He rolled his eyes.
Shilling said, 'Blue, but not true blue,' and got a glare from his boss.
'Some did it for love, if you know what I mean,' Chalybeate said.
'I'm not sure if I do,' Hen said.
'When we could persuade a girl to pose, we did. These were low-budget mags. Any savings we could make were a bonus.'
'How did you find such girls?'
'Don't look at me personally. This was more Blacker's department than mine. My understanding was that some of them were pickups. He'd buy them a few drinks and chat them up, flatter them into stripping off.'
'Drinks or drugs?'
His mouth gave a twitch that answered the question.
'Same old trickery men have used on gullible girls from time immemorial,' Hen said. 'I'm not surprised you want to distance yourself from all that'
'Blacker, too,' he said. 'Let's be fair. He was trying to cut it as a serious publisher.'
'But not without some gentle blackmail to fund it.'
'I wouldn't call it that'
'I do,' Hen said. 'And if he'd lived you can bet your life he'd have been back to you for more.'
26
One can survive everything nowadays, except death, and live down anything except a good reputation.
The printout of Naomi's website material on what she called 'The Chichester Arson Killings' amounted to thirty-three pages. Each now bore Hen's imprint, the whiff of cigar.
She'd asked Stella to look through it.
'Done?'
Stella nodded.
'Close the door.'
Stella knew what was coming. The anger had brought a kind of paralysis to Hen's normally mobile face.
'It's obvious, isn't it, that someone's been talking out of school? This stuff about two people working together. It comes straight from our last meeting.'
'I thought so, guv.'
'Scumbags. I knew as soon as you and I walked into this nick we were in for a hard time, but I didn't reckon on this.'
'They're not all bad.'
'One is, at the very least. One of the team is bending Naomi's ear. Who is it? Who did the interview with her?'
'The first one? You did, guv.'
'No — the latest. After Jessie was killed.'
'Andy Humphreys.'
'Don't rush in, guv. I know he got off to a bad start with you, that crack about gays, but he's keen.'
'Too damn keen if he's playing his own game, feeding titbits to one of the suspects.'
'Want me to talk to him?'
'No, I will.'
Stella feared for Andy. She'd seen Hen in warlike moods, but this was Armageddon. 'It could be one of the others.'
'I don't think so. Who else in the team has spent time with Naomi? Duncan Shilling hasn't been near her. I made a point of clobbering Johnny Cherry with the dumb blonde. It's Humphreys, bang to rights.'
Stella decided to let her simmer for a while. Finally, she said, 'What about this website? Shall we close it down?'
'No need, if I plug the leak. Most of it's self-serving rubbish. Let the woman rant on as much as she likes.' Realising that she was ranting herself, she gave a half-smile and made an effort to lighten up. 'I must say I enjoyed some of these names. Nitpicker.'
'Passionella.'
'I wonder what she calls you and me.'
'Better not ask,' Stella said. 'Anyway, I've read it, like you asked. Seems to me she wants to be a part of the action even at the cost of drawing suspicion on herself. Basically the diary shows she's in the clear, if it's true. And this latest entry supports Tudor's statement that he was at home all night.' She reached for another stack of printed sheets.
'Tudor.' Hen pulled a face. 'His stuff is even more of a pain to read. Remind me what he says about yesterday. Don't give me earache by reading the whole thing.'
Stella picked up the printout of Tudor's book and turned to the last sheet. ''And so to bed about three in the morning, dog-tired, pooped and tuckered, but with another two thousand words of purple prose in my trusty computer.''
'Can you beat it? These bloody writers think they're God's gift. But you're right, Stell. Three a.m. was when his light went out according to Naomi.'
'So they're both in the clear.'
'Apparently.'
'Which means Naomi is right. We're down to the last three. Or four, if we include Fran.'
'Five,' Hen said. 'Naomi doesn't know if Basil went out that night, and neither do we.'
'Nothing we know about,' Hen said, and then added, 'He stays on my list.'
'He's on the fringe,' Stella said, giving serious consideration to Basil for the first time. 'Doesn't regard himself as a serious writer. Only joined to make up the numbers. I wonder if he hates the lot of them.'
'Might do.'
'But he's an ex-fireman. They don't start fires, do they?'
'Coppers can go wrong, so why not firemen?'
'He'd have to be a nutcase.'
'Whoever is doing it has to be a nutcase,' Hen said. 'But if you think about it, we're left with the level-headed ones. Dagmar never says anything outrageous. Thomasine is more animated, but has her feet on the ground. Fran has a kind of worldly wisdom learned from those years as the wife of a gangster. And Bob is the guy on the Clapham omnibus.'
'The Parcel Force van.'
'Right. Your all-round good egg. Not a nutter among them that I can see.'
The mention of Bob reminded Stella of something. She opened the drawer of her desk and took out the diary he had loaned her. 'While we're looking at their literary efforts — I didn't tell you about this, guv.'
'What is it?'
'Bob's poems. His doggerel, he calls it.'
'He lent them to you? He's very trusting. I wouldn't lend you an umbrella on a wet day.'
'Thanks!'
'Anything of interest?'
'I haven't had time to read them.'