Just then the front door bell sounded and Jan jumped to her feet. ‘Oh, that’ll be him now, my boyfriend. We’re late. You don’t mind me dashing off, do you? It’s the rumba you see, my favourite. I love the hip movements, don’t you? Although my boyfriend has a bit of trouble with them, since his operation.’
Kathy and Leon Desai stood at the window, watching Brock and Lowry working on Eddie. Kathy was very conscious of Leon’s body at her side and its stillness, observing the exchanges in the other room with hardly a blink of his dark eyes. Despite Lowry’s lip service to interviewing rules, Kathy was in no doubt that his manner was intimidatory, and was intended to be so. He sat hunched forward across the table as if short of hearing, baring his teeth in what he might claim to be a smile. His crouching posture contrasted with Eddie’s, sitting stiffly upright, head back on his thick neck, and Kathy wondered if Lowry might be physically envious of the other man, even while he seemed, with every gesture and word, to despise him utterly. Brock was sitting back, saying nothing, doing something with a pencil on a notepad as if the proceedings held no interest.
‘You’re a very, very stupid fellow, Eddie,’ Lowry was saying. ‘You could kill yourself taking stuff like that. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Sergeant,’ the duty solicitor interrupted. ‘Excuse me, but are you intending to lay charges in connection with the alleged possession of performance-enhancing drugs? Because if not, I don’t see-’
‘Do you mind!’ Lowry screamed at her, furious. The violence in his voice and in his cold stare set the solicitor abruptly back. There was silence for a moment as Lowry seemed to struggle with his temper, before continuing in a more reasonable tone to Eddie. ‘You do know that, don’t you? Those are animal drugs, Eddie. What they give to horses.’ He shook his head in amazement.
‘Are they?’ Kathy asked Leon. ‘Did you get a look at them?’
He nodded. ‘Yes. Stenbolol, the anabolic steroid, is a veterinary product, usually used for geldings in training. It’s popular among body builders because it’s available in tablet and paste form, rather than by injection like most animal anabolic steroids. Eddie could have got them from anywhere-they’re common enough. He also had human testosterone tablets, and a cocktail of tranquillisers, too.’
‘What sort of doses have you been taking, Eddie?’ Lowry pressed him.
The solicitor frowned and sat forward to whisper in Eddie’s ear.
‘I’m asking, Eddie,’ Lowry said in a menacing tone aimed at the lawyer, ‘because I understand that taking heavy doses of this stuff can make you very tense and angry, is that right? Do you find that? Does it put you on a short fuse? Does it make you really mad when people muck you about? Does it make you want to sort them out with those great big bulging muscles of yours?
‘And maybe your clever solicitor can understand now the relevance of my question to you, Eddie. Because if you’d been taking them before you got talking to Kerri, and if she mucked you about and wouldn’t give you what you wanted, and if the steroids made you very, very angry with her, well, that might be something we should bear in mind, isn’t it? You might not have been in full control of your faculties, see? You know all about that, don’t you, Eddie, because you’ve used that excuse before. But the problem is, if you don’t tell us about that now, if you keep silent, the court won’t want to know about it if you try to bring it up later, when we’ve brought you to trial. Ask your brief, Eddie-go on, ask her. True or false, it’ll be too late then.’
Lowry thumped the table with the flat of his hand and got to his feet and paced away as if he couldn’t stand to look at Testor any more. Eddie stared after him, then turned slowly and looked at his solicitor.
Desai shook his head. ‘I don’t think Gavin’s making any impression at all,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t think Testor has a clue what he’s talking about.’
The solicitor was frowning. She leant forward across the table to say something to Brock, who stooped to hear her point. While the two of them were taken up in this, Lowry, stretching his frame, sauntered round the table and suddenly ducked his head against Eddie Testor’s ear, muttering something which the microphones didn’t pick up. The body builder flinched abruptly, his eyes widened, and he shrank away from Lowry as if from a freezing draught. Lowry straightened, smiling grimly to himself, and strolled away.
‘I wonder what he said,’ Kathy murmured.
Desai shrugged. ‘Fancy a coffee?’
‘In a minute,’ Kathy said. ‘Brock’s going to have a go.’
‘Eddie,’ Brock began, sounding as if he was only noticing him for the first time. ‘Are you feeling all right? The lip, I mean. It looks sore. You sure?’
Eddie made no response.
‘You like working at the pool, don’t you?’
Eddie studied his fingers fixedly, waiting for the trap.
‘I can understand that. It looks like a really nice place to work. I haven’t been able to find the time to go down there yet, but I will, for a swim. How much will that cost me, for a swim?’
‘Two fifty,’ Testor whispered, ‘three fifty at peak time.’
Brock nodded, as if this confirmed something that had been on his mind. ‘I was reading about the pool in the brochures. An average length of fifty-three metres, width of eighteen and a half metres, and depth of one point six metres, that’s what the brochure said, and I was trying to multiply the numbers together to work out how many litres it holds, at one thousand litres to the cubic metre.’
‘One million five hundred and sixty-eight thousand eight hundred,’ Eddie Testor said without hesitation.
Brock chuckled and nodded his head. ‘That’s absolutely right,’ he said, and slid his notebook across the table to Testor. ‘But it took me five minutes to work it out.’ He grinned at the solicitor, who was looking very puzzled. ‘No really, I’m impressed, Eddie.’
Testor ducked his head, clearly pleased with the compliment although reluctant to acknowledge it.
‘Let’s see,’ Brock continued. ‘If we assume the earth is a perfect sphere with a radius of six thousand three hundred and fifty kilometres, and the volume is pi times the radius cubed, what is the volume of the earth in cubic kilometres?’
Testor looked unhappy. ‘Pi times…?’
‘Take a value for pi of three point one four one five nine,’ Brock added.
‘Oh.’ Eddie’s face brightened. ‘Eight hundred and four billion three hundred and ninety-seven million, four hundred and fifty-three thousand four hundred and twenty-one point two five.’
Brock laughed out loud. ‘That is simply amazing. I’ve heard of people who can do this, but you’re the first I’ve ever met, Eddie. How do you do it?’
Testor gave a shy smile. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Astonishing.’ Brock looked at the solicitor. ‘Isn’t it?’
She gave a guarded smile, looking at Brock a little oddly.
‘You really don’t know how you do it?’ Brock asked again.
‘The answer just sort of comes into my head. I don’t know how.’
‘Well, you’ve got a very special kind of head there then, Eddie. Very special. Is that why you got that black eye? Has that got something to do with it?’
Testor looked unhappy, winced as he pulled a face.
‘Your mouth hurts?’
He nodded.
‘It was someone you knew, wasn’t it, Eddie?’
Testor’s face formed a deep scowl of denial.
‘I can’t do sums in my head like you, Eddie,’ Brock said amiably, ‘but I can see some things that are obvious. If it was a stranger who knocked you down in the street, like you said, your clothes would have been wet and dirty, but they weren’t. There was blood on your tracksuit top from your mouth, but no dirt or rain. And things were upset in your flat, the chair knocked over, and the lamp. It seems obvious to me that you were knocked down in your flat, after you let the people in. So I assume you knew them. That’s obvious, isn’t it? Like two times two?’
Eddie wouldn’t meet Brock’s eyes. He stared down at his hands and made little flexing motions with his shoulders.
‘Why did they hit you, Eddie? Was it to do with the way your mind works? Did they not like that?’
There was no reply.
After a moment, Brock took Kerri’s photograph from the file and placed it in front of him. ‘Tell me what goes through your mind when you look at her now, Eddie,’ he said gently. ‘Is it as simple as long multiplication? Or is it more difficult and complicated? Try to tell me.’
