“All right, so I handled it after it’d been used. That still doesn’t mean I killed anyone.”
“It does unless you’ve got a better explanation. And I haven’t heard one yet.”
“How did you know we’d found the knife?” Banks asked.
“I saw that shepherd find it on the moor, so I took off.”
He was lying, Banks thought. Mara had told him. But he let it go for the moment.
Paul fell silent. The floor creaked as Burgess paced the office. Banks lit a Silk Cut, his last, and leaned back in his chair. “Look, Paul,” he said, “consider the facts. One: we found PC Gill’s blood on the knife, and the doc tells us the blade fits the wound. Two: we found your prints on the handle.
Three: we know you were at the demo-you were seen. Four: as soon as things start adding up, you bugger off to Scotland. Now you tell me what to make of it all.
What would you think if you were me?”
Paul still said nothing.
“I’m getting fed up of this,” Burgess snarled. “Let’s just lock the bastard up now. He’s in on a warrant. We’ve got enough evidence. We don’t need a confession. Hell, we don’t even need a motive.”
“No!” Paul yelled.
“No what? You don’t want us to lock you up? Dark down there, isn’t it? Even a normal person feels the walls closing in on him down there, in the dark.”
Paul was pale and sweating now, and his mouth was clamped so tight that the muscles in his jaw quivered.
“Come on,” Banks said. “Why don’t you just tell us. Save us all a lot of trouble. You say you’ve done nothing. If that’s so, you’ve nothing to be worried about. Why hold back?”
“Stop mollycoddling him,” Burgess said. “He’s not going to talk, you know that as well as I do. He’s guilty as sin, and he knows it.” He turned to Hatchley.
“Sergeant, send for a couple of men to take dick-head here down to the cells.”
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“No!” Paul leaned forward and gripped the edge of the desk until his knuckles turned white.
Burgess gestured to Hatchley to sit down again. The command was a bit premature, as the sergeant moved slowly and hadn’t even got as far as putting his notebook away.
“Let me make it easy for you, Paul,” Banks said. “I’ll tell you what I think happened and you tell me if it’s true. All right?”
Paul took a deep breath and nodded.
“You took the knife from the farm. It was usually just lying around the place.
It didn’t belong to anyone in particular. Mara used it occasionally to cut twine and wool; maybe Seth used it sometimes to whittle a piece of wood. But that day, you picked it up, carried it to the demo with you, and killed PC Gill. Then you folded the blade over again, made your way to the edge of the crowd, and escaped down an alley. You ran to the edge of town, then across the moors back to the farm-almost four miles. About halfway there, you realized what you’d done, panicked, and chucked the knife away. Am I right, Paul?”
“I didn’t kill anyone,” Paul repeated.
“But am I right about the rest?”
Silence.
“It’s beginning to look like the thumbscrews for you, sonny.” Burgess leaned forward, his face only inches from Paul’s. “I’m getting bored. I’m sick of the bloody north and this miserable bloody weather. I want to get back home to London, the civilized world. Understand? And you’re standing in my way. I don’t like people who stand in my way, and if they do it for long enough, they get knocked down. Savvy?”
Paul turned to Banks. “You’re right about everything else,” he said. “But I didn’t take the knife. I didn’t kill the copper.”
“Police officer to you, dick-head;” Burgess snapped.
“How did you end up with it?” Banks asked.
“I got knocked down,” Paul said. “At the demo. And I curled up, like, with my hands behind my neck and my knees
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up in my chest, in the … the … what do you call it?”
“Foetal position?”
“Yes, the foetal position. There were people all around me, it was bloody awful.
I kept getting booted. Then this knife got kicked towards me. I picked it up, like you said, and made off. But I didn’t know it had killed anyone. I just thought it was a good knife, too good to waste, so I took it with me. Then on the moors, I saw there was blood on it, so I flung it away. That’s how it happened.”
“You’re a bloody liar,” Burgess said. “Do you think I’m an idiot? Is that what you take me for? I might be a city boy, but even I know there aren’t any lights on the fucking moors. And even you’re not stupid enough to lie there in the street, boots flying all around you, police everywhere, and think, ‘Oh, what a pretty bloodstained knife. I must take it home with me!’ You’ve been talking cobblers.” He turned to Banks. “That’s what you get for being soft with them, see. Spin you a yarn a bloody mile long.”
