Fell Purpose by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Page A

the ruckus stopped as if by magic. Someone had appeared in the doorway. Slider turned to see a young man in leather jacket and jeans standing there.
    Lilly saw him too, stopped writhing, and cried urgently, ‘Mikey, have you got the stuff? Have you got the shit for me, Mikey?’
    The man disappeared with amazing speed. Slider flung himself after him, feeling, rather than seeing, McLaren coming behind.
    But the fleeing man had jumped astride a powerful motorbike parked at the kerb. Because the engine was hot, it caught at once. Slider only managed to touch a sleeve with fingertips as he swerved out of reach. McLaren passed him running as the bike roared up the road, but he stopped after a few yards, seeing it was hopeless. The bike turned the corner and was out of sight.
    Slider ran to the car. There wasn’t the faintest chance of catching him with that sort of start, but the gesture had to be made. The others piled in, and he drove off with a squeal of rubber.
    ‘Anyone get the number?’ McLaren said.
    No one had.
    ‘It was a Harley Davidson,’ Fathom said.
    ‘Yeah, we got that,’ McLaren said witheringly.
    ‘But he must be making big money, to have a bike like that,’ Fathom offered.
    ‘Yeah,’ said McLaren, ‘and better than that, we know we’re on to something, or else why did he run?’

SIX
    One Ring Leads to a Mother
    S ergeant ‘Nutty’ Nicholls, the handsome, polyphiloprogenitive Scot from the far north-west, took the trouble to come upstairs to Slider’s office from the front desk to report that there was a woman waiting to see him. ‘She says she’s your victim’s headmistress.’
    ‘Oh? Well, I’d better see her. She might have an insight to share. What’s she like?’
    ‘Posh. I doubt she’s ever seen the inside of a polis station before. She spoke to Harris ve-ry slo-owly to be sure the puir heathen understood what she was saying.’
    ‘We’d better not slap her in an interview room, then,’ Slider said. ‘Can you get someone to wheel her up here?’
    ‘My thought exactly. She’s the sort that’d tell on ye in a minute. Years of working with children warps your mind. It’s a bad business, this, Bill,’ he went on, suddenly serious. ‘With six girls of my own, I hate it like fire. Any leads yet?’
    ‘Not really. But we’ve got everyone out asking questions, and someone will have seen something. They always do.’
    ‘Aye. Well,’ he sighed, ‘not to be suggesting anything, but I don’t know if you knew that Ronnie Oates is back in circulation.’
    ‘The Acton Strangler?’ Slider said, and then distracted himself. ‘I can’t believe we’ve got a serial killer called Oates.’
    ‘God has a strange sense of humour,’ Nicholls acknowledged. ‘But I’d remind ye that he’s never killed anyone.’
    ‘I beg his pardon,’ Slider said. Oates had indecently assaulted five women, and although the assaults themselves had been fairly minor, he had a proclivity for choking his sexual partners during the act, which had eventually got him into trouble when one of them complained. It had also finally brought him to the notice of the press, who could not resist giving him the sobriquet. ‘What did he get last time?’
    ‘Four years. He was a good boy and got out after eighteen months. That was a couple of months ago, and Arthur told me when we swapped over that he’s been seen around East Acton again, where his mother lives.’
    ‘Arthur’ was Paxman, the sergeant on the night relief.
    ‘How come he always knows everything?’ Slider complained.
    ‘People tell him things. He’s like the river that king in the legend stuck his head in, to whisper his secret. He flows.’ Nicholls demonstrated a beautiful smoothness with one hand. ‘Men may come and men may go but he goes on for ever.’
    ‘Well, thanks for telling me, anyway,’ Slider said. ‘Oates liked to use the women’s own tights, didn’t he?’
    ‘That’s why I thought you ought to know right away,’ said