Danny looked at me aghast, his usually thin blue eyes bugging out like they were on mini springs. ‘Are you serious? Fuck me, Dennis, I don’t know how you can live with yourself.’
‘What? Going to pub quizzes?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Like I said, we’ve just got to carry on as normal. And what’s more normal than a pub quiz?’
‘And to think my sister was going to marry you.’
‘Lucky you came along and fucked it all up really, wasn’t it?’
He shot me a guilty look then, which I knew he would. It was cruel really, making him pay again for something that happened all that time ago.
I grinned at him to show I was only joking, and clapped him on the shoulder again. Still very much man-to-man. ‘Come on, it’ll be a laugh. Shit, it’s got to be better than sitting here biting your nails and gawking at the TV, waiting for your mugshot to appear.’
‘I can’t go back inside again, Dennis. Not after last time.’
‘You won’t have to,’ I told him. ‘I promise.’ We looked at each other for a long moment. ‘So, are you coming then?’
‘Where is it?’
‘Pub called the Chinaman. Just off City Road.’
Danny thought about it for a moment. It looked as though he was trying to work out whether he could afford to do something so frivolous when, by rights, he ought to be putting all his concentration into shitting himself. In the end it seemed he could afford to let his concentration slip for a few hours.
‘Fuck it. Why not?’ He picked up the jiffy bag. ‘At least I won’t be short of cash for a drink.’
10
‘He was an accountant.’ Malik chewed on his sandwich as he spoke.
‘You spoke to your mate, then?’
He nodded, finishing his mouthful. ‘Yeah, last night. He’s been working round the clock.’
‘I can imagine.’
It was twenty past two the following afternoon, and we were in the station canteen. A fairly unproductive morning had been spent helping to collate all the statements we and the other officers had taken so far in an effort to make some sort of sense of them. So far nothing was leaping out at us, and the one possible suspect, the pimp, had still not been found. Nor was anyone sure where else to look for him.
‘How are they coming along with everything?’
‘You know what it’s like, Sarge. It was difficult for him to say too much but it seems they’re working on a lot of leads. From what I can gather, they’re concentrating on the accountant and trying to establish what he was doing with those customs officers.’
‘Two customs officers and an accountant. It sounds like the name of a bad film.’
‘It’s an interesting combination, I’ll give you that.’
I finished picking at the Caesar salad I’d ordered and pushed the plate away, thinking about the inevitable cigarette. ‘What does your mate make of it all?’
‘He said they’d already dug up a lot of info on the accountant and there was nothing to suggest he wasn’t a sound guy. He didn’t have a record or anything.’
I remembered the accountant’s face, the shock on it as he looked down the barrel of my gun. I lit the cigarette. ‘So what was he doing with them?’
‘That’s the million-dollar question. My friend says there was an official reason why they were together. He wouldn’t say exactly what it was, but from what I can gather the accountant had information on something that was very useful to the customs men.’
‘So they’re pretty sure the customs men were part of some sort of investigation?’
Malik nodded slowly. ‘That’s my impression. He didn’t say for sure, but I think that’s the angle they’re looking at it from.’
‘So the only way the murderer would know they were there at that time—’
‘Was if it was an inside job. It’s a worrying thought. You don’t like to think of the forces of law and order as being corrupt.’
‘You think someone tipped the killer off?’
He shrugged. ‘That’s what it looks like. What else could it be?’
I hoped Malik’s information was wrong – which, of course, it could have been. A lot of the time on big cases involving a lot of detectives, contradictory stories get thrown up. From my point of view, it would be a lot easier to believe that the three victims were the pondscum Raymond had labelled them. Not only did it make what I’d done a lot more palatable – at least to me – I also felt it would make it much more difficult for the investigating officers to come up with a result. If it was an inside job, then the list of people who would have been in a position to know where those men were going to be and when they were going to be there would be pretty short.
But at the moment, it was still conjecture. I knew I was going to have to find out more information from Raymond, but at the same time I was going to have to be careful about how I did it. I’d never looked at him as a threat before, but suddenly I didn’t want to give him a reason for wanting me out of the way as well. Maybe there’d been more truth in Danny’s words than I’d initially given him credit for.
‘You look very thoughtful, Sarge. Everything was all right at the doctor’s yesterday, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh, yeah, yeah. No problem. Nothing serious anyway. I’m just not looking forward to chasing around questioning the rest of those kids at the childrens home. It just seems like a hiding to nothing.’
We still had close to two thirds of the kids to take statements from, and, although I quite fancied the idea of seeing the alluring Carla Graham again, I didn’t want to waste any more time talking to snotty little bastards who wouldn’t help you if their lives depended on it. I’d already told Knox I didn’t think we’d get anything helpful out of it, but he’d insisted. He
