‘What?’ For a second, Simon forgot Proust was in the room with them. ‘You told me you’d given that to Sellers and Gibbs.’
‘Sergeant Kombothekra changed his mind,’ said Proust. ‘He decided it was a task best suited to a pedant with a keen eye for detail. That’s you, Waterhouse. As it happens, I agree with him.’
Simon knew what that meant. There was no way this was Kombothekra’s initiative. ‘I don’t mind doing my share if we’re all chipping in,’ he said, doing the calculation in his head as he spoke. Kombothekra would have to do his bit too if he was making Simon do it; he wouldn’t dare not to.
‘Good.’ Proust smiled. ‘Tell him what his share is, Sergeant.’
Kombothekra looked as if someone had inserted a hot poker into a tender part of his body as he said, ‘I’m giving you all the statements.’
‘All of them? But there are two hundred-odd.’
‘Two hundred and seventy-six,’ said Proust. ‘In this instance, no one will be chipping in apart from you, Waterhouse. This is something you can make your own. I know that’s important to you. You’ll have no one interfering, no one to cajole or negotiate with. From here on in, Nancy Beddoes is your exclusive territory. You can plant your flag unchallenged.’
‘Sir, tell me you’re joking. Two hundred and seventy-six people, all living in different parts of the country? It’d take me weeks!’
The Snowman nodded. ‘You know I’m not one to gloat, Waterhouse, or push home my advantage, should I be so lucky as to find myself in possession of one, but it would be remiss of me not to point out that if you were a sergeant, as you certainly should be by now and could be in a matter of months if you put in for your exams-’
‘Is that what this is about?’
‘Don’t interrupt me. If you were a DS, you’d be the team leader. You’d be the one assigning the actions.’
‘To a different team, maybe hundreds of miles away!’ Simon struggled to compose himself. Charlie was in Spilling, his parents were here, everything he knew was here. Proust couldn’t make him move, couldn’t force a promotion on him that he didn’t want.
‘You need to broaden your horizons, Waterhouse. Another good reason to give you Nancy Beddoes. As you say, taking all those statements will involve a fair amount of travel. Aren’t you even a bit curious about your native land? Have you ever left the Culver Valley for any significant period of time?’
Simon wanted to kill him, mainly for staging this production in front of Kombothekra, who knew Simon had been to university in Rawndesley but not that he’d lived with his parents for all of his three years as a student. Proust, unfortunately, knew everything-all the sad details of Simon’s life so far. Which of them was he about to mention now? The age at which Simon left home? The Sunday mornings he’d spent at church with his mother rather than upset her while his university mates had been in bed sleeping off hangovers?
‘I can’t believe you’re serious, sir,’ he said eventually.
Proust grinned. Unlike most of his good moods, this one didn’t have a provisional, threatened-with-imminent- extinction feel about it. It seemed to have taken root, possibly for the whole day. ‘Waterhouse, explain something to me. Why do you respond with such… bamboozlement, if that’s a word, when all I’m asking you to do is your job?’ Giving Simon no opportunity to respond, he went on, ‘I’m not ordering you to dress up in a gorilla costume and distribute free bananas on public transport. I’m asking you to take statements from the people to whom Nancy Beddoes fraudulently sold items of clothing on eBay, clothing she’d stolen from high-street shops. Is it my fault there are so many of them? Did I ask Mrs Beddoes to put in the hours of a hedge-fund manager in pursuit of her criminal activities? The woman’s an exceptionally motivated and diligent lawbreaker-you don’t see her complaining about having two hundred and seventy-six people to deal with. Think of it this way, Waterhouse-she did it for the money, and so will you be, because it’s your job.’ Proust beamed, pleased with the neatness of his conclusion. ‘I trust that, by the time you’ve finished, you’ll have had your fill of taking statements. You certainly won’t want to bother taking one from an irresponsible timewaster about a murder that never happened.’
‘So this is about Aidan Seed,’ said Simon angrily. He should have known. He looked at Kombothekra, who’d agreed with him no more than an hour ago: they ought to take Seed’s statement, make sure all bases were covered. Had Kombothekra broached the subject with the Snowman? He must have. It made perfect sense: Simon’s punishment was Nancy Beddoes, Kombothekra’s was having to participate in this excruciating scene.
‘It’s a shame, in a way,’ said Proust. ‘Mr Seed’s statement is one I’d have enjoyed reading. Pity we can’t get it just to entertain ourselves. “I do not intend to explain why I killed one Mary Trelease. I do not intend to inform the police of the date on which I killed Ms Trelease. I do not intend to offer details as to the nature of my relationship with Ms Trelease prior to my killing her…’
‘Sir, Simon and I both think…’
‘“I do NOT”’-Proust’s voice rose to a crescendo as he drowned out Kombothekra’s words-‘“have any comment to make regarding the claims made by DCs Christopher Gibbs and Simon Waterhouse that they, on the twenty-ninth of February 2008 and the first of March 2008 respectively, found Ms Trelease alive and well at her home, 15 Megson Crescent, Spilling, RY27 3BH, and were shown by Ms Trelease several items of identification that confirmed her identity as Mary Bernadette Trelease, aged forty…”’
‘If a situation being at all unusual prevents us from taking a statement, sir, we might as well all give up now,’ said Simon.
‘Tell me why we aren’t charging Mr Seed with wasting our time,’ the inspector snapped. So the good mood was finite after all. Even so, Simon was sure Proust had broken his record; usually the ice storm was much quicker in coming.
‘Trelease told Gibbs she didn’t know Seed, but he thought she was lying,’ said Kombothekra. ‘What if Seed beat her up, left her for dead, and now she’s too scared to tell us in case he does it again?’ It came out sounding awkward because they weren’t his words. He was quoting Simon, trying to make amends for Nancy Beddoes.
‘Did Ms Trelease look as if she’d recently been attacked? Any scars, bruises, cuts? Any sign of limited mobility, hospital notes lying around the house, wheelchairs parked on the front lawn?’
‘No, sir,’ said Simon.
‘We’ve been able to find no evidence-substantial or circumstantial-that Aidan Seed’s committed any crime,’ Kombothekra told Proust. ‘That’s if we leave aside the verbal evidence…’
‘Verbal evidence?’ the Snowman intoned flatly. ‘You mean lies?’
‘I spent most of last night going through our unsolveds, just in case anything from any of them chimed in with what Seed and Bussey had told us.’
‘Chimed in? Are you a bell-ringer, Sergeant?’
Kombothekra smiled in deference to Proust’s witticism. ‘I found nothing that might fit the bill, however wide a margin I allowed myself: no suspicious deaths where the victim’s name or appearance or address was in any way similar to Mary Trelease’s. Nothing. We’ve put all three names-Seed, Bussey and Trelease-into Visor, Sleuth, the PNC, NFLMS. None of them have got form.’
‘Yes, yes, Sergeant.’ Proust waved his hand dismissively. ‘And you failed to find mention of them in the cast list of Rawndesley Opera House’s production of
‘Simon and I think that, all this notwithstanding, we ought to take a statement from Aidan Seed,’ said Kombothekra. Nervousness about the brave stand he imagined he was taking made his voice louder than it normally was.
‘Not only Seed,’ said Simon. ‘Bussey and Trelease too.’
‘If only we could amuse ourselves by doing as you suggest,’ said Proust with feigned wistfulness. ‘Had we but world enough and time. Imagine Mary Trelease’s statement: “On a date that a man I don’t know called Aidan Seed refuses to divulge, he did not murder me.”’ Proust banged his fist down on his desk. ‘What’s wrong with the pair of you? Did you share a beefburger of questionable origin in the mid-nineteen-eighties?’
‘No, sir.’ Kombothekra took a step back. The brave stand was over, then.
‘I’ve heard as much as I want to about Aidan Seed, and seen more than I want to of your pathetically expectant faces. I’m sorry Santa didn’t bring you both what you wanted, but there’s only so much tat you can force down one reasonable chimney. Are we clear?’ Proust stopped, red in the face.
Reasonable chimney? Was he talking about himself? The Snowman had trouble recognising his opinions as opinions, had for as long as Simon had known him. He regarded himself as the embodiment of universal truth. It wouldn’t for a moment have occurred to him, in constructing his metaphor, that he was closer to being a chimney
