Killing Time by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Read Free Book Online Page A

being run off your feet for keeping your mind off things.’
    ‘Thanks,’ said Slider shortly.
    ‘What is it?’ Joanna asked as he put the phone down.
    ‘A corpus,’ Slider said, pushing Oedipus off his legs and getting out of bed. He turned back to kiss her. ‘I shan’t be back before you go to work. Have a good day.’
    ‘You remember I’m on at the Festival Hall tonight?’
    ‘So you are. Well, I’ll see you when I see you, then.’
    ‘Good luck,’ she called as he headed for the bathroom.
    By the time Slider got there, Busty had been taken away in hysterics, with WPC Asher to lean on, which was one comfort. Hollis was waiting for him.
    ‘I suppose he is dead?’ Slider asked, without hope.
    ‘In spades,’ Hollis said. ‘Hart’s inside.’
    The flats on the White City Estate had all now been modernised to within an inch of their lives, with double glazing, central heating and solid wood doors – the glass panels in the originals having been a gift for felons. But of course no-one locks their door on the mortice when they are at home, and judging by the size and singularity of the footmark on the door, the murderer had been a very large and powerful man, strong enough to kick the door open at the first blow.
    The flat seemed tidy and clean. In the kitchen everything was put away, except for two coffee mugs, a saucepan and a plate with a knife and fork lying on it, which were sitting in the sink. Slider examined the evidence. Scrambled eggs, he concluded. On toast. The bathroom was likewise tidy with hand towels neatly folded and bath towels stretched to dry along the shower rail. The bedrooms were tidy with the duvets straightened on the beds. He could tell which was Busty’s by the collection of cosmetics spread out on the dressing-table, which was largerthan the collection in Jay’s room; and by the brown-and-red silk Noël Coward dressing-gown flung across his bed and the leather mules on the floor by its hem.
    Only in the sitting-room did disorder reign, and even there only in one small area. The television was on with the sound turned low. On screen a bunch of people with demented expressions were talking non-stop over the top of one another, mugging at the camera, and prancing about a set done out with huge cut-outs in primary, not to say dayglo, colours. Someone at TV headquarters had evidently decided that only the brain-damaged and the under-fives watched television at that time of day, and for all Slider knew they could be right.
    An armchair near the television had been turned over backwards, and Jay Paloma lay sprawled half out of it, cruelly illuminated by the bright sunshine from the window. His head had been beaten to crunchy red-and-yellow breakfast cereal. He was wearing a chambray shirt, jeans and moccasin slippers. The front of the shirt was liberally soaked in blood, which was not surprising because his face had been stoved in by a mighty blow across the bridge of the nose. There were no apparent other injuries, and his clothing was not torn or disordered, his shirt still tucked into his trousers and his slippers still on his feet.
    Hart, at Slider’s side, turned her head away quickly, swallowing with a clicking sound.
    ‘Feeling sick?’ Slider asked. She made an affirmative sound. ‘Is this your first time?’
    ‘No, sir, I’ve felt sick before.’
    He gave her points for trying. ‘First murder?’
    ‘Not the first, but the messiest,’ she said.
    ‘You never get used to it,’ he told her from the depth of his own present misery. ‘You just have to learn to keep your stomach detached from your eyes. Now, using your eyes, what do you think happened here?’
    She looked around, grateful to have her attention taken from the corpse. ‘He doesn’t seem to have put up much of a fight. None of the furniture’s out of place, apart from the one chair.’ There was another armchair, placed opposite the first, both of them facing the television on a slant, and between the two,