‘I don’t know nothing about that,’ Bixley said. ‘It’s lies, all lies.’
‘We’re out looking for your chocolate-store, Bixley.’
‘Yuh,’ Bixley said. ‘Bloody look for it.’
‘We’ll find it, too,’ Gently said.
‘Yuh,’ Bixley said. ‘I ain’t got one.’
‘Not at Tony’s,’ Gently said.
‘I ain’t got one,’ Bixley repeated.
‘Not at Dicky’s,’ Gently said.
‘You’ve a bleeding hope.’ Bixley said.
‘How will you manage without chocolates?’ Gently said.
‘Crap on your chocolates,’ Bixley said.
‘You’ve smoked your last one,’ Gently said. ‘It’s going to be tough if you’ve been at them heavy.’
‘I don’t smoke sticks,’ Bixley said.
‘Oh, yes,’ Gently said. ‘I think you do.’
‘I ain’t never had nothing to do with them.’
‘We’ll see,’ Gently said. ‘Your pockets will tell us.’
Bixley got unsteadily to his feet. ‘They bloody won’t,’ he said. ‘They won’t, because I ain’t got none. So you can search as much as you like.’
‘You’ll let me search you?’ Gently asked.
‘Yuh,’ Bixley said. ‘You search me.’
‘You can sit down again,’ Gently said. ‘That’s all I want to know for the moment.’
‘I tell you you can search me,’ Bixley said.
Gently ignored him, turned to Baynes.
‘Go and look in the waiting room,’ he told him. ‘Bring back anything interesting you find there.’
Baynes nodded, got up, departed. Bixley came up to the desk, put his hands on it.
‘I’ll get you for this,’ he said. ‘If it’s the last bloody thing. I’ll get you, screw. I don’t care if I swing for it.’
‘You’ve been watching too much TV,’ Gently said.
‘I mean it,’ Bixley said. ‘I’m going to get you. I mean it.’
He kept standing there, leaning, glaring at Gently.
‘I mean it,’ he kept saying. ‘I mean it, I mean it.’
Baynes returned, carrying in his hand a cigarette case which combined a petrol-lighter. His hands were sooty and there was soot on the case.
‘It was stuffed up the chimney of the stove,’ he said. ‘He’d had the soot-door off. It’s a finger-screw job.’
Gently took the lighter. It was flamboyantly engraved: S.A.B. He sprang it open. It contained twenty-three of the reefers.
‘Somebody else’s?’ He asked Bixley.
‘I mean it,’ said Bixley. ‘I mean it.’
‘And I mean this,’ Gently said. ‘I’m charging you with having possession of prohibited drugs. You don’t need to say anything in answer to the charge.’
‘I ain’t saying anything,’ Bixley said. ‘Not nothing at all.’
Nobody was saying anything. Gently rang the Yard again and got in touch with the Chief Inspector in charge of the Slavinovsky interrogations. There they were having an all-night session, but it hadn’t got them much further. Slavinovsky himself, a Polish Jew, hadn’t breathed a word in five hours. Some of the smaller fry had squeaked and a few more arrests had been made. Two experts were working on the code in which Slavinovsky kept his records.
‘We’re getting the impression,’ the C.I. told Gently ‘that there were other depots like the one in Castlebridge. But we still haven’t got a clue as to how the stuff was coming in. It’s Cyprus hemp we seized in Bethnal, we’re checking all the known channels. I think Slavinovsky’s building his hopes on us not cracking the code.’
‘Has Percy Waters talked?’ Gently inquired.
‘Not as yet,’ the C.I. replied. ‘Pagram briefed me on your interest and I’m doing my best to get you something. The trouble is, we want everything quickly. You understand that, don’t you? Time’s against us, we have to keep plugging away at the main issues.’
‘I’ve got a murder at this end,’ Gently said.
‘We’re doing our best,’ said the C.I. ‘The moment Bixley’s name comes up I’ll give you a ring at Latchford.’
It was just after ten when Setters got back, dirtier than ever and looking bushed. He dropped on the visitor’s chair in the office, lit a cigarette, and took several deep drags.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just the fun.’
‘How did Deeming take it?’ Gently asked.
‘Dicky,’ said Setters, ‘played records, did some typing, made light conversation. I’ve had a basinful of Dicky. I was bloody polite to him. Bloody.’
‘And Tony?’ Gently asked.
‘He was throwing a fit the whole time. And we had the jeebies on our necks, though they were quiet, for a change.’
Gently nodded, told Setters how his interrogation had gone. Setters sat very quiet when he heard that Bixley had been charged.
‘Yep,’ he said at last. ‘That was good. Me, I’d have searched him and risked the rap. Or maybe I wouldn’t, I’d have fallen down on it. I don’t aspire to such class.’
Gently grinned. ‘I can take it,’ he said.
Setters grinned too. ‘I’m whacked,’ he said. ‘Just reprimand me and let me go home. I need a bath to set me up.’
But he got on the phone and made the arrangements for Bixley’s appearance in court in the morning.
Gently drove him home, to Ashgrove Road, drove to the Sun, parked, smoked a last pipe.
CHAPTER TEN
The courtroom at Latchford was in the medieval guildhall, and courts had been held there since 1452. Like all the oldest buildings in Latchford it was built of dressed flint and Caen stone. The Caen stone had been brought up the River Latch, which flowed into the Ouse, and so into the Wash. The flint was the native stone of the country and had been the wealth of the aboriginal tribes. Thus the pale stone was a modern innovation in the time scheme of Latchford, a mere frame, beginning to crumble, for the panels of indestructible, purplish-dark flint. The flint had never been known to crumble or to make the least acknowledgement of multiplying aeons.
The guildhall stood in the small marketplace and was separated from Police H.Q. by three narrow streets. The marketplace was not now the centre of the town and had ceased to be so for one or two centuries. Its principal use was as a car park. It had only two small shops. In the middle of the morning it was usually deserted, and it was almost deserted when Gently parked there.
He locked his door, strolled over to the guildhall’s spill of worn stone steps. A uniform man stood by the porch. He straightened, touched his helmet to Gently. Inside the building was cold and meagre, its gloom helped out by a few naked bulbs. Some grey cement stairs led up to a landing and to a varnished door labelled Court Room. Beside this stood a second uniform man. He was rocking ponderously on his heels.
‘Your man isn’t here yet, sir,’ he told Gently. ‘They’re doing a bloke up for indecent exposure.’
‘That should be edifying,’ Gently said.
The man began to grin, thought better of it.
Gently went through the door. The courtroom was high-ceilinged and underlit. Its fixtures, sprouting over the whole floor space, were of brown wood and black iron. The dock on the left looked like a cattle-cage and the raked
