For Kicks Part 23

They were busy. The building was full of bustle and hurrying voices. They shoved me still hand-cuffed from room to room under escort and barked out intermittent questions. 'Later,' they said. 'Deal with that one later. We've got all night for him.'

I thought with longing of a hot bath, a soft bed, and a handful of aspirins. I didn't get any of them.

At some point late in the evening they gave me a chair in a bare brightly lit little room, and I told them what I had been doing at Humber's and how I had come to kill Adams. I told them everything which had happened that day. They didn't believe me, for which one couldn't blame them. They immediately, as a matter of form, charged me with murder. I protested. Uselessly.

They asked me a lot of questions. I answered them. They asked them again. I answered. They asked the questions like a relay team, one of them taking over presently from another, so that they all appeared to remain full of fresh energy while I grew more and more tired. I was glad I did not have to maintain a series of lies in that state of continuing discomfort and growing fatigue, as it was hard to keep a clear head, even for the truth, and they were waiting for me to make a mistake.

'Now tell us what really happened.'

'I've told you.'

'Not all that cloak and dagger stuff.'

'Cable to Australia for a copy of the contract I signed when I took on the job.' For the fourth time I repeated my solicitor's address, and for the fourth time they didn't write it down.

'Who did you say engaged you?'

'The Earl of October.'

'And no doubt we can check with him too?'

'He's in Germany until Sat.u.r.day.'

'Too bad.' They smiled nastily. They knew from Ca.s.s that I had worked in October's stable. Ca.s.s had told them I was a slovenly stable lad, dishonest, easily frightened and not very bright. As he believed what he said, he had carried conviction.

'You got into trouble with his Lordship's daughter, didn't you?'

d.a.m.n Ca.s.s, I thought bitterly, d.a.m.n Ca.s.s and his chattering tongue.

'Getting your own back on him for sacking you, aren't you, by dragging his name into this?'

'Like you got your own back on Mr Humber for sacking you yesterday.'

'No. I left because I had finished my job there.'

'For beating you, then?'

'No.'

'The head lad said you deserved it.'

'Adams and Humber were running a crooked racing scheme. I found them out, and they tried to kill me.' It seemed to me it was the tenth time that I had said that without making the slightest impression.

'You resented being beaten. You went back to get even... It's a common enough pattern.'

'No.'

'You brooded over it and went back and attacked them. It was a shambles. Blood all over the place.'

'It was my blood.'

'We can group it.'

'Do that. It's my blood.'

'From that little cut? Don't be so stupid.'

'It's been st.i.tched.'

'Ah yes, that brings us back to Lady Elinor Tarren. Lord October's daughter. Got her into trouble, did you?'

'No.'

'In the family way...'

'No. Check with the doctor.'

'So she took sleeping pills...'

'No. Adams poisoned her.' I had told them twice about the bottle of phen.o.barbitone, and they must have found it when they had been at the stables, but they wouldn't admit it.

'You got the sack from her father for seducing her. She couldn't stand the disgrace. She took sleeping pills.'

'She had no reason to feel disgraced. It was not she, but her sister Patricia, who accused me of seducing her. Adams poisoned Elinor in gin and Campari. There are gin and Campari and phen.o.barbitone in the office and also in the sample from her stomach.'

They took no notice. 'She found you had deserted her on top of everything else. Mr Humber consoled her with a drink, but she went back to college and took sleeping pills.'

'No.'

They were sceptical, to put it mildly, about Adams' use of the flame thrower.

'You'll find it in the shed.'

'This shed, yes. Where did you say it was?'

I told them again, exactly. 'The field probably belongs to Adams. You could find out.'

'It only exists in your imagination.'

'Look and you'll find it, and the flame thrower.'

'That's likely to be used for burning off the heath. Lots of farmers have them, round here.'

They had let me make two telephone calls to try to find Colonel Beckett. His manservant in London said he had gone to stay with friends in Berkshire for Newbury races. The little local exchange in Berkshire was out of action, the operator said, because a water main had burst and flooded a cable. Engineers were working on it.

Didn't my wanting to talk to one of the top bra.s.s of steeplechasing convince them, I wanted to know?

'Remember that chap we had in here once who'd strangled his wife? Nutty as a fruit cake. Insisted on ringing up Lord Bertrand Russell, didn't he, to tell him he'd struck a blow for peace.'

At around midnight one of them pointed out that even if (and, mind you, he didn't himself believe it) even if all I had said about being employed to find out about Adams and Humber were against all probability true, that still didn't give me the right to kill them.

'Humber isn't dead,' I said.

'Not yet.'

My heart lurched. Dear G.o.d, I thought, not Humber too. Not Humber too.

'You clubbed Adams with the walking stick then?'

'No, I told you, with a green gla.s.s ball. I had it in my left hand and I hit him as hard as I could. I didn't mean to kill him, just knock him out. I'm right handed... I couldn't judge very well how hard I was. .h.i.tting with my left.'

'Why did you use your left hand then?'

'I told you.'

'Tell us again.'

I told them again.

'And after your right arm was put out of action you got on a motor-cycle and rode ten miles to Durham? What sort of fools do you take us for?'

'The fingerprints of both my hands are on that paperweight. The right ones from when I threw it at Humber, and the left ones on top, from where I hit Adams. You have only to check.'

'Fingerprints, now,' they said sarcastically.

'And while you're on the subject, you'll also find the fingerprints of my left hand on the telephone. I tried to call you from the office. My left hand prints are on the tap in the washroom... and on the key, and on the door handle, both inside and out. Or at least, they were...'

'All the same, you rode that motor-bike.'

'The numbness had gone by then.'

'And now?'

'It isn't numb now either.'

One of them came round beside me, picked up my right wrist, and pulled my arm up high. The hand-cuffs jerked and lifted my left arm as well. The bruises had all stiffened and were very sore. The policeman put my arm down again. There was a short silence.

'That hurt,' one of them said at last, grudgingly.

'He's putting it on.'

'Maybe...'

They had been drinking endless cups of tea all evening and had not given me any. I asked if I could have some then, and got it; only to find that the difficulty I had in lifting the cup was hardly worth it.

They began again.

'Granted Adams struck your arm, but he did it in self-defence. He saw you throw the paper-weight at your employer and realized you were going to attack him next. He was warding you off.'

'He had already cut my forehead open... and hit me several times on the body, and once on the head.'

'Most of that was yesterday, according to the head lad. That's why you went back and attacked Mr Humber.'

'Humber hit me only twice yesterday. I didn't particularly resent it. The rest was today, and it was mostly done by Adams.' I remembered something. 'He took my crash helmet off when he had knocked me dizzy. His fingerprints must be on it.'

'Fingerprints again.'

'They spell it out,' I said.

'Let's begin again at the beginning. How can we believe a yob like you?'

Yob. One of the leather boys. Tearaway. Rocker. I knew all the words. I knew what I looked like. What a millstone of a handicap.

I said despairingly, 'There's no point in pretending to be a disreputable, dishonest stable lad if you don't look the part.'

'You look the part all right,' they said offensively. 'Born to it, you were.'

I looked at their stony faces, their hard, unimpressed eyes. Tough efficient policemen who were not going to be conned. I could read their thoughts like gla.s.s: if I convinced them and they later found out it was all a pack of lies, they'd never live it down. Their instincts were all dead against having to believe. My bad luck.

The room grew stuffy and full of cigarette smoke and I became too hot in my jerseys and jacket. I knew they took the sweat on my forehead to be guilt, not heat, not pain.

I went on answering all their questions. They covered the ground twice more with undiminished zeal, setting traps, sometimes shouting, walking round me, never touching me again, but springing the questions from all directions. I was really much too tired for that sort of thing because apart from the wearing-out effect of the injuries I had not slept for the whole of the previous night. Towards two o'clock I could hardly speak from exhaustion, and after they had woken me from a sort of dazed sleep three times in half an hour, they gave it up.

From the beginning I had known that there was only one logical end to that evening, and I had tried to shut it out of my mind, because I dreaded it. But there you are, you set off on a primrose path and if it leads to h.e.l.l that's just too bad.

Two uniformed policemen, a sergeant and a constable, were detailed to put me away for the night, which I found involved a form of accommodation to make Humber's dormitory seem a paradise.

The cell was cubic, eight feet by eight by eight, built of glazed bricks, brown to shoulder height and white above that. There was a small barred window too high to see out of, a narrow slab of concrete for a bed, a bucket with a lid on it in a corner and a printed list of regulations on one wall. Nothing else. Bleak enough to shrink the guts; and I had never much cared for small enclosed s.p.a.ces.

The two policemen brusquely told me to sit on the concrete. They removed my boots and the belt from my jeans, and also found and unbuckled the money belt underneath. They took off the hand-cuffs. Then they went out, shut the door with a clang, and locked me in.

The rest of that night was in every way rock bottom.

Chapter 19.

It was cool and quiet in the corridors of Whitehall. A superbly mannered young man deferentially showed me the way and opened a mahogony door into an empty office.

'Colonel Beckett will not be long sir. He has just gone to consult a colleague. He said I was to apologise if you arrived before he came back, and to ask if you would like a drink. And cigarettes are in this box, sir.'

'Thank you,' I smiled. 'Would coffee be a nuisance?'

'By no means. I'll have some sent in straight away. If you'll excuse me?' He went out and quietly closed the door.