‘Which is?’ Slider asked.
‘I co-own an employment agency – Sturgess and Beale, in Chiswick. We specialize in placing disabled people.’
It was a bit of a conversation-stopper. ‘That must be very – rewarding,’ Slider managed.
‘It is,’ she said, back in control and blanking them out again. ‘Since then, as I say, I have had nothing to do with David, beyond the occasional phone call. I can’t even recall when the last one was. Last year some time. So I don’t know what he’s been getting up to.’
‘Do you know where he’s been working recently?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I have no idea how he supports himself. He could be a taxi driver for all I know.’
‘Has he ever suggested to you that he had money worries?’
‘No. I imagine he does all right, since he’s still living in that house in Shepherd’s Bush. I know that cost quite a bit when he bought it. But he wouldn’t ask me for money anyway. He’d get short shrift if he did! When I think of what he made me give up . . . I loved our life – the parties, the holidays – living in the country – our lovely house. And it’s come to this.’ She looked around her bitterly. ‘A semi-detached in Ealing. That’s all I have to show for all those years.’
What was so bad about that? Slider thought. It was a pretty nice house. He made a non-committal noise.
She looked at him. ‘And now he’s dead. Shot. He shamed me, but I wouldn’t have wanted it to come to that. You’ll find there’s a woman at the bottom of it. Some jealous woman or some angry husband. I suppose he’s gone out in a blaze of glory, in a way. I don’t know if that isn’t an ending he’d have approved of.’
They were interrupted at that moment by the sound of a key in the front door, and her faced snapped back instantly into
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I didn’t know you had visitors.’ His accent, while not as cut-glass as Amanda’s, was quite pure – a surprise, given his clothing, and hands which had seen manual labour in the recent past. He saw Atherton looking at them and put them behind his back.
‘These gentlemen are just leaving,’ Amanda said. There was a pink spot – of annoyance or embarrassment, or both – in her cheek. Slider stood his ground sturdily and smiled enquiringly until she was forced to say, ‘Robin Frith, an old friend of mine. These gentlemen are police officers. It seems David’s had an accident.’
She gave him a glare that would have turned Medusa to stone, and a flick of the head which made him say, ‘Well, I won’t interrupt,’ and absent himself hastily.
Slider could hear him going upstairs; and Amanda’s body language was urging them towards the door.
‘I mustn’t keep you,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I’m not able to tell you anything useful.’
‘Oh, you’ve been very helpful, thank you,’ Slider said, but more to give her something to think about than because it was true.
‘Odd,’ Atherton said when they had left. ‘Don’t you think it was odd?’
‘What, specifically? She’s an unusual woman.’
‘Her attitude to David Rogers, for a start.’
‘In particular?’ said Slider.
‘Well, she’s driven by his womanizing into divorcing him, but she doesn’t make him pay alimony. It shows an unhealthy lack of desire for vengeance.’
‘Unless she’s trying to make it
‘You think she could be guilty?’
‘Anyone could be guilty. I’m sure she’s not telling us everything.’
‘What she said did seem inconsistent,’ Atherton agreed. ‘She complains about her lifestyle but didn’t want his money. She’s confident he’d tell her if he got married, but says she doesn’t know where he’s been working. I think that there was more contact between them than she’s letting on.’
‘Probably. But why hide it?’ Slider said.
‘Because she’s guilty?’
‘I don’t know,’ Slider mused. ‘She obviously still had feelings for him. A mixture of sentiment and bitterness. And she really seemed shocked by his death.’
‘Could be shock that we’d come to her so soon. And you admit the bitterness.’
‘Hmm. But they’ve been divorced for ten years. Wouldn’t she need a more recent motive to want to do away with him?’
‘She seemed to be deliberately distancing herself from him and his money,’ Atherton said. ‘But wouldn’t it be interesting if it turned out he’d left everything to her? That would answer a lot of questions. “He shamed me but I’ve had the last laugh.” Revenge eaten cold and so on.’
‘I wonder what she is living on? This agency of hers? I suppose we’ll have to check if it’s pukka.’
‘It would be a brilliant front if it wasn’t,’ Atherton said. ‘So utterly worthy you’d feel like a complete shit asking questions. And she obviously didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘But equally, if she’s a genuine philanthropist she wouldn’t want to talk about it. That would be blowing her own trumpet.’
‘You always have to see both sides, don’t you? Well, and what about old Mellors coming in? Did she blush! Old friend, indeed – and he went straight upstairs. She’s shacking up with him.’
‘Quite possibly.’
‘It looks as if she has a bit of a thing for horny-handed sons of the soil. OK –’ he forestalled Slider – ‘Rogers was a doctor, but he started out with coal dust in his hair.’
‘Greasely, not Greaseborough,’ Slider said, for the second time of what he was afraid would be many. ‘Different sort of place entirely.’
‘Still, she seems to like sinning below her station.’
‘Did you catch the smell from Frith when he came in?’ Slider pondered.
‘We don’t all have a hooter like yours. What was it?’
‘Horses.’
Atherton didn’t know what to make of that bit of information. They had reached the car. The gritty wind, rollicking unchecked across Ealing Common, slapped a greasy sandwich paper against the side window, just missing his sleeve. He peeled it off with flinching fingertips. The homeward-bound traffic was pouring across the junction into Hanger Lane and backing up, like water pouring into a jar. Dusk had come, and it wasn’t any warmer, and he still didn’t have an overcoat on. He shivered, and his mind turned naturally to crackling fires, old oak beams, naff crimson carpets and the sultry gleam of horse-brasses.
‘Fancy a pint?’ he asked.
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ Slider said, unlocking the door.
FOUR
They Tuck You up, Your Mum and Dad
As Slider was trying to get his key into the lock, the door opened, and his father smiled a welcome at him.
‘Joanna not home yet?’ he divined.
‘She’s on her way,’ Dad said. She had been doing a concert in Norwich, a repeat of the one in Harrogate. ‘She rang from her mobile – said they were stopping in The Red House for a pint.’
Slider nodded. He understood how they had to ‘come down’ from a performance; and also that in a freelance world it was the clubbable people who got the jobs, all other things being equal.
‘She’ll only have the one,’ his father went on. Slider was amused that he should defend her. Or was he reassuring him? In the early days he had worried all the time when she was out on her own in her car. Not that she
