'He's in interview room three. Claims he hasn't done anything.'
'Don't they all? We'll let him stew for a while. Let's see what his mate comes up with first.'
Horton ran through the preliminaries with Dunsley. When he had finished Dunsley said, 'OK, so you've charged me and I admit faking the break-in. I'll make my statement and then can I go?'
Horton left a silence that was just beginning to get uncomfortable when he spoke. 'Where were you between nine and midnight on Thursday night?' He looked up from the file he had been studying to see Dunsley's wary expression.
'In the bar working and then in my flat.'
'We have a witness who says you were out all evening.'
'Who?' Dunsley declared cockily but Horton could smell a worried man.
'Do you want me to repeat the question?' he asked in an icy tone.
Dunsley pursued his lips together.
After a moment Horton continued, 'I think you were with Neil Cyrus at the Sir Wilberforce Cutler School, helping yourself to building material.'
Dunsley's eyes flickered minutely from side to side. His lips twitched but remained firmly shut. Horton went on in the same even tone, 'Did Jessica Langley discover you stealing and that's why you killed her?'
'What?' Dunsley was suddenly alert. He shot out of his seat.
Cantelli said, 'Sit down, Mr Dunsley.'
'You must be mad.' Dunsley eyed each of them in turn. Silence greeted him. After a moment he sat. His body was twitching nervously and he'd begun to sweat.
Horton said, 'What else can we think unless you start telling the truth?'
'I didn't kill her.'
'I think you did, Barry. She returned to the school when you and Neil were stealing the building material. She threatened to call the police. You hit her. Or perhaps it wasn't you, perhaps it was Neil.'
'Neither of us killed her.' Dunsley looked as if he was about to burst into tears.
Horton could see it wouldn't take long now to crack him and get to the truth. He left a silence into which dropped the sounds of the station beyond the closed door: a ringing telephone, raised voices, running feet. As he hoped, Dunsley obviously couldn't bear it.
'I wasn't anywhere near that school. I swear it.'
Horton laughed scornfully and was pleased to see Dunsley flush. 'Oh, come on, you can do better than that. At this moment Neil is probably telling one of my officers how you engineered a break-in at the Sir Wilberforce, and how you struck Jessica Langley-'
'Neil's here?' Dunsley looked horrified. 'I didn't kill her. You have to believe me.'
'Convince me,' and Horton needed convincing. If Dunsley wasn't their killer then it had to be Cyrus.
Dunsley licked his lips. Hs eyes darted about the room. Horton waited. The ticking clock and the rain drumming against the darkened windows seemed abnormally loud to him. Cantelli sat casually back in his seat, yet Horton could sense his tension.
Finally Dunsley exhaled and said, 'OK, so I was with Neil at the Sir Wilberforce Cutler School on Thursday night. He's got this builder friend who doesn't much care where he gets his materials from.'
'And you supplied him. Is that when Langley returned to the school and saw you, so you had to kill her?'
'She never came anywhere near us. I swear it,' Dunsley cried in exasperation.
Horton contrived to look sceptical. Dunsley hurriedly continued. 'I met Neil at the school just after ten o'clock. We loaded the gear into Neil's van and delivered it to the builder.'
'Name?' barked Horton, making Dunsley start.
'Sam. I don't know his last name or his address. I'm telling the truth,' he appealed to Horton. 'He's Neil's contact. Ask him.'
'We will. Go on.'
'When we were unloading, I tripped and fell. I gashed my head on a bit of piping, there was blood everywhere so I had to leave Neil and drive to the hospital clutching my head with a bit of rag. I didn't get out of there until just after three in the morning.'
'Which was why you were in the accident and emergency unit between midnight and three fifteen a.m.' Horton consulted the paperwork in front of him. An officer had checked with the hospital and Dunsley had been booked in at 12.15 a.m. and had left at 3.20 a.m. And although the times could put Dunsley in the clear of dumping Langley's body on the mulberry, he could still have killed her and left Neil Cyrus to take her body to Langstone Harbour. He put this to Dunsley, who vehemently denied it.
Horton said, 'So, where were you between eight and ten p. m?'
'Having a drink in the Three Crowns. You can ask the landlord, he served me.'
They would, and Horton guessed there would be enough witnesses to confirm it. He studied Dunsley a moment longer and didn't much like what he saw: a weak, stupid and idle man who thought he was clever and above the law. Horton was sick of him and his type. He was also growing rather sick of this bloody case. This wasn't his killer after all and he doubted Cyrus was either. They were just a pair of stupid, greedy crooks. Horton felt frustration well up inside him, but he restrained it. It was just a matter of tying up the loose ends of the club break-in and the theft at the school, and he wanted it over with as quickly as possible so that he could get back to the real case in hand: Langley and Edney's murders.
'When did the idea about the phoney break-in at the club come to you?' he asked, wishing fervently that Dunsley had been their man. Dunsley couldn't talk quickly enough, which only reinforced Horton's opinion of him.
'I should have got back to the club by eleven thirty in time to cash up and lock up. But I was stuck in the hospital. So I called Doris and told her to lock up and leave the money in the till but the silly cow forgot to lock the back door. It gave me an idea. I thought I could make some extra money if I said there had been a break-in, what with being in the hospital with a cut head. I loaded the car with some booze, cigarettes and crisps and drove it to Neil's place.'
'Time?' Horton snapped. He wanted out of here.
'About four a.m. Had to wake him up. Neil didn't mind. He can always find someone to sell stuff on to if only to the kids. I went back to the club, cut my finger so that there would be blood on the ground, and reported the break-in.'
'At four thirty a.m.' Horton's eyes flicked down to the report. 'And a unit responded at five a.m. You told them the break-in had happened just as you were about to lock up and you had been attacked and dazed, had gone to the hospital and hadn't thought to report it until you got back,' Horton read out.
Dunsley nodded. 'That's right. You can check it with Neil. We didn't kill anyone. I swear it.'
Horton scraped back his chair.
'What happens now?' Dunsley asked nervously.
'We talk to Cyrus, and we check out your story.' That would take the rest of the evening and night, and they would still be no nearer to catching this blasted killer.
Horton adopted the same tactics with Cyrus, who was ready to hold his hands up for the break-in at the school in order to be cleared of committing murder.
Later that night to Uckfield, Horton wearily said, 'The landlord of the Three Crowns has confirmed that Dunsley was in there drinking, and watching football on the big television screen, from seven until just before ten p.m. They each give the other as their alibi for after ten p.m., and Dr Clayton says that Langley was killed some time between nine and eleven p.m. Langley could have returned to the school after receiving that second telephone call and after ditching Ranson at eight p.m.' But Horton didn't really think so.
'Could Cyrus be her lover?'
'Not her type.' Still, Horton thought, there was no accounting for taste. Horton would hardly have said that Edward Shawford was Catherine's type. But he was almost sure that Cyrus couldn't be Langley's lover. 'Cyrus was on duty, alone, as assistant caretaker until ten p.m. He could have killed her between nine and ten p.m., but there's no motive and he denies it vehemently. He also says Langley never returned to the school. And if he did kill her how did he and Dunsley get the body on to a boat, which neither of them has, and take her to the mulberry? It doesn't add up. And both Cyrus and Dunsley have an alibi for Edney's death. They were at Fratton Park watching Pompey play Manchester United.'
