Everyone had by then read the transcript of Jennings’ interview. The immediate response divided the incident room fairly cleanly down the middle. Half thought the story too far-fetched even for Brookside or EastEnders and the rest were moved and intrigued by the darkly predictive nature of the tale and the way it shed light on their previous understanding of the murder victim.
But if Barnaby had hoped for the sort of positive feedback that would shunt his inquiry on to a more fruitful and revealing track he was unlucky. True the room was full of silent support. The wish to contribute, perhaps even to brightly shine, was plain enough and the frustration at being unable to do so equally palpable. It was clearly killing Meredith.
Eventually Detective Constable Willoughby wondered aloud if Jennings might not himself be Neilson and had told the story to direct the investigation away from the successful figure he had now become. Admittedly there appeared to be an age discrepancy but he himself had established that and could well be lying.
Barnaby pointed out that the author’s CV was well documented and easily checkable and that he thought this probably made Constable Willoughby’s suggestion something of a no no. He did not put this at all forcefully - the lad was brand new and only eighteen - but Willoughby, though managing to nod calmly in response, thereafter was seen to fall quietly apart.
‘We shall have to start winding down here pretty soon if no new information emerges. We can’t have thirty people twiddling their thumbs. Some of you will have to go back to your divisions at the end of the week. Watch the board for names. We can always jack things up should the tide turn.
‘As for today, I’d like everyone who was present on the evening Hadleigh died re-interviewed. And before you do so go over their previous statements, including Hutton and Clapton’s follow-ups, until you know them inside out. Look for the smallest discrepancy or contradiction, especially self-contradiction. It’s six days since they talked to us. They’ll not only have forgotten most of what they said but they’ll have remembered things that they may well regard as irrelevant but which might be very relevant indeed to us. Don’t forget that though opinions won’t stand up in court they can sometimes point the way to stuff that will. Try and establish an atmosphere where errors can easily be admitted or minds changed. It’s often the fear of looking foolish that stops people backtracking and keeping what could be valuable information to themselves.
‘I want you to try and get behind what has been said already. Apparently straightforward remarks can often conceal something more complicated. Compare different people’s version of the same event. And easy does it. Five of the six people you’ll be talking to will have committed no offence whatsoever.’
Unnecessary to add it could well prove to be six out of six. Everyone knew how much real meat was on the plate.
‘I’d also like information about the day leading up to the meeting which, until now, has not been fully explored. Something untoward may have occurred but not been thought worth mentioning.’
At this point a uniformed sergeant asked if any decision had been reached regarding Max Jennings.
‘He’ll be released later this morning. I’ve nothing to hold him on.’
‘I was wondering, sir.’ Inspector Meredith spoke with a politeness so mannered and artificial he could have strayed in from a Restoration comedy.
‘Yes?’
‘I was going over both of Clapton’s statements last night.’ Well, bully for you, Ian. ‘Could I ask if you yourself have any ideas as to what he might have been doing between eleven and midnight on the night of the murder?’
‘Sergeant Troy seems to think he was hanging around a house in the village where a young girl, one of his pupils, lives.’
‘I see. Thank you, sir.’
Meredith had the extraordinary ability to write his thoughts across his face with absolute precision and without moving a muscle. What he was presently thinking was, ‘You should have mentioned that without being asked. Who now is hugging information to themselves?’
Troy said, almost matching the frozen politesse: ‘There is a note to that effect on the back-up file, sir.’
After the outdoor team had gone about their business Barnaby withdrew to his desk at the back of the room. No need to seek the sanctuary of his office now for peace and quiet. The telephones, so clamorous a mere seven days ago, rang only intermittently. Occasionally someone used a computer, but to check facts rather than add new information. A good two thirds of the machines were idle. A winding down of energy was visibly taking place, a procedure satisfyingly normal at the successful conclusion of a case and depressingly frustrating otherwise.
Barnaby switched on his own monitor and brought up the detailed notes from Amy Lyddiard’s interview. But he had hardly started to read when a call came in from the Garda in Dublin. This was far from being a rare occurrence. Contact was maintained almost daily, often in connection with the movements of known or suspected terrorists. But now the call was in response to Barnaby’s request for information on Liam Hanlon’s former companion and procurer.
The bottom line on Conor Neilson was about as final as you could hope to get. A man going under that name for the past twenty years, which was as long as the police had known him, had been fished out of the Liffey eighteen months previously. His feet had been jammed into paint kettles filled with cement, his throat had been cut and his ears sliced off. He was known to have links with protection rackets, drug-running and prostitution.
Barnaby, asked then if this was the man he was looking for, said he wouldn’t be at all surprised. Further details were promised by fax and the chief inspector thanked his informant, gave assurances that the matter was not urgent and rang off. It seemed to him that what he had just heard brought a dreadful symmetry to the matter under investigation. That two men, yoked together against a background of violence from their earliest years should, quite unconnectedly, end so.
Barnaby, disturbed and restless, got up and started to move about. Images proliferated in his mind. A little boy weeping through a mess of freshly bleeding offal. A man, blown apart by a shotgun, lying in an unknown grave, his mouth stopped by earth. Another standing upright, drowned, a great gash across his neck. Around him a floating stain suffused brown water and the gills of his wound, fish belly pale, gradually widened. Last and perhaps most terrible (Barnaby had fetched up opposite the Ryvita panels), were the battered remains of Gerald Hadleigh.
Old tags, quotations, half-remembered lines haunted Barnaby - thicker than water ... who would have thought the old man ... of coral are his bones ... blood-boltered Banquo smiles ... as old as Cain ... every tear from every eye ...
He couldn’t stop staring at the photographs.
Directly after leaving the gym Brian also left the school premises. Pleading stomach cramps, he arranged for someone to double up on the only teaching period he had that afternoon and decamped. He couldn’t put enough distance between himself and that terrible place where he had been so thoroughly eunuchised.
He was wondering if he could possibly work it so that he would never have to go back. There were barely three weeks to half term. He could fake an injury. Or develop his present supposed malady to a degree which would leave him virtually bedridden. If he could stretch this out to mid-June the little bastards would all have left. And it wasn’t as if he’d lose any pay.
On the other hand (Brian braked carefully, drawing up at a red light) was there not perhaps a more positive way of looking at this diabolical misadventure, so spitefully thrust upon him? He had more than once read interviews with well-known actors and writers who had been forced, frequently quite late in life, out of some mundane occupation by an accident of fate, then found their true vocation. Why shouldn’t this happen to him?