This was bad. Worse than bad, probably. At the Stanger we’d been careful not to park anywhere within range of the one visible security camera, but the nurse on reception had seen the van and presumably the description was right there in the police report. I was caught between a rock and a hard place. The only way I could get myself off the hook for attempted murder was to put myself on a different hook labelled
Basquiat didn’t mind. She was keeping her end of the conversation up very well without me.
‘So we’ve got you in the vicinity of the Salisbury Estate,’ she summarised. ‘Admittedly, some weeks before the attack on Kenny Seddon, but — to make things more interesting — in a van you took the trouble to hire under an assumed name. And we’ve got you lying about it in evidence freely given to an investigating officer — both now and when I asked you the first time down at the Cromwell Road nick. Are we having fun yet, Castor? Because it gets better.’
I looked at Coldwood again. This time he met my gaze. He touched his lips, which were closed, presumably to indicate that I had nothing to gain by running my mouth off here. It was a fair point, but not one that I needed coaching in.
‘You were seen on the Salisbury Estate,’ Basquiat went on. ‘Two nights ago. Barely twenty-four hours after you were released from police custody. I’ve got positive ID from two separate sources. I ought to be embarrassed about how easy you’re making this, but hell, these days it takes a lot to make me blush. Now tell me what you were up to, and maybe when you come out on the far side of this you won’t be quite old enough to claim your pension.’
Her tone had become even colder and more clipped in the course of this speech, and she was leaning forward, her face just a little too close to mine. Two separate sources? I thought irrelevantly. Was one of them Catholic? Was the other Gary? Where did the Pope shit these days, anyway?
‘I was looking into the attack on Kenny myself,’ I began, ‘because it seemed pretty likely that I was going to end up in the frame for it–’
‘You built the bloody frame,’ Coldwood growled — his first contribution to the proceedings. I knew what he meant. I couldn’t have put myself in a shittier position if I’d been trying. But hope springs eternal, especially when you’ve got nothing else to fall back on.
‘Kenny was sending me a message,’ I said. ‘The words on the car windscreen were like — the last throw of the dice. He wanted me to look at what was happening down on the Salisbury, so he did the only thing he could think to do as he was bleeding out.’
‘And you felt like you had to honour his last request?’ Gary concluded. Basquiat clenched her fists and swung round to give him a look, but she was too late to stop him from spoiling her game plan. I took the sucker punch to the chest, not to the chin.
‘Kenny’s dead,’ I said, feeling a momentary sense of vertigo.
‘About three hours ago,’ Basquiat confirmed. ‘So it’s not wounding with intent any more, Castor. It’s murder. And this is your last chance to level with me about your part in it.’
‘My part?’ I couldn’t make my brain work, and I couldn’t figure out what her game was — the way she was playing this. But my hopes of Kenny coming round and explaining how all this was just some amusing mistake had just gone up the Swanee. ‘Basquiat, for the love of Christ!’ I said, almost pleading because I really felt like I needed not to be arrested right now. ‘I didn’t kill Kenny. You know I didn’t. You’ve got two other men’s prints on the fucking razor.’
‘But the razor wasn’t the murder weapon,’ she reminded me grimly, her face still almost shoved into mine. ‘The last blow — the one that counted — was struck with a short knife, none too sharp, that we haven’t been able to retrieve yet. What’s the fascination with the Salisbury Estate, Castor? Why do you keep going back there, if it’s not to get paid or cover your tracks or coach someone down there through their story?’
‘I was checking the place out,’ I persisted doggedly, ‘because Kenny’s message–’
‘And you called in some back-up of your own, didn’t you? I almost forgot that part. But you were smart there, at least. Kept it in the family.’
‘In the family?’ I echoed, missing her point for a moment. Then I realised what she was talking about and felt sour anger flare in my stomach like a progress report from a perforated ulcer. ‘Yeah, right. Of course. I teamed up with my brother, who’s a fucking priest, and we carved Kenny up because he stole our football back when I was ten. Basquiat, Matt wasn’t even with me when I went to the Salisbury. He was there by himself, under orders from another priest named Thomas Gwillam. If you want to know more, look him up in the Yellow Pages under rabid religious conspiracies.’
‘The two of you were seen at the Salisbury together.’
‘Because we were both there for the same reason, I suppose. I mean, because of what happened to Kenny. But we didn’t arrive together and we didn’t . . .’ I faltered for a second, lost my thread, because I was listening to my own words and I could see, very abruptly, how little sense they made. Everything was tied together. It had to be. But maybe I was wrong in putting Kenny at the centre of it. When I first saw Gwillam on the walkway at the Salisbury, it was before any word of Kenny’s death could possibly have got out to him. And the first thing he’d done, as far as I could make out, was to knock on the Danielses’ door.
Incised wounds. Puncture wounds. Bic didn’t have either kind. And I suddenly realised that that might be the point.
Basquiat was still looking at me expectantly. ‘Didn’t what?’ she prompted.
‘Didn’t anything,’ I muttered. ‘We ran into each other, we talked, and then we went our separate ways.’
‘You ran into each other.’ Basquiat didn’t even need to inject any sarcasm this time: the words just hung there, limp and ailing in the unsympathetic air.
‘I didn’t call Matt to the Salisbury,’ I said.
‘So he was there for reasons of his own.’
‘Obviously.’
‘Before Kenny Seddon was attacked, or after?’
‘Like I said, ask Gwillam. There’s a church-based group called the Anathemata Curialis–’
At this point the main door of the ward swung open and Charge Nurse Petra Ryall walked in, wheeling the meds trolley. She immediately looked across at the little group by my bed, and her gaze lingered. Basquiat’s power dressing is multifunctional, but you couldn’t mistake Gary for anything but a cop.
‘Find Gwillam,’ I suggested again. ‘Ask him about all this. Matt is part of whatever he’s doing. You ought to be able to get chapter and verse on that from your two fucking sources–’
Basquiat stood up, so abruptly that I was taken by surprise and stopped in mid-curse. ‘I’ll do that,’ she said. ‘And in the meantime, I suggest you don’t leave town. Can you promise me that, Castor? Because if I have to come chasing after you, when I find you I’ll nail your balls to the table to make sure you stay where you’re put.’
I stared at her, mystified. The absence of handcuffs, verbal cautions and statutory phone calls caught me so far off balance that all I could think of to say was ‘What?’
‘Stay at your regular address,’ Coldwood interpreted. ‘Or check with us before you go anywhere. We’ll be in touch again soon.’
‘Ending interview at ten-sixteen a.m.,’ Basquiat said. She picked up the tape recorder, turned it off, and slipped it back into her pocket. ‘Very soon,’ she confirmed, and stalked away without even blowing me a kiss. She stopped and looked back, though, when she realised that Gary wasn’t following her. He was still loitering by the sunflowers.
‘I need a minute,’ he said.
‘Off the record?’ Basquiat’s tone was dangerous.
‘Off the record.’
‘No.’
‘How exactly are you going to stop me, Ruth?’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘By telling you no,’ she said. ‘I’m senior officer on the case and I conduct the interviews.’
‘This isn’t an interview.’
‘Then send him a bloody postcard.’
Gary waited her out. In the end she made a gesture of disgust and walked on through the door, pushing the
