‘Yes. He rang me here yesterday morning.’ Good Lord, was it only yesterday? ‘He’s talking about selling the house.’
‘Yes, he said something about it when I was over there on Monday.’ She hesitated. ‘Reading between the lines, I think he’d like to move nearer to us.’
Slider sighed. ‘I wish he could, but London prices being what they are . . .’
‘I know.’
‘I worry about him.’
‘I know. But he can look after himself. He’s a big boy. And talking of big boys . . .’ Through the windows on to the CID room, she had seen that Atherton had come purposefully in and was heading towards the communicating door. ‘Let me have him. I’ll get out of your hair.’ She took the baby back, shouldered her bag, and pecked her husband on the cheek in passing. ‘I’ll leave something out for you to heat up, in case you’re hungry when you get home.’
‘Have a good concert. Drive carefully,’ Slider said.
She departed through the door to the corridor, George watching his father over her shoulder with a slightly disconcerted air, and reaching out for him in farewell with the damp rusk. ‘Bloo,’ he said.
Atherton came in at the other door, unaware that his big entrance had been upstaged by one of the world’s great exits, and said, ‘Wilding’s flitted. That’s one for my side!’
‘It’s not exactly flitting, is it?’ Slider said, perched on Atherton’s desk for a change. ‘They were under siege from the media, angry and distressed. When I saw him on Wednesday he complained they were prisoners in their own home. They’d probably just had enough.’
‘It’d drive anyone mental,’ said Connolly.
‘Ah, but wait till I tell you what the neighbours had to say,’ said Atherton, and gave him a summary of the Barretts’ evidence. ‘Now, leaving aside all prejudice for bad neighbourly relations, Wilding was out in his car on the night Zellah died, and didn’t tell us. When I interviewed him he said he was working in his shed all evening until quite late and then went to bed.’
‘Yes,’ said Slider. ‘That is a point. And if it’s true that he often slipped out without his wife’s knowing . . .’
‘It puts things in a different perspective.’
‘Yeah. Wandering about at night—’ Mackay began.
‘Driving,’ Connolly corrected him.
‘I was gonna say,’ he went on, giving her a look, ‘he’s probably down Paddington picking up tarts. He’s a kerb-crawler.’
‘Why does it have to be something to do with sex?’ she objected.
‘It always is,’ said Mackay with some justification. ‘I mean, what else would he bother to hide from his wife? He’s got some sex-habit he needs catered for.’
‘S and M, most likely,’ Fathom agreed. ‘He looks the type. He’s out nights finding a Miss Whiplash to give him correction.’
‘He’s a pillar of society,’ Connolly said.
‘They’re the worst,’ said Mackay confidently. ‘All pious and holy when anyone’s looking, then creeping out at night murdering prostitutes. Look at Reg Christie.’
‘We’re not talking about murdered prostitutes,’ Slider reminded him. ‘However, in fairness to the “here comes a churchgoer, let’s chuck a brick at him” brigade I seem to be fostering in my midst, it does make you wonder whether his repression of his daughter was ever taken any further.’
‘I wondered about that,’ Atherton said. ‘I asked the neighbours if he ever knocked his wife and daughter about, but they only said they’d heard him shouting at them. And if I was married to Mrs Wilding I’d probably shout. But they obviously don’t know what went on inside the house.’
‘And neither, I suppose, will anyone,’ Slider said. ‘That’s the problem with a family that never lets anyone else in. He could have been abusing her, but if he was, I’d imagine it was only the psychological sort of abuse.’
‘Only?’ Atherton queried, with a pained air.
‘You know what I mean. Physically abused children tend to be too quiet and don’t do well at school. They’re not described as live wires by their friends. They don’t go to ballet classes and extra-curricular drawing and shine at lessons.’
‘But then,’ Mackay said, ‘what was Wilding doing out in his car on the night Zellah was murdered, and why didn’t he tell us about it?’
‘Following her,’ Atherton said. ‘That’s my bet. If the old bat next door is right, he left not long after her. He was following her to see what she got up to when she was out of his sight. And I would be surprised if he hadn’t done it before.’
Slider nodded unwillingly. ‘It is suggestive. He obviously liked to keep a high level of control over her. And Mrs Wilding said he was very against her staying over at a friend’s house. Perhaps he wanted to make sure that was where she was going to sleep.’
‘Suspicious brute,’ Atherton said.
‘The question is, how long did he follow her, how much did he witness, and what, if anything, did he do about it?’
‘Say he followed her to the Black Lion an’ saw her go off with Mike Carmichael, when he’d forbidden her to see him again,’ Connolly said.
‘And he went mad with rage,’ Fathom went on, ‘and decided to punish her.’
‘You don’t punish someone by strangling them,’ Slider said. ‘Strangling is always intended to kill.’
‘Perhaps,’ Atherton said – and the tone of his voice told Slider that he wasn’t happy thinking this – ‘he decided she was so far gone in sin it was the only way to save her soul.’
Slider wasn’t happy thinking it, either, because there was something about Wilding’s towering person and character that made it seem plausible. Each man kills the thing he loves – and who had loved Zellah more? ‘There’s still the problem of the tights,’ he said.
‘As I said before, there must be lots of pairs around at home,’ said Atherton.
‘But if he went home to get a pair,’ Slider said, ‘how did he know where she would be? And in any case, why would a man in a homicidal rage bother, when he’s got a pair of large, strong hands at the end of his arms?’
There was a little silence. The hands came before Atherton’s mind’s eye, strong and grimy with a workman’s little nicks and scratches. Had he got those from carpentry? But it was true, he wouldn’t need to go and fetch a pair of tights. ‘Unless,’ he said slowly, ‘he’d already had enough evidence that she was going to hell in a hand basket, and he took the tights along with him in case execution proved necessary. In which case it wasn’t just spur-of-the-moment homicidal rage.’
‘In which case,’ Mackay agreed, ‘he’s seriously bonkers.’
‘It’s a lot of suppositions,’ Slider said. ‘But there are certainly important questions to ask him. The trouble is, we don’t know where he is, do we?’
‘The old bat next door said they’d probably gone to his wife’s sister’s,’ Atherton said, ‘so we’ll start by trying to find her.’
‘How?’
‘Bit of this, bit of that,’ Atherton said airily. ‘The wonders of the internet, plus the Wildings’ address book. Leave it to me.’
‘That’s what I was thinking of doing. But make it quick, wonder-fingers. If – and it’s only an if, but all the same – if Wilding did kill Zellah, he’s dangerously deranged, and his wife could be the next target.’
‘If it had been me,’ Atherton said, departing, ‘she’d have been way up the list.’
Meanwhile, Slider went to see Porson.
The new Wilding development caused the Syrup’s massive eyebrows to hurtle together above his nose as if for comfort. ‘This is not good,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it. A man driving secretly round the streets at night, and not telling us. And then flitting. He’s got something to hide, all right.’