'You might have questioned your own judgment,' I suggested.
'You've only yourself to blame for that,' he retorted sharply. 'Maybe if you'd backed off once in a while, I'd have taken you more seriously. I don't like people in my face all the time.' As if to prove the point, he slammed his back against the wall and stared at me through half-closed eyes.
I looked away. 'Then why didn't you let someone else take over? Why wasn't I allowed to talk to Andy? Why did you get him pushed off the case?'
'He was more trouble than he was worth. He believed everything you told him.'
We both knew that wasn't the real reason, but I let it go. 'Because everything I said was true.'
'You mean like this.' He jerked his chin at the brown envelope. 'There's no evidence of murder in there. Just different opinions.'
'That's only a fraction of what I've got,' I said. 'You didn't think I'd show my whole hand, did you?' I took the photographs of Beth and Alan Slater's house from my rucksack. 'There's plenty of evidence that Annie was robbed.' I passed the pictures across to him. 'Maureen Slater admits most of this stuff was sitting in her house for months after Annie died ... claims you saw it and even went back on one occasion, offering to buy the Quetzalcoatl mosaic. Which means you should have treated Annie's house as a scene of crime, if only because it must have been obvious to you that the Slaters had robbed her.'
He gave the pictures a perfunctory glance. 'Maureen said she bought it in a junk shop,' he said dismissively. 'I had no reason to think otherwise.'
'She couldn't afford to go to the laundrette. How could she afford to buy paintings?'
'Not my problem. None of the stuff had been reported stolen.'
'You must have recalled the Quetzalcoatl when Dr. Arnold started asking questions about Annie's possessions.'
'No,' he said bluntly. 'It was four years later. How many houses do you think I'd entered in that time? I couldn't describe a picture I'd seen a week before, let alone one from way back.'
'You offered Maureen twenty quid for it,' I reminded him, 'so it obviously made an impression on you.'
He shrugged. 'I don't remember.'
'I didn't think you would,' I said with a small laugh. 'Any more than you'll remember Maureen giving you a gold statuette with emeralds for eyes and rubies for lips. She said you had no intention of buying the Quetzalcoatl ... All you wanted was something valuable as a quid pro quo for not asking awkward questions. What did you do with it? Keep it? Sell it? Melt it down? It must have scared you rigid when Sheila Arnold described it as one of the artifacts Annie had on her mantelpiece.'
'Maureen's lying,' he said bluntly.
'She's prepared to make a statement about it.'
A glint of amusement sparked in his eyes. 'You think anyone's going to believe her about something that happened twenty years ago? And why wouldn't I want to ask awkward questions of the Slaters? I had a reputation for being tough on the whole damn family.'
'Not just tough,' I said casually. 'According to Danny, you were quite happy to frame them as well. He says you planted some cannabis in Alan's pocket and got him sent down for dealing.'
Drury shook his head pityingly. 'And you believe him, of course.'
'Not necessarily. No one seems to know what Alan actually did. Danny says dealing, but Alan told his wife he was sent down for assaulting Michael Percy.'
'Why am I not surprised?' he said with irony.
'Well?' I prompted when he didn't go on.
'She wouldn't have married him if she'd known the truth.'
'Why is it such a secret?'
He pointed an accusing finger at me, as if Alan's crime were my responsibility. 'He was always going to get off lightly. He was fifteen and couldn't be named, and neither could his victim. It's a bloody stupid rule in my book. All a kid has to do is see out his sentence, lie through his teeth, put a bit of distance between himself and what he did and he gets off virtually scot-free.' He started popping his knuckles again. 'Maureen kept it quiet because she was scared stiff of what people would say.'
'What did he do?'
'Work it out for yourself. The victim was a woman.'
'Rape,' I suggested.
He nodded. 'Took himself off to the other side of London where he thought he could get away with it. Dragged the woman into a car park behind some houses and proceeded to beat her up. But she managed to scream and one of the occupants called the police. Alan was caught in the act, pleaded guilty and did four years before he was let out.'
'Anyone could have predicted it,' I said unemotionally. 'He was appallingly abused as a child, both physically and mentally.'
But Drury wasn't interested in bleeding-heart excuses. 'On that basis Danny would have become a rapist as well.'
I stared at my hands. 'Danny has no memories of his childhood. He was so young when his father left that he can't even remember what he looked like ... and if he heard his mother being thrashed in the bedroom, he wouldn't have understood the connection between sex and violence.' I raised my head to took at him. 'It makes a difference. All poor Alan ever learned from his parents was that reducing a woman to a shivering wreck would result in an orgasm.'
