‘I don’t see what all this is in aid of.’
And sweat there on the boy’s forehead? Certainly looks like it. A sheen. So Verney’s getting somewhere.
‘You don’t see? Well, it’s just that I’m trying to make sure you understand exactly the implications of the message I have in my hand here. You see, it tells me that your prints do not bear sixteen identical points to those we found.’
Palpable relief.
Verney, situation beautifully set up, sprang his trap.
‘What there is mention of, however, is twelve points. Twelve points on one of the prints, and eleven on another.’
It worked.
Alec’s face, till that moment simply expressing moderate confidence, looked abruptly shattered.
‘So tell us …’ Verney said softly.
‘All right, it’s true I was in there. But - but— But not on Monday. It was— It was the Friday before. Truly. It was. You must believe me. It - it was all so damn silly.’
‘Go on.’
Alec gave a tremendous swallow.
‘We - I was down in Sandymount to— Well, to buy some E for the weekend. And - and I just happened to be walking along Percival Road on my way there when the door of that old house - of number twelve opened. And this little old Indian called out to me. “My mouse,” he said. “It’s my mouse. Catch it. Catch it.” Well, he was looking at the path to his gate, and when I looked there was a little white mouse crouching there on the red and black tiles. So, well, I didn’t much want to, but I opened the gate and made a dive for it. And I caught it. Then the old chap told me to bring it in, and I went in with him and there were all those cages with other mice in them. One of them had its door slightly ajar, and the old man asked me to put the mouse in there. And I - well, first of all it escaped again. But I managed to catch it all right, and I got it into the cage, but I knocked the old boy’s specs down behind …’
The oddly convincing story abruptly trailed away.
As much to round it off as anything he put a soft-man’s question.
‘You knocked his spectacles down, and then what? Did you pick them up for him? Or what?’
He got no immediate answer.
‘Well, go on. I mean, you did find them, the specs, I suppose. But then what? Was Professor Unwala grateful? Did he - what? - offer you a drink before you left? Well, no, not a drink. But tea? Or some money? Or what?’
Alec continued to look almost as uneasy as when he had been trying to lie his way out of having been in the house at all. Then he recovered.
‘Oh, yes. Yes, he thanked me. He said— Yes, that’s it. He said “I hope this won’t ever happen again”. Those were his very words.’ Abruptly he looked much happier. And after that I left. So, you see, it was then, on Friday, that I must have put my hands down in lots of places. And that explains those fingerprints. It explains everything.’
They all five sat for some moments in silence. Then Verney turned aside.
‘Mr Benholme,’ he said, ‘you were at the scene when the murder was discovered. Does anything Alec Gaffney here has said conflict with your recollections of the state of things there?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then I think this interview might well be concluded.’
Back to square one. Another post-mortem on an interview. Verney’s office unchanged. Bar three or four sheets of paper now in what had been his empty in-tray.
But Verney not altogether the same. No snarling rebuke as soon as he had closed the door this time. Instead, shoulders slumped, he made straight for the tall leather chair behind the desk and carefully lowered himself into it, as if he was not quite sure it would be there when he left his full weight on the seat.
‘Well, Phil, we made a right cock-up of that.’
He felt a dart of pity for him. Pity for Verney.
‘I wouldn’t say that, sir. Not altogether. After all, we did find out what that damn boy was lying about, and, if we hadn’t, we’d have gone on half-thinking we’d had him in the frame and had had to let him go.’
Verney grunted.
‘I don’t know that I still don’t half-think he ought to be in the frame,’ he said.
‘Well, I know what you mean. I suppose, technically, we haven’t had proof the boy didn’t go back into the house on Monday evening. He was in the area all right. He bloody admitted that earlier. But, all the same, that damn silly story about the mouse, it somehow convinced me.’
‘Tell you the truth, it convinced me, hundred per cent. Well, ninety-nine.’
‘And there’s something else, in fact, sir. Something I’ve just thought of.’
‘Yeah?’
‘The vomit. The vomit found in the corner of the garden at number twelve, almost certainly sicked up there by the murderer as they were getting away, and Forensic said it had whisky in it. At one time, to tell you the truth, I thought its being there added to the possibility my Conor was involved. I could see him puking his guts up if, in a moment of mad rage, he had done that thing and had had a swig of Dutch courage beforehand. But you remember at this morning’s interview, when Alec buying whisky came up, his father said that even the taste of it made him throw up. He was quite vicious about it.’
‘Oh yes, I remember.’
Oh, my God. Does he remember, too, that it was when I put my softly-softly question to Alec about his not being able to take whisky that, bouncing in, he almost lost the boy when we thought we had him? He’ll scarcely listen to me now if he does.
‘Well,’ he said hastily, ‘that makes it hardly possible Alec was the puker. He wouldn’t have been able to keep the whisky in, even if he had taken it to work up his courage. One other indication that we’re right in thinking he’s definitely not in the frame.’
‘All right then, clever clogs, who is in the frame if the Gaffney boy isn’t?’
Some of the old Verney intolerant fire back. He must after all have remembered that cock-up of his.
But, as if in reaction to Verney’s just-suppressed fire, he found he had an answer.
‘Who’s in the frame? Well, sir, how do you fancy Belinda Withrington?’
No answer. No immediate answer.
‘You know, Phil,’ Verney said eventually. ‘I’ve a feeling you may be right. But what’s made you finger her all of a sudden?’
‘I don’t know precisely, sir. I mean, to some extent it was just realizing, I don’t know why, that, though we’ve been saying all along, joking about it even, that this wasn’t a woman’s crime, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be. If the woman had a ruthless streak in her. And if she was physically strong enough to deal out a whacking great thump with that bat. And actually you wouldn’t have to be all that strong.’
‘No, you’re right there, certainly. But go on.’
‘Well, I suppose, in part, it was also young Alec going out of his way so often to blot Belinda from the scene. All those times he said “we” and then hastily changed it. You picked him up on it even, sir. And she was all along just as much there in Sandymount on Monday evening as he was. I reckon our Alec knows she did it, and, what’s more, he’ll know why she went to see the old man. However much he’s wriggled out of saying anything so far.’
‘But you don’t think, after all, he was actually there? If she was, if she did it. If, if, if, Phil.’
‘No. No, I don’t think he can have been there. I mean, if he was, he wouldn’t have produced that story about the mouse. That only took him off the hook eventually because it was so ridiculous it obviously had to be true.’
‘Yes, I’ll go along with you there. And I’ll throw in something more. Two things, in fact. First, the footmark in the garden. Size seven, could well be the girl. Then the whisky. You know, I see them as buying some, not at that corner shop but somewhere less shit-scared of the law. And I reckon it must have been to give her courage, not him. He said in the end she was the one who wanted it. But this is what we’ve got to find out: it was to give her courage for what? To go into the h
ouse, yes. And I’ll bet she left young Alec, too bloody timid to go in himself, keeping watch there in the fog a bit down the road. But why did she go in there? To get money out of the old man, pretty well certainly. But why should she think he’d give it to her? Had she got some hold on him, or what?’
‘Can’t think of any answer to that, sir. Not at this moment. Nor what would have led to a total row and that yell of You black bastard. But, listen, that yell. Mrs Ahmed talked about a boy’s voice. Dare say she couldn’t imagine a girl doing what I’d told her had happened. But an unbroken boy’s voice equals a girl’s voice, certainly from that distance away. Must do.’
‘Fair enough. But that still doesn’t answer the question: why was the girl in there at all?’
‘That old Hampton Hoard notion?’
‘Might be. I suppose it just might be. Can’t say I really go for it though. Bloody unlikely rumour in the first place.’
‘Yes. Can’t say I much like it either, sir. So we seem to be back to this: what could it have been that took the girl into the house - if she did go in - and led on to her snatching up that bat?’
‘That’s for you to find out, my boy. And me to learn.’
‘Sir?’
‘Yes. You to find out, Chief Inspector. Your idea. You get me the proof. You interview Belinda Withrington. Interview her, hard as hard, till she ups and gives us our cough.’
Chapter Nineteen
They fixed on the following day, Sunday, for the interview.
‘You’re right, Phil. Tomorrow. Sunday. Day of rest. All good parents - Withrington a dentist, right? - got nothing better to do than listen to their little darling being put through it by nasty Detective Chief Inspector Benholme.’
Back in his own office beginning to work out how he might tackle Belinda, it occurred to him that there was now time enough to gather some extra ammunition. Verney had reckoned the girl, failing to persuade Mr Patel at the corner shop to sell her any whisky, had got hold of some elsewhere. Knowing just where might be useful.
He picked up his internal phone, rang down to the Incident Room.
‘Sergeant March there?’
‘She is,’ Jumbo Hastings answered, his voice sounding heavy with a wish that she was not.
‘Ask her to come up and see me, would you, Jumbo?’
‘Will do.’
A plain note of satisfaction. March been laying down the law again, evidently.
A knock on the door.
‘Come in. Ah, it’s you, Sergeant.’
‘Yes, sir, it’s me.’
As much as to say You sent for me. I’ve come. Who did you expect it to he?
He took an instant to control himself. She was the way she was, couldn’t help it. Or couldn’t altogether help it.
‘I’ve got a job for you, Sergeant.’
She gave him a look in which he detected a clear trace of contempt. I-know-best March.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘since there’s no Tarts and Toffs party tonight I suppose doing something’s better than sitting on my arse in the Incident Room.’
Oh, God. My cancelling that senseless piss-up still rankling, is it? Well, too bad.
‘Right. Well, you remember when you were making inquiries at the corner shop in Sandymount the black lady there said two of my son’s friends from Harrison Academy had come in and tried to buy a half-bottle of whisky?’
‘I put nothing about that in my report.’
A challenging stare.
Damn. Totally forgotten. She hadn’t mentioned it. She failed to see the possible significance. I’m the one who did that. And she doesn’t know I was hiding round the corner there listening.
So can I say I was now? Doesn’t, as the phrase is, redound to my credit. Eavesdropping. And when I’d been taken off the case, too. Oh, well, come on, admit it. A bit of honesty from me might actually make her think, knock a little intolerance out of her.
‘Quite right, Sergeant. There was nothing in your report. But the fact of the matter is: I happened to be— No. The fact is outside the Incident Room I overheard you saying you’d been told to make inquiries at that shop, and, as my son was involved, I took it on myself to go down there, too. Then, hiding round the corner, I heard the answers you got. Including that minor piece of information.’
So, let’s see her reaction.
‘Did you, sir?’
Couldn’t be more poker-faced. But what she’s saying to me, damn her, is that she’s got something on me now. That she’s one up.
Oh, well, let her be, if it makes her feel any better.
‘Yes, I did, Sergeant. But what I want you to do now is to go down to Sandymount and see if you can find some shop, convenience store, whatever, where those two schoolfriends of Conor’s, Belinda Withrington and Alec Gaffney, did buy whisky last Monday evening. Belinda, for your information, is not quite seventeen but dresses older. She won’t have been wearing Harrison Academy uniform. Blonde, average height, well built.’
‘Busty, is she, sir? Your Conor fancy her?’
Cheeky bitch. Thinks because I’ve shown her a weakness she can take liberties with me. All right, but I’ve got better things to do than play up to that.
‘You could call her busty, yes, Sergeant. But Alec Gaffney may be more easily identified. Tall. Six foot at least. Most probably be would have been in his Harrison clothes. And he’s got a mop of striking red hair.’
‘Then I won’t have much difficulty carrying out my task, will I, sir?’
‘I hope not, Sergeant. If you get it right, you may even have got us a valuable link in our chain of evidence.’
It took March less than two hours. She was efficient, a good detective, no doubt about that.
‘Thought you’d like to know as soon as possible, sir. The two of them bought a half-bottle of Teacher’s at a shop at the corner of Lancelot Road and Arthur Road at approx. five-forty-five last Monday. People in the place weren’t crystal-clear about the time.’
‘Good work. You’ll let me have your report before you go off duty?’
‘Oh, yes, sir. And there’s one other thing.’
‘Yes?’
What’s she keeping tucked up her sleeve now?
‘The girl stepped outside the shop and poured a good part of that half-bottle straight down her throat. The ethnics in the shop were jumping up and down about it.’
He would have liked, just to keep March in her place, to have received that with total matter-of-factness. But he could not stifle his pleasure. So Belinda Withrington had swigged down a lot of Dutch courage shortly before six o’clock on the evening of the murder. First-class lever when it came to the interview.
‘Did she indeed? Well, well, well. You’ve done better than I could have hoped, Sergeant. Good work indeed.’
‘This is Sunday, November sixteenth, nineteen-ninetyfive. The time is—’ He glanced at his watch, checked with the big clock on the interview room wall: ‘1034 hours. Present Belinda Mary Withrington, accompanied by her father, Mr Louis Withrington, and Mr Barham Williams, solicitor. I am Detective Chief Inspector 2307 Phillip Benholme and with me is—’
He gave the nod to Jumbo Hastings, elephantinely overflowing his chair next to him.
‘Detective Sergeant 1017 John Hastings.’
Me, this time, the hard man, Verney’s explicit order. Fatherly old Jumbo, the soft. If a soft man’s needed.
He went into the appropriate cautioning procedure, looking straight across the bare, shiny green surface of the table at Belinda Withrington opposite. Pebble-hard blue eyes returning his look unflinchingly. Bloody innocent English-rose cheeks, their pink and white not fluctuating for a moment. Tight-fitting jeans at present invisible under the table, together with unblemished brilliant white trainers, checked already as almost certainly size seven although too pristine to be the shoes, one of which left an imprint in the mud at twelve Percival Road. Hanging from her shoulders a denim jacket. Under it a very tight T-shirt, its message Peter Andre Makes Me Randy stretched out t
o distortion point.
Poor Conor, he thought for one instant. No wonder his adolescent eye had been drawn that way. As no doubt had that of almost every boy at Harrison.
On Belinda’s left, her father, the dentist all King’s Hampton’s top people went to. Fiftysomething, squat, hirsute, round jowly face already at this hour dark with beard, thick mobile lips, strong glasses on a pudgy, wide-nostrilled nose. Sitting forward in his chair, a powerful tennis player waiting for the first serve.
And on her right Baa-baa, mild in appearance but with eyes missing nothing.
‘Right, now,’ he began. ‘You know, Belinda, that I’m inquiring into the murder of Professor Edul Unwala, on Monday last, at his home at twelve Percival Road, Sandymount.’
He waited for an instant to see if that got some reaction. The bare recital of what she had done, as he had come even in the last few minutes yet more strongly to suspect, would that, put to her flatly, even produce an immediate confession? She is, after all, not much more than a child still. Despite the sexiness.
He might have saved his breath.
Her expression did change. A little. A quick curve of the lips conveyed What’re you telling me all that stuff for? No more.
‘Now, we have reason to believe that you were there in the immediate area at or about the time of the murder. Can you tell me why you were down in that part of the town?’
‘Who says I was?’
So it’s going to be defiance, is it? Right, we’ll see how long that lasts.
‘We have witnesses who saw you.’
‘Did they? And who says they were right? There’s lots of girls look like me, more or less. Could have been almost anyone those witnesses of yours saw, couldn’t it?’
‘No. Because one of them happens to know you very well. And has said quite definitely where you were and when.’
‘Bloody Alec. He may be more ready to give a girl what she needs than your baby Conor. But I’ve begun to think he’s just another wanker.’
The Soft Detective Page 18