Recent Titles by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles from Severn House
THE COLONEL’S DAUGHTER
A CORNISH AFFAIR
DANGEROUS LOVE
DIVIDED LOVE
EVEN CHANCE
HARTE’S DESIRE
THE HORSEMASTERS
JULIA
LAST RUN
THE LONGEST DANCE
NOBODY’S FOOL
ON WINGS OF LOVE
PLAY FOR LOVE
A RAINBOW SUMMER
REAL LIFE ( Short Stories )
The Bill Slider Mysteries
GAME OVER
FELL PURPOSE
BODY LINE
Copyright © 2010 by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.
All rights reserved.
For Ali and Giles, with love.
ONE
The Wrath of Grapes
‘You look terrible,’ Slider said as Atherton slid into the car.
‘I feel terrible. I’d have to be dead three weeks to feel better than this,’ Atherton said. His voice gave him away – he sounded as if he’d been smoking forty a day for a week. ‘You, on the other hand . . .’ he added resentfully.
‘You shouldn’t mix your drinks,’ Slider said mildly.
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t sit in a jazz club and sip wine. It isn’t hip.’
‘If you were any more hip you wouldn’t be able to see over your pelvis.’
With Emily away in Ireland covering the elections, and Joanna doing a concert in Harrogate, Slider and Atherton had had an all-too-rare-lately boys’ night out. They had gone to Ronnie Scott’s for a Charlie Parker evening: Gilad Atzmon on sax, with a septet backing. Later on some of the Central boys coming off duty had arrived and the session had turned into a long one, moving from Ronnie’s to the flat of one of them nearby.
‘It was a good evening, though,’ Slider said.
Atherton agreed. ‘I can’t remember when I last heard live jazz.’
‘When I worked Central, I often used to slip into Ronnie’s at the end of a shift. Heard all the greats back then – met quite a few of them, too. The atmosphere’s not the same, though, now they’ve banned smoking.’
‘True. Without the fog you can actually see the performers across the room.’
‘Yes, but . . .’ Slider let it hang.
‘I know,’ said Atherton. ‘It’s weird. I hated smoky pubs and bars, but without smoke . . . It’s like waking up with someone you picked up when you were really, really drunk.’
‘It’s a long time since I did that,’ said Slider.
‘At least you went home to a bed and a missus. The kits had been shut in on their own all day, so when I got home they wanted a vigorous workout. They were wall-of-deathing round the house until dawn. Once every circuit they’d land heavily on my stomach and bawl, “Get up and play!”’
Atherton had inherited two Siamese, Shredni Vashtar and Tiglath Pileser, from his previous relationship. They had originally been intended to cement it – ha ha. Fortunately, Emily loved cats; and even more fortunately she was a freelance journalist and worked from home a lot. The kits liked company.
‘Well, you smell nice, anyway,’ Slider said, catching a breath of Atherton’s expensively subtle aftershave. ‘Maybe too nice for police work. A blast of Old Corpsebuster can make a big difference to that all-important first impression.’
‘Oh, blimey, it’s not a stinker is it?’ Atherton said. They were on their way to a murder shout.
‘I don’t know anything about it, only the address. Three Hofland Crescent.’
‘Where’s that? It doesn’t ring a bell.’
‘Back of Sinclair Road. I know where it is, but I don’t think I’ve ever been there.’
‘So it could be anything. Could be something that’s been down a cellar for a week,’ Atherton said. ‘And I haven’t had any breakfast yet.’
‘Maybe just as well.’
Shepherd’s Bush was not beautiful, but it had something to be said for it on a bright, breezy March morning. Clouds were running like tumbleweed across a sky of intense, saturated, heraldic azure. The tall, bare planes on the Green swayed solemnly like folkies singing Kumbayah. All around, the residents – young, old and middling – were sleeping, getting up, planning their day, thinking about work, school, sex, shopping, footie. Some were perhaps dying. One was dead in what the police called suspicious circumstances, and that, fortunately, was unusual. Homicide, even in the most crowded capital in Europe, was not the great eraser.
The Monday morning traffic was squeezing down the side of the Green to the West Cross roundabout, and piling lemming-like beyond it into Holland Park Avenue. The right turn lane at the roundabout was clear except for a pair of ditherers. ‘Tourists!’ Slider said, gave them a couple of bloops and swung round into Holland Road. A moment later Atherton roused himself from his torpor to say, ‘Here’s Sinclair Road. So where’s this crescent?’
It was misnamed – not a crescent at all, but a little snip of a straight road leading off Masbro Road at an angle. They had to leave the car in the only space left in Masbro Road and walk the rest. It was bitterly cold, despite the sunshine. The icy wind was coming down direct from the north, which accounted for the searing clarity of the sky, but it meant there was nothing between the Arctic floes and Slider’s skin except some wholly inadequate clothing.
Seduced by the sun, Atherton hadn’t worn an overcoat either. He shivered beside Slider like a fastidious cat. PCs Renker and Gostyn, on duty at the barrier closing off the crescent, were bundled into multiple layers, and stood massively impervious to the wind-chill factor – as weather forecasters so blithely called it these days. They smirked a little as they moved the barrier to let them through. Beyond it, there were unit cars and the forensic waggon blocking the road, and other uniforms keeping the curious residents and the press back from the blue-and-white tape which made a clear space in front of the house.
The sight of the house made Slider forget the cold for a moment. While the other side of the street consisted of a perfectly standard row of 1840s artisan cottages, their destination was one of a terrace of four Regency villas, harmonious in proportion, exquisite in detail, white-stuccoed, with the original fanlighted doors, and a little wrought-iron balcony at each first-floor window. ‘It’s a gem,’ he said, pausing in admiration.
‘Unexpected,’ said Atherton, who had had to start noticing architecture since he had been working with Slider.
‘They’re earlier than anything else around here,’ Slider said. ‘They must have been here first – when Shepherd’s Bush was still a country village. They’d have had a view over the fields in those days.’
‘Must be worth a fortune. I had a look at a cottage like one of those,’ Atherton said, jerking his hand over his shoulder, ‘for Emily and me, but they were going for nearly seven hundred thou, and they’re just two-up, two-down.’
‘I think we can surmise that our victim is a man of means,’ Slider concluded.
‘Well, thank God for that. Maybe we won’t need the industrial strength cologne after all.’
Detective Constable Kathleen ‘Norma’ Swilley, returned at last from maternity leave, was co-ordinating the troops on the scene. She had arrived back just in time to replace Hart, who had passed her sergeant’s exam and secured a posting to Fulham – a good promotion, though she went with many a wistful backward look. ‘You’re fam’ly,’ she had informed Slider’s firm tearfully at the leaving do, and had insisted on kissing every member of it full on the mouth – even McLaren, which was quite a feat. She’d had to compete with a vegetable samosa. McLaren never saw the point in wasting his lips on anything other than eating, which was perhaps why he hadn’t had a date since the Thatcher administration.