‘Very well, very well. But … Well, to hear that the boy’s been in the habit of frequenting that malodorous part of the town… All I can say is he’ll have words from me when this is over.’
Now. Time for my soft intervention.
‘But you are in the habit of going down to Sandymount, Alec,’ he said. ‘That’s true, isn’t it?’
Alec gave his father a quick glance, mingling fear and boyish anger. And then he turned with a look of pure insolence.
‘I’m sure that’s one of the things Mr Williams would tell me I needn’t answer.’
Well, I do seem to have lost my soft-man touch.
Verney, flashing him a quick look of disapproval, leant an inch further towards his victim.
‘And I’ve already told you, lad, what conclusions I draw from clever-dick answers like that. Now, let’s hear the truth. You go down to Sandymount often enough, don’t you? And why do you go there, lad? Eh? Why?’
‘None of your—’
Baa-baa leaping in to save his client from the wrath evidently about to burst on him.
‘Mr Verney, I am within my rights, my rights, to advise Alec here when he should or should not answer questions.’
‘Oh, yes? And I suppose you’ll advise him to answer nothing. Your rights. His rights. And I tell you both again, I’ve got my rights. To think whatever I choose to in the face of tactics of that sort. Now, lad, let’s hear it. Why do you go down to Sandymount?’
‘It’s - it’s— Oh, hell, you might as well know. We’re not the only ones. I - I mean, I’m not the only one. I’m not. The bloody police must know what goes on in the town, I suppose. You must know how many Saturday-night raves there are. And what you take before you go.’
‘Ecstasy,’ Verney snapped in. ‘Oh, yes, lad. We know all about Ecstasy. Where you can get it, how you can get it. So that’s what you’ve been doing, is it?’
And is that, after all, all the stupid boy’s been doing? Is this what all that evasion’s been about? That he was down there, as I did think at one stage, to buy Ecstasy and for no other reason? Have we got it all wrong about the murder? Was this all Conor was trying to shield his mate from?
But Verney had not finished.
‘All right, lad. You were breaking the law. Ecstasy’s a prohibited substance. But—’ A tiger smile. ‘But we won’t bother with that. Not at all. Just so long as you tell us who you were with down there. Who’s this “we”, we’ve been hearing mentioned and then rowed back from? You tell me that.’
Well done him. I’d noted the hesitations and withdrawals, but I hadn’t thought of pursuing them. Not keeping up enough pressure? Could be. And I ought to be pressuring him hard, when I’m sitting here. Even if I never say a word. It’s what’s needed. The looming figure, silently asking. Demanding.
But in any case, I think I know the answer Verney’ll get. I’m sure I do, in fact. It’s Belinda. Belinda Withrington’s been going down to Sandymount with Alec to buy Ecstasy. No doubt about it. But Conor? Was he one of the party? Well, I’d take a bet he wasn’t, or not to go buying Ecstasy. But perhaps I’m about to be proved wrong. What if instead of saying Belinda Withrington Alec now bursts out with Conor Benholme?
‘Mr Williams, do I have to answer that?’
Baa-baa all smiley reassurance.
‘No, not at all, Alec, As I’ve already explained you don’t have to—’
‘Oh, damn it all. Mr Benholme here knows anyhow. His sneaking son, Conor, will have told him. So there’s no point in keeping it secret. OK, it was Belinda Withrington I was there with on Monday. We often go down there. And, yes, make of it what you like, I don’t care, it’s to get hold of a few E’s at the weekends.’
Verney did not bother to look pleased. He gave Alex another of his stony, tank-driver looks.
‘But what about the whisky, lad? Why did you and this Belinda girl want whisky on Monday evening? Why was that, I wonder?’
It was plain that this seemingly inconsequential question had hit a dangerous area. Alec’s face went tense as if it were corded inside.
‘Now, Alec, I want to know. Why exactly were you trying to buy yourself whisky at that shop at the end of Percival Road Last Monday?’
No answer.
‘I asked you why, lad.’
Still no answer. Now Alex was looking down at an imaginary spot of the clear green surface of the table in front of him as if he was determined never to look anywhere else.
‘I’m going to hear your answer, lad. Make no mistake about that. If we sit here till ten o’clock tonight I’m going to hear.’
‘Mr Verney,’ Baa-baa Williams sounded deeply, deeply shocked. ‘Mr Verney, my client, as you well know, is entitled to refreshment from time to time, and to periods of relief. There can be no question of his still being here at ten o’clock this evening.’
‘No, Mr Williams, I’m sure there can’t be. Because your client is going to answer my question. Now.’
And Alec did answer.
‘I was trying to buy some whisky to get my courage up. And that’s the whole truth.’
But I bet he’s only come up with that because that cunning old devil Baa-baa has given him a breathing space. The boy’s pleased with himself now, however much he’s trying to conceal it. So what’ll Verney do now?
‘All right. So you wanted to get your courage up. Just what for, lad?’
The question cracked whip-like.
Look at Alec’s face now. It’d be a comical sight in any other circumstances. But not now. It’s plain to me. By inventing that answer he overstepped the mark and he’s just realized it. He wouldn’t be the first to make a mistake like that under Verney’s pressure.
‘I - I - I just wanted to get my courage up to— Yes, to buy some E.’
Verney was implacable.
‘Oh, yes? That’s what it was, was it? So how does it come about that one moment you’re telling me you go down to Sandymount regularly to get your little supplies, and the next you’re saying you can’t get the courage up to buy any without downing a bottle of whisky?’
Downing a bottle of whisky. Or a half-bottle as Mrs Damberry told me, and I told Verney, briefing him.
But, hey, Alec can’t take whisky. Didn’t his dad say so not ten minutes ago?
He leant forward beside Verney.
‘Alec, that can’t be right, you wanting whisky. It makes you sick, doesn’t it?’
The soft question, softly put.
And this time it worked.
‘Oh God, it was— It was for Belinda, if you must know. She wanted it. But she doesn’t look as old as I do, and so she told me to say I was eighteen and insist on getting it. But… But they wouldn’t let me have it anyhow.’
‘Trying to hide behind a girl now, are we?’
Hard Verney came bouncing in.
Oh, God, the fool. I’d got it out of him, and now he’s banging in saying he doesn’t believe him. We were beginning to get somewhere, I swear it. But now …
‘Oh, damn it, think what you like. I don’t care. You’re just trying to trap me into saying I did something I never did do. Well, go on then, go on. But I won’t give you the satisfaction of hearing another word from me.’
‘Mr Verney,’ Baa-baa put in now, at his smoothest. ‘May I suggest my client has been tried too far?’
Verney’s mouth shut in a grim line.
I do believe he’s seen where he’s gone wrong. The hard man.
And, hard or not, Verney clearly knows when he’s been beaten.
‘Very well, Mr Williams, I think perhaps we’ll take a break now. We’ll resume, shall we say, after lunch. Two o’clock suit you?’
Chapter Seventeen
Verney, as soon as the Gaffneys and Baa-baa Williams had gone, took him into his own office. Big desk, clear but for brass pen tray, empty in-basket, empty out-basket, one red telephone, one black. Looming bookcase filled with bound copies of the Police Gazette. Above them a row of gleamingly polished golf trophies.
&
nbsp; Shutting the door, Verney turned to him.
‘I told you we were to play it the old way. You only opened your mouth on a couple of occasions, and then you made a muck of it. What’s got into you?’
What’s got into me? How can I say to him that only last night I thought my son had committed suicide because I had been too tolerant, and that I resolved I’d keep that weakness of mine in check for ever more? I can’t say that. So what do I say?
‘I did my best, sir.’
‘And a pretty poor best it was. I suppose you were sitting there feeling sorry for that little tyke. So, when we have our next go at him, what line would you, in your wisdom, care to take?’
He thought rapidly.
Let the sarcasm slide over him? Say I leave that to you, sir? But if that little tyke in fact took that cricket bat to old Professor Unwala, then he’s got to be made to admit it. So, tell Verney what I can’t help feeling would do that? Yes or no?
Yes.
‘I don’t like to say this, sir, but it’s my impression the boy’s actually too scared of you to let himself come out with anything at all. Whether all he’s doing is trying to keep that girl, Belinda Withrington, out of trouble, or whether he did kill the old man, either way I’ve got the feeling he’s too dead frightened to say anything.’
‘Too frightened? A nasty little squit like that can’t be made to be too frightened, Mr Benholme. Putting the fear of God in them’s the way to get a cough. As you should know by now.’
A glare.
Then he marched round to the far side of his desk and sat himself in his tall leather chair.
‘Now I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,’ he went on, tilting back as far as the chair would go. ‘You were right about one thing at least. What we’ve got to establish is that the boy was in that room where the murder took place. All right, we’ve no evidence. There wasn’t anything the Fingerprint officer could read, was there? Bookcase well wiped, bolts on the french windows hardly touched. And otherwise a jumble of dabs dating back to God knows when. Yes?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Right then, we’ll take a little liberty and put it to the boy we’ve found some dabs that may’ve been left by the killer. That alone, that word may, could crack him. And, if it doesn’t, we’ll bloody well go on to take his prints, making as much of a business of it as we can. If he goes on holding out on us after that, I’ll keep a close eye on old Baa-baa, but I’ll say something to make the little tick believe we’ve got a match. Then we’ll see.’
Tough tactics. And will they do it? Still, I suppose he could be right. Sometimes tough tactics the only way. That poor long streak of piss, Alec, though. All the same if he is the long streak of piss who hefted up that cricket bat… And I think he is. I think he must be. So …
‘Yes, sir. That’s clever. I reckon it may very well do the trick. Almost for a cert, in fact.’
Verney’s big, red-flushed face showed faint signs of gratification.
‘And what about that runaway lad of yours, Phil?’ he said, with a sudden change of direction. Any news?’
‘Haven’t heard anything, sir.’
‘Well, cooped up with me in the interview room you hardly could. You’d better hop off now and see if anything’s come in. I’ll want you again this afternoon, but let’s hope by then you’ve heard something. Ninety cases out of a hundred you do.’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’
So, under that hard front some thought for others? Pretty well the first time I’ve ever seen it. But nice to find it’s there. If only once in a long while.
There was no news of Conor. Nothing had come in as a result of his messages of the night before. Vicky, when he brought himself to phone her, had heard nothing. He even made a dash for his own deserted house, in the faint hope that Conor might have chosen to go back there. But no Conor, no message on the answerphone, nothing.
He tried to tell himself that no news was good news, and succeeded to the extent of feeling no news was not bad news. And then he forced himself to forget he was the father of a runaway son and remember he was a detective officer of the Barshire police investigating the murder of Edul Unwala, former Nobel Prize winner, aged researcher perhaps on the point of finding an answer to the miseries of Alzheimer’s.
So who, he asked himself back in his own office with a hastily snatched sandwich, did kill the old man? If it was really Alec Gaffney, why? Why had he gone to that house and killed an old, defenceless man? The notion of the Hampton Hoard and Alec trying to get money to buy Ecstasy by finding it was looking more and more unlikely. The boy, apparently, had had no difficulty up to now in getting together enough cash for regular visits to Sandymount. So why at this point should he have urgently needed a lot more? All right, he might have upgraded to something costing a good deal more, but there had been no sign this morning of him having been on anything.
So is Verney wrong? Can’t see myself suggesting that to him, though. Or not yet. Not at least till he’s worked his fingerprints trick.
But if that doesn’t come off? If at the end of the afternoon it’s really clear Alec’s innocent, as innocent as Conor, then who is in the frame? No one. No one with half the case against them as we’ve got against Alec. And, damn it, that’s not all that good.
So, who?
He looked at his watch.
Ten to two. Better get down there. Verney may have had other thoughts, some other make-or-break tactic. And want me to play the softie? Or the hard man?
And the softie I can certainly do without. Being made to think all over again of my mistake with Conor. Conor, gone, lost, down in London, in danger, hungry, without hope.
‘Mr Verney,’ Baa-baa Williams leant forward, with his air of never doing any harm to anyone, ‘before that recording instrument is switched on, may I simply say this? I was very much aware this morning that you were pressing this young lad to the utmost bounds of what is permissible. I trust that, when we are being recorded now, you will not go as far as you did before.’
Stony-faced reception.
‘Mr Williams, I shall do as I think fit. I shall do my duty as I see it.’
‘Very well, perhaps you should activate the recorder. I am beginning to think it’s a pity I didn’t make such remarks as I felt necessary while they were going on record. For a court perhaps to hear.’
Verney, by way of answer, simply leant across and pressed the switch on the machine.
They went through the formal ritual once again. Time, date, persons present, statutory warning recalled.
‘Right, now, Alec. When we finished this morning you were telling me I was trying to trap you into admitting things you had never done. So just what was it you claim you didn’t do?’
No answer.
So, as I’m in the softie shoes, chance here to jump in without committing myself more deeply than I want?
‘For the tape. Alec Gaffney, though a little distressed, appears to have taken in what Detective Superintendent Verney asked him, and he has made no reply.’
Trust Verney likes that.
A half-glance of approval, I think. Let’s see where he goes from here.
‘All right then, lad, let me put it to you quite straight. Did you kill Mr Edul Unwala?’
Clear enough who’s playing the hard man. If playing’s the word. He’s not capable of doing anything much else. But what reaction’s he getting? Alec gone bloody white, that’s for sure.
Christ, this going to be it? So soon? So quickly? The cough?
But at last Alec managed to voice an answer.
‘No. No, no, no. I never killed him. I never touched him. Why should I? What’d he ever done to me? I didn’t even see—’
But apparently he thought he had said enough.
Verney leant across the green-topped table till his heavy-set face was as near as he could get it to Alec’s.
‘And suppose,’ he said, T was to tell you that fingerprint experts have been over and over that room where the old man was kill
ed, and that they have a fine selection of unknown prints on file?’
It looked as if the shot had gone right home. Alec twisted his head from side to side, to Baa-baa Williams, to his father. A hunted animal.
Under the table Verney’s knee gave him an urgent nudge.
He braced himself.
‘Look, Alec, if you’ve got anything to tell us, now is the time, eh? Don’t make it any harder for yourself. We’re on your side, you know, when it comes down to it. We just want to get at the truth.’
He looked unwaveringly at the boy, trying to glow with compassion.
But am I really feeling it? Conveying it? And how is he reacting to me? Jesus, I wish that face of his was some sort of VDU screen, flashing up the thoughts inside. Damn it, I can see some emotion, some bloody strong one, is occupying his whole mind. But I’m buggered, try as I may, if I can get inside that skull of his.
So much for gift of understanding.
So I’ve lost it? Now that I’m striving to be less bloody tolerant, have I lost that prized ability of mine?
God knows.
At last Alec exploded into speech, an indignant screeching denial.
‘I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe you’ve got any stinking fingerprints.’
So, no go. Fighting on.
And what does that outburst mean? Guilty? Guilty, and reduced to hoping against hope? Or is he somehow in the clear? But if he is, he’s still got something to hide. He must have. Why else did he flame up like that? But what? What’s he hiding? Wish I had even a glimmering.
‘Very well, lad,’ Verney said, making his voice ominously smooth. ‘Shall we take your fingerprints? See what we find?’
Glower.
‘Do what the hell you like.’
Verney turned to Harold Gaffney, moulding his face into a semblance of a smile.
‘Mr Gaffney, do you give your consent, as the Appropriate Adult at this interview, to your son’s fingerprints being taken?’
The Soft Detective Page 16