‘Is your mother a liar?’ Gently asked.
‘She — she’s a stupid so-and-so,’ Bixley said. ‘She got things mixed, that’s all it is.’
‘Percy Waters was arrested today.’
‘So what?’ Bixley said. ‘He’s another stupid.’
‘Leo Slavinovsky was arrested today.’
‘I tell you I don’t know nothing about him.’
‘Listen,’ Gently said. ‘I’m going to do some more thinking.’
‘I’ve had enough of this!’ Bixley yelped. ‘You bleeding let me out of here. I ain’t done nothing, you know I ain’t. I got alibis and you can’t touch me. I ain’t going to sit here having it shot at me, I bleeding ain’t. You let me out!’
‘But you aren’t going anywhere,’ Gently said.
‘I’ll get a lawyer!’ Bixley shouted.
‘You’ll be good business, too,’ Gently said. ‘Only right at this moment you’re going to listen to me.’
‘I bloody won’t listen!’
‘You’d better,’ Gently said. ‘Otherwise you won’t know what to tell your lawyer.’
Bixley swore.
‘Are we going too fast?’ Gently asked Baynes.
Baynes shook his head. ‘I can do a hundred and sixty, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a special set of lettergrams for use with swear words. Very useful they are in this line of business.’
‘Stop me if you’re getting behind,’ Gently said.
‘Yes, sir. But I’ve had no trouble so far.’
Bixley sat trembling, worrying his thick lip. There was sweat on his cheeks, down each side of his chin.
‘Right,’ Gently said. ‘Are you listening to what I say to you, Bixley?’
‘I ought to have done you,’ Bixley muttered. ‘Christ, if I’d only done you, screw.’
‘You’re in trouble enough,’ Gently said. ‘Another thick lip wouldn’t have helped you. So let’s do some thinking about Leo and Cousin Perce.’
Bixley moaned, said nothing.
‘I think you heard from Perce,’ Gently said. ‘I think he told you he’d got something for you and that you’d better look him up. So you did, you went to Bethnal, you saw Perce and Leo. You heard that business was flourishing with Leo and that he was planning a little expansion. He was going to put Leach in Castlebridge to run a chocolate depot there — it was a good place for pushing chocolates, a university town. And Leo had remembered his old gang-boy who’d gone to live here in Latchford, and Leo thought that perhaps Latchford could absorb a few chocolates, too. So he proposed that you took care of that district for him, drawing your supplies from Leach on some weekly excursion to Castlebridge. And you liked that proposal, didn’t you, Bixley? It might have been made to measure for you. It meant a return to the easy money you’d been missing — and it flattered you, Leo choosing you for a job like that.’
Bixley croaked: It’s bloody lies, bloody lies, that’s what it is.’
‘Leo and Perce,’ Gently said, ‘haven’t got much left to lie about now.’
‘I only know what you tell me,’ Bixley said. ‘I know screws. Bloody liars. It’s all lies, every bit of it.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ Gently said, ‘back that horse, if I were you. We didn’t guess about Leo and his trade in chocolates. Suppose you start brightening up a little, give us a little cooperation. You’re on your own now, Bixley. All your pals are inside.’
‘They ain’t my pals. I didn’t never know them.’
‘Where did Lister come into it?’ Gently asked.
‘I don’t know about Lister.’
‘Why did he whip that box of chocolates?’
‘I don’t know nothing about that,’ Bixley said. ‘It’s lies, all lies.’
‘We’re out looking for your chocolate-store, Bixley.’
‘Yuh,’ Bixley said. ‘Bloody look for it.’
‘We’ll find it, too,’ Gently said.
‘Yuh,’ Bixley said. ‘I ain’t got one.’
‘Not at Tony’s,’ Gently said.
‘I ain’t got one,’ Bixley repeated.
‘Not at Dicky’s,’ Gently said.
‘You’ve a bleeding hope.’ Bixley said.
‘How will you manage without chocolates?’ Gently said.
‘Crap on your chocolates,’ Bixley said.
‘You’ve smoked your last one,’ Gently said. ‘It’s going to be tough if you’ve been at them heavy.’
‘I don’t smoke sticks,’ Bixley said.
‘Oh, yes,’ Gently said. ‘I think you do.’
‘I ain’t never had nothing to do with them.’
‘We’ll see,’ Gently said. ‘Your pockets will tell us.’
Bixley got unsteadily to his feet. ‘They bloody won’t,’ he said. ‘They won’t, because I ain’t got none. So you can search as much as you like.’
‘You’ll let me search you?’ Gently asked.
‘Yuh,’ Bixley said. ‘You search me.’
‘You can sit down again,’ Gently said. ‘That’s all I want to know for the moment.’
‘I tell you you can search me,’ Bixley said.
Gently ignored him, turned to Baynes.
‘Go and look in the waiting room,’ he told him. ‘Bring back anything interesting you find there.’
Baynes nodded, got up, departed. Bixley came up to the desk, put his hands on it.
‘I’ll get you for this,’ he said. ‘If it’s the last bloody thing. I’ll get you, screw. I don’t care if I swing for it.’
‘You’ve been watching too much TV,’ Gently said.
‘I mean it,’ Bixley said. ‘I’m going to get you. I mean it.’
He kept standing there, leaning, glaring at Gently.
‘I mean it,’ he kept saying. ‘I mean it, I mean it.’
Baynes returned, carrying in his hand a cigarette case which combined a petrol-lighter. His hands were sooty and there was soot on the case.
‘It was stuffed up the chimney of the stove,’ he said. ‘He’d had the soot-door off. It’s a finger-screw job.’
Gently took the lighter. It was flamboyantly engraved: S.A.B. He sprang it open. It contained twenty-three of the reefers.
‘Somebody else’s?’ He asked Bixley.
‘I mean it,’ said Bixley. ‘I mean it.’
‘And I mean this,’ Gently said. ‘I’m charging you with having possession of prohibited drugs. You don’t need to say anything in answer to the charge.’
‘I ain’t saying anything,’ Bixley said. ‘Not nothing at all.’
Nobody was saying anything. Gently rang the Yard again and got in touch with the Chief Inspector in charge of the Slavinovsky interrogations. There they were having an all-night session, but it hadn’t got them much further. Slavinovsky himself, a Polish Jew, hadn’t breathed a word in five hours. Some of the smaller fry had squeaked and a few more arrests had been made. Two experts were working on the code in which Slavinovsky kept his records.
‘We’re getting the impression,’ the C.I. told Gently ‘that there were other depots like the one in Castlebridge. But we still haven’t got a clue as to how the stuff was coming in. It’s Cyprus hemp we seized in Bethnal, we’re checking all the known channels. I think Slavinovsky’s building his hopes on us not cracking the code.’
‘Has Percy Waters talked?’ Gently inquired.
‘Not as yet,’ the C.I. replied. ‘Pagram briefed me on your interest and I’m doing my best to get you something. The trouble is, we want everything quickly. You understand that, don’t you? Time’s against us, we have to keep plugging away at the main issues.’
‘I’ve got a murder at this end,’ Gently said.
‘We’re doing our best,’ said the C.I. ‘The moment Bixley’s name comes up I’ll give you a ring at Latchford.’
It was just after ten when Setters got back, dirtier than ever and looking bushed. He dropped on the visitor’s chair in the office, lit a cigarette, and took several deep drags.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just the fun.’
‘How did Deeming take it?’ Gently asked.
‘Dicky,’ said Setters, ‘played records, did some typing, made light conversation. I’ve had a basinful of Dicky. I was bloody polite to him. Bloody.’
‘And Tony?’ Gently asked.
‘He was throwing a fit the whole time. And we had the jeebies on our necks, though they were quiet, for a change.’
Gently nodded, told Setters how his interrogation had gone. Setters sat very quiet when he heard that Bixley had been charged.
‘Yep,’ he said at last. ‘That was good. Me, I’d have searched him and risked the rap. Or maybe I wouldn’t, I’d have fallen down on it. I don’t aspire to such class.’