Gently shrugged and closed the glass-panelled door behind him. ‘I’ve been to the football match,’ he said, ‘I thought you might like to hear about it.’ He moved round from the door to Leaming’s desk and peered disinterestedly at the open ledger. Leaming watched him closely. Gently felt in his pocket and produced two peppermint creams, which he placed on the desk, pushing one towards Leaming with a stubby finger. ‘Have one,’ he said.
Leaming remained tense, watching.
Gently pulled up a little chair and sat down weightily. ‘It wasn’t a very good match. It was a bit end-of-the-season. And the people! I think it must have been near the ground record… forty-two thousand, isn’t it?’ His green eyes rose questioningly.
‘A little more than that.’
‘A little more?’ Gently looked disappointed. ‘I thought you would have been able to give me the exact figure… I know how precise you are about football matters.’
Leaming bit his lip. ‘What does it matter, anyhow?’
‘Oh, it doesn’t, not really… but I thought you would have known.’
‘It’s forty-three thousand one hundred and twenty-one.’
‘Ah!’ Gently beamed at him. ‘I was sure you could tell me. And wasn’t that at the cup-tie with Pompey a couple of seasons ago… when Pompey won two-nought?’
Leaming came a step forward. ‘See here,’ he snapped, ‘I don’t know what you’re after, and I don’t care. But I’ve got work to do… we’ve got the accountants coming on Monday.’
‘And you’ve got the “Straight Grain” books to prepare and make plausible before then… haven’t you?’
Leaming seized the ledger on the desk, jerked it round and shoved it across to Gently. ‘There!’ he jeered. ‘Have a look at it — see what you can find out.’
Gently shook his head. ‘It isn’t my job. We’ll get a fraud man down to go through it.’
‘A fraud man? Who’s charging me with fraud?’
‘Nobody… and as a matter of fact, I don’t think anybody will.’
‘Then what’s this talk of getting a fraud man down?’
Gently continued to shake his head, slowly, woodenly. ‘They’ll want to know all about it in court, you know… the prosecution for the Crown will go into it with great thoroughness.’
There was a dead silence. Leaming stood immobile, his handsome face drained of all colour. Against the unnatural paleness his dark eyes seemed larger, darker, more penetrating than ever. ‘What do you mean by that?’ he asked huskily.
Gently turned away and said, speaking quickly: ‘I’ve got the last piece of evidence I needed against you. There was a mistake in the account of the match which appeared in the Football News last Saturday. The same mistake appears in an answer you gave to one of my questions on Sunday… a record of it is in the files at police headquarters.’
‘You found that out… today?’
‘A short time ago. I overheard a scrap of conversation at the match this afternoon which led me to check with the Press office. I also checked your account in the police files.’
Leaming went back a pace, his hands grasping involuntarily. ‘You’re not lying?’ he demanded suddenly.
‘No, I’m not lying… why should I?’
‘Suppose I said I wasn’t at the match, but I was somewhere else?’
‘No.’ Gently shook his head again. ‘It won’t do. You’d have to prove it… and you can’t prove it.’
‘But you can’t base a murder charge on that alone!’
Gently reached out for his peppermint cream, slow and deliberate. ‘I can show that you had the motive,’ he said. ‘I can show that you could have hidden in the summer-house while Peter and his father were quarrelling. I can show that Fisher was watching what took place. I can show that Fisher blackmailed you first for Susan and then for the money. I can show that Fisher was murdered and he was murdered just when I had got sufficient evidence to make him speak — which you had grounds to suspect. I can show points of similarity between the two murders. I can show that you can prove no alibi at the time of Fisher’s murder. I can show you were seen at the scene of the crime carrying a bag which subsequently became blood-stained and was destroyed here, where it is logical to suppose you would destroy it. I can show that the key which locked the door of Fisher’s flat after the murder was found with it. And finally, I can now show that the alibi you gave for the time of the Huysmann murder was deliberately fabricated and completely false.’
‘It’s not enough — I’ll get a defence to tear it to tatters!’
Gently bit into the peppermint cream. ‘You might have done before today,’ he said smoothly.
‘It can’t make all that difference… I won’t believe it!’
‘It was the one thing necessary.’
Leaming came forward again and leaned on the desk with both hands. ‘Listen, Gently, listen — you can’t go through with this. I’m talking to you now as a man, not as a police officer. All right, I admit it — I killed them both, Huysmann and Fisher, and you’ll say I should be punished for it. But think a minute — there’s a difference! Huysmann died, never knowing what had happened, and so did Fisher, instantaneously. They were both killed in hot blood, Gently. They were killed in the way of life, by their enemy, one man killing another to survive, Huysmann a vicious old man, Fisher a rat who asked for what he got. But you are after something different with me. If you go through with this, I shan’t be killed that way. I’ll be taken in cold blood, taken bound, taken with every man’s hand against me, not a fight, not a chance, just taken and slaughtered in that death-pit of yours. That’s the difference — that’s what it amounts to! And I say to you as a man that you can’t do it. You wouldn’t match a killing of that sort with a killing of my sort, and clear your conscience by calling it justice!’
Gently stirred uneasily in his chair. ‘I didn’t make the laws — you knew the penalty that went with killing.’
‘But it only goes with killing when a man’s convicted — and I’m not convicted, and except for you I never would be!’
‘I’m sorry, Leaming… it doesn’t rest with me.’
‘But it does rest with you — the local police are satisfied to let it go at the inquest verdict. They must know what you know… you work together. And they’re satisfied, so why aren’t you?’
‘They don’t know I’ve broken your alibi yet.’
‘But they know the rest — and they’re doing nothing about it.’
Gently turned away from him, his face looking tired. ‘It’s no good, Leaming… I’ve got to do it. When a man begins to kill it gets easier and easier for him, and it has to be stopped. I’m the person whose duty it is to stop him. And I’ve got to stop you.’
‘Even if you have to deliver me to a state killing party?’
‘I’m a policeman, not a lawgiver.’
‘But you’re a man as well!’
‘Not while I’m a policeman… we’re not permitted to have thoughts like that. The law allows me only one way to stop killing… it’s not my way, but it’s the only way.’
‘Then you’re going through with it?’
‘Yes, I’m going through with it.’
Leaming drew back from the desk, as far as the closed door. ‘Then you leave me no option but to kill you too, Gently,’ he said.
Gently looked up at him with unmoved green eyes. ‘I realized it would come to that, of course… but it won’t be easy for you.’
Leaming felt casually in his pocket and produced a small automatic. ‘It will be as easy as this,’ he said. The colour had come back into his cheeks now and something of the old jauntiness to his manner. ‘I’m sorry it’s come to this, Gently. I didn’t want to do any more killing… whatever you may think about killing getting easier, I assure you it’s something one would rather not do. And I don’t want to kill you, because I admire you. But I have a duty to myself, just as you have a duty to the state.’
Gently said: ‘It won’t help you to kill me. They’ll come straight to you for it.’
Leaming said: ‘But they won’t find anything… and I don’t care what they suspect. I shall tip your body into the incinerator at Hellston Tofts and the gun after you. It isn’t traceable… I bought it on the black market.’