Bord nodded. “Thanks very much, Mr. Lawley. That’s a capital piece of evidence, and I’d like a further word with you later about your redheaded chap.” He turned to Wharton. “Now what I’d like, if you can arrange it, is a chance for Mr. Staple and me to see all your men. I take it they’ll be in camp now. Could you parade them so that we could have a look at them?”
“Now, look here, Inspector; it’s up to every responsible man to help the police,” replied Wharton, “but think things out a bit. This isn’t the Army, you know, and I’m not in the position of a commanding officer. I’m a manager and it’s my business to keep the gangs on the job, and the contract finished to time. To do that, I’ve got to keep the men in good heart, contented with conditions here and so forth. Now while they’re working, there’s got to be discipline, as Lawley told you about the blasting job. The men have to take orders from the overseers and by and large that’s acknowledged. The majority of the men have been working for the company on other projects and they know the regulations are for their safety as well as for keeping the job moving. But when the day’s work is over, our men are free, just like other working men. They feed in the canteen and sleep in the huts because it suits them that way. Except at weekends, there’s no transport to take them to a town, and this place is a perishing long way away from anywhere. They may like pubs and cinemas, but they don’t want to tramp best part of twenty miles there and back over the fells after a heavy day’s work, so they stay around the camp. We’ve got a cinema projector in the big hut, and a TV and radio, and they settle down contentedly enough. But their time’s their own in the evenings and apart from a bit of supervision to see that there’s no rowdyism or smashing things up, we don’t interfere.”
“Yes, I see your point,” said Bord; “but you’ve got the authority to ask them to file past, I take it? You can give any reason you like.”
“Don’t you go thinking they’re simple,” retorted Wharton. “They’re not. They know, more or less, what happened over yonder at High Garth. Turner, the canteen lorry driver, told them, and the reaction was, ‘Now we shall have the cops up here, trying to pin something on us.’ They will have seen you arrive. By the way, did you leave a man in charge of your car?”
“Yes, I did,” rejoined Bord. “I’m not that simple myself.”
Wharton nodded. “Well, then, you can guess how their minds work, Inspector. They’ll have seen your car and they’ll know it’s a police car and they’ll have said: ‘There you are: here are cops, trying to prove we put paid to the bloke they found. We’re working chaps and we’re all from away, so it’s got to be us.’ And if you’d left your car with no one in charge, you might have found it upside down when you went to drive home. I’m not trying to make out that the men are potential criminals, far from it. They’re a decent set of chaps so far as working goes. We’ve had no trouble, barring a few deserters who couldn’t face the hard work and the weather, but once they get the idea that the police are making a beeline for them when a crime’s been committed, they’ll resent it, and once they feel they’re not being treated fairly, they’ll get difficult.” Wharton paused a moment “You want me to ‘parade them,’ as you call it,” he went on, “order them to file past so that you can have a look at them. If I give that order, some may oblige, but others won’t. Some of them may take it into their heads to go out over the fell. I’ve no means of knowing if any of our toughs have ever been in the hands of the police: if they have, they’ll be the chaps who won’t oblige. They just won’t be there when they’re wanted. If you want to have a look at them, why not wait till morning, when you can see them as they leave the huts, and there won’t be any bother?”
“If there’s anybody here I want, tomorrow may be too late,” persisted Bord.
“Following the same argument, it’s already too late,” persisted Wharton; “but remember this: you can’t charge any of our chaps with assault if the assault was committed this afternoon,” he went on. “We’ve told you that we can answer for the men
