and a couple of pints. I watched sport on television in the afternoon. England were struggling to avoid the follow-on against Gilbert and Ellice Islands. Later I rang Annabelle, but there was no answer.
On Sunday morning I called in the office and read most of the file on Miles Dewhurst. Then I shopped to restock the freezer and did a few of the more desperate chores around the house and garden. I urgently needed a cleaning lady, a gardener and a window cleaner. An alternative solution would be to move in with someone who either already had these or who managed to complete such menial tasks with consummate ease. I dialled Annabelle's number again. She still wasn't there. On a few occasions in the past Annabelle had disappeared for the whole weekend. Ah well, she was a big girl. It was none of my business how she spent her time. I had a shower and a sulk.
Gilbert and Ellice bowled underarm, so England managed to hold on sufficiently to save Monday's gate receipts. I had Sunday lunch at dinner time, in other words tea time, as is the modern practice. Roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, peas, carrots, and sprout.
Singular. All frozen. For pudding I had blackberry and apple pie from a local bakery. That was the best bit. I was settling down with a large pot of tea and Biggles Flies East when the phone rang. It was Gilbert. My superintendent, that is, not the island.
He said: 'Hi, Chas. You can go out and get rat-arsed tonight. Tomorrow is cancelled.'
'Great, I hate Mondays. Is this a one-off or will it apply to all of them from now on?'
'Just this one, sadly. You remember Terry Finnister?'
'Yes. Lorry driver from near Warrington who somebody fingered to us.
Was delivering toilets or something when Georgina vanished.'
'That's him, except it was near Workington. Well, on Saturday he was arrested by the local fuzz for showing his own to a bunch of schoolgirls in the park. Apparently they laughed at him and he turned nasty, assaulted one of them.'
'I should think so, too. What's this got to do with us?' I asked.
'What it's got to do with us, Charlie boy, is that this afternoon he confessed to the murder of Georgina Dewhurst.'
Chapter 16
I'd been standing by the telephone. I slumped into the easy chair alongside the low table and didn't speak for several seconds.
Eventually I said: 'Is he being taken seriously?'
'North-West are taking him seriously. Apparently he asked to make a statement and it was all done with the duty solicitor present.'
'Golly gosh. Do you want me to get over there?'
'No, he's not going anywhere, they've already charged him. I've said we'll collect him at ten o'clock tomorrow morning. I think you and I ought to go. OK? That'll give them time to have the initial interview transcribed.'
'OK. Did he say how he killed her?'
'We might have a problem there,' Gilbert replied. 'His story is that when she struggled he put his hands on her throat to quieten her and she just went limp.'
'Like they always do.'
'Exactly. We'll have to check with the pathologist to see if it's a possibility.'
'What about his movements? I don't suppose he went anywhere near Capstick that Monday morning.'
'Suitably vague. He says he hid the body and went back for it one night. We'll find out more tomorrow. The good news is that Partridge gets his arrest to announce at the conference, and Dewhurst will think the pressure is off him.'
'So you're not convinced?'
'I've an open mind. Are you?'
'No.'
'Right. See you in the morning.'
It doesn't say much for a person's lifestyle when they want to claim credit for a murder they didn't do. It's a poor reflection on society when, for a few individuals, being a convicted murderer or child molester is a step up the social scale. Terry Finnister was on my mind when I went to sleep that night. He wasn't in my normal library of bed-time reveries. I cursed him and thought about Annabelle, but that only caused me to wonder where she had been all weekend.
Poor old Gilbert was called in to brief Trevor Partridge, the Acting Chief Constable, so DC Mad Maggie Madison went to Workington with me.
We set off at eight, dodging the morning meetings. 'I'll drive there,'
I told her. 'You can drive home, unless you'd rather sit in the back with lover boy.'
'Why not let him drive home,' she suggested. 'Then I could sit in the back with you.'
I tut-tutted. 'Any more talk like that, Margaret, and I'll have to report you for sexual harassment. You really will have to make an effort to control these animal urges.'
'Why?'
'Buggered if I know. We could always forget Finnister and book into a seedy boarding house in Blackpool.'
'Sorry, Charlie. It's the Holiday Inn or nothing.'
'No, it's got to be a seedy boarding house, much more romantic. People don't have affairs at the Holiday Inn. They go there for six hours' sleep and fifteen hundred calories of breakfast down 'em. Stay in bed too long and you'll wake up with a Sanitised label round you.'
Maggie said: 'Can you imagine the expression on Finnister's face if we said: 'Do you mind driving, Terence, old boy, while we have a session on the back seat?'
'Can you imagine the expression on my face?' I answered.
It was harmless banter. I'd known Maggie, and her husband, a long time. She was a figure of stability to whom I'd turned once or twice when times were bad; especially when my marriage collapsed. Nothing heavy, just someone to talk to. She was a good cop, and I think she regarded me the same.
We fell to talking about the job. The latest policy scare that someone had dreamed up was called Tenure of Office. The theory was that we'd all have to rotate jobs every few years. Five years in CID and then it would be back into uniform. Maggie thought I'd have some inside information about it, but I didn't. She said she'd leave if it came about. I didn't know what I'd do. We both agreed it was crazy.
We had a comfort stop at the services on the M6. At Junction 36 I said: 'Let's take the scenic route,' and swung off the motorway. In Windermere I said: 'If we're taking the scenic route we might as well do the job properly,' and turned on to the Kirkstone Pass road, round the back of Helvellyn.
The tops were shrouded in the usual mist as we dropped down into Patterdale. 'They do good chicken legs in garlic there,' I said, gesturing towards the pub.
'Sorry, Charlie, we haven't time,' Maggie replied. She liked to play the mother hen with me. I accepted the roles.
'Just a thought,' I said.
The proximity of the mountains made me melancholy. Having to drive by them was like leading a small boy past a sweet-shop window. I'd done a lot of fell-walking and a small amount of climbing over the years, but hardly any recently, apart from the brief excursion with Annabelle a fortnight ago.
'When things quieten down maybe we should resurrect the CID walking club,' I suggested.
'CID boozing club, more like it,' Maggie replied. 'It was fun, though, maybe we should.'
Thirty minutes later we breezed into the station and identified ourselves to the custody sergeant. 'You're late,' he told us. 'We were expecting you an hour ago.'
'Traffic was bad,' I replied.
The sergeant passed me the detention sheet to sign. I noted that Finnister was in good health and bore no visible signs of bruising or other injury. I scrawled my name and the sergeant handed me a poly bag containing a
