confessions, ‘I’m afraid of losing my edge.’
‘No, sir,’ Slider protested, but Porson held up his hand in his traffic-stopping gesture.
‘It’s true. When Betty died …’ A long pause. ‘When you suffer a bereavement, you run the gambit of emotions. I expected that. Says it in all the books. Denial, anger and so forth, blah-de-blah.’ He waved away the psychotalk with a large hand gesture. ‘But now I’m through all that, I just feel tired. As if I can’t be bothered.’
Slider said, ‘That’s one of them. One of the reactions. You’ll come through that, too.’
Porson said nothing. He cleared his throat thunderously, then fumbled a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and blew his nose. He began to turn and Slider was afraid of what he was going to see – the trace of tears? A tremulous, confiding Syrup?
He wasn’t sure he could handle that.
Porson showed him a face like a badly hewn statue, and eyes that gleamed like steel rivets under scowling brows.
‘So bloody well get on with it, then! Thirty-six hours on and you haven’t even got a next of kin? I’ve stuck my neck out to get this case, and if you make me look like dick over it, I may be leaving, but you can kiss your bollocks goodbye, clear?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Slider. He almost smiled with relief. Abuse from above made him feel more comfortable. It was his normal medium.
Atherton and Hart were seated at one desk, heads close together, going through the victim’s diary and address book, cross checking them with each other and with other documents taken from the filing cabinet.
‘The trouble is,’ Atherton said, when Slider delivered Porson’s gee-up, ‘though she tends to write in business appointments with proper names, with the personal ones she uses a lot of initials and codes.’
‘How do you know those are the personal ones?’
‘Well, I’m guessing, of course, but it tends to be the evening engagements. There’s one on Tuesday night – “JS 8pm”. Her business engagements check out against the clients on file, and she keeps a time sheet for each, showing when and for how long she either worked for them or was with them on their premises. Expenses too. All very businesslike.’
‘But then there’s all this “DC 10 TFQ” stuff,’ Hart put in.
‘That’s in here for Tuesday. I’m trying to run down the initials through the address book, but I’m not having much luck. There’s definitely no-one under Q. DC 10’s an aeroplane, and TFQ sounds like an airport terminal. Maybe she was meeting someone off a plane – ha ha.’
‘If she was, she was spending the afternoon with them. There are two business appointments for the afternoon, both crossed out. We checked, and she cancelled them on Monday. So Tuesday is a mystery,’ Atherton said. ‘Apart from Marion saying she saw her at a quarter past six, we can’t place her at all for that last day.’
‘Marion!’ Hart snorted, but very quietly.
‘What about next of kin?‘ Slider pressed his own urgent need.
‘People don’t put their mums and dads in their address book,’ Hart said. ‘I mean, they know
their
addresses, don’t they? There’s nothing under Cornfeld, anyway. I tell you what, though, guv,’ she added, lifting a confiding face, ‘there’s a lot of blokes’ addresses in here, and quite a lot of just blokes’ names and telephone numbers. I reckon she had a right merry old time on the quiet. Out most nights by the look of it.’
‘The credit-card statements bear that out,’ Atherton said. ‘Quite a few donations to charities – I’m making a list of them. But lots of jollies, too – restaurants, theatres, cinema tickets, big food and drink bills. She didn’t stint on enjoying herself.’
‘Well, she was a good-looking bird, why not?’ Hart said. ‘If she had a lot o’ boyfriends, what of it? This is the twenty-first century. Women are just as entitled to enjoy themselves as men.’
She had turned her head as she said
‘No, sir,’ Slider protested, but Porson held up his hand in his traffic-stopping gesture.
‘It’s true. When Betty died …’ A long pause. ‘When you suffer a bereavement, you run the gambit of emotions. I expected that. Says it in all the books. Denial, anger and so forth, blah-de-blah.’ He waved away the psychotalk with a large hand gesture. ‘But now I’m through all that, I just feel tired. As if I can’t be bothered.’
Slider said, ‘That’s one of them. One of the reactions. You’ll come through that, too.’
Porson said nothing. He cleared his throat thunderously, then fumbled a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and blew his nose. He began to turn and Slider was afraid of what he was going to see – the trace of tears? A tremulous, confiding Syrup?
He wasn’t sure he could handle that.
Porson showed him a face like a badly hewn statue, and eyes that gleamed like steel rivets under scowling brows.
‘So bloody well get on with it, then! Thirty-six hours on and you haven’t even got a next of kin? I’ve stuck my neck out to get this case, and if you make me look like dick over it, I may be leaving, but you can kiss your bollocks goodbye, clear?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Slider. He almost smiled with relief. Abuse from above made him feel more comfortable. It was his normal medium.
Atherton and Hart were seated at one desk, heads close together, going through the victim’s diary and address book, cross checking them with each other and with other documents taken from the filing cabinet.
‘The trouble is,’ Atherton said, when Slider delivered Porson’s gee-up, ‘though she tends to write in business appointments with proper names, with the personal ones she uses a lot of initials and codes.’
‘How do you know those are the personal ones?’
‘Well, I’m guessing, of course, but it tends to be the evening engagements. There’s one on Tuesday night – “JS 8pm”. Her business engagements check out against the clients on file, and she keeps a time sheet for each, showing when and for how long she either worked for them or was with them on their premises. Expenses too. All very businesslike.’
‘But then there’s all this “DC 10 TFQ” stuff,’ Hart put in.
‘That’s in here for Tuesday. I’m trying to run down the initials through the address book, but I’m not having much luck. There’s definitely no-one under Q. DC 10’s an aeroplane, and TFQ sounds like an airport terminal. Maybe she was meeting someone off a plane – ha ha.’
‘If she was, she was spending the afternoon with them. There are two business appointments for the afternoon, both crossed out. We checked, and she cancelled them on Monday. So Tuesday is a mystery,’ Atherton said. ‘Apart from Marion saying she saw her at a quarter past six, we can’t place her at all for that last day.’
‘Marion!’ Hart snorted, but very quietly.
‘What about next of kin?‘ Slider pressed his own urgent need.
‘People don’t put their mums and dads in their address book,’ Hart said. ‘I mean, they know
their
addresses, don’t they? There’s nothing under Cornfeld, anyway. I tell you what, though, guv,’ she added, lifting a confiding face, ‘there’s a lot of blokes’ addresses in here, and quite a lot of just blokes’ names and telephone numbers. I reckon she had a right merry old time on the quiet. Out most nights by the look of it.’
‘The credit-card statements bear that out,’ Atherton said. ‘Quite a few donations to charities – I’m making a list of them. But lots of jollies, too – restaurants, theatres, cinema tickets, big food and drink bills. She didn’t stint on enjoying herself.’
‘Well, she was a good-looking bird, why not?’ Hart said. ‘If she had a lot o’ boyfriends, what of it? This is the twenty-first century. Women are just as entitled to enjoy themselves as men.’
She had turned her head as she said
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