like a drink!” she exclaimed, pulling herself to her feet. “What must you think of me?” Trixie, who was curled up on her lap, fell to the floor.
There was a bar in the corner of the room, behind me, with a quilted facade and optics on the mirrored wall. A personal replica of the real thing for those times when you can’t face the world. I twisted in my seat as she poured clear liquid from a decanter. “What would you like, Chief Inspector?” she asked.
There was no coffee percolator quietly gurgling on the counter. “Not for me, thank you,” I said. Glass clinked against glass, suede swish-swashed against suede and she resumed her seat, slowly easing herself down into it like a forklift truck lowering a crate of eggs. If it was gin she now held in her hand she’d be talking in hieroglyphics before she was halfway through it. “Whose idea was it to lie?” I asked, getting straight to the point.
She took a long drink, slurped, gurgled and coughed. “I don’t know.” The end of Trixie that didn’t have a curly tail looked up at her, then decided not to bother. The dog sloped off and crashed out on a folded sheepskin rug near the fireplace.
“Did Peter ask you?”
“Ask me what?”
“Did he ask you to say he was with you?”
“No. I don’t think so. I’d stopped seeing him by then.”
“By when?”
“By when the police were asking questions. It was months after the girl was murdered.”
“Was it Silkstone, then?”
“I don’t know. It was a long time ago. I used to drink a lot…” She downed half of the tumbler to demonstrate how it was done and re-crossed her legs.
“Was it Margaret’s idea. Did she persuade you to say that you saw Peter and Tony in the Lord Nelson, that night?”
“I was never very good at times, and days of the week.”
“Was it Margaret’s idea?”
“I think so.”
“What did she say?”
She downed the last of whatever it was and stared gloomily at the empty glass. Her legs uncrossed themselves, as if she were about to go for another, but she decided not to and sank back in the chair. There’d be plenty of time for that when the nice policeman had gone.
“She said that Peter was scared stiff that his wife would find out about, you know, me an’ ’im. We used to go to the Nelson to hear this group. They were called the Donimoes…the Dominoes. Gerry and the Donimoes. They did all Roy’s stuff. When Gerry sang ‘In Dreams’ they used to dim all the lights, an’ the group, they used to turn their backs to the audience, as if to say that this was ’is spot. All ’is.” She closed her eyes and the savage lips melted into a smile.
“In dreams I walk with you,” she sang, very softly, her head weaving gently from side to side. “In dreams I talk to yo-ou.”
“It’s a lovely song,” I said.
“Do you like it?”
“Mmm. You were telling me what Margaret said to you?”
She looked at the glass, realised it was still empty and leaned forward to place it on the coffee table. Her fingers fumbled, lost their grip, and it rolled on to the floor. It was a heavy tumbler, cut glass, and the rug was luxurious, so it didn’t break. I picked it up and placed it just out of her reach.
“What did she say?”
“She shaid…she said…that Peter had told Tony that he didn’t ’ave a…a…a nalibi for the night that little girl went missing. He was wiv me, she shaid, she…said, bur ’e couldn’t tell the police that, cos ’is wife would find out.”
“What did she tell you to do?”
“Just that we saw ’em in the pub. The Nelson. I was wiv Margaret, an’ we saw these two blokes, called Peter and Tony. They dint buy us a drink or anything, but we spoke to them. If the police came and asked where I was on that Wednesday night, I’d to say I was in the Nelson, wiv ’er.”
“And did they?”
“Did what?”
“Did the police ask you where you were?”
“Yes, but ages after. I could ’ardly remember.”
“And was Peter with you, that Wednesday night?”
“That’s the funny fing. I didn’t realise until I fought about it. We went to the Nelson free times a week, when the Donimoes…the Dominoes…were playing. But they were on a Sunday and on a Tuesday and on Thursday nights. Not We’nsdays. We never went on We’nsdays. It was old time dancing on We’nsdays.”
I made her a black coffee, but I couldn’t do much about the brewery in the corner. Leaving her alone with her real or imagined memories, a CD of Roy Orbison’s greatest breakdowns and a gallon of spirits was like playing Russian Roulette with her, but I didn’t see what else I could do. Hopefully she’d collapse and sleep it off. She must have been half cut when I arrived, so she knew the score.
The rain drove all the day-trippers away early, so it was a twenty-minute crawl to reach the motorway. I stopped at the Birch services for a meal but changed my mind when I saw the prices. I always do. Instead it was a trout from Sainsbury’s, with Kenyan green beans and new potatoes, followed by half a pint of strawberry Angel Delight. I did the trout under the grill, with lashings of butter, and it was delicious.
I hadn’t lied to Michelle. I saw Roy Orbison, once, at Batley Variety Club, and he was brilliant. I took Vanessa, my wife, soon to be ex-wife. He sounded exactly the same live as he did on record, which is more than you can say for most of them. I went upstairs to the spare bedroom, humming Pretty Woman, and logged on to the computer that lives in there.
“Michelle Webster admitted that she lied when asked by the investigating officer if Peter Latham was with her on the night Caroline Poole disappeared,” I typed. I expanded the story, with all the dates and legal-speak to make it sound professional. As an afterthought, I added that she was totally kettled when I interviewed her, and was an unreliable witness, open to manipulation. When it was finished I ran off two copies and deleted the file.
Monday morning I’d post it to Somerset, augmented with a phone call. They’d use the information to pin a sixteen — year-old girl’s murder on Latham, and close the case. It wasn’t much, but he had, after all, gone on to commit another murder up in Yorkshire, hadn’t he?
Meanwhile, we’d reinforce our case against the man by regarding him as someone who had killed before, down in Somerset. It wasn’t what might be called a Catch 22, but there ought to be a name for it. Ah well, I thought, the coroners will have to sort that one out.
Latham did leave his sperm all over Margaret Silkstone’s thighs, I remembered as I logged off, and felt happier. Were he still alive he’d be having difficulties arguing that small fact away. Thank God for sperm samples — where would we all be without them? Jeff Caton had loaned me the video of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, with Harrison Ford, and I watched it while sipping lager I’d brought from the supermarket. It was the later version, the director’s cut, with the voice-over removed. Sorry, Mr Scott, but you ruined it. Sometimes, the man in charge just doesn’t know best. You can be so close to something that you don’t see the wet fish coming until it slaps you in the chops.
Monday morning I followed a double-decker bus all the way into town. Since the buses were regulated — or was it de- regulated? — they’ve started painting them in fancy colours and allowing different companies to sponsor individual buses. Sometimes you don’t know if it’s the one you want coming down the road or a bunch of New Age travellers. On the back of most of them, covering the panel that conceals the engine, it states: Bus advertising works. You’re reading this, aren’t you?
Dave’s and Annette’s cars were already in their places when I swung into the station yard. Latham’s ex-wife, who lives in Pontefract, started work at the local hospital at ten a.m., and they’d arranged to drive over and catch her early. I filled them in with my weekend discoveries but suggested they concentrate initially on our enquiry, not
