Gone Tomorrow Read Free

rest of his team, bar Hollis and Mackay who were still at the scene, had come in behind him. ‘With no identification on the corpse, we’ve got more work even than usual ahead of us. In fact, I expected to find you all hard at it already,’ he complained.
    ‘We have been. Hive of activity, guv,’ McLaren said smartly. ‘Just waiting for you to get back to see how you wanted it set up.’
    ‘Never mind that Tottenham. When did I ever want it set up any differently? Here’s the Polaroids from the scene. And I shall want a sketch map of the immediate area up on the wall. Get on with it, Leonardo.’
    McLaren stuffed the last of the sandwich in his mouth. ‘Right, guv,’ he said indistinctly. ‘Get you a cuppa first?’
    ‘From the canteen? Yes, all right, might as well. It’ll be a long day.’
    ‘Get me one too, Maurice,’ Anderson said.
    ‘Slice cake with it?’
    Anderson boggled. ‘You what? Turn you stone blind.’
    McLaren shrugged and hurried off.
    Atherton shoved the newspaper into his drawer and unfurled his elegant height to the vertical. ‘He probably thought you meant DiCaprio,’ he observed to Slider.
    The park keeper, Ken Whalley, was in the interview room, his hands wrapped round a mug of tea as if warming them on acold winter’s day. He had a surprisingly pale face for an outdoor worker, pudgy and nondescript, with strangely formless features, as if he had been fashioned by an eager child out of pastry but not yet cooked. Two minutes after turning your back on him it would be impossible to remember what he looked like. Perhaps to give himself some distinction he had grown his fuzzy brown hair down to his collar where it nestled weakly, having let go the top of his head as an unequal struggle.
    He looked desperately upset, which perhaps was not surprising. However un-mangled this particular corpse was, it was one more than most people ever saw in a lifetime, and finding it must have been unsettling.
    Slider, sitting opposite, made himself as unthreatening as possible. ‘So, tell me about this morning. What time did you arrive at the park?’
    Whalley looked up over the rim of the mug like a victim. He had those drooping lower lids, like a bloodhound, that showed the red, which made him look more than ever pathetic. ‘I’ve already told the other bloke all about it,’ he complained. ‘Back at the park. I told the copper first, and then I had to tell that plain-clothes bloke an’ all.’
    ‘I know, it’s a pain the way you’ll have to keep repeating the story,’ Slider sympathised, ‘but I’m afraid that’s the way it goes. This is a murder investigation, you know.’ Whalley flinched at the ‘M’ word and offered no more protest. ‘What time did you arrive?’
    Whalley sighed and yielded. ‘Just before a’pass seven. I’m supposed to open up at a’pass.’
    ‘At the South Africa Road end?’ A nod. And what time did you leave home?’
    He seemed to find this question surprising. At last he said, as if Slider ought to have known, ‘But I only live across the road. I got a flat in Davis House. Goes with the job.’
    ‘I see. All right, when you got there, were the gates open or shut?’
    ‘Shut. They was shut,’ he said quickly.
    ‘And locked? How do you lock them?’
    ‘With a chain and padlock.’
    ‘And were the chain and padlock still in place, and locked?’
    ‘Yeah, course they were,’ Whalley said defensively.
    ‘And what about the Frithville Gardens end?’
    ‘I never went down there. Once I saw that bloke in the playground I just rang you lot, and then I never went nowhere else.’
He looked nervously from Slider to Atherton and back. ‘Look, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I never locked up properly last night.’
    ‘I didn’t say that.’
    ‘Well I did. I done everything right, same as always. It’s not my bleedin’ fault ’e got done!’
    ‘All right, calm down. Nobody’s accusing you of anything,’ Atherton said. ‘We just need