'Let's see your warrant,' Skinner insisted.
'I'm all the warrant we need,' I told him. 'Let's go.'
'Hang on,' Skinner protested. 'I haven't got any shoes on.'
I looked down and saw his bare feet for the first time. 'For God's sake, someone fetch his shoes,' I yelled.
'Where do you want him taking, guy,' the City DC asked.
'Heckley. We're still allowed to make our own tea there.'
While Skinner was being processed I had a toasted tea cake in the canteen then ran upstairs to see if anything was happening in the office that I needed to know about. Maggie was hanging her coat up.
'Did you get him?' she asked.
'Bet your ass,' I replied with a wink and a jerk of the head. 'But we had to arrest him. We'll let him settle in, have a word with the duty solicitor, then I'll put the thumbscrews on him.'
It had worked out well. The evidence was a bit weak, all circumstantial, and the custody sergeant might have thrown it out, so I'd normally have done an initial interview and hoped something would have come from that. We'd arrested him because he wouldn't cooperate, and that meant that I could now authorise a property search.
'Have you time to hear about Darryl?'
'You may not believe it, Maggie,' I told her, 'but Darryl is my number one priority. I'm just Makinson's running dog in this murder case.
Fire away what have you got?'
She tucked her blouse into her skirt and sat down opposite me. Her hair was wet, several strands clinging to her forehead. 'We went looking for him last night,' she began. 'Janet and me, that is. Found him in a town-centre pub. The Huntsman. It was fifties night you'd have been at home. Darryl was leaning on the bar, chatting to anyone who came to be served. Got the impression that was his technique. It was early, about eight thirty. Looked like we'd have a long wait and Janet was upset, so I phoned for a taxi and sent her home. Hope that's all right?'
'No problem. Go on.'
'Darryl stayed until chucking-out time. He drove home alone and I followed him to a flat in that posh new block near the canal. The address matched the one on record for the owner of the Mondeo he was driving. He's called Darryl Buxton and he's clean, I'm afraid. All the other details are on your desk.'
'Brilliant, Maggie. We'll make a detective of you yet. Looks as if you'd better take an afternoon off when things settle down you heard what Mr. Wood said about overtime.'
'That's OK. There's more. This morning I followed him to his place of employment. He works in the town centre, for someone called Homes 4U.
That's number 4, capital U. Snappy, eh?'
'Speaks volumes about their clientele,' I said. — 'Quite. They're some sort of estate agents, special ising in cheap rentals, DHSS work, that sort of stuff. They're big around Manchester and are just expanding to this side of the Pennines. I rang them up and had a girl-to-girl chat with their receptionist. She sounded a bit dim.
Darryl is the local manager.'
We were sitting at Nigel's desk and I'd straightened most of his paper clips as I listened to Maggie. I pulled at his middle drawer to find some more and saw the Guardian, open at the crossword. My proudest achievement is that I've created the only department in the force where officers dare to be seen reading the Guardian. I slid the drawer shut again.
'Now you've sorted that out,' I said, 'I don't suppose you'd like to have a go at this murder case would you? Sort that out, too?'
Maggie smiled and her cheeks flushed, just a little. 'If you need me, but what I'd really like is a bacon sandwich in the canteen, if you don't mind.'
I nodded my approval and she asked me if I was joining her. 'No, I've just come from there,' I said.
When she'd gone I pulled the crossword out and read through the clues.
They might as well have been written in Mandarin Chinese. One across was 'Editor rejected ruse set out (6).' Possibly an anagram of set out, but nothing flashed into my brain. I put potato. Two lines below was nine across: 'Comes down, about to fix forest in grand planned development (9,9).' The second nine referred to twelve across. I wrote apple pies and crocodile in the appropriate squares. For fifteen, nineteen, twenty-two and twenty-seven across I put: haddock, ruminant, frog spawn and Zatopek.
Then, with a blunt black fibre-tipped pen, I carefully drew a line through all the clues for the lines that I'd filled in. You need inspiration like that for the Guardian crossword.
I was admiring my work when a pair of hands fell on my shoulders. 'Need any help?' Sparky asked.
'Er, n-no thanks,' I stuttered, guiltily, 'I, er, think that's as far as I can go.'
'Read the clue out,' he invited.
'Clue!' I gasped. 'Clue! Since when did we bother with clues?'
He'd come to tell me that the interview room was set up and Skinner and the duty solicitor were waiting for us. We discussed tactics for ten minutes and went downstairs.
Skinner was smoking. We, the employees, are not allowed to smoke in the nick, but stopping our clients doing so would be to violate their civil liberties. I found him an ashtray. Sparky switched the tape recorder on and did the introductions. It was ten thirty a.m. and we had him for another twenty-three hours. I verified that he was Ged Skinner and his main place of residence was the squat.
'Did you know Dr. Give Jordan?' I asked.
'Yeah,' he grunted.
'How did you know him?'
'Cos he was prescribing methadone for me.'
'Why?'
He looked straight into my eyes and said: 'Cos I'm a fucking dope-head, ain't I?'
I said: 'I know why you were taking methadone. What I want to know is why was Dr. Jordan prescribing it for you? He wasn't your GP, was he?
And as far as we know he wasn't attached to any programme.'
Skinner galloped his fingertips on the table. 'Yeah,' he said. 'Sorry.
I, er, met him about five weeks ago, at the General. The wife was sent to see him, by her doctor. Women's problems. She was worried scared so I went in with her. He was good about it. Brilliant. Said she was pregnant but there was nothing to worry about, if she was careful with herself. Gave her some pills and told her to come back in a month. Then he looked at me and said: 'That's her fixed up, now what are we going to do about you?' I said 'How do you mean?' and he told me that if I didn't get off drugs I might not live to see my kid.'
'Who told him you were on drugs?'
'Nobody, I don't think. He could see from the state I was in.' He raised his arms and said: 'This is sound, for me.'
'Go on,' I invited.
He folded his arms and sat for a few moments with his chin on his chest. 'I've done all the cures,' he began. 'All the do-gooders have had a go at me. St. Hilda's, Project 2000, the City Limits Trust. You name it, I've done it. But nobody talked to me like he did. They're all sympathy and encouragement and 'I know what you're going through.'
He raised the pitch of his voice for the last bit and affected a posh accent. 'There was none of that with the doc. He said:
'Get off it now or you're dead. D-E-A-D fucking dead!' He said he'd help me as much as he could, but he couldn't do it for me. It was up to me. I said right. Let's give it a go.'
'So he started prescribing methadone for you.'
'That's right. One day at a time. He'd leave a script for me either at the hospital or, later, I'd collect one from his flat. I'm down to twenty milligrams.'
'From what?'
'From whatever I could get. 'Bout hundred milligrams, plus horse.'
'And you were doing OK?'
'Yeah. You don't gouch out on it, but it helps you through the bad times, which is all the H does, when you've been using it as long as me.'
