‘What makes you think that?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. But if he wasn’t, why did it all have to be such a secret?’
‘Because her parents wouldn’t have liked her to have a boyfriend?’
‘Oh, I don’t mean secret from them. Obviously it had to be a secret from them,’ she said, shaking her head at his stupidity. ‘But why keep it a secret from me? She didn’t keep Mike a secret from me. Or from Sophy and Chloë. But I don’t think they even knew she had a new boyfriend.’
‘I don’t think they did either,’ Slider said encouragingly. ‘I think you knew Zellah much better than they did.’
‘I was her only real friend,’ she said bleakly, ‘but still she didn’t trust me enough to tell me about him. I wish I knew why. Nothing’s ever so bad if you can understand.’
‘Can you think of anything, anything at all, that she told you about the new boyfriend? Anything that might help us find him.’
Now her gaze sharpened behind the glasses. ‘Why do you want to find him? Do you think he was the one that . . . that killed her?’
‘I don’t know,’ Slider said, glad to be able to fall back on that. ‘But obviously we want to talk to anyone who knew her well, particularly in the last two or three months.’
‘Well, I can’t think of anything she said, apart from what I’ve told you. Mostly she just said how wonderful he was. And how he understood her. She said that a lot.’ She nodded at Slider emphatically. ‘She really thought he was her soul-mate. She didn’t like her parents much. They were always fighting over her. I’ve seen them with her, at parents’ day, and it was true. Everyone says how proud they were of her, but I don’t think they actually really saw her, as a person. They just wanted to own her. For reflected glory. You know,’ she added seriously, ‘I don’t think it could have been the new man that killed her. I mean, she loved him. And I suppose he must have loved her. So why would he?’
For all her intellectual maturity, she was still untried where emotions were concerned. She couldn’t conceive why love might lead to death.
Atherton was still there when Slider got back to the station, sitting on his windowsill.
‘I thought I told you to go home.’
‘With my boss going solo, risking his all out in the wilderness? No way,’ said Atherton. ‘You might have needed rescuing, and who else was going to go out with the barrel of brandy round his neck? Besides, you’ll want to hear this. Connolly?’
Connolly came in from the CID room with a piece of paper in her hand. ‘I got the gen on the car, sir,’ she said. ‘Two-year-old Toyota Corolla, colour sapphire black.’ She looked up from the paper. ‘That’s—’
‘I know what that is, thank you, Constable,’ he said. ‘I had a lecture earlier today from a career TDA artist.’
‘Registered keeper is a Miss Stephanie Barstowe, address 6 Shirland House, Bravington Road, Kensal Town. Bought new on finance from Kensal Motors, Harrow Road – payments all up to date so far. You asked about tickets – there’s half a dozen outstanding, all around London. No other violations. Insurance is with Liverpool Victoria, fully comp, fifty-pound windscreen excess, self and named driver covered. And,’ she looked up here, with an expression of triumph, ‘the named driver is Alexander Markov of the same address.’
Slider sat down behind his desk. ‘Go on.’
‘I got talking to another nurse in the same unit, and they are married, but she uses her maiden name. I suppose that’s because of her career – she’s manager of the intensive-care unit, so she’s a bit of a player. Also, I asked did Stephanie drive the car to work. Apparently she drives in when the weather’s bad, otherwise she cycles.’
‘The weather was fine on Sunday,’ Atherton said.
‘And I did a bit of checking with the management about her shifts. The parking tickets are all at times Stephanie was working. So someone else was driving the car at those times.’
‘You said the car under the railway bridge was a Toyota Corolla,’ Atherton said to Slider. ‘But I’m not sure where you’re going with this, or what made you connect the two. There must be hundreds of Corollas in the area.’
‘Just as there are Focuses,’ Slider replied, ‘but you were happy for it to be Wilding’s.’
‘Well, obviously, because it belongs to someone connected with the victim,’ he said, and stopped abruptly.
‘Sir,’ Connolly said, frowning as she tried to catch up, ‘I thought Markov said Zellah was a lezzer. It said in your notes—’
‘Classic misdirection,’ Slider said.
‘Hey, I said that,’ Atherton protested.
‘About a completely different subject. Markov threw out the suggestion about Zellah in the hope that I wouldn’t make a connection between him, Zellah and sex. He didn’t say she was a lesbian. He said he wondered if she had doubts about her sexuality, as many young girls do. He also told me that he didn’t own a car. And then he said it was hardly worth it in London. And he said his wife cycled to work. Every one of those statements is true. But he didn’t say he never drove a car, though that was the impression he hoped to leave.’
‘Misdirection,’ Connolly said. ‘I see. So you think . . .?’
Slider turned to Atherton. ‘Emily said Carmichael’s account of the last meeting with Zellah was so dumb it could almost be true.’
‘The thing about having two dates?’ he remembered.
‘It was school holidays. She couldn’t use the after-school activity excuse. The sleepover with Sophy and Chloë was her one chance to get in touch with the father of the baby,’ Slider went on. ‘She must have been desperate and terrified by then. Imagine if you were her, having to tell that father you were pregnant.’
‘Yes,’ Atherton said. ‘That would frighten a triple DSO.’
‘She couldn’t ring Markov from home. I don’t know if she tried to ring him from Sophy’s house. Maybe she did, and he wasn’t in, or his wife answered. I suspect she felt she had to see him face to face to tell him – it’s not something you can do over the phone.’
‘So where did Carmichael come into it?’ Atherton asked. ‘Was she really just using him for transport?’
‘I think she thought of him as a friend – someone she could talk to. She must have felt lonely, isolated with her problem.’
‘You got that right,’ Connolly said. ‘Couldn’t talk to her parents. And nobody would confide something like that to Sophy Cooper-Hutchinson.’
‘And I’ve learned enough about Frieda Mossman today to know she wouldn’t have confided in her, either,’ Slider said. ‘Not about that. At least Mike wouldn’t be shocked or disapproving. Probably she hoped to be able to talk to him. But he quickly showed he was just interested in sex,’ he said sadly. ‘So all that was left was to get in touch with Markov. Now, the scenario I’m working on is that she phoned Markov from Mike’s flat – he says she made a phone call. She told him she must see him. They agreed a time and a place – the fairground, ten o’clock. She had time to kill, so she got Mike to take her to the fair, and tried to have a good time.’
‘The condemned man eating a hearty meal?’ Atherton said.
‘Something like that.’ He thought of her going on the rides and screaming, hugging Mike’s arm to her, being a normal girlfriend for the last time in her life. He couldn’t blame her for using Carmichael. Hadn’t he used her? ‘But then she told Mike she was meeting someone else, and naturally enough he didn’t like that and they quarrelled.’