Blind Needle (24 page)

It would be a weird and cruel quirk of justice, I thought, if the Patundi child was to be the instrument which would bring about the destruction of the one person who might avenge his death.

I stirred my tea and waited for the Inspector to sort out his papers. Was this how such matters as murder and culpability, crime and punishment, were dealt with – over tea and biscuits?

‘We'd like you to sign a couple of forms before you go,' Blend said, shuffling paperwork. ‘Just to say you were treated fairly and courteously during questioning, placed under no duress, and that you have
no complaint to make against the police authority in regard to this matter.'

I swallowed some hot tea and managed not to choke or splutter.

‘You have no objection to signing?'

‘No, none at all.' I put the cup down quickly so that it wouldn't rattle against the saucer. ‘You're finished with me? I mean your inquiries are – completed?'

‘We still have an unsolved murder, Mr Holford,' Inspector Blend said gloomily. He sighed into his cup and drank his tea. ‘Committed by a person or persons unknown, without apparent motive. Nothing was taken from the shop, the safe wasn't tampered with. We do know that somebody stayed in the room above the shop – we have a good set of prints – and that's the person we're anxious to interview. He could be an outsider, like yourself, or a local man. Frankly we don't know.'

‘The child – the boy,' I said ‘– he could identify this person?'

‘Possibly. He certainly saw him. But the lad is seriously ill, and children's evidence is very difficult to assess anyway. To them, all adults, unless they're extremely old, appear to be the same age. He thinks this man was about the same age as his father, but …' Blend smiled and shrugged.

‘How old was his father?'

‘Forty-three.'

‘That's my age,' I said.

Blend nodded. ‘That didn't escape us. It was one of the first links we made between yourself and the man we wish to interview. But the child is certain, so he says, that he's never set eyes on you before.' He pushed two printed forms across the desk and laid his pen on top of them. ‘And even if he had made a positive identification we would have reasons to doubt it.'

‘What reasons?' It was curiosity and astonishment that made me blurt it out.

‘You have a right to know, I suppose. We were unable to obtain a match with your prints and those found in the room where the man stayed, that's number one – would you mind signing those?'

I picked up the pen. I had to summon up all my powers of concentration to sign my name. Had someone else, another person, been in
that room and obliterated all signs of my presence, wiped every surface and object clean? It seemed not only unlikely, but impossible. I wanted to protest,
You've made a mistake – of course they're my fingerprints! Search again! Double-check! Computers aren't infallible. Take me back to the hospital and let me convince the boy that I'm the man he saw
 …

I laid the pen down. ‘Was that all?'

‘What?'

‘You said reasons.'

Blend slid a manilla envelope from underneath the blue folder, inserted two blunt fingers inside the flap and pushed a ten-by-eight black-and-white photograph across the desk. I was aware that he was watching me, waiting for my reaction.

‘We think there's a possibility that this could be the man.'

The camera's flashlight had whitened the already fair skin so that the body looked bleached and bloated, lying there on a metal table with drainage channels leading to sluice holes in the corners which reminded me of the pockets on a snooker table. The damp black hair was brushed straight back, the lips pale and puckered through the tangle of dark beard. The photograph showed him from the waist up, revealed the faint bruising on his upper arms and shoulders.

Blend leaned forward on his elbows. ‘You're not in the habit of making anonymous phone calls to the police, are you, Mr Holford?'

I shook my head.

‘Somebody did. That's how we came to find him in the harbour.'

‘Drowned?'

‘No, he didn't drown.'

‘Who is he?'

‘You don't recognise him?'

‘No,' I said steadily. ‘Why should I?'

My reaction – or lack of it – must have satisfied him, because Inspector Blend slid the print back in the envelope. He said, ‘We have reason to believe it's the body of a man named Smith who absconded from a mental institution in Cheshire about a week ago. Though we've yet to have the identification confirmed.'

‘What about his fingerprints? Did they match those you found in the shop?'

Inspector Blend gave a weary smile. ‘That would have been easy,
wouldn't it? Too easy – if he had any fingerprints. They've been burned off with some kind of acidic solution.' He raised his eyebrows. ‘You know, Mr Holford, by dyeing your hair and growing a beard there's a pretty close resemblance between the two of you. You were lucky not to involve yourself in a lot of trouble.'

‘I realise that now,' I said.

‘Yes, well, if you wouldn't mind,' he said, glancing at his watch, ‘we've got other things to do. We won't detain you any further.'

‘There's something else,' I blurted out, surprising myself. ‘It's to do with Benson.'

‘Benson? Who's that?'

It was as I'd thought. If Blend had been a local man he'd have known at once about Mr Big of Brickton, town councillor and businessman, but the name meant nothing to him.

‘He runs B-H Haulage.'

Inspector Blend drummed on the desk. ‘I haven't the time, nor the inclination, to concern myself with your petty personal problems, Mr Holford.' He slipped the forms into the folder and flipped it shut. ‘I don't fancy opening another can of worms.'

‘What do you mean?'

The faded brown eyes were pained, faintly irritable. ‘You've already told us that you went along to Benson's firm for a job and were turned down. Frankly, I'm not interested in any grudge you might have against him, or any disagreements between you.' Blend finished his tea and pushed his chair back. ‘As long as your difference of opinion doesn't involve homicide, Mr Holford, I really couldn't care less …'

‘What if it does?'

Blend held out the folder to Dimelow, who took it from him. He said, ‘I already have four murder inquiries on the go; I can well do without another.'

‘But …'

‘Yes?'

‘The boy in the hospital.' I swallowed and gulped out, ‘That's murder.'

‘Leukaemia isn't murder, Mr Holford.' Blend spoke to Sergeant Dimelow: ‘Clear those with the Super and make copies, would you?' Dimelow went out.

‘This is important. I have to tell you.' I didn't like the sound of my voice, the thin note of pleading in it, but I couldn't restrain it. ‘Benson's firm has been dumping radiocative waste here. He's poisoning the town for profit. Those children in the hospital—'

‘Benson's the ogre, is he?'

I gripped the edge of the desk. ‘He's paying off one of the managers at the Station – a man called Rhodes. They're both involved in a scheme to pipe hot water to the local swimming baths, which is supposed to save the council thousands of pounds a year.'

Inspector Blend leaned his elbow on the back of the chair, toying with the lobe of his ear. ‘I get it. It's a conspiracy, right? The Station, the council, Benson, this chap Rhodes, they're all up to their necks in this scheme and it so happens that you're the one person to have tumbled to it.'

‘Benson and Rhodes are involved but I don't know who else.'

‘Sure it's not the Mafia?'

Dimelow came back in, leaving the door open. The young constable hovered alertly outside.

Blend stood up, buttoning his jacket, huge and still solid under the slack of advancing years. As a young copper he would have pounded the beat, knocking heads together, settling family disputes, never having to deal with a murder from one year's end to the next. Now he had four on his plate, meetings chaired by the chief constable to sit through, and a shabby itinerant with a personal vendetta babbling on about piped hot water and radioactive waste.

‘I can't face shepherd's pie and rhubarb tart in the canteen; we'll stop for lunch on the way.'

Sergeant Dimelow smiled. ‘Right, sir.'

‘Mr Holford was just telling me an interesting story,' Blend said, poker-faced.

‘It isn't a story,' I said. ‘It's true. I can prove it.'

‘Oh yes?' Blend stopped at the door, glancing back at me over his shoulder. ‘How?'

‘There's a tape. I stole it from his car.'

‘Whose car?'

‘Benson's
car.'

Even as I was saying this, blabbing it almost in desperation, something
was bothering me, something vital that I'd forgotten.

‘You stole this tape from Benson's car,' Blend said pedantically.

‘Yes! It's a conversation he had with Rhodes about the money he was paying him – five thousand pounds – to keep his mouth shut.'

What the hell was it, the niggling thing? Something to do with the tape … or something
on
tape? What was this unknown, forgotten thing that sent the fear of God through me?

‘I don't recall any tape.' Blend glanced inquiringly at Dimelow. ‘Was there a tape listed among Mr Holford's belongings? No, I didn't think there was.'

This was impossible, like trying to give the answers to someone filling in a crossword puzzle without them knowing what the clues were. What did I have to do to convince Blend that …

Then it hit me. The unknown, forgotten, frightening thing.

I remembered.

I remembered Benson's voice on the tape saying
Wayne will see to Holford. He'll be dumped with the next load from the Station …

That would intrigue Inspector Blend: he would wonder about it. He would puzzle over the fact that only recently he had interrogated this man Holford whose body Benson had planned to have dumped in the harbour. Next question. If the body lying on the mortuary slab was actually that of Holford, not Smith, then who was the person he had eliminated from his inquiries into the Patundi murder? If not Peter Holford, as he claimed to be, then who was he?

That was the dangerous question all right. Who was he?

‘So where is it, then, this tape you say you stole from Benson's car?'

I found myself staring at the crease in Sergeant Dimelow's trousers; you could have sliced cheese with it. I shook my head slowly. ‘I've forgotten.'

‘You've forgotten. Unfortunate.'

‘I think I must have lost it.'

‘Careless of you,' Blend said, not at all unkindly. He said, ‘Look here, there are other jobs, Mr Holford. Don't take it too hard. I don't suppose Benson meant it personally when he wouldn't take you on. Try somewhere else. Your luck might change.'

Dimelow followed him out.

It was cold on the hill leading out of town, though unusually for Brickton the day had kept fine. It was possible to look directly at the sun: a bland orange balloon hanging motionless above the flat misty sea. In the soft, even twilight the harbour wall was clearly visible, enclosing an area of deepest black touched here and there with crimson streaks, the sunken hulls and rusty superstructures glowing dull red.

I turned my back on the town and went on up the hill. It occurred to me that I was leaving Brickton with even less than I'd arrived with – a borrowed suit, a few pounds, no belongings, no destination. I walked on shivering. The road levelled out and dipped over the crown of the hill, hiding the town from view, then slid down between hedgerows into the countryside. There wasn't much traffic, a few cars, a bread van, a tanker going the opposite way, air-brakes gasping as it slowed for the descent. They were a menace on these narrow winding roads.

The pavement had given out before I came over the hill, and I kept close to the grass verge, facing the oncoming traffic. Brickton, it seemed to me already, had ceased to exist. I had the notion that if I turned round and went back there would be no tattoo parlour along the narrow shuttered street, no E GA FOO S ORE halfway down the hill, no bare dusty room above it (I'd never been there: the fingerprints proved it), no town hall, no swimming baths, no harbour.

The place was evaporating in my mind, had less substance than a distant fading memory. It had no basis in reality; either that or I had none, but I couldn't decide at the moment which.

A car slowed behind me and automatically I moved onto the grass verge. Its engine idled, and when I turned my head I saw a silvery
metallic bonnet, rusting at the edges, with a wire coat-hanger bent into a square for a radio aerial.

The Datsun drew level. Diane Locke wound the window down. She was wearing the bulky shapeless anorak, the hood pulled back, her hair a dark tangle, her eyes large with concern in her pale face.

‘I didn't want to pick you up outside the police station. They might have been watching.'

I stepped back onto the road and walked on. The car crept after me.

‘Get in. Please.'

I kept on walking.

‘Stop for a minute and
listen
to me!'

Part of me wanted to stop and another part of me wanted to walk on. I walked on.

‘Where are you going?'

‘It doesn't matter. Away from here.'

‘I'm heading in that direction. Get in.'

Go on

Get in

‘
No,'
I said savagely, feeling the sultry throb of a headache. I was chilled to the bone and yet my head felt hot. The pain drove down through the base of my skull and all at once I felt nauseous. I thought of Trafford's scaly hand pointing at the harbour through the lopsided window of the hulk.