked guilty. ‘Sorry. Is this a completely inappropriate time? I just picked him up from the baby- minder after rehearsal. I was on my way home when I thought that, as you’ll be late again this evening, you’d like to see him awake for once, so I popped in. But I can pop out again just as quickly.’

George had spotted his father now and was beaming in delight, showing his new top incisors, which he was growing to match the two at the bottom. ‘Mumurummum,’ he said.

‘I didn’t realize it was that late,’ Slider said.

‘It isn’t. We finished early. I think the conductor had somewhere more exciting to go.’

Slider picked up the baby, who signalled his approval by pushing the damp end of the rusk into his father’s ear and saying, ‘Blum mum num.’

‘I’m glad you came,’ Slider said. ‘But I can’t spare you long. We’ve just brought someone in and he’ll need questioning.’

‘I know, don’t worry. I should go home, anyway. There’s a mountain of ironing I’ve been putting off. I can get some of it done while he’s having his nap.’

‘I wish I could take you out to lunch,’ Slider said wistfully, ‘but . . .’

‘We’ll catch up when all this is over. I just wanted my boy to know he still has a father.’ She smiled as she said it to show she was not complaining.

‘I slept with him last night. What more does he want?’ He grinned at his son, who tried to grab his nose, so the pencil in his hand came dangerously close to Slider’s eye. He removed it gently. ‘I’m glad you brought him.’ It helped to keep a person grounded. He made that noise with his lips that all babies find irresistibly funny, and George responded by demonstrating his award-winning chuckle. ‘If we could bottle that, we could sell it for a fortune,’ Slider remarked, making him do it again.

‘By the way – I meant to ask you – did you speak to your father?’

‘Yes. He rang me here yesterday morning.’ Good Lord, was it only yesterday? ‘He’s talking about selling the house.’

‘Yes, he said something about it when I was over there on Monday.’ She hesitated. ‘Reading between the lines, I think he’d like to move nearer to us.’

Slider sighed. ‘I wish he could, but London prices being what they are . . .’

‘I know.’

‘I worry about him.’

‘I know. But he can look after himself. He’s a big boy. And talking of big boys . . .’ Through the windows on to the CID room, she had seen that Atherton had come purposefully in and was heading towards the communicating door. ‘Let me have him. I’ll get out of your hair.’ She took the baby back, shouldered her bag, and pecked her husband on the cheek in passing. ‘I’ll leave something out for you to heat up, in case you’re hungry when you get home.’

‘Have a good concert. Drive carefully,’ Slider said.

She departed through the door to the corridor, George watching his father over her shoulder with a slightly disconcerted air, and reaching out for him in farewell with the damp rusk. ‘Bloo,’ he said.

Atherton came in at the other door, unaware that his big entrance had been upstaged by one of the world’s great exits, and said, ‘Wilding’s flitted. That’s one for my side!’

‘It’s not exactly flitting, is it?’ Slider said, perched on Atherton’s desk for a change. ‘They were under siege from the media, angry and distressed. When I saw him on Wednesday he complained they were prisoners in their own home. They’d probably just had enough.’

‘It’d drive anyone mental,’ said Connolly.

‘Ah, but wait till I tell you what the neighbours had to say,’ said Atherton, and gave him a summary of the Barretts’ evidence. ‘Now, leaving aside all prejudice for bad neighbourly relations, Wilding was out in his car on the night Zellah died, and didn’t tell us. When I interviewed him he said he was working in his shed all evening until quite late and then went to bed.’

‘Yes,’ said Slider. ‘That is a point. And if it’s true that he often slipped out without his wife’s knowing . . .’

‘It puts things in a different perspective.’

‘Yeah. Wandering about at night—’ Mackay began.

‘Driving,’ Connolly corrected him.

‘I was gonna say,’ he went on, giving her a look, ‘he’s probably down Paddington picking up tarts. He’s a kerb-crawler.’

‘Why does it have to be something to do with sex?’ she objected.

‘It always is,’ said Mackay with some justification. ‘I mean, what else would he bother to hide from his wife? He’s got some sex-habit he needs catered for.’

‘S and M, most likely,’ Fathom agreed. ‘He looks the type. He’s out nights finding a Miss Whiplash to give him correction.’

‘He’s a pillar of society,’ Connolly said.

‘They’re the worst,’ said Mackay confidently. ‘All pious and holy when anyone’s looking, then creeping out at night murdering prostitutes. Look at Reg Christie.’

‘We’re not talking about murdered prostitutes,’ Slider reminded him. ‘However, in fairness to the “here comes a churchgoer, let’s chuck a brick at him” brigade I seem to be fostering in my midst, it does make you wonder whether his repression of his daughter was ever taken any further.’

‘I wondered about that,’ Atherton said. ‘I asked the neighbours if he ever knocked his wife and daughter about, but they only said they’d heard him shouting at them. And if I was married to Mrs Wilding I’d probably shout. But they obviously don’t know what went on inside the house.’

‘And neither, I suppose, will anyone,’ Slider said. ‘That’s the problem with a family that never lets anyone else in. He could have been abusing her, but if he was, I’d imagine it was only the psychological sort of abuse.’

‘Only?’ Atherton queried, with a pained air.

‘You know what I mean. Physically abused children tend to be too quiet and don’t do well at school. They’re not described as live wires by their friends. They don’t go to ballet classes and extra-curricular drawing and shine at lessons.’

‘But then,’ Mackay said, ‘what was Wilding doing out in his car on the night Zellah was murdered, and why didn’t he tell us about it?’

‘Following her,’ Atherton said. ‘That’s my bet. If the old bat next door is right, he left not long after her. He was following her to see what she got up to when she was out of his sight. And I would be surprised if he hadn’t done it before.’

Slider nodded unwillingly. ‘It is suggestive. He obviously liked to keep a high level of control over her. And Mrs Wilding said he was very against her staying over at a friend’s house. Perhaps he wanted to make sure that was where she was going to sleep.’

‘Suspicious brute,’ Atherton said.

‘The question is, how long did he follow her, how much did he witness, and what, if anything, did he do about it?’

‘Say he followed her to the Black Lion an’ saw her go off with Mike Carmichael, when he’d forbidden her to see him again,’ Connolly said.