“The UK News? Do you like the UK News, Jason?”
“Dunno if I do or not.”
“Where do you get your magazines from?”
“From mates.”
“Do you buy them?”
“No. We just swap them.”
It always looks good in the report of a trial: Police found a number of pornographic magazines in the accused’s house. Of course we did, because they’re all over the place. There isn’t an establishment in the country that employs a majority of males where you couldn’t find some sort of unofficial library of top-shelf literature, and that includes most police stations. Jason would have been more interesting to the psychiatric profession if we hadn’t found any sex books at his home.
“Tell me about your girlfriends,” I suggested.
“’Aven’t got one,” he replied.
“But you’ve had one, haven’t you?”
“I suppose so.”
“Good looking lad like you,” I said. “With a little car. Wouldn’t have thought you’d have any problem pulling the birds. Am I right?”
“Sometimes.”
“Who was your last girlfriend?”
“Can’t remember.”
“Can’t or won’t? How long since you last had a girl in the car, Jason?”
He thought about it, his brow a rubbing-board of furrows. “’Bout three weeks,” he eventually volunteered. “Maybe a bit longer.”
“So that would be before Marie-Claire Hollingbrook was murdered,” I said.
“Yeah. ’Bout a week before.”
“How did you learn about her murder?”
“In the pub. They were talking about it in the pub.”
“Did you know her?”
“No.”
“Did you ever see her?”
“No.”
“So you didn’t recognise her from her picture in the papers?”
“No.”
The solicitor leaned forward and said: “Inspector, could you possibly explain where this line of enquiry is leading? My client has strenuously denied any knowledge of Miss Hollingbrook or any involvement in her death. There are several hours of taped interviews in which he answers all questions fully and satisfactorily.”
“There is some rather heavy evidence against your client,” I pointed out.
“Which is being contested,” he rejoined. “There are precedents, Inspector, in which DNA evidence has been discredited. We are currently investigating the whole procedure for taking and examining samples from both the crime scene and witnesses.”
Here we go, I thought. O.J. Simpson all over again. O.J. bloody Simpson. It wasn’t my job to give him lines of defence, so I just accepted what he said. I turned back to Jason and asked: “What was this girl called that you last went out with?”
“Dunno,” he replied.
“You don’t know? Didn’t you ask?”
“Yeah, but I’ve forgotten.”
“Well try to remember. It could be important.”
“I’ve forgotten.”
“OK. Let’s go through it. Where did you meet her?”
“At that club in Heckley with the daft name.”
“The Aspidistra Lounge.”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Go there a lot, do you?”
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
“What nights?”
“Sometimes Thursdays, and most Fridays.”
“And what night did you meet this girl?”
“Not sure. Think it was Friday.”
“So what did you do?”
“What did we do?” he asked, looking even more bewildered.
“Did you dance?”
“Yeah, a bit.”
“Buy her a drink?”
“Yeah.”
“What did she drink?”
“Lager. And Blastaways.”
“Blastaways. Right.” I knew that was a sickly combination of cider and a ready-made cocktail called a Castaway. “And did you ask her name?”
“I suppose so.”
“Which was?”
“Can’t remember.”
It’s at times like this that I wished I smoked. I could take out the packet of Sobranies, flick one between my lips, light it with my gold-plated Zippo and inhale a long satisfying lungful of nicotine-laden smoke. All I’d have to worry about was an early grave from cancer, not trying to keep an uncommunicative twerp like Jason from spending the rest of his natural being used as a trampoline in an open prison.
“Did you take her home?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Straight home?”
“Er, no.”
“Where did you go?”
“To the brickyard.”
Atkinson’s brickyard was long gone, but the name lingered on. It was now a lawned-over picnic site, only the red shards poking through the grass indicating its industrial past. More people meet there after dark for sex than ever eat at the primitive tables during daylight hours.
“Did you have sex with her?”
“Yeah.”
“In the back seat?”
“No, in the front.”
“Really! Wouldn’t you have found it more comfortable in the back?”
“Yeah, but…”
“But what?”
“We just started, you know, snogging, in the front, and that was it.”
“You were carried away.”
“Yeah. Well, she was. Dead eager for it, she was.”
“She took the initiative?”
“Yeah.”
I expected his brief to interrupt, but I think he was as fascinated as I was by the sexual mores of the young. I dragged the conversation back on course. “Was she on the Pill?” I asked.
“No.”
