‘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.
When the others returned to their desks he called McLaren back. ‘Not you.’
McLaren looked helpful. ‘Want me to get you a cuppa from the canteen?’
‘No,’ said Slider. ‘Well, yes, actually, but that’s not why I called you. Tell me about this morning – the wrecking yard.’
‘Oh, yeah. Embry. He’s tasty. When we got back I ran him through records and he’s got a bit of form all right. Nothing for the last ten years, but that don’t necessarily mean he’s straight, only that he’s careful.’
‘What sort of form?’
‘Started with TDAs, some fights, bit of stealing – mostly car parts, he was car mad – when he was in his twenties. Then he settled down until he got done for ringing. It was a big operation spread out all over North London. Reckon he was the unlucky one – he got nicked as part of a sting, and put his hands up when a lot of others got away. Took the rap for them. Did fourteen months. Since then, nothing. But he might’ve earned the gratitude of a lot of big players for taking the fall. And he could’ve made some useful contacts inside. Dunno what he’s up to now. The wrecking yard looks legit, but if he’s Honest John, guv, I’m Madonna’s left tit.’
‘Leaving celebrity mammaries out of it for the moment, what did you find out about the number plate?’
‘He wasn’t best pleased it’d come back to him. He didn’t want to show us the CCTV tapes, but we had him cold. Applied a bit of muscle—’
‘As in?’
‘Just threats,’ McLaren reassured him. ‘You wouldn’t want to try beating him up with only the two of you. Got a face like a sack a spanners and a body to match. Anyway, we brought the tapes back. We got the bloke buying the plates. Embry said he didn’t know him, but I reckon he did. So Fathom’s looking further back, to see if he was in there before, but the tapes only go back six weeks. If the job was a long time in the planning . . .’ He shrugged.
‘But you say you got the bloke?’
‘Well, sort of. It’s gotta be him, right build and dark hair. But he knows the camera’s there. Keeps his head down, keeps kind of rubbing his nose and scratching his eye, sort o’ thing, so you can’t see his face.’
‘So you’ve come back with nothing?’ Slider said impatiently.
‘No, guv. There’s something. I’ll show you.’
‘That’d be nice,’ said Slider patiently. He followed McLaren to the tape room, where Fathom, looking too big for the furniture, was working his way through the back videos.
‘Got the one with chummy’s face, Jezza?’ McLaren asked.
Fathom swapped cassettes and started fast-forwarding. McLaren, watching, excavated sandwich remains from the recesses of his mouth. Then he sucked pickle off his finger and pointed. ‘There. Play it from there, Jez. Watch, guv. Just a minute – bit more – now!’
Fathom froze the frame. As the frustratingly canny customer turned away from the counter, there was a single frame of his face in profile. ‘Got him!’ Fathom said with quiet triumph.
‘It’s not Frith,’ Slider said. It was a lean-faced man with thick dark hair, who could pass for Frith at a glance at a distance, but there was no doubt it wasn’t him. He looked older too – fifties, maybe – and harder. ‘You might have mentioned this at the meeting.’
‘Well, guv, it don’t mean Frith’s out of it,’ said McLaren. ‘All right, he didn’t buy the plates off Embry, but he could’ve bought ’em off this geezer. More likely he did, really,’ he argued, ‘because Frith’s got no record, so he probably wouldn’t know where to go to get stuff. Someone puts him on to this bloke –’ he stabbed at the frozen frame – ‘who gets him whatever he needs. Maybe he gets him the shooter as well. He’s a fixer.’
‘It’s a theory,’ said Slider. ‘But then why would Frith go to Stanmore?’
‘Same reason,’ McLaren said promptly. He had evidently been thinking about it. ‘He’s got to take the shooter and the plates back to the fixer. We don’t know any other connection between Frith and Stanmore, so it makes sense it’s the fixer, which we know has been in Embry’s yard.’
Fathom said eagerly, ‘Maybe Embry’s still the armourer, and this bloke’s the go-between. I’d swear Embry knows him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was supplying a lot of stuff out of that yard.’
‘If they were working together, why would Embry CCTV him?’ Slider objected.
‘To make sure he’d got something on him,’ McLaren said. ‘Insurance, in case anything comes back to him. Which it has.’
‘It’s all pure speculation,’ said Slider. ‘However, you can take a print of this still and see if the local police know him. I don’t know anyone up there so you’ll have to do it tactfully. And find out if they’re watching Embry for anything. McLaren, that’s you. Fathom, you can get on to the firearms section and see if there’s anything leading back to Embry or his yard.’
As he returned to his own office, Slider was thinking that it could just be – and it was much simpler, wasn’t it? – that it was Numberplate Chummy who did the murder, and not Frith at all. But that left them further from the solution than ever, because they had no idea who Numberplate Chummy was or what his connection with Rogers might have been. At least they knew Frith was acquainted with the doctor and hadn’t liked him.
Swilley caught up with the trolley dolly, Sue Hardwicke, at Heathrow, coming in from another long haul flight. She turned out to be endearingly middle-aged and unglamorous, except that her make-up was so thickly applied it looked as if a sharp rap on the back of her head would make the whole lot fall off in one piece, like a Greek theatre mask. As she clicked along on her swollen ankles, towing her little black suitcase, her exhausted eyes met Swilley’s blankly at first, and then as she was stopped, with faint irritation.