‘It couldn’t have been like that,’ Slider said. ‘Zellah wasn’t a prostitute.’
‘Unless,’ Connolly said, ‘she was just doing it to sort of get back at her dad. Not the strangling, obviously, but having sex for money. You know, “You don’t trust me so I’ll give you something not to trust”, sort of thing. Not knowing what Ronnie liked to do.’
‘Cutting off her nose to spite her face, you mean?’ Slider said.
Hart said thoughtfully, ‘Yeah. If she’d had a rotten evening and was looking forward to a row with her dad, she might just decide to throw everything over and be as bad as she could for the hell of it. Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, sort o’ style.’
Slider said, ‘Ye–es. It’s a theory. There’s just one tiny snag with it.’
‘Ronnie,’ said Hollis. ‘Even to get back at her old man, would she really come on to Ronnie Oates?’
‘Exactly.’
‘So what d’you think is going on, then, sir?’ Connolly asked.
‘Ronnie’s attention-seeking,’ Slider said. ‘He doesn’t grasp the significance of what he’s doing; he’s just enjoying being a big man and having everyone listen to him.’
‘Not to mention whatever he wants to eat, plus waiter service,’ Hollis added. ‘The trouble is—’
‘It still could have been him,’ Slider concluded. ‘The fact that this present account doesn’t add up doesn’t mean there isn’t another one somewhere that does, that he’s not remembering. We have to get more confirmation, someone who saw something. Connolly, you were on that. Anything?’
‘Not yet, sir. I’m still trying to find out who the snogging couple were. They seem to have been around a lot of the time. And the blue or black car parked under the bridge comes up a bit, but no one remembers the number.’
‘Keep working on it,’ Slider said. ‘Something will come up. Meanwhile—’
‘Meanwhile,’ Atherton interrupted, walking in at that moment, ‘Wilding has flitted again.’
‘Wojjer mean, again?’ Hart said. ‘How can you flit from a flit?’
‘I found the wife’s sister,’ Atherton said, perching on a desk and looking round. ‘No tea for me?’
‘We didn’t know you were coming,’ Hart said. ‘Have a bun and get on with it.’
He took the last remaining Bath bun and began picking the currants out with his long, precise fingers, like a doctor removing buckshot from a bottom. ‘I traced Mrs Wilding’s sister, and rang up to see if they had gone there, which they had. The sister – a Mrs Peachey – sounded nervous and twitchy, so I asked to speak to Mr Wilding, and the next thing, Mrs Wilding came on, distraught. It seems they’d had a huge row about Zellah. Our Pam, having the usual unregulated emotions of the cerebrally challenged, apparently expressed her grief over the loss of her daughter by attacking her husband for having been too strict with the girl all her life. The logic of her position escaping the fond father, he attacked her right back for having persuaded him to let Zellah go to Sophy’s for a sleepover against his better judgement. He said it was her fault Zellah was dead. She responded that, au contraire, if he’d let her have a normal life she’d have known how to take care of herself. Little Pam screamed that he had killed his precious as surely as if he had strangled her himself, upon which he bellowed loud enough to shake the chandeliers, belted her round the side of the head, and rushed from the house shouting that he was going to kill himself. She yelled he should get on with it and do everyone a favour. However, when he didn’t return, she cooled off and started to wonder whether he really meant it, and now she’s in a state of complete meltdown. End of Act Two, audience goes wild, curtain, lights up and ice cream all round.’
‘Them as says it, never does it,’ Hollis suggested.
‘Unless, of course, they are already racked with guilt because they actually did strangle the precious,’ Atherton said. ‘It’s looking better, isn’t it? He was out all night and didn’t tell us; he knew what time the murder happened without our telling him; he had her phone at home – what girl ever goes out without her mobile? – and he did a runner. Now he’s done a runner from a runner.’
‘She didn’t use the mobile after that morning,’ Slider said. ‘We got the records. She phoned Carmichael from it that morning, and that was the last call made. So it’s quite possible she did just leave it behind by mistake.’
Atherton looked pleased. ‘That’s even better. She left it behind. Daddy, creeping about her bedroom trying to catch her out – because I’d bet anything he did snoop around when she wasn’t there – finds it, does last number recall and discovers she’s rung the boyfriend from the sink estate when he’s forbidden her to. He blows a fuse and decides she has to go. Actually,’ he concluded, ‘it’s better if she really did leave the mobile behind.’
Slider couldn’t deny that. Deceit was something that really could enrage a controller like Wilding. He thought of the sketch book, not quite properly concealed under the mattress. Had Wilding found that as well? Had he realized that all the rules he could make wouldn’t stop his little girl from slipping away from him eventually? Had he seen in these successful deceits the inevitable end of the game, where she grew up and left home and he never saw her again? In his passion, rage and grief did he perhaps decide that the only solution was that she must never grow up?
‘We’ll have to find him, that’s certain,’ Slider said. ‘For his own safety if nothing else.’
‘Sceptic!’ Atherton snorted. He discovered he was hungry, having missed lunch, and demolished the denuded bun in three chomps.
‘Did Mrs Wilding have any idea where he might have gone?’
‘She could only think he must have gone home, but she’s been ringing there without getting an answer.’
‘Any other relatives he might have gone to?’
‘I asked that. Wilding was an only child. Mrs W only has the one sister. Parents all dead. A couple of cousins they aren’t close to. And they’ve never really had any friends. Why am I not surprised? Besides, she’s convinced he’s gone to “do something stupid” as she so elegantly puts it, which I gather is either kill himself or someone else.’
‘Who else could he kill?’ Connolly asked. ‘If he’s blaming his wife and she’s blaming him?’
‘Sophy, for leading Zellah astray,’ Atherton suggested. ‘Sophy’s parents for not bringing her up right. Carmichael for trying to corrupt the perfect lily.’
‘We’ve got Carmichael here,’ Mackay pointed out.
‘I don’t suppose Wilding knows that,’ Atherton said. ‘And if my idea about last number recall is right, he might have gone off to slaughter the Goth before doing himself in.’
‘All right,’ Slider said. ‘We’ll ask Basingstoke police to look out for him. Alert Reading police in case he goes to Woodley South estate. We’ll have to have someone watch the house in Violet Street in case he goes home. And we’ll put out a Met-wide alert for him. We’ve got the make and reg number of his car?’ Atherton nodded. ‘All right, get those and a description of him out to every borough.’
‘Wanted for murder?’ McLaren asked eagerly.
‘For questioning.’ Slider still felt a father’s tenderness about suspecting him, however bad things looked. ‘And to stop him committing suicide—’
‘Which would bugger up the investigation,’ Hart concluded.