‘They’ve not come back on it yet. I’ll chase them up,’ Norma said. ‘Can I know what it is, boss?’
‘I’ll tell everyone,’ Slider said. ‘Give me ten minutes and I’ll be out for a rundown on what we’ve got so far.’
When he was alone, he took another mouthful of sandwich and dialled Joanna’s number. ‘Hello, Inspector,’ she answered him before he spoke. She had number recognition, of course.
The sound of her voice gave him a frisson, as always, and he reflected how lucky he was to have found his soulmate against all the odds. He had been married fairly joylessly to Irene for fourteen years but, being the sort of person he was, he hadn’t been looking for anyone else. A promise was a promise in his book, and he had meant to stick by her and do his best to be a good husband. It wasn’t her fault they had grown apart. But then he had met Joanna and everything became instantly different. It had plunged him into a tornado of troubles, doubts and self-loathing as he tried to square his sense of duty towards Irene and the children with the visceral conviction that his life lay with Joanna. Well, they had been through some difficult places on the rocky road to divorce, Irene’s remarriage, and the present blissful state of Joanna’s expecting their first child, but in all the turbulence the one thing that had never wavered was his conviction that he and Joanna were meant to be together and would get through it somehow.
‘Where are you?’ he asked, hearing sounds of conversation in the background.
‘The Spotted Dog,’ she said. ‘I’ve taken Mum and Dad out for a pub lunch. Madly gay, isn’t it? I love the way they’ve branched out since Dad retired. Eating out was completely unthought of when I was a kid.’
‘Everything all right?’ he asked.
‘They’re still agitating about the wedding,’ she said. ‘I keep telling them that it’s a matter of finding the time to do it, but they narrow their eyes and look sceptical. They think you’re trying to wriggle out of your responsibilities.’
‘If only they knew, I’m desperately trying to wriggle in,’ Slider said sadly.
‘I know. I tell them that. They’ll understand one day,’ she said. ‘They want us to call the baby Derek after Dad’s father.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘I thought that would prove a nice counter-irritant,’ she chuckled.
‘What if it’s a girl?’ he asked flinchingly. Did he have a vague memory that the paternal grandmother had been named Gladys?
‘Rebecca,’ said Joanna.
‘Oh. How come?’
‘Heroine in a book Mum’s reading. She thought it was a pretty name. They can’t understand why we don’t want to know which sex it is, given that we can.’
‘Very modern of them. Look, I can’t really chat, I haven’t got long.’
‘I know, you must be busy.’ The shout had come in before she left. ‘Is it awful?’
‘I’ll tell you about it when I see you. But, listen, something else has come up.’ And he told her briefly about Trevor Bates ringing him.
When he had finished she said, ‘Is it serious? I mean, is he really likely to do anything?’ Slider hesitated before answering, only so as to assemble his words carefully, but she misunderstood and said, ‘Please don’t just tell me not to worry. I want to know the truth. We’re in this together, you know – all three of us.’
‘I wasn’t going to hide anything from you,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s just that I really don’t know how serious it is. He wants to frighten me, that’s plain enough. Whether he’d go any further I simply don’t know. But I don’t want you to worry, and I do want you to be careful.’
‘Careful how?’ she said. She sounded a bit bleak. It was not a nice thing to have dumped on you – and she had the baby to worry about as well. The world had become hostile and comfortless, and who was to help them now?
‘When you come back today, come to the station first, and we’ll go home together.’
‘Oh. It’s that bad, is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, frustrated. ‘I wish I did.’
She heard the strain in his voice and hastened to take up the slack. ‘All right, I’ll see you later. Don’t worry about me – you’ve got enough to be going on with.’
Out in the main office, DS Hollis was back and was marking up the whiteboard. He was a laconical Mancunian with a scrawny moustache and pale green eyes like bottled gooseberries, but despite his odd appearance – or perhaps because of it – he had a wonderful way of getting witnesses to trust him and tell him All. He was always office manager by default, because he didn’t mind doing it and everyone else did, but Slider sometimes thought it was a bit of a waste of his talents.
Swilley and Atherton had their heads together in a serious and sotto-voce conversation, and from their glances upwards when he came in he guessed they were talking about him. But he was so glad to see them getting on together after the tensions in the past that he didn’t mind being the cause. Hart had brought in the first heap of statements and Mackay, the office swot, was stolidly working his way through them; while McLaren, the face that lunched on a thousand chips, was stolidly working his way through a Ginsters Mexican Chicken Wrap, which he was eating cold straight from the packet, the shiny sauce smearing his mouth like gloss lipstick.
‘Right,’ Slider said. ‘Ed Stonax.’ They all looked up. ‘First of all I have to tell you that there is a complete embargo on speaking to the press. That means any form of news media, and it means all of you. They’re going to be all over you—’
‘They’ve been ringing up already, guv,’ Hart said.
‘I’m not surprised. But you do not give them anything, repeat anything.’ He looked round the room and noted Fathom’s expression of insouciance along with his slight pinkness of complexion.
Fathom, meeting the boss’s eyes reluctantly, said, ‘What are we supposed to say if they ask us stuff?’
‘You say no comment. Can you repeat that? Two words, no comment. Say it.’
Fathom, realising he meant it, muttered sheepishly, ‘No comment.’
‘Good. Now, anything to report?’
Hart said, ‘I had a long chat with the next door neighbours, guv. Mr and Mrs Arbuthnot.’
‘Yes, I saw that.’
‘They never heard nothing.’
‘That’s a surprise,’ said Swilley.
‘Ooh, irony! You could put someone’s eye out with that,’ said Atherton.
‘They have their wireless on a lot,’ said Hart said imperturbably. ‘That’s what they call it, love ’em. But they did say that when they didn’t have it on, they could hear him typing through the walls.’
‘Wouldn’t that be normal? He was a journalist,’ Hollis said.
‘Yeah, but he’s been doing an awful lot of it lately. They always could hear him when he was working, because his desk is against the party wall, but they said for about the last week or ten days he was always at it. Whenever they turned off the radio they could hear him, and in the night, too. Like a death-watch beetle, Mr A said – whatever that is.’
‘A parasitical beetle that chews wood and destroys churches and makes a clicking noise,’ Atherton said. ‘How can you not know that?’
Hart shrugged. ‘Education’s failed me.’
‘How would you know?’
‘Can we get on?’ Swilley said in a pained voice.
Hart resumed. ‘Well, they didn’t have anything else to tell me except that they liked him and reckoned he was dead straight and dead public spirited. They said he was a real help with the tenants’ meetings, jollying people along and getting round the awkward customers and that. They wanted him to take over as chairman only he said he didn’t have the time. So he seems to have been a stand-up bloke.’