Shallow Grave (12 page)

‘Thanks, but best friends notoriously don’t tell. Better to rely on one’s wife for brutal frankness. I’ll be in touch when the lab report comes back. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’

‘Oh – and, Bill?’

‘Hello?’

‘Go home, there’s a good chap. It’s after seven.’

The flat was empty when he got back: Joanna was away overnight, doing a concert in Swansea, from which it was not practicable to drive home to sleep. Or, at least, Joanna didn’t think it was. Some musicians, he knew, drove back and pocketed the ‘overnight’ allowance, but Joanna said, ‘I’d sooner relax, wind down and go for a drink after a concert than hammer down the M4. And I should have thought as a policeman you wouldn’t want me to drive all that way when I’m exhausted,’ so after that there was nothing more he could say. And she was right, of course. He’d got to the ridiculous stage of worrying about her whenever she was out of his sight, particularly when she had a long drive to do, which was often. She was an excellent driver, he knew, but it wasn’t the excellent drivers who caused the accidents.

She was right to stay away; but still he felt rather pathetic and hard-done-by, coming home to an empty house after a
hard day at work. Where was the warm greeting, the nicely adjusted bath-water, the ‘supper in half an hour, darling’ that a man ought to have the right to expect? Joanna wouldn’t be alone this evening. After the concert she would go for a drink – or more likely several – at the hotel where they were all staying. He expected it would turn into quite a late session, since she was more inclined to hang around with the brass players than anyone in the string section, and everyone knew brass players were boozers. Joanna didn’t much like other violinists – tea-drinkers, she called them – and he put it down to her having been corrupted early in her career by that trumpet player she used to go out with, Geoffrey whatever-his-name-was. Geoffrey! What kind of name was that for a grown man? he asked, with savage illogic. Then there was Martin Cutts, the man they called Measles, because every girl had to have him at some point. And that big trombone player with the beard who always put his arm round Joanna’s waist when he was talking to her … Slider would not allow himself to think about what else brass players had the reputation for being besides boozers. As Joanna had said, in her limpid way, ‘You either trust me or you don’t’; and, of course, it wasn’t that he didn’t trust her. He did, completely. Absolutely. But you couldn’t expect hormones to be logical, and his hormones had a vivid imagination and no sense of proportion whatsoever.

He stumped off to get himself a large malt – Aberfeldy, he decided, since he needed soothing – and went with it in his hand to look in the fridge. There was salady stuff, he saw with deep indifference: salad was not what he wanted, when he’d had nothing all day but McLaren’s spare sandwich. Salad! Rabbit fodder! Well, what did he expect? Hot food didn’t spring into existence, like Athene out of Zeus’s head, just because he thought about it. For a moment he contemplated cooking himself something, but the silent emptiness of the flat was striking lethargy deep into his bones, and after a moment he took out the cheese box instead. Too far gone even to make himself a sandwich, he cut some thick wedges of Cheddar and put them on a plate with some oatcakes; hesitated, and added a chilly tomato (Dutch! In the middle of summer!) that he knew even then he would leave.

He was half-way to the sofa when he remembered he hadn’t
turned off the answering-machine and, dumping his plate and glass, went back into the hall. The little red light was blinking away like a contact-lens wearer in a sandstorm. He pressed Replay. There were several messages about work for Joanna, one irritatingly casual, ‘Hi Jojo, it’s Ted Bundy, give me a ring, okay? Chiz!’ (Jojo? Who the hell was Ted Bundy? And why did he assume she knew his number? He hated people who said cheers instead of goodbye.) And then a click and one for him.

‘Hello, Mr Slider, it’s Yvonne here from Ralph Easterman.’

That was the estate agent to whom he’d transferred the ex-marital home in Ruislip, after the original two had failed to shift it. She went on, sounding annoyed, ‘You seem to have made some new arrangements. Um, it would have been helpful if you could have let me know, because actually I did take someone round there this afternoon, and it was a bit embarrassing. So, um, could you give me a ring, please, and confirm whether you are taking the house off the market or not? Thanks very much. ’Bye.’

That was all. Slider stood a moment, frowning, while his magnificent analytical brain went to work on it. Then he picked up the receiver and, with a peculiar sensation of unfamiliar familiarity, tapped in what for so many years had been his home number.

Irene answered. She had always been one of those annoying people who answer the phone properly, with the full number, as specified in the
GPO-Debrett Book of Telephone Etiquette,
1965 edition; but this time she just said, ‘Hello?’ in the uncertain tone of someone who has arrived by appointment at night at a lonely house on the moors and found the windows dark and the front door standing open.

‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘What are you doing there?’

She didn’t speak at once, and he heard in the background the sound of the television on loudly in the sitting room, with the peevishly upraised voices of some soap-opera characters being unpleasant to each other. Suddenly and painfully he was back there in the cramped little hall with its smell of incipient food, glimpsing through the open door the children sitting on the floor gaping at one of the early-evening banalities, in which there was always someone with their hands on their hips saying aggressively, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ His children, his
home, his wife: the encrusted habit of so many years which, however little pleasurable it had been at the time, was so very hard ever afterwards to scrape off the old hull.

Then Irene said tautly, ‘Wait while I shut the door.’ Clatter of the receiver being put down; click of the sitting room door being shut, and the soap stars were cut off in mid plaint. Then Irene was back, with an air of speaking without moving her lips. ‘I didn’t want the children to hear.’

Why? he wondered. Had he become an indecent secret? But he had a more urgent question. ‘The estate agent left me a message on the answer-machine—’

‘Yes, she was round here today. She wanted to show someone round. I told her the house wasn’t for sale any more.’

‘You did what?
Why?
What are you doing there, anyway?’

‘Why shouldn’t I be here if I want to?’

‘Irene!’ he said, exasperated. ‘Are you saying you’ve moved back in?’

‘Brain of Britain,’ she said disparagingly.

It was a bit of a blow. ‘You might at least have told me.’

‘Why should I? It’s my home, isn’t it?’

‘Is this permanent?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. Any objections?’

‘Well, yes, as it happens! It may be your home, but it’s not his. I’m damned if I’m going to subsidise Ernie Newman. What’s happened, anyway? Has he lost all his money on the horses or something?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Irene said icily. ‘Ernie isn’t here. Do you really think I’d—?’

‘What, d’you mean you’ve left him? You’ve split up?’

She paused, selecting her words. ‘Ernie and I aren’t living together any more.’

My God! What did he feel about that? Vindication – he’d always known it wouldn’t work. Triumph – the smug, boring prick that his wife had preferred to him had lost after all. Dismay – Irene without Ernie became his responsibility again. Fear – what was she going to demand of him in these new circumstances, and how was he going to cope? And also – and not least – horrible, embarrassed sympathy for Irene herself, because whosever choice this was, it must be humiliating for her.

‘So it didn’t work out, then?’ he heard himself say, and his voice sounded definitely peculiar.

‘I didn’t say that.’ She sounded strange too. ‘It’s just that, for the time being, at least, we’re going to have separate homes.’

‘There’s something going on here,’ he said suspiciously. ‘I know you. You’ve got that tone of voice when you’ve done something you know you shouldn’t – like when you bought the conservatory furniture without asking me. Marilyn Cripps was behind that, as I remember. I bet you’ve been talking to her.’

‘Oh, you love to play the great detective, don’t you? You think you’re so clever!’ She was trying to sound scornful, but there was a quiver of defiance in it.

‘What’s that bossy bitch up to now? Why has she turned you against Ernie?’

‘Don’t you call my friend a bitch! She hasn’t done anything of the sort. And what do you care about Ernie all of a sudden? You’ve never done anything but sneer at him, when he’s never done anything to you—’

‘Apart from waltz off with my wife, you mean?’ He knew as he said it that it was a mistake but he couldn’t stop himself in time. The trouble with these marital rows was that the script was all engraved on the brain from years of television, and lumps of it tended to come out of their own volition.

Irene was furious. ‘
Your
wife? Pity you didn’t think a bit more about
your
wife when you started messing around with that dirty little cow you’re shacked up with! I told you I’d make you damn well pay, and I will!’

‘Marilyn is behind this,’ he concluded.

‘She gave me some good advice, simply because she has my welfare at heart – unlike some people!’

‘She told you to move back in?’

‘Yes. So that I can take you for every penny you’ve got!’

He tried to assemble the words so that she would hear them. ‘Irene, it doesn’t work like that any more. Divorce is all no-fault, these days – didn’t your solicitor explain that to you?’ A suspicion took hold of him. ‘You have spoken to a solicitor, haven’t you?’

There was a tell-tale pause. ‘I don’t need to. Marilyn knows all about it. She’s got a friend who’s a solicitor who deals
with divorce all the time. She practically does nothing else but divorce, this friend. So Marilyn’s quite well able to advise me, thank you.’

A huge tired sadness overwhelmed him, so that he couldn’t even be angry. Irene was such a plonker when it came to people with big houses and Range Rovers.
‘Please
listen to me,’ he said. ‘They don’t take fault into account any more. Unless there are special circumstances, they always end up dividing everything fifty-fifty. Including the house – which means selling it, so that the proceeds can be split. The courts won’t automatically give you the house, like in the old days, just because you’re living in it. And they won’t automatically expect me to go on paying the mortgage.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said stonily. ‘Why should I believe you?’

‘You don’t have to take my word for it,’ he said. ‘Any solicitor will tell you. But it would be so much better if you and I came to an amicable arrangement first. Look,’ he said gently, ‘do you really not want to live with Ernie?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I want.’ Her voice broke, and she was obviously close to tears. Behind her he heard the television grow suddenly loud, and she said sharply, away from the receiver, ‘Go back in and shut the door.’

‘Is it Daddy?’ he heard Matthew’s voice ask wistfully, and his heart lurched painfully. ‘Can I talk to him?’

‘Go back in, Matthew, I want to be private. Go on! It isn’t Daddy, it’s – a friend.’

There was a pause, during which he could imagine Matthew accepting what he knew was a lie, and turning away, obedient but hurt. Then the sitting room door shut again.

Irene said, ‘I must go. I can’t talk about this now.’

‘We must talk about it some time,’ Slider said.

‘Oh, that’s big, coming from you, isn’t it?’ she said resentfully.

‘Please, Irene, don’t let’s quarrel.’

‘I can’t talk now,’ she said again. He could tell she was trying not to cry. ‘Don’t call me – not here. I don’t want the children upset. I’ll call you.’ And she snapped the phone down.

Slider put his end down too, and stared at it unhappily for a moment, reflecting that it did things to a man to know that
whenever he spoke to a woman he was going to leave her in tears. He went off in search of his whisky. What a time for Joanna not to be here! He needed more comfort than alcohol, even a glass of the good stuff, could give him.

Nobody loves an estate agent, but David Meacher was a handsome, well-groomed man in his late forties. His suit was beautiful, his shirt and shoes exquisite, his silk tie daring without being vulgar, his hair thick and glossy, his face firm and alert and lightly tanned. He was on his way out of the Chiswick office door and held a poser-phone in one well-manicured hand, and in the other a car key whose leather fob bore the Aston Martin badge. Slider hated him instantly and effortlessly.

‘Hello,’ Meacher said, in a cultured, well-modulated voice, and smiled a professional smile. ‘Do come in.’ He stepped back into the shop again and held the door open for Slider, but with the poised look of a bird about to take to the air. ‘Can I leave you in Caroline’s capable hands?’ he asked rhetorically, gesturing towards the very young, very fair, very nervous-looking girl behind one of the desks.

‘I don’t think so,’ Slider said. ‘Are you David Meacher? I’m Detective Inspector Slider of Shepherd’s Bush CID. I’d like a word with you, if I may.’