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sentence hang for him.
    ‘Yes, I see.’ He was getting a very clear picture of Mr Richard Neal, the Rep with the Quick Dick and the All-England capacity. ‘So there was nothing unusual in his telling you he was going to meet an old friend on Saturday?’
    She shook her head. ‘Except that he wouldn’t say who it was. Even when I asked him.’ She met his eyes urgently. ‘They’re saying he was killed in a hotel fire – is that true?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Atherton. He could see her thinking.
    ‘But if it was just a fire, just an accident, you wouldn’t be asking all these questions, would you? You think it was deliberate? That someone started it deliberately?’
    ‘We don’t know yet. Let’s say there were suspicious circumstances.’
    ‘What circumstances?’
    ‘I’m not at liberty to tell you.’
    She stared, thinking hard. ‘This man he was meeting—?’
    ‘If you think of anything, anything at all, that might help us to find out who he is, it would be very helpful. We know Mr Neal didn’t go to Bradford, but we don’t know where he did go. It’s possible he said something to this friend of his.’
    She shook her head slowly. ‘I can’t think of anything. Butit must have been an accident. It must have been. Nobody would want to hurt Dick. Everyone liked him. He had friends everywhere. Everyone liked him.’
    Apart from his predilection for getting drunk, and nibbling on forbidden sweetmeats, Atherton thought, he seemed to have been a regular little Postman Pat. Mr Popularity. If only I could have got on with people like that, I might have been a Commissioner by now – or dead, of course.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Talk to the Animals
    JUST BEFORE THE UNIFORM SHIFT change at two o’clock, D’Arblay appeared politely in Slider’s office.
    ‘Sir – could I have a word?’
    ‘Yes, of course.’ Slider liked D’Arblay. There was a pleasant modesty about him, though he must have been tough enough underneath, having survived his first six years in the criminal hothouse of Central. ‘What is it?’
    He seemed hesitant. ‘Well, sir, the Skipper said I should mention it to you, though I didn’t want to presume.’
    ‘Presume?’ Slider savoured the word. It was like something Joanna would say.
    D’Arblay looked uncomfortable. ‘I didn’t want it to look as if I was trying to tell you your job, sir.’
    Slider smiled. ‘Relax, lad. What’s on your mind?’
    ‘Well, sir, as the motel fire was on Sunday night, I wondered if you’d thought of asking Mrs Mason if she saw anything?’
    ‘Mrs Mason?’
    ‘Elsie Mason, the old bag lady, sir.’
    ‘Oh, Very Little Else, you mean. I never knew she had a surname.’
    ‘Yes sir,’ D’Arblay said seriously. ‘I always call her by it – she seems to like the bit of formality.’
    They taught them that in Central, Slider remembered. It sometimes paid off, especially if some really scuzzy wino was shaping up to give you trouble, to address them with formal politeness. A kind of benign shock treatment. Notthat Very Little Else came into that category, of course.
    ‘She’s around that area on Sundays, is she?’
    ‘Yes sir. She walks along Goldhawk Road and Askew Road on a Sunday. I didn’t actually see her at the fire, but she’d be bound to have gone there once she heard the sirens – she’s very curious about anything on her ground.’
    ‘How reliable is she? I haven’t spoken to her for quite a time.’
    ‘Her memory’s sound enough, sir. She acts a bit dotty, but she knows what’s going on.’ He looked at Slider hopefully.
    ‘I see. Well, you did quite right to mention it.’
    ‘Thank you, sir. But it was the Skipper said I should come and see you.’
    Sergeant Paxman was not one to poach another man’s credit. D’Arblay had had a good thought, and he’d let him run with it; and D’Arblay was handing the credit straight back to his skipper. It was touching about those two.
    In fact, Slider had forgotten Very Little Else. She was one of the