For Kicks - Страница 45

The doctor had heard enough. He walked out of the room without looking back. What was the use of trying? Better just do what the red-head said, and take it quietly, bitterness and all.

"Let's be going, chum," said the dark one. They stood there, tense again, with watchful eyes and hostile faces.

I got slowly to my feet. Slowly, because I was perilously near to not being able to stand up at all, and I didn't want to seem to be asking for a sympathy I was clearly not going to get. But it was all right:

once upright I felt better; which was psychological as much as physical because they were then not two huge threatening policemen but two quite ordinary young men of my own height doing their duty, and very concerned not to make any mistakes.

It worked the other way with them, of course. I think they had subconsciously expected a stable lad to be very short, and they were taken aback to discover I wasn't. They became visibly more aggressive:

and I realized in the circumstances, and in those black clothes, I probably seemed to them, as Terence had once put it, a bit dangerous and hard to handle.

I didn't see any sense in getting roughed up any more, especially by the law, if it could be avoided.

"Look," I sighed, 'like you said, I won't give you any trouble. "

But I suppose they had been told to bring in someone who had gone berserk and smashed a man's head in, and they were taking no chances.

Red-head took a fierce grip of my right arm above the elbow and shoved me over to the door, and once outside in the passage the dark one took a similar grip on the left.

The corridor was lined with girls standing in little gossiping groups.

I stopped dead. The two policemen pushed me on. And the girls stared.

That old saying about wishing the floor would open and swallow one up suddenly took on a fresh personal meaning. What little was left of my sense of dignity revolted totally against being exhibited as a prisoner in front of so many intelligent and personable young women. They were the wrong age. The wrong sex. I could have stood it better if they had been men.

But there was no easy exit. It was a good long way from Elinor's room to the outside door, along those twisting corridors and down two flights of stairs, and every single step was watched by interested female eyes.

This was the sort of thing one wouldn't be able to forget. It went too deep. Or perhaps, I thought miserably, one could even get accustomed to being hauled around in handcuffs if it happened often enough. If one were used to it, perhaps one wouldn't care. which would be peaceful.

I did at least manage not to stumble, not even on the stairs, so to that extent something was saved from the wreck. The police car however, into which I was presently thrust, seemed a perfect haven in contrast.

I sat in front, between them. The dark one drove.

"Phew," he said, pushing his cap back an inch.

"All those girls." He had blushed under their scrutiny and there was a dew of sweat on his forehead.

"He's a tough boy, is this," said Red-head, mopping his neck with a white handkerchief as he sat sideways against the door and stared at me.

"He didn't turn a hair."

I looked straight ahead through the windscreen as the lights of Durham began to slide past and thought how little could be told from a face. That walk had been a torture. If I hadn't shown it, it was probably only because I had by then had months of practice in hiding my feelings and thoughts, and the habit was strong. I guessed correctly that it was a habit I would find strength in clinging to for some time to come.

I spent the rest of the journey reflecting that I had got myself into a proper mess and that I was going to have a very unpleasant time getting out. I had indeed killed Adams. There was no denying or ducking that. And I was not going to be listened to as a respectable solid citizen but as a murdering villain trying every dodge to escape the consequences. I was going to be taken at my face value, which was very low indeed. That couldn't be helped. I had, after all, survived eight weeks at Humber's only because I looked like dregs. The appearance which had deceived Adams was going to be just as convincing to the police, and proof that in fact it already was sat on either side of me in the car, watchful and antagonistic.

Red-head's eyes never left my face.

"He doesn't talk much," he observed, after a long silence.

"Got a lot on his mind," agreed the dark one with sarcasm.

The damage Adams and Humber had done gave me no respite. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, and the handcuffs clinked. The lightheartedness with which I had gone in my new clothes to Slaw seemed a long long time ago.

The lights of Clavering lay ahead. The dark one gave me a look of subtle enjoyment. A capture made. His purpose fulfilled.

Red-head broke another long silence, his voice full of the same sort of satisfaction.

"He'll be a lot older when he gets out," he said.

I emphatically hoped not: but I was all too aware that the length of time I remained in custody depended solely on how conclusively I could show that I had killed in self-defence. I wasn't a lawyer's son for nothing.

The next hours were abysmal. The Clavering police force were collectively a hardened cynical bunch suppressing as bebrthey could a vigorous crime wave in a mining area^wfthja high unemployment percentage. Kid gloves did"58t figure in their book. Individually they may have loved their wives and been nice to their children, but if so they kept their humour and humanity strictly for leisure.

They were busy. The building was full of bustle and hurrying voices.

They shoved me still handcuffed 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 Saturday."

"Too bad." They smiled nastily. They knew from Cass that I had worked in October's stable. Cass 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?"

Damn Cass, I thought bitterly, damn Cass 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 stitched."

"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 phenobarbitone, 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 phenobarbitone 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?"