‘So have I, my friend,’ said Tom Beano, unshakable.
‘Faith in what? Faith in God, Mr Beano?’
‘Faith in the non-existence of God, Mr Pink.’
‘Then you’re a blind fool, Mr Beano, if you don’t mind my saying so.’
‘And you are a blithering idiot, Mr Pink.’
‘Thank you, Mr Beano,’ said Pink, with irony.
‘Thank
Asta picks such people up as the whim moves her, and seldom drops them. She always feels personally responsible for the welfare of her wistful, watchful hangers-on, who sit hungrily about her big red presence like stray dogs about a butcher’s shop. Yet she has made several true friends who love and understand her. Curiously enough, most of her real friendships developed out of enmity: Asta’s best friends are people whom she originally attacked.
Once you persuaded her that she had done you an injustice, Asta would take off her skin to make a waistcoat for you: she was yours for life. Now, for example, Chief Inspector Turpin might be her brother: he is one of the few men she really admires. Yet at the time of the murder of Sonia Sabbatani, when Turpin was only a detective- inspector, she was ready to tear him to pieces.
Turpin was a big man with a tucked-in chin and a spirallywrinkled neck that resembled a gigantic screw by means of which his small head was fixed to his thick shoulders. His fists were freckled and his face was pale. When Turpin talked he barked, kept his white-grey eyes on you as if he was waiting for a sudden, belligerent move.
Now his hair is white: his scalp resembles one of those wire brushes with which suede shoes are cleaned. When the Sabbatani case was in the newspapers, Turpin’s hair was almost red; he is thinner now, so that his face hangs in folds. The watery sepia ghosts of freckles still speckle the backs of his hands, but he is not the lean, tense man he used to be, although his eyes are more arrogant and his voice more brusque.
13
Asta met him first in the Bar Bacchus: he was pointed out to her by Gonger. ‘Detective-Inspector Turpin of the Yard,’ he said, in a graveyard whisper.
‘Ho!’ cried Asta Thundersley, loosening her shoulders with a series of angry shrugs, like a boxer before a fight. ‘Ho! … H, you!’
‘Mom?’ said Turpin.
‘Where’s the beast that murdered Sonia Sabbatani?’
‘Couldn’t say, Mom, I’m afraid.’
‘He couldn’t say!’ said Asta. ‘He couldn’t
‘Ha!’ said Turpin, finishing his lager beer.
‘You’re a detective-inspector, aren’t you?’
‘Yes’m.’
‘Aren’t you a public servant, then?’
‘Yes’m.’
‘Find the beast that murdered Sonia Sabbatani, and I’ll give you a hundred pounds. There!’
‘Much obliged to you,’ said Detective-Inspector Turpin, dryly. ‘See what I can do.’
‘See what you can do? Bah! Catch the beast, lock him up and hang him — d’you hear?’
‘Yes’m,’ said Turpin, rising and brushing ashes off his blue trousers and moving towards the door.
‘No you don’t,’ said Asta. She interposed her powerful body between the detective-inspector and the way out of the Bar Bacchus, and continued:
‘Look here, you, whatever you call yourself. Find who killed Sonia Sabbatani, and I’ll give you a hundred pounds for yourself. In notes. Do you hear?’
‘Couldn’t accept it, ‘m. Find the man if we can, in any case.’
‘Look here!’ Asta bellowed, holding the detective-inspector back as he tried to go out. ‘A little girl is murdered. Have you got any daughters?’
‘Two.’
‘If one of your daughters was Sonia Sabbatani, what’d
‘What I’m doing now,’ said Turpin. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’
‘Here,’ said Asta, ‘here a child is murdered —’
‘Listen, Madam,’ said Detective-Inspector Turpin, ‘do listen. This murder was, as they call it, a Sex Murder. That is to say, a sort of a murder without obvious motive —’
‘The motive
‘Quite so. You know how these things are, don’t you? Some of the nicest people go in for that kind of thing — there’s no way of identifying them. Is there, now?’
