‘Just you behave yourself, my boy,’ she would warn continually. ‘Another do like the last affair and it would kill your father.’
Johnny knew what she really meant. The eleventh commandment ruled his family: don’t get found out.
Suddenly Johnny was startled back to the present. Bill Turpin loomed at his side. He had crept up in that disconcerting way he had. Silent footsteps. Johnny felt the old man’s breath before he heard a sound.
‘Morning, boy. All right this morning be ’ee?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Feeling better, then?’
Johnny’s flesh started to crawl. Did Bill Turpin know something? Oh God. If it was going to be anybody it would be Bill, the nosy old bugger.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘Well, I thought you seemed a bit off-colour the last day or two.’
‘Uh yeah, tummy’s a bit dicky.’
‘Oh.’ Long drawn out. Speculative. ‘I thought you might be fretting over that poor maid.’
Johnny tried to keep cool.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘That poor murdered maid. You saw a bit of her, didn’t you boy?’
‘What are you saying?’ Johnny’s voice came out in a croak.
‘Oh, I used to see you pair scuttling off together now and again. I often take old Jip for a stroll over the dunes of an evening.’
Johnny knew his face was now crimson.
‘I haven’t seen her for a long time,’ he said quickly. ‘Not a long time.’
He didn’t realise that he was shouting.
‘All right, boy, all right. Calm down.’ Bill had his eternal pipe in his hand. He sucked on the stem, still staring.
‘I am calm,’ Johnny snapped. ‘Do you mind if I go for a quick swim?’
Bill shook his head.
Johnny peeled off his shirt and jeans. Underneath he was wearing a pair of brief red swimming shorts. Two girl tourists walking by turned their heads for a better look. All the girls fancied Johnny, Bill Turpin knew that. Not surprising, he thought, good-looking boy and a fine body he had on him too. What a shame.
Johnny sprinted down the slipway and across the stretch of beach to the sea. Bill leaned against the sea wall. The faithful Jip nuzzled affectionately against his leg. He pushed her lazily away with a foot.
‘Lie down, dog, will you.’
The old man tapped his pipe against the wall and began the ritual of refilling and relighting it. He drew on the tobacco, blowing smoke through his mouth and nostrils. Johnny had swum a couple of hundred yards out to sea. He was moving very fast, ploughing through the water with his powerful crawl.
Bill watched, squinting against the already bright sun; motionless, controlled, like an old tomcat waiting to pounce.
Throughout the morning, Johnny wondered if he should take Mark’s advice and go to the police himself. When the blue Q car pulled up on the no-parking zone by the deckchair stand, he knew it was too late for that.
He glanced quickly at Bill Turpin, but the old man looked away.
Johnny ran his fingers through his long hair, still damp from swimming, as he watched Detective Chief Inspector Mallett heave his bulk out of the car. The policeman approached, trying to look reassuring. He could see the panic in Johnny at fifty paces, and it was not his style to frighten those he interviewed. He wanted the truth and he thought he knew the best way to get it. He was a ‘softly, softly’ man. People talked to Phil Mallett as a rule, they trusted him. He looked like a picture-book illustration of a Devonian country policeman, his skin smooth and creamy with very little beard, his cheeks excessively plump and pink. He adopted his most sympathetic, friendly look, and strolled over to Johnny with an almost too casual walk. The young detective inspector accompanying him was a different kettle of fish: an ambitious career cop, a graduate, whom Mallett suspected had been foisted on him by those who thought his methods were too old-fashioned and too soft.
‘Just you keep quiet unless I say otherwise,’ Mallett hissed at him out of the side of his mouth.
Johnny knew his hands were shaking. He twisted them behind his back. The deeper he got into this, the more certain it became that his parents would have to hear about it. That was the worst of all. The recriminations, the tears, the oppressive caring.
‘Been swimming, have you?’ asked the inspector conversationally, looking at Johnny’s thick dark hair, wet and shiny from the sea.
Come on, come to the point, get on with it, Johnny willed.
The young inspector was kicking the ground with the toe of one shoe. He was just as impatient. The boy should have been picked up by a carload of uniformed bobbies and whisked straight off to the station in his opinion. No messing. Give him a scare.
‘Wouldn’t mind a dip myself.’ The chief inspector smiled as if he had made a joke.
Johnny tried to smile, but was not sure if he succeeded. Mallett leaned against a pile of deckchairs adopting his best ‘I’m on your side ... but’ manner.
And then he asked the question Johnny had been dreading.
‘I understand you knew the young woman who was murdered on Saturday?’
Johnny took a deep breath. ‘Yes, I did.’
‘Well then, lad, you’d better tell me all about it.’
Johnny told him how he had met Marjorie at the golf club and they had become friends. Just friends? Just friends, Johnny heard himself say. He had a feeling he was acting stupidly. He was right.
Phil Mallett scratched his balding head.
‘Now why would a woman like that be interested in a young lad like you, Johnny?’ he asked wryly.
‘She was lonely. We used to walk out over the dunes and talk.’
‘Talk, eh?
‘Yes.’
‘What, a healthy good-looking feller like you? Out with an attractive older woman and just talking?’
‘Yes.’
The detective chief inspector shook his head sorrowfully. His eyes were very gentle. When he spoke again his voice was flat and expressionless.
‘I am not satisfied with your story, Johnny. I have to ask you to come back to the station with me now, where I will take a formal statement from you. I suggest that along the way you think very carefully about what you are going to say.’
About bloody time too, thought the young inspector, as the two men led Johnny to the waiting car.
Johnny was taken to the station’s only interview room where, sitting on a hard upright chair before a wooden table, he had stared resolutely down at his hands, clenched tightly in his lap, almost throughout the interrogation. His palms were sweaty and he was painfully aware of the tape recorder relentlessly putting on record the awful mess he knew he was making of it all. At last he raised his eyes and looked directly at Phil Mallett.
‘I was in love with her,’ he said. His chest felt tight.
The young inspector could contain himself no longer.
‘Love?’ he snapped. ‘Is that what you call it? Is that what you called what you did to that girl on the riverbank last year?’
Phil Mallett motioned sharply for the D.I. to be silent, but it was too late.
Johnny looked as if he had been hit.
‘I knew it, I knew it, that’s why I didn’t want to tell you anything. I’m already branded by you lot, aren’t I? But you’re bloody wrong.’
‘When did you last see Marjorie Benson, Johnny?’
Johnny hesitated, just for a second.
‘Ages ago.’
Oh God. Another mistake? He didn’t know which way to turn.