Body Line

small window in the tall, pointed gable indicated there would be servants’ rooms in the attic. Counting them, it would be a five-or six-bedroom house. And from the state of the outsides Slider could tell that all the houses along here had been refurbished. Given the proximity to Ealing Common they would be very expensive. Not so much of a comedown after all.

The woman who came to the door could only be Amanda Knox-Sturgess. Slider had subconsciously been expecting Penelope Keith from The Good Life, and she didn’t disappoint him. She was tall – too tall for a woman, probably five-eleven – with a long and prominent nose and not too much chin. Oddly, she still managed to look reasonably attractive despite these handicaps, and Slider put that down to her immaculate turnout. Her hair was brown and subtly highlighted, in a smooth short bob, held back by an Alice band; her make-up was perfect; and she wore a navy skirt, blue-and-white striped shirt, low-heeled court shoes, large false pearl earrings and a string of large pearl beads.

That she was not glad to be disturbed was immediately apparent.

‘Yes?’ she snapped, her face fixed in an expression of impenetrable hauteur.

‘Amanda Sturgess?’ Slider asked politely.

Her expression changed to one of suspicion and dislike. Her eyes flicked to Atherton, rapidly assessing his suit; and, strangely, this seemed to deepen her aversion. ‘If you’re from the Bible College, you’re wasting your time. My religion is not open to discussion.’

Slider winced. Oh, poor Atherton, he thought. The Hugo Boss wouldn’t be getting another outing any time soon. ‘We’re police officers, madam,’ he said, showing his brief, before she could slam the door. She inspected it without touching it; Atherton’s did not merit even a glance. ‘I’m sorry to trouble you but we’d like to speak with you. May we come in for a moment?’

Atherton noticed that, as well as using his most deferential tone, he had allowed a very slight hint of a country accent to creep in. He had used this before, to disarm ‘county’ types, but Atherton was never sure if it was deliberate or instinctive.

Perhaps Sarratt didn’t count as ‘county’. There was no thaw. ‘What about?’ she demanded.

‘I’d rather not talk about it on the doorstep, madam.’ Slider, gently persuasive.

‘Tell me what it’s about, or I shall close the door.’ Amanda Sturgess, magnificently unpersuaded.

‘It’s about your former husband, David Rogers.’

For a moment something flickered through her eyes that might have been alarm, but then there followed overt and sighing exasperation. Overdone? ‘What’s he been up to now?’ Interesting, Slider thought. He’d been up to things before? ‘As you point out,’ she went on, ‘he is my ex-husband. I know nothing about his present exploits. I can’t help you.’

‘We’re hoping you can help us with some background information,’ Slider said, and threw in another ‘madam’ for good measure. He had dropped the slight burr now, Atherton noted. Smart and workmanlike was the way to go with this dame. ‘We shan’t keep you long.’

He could do as good an unyielding as her any day, and did it now. Unwillingly, she let them in. The house had been refurbished to a high standard of what passed these days for luxury – that is, all the floors had been stripped and polished and left bare, the walls were painted white, the furniture was modern and minimal, and an extravagant number of walls had been knocked out, so that the downstairs into which they were led formed a vast L shape with the sitting-room, the short leg, leading through to a kitchen-diner that stretched across the whole back of the house, and had glass doors across most of the width. Slider guessed they would be both sliding and folding, so that in summer almost the entire back of the house could be opened on to the patio. If ever the weather was hot enough. For the rest of the year, it seemed to him, the set-up would be pointedly un-cosy. It struck him that the current fashion for vast open spaces inside houses was an import from a country with a very different climate. But of course, the Amanda Knox-Sturgesses of this world had never set great store by comfort.

Her heels clacked aggressively on the bare boards; Slider’s and Atherton’s police rubber soles were soundless behind her. No cat or dog came to greet them; the air smelled only of potpourri, not supper; there was no visible food preparation going on in the kitchen; and the sunless rooms were chilly. It was not Slider’s idea of a home; but he was a farm boy from the sticks, so what did he know?

She turned to face them at the point where the sitting-room turned into the dining end of the kitchen and, menacingly tall under the RSJ, said, ‘Very well. Please be brief. What has David done now?’

No please-sit-down, no cuppa. There was nothing for it: Slider said, ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that he’s dead.’

He was watching her face, and it went stationary with shock; though again he felt there was a flicker of something – guilt or fear? – before she regained her icy mask. ‘I suppose he crashed his car. He always was a careless driver,’ she said as if indifferently, but she was not unaffected. Her eyes seemed blank, and her voice was by the tiniest degree not steady. She sat abruptly in the nearest armchair. Thus licensed, Slider and Atherton sat too.

‘One of the things we hoped you might be able to tell us,’ Slider said, sidestepping the car crash thing, ‘was, who is his next of kin? He seems to have been living alone. Did he remarry after your divorce?’

‘Neither of us remarried,’ she said, a little absently, surveying some inner landscape.

‘So you did keep in touch with him,’ Slider said. She looked up sharply. ‘If you knew he hadn’t remarried, you must have had some contact with him.’

‘We sent birthday and Christmas cards. And occasionally we spoke on the phone – about once a year. He would have told me if he was getting married. But that’s all. I haven’t seen him in years, and I know nothing about his present life.’

‘Are his parents alive?’ Slider asked, pursuing the next-of-kin line.

‘No. His father died in nineteen-eighty-eight and his mother in ninety-four. They were quite elderly when they had him.’

‘Brothers and sisters?’

‘He was an only child. And his parents were only children as well. He had a quite remarkable lack of relatives. It made his side of the church look very empty at our wedding.’

An extraneous comment! Slider was glad of this evidence of softening. ‘At Holy Cross?’ he suggested beguilingly.

‘You know Sarratt?’ she asked, but not warmly – almost suspiciously, as if she suspected he was sucking up to her.

Which he was, of course, though she wasn’t supposed to know it. ‘I know that part of the world. It’s a lovely church. And you and David didn’t have any children?’ Somehow he knew that: there was nothing maternal about her shape or her manner.

‘No,’ she said shortly, and in such a voice that it was impossible to pursue the subject.

‘Then it looks as though you are the nearest thing he had to next of kin,’ Slider concluded.

‘I am his ex-wife,’ she reminded him again, sharply. ‘I am not responsible for anything to do with him.’

‘Not legally, of course,’ Slider said, as though there was another kind of responsibility. She eyed him and opened her mouth to retort but he got in first – soothingly. ‘I was just wondering whether there was anyone else who needed to be told about his death.’

‘And you were wondering who’s going to pay for the funeral, I suppose,’ she suggested tartly.

‘Oh, I dare say there’ll be enough in his estate to cover that. He seems to have been living in comfort.’

This seemed to interest her. ‘You’ve found money?’

‘I didn’t mean that – just that his style of living suggests he was comfortably-off.’

She looked down at her hands and then up again. ‘I thought perhaps he had got into financial trouble and committed suicide.’

‘It wasn’t suicide,’ Slider said.

She surveyed his face keenly. ‘You’re sure of that? David wasn’t a very – resolute person. Liable to look for the easy way out when things – set him back. Not a striver against misfortune.’

Why was she keen to sell them on suicide, Slider wondered. ‘He didn’t kill himself,’ he said.

‘Sometimes these things can be made to look like an accident,’ she said, and then hurried on, as though she had come to a decision. ‘You needn’t worry about the funeral. I’ll make all the arrangements, if that helps. I don’t