Body Line

of them at home it can’t be disproved. Bummer. When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies.’

‘Eh?’

‘Shakespeare.’

‘The bummer, or the last bit?’

‘Both. That business about the phone calls—’

‘Doesn’t hold water. That last phone call wasn’t just chit-chat. I’d like to get hold of her phone records, see if she rang him as well, during that period. Something was going on; and he ended up dead. If she didn’t arrange it, she knows more about it than she’s telling us.’

‘But getting it out of her will be the trick,’ said Atherton. They paused at the kerb. ‘What now?’

‘Back to the factory. I still want to find out what happened with Rogers and the female patient.’

‘Isn’t that old history?’

‘Maybe. But I have a feeling it may be important.’

‘Oh, I’ll go with your feelings any day,’ Atherton said easily. ‘If you could bottle them, you wouldn’t need to train detectives, just inject them. But before we leave – there’s a superlative sandwich shop just round the corner, and it is getting on for lunchtime. Shall we stock up?’

‘When you say superlative,’ Slider said suspiciously, ‘you aren’t talking grilled tofu on sun-dried tomato focaccia and with beetroot and courgette coleslaw, are you?’

EIGHT

Beauty in a Mist of Tears

Atherton’s reply was lost because behind Slider’s head he had seen the red door open again, and the pale young woman come out. He nudged his boss and Slider turned to see her pause, look round, spot them, hesitate, and come towards them.

‘Hello. Did you want to speak to us?’ Slider said kindly.

‘It was my lunch break anyway, but I thought I might catch you,’ she said, with a frowning, uneasy peep upwards at them – she was small as well as thin, almost a childlike figure. ‘I don’t know if I should – if it’s important . . .’

‘Anything you can tell us could be important,’ Slider said. ‘Is it about your boss?’

‘Sort of. Well, it’s David. I’ve been seeing him.’

Slider suddenly realized the signs of a heavy cold were in fact signs of weeping. ‘Then I definitely think you should talk to us,’ he said.

She glanced upwards at the window of the office. ‘Not here,’ she said. ‘Amanda might look out and see us. Can we – I mean, it is my lunchtime . . .’

‘Of course. Where would you like to go?’ Slider said.

‘There’s a place along there – Eddie’s – they do sandwiches and things,’ she said.

Eddie’s proved to be a wholly unreconstructed sandwich bar, with a few chrome-and-formica tables in the back of the sort that come screwed to the floor and all-in-one with their chairs. But the coffee smelled good, and the sandwiches were made to order from basic ingredients of the old-fashioned sort: ham, cheese, corned beef, liver sausage, lettuce, tomato, cucumber etc. And the coleslaw was made of cabbage.

‘This is not the place I was talking about,’ Atherton whispered as they went in.

‘Oddly enough, I guessed that,’ Slider murmured back.

The young woman, whose name was Angela Fraser, only picked listlessly at her food, and seemed likely at any moment to start leaking at the eyes again. Slider addressed his sandwich – he’d gone for the liver sausage, mostly to annoy Atherton, who thought it was the Devil’s Truncheon – and got her started.

‘So you knew David Rogers?’ he offered.

She nodded. ‘We’d been going out for a while.’

‘Going out as in . . .?’

She cast her eyes down, and colour came into her cheeks for the first time. ‘We were lovers,’ she managed at last. It was a curiously modest phraseology, for a female who looked to be in her early thirties. ‘We saw each other every week, on a Monday or Tuesday, and sometimes Saturdays. Unless there was some work reason why he couldn’t. Which there often was,’ she admitted, sighing.

‘What was his work?’ Slider slipped in.

She looked surprised. ‘He was a doctor,’ she said in an explaining-the-bleedin’-obvious tone. ‘A consultant,’ she bettered it.

‘At a hospital?’

‘I suppose so. He never talked about his work,’ she said. ‘He told me he was a consultant, that was all. Well, I sort of knew that anyway, because Amanda had said so. But he never said anything else about it.’

‘So you don’t know what field he was in?’ Atherton asked. She shook her head. ‘Or what hospital?’

‘No. I told you, we didn’t discuss it. We had other things to talk about.’ She smiled faintly. ‘He was great company. And he was interested in things I was interested in, too. I mean, we talked about films and clothes and decorating and food and everything. Not just football and cars, like most of the men I’ve dated. He’d always notice my hair and make-up and things. He didn’t think it was weak to know about stuff like that.’

‘He was a metrosexual,’ Atherton suggested.

She nodded, her eyes filling. ‘He was great. He bought me a Dolce and Gabbana handbag. I can’t tell you what it cost.’

‘It’s nice when a man is generous,’ Slider said warmly. ‘I suppose he was well off?’

‘I suppose he must have been.’ She looked dreamy, remembering. ‘It was always the best, wherever we went – best seats, best restaurants, taxis everywhere, champagne. He always had loads of cash on him. He paid for everything cash – even the handbag.’ Her expression sharpened suddenly. ‘You’re not thinking I went out with him for his money?’

‘Of course not,’ Slider said soothingly.

‘Because it wasn’t that at all,’ she informed him sternly. ‘He was a lovely man, sensitive and kind. He was a great listener. He always wanted to know what was on my mind, not just rushing me into bed like other men. That’s what I loved him for.’

It was a good ploy, Atherton thought. If you can listen to a woman with an appearance of interest, no matter what bollocks she’s talking, for long enough, she’s yours. The old Dirty Doctor had doubtless developed his skills over a long period.

‘So how long had you been going out?’ he asked.

‘Fourteen months,’ she said, with a hint of pride. ‘We’d started talking about taking our relationship to the next level.’

‘I thought you were already lovers,’ Atherton queried.

She frowned. ‘I don’t mean that. I mean moving in together. I’ve got this flat in South Acton, and he had this house in Shepherd’s Bush. I never saw it – we always used my place. He said he’d never liked his house and only bought it because he had to have somewhere to lay his head, and it was a good investment. But he kept saying he wanted to see more of me, though with his work commitments he couldn’t manage more than twice a week, sometimes not even that, so I said maybe we should look at both selling and getting a place together, and that’s where we were at when – when . . .’ Definite filling of the eyes. Slider pulled a couple of paper napkins out of the dispenser on the table and pressed them into her hands. ‘I can’t believe he’s gone,’ she cried into her hands. ‘I’ll never see him again. And we were – we were – so in love!’

Slider exchanged a glance with Atherton while she was busy and read his cynical amusement. No doubt this poor deluded female had been due for the big drop, having brought up with Rogers the unmentionable subject of commitment, but the pain was no less real for her. Twice a week – at her flat – for Angela; twice a week – after stripping, and at his place – for Cat. How many others? How easy women made it these days, when sex was simply expected at the end of a date – particularly when they had hit the thirty barrier and were afraid of being left