Body Line

Monday morning? And how many of the cabin crew on that flight are called Sue and live in Ruislip? We get her details from BA and check with her. And if she doesn’t exist, we’ll nick him for obstruction.’

‘You’re devious,’ Atherton said admiringly.

‘Maybe I am, and maybe I’m not,’ said Slider.

NINE

Who Dares Whinge

When they walked into the CID room, Emily was there, sitting on Norma’s desk, chatting. Atherton sloped up to her and they greeted each other with studied nonchalance.

‘’Lo.’

‘Wotcher.’

‘’Right?’

‘Uh. You?’

‘Young love!’ Norma said sourly. ‘Can you go and mate on someone else’s desk?’

‘You’re not the same since you had that baby,’ Atherton complained, and added in his Michael Caine voice, ‘You gone all milkified, girl.’ He turned to Emily. ‘When did you get in?’

‘Couple of hours ago. I came to take you out to lunch,’ Emily said. ‘Or have you eaten already?’

‘We had a sandwich, but that was hours ago. A witness lunch. They never satisfy, somehow. You always want another an hour later.’

‘Witness or sandwich?’

‘Both.’

‘No second lunches,’ Slider decreed. ‘We’ve got work to do.’ He cleared a space on the edge of Atherton’s desk, perched and said, ‘Report time. Gather round.’

The troops gave him their attention. McLaren gave as much as he could spare from giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a cheese and pickle sandwich. It looked as though the sandwich wasn’t going to make it.

Slider went over the Frith interview and his possible, though partial, alibi. ‘The good thing is that Amanda Sturgess has been provoked into giving a false alibi. She says Frith was home until she left at a quarter past eight, while he says he left at six. The bad thing is that even if the air hostess checks out, it still gives him time to have gone to Stanmore and get back to Ruislip.’

‘Boss, I don’t understand,’ Connolly said. ‘If the murderer was Frith, and his alibi’s in Ruislip, why would he go to Stanmore at all?’

‘To give back the number plates?’ Mackay hazarded. ‘Maybe he only rented ’em.’

‘Better for Embry if he didn’t give ’em back,’ Hollis said. ‘Then he could claim they were stolen.’

‘But he didn’t report ’em stolen,’ McLaren said. ‘Didn’t want to draw attention to the number.’

‘I don’t understand about the number plates anyway,’ Connolly complained. ‘Why bother with real ones? I mean, why not just make up a number?’

It was Norma who explained. ‘Because you might pick a number the traffic division is looking out for. The patrol cars have on-board ANPR. The last thing you want coming away from a murder is to have the traffic cops on your tail because the number’s in their computer for an uninsured driver or unpaid parking tickets. With a genuine scrapped car you can be sure nobody’s looking for it.’

‘And it’s not that easy to get number plates made, anyway,’ Hollis added. ‘The suppliers and manufacturers are heavily regulated. Any hint o’ wrongdoing and they’d be in a shipload of trouble.’

‘I’m thinking, guv,’ McLaren began, and spoke on resolutely through the woo-hoos. ‘Maybe he was taking the shooter back. We know that was rented. The plates he could dump any time, but he’d need to get rid of the shooter right off.’

‘You’re thinking the armourer is in Stanmore?’ Slider asked.

‘I’m thinking Embry is the armourer. He looks well fit for it.’

‘Something to take on board,’ Slider said. ‘Well, now, someone will have to check Frith’s alibi, such as it is, which means getting hold of this Sue person. Swilley, I’d like you to do that. I trust your instincts. Get on to it as quickly as possible, before he has time to feed her any lines.’

‘Right, boss.’

‘How did you get on with Amanda Sturgess?’ Hollis asked.

‘Was that today? God, it seems like a week ago,’ Slider said. ‘She’s still holding out, admits talking to Rogers but only recently and says it was general chit-chat. But then one of her staff, Angela Fraser, followed us out and volunteered that she was another Rogers girl.’

‘That was the witness lunch,’ Atherton put in.

Slider went over what Angela Fraser had said. ‘It tends to confirm what we already suspected, that there must be other women out there who knew Rogers – or had been known by him. But with the two we know about, at least – Fraser and Aude – he’s been playing it very cagey. Neither of them knows where he worked or what he did, beyond his being “a doctor”. Aude said he worked at a hospital in Stansted, which we know wasn’t true. And Fraser said he went to Suffolk once a week.’

‘Suffolk?’ Hollis queried.

‘That’s a new one,’ said Mackay. ‘What did he go there for?’

‘Somebody has to,’ said Norma, screwing up her face. She hated ‘the country’ with a townie’s pure fervour.

‘We did put it to Frith,’ Slider said, ‘and he suggested it may be where Rogers kept his boat. Apparently he’s recently taken up sport fishing as a hobby.’

‘Huh. All right for some,’ said McLaren. ‘Wish I had time for a hobby.’

There was a brief silence as everyone stared at the famously indolent McLaren. Slider, baffled, said, ‘You have enough time to make your own coal.’

McLaren looked wounded. ‘Hardly sit down, time I’ve finished.’

Slider left it. ‘Now, two things seem to be emerging from this morning’s work. One is that Amanda Sturgess had a great deal more contact with Rogers than she’s admitted to. And her relationship with Frith is a complicated one. He’s financially in hock to her, and resents it, and also spits venom when Rogers is mentioned.’

‘Which is good for us,’ Swilley said, ‘if we’re thinking Frith might be the murderer.’

Slider nodded. ‘Also, whatever it was that Rogers did for a living, he kept it very secret.’

‘That’s three things,’ Atherton objected.

‘Glad you’re still awake. With regard to the third thing,’ Slider went on, ‘we don’t seem to be able to get a handle on it, and I have a feeling that it would help if we knew more about this trouble he got into. I get the sense that things changed then – certainly personally, but surely professionally as well. Possibly if we knew what happened we could get closer to what he’s been doing lately. I want the details. The real, inside story. It’s another of the things Amanda won’t talk about, and anything she won’t talk about naturally interests me. But it’s going to take some research.’

Emily spoke up. ‘Oh please, let me!’

Slider had forgotten she was there. He looked doubtful. ‘It’s police work.’

‘Well, it isn’t really, is it? Not the beginning part, anyway. Searching the archives, finding out who was there at the time, tracing them, getting them to talk about it – that’s investigative journalism. It’s the sort of thing I do all the time. And I’m good at it.’

‘She is,’ Atherton agreed. ‘But what about your Irish story?’

‘Done. Wrote it up last night, finished it on the journey this morning, filed it before I came here,’ Emily said triumphantly. ‘I have to do a piece for the Sundays, but I can fit that in easily – it’s mostly rehashing. Please let me.’

‘But what will you get out of it?’ Slider wondered. ‘I can’t pay you.’

‘Money isn’t everything. I’m interested. I want to know what happened as well. And when it’s all over – who knows, it could be a story, or grounds for an article. Nothing is ever wasted,’ she concluded.

It was one of Slider’s own maxims, the reason he listened so patiently to Everyman’s rambles. ‘You’d have made a good detective,’ he said.