He laughed. “No danger. Come inside for a minute. Table’s booked for eight.”
As he was offering her a seat in the lounge, the bell summoned him for the second time. He groaned and hurried to answer the door. Outside were Skinner and Macbeth. Immediately, he was transported back to the nightmare of the previous Friday morning, but he swallowed and managed to say calmly enough, “Evening, gentlemen. What can I do for you?”
In his customary sorrowful way, Skinner said, “I believe that you are acquainted with a Mr. Stanley Evison.”
The unfamiliarity of the forename baffled Harry momentarily before he said, “You mean Froggy? I’ve come across him, yes. I’ve been trying to make contact with him today.”
“And why might that be?”
Harry noticed that Skinner was no longer calling him “sir”.
“Let’s just say that I want to ask him one or two questions.”
“I hope you’re not waiting on the answers,” said Skinner softly.
“What do you mean?”
“Mr. Evison’s body was found earlier today. He had been murdered.”
“Where?” It was the first thought that occurred to him.
Looking straight at him, Skinner said, “At the Pasture Moss Waste Disposal Site, off Pasture Road.”
It was a nightmare, like something out of a film noir scripted by Cornell Woolrich. “But I was there earlier today.”
Unblinking, the Detective Chief Inspector said, “So we understand. And I have reason to believe that you can help us with our enquiries.”
The cliched phrase, and the manner of its delivery, stung him. “Surely you don’t…?”
Both policemen were motionless. Just as in his first encounter with them on that terrible Friday, Harry felt as if he were being measured and found wanting. He looked from one to the other and said, “This is absurd.”
Skinner sniffed, evidently still struggling with his cold. He said, “Would you mind accompanying us to the station now?”
“What if I refuse?”
The set of the mournful face hardened. “In that case we would simply take the necessary steps. You know the score.”
Harry knew what that meant. They considered there was a prima facie case against him on a charge of murder, perhaps of a double crime. They had enough evidence to justify arresting him, though not enough — surely? — to want yet to proceed with a trial. He could choose between resistance and co-operation. Over the years he had seen too many of his own clients make the wrong choice. He nodded at Skinner and looked around for his raincoat.
The sound of voices had brought Brenda to the doorway of the lounge. He saw her made-up face crumple with dismay and the policemen stare at her with grim curiosity. Their minds were easy to read: His wife’s not buried yet and already he’s knocking a slice off the next-door neighbour.
Quietly, he said, “Please would you ring Pino at the Ensenada, Brenda? I won’t be able to make it tonight.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Why did you lie to the boy?”
Macbeth’s sardonic tone and the sly sidelong glance he shot at Harry gave the impression that he scarcely expected an honest answer. He had taken off his tie and the sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up to reveal brawny arms thick with dark hair. His hands lay flat upon the scratched top of the round table that stood between them, his palms down as though he were trying to crush the wood. For the last ten minutes he had been chewing something. The need for common courtesy had gone.
Harry let his eyes roam around the mustard-coloured walls of the interview room. The furniture comprised the table and three chairs; the walls were bare. In one corner sat the constable with the pitted face, ballpoint pen raised. A fresh page in his notebook awaited something new: a breakdown and confession, perhaps. All evening, the drip-drip-drip of the inquisition, repetitive but seemingly endless, had stretched Harry’s nerves to snapping point. He had to keep biting his tongue to remind himself of the need to take all this seriously and to concentrate. The police were not treating the interrogation as a game.
“Why did you lie?” Macbeth repeated.
“I’ve already explained a thousand times.”
“Try again.”
At first, two or three hours ago, Harry had down-played his activities after Liz’s death, had not acknowledged the strength of his determination to identify her murderer. But he hadn’t lied outright — why should he? — and under Skinner’s patient, probing cross-examination he had been forced to admit the full extent of his quest for Coghlan and the attack upon him outside Empire Dock. When Skinner left the room, the sergeant took over, not bothering to hide his contempt. Macbeth concentrated on the death of Froggy Evison, yielding no information, nagging for the reason why Harry had visited Pasture Moss that day.
“You couldn’t even fool Pensby,” he said derisively.
Pensby, it turned out, was Geoff, the freckled youth from the tip. Harry gathered that the lad himself had found Froggy’s body, not long after his own departure from the scene. The cause of death had not been mentioned and Harry knew he was being tested. There was always the chance that a killer might make the mistake of revealing knowledge of more facts about the crime than the police had disclosed. Harry had seen the strategem work too many times with his own clients to disparage its effectiveness. There was no danger of his falling into that particular trap, but Geoff had evidently regaled the police with a detailed account of Harry’s arrival at the tip in search of Evison, not omitting to mention the initial cock-and-bull story about Myra’s illness. Macbeth had fastened on to the silly subterfuge and would not let it go.
“All I wanted was to talk to Evison,” said Harry. Wearily, he went back over the old ground. “I was sure he’d been holding back on me when I spoke to him at the Ferry. The first time I’d seen him, on the night that Liz was stabbed, he’d come in to work late and seemed agitated about something. When I challenged him at the club, I was sure he knew more than he was prepared to admit. Might have been bravado, a desire to impress, but I didn’t think so. I had to speak to him again to have any hope of getting to the truth. At the rubbish tip, I had to spin some kind of line to get even the kid to talk to me.”
“A regular Sherlock, aren’t you?”
“Listen, Evison’s dead. He may have been killed by a Keep Britain Clean campaigner, but more likely he had a clue to this mess and that’s why he had to die. Whoever did this,” Harry gestured at his own bruised eye “ — would hardly scruple at eliminating Froggy if he was a threat.”
“Wasn’t Evison a threat to you?”
Mustering every last ounce of self-possession at his command, Harry said, “You’re on the wrong track, Sergeant. While we sit here wasting time a killer is on the loose.”
“To believe all this, we have to accept you were devoted to your late wife, despite the fact she treated you like dirt. That you have no pride, that you will let a woman walk all over you, turn you into a laughing stock, and still shed a tear when she gets her just desserts.”
The calculated provocation made Harry flinch, but all he said was, “Accept what you like.”
“And yet with the inquest not yet over, with the woman still not decently buried, you’re carrying on with your next-door neighbour. Your period of mourning didn’t last long.” Macbeth relaxed in his chair, almost smiling, daring Harry to lose his temper.
He could recall countless occasions such as this. Sitting in on an interview, sometimes in this very room, and feeling impotent whilst his clients protested, pretended, evaded, elaborated, before in the end deciding to confess to their crimes. Over the years he had seen everything from the remorseless grilling of a teenage yobbo already black-and-blue as a result of injuries sustained whilst allegedly resisting arrest before his lawyer arrived, to the careful wearing down of a conman or petty blackmailer. The occasional breaks that paved the way for a change of
