‘Nice to know,’ said Slider, ‘but it would have been nicer if they’d heard something.’
‘No-one we’ve interviewed so far heard anything,’ Fathom said.
‘But, guv, the front door’s broken,’ Hart said. ‘That could be something?’
‘Yes, I heard. In what way broken?’
‘It’s one of them where you buzz people in, but the buzzer wasn’t working and the door wouldn’t latch. Anyone could have just pushed the door open. It was supposed to have been mended yesterday, but the Arbuthnots said it was broken again today.’
‘Who was supposed to have repaired it?’ Slider asked.
‘There’s a sort of handyman, caretaker kind of person. He lives in the basement. Name of—’ she inspected her notes ‘—Borthwick, David Keith. He’s supposed to do repairs, or get people in if he can’t do them himself. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet.’
Slider nodded. ‘That’s something to follow up, anyway. What about the lift? That was out of order as well. Did the Arbuthnots say anything about it?’
‘No, guv,’ said Hart, ‘but I didn’t ask. I didn’t notice any sign. I just used the stairs anyway. Lifts give me the creeps.’
‘Something else to check on with the caretaker. Anything else?’
There was a general shaking of heads. ‘But we haven’t spoken to all the residents yet,’ Atherton said. ‘There was no answer from numbers five and nine.’
‘Right, follow up on them – Mackay, Fathom. Uniform’s still doing the street canvass. Interview the caretaker, Hart. See what you can get out of him. Someone has to go and see Candida Scott-Chatton. Swilley, you can do that. I have to take the daughter back to the flat this afternoon to see if anything’s missing. Hollis, records.’
‘Yeah, guv. Local slags, anyone doing householders, same MO, all that stuff.’
‘That should keep you busy. All right,’ Slider concluded. ‘Before we scatter, I have something else to tell you, not connected with the case.’ And he told them about Trevor Bates. There was some growled comment. No-one had been pleased when Bates had escaped. They had all put hard work into the case.
‘It will be handed over to SOCA, I imagine, though Mr Porson has promised to keep me informed,’ Slider concluded.
‘But, guv,’ McLaren objected, ‘we can’t just sit on our arses and do nothing.’
‘We’ve got a very important murder case on our hands,’ Slider reminded him.
‘Yeah, but Bates was our collar, by rights. And you’re our guv’nor.’ He looked round and saw agreement in every face.
‘We can’t get officially involved. However,’ he added to stem the protest, ‘there’s no reason we shouldn’t do what we can unofficially. At the very least I’d like everyone to keep his or her eyes open for any sightings of this man. I’d be grateful to have my back watched.’
‘We’ll do that all right,’ Hollis said, ‘but can’t we try and nail the sod? This was his old ground, and if he’s come back here, it gives us a chance, doesn’t it? We know the place as well as he does, and if anyone’s going to catch him, it ought to be us, not SOCA.’
Slider was pleased, but didn’t allow it to show. ‘We can’t let the Stonax case fail because we’ve got our minds elsewhere.’
Atherton spoke up. ‘We’ve all got enough brain cells to work both at once. Well, all of us except Maurice.’
‘Don’t be such a snot,’ Swilley rebuked him automatically.
‘Don’t mind me,’ said McLaren. ‘I never know what he’s talking about anyway.’
Slider ignored the exchange. ‘You could all get into trouble for working on it unofficially.’
‘We’re all grown-ups here,’ Atherton said. ‘We can stand a few rapped knuckles.’
Everyone nodded.
‘All right,’ Slider said, warmed by the response. He was not facing Bates alone after all. The posse was riding for the gulch hard on his heels. ‘Thank you for that. We’ll do what we can. But listen – this has to be kept among ourselves. No-one outside our firm must know. And I’m afraid we have to keep Mr Porson out of the loop, for his own sake. Hollis, you’ll office manage the Stonax case; Atherton, you’ll be c-in-c on Bates. Everyone, report anything you get on Bates either to Atherton or me direct.’
‘Had we better have a code name?’ Mackay asked. ‘In case anyone overhears us talking about him?’
‘Yeah, let’s call him The Needle,’ McLaren suggested.
‘Duh!’ said Hart. ‘That’s his nickname anyway, dumbo. Everyone knows it.’
‘Maurice, you have to stop pushing the Q-tip when you feel resistance,’ Atherton advised kindly.
‘Let’s call him Roberts,’ Mackay intervened. ‘After Roberts radios, because he’s an electronics whiz.’
‘This is not Bletchley Park,’ Slider said. ‘Forget code names. Just don’t let anyone overhear you talking about him.’
Swilley had missed the last few exchanges because her phone had rung. She was writing rapid notes as she listened. When she replaced the receiver, she said, ‘Boss, that was the mobile dump. The call you got from Bates was made from a mobile. It was a pay as you go, and the location was King Street, Hammersmith.’
‘So he was following me,’ Slider said. ‘Who’s it registered to?’
Swilley made a face. ‘Paid for by cash. That’s the trouble with those things.’
‘Still, we’ve got the number, and we can trace the signal, can’t we?’ Fathom said.
‘If he turns it on. It’s off at the moment,’ said Swilley.
‘But SOCA will do the same thing, won’t they?’ Atherton said. ‘The mobile trace unit will report to them. How do we get them to give us the information without SOCA knowing?’
Swilley looked at Slider. ‘There’s this guy at the unit – Mick Hutton – he’s a sort of friend of mine.’ She almost blushed. An ex-lover, everyone thought. ‘From way back,’ she added as though she’d heard the thought.
‘Would he do it for you without telling anyone?’
‘Yeah, he’d do that for me, if I asked him.’
Slider thought for a moment. Maybe nothing would come of it anyway, but he’d feel better about trusting the Bates inquiry to his own people than waiting for a lofty SO department to get itself moving. If his own firm did nail Bates and there were questions about how they found him – so be it. He’d face that when and if it happened.
‘Do it,’ he said.
A couple of phone calls located Candida Scott-Chatton at her office, the headquarters of the Countryside Protection Trust in Queen’s Gate Place – handily round the corner from her house, Swilley thought. She spoke to the woman’s secretary, who said her name was Shawna Weedon, and who told her that Scott-Chatton knew about Stonax’s death. ‘It’s on all the newscasts. It’s terrible. He was such a nice man. He used to come in a lot and he was always so friendly and polite. I really liked him.’
‘I’ll come round straight away and talk to her,’ Swilley said.
The office was on the ground floor of one of those splendid white-stuccoed Kensington houses, so the inside spaces were lofty and grand, with plenty of what was known to viewers of house makeover programmes as ‘original feachers’. There were two rooms, and the rear one was labelled Reception and Enquiries. It had the massive marble fireplace with an oil painting over it of a man with a funny hat and a red coat holding a horse, and was furnished with dark blue carpet, a visitor’s sofa, and a coffee table on which were spread various appropriate magazines, such as Country Life, The Lady, Horse and Hound, and the Trust’s own glossy quarterly, cutely entitled Countryside Matters.