“I don’t think so, Jane, I looked up my letter of appointment. The three months expired,” said James with great satisfaction, “at midnight last night.”
It was a line he had obviously been rehearsing and re-rehearsing in his head, and he delivered it perfectly. Jane Rich gaped, opened and closed her mouth several times, goldfish fashion, and then turned on her heel.
As she clattered up the stairs, Detective Sergeant Bone made his way down them. He did not bother to push his way into the room. With jabbing motions he indicated Alex, James Flood and Barry Chilton. The jerk of his head said: “The guvnor wants all three of you. Now.”
11
Those with nothing better to do with their time — perhaps the majority of Soho dwellers on this bright morning — were beginning to line the streets in readiness for the annual Waiters’ Race. Detective Inspector Wills should have been standing by as one of the judges, but had had to cry off due to other duties.
Murder, explained Detective Sergeant Bone as his little party picked their way along Gerrard Street, now as thronged as any Hong Kong bazaar, was not usually on the guvnor’s beat. But the Division had two men off with stress and another suspended while awaiting the outcome of an inquiry into allegations of causing a trauma to a suspect under questioning, and so there was an undermanning problem. Besides, no one knew the area better than Detective Inspector Wills, so that was that. He had set up his Incident Room in the Waiters Club in Gerrard Street, which was unoccupied during the daytime.
Alex was apprehensive, James quite chirpy, as befitted a reporter who had got two scoops in two papers before noon, and landed himself a good job into the bargain. Barry Chilton’s only anxiety was that he had a gig in Swindon that night and wanted to get off.
“Is this going to take long, kid?” he asked Detective Sergeant Bone. “Only I mean tough luck and all that, but I hardly knew Christine.”
“Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, unless you’ve been where you didn’t ought to have been,” said Detective Sergeant Bone genially. “Look on it as a three-man identity parade.”
Which was exactly what it was. For as Alex, James and Barry descended into the Waiters Club, where Detective Inspector Wills sat in the middle of the room poring over a stack of printouts spilling from a computer he had got set up down there, and a uniformed woman constable ploddingly manned a constantly ringing telephone — “Incident room. No, he’s tied up at present, I’m going to have to put you on hold” — the squint-eyed waiter, looking at his watch, or rather looking at a space in the air a foot away from his wrist, awaited their presence. He was wearing a snowy floor-length apron and carrying a tin tray, the badges of the Soho Waiters’ Race.
“Good of you to come down, chaps,” said Detective Inspector Wills, as if they had done so voluntarily. Alex supposed that technically they had, but there was no disguising the menace behind Detective Sergeant Bone’s affability: he would have the three of them in handcuffs as soon as look at them. “It’s just a question of establishing which of you our friend here saw in the Transylvania Club last night, seeing as how he was signed in under a false name. Whoever it was, was seen later in Hog Court. He knows it was one of you but he couldn’t be sure which one of you it was. Never mind, we’ll get it sorted out soon enough.”
Shite.
“Now, Piedro, can you positively identify the man who came into the Transylvania with Christine last night?”
“Yes, sair, Meester Inspector Wills, sair.”
“Point him out.”
Unerringly, the squint-eyed waiter jabbed a lungeing index finger towards James Flood.
“Are you sure it was him, Piedro?”
“No, sair, Meester Inspector Wills, sair, not heem. Heem!” The squint-eyed waiter pointed again, this time at Barry Chilton.
“Bollox. I’ve never set foot in the Transylvania in my life,” protested Barry.
“Quiet! Piedro. Would you go over and touch the shoulder of the man you say you saw in the Transylvania?”
The squint-eyed waiter walked crabwise forward and grabbed the arm of Detective Sergeant Bone.
“You’re getting warmer, lad,” said Detective Inspector Wills encouragingly. “One more try.” Another lunge, and Alex was finally identified.
“Just a last question, Piedro, then you can get off to your Waiters’ Race. Who was it you saw lurking around Hog Court last night? Was it one of these three?”
“I wasn’t lurking, I was waiting,” protested Alex.
“So you admit you were there?”
“You know I was there.”
“I know what old Else has told me, but so far I haven’t heard it from you, son. What were you doing in Hog Court at approximately seven minutes to four this morning?”
Oh, so it was getting official, was it? Approximately seven minutes to four. Watch out, Ali.
“You know — the usual reason.” He tried to sound cocky but it came out shifty.
“There’s a lot of usual reasons for going into Hog Court at that hour, from my observation, Alex. For a pee. For a quick shag. For a quiet wank. For a flash. To commit a burglary. To mug somebody. To rape somebody. To commit a murder.”
“For a pee,” answered Alex sullenly.
“And did you ever have this pee?”
Come to think of it, no, he never did.
“No, I was sick instead.”
“They’re not alternatives, you know,” said Detective Inspector Wills mildly. To the squint-eyed waiter, who was looking agitated and trying to bring his watch within his flawed line of vision: “All right, Piedro, off you go. Come back after the race and you can sign your statement. Good luck, and don’t run into any lamp-posts.” Then to James Flood and Barry Chilton as the squint-eyed waiter zigzagged to the stairs: “You two can piss off as well.”
“Any news of the murder weapon, Benny?” asked the new Evening Standard reporter.
“A Swiss Army knife has been located on a builders’ skip in Greek Street,” said the detective inspector woodenly. “It has yet to be established as the murder weapon.”
Swiss Army knife. Swiss Army knife. Swiss Army knife.
“Can I use that, Benny?”
“You can if you don’t claim the murder was done with the gadget that takes stones out of horses’ hooves.”
Swiss Army knife. Where had he seen a Swiss Army knife? Trouble was, last night had become a blur. He had been well pissed for one thing, and for another, lack of sleep was now catching up with him. Swiss Army knife. It would come. It had better do.
With James Flood and Barry Chilton dismissed, Alex felt isolated, the more so because without any prompting Detective Inspector Wills, Detective Sergeant Bone and the woman constable, all of them with notebooks at the ready and, Alex noticed out of the corner of his eye, not one but two tape-recorders surreptitiously going, had drawn up chairs and silently arranged themselves into a semi-circle around him.
“This could be as good a time as any to have that pee you never got round to,” said Detective Inspector Wills encouragingly. “We might be some time.”
He was right. Alex went out and evacuated his bladder, and had done so, or tried to do so in dribbles, another twice before the interview was at long last over.
“Now the first thing is, Alex, you seem to have got yourself signed in at the Transylvania Club as one Mr D. Singleton, and the waiter who’s just identified you says you were addressed by the dead person as David. Why would that be, Alex?”
Shite. How did you explain the inexplicable? Well, before I knew Christine was a bloke, I was entertaining hopes of shagging her, so it was just a natural precaution not to give her my real name. Sort of nominal Durex. That do?