Joanna was depping in the West End again, and Slider had a happy couple of hours being a father. Dad had already fed George by the time he got home, but he played with his son on the floor with his Lego junior construction kit, then gave him his bath, tucked him up in bed and read to him. His favourite bedtime book at the moment was Goodnight Moon, which was so soporific Slider had difficulty in staying awake long enough to see George off.
George would be three next month, Slider thought as he went downstairs to prepare his own supper, and was due for some more grown-up brain-fare. He didn’t hold out much hope, however. Bedtime rituals were exactly that – change them at your peril. When he himself had been very small, he always had to stroke the dog goodnight before he went to bed, which had driven his mother crazy because it meant she had had to wash his hands again. The dog loved to roll in cowshit, and she was convinced he would suck his thumb during the night and give himself dysentery. Goodnight Dog. Hello A&E.
Over supper, the thoughts he had sent out for a walk while he enjoyed himself with George came back to plague him. He tried to ignore them, but they sent his appetite packing. The washing machine had come on on the timer, and made an unholy racket – Wagner’s Rinse Cycle, as Joanna was wont to call it – so he gave up on food and went into the drawing room. He tried to read, but the words wouldn’t grip, so he watched a bit of Mad Men on the boxed set Dad and Lydia had given him last Christmas. Thanks to the vagaries of work, he was still only halfway through it. It was quite good as a distraction because he could never remember who anyone was or how they related to anyone else, which had his forensic skills running around until they were tired.
And when Joanna came home, he had the gin already in the glass, waiting for the tonic, knowing that she would be both tired and ‘up’ and would need winding down before bed.
‘How was it?’ he asked, bringing her the glass on the sofa.
‘Ah, lovely! Thanks. I’ve been thinking about this all the way home. The show? Oh, much the same. Flippin’ chaos held in check by the brilliance of the musicians. The MD was off tonight, so we had the AMD, who’s a keyboardist in real life, which is fine by us, but it put the lead soprano in a temper, because she’s having it off with the MD and she’s convinced he’s seeing someone else whenever he’s out of her sight. So she was obviously determined to make his life a misery by ignoring him – the AMD, I mean.’
‘Why doesn’t she just make the MD’s life a misery?’ Slider asked.
‘Because she depends on him for work. She’s not really that good, you see. But as long as he’s bonking her, he has to come up with the jobs.’
Slider smiled. ‘You’re kidding me. It doesn’t really work like that, does it?’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Have I taught you nothing? The MD is all powerful. He dispenses patronage. He can accept or reject a dep, for instance, on the basis of whether he likes them or not. Or whether they’ve sucked up to him enough on other occasions.’
‘But this soprano – she must be able to sing the part?’
‘Up to a point. What she has is decibels. She’s got a voice like a power drill boring through sheet metal. She fills the theatre, all right. You can hear her in the back rows. Whether you’d want to hear her is another matter. But she’s the darling of Classic FM, she’s got recording contracts, and she can snub a poor humble AMD-keyboardist with impunity. Hey, have I told you the old joke? Why is being a lead soprano like staying in a cheap lodging house?’
‘I don’t know,’ Slider said obediently.
‘Because you can come in when you like and you don’t have to worry about the key.’
‘Ho-ho,’ he said. She had finished her drink. ‘Another?’
‘No, thanks, I’d never sleep. How was work? You look frazzled.’
There was no fooling her. ‘Hart found Shannon Bailey.’
‘And?’
‘She says she doesn’t remember any more what she saw, if anything at all. She was on vodka and cocaine and everything’s a blur.’
‘I see. Well, that’s possible, isn’t it? Even likely.’ She studied him. ‘And she was all you had, wasn’t she?’
‘She was the only witness to Kaylee’s death. Except that, without her testimony, there’s no knowing if that’s how Kaylee died. Or if she was even there. They’ve got a top forensic expert to say that her injuries were consistent with being hit by a car where she was found. So the whole roof thing is now officially just a junkie’s drug-fuelled fantasy.’
‘Officially? But you still think—’
‘No. That’s the problem. I now worry that I pushed her into it. Junkies are very suggestible. Young girls are suggestible. I got the answer I wanted.’
She looked troubled. ‘What about the parties? The underage sex?’
‘None of the other girls will testify. There may have been parties, they may have gone to them, but there’s no evidence any of them had sex with anyone.’
‘Oh, come on – why else would they be there?’
He shook his head at her. ‘That’s just innuendo. Give a dog a bad name and hang him. They could have been having Bible reading classes in there for all we know. A fine group of worthies trying to improve the lot of poor girls and set them on the strait and narrow. The Gladstones de nos jours.’
‘Do you believe that?’ Joanna asked, a touch raucously.
‘Doesn’t matter what I believe. In fact, I shouldn’t believe. Facts, evidence, a proper case, that’s what I have to have, or I’m not doing my job. I’m afraid,’ he said slowly, coming to the hard part, squeezing it out, because she was his confessional and he needed her to understand, even when it hurt to tell her, ‘that I wasn’t doing my job. I was running a vendetta, because I was angry about Kaylee – her life, her death, and the fact that no one cared about either. I turned myself from a policeman into a vigilante.’
She nodded – acknowledgement rather than agreement. She saw he was shaken – perhaps ashamed. This was a crisis in his life. She had been with him through aftermaths before, seen him depressed because, although he had caught the villain, it didn’t make any difference to the victim. They were still dead. He didn’t really have the robust temperament his job demanded, she thought. Pointless death troubled him too much. He should have been a farmer, and helped things grow. But he needed her now, and she had to come up with something, though she had no idea what. She opened her mouth and hoped something appropriate would pop out.
‘I don’t know if you did wrong or not,’ she said. ‘But if you did, the important thing is that you know it. That’s how we grow – learning from our mistakes.’ Too much? she wondered. He was looking at her, she thought, a trifle blankly. She couldn’t tell if he was warmed by her words, or incredulous that she’d said them. ‘Now you have to forgive yourself and move on,’ she concluded. ‘Otherwise, it’s all a waste.’ Say something! she urged him silently. I don’t know what I’m doing here!
Finally, he nodded. ‘You’re right,’ he said, and she almost sagged with relief. ‘The Job is still the Job.’
She didn’t know they were Connie Bindman’s words. ‘I was going to say that,’ she objected, to lighten the mood.
‘I got it out of a cracker in the canteen,’ he said.
‘They have crackers in the canteen?’
‘What else do you have your cheese on?’
Joking, she thought, put a layer of essential padding between the raw nerves and the world. He’d be all right now. ‘Don’t make me your straight man,’ she said, standing up.
He stood too, and put his arms round her. ‘Oh, you’re anything but straight, I’m glad to say. Bed?’
‘Are you all better now?’ she asked suspiciously.
He pressed against her. ‘Try me, and see.’
Hart was not there on Wednesday morning, but she rang in as soon as Slider was at his desk – how did she manage that? Some kind of second sight – and said, ‘You don’t need me for anything in particular, do you, boss?’
‘I can manage. Why?’
‘I rather not say.’
Slider frowned. ‘Is this something to do with the matter we weren’t going to talk about any more?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. Depends how much you want to know.’
‘I don’t want to know,’ Slider said. ‘Also it’s over. We gave it our best shot, and that’s the end of it.’
‘Well, maybe it is and—’
‘Sergeant!’ Slider said sharply. ‘And remember, promotions are reversible.’
She weakened. ‘I had an idea, that’s all,’ she said, without the sass. ‘I’d like to follow it up.’
Slider sighed. ‘You’d better tell me.’
‘It’s the other girls. I know they won’t testify about the sex parties and the drugs and that, but if I could just get them to say that Kaylee was there that night, that throws this new forensic gig out the window, dunt it?’
‘I’m afraid not. She could still have gone out to Harefield afterwards.’
‘But if the big boys all say she wasn’t there, and we can prove she was, they must be covering something up, mustn’t they?’
‘And who do you think would be believed, if it came to a straight contradiction. You’ve got nothing there, Hart. I’m sorry. Let it go.’
There was a silence. ‘If you say so, boss.’
‘I do.’
‘Can I take a personal day, then? If you don’t need me in.’
‘What for?’ Slider asked suspiciously.
‘Oh, just girl things,’ Hart said, chirpy again. ‘You don’t want me to spell ’em out, do you?’
‘Certainly not. I’ll mark you on holiday, then.’
‘Ta, boss.’
‘Just don’t go poking sticks down holes,’ Slider warned.
‘Never!’ said Hart, and rang off.
LaSalle came gangling in rather shyly, still uncertain as to how his new boss reacted to individual thought. Carver had liked things done his way. To him, initiative was the sound you made when you sneezed.
‘I’ve been doing a bit of research, sir,’ he said modestly. ‘In the BD&M.’
Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages. Like many public records, it now had an online presence. Slider remembered long, peaceful hours at Katharine House when he was a detective constable, poring through the giant leather-bound ledgers in the hushed, library-smelling fastness. It was a wonderful way to keep out of your guv’nor’s line of sight for a day. Alas, no more. Oh the times, oh the customs!
‘Into?’ he prompted.
‘Vickery, sir. Knowing they were local made it easier. I got our Mr Vickery’s date of birth from the records, then looked him up, got his parents, and went through with them to see if they had any other children. And there was a brother called David.’ He lifted his eyes, hopeful for praise. Good orang-utan!
‘Well done,’ Slider said.
LaSalle relaxed and became expansive. ‘Born 1952, sir, which made him 30 in 1982 when Mrs Clavering said the Vickerys moved into Colville Avenue – she said late twenties, so it’s a fit all right. Our Mr Vickery, Edgar, was five years older, just right for idolising a brilliant younger brother. And …’ He hesitated.
‘Go on,’ said Slider.
‘Well, sir, maybe feeling he had to protect him. If he’d been set to look after his kid brother all the time when he was a boy, the habit might stick.’
‘Hmm,’ said Slider. ‘Well, we won’t speculate about that. The only connection we’ve got between David Vickery and this case is that his daughter was friends with the victim. Doesn’t make him guilty of anything.’
‘No, sir.’
‘But it’s good to have that point cleared up, anyway. Now we just have to find Melissa Vickery.’
‘Yes, sir. She’d be 39 now. So she could be anywhere,’ LaSalle said with a slight lowering of the tail. ‘Or anyone – if she married she won’t even have the same name.’
‘If it was easy being a detective, everyone would do it,’ Slider comforted him, and he went away.
It was a day for wonders. Not long afterwards, McLaren came bursting in, for once with no food in his mouth or his hand, though the piece of paper he was holding did have a greasy thumb-mark on it, and he bore about him the faint aroma of gravy and onions. Ginster’s individual steak pie, Slider concluded.
‘I’ve got it, guv,’ McLaren said.
‘Well don’t scratch, or it’ll never get better,’ said Slider.
McLaren was used to him after all these years. He ignored that bit. ‘I had this idea, y’see, about how to find David Vickery. If he was an inventor, if he had patents, he’d have to register them at the Patents’ Office, or he wouldn’t get his royalties. And if he’d invented something really important, like Mrs Clavering said, for the space programme – or even for the motor industry – he’d have wanted the royalties all right. They’d be worth a fortune.’
‘She said he was well-off,’ said Slider. ‘But that was a long time ago – no likelihood he’d be at the same address.’
‘No, guv – you have to re-register a patent every year,’ McLaren said proudly. ‘Otherwise it lapses.’
Another good dog. ‘I didn’t know that. Well, go to it. Find him. Sic, boy!’
‘Already done it,’ McLaren said, beaming.
‘Well?’
‘Patents only last twenty years,’ said McLaren.
This was like one of those ‘I’ve got some good news and some bad news’ routines. ‘Don’t toy with me, McLaren,’ Slider warned.
‘Yeah, but he didn’t stop inventing right away,’ McLaren went on hastily. ‘He done other stuff after he left Shepherd’s Bush. So there’s patents still active.’
‘So you’ve got an address for him?’
‘Not for him. He’s dead.’
Mentally, Slider reached for a rolled-up newspaper. ‘Dead, is he?’ he said patiently. Too patiently.
‘Died four years ago, apparently.’
‘Well, well. How unfortunate.’
McLaren spotted the signs in time, and hastened to make good. ‘No, guv, the point is, patents are like property, you can leave the royalties to someone, like in a will. So if the person they’re left to wants the dosh, they got to keep in touch. Vickery left ’em to his daughter. I got an address for Melissa.’
Good dog! ‘Have a biscuit,’ Slider said.
‘Biscuit?’ McLaren said suspiciously.
‘Where is she?’ Slider translated.
‘In the same area. The old dame in Tetbury was right,’ McLaren said. ‘They moved to a farm between there and Cirencester. Oathill Farmhouse, Oathill Lane, Rodmarton, that’s the address.’
‘And she’s still there?’ Slider was taking nothing for granted by now.
‘I rung up the local boys just to make sure,’ McLaren said, with an eager nod. ‘They say she’s still there, lives there alone. The farmland’s all rented out, it’s just the farmhouse and a couple of outbuildings. Never been any trouble, so they don’t know much about her. Bit eccentric, they say – but they’d say that about any woman living alone, my opinion.’
‘You could be right,’ said Slider. ‘Or they could. Well, this is good news. At last we can talk to someone who was around at the time.’
‘Yeah, but she was only a kid then. Who remembers stuff properly from when they were fourteen?’ McLaren said.
‘Thank you, I can do my own pessimistic adjustments,’ said Slider.