Free Dear Departed by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

investigate any particular murder. ‘As we know, the SCG’s lost most of its men and they’re struggling under a backlash of work. So there wasn’t much chance of them taking on the case. On the other hand, Mr Palfreyman wasn’t happy about leaving us to pedal our own Canute, so his idea was to form a new temporary dedicated Park Killer squad with some of us and some of Ealing’s boys and girls, under his own personal regis.’
    Slider looked his horror at the idea. Porson was so moved at the thought of it that he bent the ruler too far and one end slipped from his grasp. It flew whirling across the room like a rogue helicopter blade, hit the wall and fell with a clatter. Porson hardly flinched.
    ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘so it’s not bad at all if we can tell him convincively that it
wasn’t
the Park Killer, you see.’
    Slider saw. The special squad was a mind-watering idea, and given that it was Palfreyman’s brainchild, which he had presumably seen as a path to glory, he wasn’t going to be happy about giving it up.
    ‘I’m satisfied in my own mind it wasn’t,’ he said firmly.
    ‘So am I,’ said Porson. ‘The Park Killer’s a stab-and-go raging nutter. He’s not going to pussyfoot about with narcrotics, hang about having a fag while he waits for his victim to lie down for a kip. You can’t teach an old leopard new stripes. So I think you can take it as read that we’ll be keeping this one at home, Slider. I’ll say what needs to be said to Mr Palfreyman.’
    ‘Yes, sir,’ Slider said. And, ‘Thank you.’
    Porson raised his eyebrows, and his deeply sunken eyes took the opportunity to flash fire. ‘I don’t know what you’re thanking me for. You don’t know yet what sort of a case this is going to be. It could turn out to be a sticker, and all eyes are going to be on you now to pull the chestnuts out of the fan in double-quick time.’
    ‘All eyes’ meaning Mr Palfreyman’s, Slider thought. Well, he’d been threatened with top-brass disapproval all his career. ‘I can live with that, sir,’ he said. ‘By the way, did you have a chance to ask about extra help?’
    ‘Yes, I did. They’re sending someone over this morning who’s been on a roving brief, so they’re more or less spare.’
    ‘Roving brief?’
    ‘Some diversity programme follow-up survey,’ Porson said, with an absolute absence of expression. These were dangerous waters, Watson.
    ‘Oh,’ said Slider.
    ‘Only one body,’ Porson went on, ‘but it’s better than nothing.’
    ‘Right, sir,’ said Slider. He hoped it would prove so. Some young go-getter who’d stepped straight from Hendon into a political-statistical job might well prove to be more of a liability than otherwise.
    ‘So we have a whole new game on, boys and girls,’ Slider addressed the troops, who were slumped over their tables in attitudes that would have made a chiropractor weep. Hollis was removing relevant stuff, now become irrelevant, about the Park Killer from the whiteboard. Atherton was writing up his report on the information he’d got from Marion Davies. Swilley was in a corner talking quietly to the coroner’s officer, a new man who’d never met her before, who looked as though he couldn’t believe his luck and was right about that. McLaren was bracing himself for the rigours of the day by eating Toast Topper straight from the tin with a plastic spoon, using his left hand to alternate mouthfuls from a small box of microwave chips. Slider wished he could get rid of that microwave oven, but its use was probably guaranteed under the Geneva Convention, not to say EU employment law.
    He continued. ‘It’s back to basics, find out everything we can about deceased, who had a grudge against her, who had a reason to kill her.’
    ‘It still could be a random killing, though, couldn’t it?’ Mackay called.
    ‘It could,’ Slider said fairly, ‘but I think it’s unlikely.’
    ‘Only, it’s a funny sort of way to off someone if you know