Kremes, but decided in the end it was cruelty to animals. ‘There was nothing like that. Just plain biscuits.’
‘Oh,’ said McLaren, losing interest.
‘So what’s been happening while I’ve been away?’ Atherton asked, looking round at the general busyness. ‘Something come in?’
‘Suspicious death,’ McLaren answered. ‘Looked like a suicide, Renker radioed for Hollis, but now the guv reckons it’s a murder.’
‘I leave you alone for two minutes and look what happens,’ Atherton said, and headed for Slider’s office.
‘Robin Williams! It’s a joke, isn’t it?’ Atherton was perched on Slider’s windowsill. He had a feline ability to look good in positions that would have been awkward for anyone else.
‘Not necessarily,’ Slider said. ‘It’s a common enough name. Fathom’s putting it through records.’
‘Hmm. But I’m thinking that there would have been no need to remove anything that showed his ID if he’d already given his real name to the landlord.’
‘Point.’
‘
If
that’s what happened. Maybe he didn’t have any ID in the flat to begin with.’
‘Why wouldn’t he?’
‘Lots of reasons. Maybe he wasn’t really living there – it was just a base for something, and he had his real home somewhere else.’
‘I’ve thought of that,’ Slider said. ‘But that raises as many questions as it answers.’
‘Oh, more,’ Atherton assured him easily. ‘Far more.’
‘Fat comfort you are,’ said Slider.
‘I’m not here to comfort. I’m here to keep you all on the intellectual straight and narrow. You seem to have got steamed up about very little. Why shouldn’t it be suicide? Just because there were left-hand fingermarks on the razor? Maybe he was ambidextrous.’
‘That’s what Mr Porson said.’
‘Listen to that man. Or he may have switched the razor from his right to his left hand to get at an awkward bit.’
‘Yes, but you don’t, do you? You just turn your head or stretch.’
‘
You
don’t, but someone else might. Look, the way I see it, here’s a man down on his luck, lost his job probably, forced to go and live in a cheap furnished let.’
‘Which he paints and carpet-cleans before he moves in.’
‘Why not? He’s still got a bit of self-respect at that point. And a tin of magnolia and a bottle of detergent doesn’t cost much. But after a couple of months of hopelessly hunting for work, he’s so depressed, can’t see any future for himself, so he gets in the bath and ends it all.’
‘No papers, no wallet, no phone, no credit card,’ Slider pointed out.
‘Papers – got rid of them all when he lost his previous home. You say he looked middle-class-ish? Suppose he’d had a good job, nice home, big mortgage, living it large, then with the downturn he gets sacked, suddenly it all crumbles to dust. He runs up debt, can’t pay the mortgage, home gets repossessed, has to sell all his worldly goods. Burns all the bank statements, letters, bills and what have-you. Ends up on the street with just what he can carry in a suitcase.’
‘Graham upstairs said he looked as though he’d had a tragedy,’ Slider admitted.
‘There you are. As to no wallet, credit card, mobile etc – I refer you to my previous answer.’
‘He had a nice watch.’
‘A man has to tell the time.’
‘But why didn’t he sell it and buy a cheap one? And Ronnie Brown said he saw him come home in a taxi one day. Can’t have been all that broke.’
‘Maybe he’d been pounding the streets looking for a job all day and was so fed up and footsore he thought, soddit, I’m taking a taxi, to hell with the cost.’
‘And what about black-sack man?’
‘Something to do with the naughty boys, probably. Unless it was a figment of an overheated imagination.’
‘You’d explain anything away,’ Slider said sourly.
‘I don’t see why you’re bothered about it, guv,’ Atherton said. ‘No reason at all why it shouldn’t have been a suicide.’
‘You
King Abdullah II, King Abdullah