“Unemployed. Do you claim benefits?”
Silence.
“I’ll take it that you do, then. Otherwise there might be charges under the vagrancy act.”
McGarrity leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. His clothes looked old and worn, like a tramp’s, Chadwick noticed, not like the bright peacock fashions the others favored. And everything he wore was black, or close to it. “Look,” he said, “why don’t you just cut the crap and get it over with? If you’re going to charge me and put me in a cell, do it.”
“All in good time, Patrick. All in good time. Back to the cannabis. Where did it come from?”
“Ask your pig friends. They must have planted it.”
“Nobody planted anything. Where did it come from?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay. Tell me about this afternoon.”
“What about it?”
“What did you do?”
“I don’t remember. Not much. Read a book. Went for a walk.”
“Do you remember receiving a visitor?”
“Can’t say as I do.”
“A young woman.”
“No.”
Chadwick’s muscles were aching from keeping the rage inside. He felt like flinging himself across the table and strangling McGarrity with his bare hands. “A woman you terrorized and assaulted?”
“I didn’t do any such thing.”
“You deny the young woman was in the house?”
“I don’t remember seeing anyone.”
Chadwick stood up so quickly he knocked over his chair. “I’ve had enough of this, Constable,” he said to Bradley. “Take him down and lock him up.” He glared at McGarrity for a second before he left and said, “We’ll talk again, and the next time it won’t be so polite.” Outside in the corridor, he leaned against the wall and took several deep breaths. His heart was beating like a steam piston inside his chest, and he could feel his skin burning. Slowly, as he mopped his brow, the rage subsided. He straightened his tie and jacket and walked back to his office.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Detective Sergeant Kevin Templeton relished his latest assignment, and even more he relished the fact that Winsome was to accompany him as an observer. Even though he had got nowhere with Winsome, not for lack of trying, he still found her incredibly attractive, and the sight of her thighs under the taut material of her pinstripe trousers still brought him out in a sweat. He’d always thought of himself as a breast man, but Winsome had soon put the lie to that. He tried not to make his glances obvious as she drove out of town and on to the main Lyndgarth Road. The farmhouse was at the end of a long muddy track, and no matter how close to the door they parked, there was no way of avoiding getting their shoes muddy.
“Christ, it bloody stinks here, dunnit?” Templeton moaned.
“It’s a farmyard,” said Winsome.
“Yeah, I know that. Look, let me do the questioning, right? And you keep a close eye on the father, okay?” Templeton hopped on one leg by the doorway, trying to wipe some of the mud off his best pair of Converse trainers.
“There’s a shoe scraper,” said Winsome.
“What?”
She pointed. “That thing there with the raised metal edge, by the door. It’s for scraping the mud off the undersides of your shoes.”
“Well, you live and learn,” said Templeton, making a try at the shoe scraper. “Whatever will they think of next?”
“They thought of it a long time ago,” said Winsome.
“I know that. I was being sarcastic.”
“Yes, sir.”
Nearby, a dog was growling and barking fit to kill, but luckily it was chained up to a post.
Templeton shot Winsome a glance. “No need for you to be sarcastic as well. Don’t think I didn’t catch your tone. Are you okay with the way the super wants us to play it?”
“I’m fine.”
Templeton’s eyes narrowed. “Am I to take it you don’t-”
But before he could finish, the door opened and Calvin Soames stood there. “Police, isn’t it?” he said. “What do you want this time?”
“Just come to clear a couple of things up, Mr. Soames,” said Templeton, bringing out his best smile and offering his hand. Soames ignored it. “Is your daughter at home?”
Soames grunted.
“All right if we come in?”
“Wipe your feet.” And with that he turned back into the gloom and left them to their own devices.
After further wiping their feet on a bristly mat, they followed him into the inner recesses of the house and heard him call out, “Kelly! It’s for you.”
The girl came downstairs, and her face registered disappointment when she saw Templeton and Winsome standing there in the hallway. “You’d better come through,” she said, leading them into the kitchen, which was marginally brighter and smelled of bleach and overripe bananas. A black-and-white cat stirred lazily, jumped off its chair and sidled out of the room.
They all sat on sturdy hard-backed chairs around the table. Calvin Soames muttered something about work and headed out, but Templeton called him back. “This concerns you, too, Mr. Soames,” he said. “Please sit down.”
Soames let a moment pass, then he sat.
“What’s this all about?” asked Kelly. “I’ve told you everything already.”
“Well, that’s just it, you see,” said Templeton. “Being the untrusting detectives that we are, we don’t take anything at face value, or on first account. It’s like first impressions, see, they can so often be wrong. Any chance of a cup of tea?”
“I’ll put the kettle on,” said Kelly.
She was definitely fit, Templeton thought, as he watched her move toward the range with just the barest swinging of her hips, encased in tight jeans. Her waist was slender as a wand and she wore a jet belly-piercing, which made a nice contrast to her pale skin. Her blond hair was tied back, but a few tresses had escaped and framed her pale oval face. Her breasts moved tantalizingly under the short yellow T-shirt, and Templeton guessed that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Lucky bugger, that Barber, Templeton thought. If the last thing on earth he had done was shag Kelly Soames, then it can’t have been such a bad way to go. He began to wonder if, perhaps when they’d got this business over and done with, he might be in with a chance himself.
When the tea was served, Winsome took out her notebook and Templeton sat back in his chair. “Right,” he said. “Now, you, Mr. Soames, returned back here at about seven o’clock on Friday evening. Am I right?”
“That’s right.”
“To check if you’d turned off the gas ring?”
“It’s sometimes on so low,” he answered, “that a puff of air would blow it out. A couple of times I’ve come home and smelled gas. I thought it best to check, as I don’t live far from the Cross Keys.”
“About a five-minute drive each way, is that right?”
“About that, aye.”
“And you, Miss Soames, you were working at the Cross Keys all evening, right?”
Kelly chewed her thumbnail and nodded.
“How long have you been working there?”
