by Mike Crowson
* * *
Rosie O'Connor let them into a flat that had been tidied up somewhat. She'd washed up, done the ironing and vacuumed the carpet and the mail had either been answered or, at the very least, tidied away. Rosie had tidied herself up as well. She was wearing a crisp looking blouse and clean jeans. Lucy looked her over and decided she had quite a nice figure too.
"Now," Millicent said. "You told Detective Sergeant Turner that you didn't speak to Simon Hunter on Friday the tenth."
"I didn't actually. She asked me whether I rang Simon. I said I didn't, which is true. He phoned me."
"You're splitting hairs. You could have told us you spoke to him."
"Look," Rosie said. "This has been a pretty dismal two years. I dried out in a clinic and then lost my job ..." She paused, looking near to tears. "And here I was, still making a fool of myself over this man. Surely you don't wonder that I don't want to let you know how stupid I was, if I could avoid it."
"Somebody murdered Hunter by giving him an overdose of morphine. I don't think you realise how potentially dangerous your position is."
Rosie smiled wanly. "It's probably a good thing for me that someone did kill him or I'd still be making a fool of myself. I was sort of in love with him, even after everything."
"You talked for fifteen minutes or so," Millicent said. "What did you talk about?"
"I wanted him to meet me in that pub in Woodhead, but he wouldn't."
"What was the stuff you had for him?"
"I had some heroin for him. I'm on prescribed methadone myself and drying out, but he uses still. Or he did until someone murdered him. I don't know for a fact that he shoots, but he gets through a steady trickle."
"So where did you meet him to give it to him?" Millicent asked.
For a moment it looked as if Rosie might deny the meeting altogether, and it would have been almost impossible to prove.
"He came out of the office for a few minutes and met me in a café in Broadway. He took the stuff, but he brushed me off."
"What time?"
"You're going to think me deliberately unhelpful, but I don't know. It must have been about a hour and a quarter after he called me."
"Come on now," Millicent said. "What time did you arrange to meet?"
"The arrangement was to phone from a call box when I got to the City Centre, which is what I did. We spent about fifteen minutes together and I just sat there on my own for another half hour or so feeling really low. Then I went home."
"So why did you still go to the ‘Bulldog’ in Burley Woodhead on Saturday?"
Rosie shrugged. "I tried to compete in the bike race, like I said. When I dropped out, Gloria and I had something to eat. After that I rode back via Woodhead and stopped off for a while in the pub, feeling sorry for myself."
"Now. The stuff you gave Simon killed him. Did you deliberately give him something rather more pure than usual?"
"It wasn't cut as much as usual, but he knew that," Rosie said.
"We only have your word for that."
"What I gave him could have been cut to provide three or four shots at least and he knew that. If he died from what I gave him it was either because he gave himself a shot knowing he hadn't cut it or done anything to dilute it, or ..."
"Yes?"
"Or he cut some of it and someone else switched the cut stuff and the uncut stuff."
"And who would do that?" Millicent asked.
Rosie shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "Shirley?"
Lucy thought that, in Shirley’s place, she might have done it.
"I think that's about it for the moment, Miss O’Connor," Millicent said, getting up. "We will have to bother you further, I'm afraid, but that will do for now."