Which was a fair summary, thought Maddocks, as he examined the depressingly low-grade young man in the interview room, who couldn't open his mouth without uttering obscenities and who fingered his crotch from beginning to end of the interview, apparently unaware he was doing it. He appeared unhealthy and unwashed, with pinched, sharp features, eyes that looked anywhere but at the person he was talking to, and a sullen cast to his mouth. At such times, the fascist in Gareth Maddocks wondered why society tolerated weasels like this within its midst.
"We have something of a problem here," he murmured after Franklyn had replied "No fucking comment" to the first three questions. "I'm going to deal this one straight, Bobby, so that you know where I'm coming from. I think, then, you might decide to give me some answers. I'm not interested in your credit card fraud. As far as I'm concerned, that's a separate issue. What I am interested in are the two people named on the cards, Mr. Leo Wallader and Miss M. S. Harris, and the reason I'm interested is because I have two corpses I can't identify, who were found in Ardingly Woods yesterday afternoon. Now, guesswork tells DS Fraser and myself that our couple could very well be Mr. Wallader and Miss Harris, and it would save us a great deal of time and effort if you could confirm that for us, Bobby. We think the chances are you stumbled on the bodies a week or so ago and did what any normal red-blooded male would do, and removed their wallets." He smiled amiably. "What the hell, eh? They were dead-not by your hand, no question about that-but they weren't going to need their credit cards anymore, were they? How about giving us a break on this one? It really would help us to know who they are."
"Sod off," said Bobby. "No fucking comment."
Maddocks glanced towards the young solicitor. "What say the Sergeant and I leave the room for five minutes and you discuss options with your client? It's worth pointing out, I think, that we might very well decide to bring additional charges against Mr. Franklyn if and when we identify our dead couple as Wallader and Harris, and I should add that perverting the course of justice will be the least of them."
Fraser watched Bobby's involuntary masturbation with marked distaste. "If we're forced to go house to house on the Hawtree Estate, I wonder if we'll turn up someone else, a young girl perhaps, who was in the woods with Bobby."
"There weren't no one with me," said Franklyn in a rush, ignoring his solicitor's warning hand on his arm. Shit, if they ever found out he'd screwed a twelve-year-old. "Okay, okay, so I did find them two bodies, and Jesus, they were sodding 'orrible. Smashed bloody faces and bluebottles everywhere, but I was on my own. D'you fink I'd 'ave been able to lift them cards if I'd 'ad someone wiv me. Use yer fucking brains. They'd 'ave wanted an in on the goods, wouldn't they? But it was like you said, them two was dead and they wasn't gonna use their sodding cards again. Couldn't see no 'arm in taking them and doin' a bit of business."
"You had a duty to report it, Bobby," said Maddocks mildly, his habitual aggression cloaked in an encouraging smile which said: Don't worry about it lad, we're men of the world, you and I, and we both know rules are made to be broken.
"Fuck that! It weren't none of my business. If I were a bit keener on you lot, then maybe, but you've never done me no favors, so why should I do one for you? They was so bloody dead you wouldn't believe. Couldn't see what difference it'd make to them if they was found a week ago or if they was found today. They'd still be dead, wouldn't they?"
Maddocks couldn't argue with that. "Are you sure you were on your own, Bobby? If you had a girl with you we need to know now. It is important." He was thinking of the skid marks on the bank, made by a woman's heel.
"Yeah, I'm sure." He pondered for a moment. "I'll tell you this for free. If a girl 'ad seen what I saw, she'd still be puking all over the sodding shop. I'm not thinking about it too much myself." His skin grew even more unhealthy-looking. "I 'ad to 'old my breath to search them. It was that bloody disgusting. Reckon there was a million bluebottles in that ditch. You gonna charge me? It weren't me what did them in. I don't do that kind of stuff."
Maddocks glanced at Fraser, who shrugged. The lad's story certainly had the ring of truth. "No," said the DI, standing up. "At the moment I don't intend to add any charges to those you're already facing, but we will want to talk to you again, Bobby, so I advise you very strongly to make yourself available. Neither DS Fraser nor I want the trouble of having to look for you." He paused at the door. "Just one last thing. Had there been any attempt made to bury the bodies?''
"You mean in a grave?"
"No, I mean had they been covered over with anything?"
"Only wiv leaves."
"Well covered?"
"Yeah. Pretty well."
"Then how did you know they were there?"
Franklyn's sharp little eyes shifted nervously. "Because some-think 'ad been at the guy," he said, "a fox maybe. The 'ead and top 'alf of 'is body 'ad been dug out, least that's what it looked like. I didn't know the woman was there till I started taking the leaves off 'im and found 'er 'ead beside 'is sodding legs. To tell you the truth," he said, "I wish I'd never seen them now." He wiped his hands on his trousers. "It's got me in a bother and I'm not sure I cleaned myself properly afterwards. I've been worrying about that."
THE NIGHTINGALE CLINIC, SALISBURY-6:30 P.M.
Alan Protheroe looked in on Jinx later that afternoon and found her walking with gritty determination about her room. "I'm not going out in a wheelchair again," she told him angrily. "I hadn't realized quite how sensitive I am to being stared at. It was a deeply humiliating experience." She jabbed a finger at her bandages. "When's this idiotic thing coming off my eye?"
"Probably tomorrow morning," he said, wondering if it was only humiliation that had sparked her anger. It would be a while, he thought, before she felt confident enough to admit she remembered anything. "You've an appointment at Odstock Hospital for nine-thirty. All being well, it'll be removed then."
She came to a halt beside her dressing table. "Thank God for that. I feel like Frankenstein's monster at the moment."
His amiable face creased into a smile. "You don't look like him."
There was a short silence.
"Are you married, Dr. Protheroe?"
"I was. My wife died of breast cancer four years ago."
"I'm sorry."
"Why did you want to know?" he asked her.
Straightforward curiosity. You're too nice to be running around free, and most of your shirts have buttons missing. "Because it's six-thirty on a Friday evening in June and I was wondering why you were still here. Do you live in?"
He nodded. "In a flat upstairs."
"Children?"
"One daughter at university, who's nineteen and very strong-minded."
"I'm not surprised. You've probably been using her as a guinea pig for your theories on individual responsibility since she was knee-high to a grasshopper."
"Something like that."
She eyed him curiously. "As a matter of interest, what happens when one of your patients chooses a wrong set of values? Acts in bad faith, in other words. I can't believe they all toe the existentialist Protheroe line. It's a statistical impossibility."
He lowered himself into one of the chairs, stretched his long legs in front of him, and clasped his hands behind his head. "That's an extraordinarily loaded question but I'll have a stab at an answer. By 'wrong' you presumably mean that they leave the clinic with the same problems they came in with? In other words, their time here hasn't persuaded them that another modus vivendi might be worth considering?"