'Right,' he spanned his hand from the bottom of the glass to where the dark liquid ended. 'I’ll give you this long.' I calculated it as two and a half seconds at his current rate of drinking, but there was no point in arguing. I reached into my pocket, took out a transparent plastic bag holding the envelope containing Montgomery’s photographs and put it on the table. Blunt looked at the envelope, but made no effort to pick it up. 'Tell me about it.'
I started to regret not buying myself a short, but I took a deep breath and began.
'Twenty years ago a woman named Gloria Noon disappeared under mysterious circumstances. She never turned up, neither did her body. Her husband was chief suspect, but nothing was ever proven. This is a photograph that shows him with a guy who was then a junior officer and is now a recently retired chief inspector in the Met. They’re standing next to what I believe could be her grave. The policeman is married to the sister of the murdered woman.'
Blunt snorted.
'I don’t know what I expected but it certainly wasn’t that.'
'Will you look at them?'
'Hold your horses. A few questions first.' I nodded, trying to keep a lid on my impatience. 'Question number one, why land them in my lap?'
'I asked around, you’ve got a reputation for being straight.'
Blunt rubbed a hand over his face.
'And this is my reward I suppose? OK, question number two, what makes you think it’s a gravesite?'
'I don’t know, the look of the place, the two men standing there holding an edition of the newspaper from the day after she disappeared. That and…'
'And?'
'And the policeman in the photo is extremely eager to get a hold of it.'
'Oh lovely. Is this documented evidence?'
'No.'
'And how did you come across it?'
'I’d rather not say.'
'I see.' He paused, staring at me as he had probably stared at hundreds of men across tables in police interview rooms. 'OK, we’ll come back to that if we need to. Why aren’t you giving it to this eager detective?'
'I think it implicates him.'
Blunt looked at my untouched orange juice.
'Are you going to drink that?'
The sour liquid looked set solid inside the glass.
'No, probably not.'
'Well, get yourself a proper drink and another one of these for me while you’re at it.'
I looked at the envelope and he said ‘Leave that here, it’ll be safe enough for the meantime.'
'No offence but I’m a conjurer by trade. I know how easy it is to make things disappear.'
I reached out to take it and Blunt put his glass on the envelope.
'Don’t worry. It’ll still be here when you come back.'
I tried to see what Blunt was doing from my position up at the bar, but we’d chosen our spot well and he was hidden from view. When I returned with the drinks he’d lit another cigarette, this time he offered me one.
'Where did you say this woman disappeared from?'
'Essex, it’s near London.'
'I know where it is, and you presumably know it’s not in my jurisdiction; there’s nothing I could do with this except pass it on.'
'Aye, but at least then there would be a record. They’d be forced to investigate.'
Blunt took the head off his pint.
'Maybe so, maybe no.' He sighed. 'What your contact said about me being straight was right. I don’t take bribes and I don’t take bungs.' I looked towards the bar and he took another drag of his fag. 'I’ve got a tab, paid up every Friday on the dot. I do my best. Some people like it, some people don’t, fuck them. But I don’t go out of my way to make enemies.
Accusing a well-respected officer in the largest force in the country of being an accessory to the murder of his sister-in-law is a sure-fire way to get yourself into trouble.' He turned, looked me full in the face and pushed the envelope back at me with the edge of a beer mat.
'I can’t do anything, not on that.'
'But you’re saying you think it looks dodgy?'
'I’m saying nothing.'
'But if I get more evidence you might be able to do something?'
Blunt drained the last of his pint.
