Body Line

that he didn’t dare go to anyone who knew him. He insisted that I must keep the whole business secret. I had to type it out myself, and when he came to sign it, he came in a taxi and brought the taxi driver up to be the other witness. He didn’t want Maggie to witness it because he said he didn’t trust women. “They always talk,” he said.’

‘But why all the secrecy?’ Slider asked. ‘Did he explain that?’

‘He said –’ and here Maricas looked faintly apologetic – ‘that he was involved in important but dangerous work, and that there were people who might attack him through his wife if they knew of her existence.’

‘That’s a bit James Bond,’ Slider said.

‘I know, that was my thought too,’ said Maricas, ‘but he seemed quite sincere about it. I’m sure he believed it. I said if someone was threatening him he should go to the police, and he said that would be fatal. They mustn’t know he was wary of them, he said. And he said he was trying to get himself out of it, but it would take time and be difficult and dangerous, because everyone knew what the fate of whistle-blowers was.’

‘Whistle-blowers?’

‘That’s what he said. He wouldn’t tell me anything about what he was involved in, and frankly, although I believed him at the time, because he was obviously nervous, afterwards I thought he must be making it up. Exaggerating for effect, you know – to make himself important. But now—’ He looked seriously into Slider’s eyes, his own brown ones troubled. ‘But now, it looks as though he wasn’t kidding. I mean, someone cared enough about what he was doing to kill him.’

‘Yes,’ said Slider. And he thought about that single bullet to the back of the head. Too professional. Amanda had said there was a woman at the bottom of it, but it was much more likely to be money, wasn’t it? Putting aside the secret agent notion, had he been involved in some illegal but lucrative business, lucrative enough to kill him if he looked likely to pull the plug on it? But what the heck was it?

‘I feel so bad that I didn’t believe him,’ Maricas said. ‘So you see why I thought I should speak to you before I did anything?’

‘Yes, I think you did quite right,’ Slider said, and Maricas looked relieved.

‘He was very worried for his wife – afraid for her. He thought they’d go after her to get at him. He said no one knew about her and it had to stay that way. She even kept her maiden name so no one would connect her with him. So I was worried that if I contacted her now it might somehow draw attention to her. But she’ll have to be told – if she doesn’t know already. And other people will have to know, if the will is to go through probate. I mean, she won’t get his money until then, and he must have wanted her to have it, or why the will?’

‘It’s a tricky problem, I see that,’ said Slider. And he thought of Cat Aude. If the witness who was no witness had been murdered, in how much more danger was a wife? He might not have told his wife all about his ‘business’, of course, but the murderer or murderers wouldn’t care about that. They’d eliminate her anyway, just to be on the safe side. ‘You have no idea what it was he was involved in?’

‘No, he never said. Didn’t so much as give a hint.’

‘And do you think he told his wife about it?’

‘I don’t know. Really, I have no idea. I suppose if anyone knows, it would most likely be her. But he went to such pains to keep her secret, maybe he wouldn’t have wanted to burden her with the knowledge.’

‘And “women always talk”,’ Slider mused.

Maricas gave a quick, unhappy smile. ‘So what’s to be done?’

‘You’ll have to leave it with me,’ Slider said. ‘Say nothing to anyone about this.’

‘I’ve kept his secret this far. You can trust me.’

‘I know I can,’ Slider said.

‘But what will you do?’ Maricas asked anxiously.

‘I don’t know yet. Once we have the murderer behind bars, I think Rogers’s wife will be safe.’

‘But how will you catch him?’

I haven’t the foggiest, Slider thought. But what he said was, ‘We are following up lines of investigation.’

FOURTEEN

Beauty in the Eye of the Beer Holder

‘You’d better go yourself,’ Porson said. ‘Normally I’d disignore this James Bond bollocks as so much fantasy, but given that the Aude female was offed as soon as she raised her head, we can’t afford to assume there’s no threat to the wife. Otherwise we ought to involve the local police, out of courtesy if nothing else. But the less people know about this the better. What about this Maricas?’

‘I think Rogers got lucky. I’d say he was a hundred per cent. It seems to me that Rogers picked him because he was the first solicitor he saw – the office is very eye-catching when you turn into that road—’

‘But what was he doing on that road in the first place when he lives in Shepherd’s Bush?’

‘It’s the first major turning off the main road when you’re coming from Stanmore,’ Slider said. ‘There’s got to be some connection with Stanmore, but if it isn’t the Cloisterwood, I don’t know what it was.’

‘Well, don’t raggle your brain about that now. The wife might know. She might know everything, in fact. What else have you got to follow up?’

‘Swilley’s going after the agency – trying to find out how it’s financed.’

‘You think that’s important? You still think Sturgess is involved?’

‘We haven’t got any other suspects. And the presence of a new wife makes her more interesting.’

‘The presence of a new will leaving everything to the new wife makes Sturgess less of a suspect,’ Porson pointed out.

‘If she knew about it. Rogers seems to have been at pains to keep it secret. And the old will left Sturgess everything.’

‘Point. Anything else?’

‘I want to have a look round Rogers’s house, see if I can find that safe.’

‘You’d better do that before you go and see the wife. Might be all sorts of things in there.’

‘Yes,’ said Slider. ‘I thought I’d go now, and go down to Southwold early tomorrow. Sunday’s a good day to catch people in.’

‘Good thought.’ Porson’s brows lowered themselves in thought over his eyes. It made Slider think of someone in a cave drawing the branches down to hide the entrance. His pronouncement eventually was, ‘Be careful. Rogers could have been a fantastacist, or he could have been involved with some foreign secret service, or industrial espionage, or smuggling. But whatever it was, they’ve shown themselves to be ruthless. Don’t dick about with your safety or the woman’s.’

‘I’ll be careful,’ Slider said.

But first, to the house in Hofland Crescent, where Slider and Atherton were met by their expert on safes and safe-cracking, Bill Adams, inevitably known as ‘Burglar Bill’. He was a big man with a big presence, shrewd eyes, and the hands of a surgeon, an analogy improved by the presence of a stethoscope poking out of the top of his kit bag.

‘But first we have to find it,’ Slider said, to curb his eagerness to get cracking. ‘It can’t be anywhere too obvious or Bob Bailey’s lot would have stumbled across it.’

‘Essence of a hidden safe,’ Adams said, ‘is that you don’t stumble across it. Though it’s amazing how often people choose the obvious places. There’s a sort of psychology that wants your friends to know you’re important enough to have one. It’s showing off.’

‘Well, our Dirty Doc was a whale on showing off,’ Atherton said. ‘Where do you recommend we start looking?’

‘Leave it to me,’ Adams said, with an air of rubbing his hands. ‘I like a challenge. Though it probably won’t be much of one.’

It was interesting to walk round behind him as he checked the usual places – peeping behind paintings, lifting rugs, examining cupboards. The dressing-room got him interested because there was a lock on the door – ‘Why would anyone want to lock up their suits?’ – but in the end he found it in the bathroom. The presence of a false wall was not in itself suspicious, he explained, because there were all sorts of pipes to be hidden, but this one was on