‘Why?’
She embarked on a delicate second-hand explanation. ‘There were – er – things going on at the squat that he – er – knew about.’
‘But didn’t want to be asked about.’
‘They were his friends.’ She sketched a gesture in the air. ‘They have their loyalties in those places too.’
‘Luston Division raided it last night,’ said Sloan complacently.
‘Briony will be pleased,’ beamed Mrs Sloan. ‘That means Nicholas is in the clear, doesn’t it? He wasn’t really part of …’ She stopped.
‘What was going on?’ Sloan finished for her kindly.
‘Malcolm Darnley’s taking him into the firm.’
‘There’s more than one sort of sentence in this world,’ he said, amused.
‘He says if they send Nicholas to prison he can use his time learning about plastics.’
‘Condemned to conformity at last.’ Sloan grinned. ‘Prison for assaulting a police officer in the execution of his duty would rate more highly at the Luston squat than a job as an executive.’
‘Malcolm Darnley says,’ she repeated with a matching twinkle in her eye, ‘that with so much extra capital in the firm they can afford a few mistakes by a new boy.’
‘Crosby’s head’s healing nicely,’ he said not entirely inconsequentially. ‘He’ll make the christening without a bandage.’
To no one’s surprise Inspector Harpe was not as sanguine as everyone else.
‘Dr Peter McCavity’s inheritance,’ he announced in his usual melancholy way, ‘is going to go the same way as his income.’
‘Down his throat?’ supplied Sloan obligingly. ‘The way of all flesh was to the kitchen.’
‘And paying for the damage.’
‘It will have been George Wansdyke who rang in and reported that McCavity hit that bollard in Ridley Road,’ said Sloan. Even the outer pieces of the jigsaw puzzle were fitting in now. ‘On the Friday afternoon.’
‘Bit of an opportunist, your chap, wasn’t he?’ said Harpe.
‘Murderers usually are,’ said Sloan. ‘He must have seen McCavity’s car around when he was at the house killing the dog.’
‘There’s never any knowing what a drunken doctor will get up to,’ said Happy Harry censoriously. The Traffic man had always been convinced that alcohol was the devil in solution. ‘If Wansdyke was looking around for someone to take the blame if there was trouble …’
‘No wonder old Dr Paston had his worries,’ mused Sloan. ‘Got a lot on his mind, I dare say.’
‘McCavity went the wrong way round the station roundabout last night,’ said Harpe, who was nothing if not single-minded. ‘Mark my words, Sloan, that young man’s next traffic violation will be his last as a licensed driver …’
‘Sloan …’ Superintendent Leeyes pushed the case papers back across the desk.
‘Sir?’
‘I don’t like loose ends.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Untidy.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘There’s something we haven’t done.’
‘Is there, sir?’ Sloan allowed himself the luxury of a yawn. He felt as if he hadn’t stopped doing things for days and nights. ‘What’s that?’
‘Put the coroner right.’
Sloan stiffened.
‘You might just step round,’ said Leeyes civilly, ‘and tell him we were right and he was wrong. With my compliments, of course.’
About the Author
Catherine Aird is the author of more than twenty volumes of detective mysteries and three collections of short stories. Most of her fiction features Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan and Detective Constable W. E. Crosby. Aird holds an honorary master’s degree from the University of Kent and was made a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services to the Girl Guide Association. She lives in a village in East Kent, England.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1979 by Catherine Aird
Cover design by Tracey Dunham
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1067-2
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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