‘It doesn’t, once we’ve got the idea, once we know you’re lying about your movements last week-end. We can connect. It doesn’t follow,’ said George, ‘that we think you necessarily did the Bloome Street job. It’s a long way from helping to hi-jack a load of cigarettes to killing a man. But nobody lies about his movements without having something to hide. So where were you?’
Stockwood’s jaw clamped tight to shut in whatever words he might have been about to blurt out furiously in George’s face. He sat for a moment with his hands clenched and braced on the edge of the stone seat. There was no hope of success with a second lie, and all too clearly he had no new line of defence prepared. After a brief struggle his lips opened stiffly, and said abruptly: ‘With a woman.’
‘Miss Beck?’ said George conversationally.
‘
‘Rosalind Piper again?’
Or was it ‘still’ rather than ‘again’? But there was as little reason for him to hide a connection with her as there was to continue or resume it. According to the records, she had cost him a year in gaol by involving him in the gang in the first place; and she had cost him his marriage, too, it seemed, since there was a divorce hanging over him. Briefly George wondered what she had looked like. A blonde decoy with a brazen face, or a little innocent creature with big blue eyes? The boy could have been only about twenty-one or twenty-two at the time, and not long married, probably a decent enough young man with good prospects, but the usual, ever-present money difficulties; and a quick share-out from one big haul must have seemed to him an enticing proposition, especially the way the experienced Miss Piper had pictured it for him, with herself as a bonus.
‘No!’ Stockwood spat the negative after her memory, and turned his head obstinately away.
‘I have no interest,’ said George patiently, ‘in your private affairs, as long as you’re breaking no laws. You’d better give her a name. If she bears you out, I can forget it.’ If she bore him out, it would be the truth.
‘
‘If she didn’t grudge you the week-end, she won’t grudge you an alibi. What harm can there be in asking her to confirm your story? If, of course, it’s true this time.’
‘It’s true!’
‘And if you did nothing the law would be interested in.’
‘No. I didn’t do anything wrong. You won’t be able to prove I did, because I didn’t.’
‘Then don’t be a fool. Tell me who she is, and help yourself and me.’
‘No – I can’t tell you!’
‘You’ll have to in the end. Come on, now, she won’t be inconvenienced, we have no interest in her. But unless you name her you’re putting yourself in a nasty spot, and casting doubt on every word you have told me.’
‘I can’t help it,’ said Stockwood stubbornly, and licked a trickle of sweat from his lips. ‘I can’t tell you.’
‘You can’t because she’s as big a lie as the fishing weekend. She doesn’t exist.’
‘She does exist! Oh, my God!’ He said it in a sudden, soft, hopeless voice to himself, as though, indeed, she was the only creature who did exist for him, and of her reality he was agonisingly unsure. ‘But I can’t tell you who she is.’
‘You won’t.’
‘
George walked away from him as far as the hollow shadow under the archway, walked his heat and exasperation out of him for a few minutes in the chill of it, and came back to begin all over again. It went on and on and on through the sparse, barren exchange, two, three, four times over; but at the end of it, it was still no. Quivering with tension, exhausted and afraid, Stockwood looked up at him with apprehensive eyes, waiting for the inevitable, and still denied him.
‘All right,’ said George at last, with a sigh, ‘if that’s how you want it, there are more ways than one of finding her.’
But were there? Had he discovered even one way yet of finding the man who had picked up Annet and taken her to Birmingham? The city might be, must be, more productive.
‘We’ll leave it at that,’ he said, ‘for the moment. And on your own head be it.’
‘Are you taking me in?’ asked the young man from a dry throat.
‘No. Not yet. I don’t want you yet, and you’ll keep. But you won’t do anything rash, will you? Such as deciding to get out of here, fast. I shouldn’t. You wouldn’t get far.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Stockwood steadily, and sat with his clenched hands braced on his knees, tense and still, as George turned and walked out of the stable block.
Peter Blacklock was waiting in the leaf-strewn border of the drive, just out of sight of the windows of the house.
‘Well, did you satisfy yourself?’ His kind face was clouded, his eyes anxiously questioning. ‘You know, Felse, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’m sure Stockwood had nothing whatever to do with it.’
‘I’ve finished with him for the time being,’ said George noncommittally, his voice mild.
‘I’m glad. I was sure—’
He fell into step beside George, shaking his head helplessly over his thoughts, and feeling for words.
‘You know, Regina and I are very worried about Annet. One can’t help realising, from what was published in the papers, that she’s very deeply implicated. What I wanted to say— to ask— You do realise, don’t you, that she must have been dragged into this terrible position quite innocently? We know her, you see, very well. It’s quite impossible that she should willingly hurt or wrong anyone. She can have known nothing, nothing whatever, about the crime –
