Free Necrocrip by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Page B

murder and getting yourself taken up for it?’
    ‘He was all we had,’ Slider shrugged.
    ‘That’s exactly what I mean. Not very clever, setting things up with yourself as the only suspect, is it?’
    ‘That’s true,’ Slider said. He smiled. ‘How you do comfort me, Freddie!’
    ‘Can’t have you brooding, old bean,’ Cameron said kindly.
    The ‘maisonette’ in Acton was in fact only the upper floor of a dismal turn-of-the-century terraced cottage which should never have been divided in the first place. The short front garden had been concreted over, and the concrete was stained and cracked, sprouting tufts of depressed-looking grass and a few defiant dandelions. The front gate and most of the front wall were missing, and there were only stumps in the ground where the railings that had once divided it from next door had been sawn off, probably during one of the scrap-iron-for-victory drives of the Second World War.
    The bricks of the front elevation were blackened with the soot of ages, the paint was peeling off the window frames, and the battered front door had been painted in that one shade of blue which evokes no emotional response at all in the human soul, and which presumably goes on being produced by paint manufacturers through sheer force of habit. Slider trod carefully up the uneven path and rang the bell, setting off a fusillade of barks from somewhere inside.
    The occupants of the lower floor were at home. Inside the street door was a tiny hall, about three feet square, with a door straight ahead – across the stairs, of course –and another to the left, leading directly into what had been the best parlour of the original house. Slider was invited in with an eagerness which suggested their lives were yawningly lacking in incident. They sat him down on a sagging sofa upholstered in much-stained orange-and-brown synthetic tweed, pulled the dog off him, and offered him tea.
    The room smelled of old tobacco and old carpets and damp and dog. As well as the sofa there were two equally repulsive armchairs, a coffee table decorated with overflowing ashtrays, a large television set, and a clothes horse on which a wash was drying – a faded blue tee-shirt and a vast quantity of grey underwear. Perhaps to help thedrying process, the two-bar electric fire was on, making the room stiflingly warm and bringing out the full, ripe bouquet of the various smells. On the television Michael Fish was demonstrating the action of an occluded front, and from another room came the sound of disc-jockey babble from a radio. The dog, denied the sexual gratification of Slider’s leg, walked round in short circles by the door, barking monotonously.
    ‘It’s about Peter upstairs, is it?’
    ‘Do you take milk and sugar?’
    ‘ … some bits and pieces of rain, working their way slowly across central areas …’
    ‘No, no tea, thank you.’
    ‘D’you smoke at all? Chuck us the fags, Bet. Ta, love.’
    ‘… tending pretty much to fizzle out, really, by the time …’
    ‘Shut up, Shane! Ooh, can’t you put him out in the kitchen, Garry?’
    ‘Sorry about this, he gets a bit excited. C’mere you stupid bastard!’
    ‘ … not nearly as much as is needed, I’m afraid, particularly in the south east…’
    ‘I could make you coffee instead, if you like?’
    The dog suddenly hairpinned itself and sank its teeth into an itch at the root of its tail.
    ‘No, really, thank you, not for me,’ Slider said into the decibel vacuum. ‘I had a cup just before I came out. I wonder if you’d mind turning the television off, just while we talk?’
    They looked at each other a little blankly, as though the request had come out of left field, barely comprehensible.
    ‘I’ll turn it down,’ Garry said at last, coming to a management decision.
    ‘Only it’s
Neighbours
in a minute,’ Bet added anxiously.
    The dog finished with its tail and resumed barking, standing still now and staring at the ceiling in a way that suggested