Hearing the sound of the table being laid in the kitchen Alice entered it, intending to offer her services, to be met with cool stares from the boy and girl from the Portakabin. Mrs Norris, busy, and clearly flustered, introduced them.
‘DS Rice, this is my daughter, Rosanna, and her… er… boyfriend, Jason.’
Rosanna and Jason, as if no introductions had been made, sank into their chairs and began helping themselves to the bread and soup laid out before them. But when Alice took the chair next to her, Rosanna stopped eating to speak.
‘A policewoman, eh… maybe you could help Jason?’
‘How?’ Jason asked, glaring angrily at his girlfriend.
‘With the charge.’
Jason nodded, mollified, looking now at Alice expectantly.
‘See, Jason’s on a charge,’ the girl continued, ‘and he’s already up for something else. Maybe you could get it dropped for us, eh?’
Curious, Alice asked, ‘What’s the charge?’
‘You tell her, Jason, eh?’ Rosanna giggled.
The youth blushed before answering, ‘Er… peein’ in folks’ letterboxes.’
Eric Manson arrived back at exactly the time promised, and from his breath it was apparent that he had consumed his lunch in a pub. Hobbling out of the car he instructed his Sergeant to take the wheel, disability now to the fore, and then reclined on the back seat, legs up, eyes closed, snores vibrating his torso before they had even reached the motorway. On waking at the City boundary he became irascible, demanding that Alice ferry him to his house, rest having been advised. But on passing a service station he ordered her to stop and teetered unsteadily out, clambering back into the car clutching an undistinguished bouquet which he then transferred uneasily from hand to hand until his final disembarkation at ‘The Hollies’.
Consequently, Alice arrived alone at Gayfield Square, delighted to have shed her companion, still pondering on the slow smile she had noticed lighting up Mrs Manson’s face as she escorted her lame husband through their doorway.
A departing resident let her into the tenement building. The stone stairs leading to the topmost flat were worn and uneven, and as Alice trudged upwards she was assailed by scents of cooking: wafts of a curry-scented breeze on the first floor, bacon frying on the second and, she hazarded, chopped onions on the third. Now breathless, she rang the old-fashioned doorbell and the door, after a short delay, was opened by an elderly woman, well-spoken and immaculately turned out in a polo-neck jersey with pearls and a tweed skirt. In the drawing room, Colin Norris, unshaven and clad in a paint-spattered boiler-suit, was standing on a wooden stepladder admiring his own handiwork. Only about one square foot of the old cream paint remained on the ceiling, the roller tray now empty of Snowdrop White. Unaware that his mother had company he shouted: ‘Who was that at the door, Mum?’
‘It’s a Police officer, dear, it seems she wants to speak to you. I’ll get some tea and leave you both to it.’
As the man descended the ladder Alice glanced at him. Everything about him looked wary, on guard. The second their eyes met, he covered his with his hand, massaging his temples and sighing audibly for her benefit. When he lowered his head once more to discard his roller, she noticed that the few grey curls left on it were thin, unwinding before taking their final bow and leaving his scalp forever. Although he must have been well over six feet, he appeared smaller, as if trying to minimise his presence by stooping, camouflaging his physical bulk. Because of his diffident manner Alice was taken by surprise when he took the initiative, leading her to the sofa and then sitting close beside her, an action too open and hospitable for such an apparently timid creature. She showed him the photocopy and the caption and he identified both writings as his own, seeming puzzled at the need for doing so.
‘I need to ask you, Mr Norris-where were you between seven pm and ten pm on Monday 12th June?’
The man waited a few seconds before answering. ‘I’ve no idea, Sergeant. Does it matter?’
‘Yes, sir, it matters. Can I ask you to think again?’
Again, there was an unusual delay before he spoke: ‘Well, that’s ages ago now, and I’m sorry but I haven’t a clue.’
‘What about between eight and eleven pm on Wednesday 5th July?’
‘Last week, eh? I don’t know, but I’d probably be at home. I don’t go out much nowadays.’
‘If you were at home, sir, would anyone have been with you?’
Colin Norris looked the policewoman directly in the eye as he answered. ‘My wife, she’d have been there, I expect. I can’t be sure, I’ll have to think about it, but we’re both normally there. What’s all this about anyway? Couldn’t you just cut to the chase, please?’
‘Of course, sir. The specimen of writing on the photocopy was extracted from a series of letters written to Sheriff Freeman. You may have read about him in the papers. He was recently murdered.’
Had the man harboured any genuine doubt about the nature of her enquiries, it was now dispelled. He began to pat his curls and run his fingers through his little remaining hair.
‘In the papers,’ he repeated, nodding.
‘Yes, and I understand that you wrote those letters-threatening letters-to the Sheriff.’
Again, Alice caught the man’s eyes, and this time he held her gaze.
‘I did write them, yes.’ Although hoarse, his voice sounded unashamed, unrepentant.
‘Could you tell me why, sir?’
He nodded again, apparently keen to take up her invitation.
‘Yes. I wrote them because I was, quite frankly, desperate… DESPERATE. I wanted him to stop the wind farm development. He could have, you see. It was in his power. He owned the access strip, and without it, without his co-operation, the whole thing would have foundered… and then, of course, I’d have been all right.’
‘Why were you so desperate for the wind farm not to go ahead?’
‘Because,’ the man sighed, ‘…because if it did, my life would be over.’
‘What do you mean “my life would be over”?’
‘I expect you have been there, Sergeant, to my house, I mean?’
‘Yes, I was there this morning.’
‘Then you may understand. A tiny bit. That cottage is… well, my last chance really. I used to be in shipping, highly-paid too, then I lost my job. Our office in London was “downsized”. Actually, I was the only casualty, through no fault of my own. Naturally, I picked myself up and managed to land a job in insurance but… well… I’m not a salesman, so after two years they “let me go”. Next I tried selling wills, it was a kind of franchise, and… in a nutshell, it didn’t succeed. But Hilary, my wife, kept my spirits up, she’s always believed in me. You know she even got a job herself. Bloody good effort… Christ,’ he shook his head, ‘and I’ve led her a bloody dance. Eventually we used everything we had, every last penny, to buy the cottage, and since then I’ve worked day and night to do it up. So has she. When it’s finished… well, how could it fail? As a bed and breakfast, I mean. It’s such a perfect spot. You’ve seen it, it’s Shangri-La, the real thing. How could we fail there, how could anyone fail there…’
‘And the wind farm?,’ she reminded him.
‘In that wonderful place, they plan to dump thirty turbines. The view from the cottage, instead of being… unsurpassed, would be totally blighted. Then who, in their right mind, would want to come to a place like that on holiday? To look out over a mass of those ugly great things and listen to their perpetual clicks and whirrs. Nobody, that’s who. But I’m not going to let them destroy everything.’