his ear.
‘Are y’awake, Billy, me darling? Let me hear y’ sweet voice, y’ native woodnotes wild, so I can tell if y’r compost mentis or not.’
‘I’d speak if you gave me a chance,’ Slider muttered, hoping not to wake Joanna. ‘This better be good, at this time of morning.’
‘Tis not a chat I’m after, tis your company. I’ve had Detective Superintendent Gordon Hunnicutt of Notting Hill on the blower. Your witness, the Aude female, has bought it.’
The words cut through any remaining fog. ‘Dead?’ he said, not loudly, but sharply enough to make Joanna stir and wake. ‘How?’
‘Bashed on the head, poor little eejit,’ O’Flaherty mourned. ‘Dead as Dick’s hatband. So y’d better get up, get out and get over here.’
‘I’m on my way,’ Slider said, slinging his legs out of bed in the same movement as putting the phone on the hook.
Joanna sat up, shivering. ‘It’s so cold,’ she mumbled. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I’ve got to go in. Our witness, the Aude girl, has been bumped off.’
‘Oh God. I’m so sorry.’ Slider was already across the room, dragging clothes on. When he came back, half clad, to briefly kiss her goodbye, she grabbed him by the collar to keep him long enough to say, ‘You’re not to feel guilty about this.’
He detached her hand but kissed it before giving it back to her. ‘Too late,’ he said.
TWELVE
Hello Dubai
‘Poor little beast,’ Slider said to Porson. ‘The only good thing about it is that it isn’t our case, so we won’t have to find the men to investigate it.’
Detective Superintendent Hunnicutt (‘Two ens, two tees, please,’) had made it clear that he didn’t want other firms treading on his hallowed. Big, young and pompous, with a large, gleaming face and a head shaved to stubble to disguise the encroaching baldness, he was a whale on procedure – one of the new generation of promotees who didn’t just have a grasp of all the paperwork required these days, they positively revelled in it. Returns, censuses, reports, analyses, tables, graphs, flow charts, activity logs, productivity ratings – he loved it all. It was meat and drink to him. His overmastering joy was a meeting with a graphic display and a pointer; bullet points gave him an erection. Nothing in the realm of human activity – he had written an article about it on the Notting Hill police website – was of value that could not be measured. Measurement and analysis was what separated man from the animals, he ruled – though the parallel NH Copper’s Blog had suggested it was actually the inability to lick your own balls.
‘You needn’t worry,’ Hunnicutt had told Slider graciously, ‘we’ll make sure you are kept informed of anything that may impact on your case. And of course –’ the smile segued into a look of gravity – ‘we expect you to do the same.’
‘I’d love to impact on his case,’ Slider said later to his NH oppo, DI Phil Warzynski, which was safe to do because they were alone at the time and Warzynski felt the same way about Hunniballs, if not a bit more so, since he had to put up with him every day.
‘I’d impact on it with my trusty left boot,’ Warzynski said. He had played stand-off half for the Met Police rugby team, and said boot was respected throughout the London League. ‘But don’t worry, Bill. I’ll make sure you really do get anything as soon as we do. I take it you think this is part of your ongoing, and not just a coincidence?’
‘It’d be a bit of a coincidence if it
‘He’s being too clever by half,’ Warzynski said. ‘Overcaution is their downfall as often as carelessness. This could be a murder too far. All right, it was two in the morning and no one about, but there are surveillance cameras everywhere these days. We’ll catch him on something.’
Slider hoped they would, though it was not certain that having another grainy photo of the man would help, since they didn’t know who he was or what his connection was to Rogers.
To Porson he reported: ‘Williamson, the manager of Jiffies, is really cut up, because he actually asked Aude to come back. Apparently he’d had a customer phoning up about Ceecee St Clair, saying she was his favourite artist and asking when she was coming back. When the call was repeated he rang Aude on her mobile and said her public was missing her and any time she felt well enough to return she’d get a hero’s welcome. It played on her vanity, poor idiot, and back she came. Third call from the anxious customer, Williamson was able to tell him Ceecee would be dancing again that very night.’
‘He didn’t find the interest suspicious, then?’ Porson grunted.
‘No. He gets calls like that from time to time. Various acts have their followings. Of course, now he’s kicking himself. Says he wishes he’d asked for the man’s name.’
‘Wouldn’t’ve helped. He wouldn’t’ve given the real one.’
‘No. Warzynski pointed that out to salve his feelings. Anyway, it looks as though the “fan” rang Aude during the evening and made some kind of date with her. Williamson says he saw her talking on her mobile during a break – though I doubt whether that was unusual.’
‘Wait a minute – how would the killer get her number?’ Porson objected.
Slider almost sighed. ‘She had a website. The number was there for theatrical agents to contact her.’
‘Bloody Nora!’
‘It’s quite possible the killer posed as an agent when he rang her to get her to meet. I’m afraid she’d probably be quite uncritical about something like that. Anyway, she left the club just after two, and that was that. She was found in an access alley between two shops just off Portobello Road by a couple of blokes walking home after a party. She was lying just behind the wheelie bins. Warzynski says it looks as though she was killed at the entrance of the alley and dragged from there – it was only about ten feet. A single blow to the temple with a blunt instrument, hard enough to crush the bones. It must have been really quick, that’s the only comfort. As they passed the end of the alley, one whack, quick drag, and away.’
‘Easy enough if you’ve got the confidence,’ Porson agreed gloomily.
‘Yes. There was no real attempt to hide the body, so he could have done it almost anywhere, just looking for a moment when there was no one else in sight.’
Porson thought, scratching delicately above his ear. ‘Well, she wasn’t much of a witness, so I doubt it’ll make any difference to your case. Except that if he’s killed again you’ve got two chances of catching him.’
‘Twice as much human suffering,’ Slider felt obliged to point out.
‘But twice as much chance of chummy making a mistake. What’s goose for the sauce is gander for the other. What lines are Notting Hill following up?’
‘They’re calling in all the local surveillance camera tapes, putting out Aude’s picture and asking for witnesses,’ Slider said, with the hopelessness that these things always generated in his voice. ‘Not much else they can do.’
Porson nodded. ‘Best leave it to them, put it out of your mind, carry on with your own case. As you say, the good thing is that this one isn’t ours.’
So it was back to the grindstone. Slider, having lost most of the morning over at Notting Hill, rang Joanna, rather shamefaced, to say he would not be back soon. ‘Can you cope? I’m sorry to have to ask you.’
‘Nothing to it,’ she said blithely. ‘With your dad here. Any idea when you’ll be through?’
‘Not really. But unless something breaks, I should be able to take tomorrow off.’
‘Tush! Don’t say that. Don’t you know the old saying?’
‘Any particular one in mind?’ he asked.
She told him: ‘“What makes God laugh? People making plans.”’
‘Comforting thought,’ he said. ‘Someone wants me – gotta go.’
‘
