Playing for the Ashes (82 page)

another time—”

“Thank you,” Lynley said fervently.

“—seems like most blokes out there don’t much like it broadcast to the fuzz when they’re hiring skin films. Not that it’s illegal, mind you. But it puts a dent in the reputation. Course in this case, there was nothing to worry about since the blokes in question never hired those films.” He took a last bite and licked the pastry crumbs from his fingers. “Now, why is it I’m thinking that news doesn’t surprise you?”

“Do the films even exist?” Barbara asked.

“Oh my yes. Every one of them, though according to the shop bloke
Wild in the Woolly
has been hired so often it’s like watching gymnastics in a snow storm.”

Barbara said to Lynley, “But if Faraday or one of his mates didn’t hire them last Wednesday…” She gave the pictures of Fleming another glance. “What’s this got to do with Jimmy Cooper, sir?”

“Now I’m not saying Faraday’s mate didn’t hire them at all,” Nkata added hastily. “I’m saying he didn’t hire them that night. On other nights—” Here, he removed his notebook from his jacket pocket. He wiped his fingers on a spotless white handkerchief before he applied them to the pages of his book. He opened to a page that was marked with a thin red ribbon and read off a list of dates going back more than five years. Each one was connected to a different video shop, but the list was cyclical in nature, repeating itself after all the shops had been used once. There was, however, no set period of time between each date. “In’eresting, that bit of detective work. Wouldn’t you say?”

“Nice initiative, Winston,” Lynley acknowledged. The constable ducked his head in a show of spurious humility.

One of the telephones rang and was answered. The DC manning it spoke in a hushed voice. Barbara thought about Nkata’s information. Nkata himself went on.

“Unless they just worked up a fondness for this p’rticular set of films, seems to me like these blokes’re arranging a permanent group alibi for themselves. Memorise a list of
fil
ms for when the cops come round asking questions, right? Only detail that changes from one time to the next is the shop the
fil
ms came from, and that’s easy enough to remember, isn’t it, once you’re told the name.”

“So someone sifting through the records of a single shop wouldn’t see the same
fil
ms hired over and over,” Barbara said meditatively.

“Which’d be like putting the alibi in neon. Which is what they didn’t want to do.”

“They,” she said.

“Faraday’s stag party,” Nkata said. “Looks to me like whatever they’re into, these blokes, they’re into together.”

“But not last Wednesday.”

“Right. Whatever Faraday was into that night, he was into it alone.”

“Sir?” The DC who had answered the phone turned from his desk into the room. He said, “Maidstone’s faxing the autopsy over, but there’s not much to add. Asphyxiation from carbon monoxide. And enough alcohol in his system to drop a bull.”

“There’s a bottle of Black Bush on the bedside table.” Barbara gestured to the photographs. “A glass as well.”

“From the blood alcohol level,” the DC said, “it’s a good bet that he passed out well before the fire was lit. Slept right through it, in a manner of speaking.”

“If you got to go,” Nkata remarked, “it’s not a bad way.”

Lynley rose. “Except that he didn’t.”

“What?”

“Have to go.” He picked up his now empty cup and his unopened packet of Jaffa Cakes. The former he pitched into the rubbish. The latter he looked at with indecision before making up his mind and tossing them to Havers. “Let’s find him,” he said.

“Faraday?”

“Let’s see what he can trot out next about last Wednesday night.”

She hurried after him, saying, “But what about Jean Cooper? What about the divorce?”

“She’ll still be there when we’re through with Faraday.”

CHAPTER
21

“
L
et’s go back to the moment you opened the cottage door,” Lynley said. “Remind me again. Which door was it?”

Jimmy Cooper lifted a hand to his mouth and ripped a sliver of flesh from his
fin
ger. They’d been in the interview room for more than an hour, and during that time the boy had managed to draw blood twice, neither time apparently feeling any pain.

Lynley had kept Friskin and Jimmy Cooper waiting in the interview room for forty-seven minutes. He wanted the boy as much on edge as was possible when he
fin
ally joined them, so he’d allowed solicitor and client to simmer in the sauce of their own anticipation while they were forced to listen to efficientpolice-business-as-usual going on outside in the corridor. There was no question that Friskin was astute enough to have informed his client of the ploy that the police were using in making them wait, but Friskin had no real control over the boy’s psychological state. It was Jimmy’s neck on the line, after all, not his solicitor’s. Lynley was depending upon the boy’s ability to realise that fact.

“Are you intending to bring charges against my client?” Mr. Friskin sounded testy. He and Jimmy had once again run the media gauntlet between Victoria Street and Broadway, and the solicitor didn’t appear to be enjoying the experience. “We’re happy to cooperate with the police, as I believe our presence here has indicated from the first, but if you’ve no intention of bringing charges, don’t you agree that Jim might be better off spending his time in school?”

Lynley didn’t bother to point out to Friskin that the George Green Comprehensive had given Jimmy over to the ministrations of Social Services and the truancy officers during Autumn term. He knew that the solicitor’s protest was more a matter of form than of substance, an overt illustration of support for his client designed to gain his confidence.

Friskin continued. “We’ve raked over the same facts at least four times. A fifth time isn’t going to change them.”

“Can you clarify for me which door it was?” Lynley asked again.

Friskin made much of sighing in disgust. Jimmy shifted his weight from buttock to buttock. “I already said. The kitchen.”

“And you used the key…?”

“From the shed. I already told you that too.”

“Yes. You’ve said as much. I merely want to make certain we’ve got the facts completely straight. You put the key in the lock. You turned the key. What happened next?”

“What d’you mean what happened next?”

“This is ridiculous,” Friskin said.

“What’s s’posed to happen?” Jimmy asked. “I opened the naffing door and I went inside.”

“How did you open the door?”

“Shit!” Jimmy shoved his chair away from the table.

“Inspector,” Friskin interposed. “Is this sojourn into the minutiae of door opening absolutely necessary? What’s the point? What are you after from my client?”

“Did the door swing open once you turned the key?” Lynley asked. “Or did you have to push it?”

“Jim…” Friskin cautioned, as if suddenly realising where Lynley was heading.

Jimmy jerked a shoulder away from the solicitor, perhaps his way of telling Friskin to shove off. “Course I pushed it. How else d’you open a door?”

“Fine. Tell me how.”

“How what?”

“How you pushed it.”

“I just gave it a shove.”

“Below the knob? Above the knob? On the knob? Where?”

“I don’t know.” The boy slouched in his chair. “Above I guess.”

“You gave it a shove above the doorknob. The door opened. You went inside. Were the lights on inside?”

Jimmy furrowed his brow. It was a question Lynley hadn’t asked before. Jimmy shook his head.

“Did you switch them on?”

“Why would I?”

“I expect you’d have wanted to
fin
d your way about. You would have needed to locate the armchair. Did you have a torch with you? Did you light a match?”

Jimmy appeared to mull over the options— switching on the lights, carrying a torch, striking a match—and what each of the options might imply. He finally settled on saying, “I couldn’t take a torch on my motorbike, could I?”

“Then you used a match?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then you switched on the lights?”

“I might of. For a second.”

“Fine. Then what?”

“Then I did what I already said I did. I lit the bloody fag and I stuffed it in the chair. Then I left.”

Lynley nodded thoughtfully. He put on his spectacles and removed the photographs of the crime scene from a manila folder. He sifted through them, saying as he perused them, “You didn’t see your father?”

“I already said—”

“You didn’t speak to him?”

“No.”

“You didn’t hear him moving about in the bedroom above?”

“I
told
you all that.”

“Yes. You did.” Lynley laid the pictures out. Jimmy kept his eyes averted. Lynley made much of studying them. He
fin
ally raised his head and said, “You left the way you had come? Through the kitchen?”

“Yeah.”

“Had you left the door opened?”

Jimmy’s right hand snaked to his mouth. His index finger slipped between his front teeth and he was chewing before he seemed to realise it. “Yeah. I guess.”

“It was open?” Lynley asked sharply.

Jimmy shifted gears. “No.”

“It was shut?”

“Yeah. Shut. It was shut. Shut.”

“You’re certain about this?”

Friskin leaned forward. “Exactly how many more times is he going to have to—”

“And you slipped in and slipped out with no impediments?”

“What?”

“No difficulties. You encountered nothing. No one.”

“I said that, di’n’t I? I said it ten times.”

“Then what happened to the animals?” Lynley asked. “Mrs. Patten said that the animals were inside when she left.”

“I didn’t see no animals.”

“They weren’t in the cottage?”

“I’m not saying that.”

“You’ve said you watched the cottage from the bottom of the garden. You’ve told me you saw your father through the kitchen window. You’ve said you saw when he went up to bed. Did you also see him open the door? Did you see him put the kittens out?”

Jimmy’s face declared that he realised the questions were some sort of trick. But he clearly couldn’t fathom what the nature of the trick was. “I don’t know, see. I don’t remember.”

“Perhaps your father put them out before you arrived. Did you notice the kittens in the garden somewhere?”

“Who cares a sod about them bleeding cats?”

Lynley rearranged the photographs. Jimmy’s glance dropped to them and quickly darted away.

“This is a waste of everyone’s time,” Friskin said. “We’re not making any progress, and we have no hope of making progress unless and until you have something new to work with. When you do, Jim will be more than willing to cooperate with your questions, but until that time—”

“What did you wear that night, Jimmy?” Lynley asked.

“Inspector, he’s already told you—”

“A T-shirt, as I recall,” Lynley said. “Is that right? Blue jeans. A pullover. The Doc Martens. Anything else?”

“Underpants and socks.” Jimmy smirked. “Same ’s I got on right now.”

“And that’s all.”

“That’s it.”

“Nothing else?”

“Inspector—”

“Nothing else, Jimmy?”

“I said. Nothing else.”

Lynley removed his glasses and laid them on the table, saying, “That’s intriguing, then.”

“Why?”

“Because you left no fingerprints, so I’d assumed you wore gloves.”

“I didn’t touch nothing.”

“But you’ve just explained how you touched the door to shove it open. Yet it didn’t bear your fingerprints. On the wood, on the knob, inside, outside. The kitchen light switch had no prints of yours either.”

“I wiped them off. I forgot. Tha’s right. I wiped them off.”

“You wiped your prints off and yet managed to leave all the other prints on? How did you orchestrate that?”

Friskin straightened in his chair and looked sharply at the boy. Then he turned his attention to Lynley. He kept silent.

Jimmy shuffled his feet beneath his chair. He pounded the toe of his trainer into the floor. He too said nothing.

“And if you managed the feat of wiping your prints off at the same time as you preserved all the others, why did you then leave your fingerprints on the ceramic duck in the potting shed?”

“I did what I did.”

Friskin said, “May we have a moment, Inspector?”

Lynley began to rise.

“I don’t need no moment!” Jimmy said. “I told you what I did. I said it and said it. I got the key. I went inside. I put the fag in the chair.”