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To Diane shee there seemed to be something wrong with the scene, a sort of subtle reversal. It was as though the two
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detectives were waiting to be interviewed by the old man. not _
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the other way round. Hitchens and Tailbv were unsettled, shifting
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uncomfortably in their hard chairs, not sure what to say to break the moment. Harry, though, was totally at ease, calm and still, his feet planted in front of him on a worn patch of carpet. He had placet] himself with his back to the window, so that he was outlined against the view of the street, a faint aura forming around his head and shoulders. Hitchens and Tailbv were looking into
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the light, waiting for the old man to speak again. ‘Without, then, is it?’ ‘Without, if you like, Mr Dickinson.’ ‘I was out with Jess.’ ‘Jess?’
‘My dog.’
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‘Of course. You were walking your dog.’ Harry lit a taper, puffed on his pipe. He seemed to be waiting, to see if Tailby were going to take up the story himself.
‘I were walking my dog, like you say. We always go down
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that way. I told the lad. Sergeant Cooper’s —’
‘Sergeant Cooper’s lad, yes.’
‘Interrupt a lot, don’t you?’ said Harry. ‘Is that a, what you call it, interview technique?’
Fry thought she detected the ghost of a smile on Tailbv’s
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face. Hitchens, though so genial at the office, did not look
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like smiling.
‘Do go on, Mr Dickinson,’ said Tailby.
‘We always go down to the foot of Raven’s Side. Jess likes to run by the stream. After the rabbits. Not that she ever catches
any. It’s a game, do you follow?’
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Harry puffed smoke into the room. It drifted in a small cloud towards the ceiling, gathering round the glass bowl that hung on tiny chains below a sixty-watt light bulb. A wide patch of ceiling paper in the centre of the room was stained yellow with smoke.
Fry watched the moving cloud, and realized that the old man must sit every day in this same chair, in this room, to smoke his
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.^iip What was his wife doina meanwhile7 Warchin” O>r,->n,if ;fin
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.Street or Casualty on the colour television in the next room? And what did Harry do while he was smoking? There were a few books on a shelf set into the alcove formed by the chimney breast. The titles she could make out were The Miners in Crisis and War and trade Unions in Britain, Choose Freedom and I he Ripper and the Royals. There seemed to be only one novel — Robert Harris’s i-athcrliind. It was lined up with the other books, all regimented into a neat row between two carved oak bookends. Three or tour issues of the Guardian were pushed into a magazine rack by the hearth. But there was no television here, no radio, no stereo. Once the newspaper had been read, it would leave nothing for the old man to do. Nothing but to listen to the ticking of the
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clock, and to think.
Fry became aware of Harry’s eyes on her. She felt suddenly as though he could read her thoughts. But she could not read his in return. His expression was impassive. He had the air of an aristocrat, forced to suffer an indignity but enduring it with composure.
‘A game, Harry …” prompted Hitchens. He had less patience than the DCI. And every time he called the old man ‘Harry’ it seemed to stiffen his shoulders a little bit more. Tailby was politer, more tolerant. Fry liked to observe these things in her senior officers. If she made enough observations, perhaps she would be able to analyse them, put them through the computer, produce the ideal set of character traits for a budding DCI to aim for.
‘Sometimes she fetches things,’ said Harry. ‘I sit on a rock, smoke my pipe, watch the stream and the birds. Sometimes there’s otters, after the fish. If you sit still, they don’t notice you .’
Tailby was nodding. Maybe he was a keen naturalist. Fry didn’t have much knowledge of wildlife. There hadn’t been a lot of it in Birmingham, apart from the pigeons and the stray dogs.
‘And while I sit, Jess brings me things. Sticks, like. Or a stone, in her mouth. Sometimes she finds something dead.’
