Killing Time (18 page)

Honeyman looked startled. ‘Oh – er – yes, by all means.’

Probably thinks I want to discuss my matrimonial troubles with him, Slider thought, as he reached round behind him and closed the door. ‘It’s about Mr Barrington, sir.’ Slider recounted a brief history of Maroon, Maltesa and Cosgrove. ‘The difficulty is, trying to establish whether Cosgrove did speak to Mr Barrington on the subject, and what was said.’

‘Why should you want to?’ Honeyman asked, which was a
better reaction than Slider had feared. He had expected an indignant I-don’t-like-what-you’re-suggesting slap down.

‘Well, sir, it occurred to me, if for some reason Mr Barrington did refuse an investigation, Cosgrove might have carried on under his own steam and buzzed about some people who decided to swat him.’

‘What does Carver say? It’s his case, after all.’

‘He thinks Miss Brown is making it up. But I don’t think she is.’

Delicater and delicater – rivalry between firms was not unusual, but it was never comfortable. Honeyman was thoughtful. ‘I really think you would do better to concentrate on your own investigation, and leave the Cosgrove business to Carver. We won’t achieve anything by duplicating efforts.’

‘No, sir,’ Slider said. ‘But I have the feeling that the two cases may be connected – that Lafota may be in the frame for both attacks, and that Yates may be behind it in some way.’

‘That’s a lot of suppositions,’ Honeyman said, but his eyes were distant, preoccupied. ‘You were right that this is a delicate business. However, I am prepared to trust your instincts, and I will make some enquiries for you. I shall have to tread carefully, so don’t expect overnight results. In the meantime, forget all about this conversation, concentrate on your own case, and don’t do anything to get in the way of Carver’s enquiries.’

‘No, sir. Thank you,’ Slider said. He was agreeably surprised at Honeyman’s co-operation, and wondered with a renewed spasm of internal conflict whether his own doubts about Barrington were shared higher up. It was all too easy to succumb to a conspiracy complex. Honeyman’s advice – or was it an order – was sound. He would do his best to forget about it.

He went back to give the good word to the troops, stopping off at his own room to pick up some papers. Prominently on his desk was the card McLaren had bought for Honeyman. He picked it up. On the front was a grinning pink cartoon mouse, holding a bottle of champagne in its paws. It had evidently been shaking it, Grand Prix style, because the champagne was gushing out behind a flying cork, and bursting bubbles and pink party streamers dotted the rest of the space. Across the top was the word CONGRATULATIONS. Slider opened the card. It had no printed message, but in the middle of the recto page, surrounded
by the Department signatures, was written in careful capitals ON YOUR PREMATURE DISCHARGE.

‘McLaren!’
Slider roared.

In the confined spaces of the custody room, Jonah Lafota looked like Alice in W Rabbit’s house. He was a huge man, not just tall, but massive as well, as if he had been built for a planet with stronger gravity. His muscles moved about in his thighs and upper arms as if on business of their own, and though he wore a fashionable double-breasted suit in a lamentable shade of light grey-green, it seemed to have been cut specifically to prove that you can’t get a body like that into a suit. His hair was cropped close, but with the obligatory small thin pigtail at the nape of the neck; his ears were small and set very high on his skull, and he wore tiny gold earrings in the sparse lobes. His huge hands, lightly curled, hung like knobkerries down by his side. Despite his bulk, Slider guessed he would move quickly and lightly.

He was very black, and his wide nose had been further flattened by being broken and, Slider guessed, having the bone removed. Despite noticing this, Slider found it hard to take in his features, impossible to say whether he was good-looking or not, because all the eye would register was his sheer size. Slider had a moment of pity: what must it be like to live all your life with such difference upon you? Men longed to be tall and strong, but Jonah was a freak, a
lusus naturae.
What woman could he lie with without crushing her? What conversation could he join in with without bending down? Furniture would moan under him, doors admit him grudgingly, clothes and shoes reject him outright. What life was there for him, but to be someone’s hard man, a blunt instrument for someone else’s anger, but never a full member of the human race?

And then Slider remembered Jay Paloma, turned into something that would put Francis Bacon off his lunch, and hardened his heart.

‘I’m Detective Inspector Slider, and this is Detective Sergeant Hollis. I’d like to ask you a few questions about Jay Paloma.’

‘I don’ hafta tell you niffing,’ Jonah said without emphasis. Sitting down he was about as tall as Slider standing up, which seemed to make his point irrefutable. Slider decided to ignore it.

‘Do you know Jay Paloma?’

‘Yeah, know him. He use come downa club.’ He slurred his words, not as a drunk does, but in the manner of one who does not have to say very much to get his message across. He sat back on the small chair, his fists resting on the table, looking in a lordly way at the wall or the ceiling, anywhere but at Slider. He didn’t seem nervous, angry or afraid. He didn’t seem anything at all, really, except big.

‘Which club?’

‘Pink Parrot.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘Jay? Dunno.’

‘Roughly when? Give me some idea.’

‘I don’t see him there no more. He works downa Pomona.’

‘When were you last at the Pomona?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Days ago? Weeks ago?’

‘I go there sometimes. If Mr Yates wants me. I ain’t been there a long time.’

Slider noted the use of the present tense. ‘I understood that Mr Yates had sacked you.’

That produced a reaction. Jonah’s eyes flicked towards Slider, and a sort of spasm clenched his face and his fists for an instant. He seemed to go through some internal struggle before saying, ‘Yeah.’

‘When was that?’

‘Tuesday morning. I finished four o’clock. Mr Yates told me not to come back.’

‘So Mr Yates was at the Pink Parrot?’

‘He come round jus’ before closing.’

‘Was that usual?’

‘He goes round all the clubs.’

‘Every day?’

‘Nah,’ Lafota said scornfully. ‘What jew fink?’

‘Every week?’ Lafota shrugged. ‘So why did he sack you?’ Lafota didn’t seem to be able to answer that. His eyes were fixed on the wall beyond Slider and he was breathing like a karate exponent psyching himself up for a pile of house bricks. ‘Was it for improper dress?’

‘Yeah,’ Lafota said at last, on an exhaled breath. Clearly
resentment was fighting with some other emotion. ‘He said my shirt was dirty.’

‘What did you do then?’

‘I wen’ home, didn’ I?’

‘To your flat in – Star Road? That’s off the North End Road, isn’t it?’ Jonah shrugged. ‘What time did you get there?’

‘Half four maybe.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘Went to bed, man, wha’ fink?

‘Alone?’

Lafota clearly wanted to tell Slider to mind his own business, but an alibi was an alibi. ‘Candy was there. My girlfriend. She been staying wiv me.’

‘And what did you do for the rest of the day?’

‘I got up about half one, messed around, had summing tweat, watched the telly.’

‘What time did you go out?’

‘I never went out, man.’

‘Not at all?’

‘I stopped in. Candy was wiv me. I stopped in and watched telly, went to bed about half eleven, went to sleep. Candy will tell you.’

‘I’m sure she will,’ Slider said politely. ‘And what happened the next day?’

‘I got up about half nine, and Candy and me went over her pad. She got stuff to do. All right?’

‘Did you at any time go to Jay Paloma’s flat?’

Lafota looked contemptuous. ‘I don’ even know where he live, man.’

‘Oh, surely you do.’

‘What is all this, man? Get off my back, right? I don’t know niffing about Jay, ’cept he use’ come down the Parrot an’ he don’t no more.’ He stood up, an effect like a bedside cabinet growing into a double wardrobe before one’s very eyes. ‘I come here, I answer your questions, all right? And now I’m going. You got nothing on me.’

‘I’m afraid we have,’ Slider said. ‘We have your fingerprints, found inside Jay Paloma’s flat, which you say you never visited. So I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to sit down and answer some more questions.’

He didn’t sit down, and Slider felt the hair rise on his scalp for an instant; but he could see Jonah had been shaken. His brows drew together and his eyes dothered as he engaged in frantic thought – wondering what he might have touched, perhaps?

‘I ain’t answering no more questions,’ he declared at last. ‘And I ain’t staying.’

‘Then I’m afraid I shall have to detain you,’ Slider said. He was surprised that Jonah had come voluntarily in the first place. Perhaps he was under orders from Billy Yates. If so, would Yates spring him, or continue to distance himself? It would be interesting to see.

Candy Williams looked both nervous and depressed. She was young – judging by the curve of her cheek and fullness of lip, Norma thought she was probably only about nineteen – and adequately pretty, though her face seemed puffy and her eyes red, despite the thick, disguising makeup, as if she had been crying a lot recently, or alternatively had been on a bender. She moved, Norma noted, with a certain upright inflexibility which did not go with the profession of dancer, table or otherwise. She wore a miniskirt and her long, young legs were bare, but she had on a large, baggy, concealing jumper. She had not seemed surprised when she opened the door to the police. Now she sat with passive docility in another interview room, her eyes moving anxiously from face to face, licking her lips occasionally. She would clearly like to be elsewhere, but just as clearly was under orders to do what had to be done.

‘Your full name is Candy Williams, is that right?’ Norma asked. Easy questions first, to get her relaxed.

‘Clare,’ she said. ‘My real name’s Clare. Candy’s my stage name.’

‘How sweet,’ said Norma. ‘And you’re an actress, I understand?’

‘Yeah, that, and I dance. Model a bit. Whatever.’

‘An all-round entertainer. And you live at Flat Twelve, Waterside Court, Hammersmith?’ A nod. ‘You work for Mr Yates, don’t you?’

She licked her lips. ‘Sometimes.’

‘Your last job was table dancing, at the Manhattan Club in
Clapham?’ Candy did not dissent. ‘Is that how you met Jonah Lafota? At the club?’

‘Not at the Manhattan. I was at the Pink Parrot. Filling in.’

‘Filling in as what?’

‘Waitress,’ Candy said.

‘Topless?’ Candy shrugged. Prostitution was the name of the game, Norma thought, but that was not what they were here for. ‘How long ago was that? When you worked at the Pink Parrot and met Jonah?’

‘About three months.’

‘And you started going out together then?’ Candy looked up for a moment, as if struck by the incongruity of the expression. Norma smiled. ‘That’s when you became his girlfriend,’ she amended. ‘I don’t suppose you had much choice. He’s not someone I’d like to have to say no to.’

Candy’s eyes met Norma’s. Her expression did not change, but contact had been made. We’re all sisters under the skin, said Norma’s smile, and men are all bastards. It’s only a matter of degree. ‘Does he knock you about, Candy?’

‘He’s all right,’ Candy said expressionlessly.

‘He isn’t,’ Norma said. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to give you away to him. Tell me about Tuesday last week. You’d been staying at Jonah’s flat, is that right? Since when?’

‘The weekend. Satdy. I went over Satdy afternoon. He was working Satdy night and Sundy night, but he likes to have me there when he wakes up. So I stopped on.’

‘Were you there on Tuesday morning when he came home from work? And what time was that?’

‘About half past four.’

‘And what did he do?’

‘He come straight to bed.’ All this was easy to her, straight from the script. She answered without hesitation.

‘What time did he get up?’

‘It was about half past twelve when he woke up. I brought him breakfast in bed.’

‘You were already up, then?’

‘Well, I slept in the night, so I got up when he fell asleep.’

‘I see. So you brought him breakfast, what then?’

‘He et it. I got back into bed.’ She shrugged to indicate the reason for that. ‘Then we got up about half one.’

‘And what time did he go out?’

Her eyes moved cautiously. ‘He didn’t go out.’

‘He must have gone out at some point in the evening.’

‘He didn’t. He didn’t go out at all.’

‘But how would you know? You weren’t there the whole time, surely?’

‘We both stopped in. He was with me all evening, all night.’

‘Come on, you must have been out at some point between half past one in the afternoon when you both got up, and half past nine the next morning when you went off to your place. That’s twenty hours.’

The mathematics seemed to upset Candy, and she looked uncertain, but still she said, ‘I was in the flat all that time. And Jonah was with me.’

‘Every minute?’

‘Yeah.’

Norma looked at her consideringly a long time. Candy shifted a little under the gaze, but returned the look defiantly. Norma changed tack. ‘Tell me what you know about Jay Paloma.’

‘I don’t know him,’ she said, easily again, back on script. ‘I never even met him.’

‘But you know who I’m talking about.’

‘It was in the papers. Jonah’s talked about it. He got murdered.’

‘So Jonah knew him?’

‘He worked for Mr Yates. Jonah’s met him a couple of times, I think. He didn’t know him well.’

‘Why did Mr Yates sack Jonah?’

‘I don’t know. He didn’t say.’

‘He was upset about it, wasn’t he?’ Candy hesitated. ‘He must have been furious. Did he take it out on you?’

‘No,’ she said, but absently, as though she was thinking about something else.

‘Candy, I think Jonah had something to do with Jay Paloma’s death. I think he’s told you to say that he was with you, to give him an alibi for when he was at Jay Paloma’s flat. That makes you an accessory. Do you know what that means?’ No reply. ‘It means that when we get enough evidence to charge Jonah, you can be charged with him. And we’re going to get that evidence, believe me. It’s only a matter of time. Jonah’s going down. Surely
you don’t want to go down with him?’ No answer. Candy stared sullenly at her hands. ‘I’ve seen your flat – very swanky. Nice bathroom, nice kitchen. Soft toilet paper. You wouldn’t like it in Holloway, believe me. It’s a dirty, horrible place.’ No response. ‘Help me, Candy. If you tell me the truth, I can help you. You’ll be all right.’