‘He doesn’t react well to migraine?’ Beale suggested. ‘He seems to lose his temper when the pain first starts. He lost it with the Pakistani in the pub and he lost it with you. It’s only when the retching begins that he becomes incapacitated.’
Jones shook his head. ‘He lost it with me because I touched him . . . The same was true of the Pakistani. He may be less able to control his anger when he has a migraine, but I don’t think it’s the reason he kicks off. He didn’t have a migraine outside the bank when Walter poked him, but he still reacted angrily.’
‘And walked away without doing anything stupid, Brian,’ Beale pointed out. ‘Maybe the migraine isn’t the initial trigger, but it sure as hell contributes to the violence of his responses. He needs to carry a warning sign . . . steer clear when my head hurts.’
‘He’s in a bad way at the moment,’ said the superintendent thoughtfully. ‘The doctor’s pumped him full of an anti-emetic and gone off to change her tyre. I think he’s expecting her to wash her hands of him.’
‘Is that likely?’
‘It depends whether she thinks he was trying to kill her. She’s covering his arse at the moment by claiming it was her fault – probably because she knows she provoked him – but she may change her mind by the morning. She’s mighty pissed off . . . and very reluctant to leave him alone with her partner.’
Beale used a finger to stir the beer in his glass, hoping to energize some fizz. ‘I had a mate who tried to kill himself in a BMW,’ he said idly. ‘He drove into a brick wall at forty miles an hour, and walked away without a scratch. Claimed afterwards that he forgot about air bags and didn’t know that BMWs were built like tanks.’
‘You think Acland was trying to kill himself?’
‘He’s a mess . . . bit like my friend . . . Can’t handle what’s happened to him. According to Dr Campbell, he’s been trying to end it for months through slow starvation while kidding himself it’s a lifestyle choice. Maybe he opted for the more direct approach
tonight and decided to take Dr Jackson with him.’
Jones didn’t say anything.
‘You don’t buy that?’
‘Some of it,’ the superintendent said. ‘He’s certainly a mess and it wouldn’t surprise me if he ends up dead somewhere, but I wouldn’t expect it to be through suicide. One day he’ll take on someone who’s angrier and more messed up than he is.’ He paused. ‘You could describe that as a death wish, I suppose.’
‘So he was taking the doctor on? He wanted her to punch him?’
‘Not exactly. I think he wanted to test her . . . see how she’d react if control was taken away from her. I’m beginning to wonder if that’s why he put a half nelson on me. Pay-back for depriving him of his liberty for six hours.’
Nick Beale was doubtful. ‘What was he planning to do if the doctor lost control?’
Jones shrugged. ‘Pull on the handbrake . . . Hold the wheel steady . . . Prove his nerve was stronger than hers. They can’t have been going more than twenty, not from the damage I saw, and he’s been trained to drive a Scimitar at high speed across rough terrain.’
‘Then by rights we should notify traffic and tell them a criminal offence has been committed. Whatever his reasons, Acland interfered with the safe operation of a moving vehicle. He’s damn lucky the doctor did what she did before they ploughed into those kids at the bus stop.’
‘All in good time,’ said Brian Jones, pressing his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. ‘At the moment he’s under my jurisdiction and I want it to stay that way.’
*
For Derek Hardy the superintendent’s ‘jurisdiction’ was becoming uncomfortable. Having run rural pubs for twenty years before he and his wife were offered the management of the Crown, he was more used to the village bobby showing up in his shirtsleeves for a game of darts than a detective superintendent turning his bar into a new base for operations. Another two policemen had arrived, and Derek and Jackson watched the four men swap information on the CCTV monitor in the kitchen.
‘What’s going on?’ Jackson asked curiously, using a wodge of paper towel to turn the tap in the sink to avoid smearing the chrome.
‘You probably know better than I do,’ Derek said irritably. ‘Everything was fine till you showed up with sonny boy. What’s he done?’
‘Nothing to concern that lot.’
‘Why don’t you want Mel going near him?’
Jackson washed her oily hands and wrists at his sink. ‘He has a problem with women being nice to him.’ She pulled a wry face at his alarmed expression. ‘You don’t need to go into the room, Derek. Just check from the door that he’s breathing. A couple of times should do it. Once the retching stops, he’ll go to sleep.’
‘You’re making me nervous.’
‘No reason to be. He gave me his word he’ll stay in his room and not bother anyone.’ She used the paper towel again to turn off the tap, then wiped the sink with it to remove the last traces of oil. ‘I’m more worried that he’ll do something to himself, particularly if he knows that lot are still around.’ She nodded at the monitor.
‘Is he the reason they’re here?’
‘I don’t see how. They didn’t know we were coming,’ she reminded him. ‘What were you talking about when I first walked in?’
‘The old boy who was clobbered the other day. He’s one of our regulars.’
‘Walter Tutting?’ Jackson ran off another length of paper towelling. ‘They’ve already interviewed Charles about that assault and he was able to prove he was three miles away when it happened.’ She dried between her fingers as she watched Ahmed Khan pass a piece of paper to Brian Jones. ‘It has to be something you told them.’
‘Pat Streckle did most of the talking. He and Walter knew the cab driver who was killed.’
‘Harry Peel?’
Johnson nodded. ‘He used to come in here before Mel and I took over. Did you know him?’
‘No.’ She folded the towel and put it in the rubbish bin. ‘What did you tell them about Walter Tutting?’
‘Me? All I did was describe a lad I saw with him once. They were more interested in Pat’s views on whether the old boy was a closet gay or not.’ He paused. ‘Pat recognized your friend. Maybe that’s what they’re excited about.’
‘Charles?’
Derek nodded. ‘He told the superintendent he’d seen him in here before.’
Jackson frowned. ‘When?’
‘Last year . . . said he sat at the bar a few times on his own. Before we arrived,’ he added, as if Jackson’s frown was an accusation of customer-poaching. ‘He doesn’t ring any bells with me.’
She pulled her sleeves down and buttoned her cuffs. ‘Ever seen a girl who looks like Uma Thurman in here?’
Derek shook his head. ‘Who is she?’
‘Good question,’ said Jackson with a frustrated sigh. ‘Charles swore blind to me that he’d never used any of the pubs round here. If he can lie about that, he’s almost certainly been lying about his girlfriend.’
Hardy folded his arms and studied her for a moment. ‘How the hell did you come to be involved with this bloke?’
‘Because I’m a fool,’ she said crossly, ‘and I’m damned sorry to have wished him on you and Mel. He should sleep through the night, but I’ll take him off your hands first thing . . . assuming he’s still here.’
‘Why wouldn’t he be?’
She glanced at the monitor. ‘He makes a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ she said cryptically, ‘and it’s looking less and less like coincidence.’ She moved towards the door. ‘He’s not your responsibility, Derek. If they transfer him to hospital because they want to question him, then that’s something Charles will have to deal with himself. He wouldn’t be here at all if he hadn’t acted like a prize idiot.’
*
DC Khan, one of the officers who’d joined Jones and Beale in the bar, placed a couple of printouts in front of the superintendent. ‘This –’ he touched a page – ‘is Dr Jackson’s description of Chalky, the other gives the details of the man the river police pulled out of the Thames this morning. I’ve had a word with a chap called Steve Barratt and he’s blaming paperwork for why no one made the connection. He said they checked missing persons, but there was no one matching the description.’ Jones leaned forward to scan the pages. ‘So what else has dropped through the net? We have phone calls that haven’t been followed up . . . statements that haven’t been read –’ he smacked the back of his hand against Jackson’s description – ‘and now this. What are we running here? A chimpanzees’ tea party?’ ‘We distributed Chalky’s particulars across the whole network, sir.’ ‘But you didn’t think to list him as a missing person?’ ‘No,’ Khan admitted. ‘Just that he was wanted for questioning.’ Jones looked irritated. ‘What else did this Barratt tell you? Have they done a post-mortem?’ Khan shook his head. ‘Not a full one. A pathologist took some blood and temperature readings and had a look at the external features, but there were no signs of foul play. There’s a high level of alcohol in the blood. He concluded the man was a vagrant who drowned in the river some twelve hours before his body was recovered . . . and they gave the case a low priority. According to Barratt, vagrants are the hardest to identify. It usually takes months, and no one cares when they finally come up with a name.’