‘Oh, innocent were you? Well, we don’t have to bother about little details like that this time, do we?’
Perking was about to speak again but thought better of it and clamped his mouth shut.
‘Why don’t you sit down, Perking?’
Perking looked round the room. There was just one spindly chair placed dead centre, directly under the light. ‘I prefer to stand.’
‘You’re going to get very tired,’ said Dover pleasantly. ‘Unless, of course, you decide to be sensible and just answer a few simple questions.’
‘I don’t have to say anything if I don’t want to,’ repeated Perking doggedly.
‘You’re a proper little poll parrot, aren’t you? Now then, why did you kill your wife?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Come off it, laddie! You killed her all right. You know you did and I know you did so let’s stop messing about. We know all about you trying to clean up in the kitchen after you’d bashed her head to a pulp in the front room. Very clever that was, but just not clever enough. If that’s what you’re relying on I should have another think about it if I were you.’
Perking was shaken. Even Dover could see that. His mouth sagged open incredulously and what colour was still left in his face ebbed away.
‘Here,’— Dover turned on a kindly voice—‘you look as though you’ve had a bit of a shock. Come and sit down. You’ll feel better in a minute or two.’ He draped a fatherly arm round Perking’s shoulders and escorted him to the chair.
‘I’m all right,’ mumbled Perking.
‘Of course you are!’ Dover smiled at him encouragingly. ‘Now, just sit yourself down and take the load off your feet.’
Perking, his suspicions not entirely lulled, was inclined to resist, but Dover was pressing down heavily. Dover weighed seventeen and one quarter stone. Perking could manage ten and a half with his overcoat on. Dover leaned and Perking’s legs bent at the knees.
He sat.
Or, at least, he would have sat if at the very last moment Dover had not, with beautiful timing, hooked the chair aside with his foot.
John Perking hit the floor hard in a painful and undignified sprawl. The chair toppled over and, being old and of inferior workmanship, collapsed into its component parts.
‘My, my,’ murmured Dover, oozing with sympathy, ‘you are in a state, aren’t you, laddie? What are you grovelling about down there for? No good trying to lick my boots, laddie. Things have gone a sight too far for that.’ He bent down with a grunt and seized a fistful of Perking’s hair. ‘Oops-a-daisy!’ Perking screamed as he was hauled roughly to his feet. ‘Now, laddie,’ leered Dover, maintaining his grip and jerking Perking’s head methodically from side to side, ‘feel more like talking, eh? I just want to know why you did her in, that’s all. Just give me a nice straight answer to a nice straight question and you and me, we’ll be the best of friends, won’t we?’
‘You rotten, stinking, old swine!’ shrieked Perking, trying to hack Dover’s shins.
‘Temper, temper!’ chided Dover and administered a resounding slap across the face which brought tears to Pcrking’s eyes. ‘You want to be careful, laddie. I’m a very good-natured chap on the whole. I only start getting really nasty when I ask somebody a simple question and they won’t give me a simple answer. Why did you kill your wife?’
‘You can’t bully me!’ sobbed Perking.
‘Oh, can’t I? I shouldn’t bet on it, laddie.’ There was another yell of pain from Perking. Dover looked down. ‘Sorry, laddie! Did I tread on your toes? I’ll have to be more careful, won’t I? Seeing as how you’ve got no shoes on. Now then — why did you kill your wife? You can tell me — I’m a married man myself.’
‘I didn’t kill her!’ moaned Perking, writhing impotently in Dover’s grasp.
Another hefty box across the ears. ‘Don’t contradict me, laddie! That gets me really mad, that does.’
‘You go to hell!”
Dover began to get cross. If there was any justice in the world a weedy little specimen like Perking should have cracked at the first sniff of a bunched fist, but here he was, still on his feet and still breathing defiance. Dover raised his right hand and let Perking have it in the pit of the stomach. The young man doubled up and Dover, releasing his hold on the hair, speeded him on his way to the nearest wall with another resounding slap on the side of the head.
Perking hit the wall with his shoulder and sank, coughing and choking, on to his knees. Dover rubbed the knuckles of his right hand and prepared in his usual measured and majestic manner to continue the treatment.
Which is where the Chief Inspector made his mistake.
Perking was bruised and dazed, all right, but he was a deal tougher than Dover had given him credit for. He made a real effort and, with a howl of fury, launched himself off the wall before his tormentor could reach him. Perking might have swerved to the right or he might have swerved to the left. In actual fact like a panic-stricken mouse he plunged forward in a straight line and scored with his head a perfect bull’s eye on Dover’s advancing paunch. By pure chance he caught Dover at his most vulnerable.
‘ ’Strewth!’ gasped Dover a split second before the impact deprived him temporarily of all power of speech and he thudded writhing on to the floor.
Perking, once having seized the initiative, had enough gumption not to rest on his laurels. Quick as lightning he grabbed the largest piece of the broken chair and proceeded with considerable relish to beat Dover round the head with it, having first knocked off the protective bowler hat.
The subsequent bellows could be heard quite distinctly all over the police station. MacGregor, sitting with the sergeant at his desk, cringed with shame. His companion, however, was visibly impressed.
‘Cor,’ he observed throatily, ‘get a load of that! He’s a lad, your Chief Inspector, all right! I wouldn’t
