Jason was staring at the floor, ashen to the lips. “I’ve known him all my life,” he said in a stunned whisper. “And I don’t… I don’t know him at all.”
“Will you be all right to go back in?” Tennison asked gently, and received a brief nod.
Muddyman stirred himself. “I’ll get us a coffee,” he said, and went off to find a machine.
Tennison felt soiled and grubby. What she really wanted was a hot cleansing shower and a large brandy. Wash away the stink from her body and deaden the memory of that gaunt, wasted face gasping out its last confession.
“If I had buried her,” Tony Allen told Oswalde, his eyes dangerously bright, “I’d have buried her so deep you’d never have found her again. She’d never have come back…”
“Has she come back?” Oswalde asked, watching him closely.
Tony gave a pitying half-smile, the smile of someone trying to communicate an ultimate truth to an ignoramus. “She’s inside you,” he hissed. “I can see her looking at me. Looking at me through your eyes. Reaching out to me.” He tapped his chest. “I’m her friend. She wants to get away from you. You’re a coffin. You suffocate her. You’re her coffin. Your eyes are little windows. I can see inside you. Through your eyes. See Joanne. She hates you…”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. When it came away he was grinning at Oswalde with a strange mixture of triumph and the deepest loathing.
Harvey seemed to have regained a little strength. The pill, or injection-whatever it was-had brought him back into the world, banished for a short while the shades closing in around him.
Tennison pressed on, anxious to get it over and done with. “What did you do with Joanne’s body?”
“I kept it in the cupboard under the stairs. Till the following night. I dug a hole. I put the earth in bags. I had a lot of plastic sheeting. I wrapped her in the sheeting.” His voice broke. He stared sightlessly upwards. “Buried her.”
Muddyman leaned forward into Tennison’s eye line, stroking his chin. She nodded slowly. Harvey was coming out with crucial details-the belt, the plastic sheeting-that hadn’t been released to the media. Harvey couldn’t possibly have known about them unless he was personally involved with the disposal of Joanne’s body. It was the kind of clinching evidence they required to make the case stand up in court.
She was about to ask a further question when Harvey suddenly, and with great effort, raised himself up. His eyes probed the darkness, his slack mouth working desperately.
“I’m sorry, Jason, I’m sorry you have to hear all this. I just needed you to be here…” Exhausted, he fell back, and Tennison waited for calm.
“Did you bury anything else with her, David?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“A plastic bag.”
That hadn’t been mentioned in the press either.
“What did it contain?”
Tennison had to crane forward to catch his mumbled. “I don’t know,” and it seemed to her that, having confessed to the murder, he was losing interest in the more mundane details of the crime.
Again she glanced towards Muddyman, who was looking like the cat that got the cream. Harvey was a goner, in more senses than one. He’d given them chapter and bloody verse on the whole sordid saga, committed it to tape, with three witnesses in attendance. Game, set, and match.
Harvey continued to mumble. Tennison strained to hear, hoping the tape was picking it up.
“… I banged the earth flat. Laid the rest of the slabs, cemented them in. There was a smell. The darkie next door complained. I told him it was… the drains…”
His eyes closed.
The wheezing breath fluttered from his lips, emphasizing the silence.
Tennison straightened her shoulders, sat back in her chair. “Thank you, David,” she said, and indicated to Muddyman that he could turn off the machine. Thank God that was over. Her flesh crawled at the memory of his clammy grip.
They went out into the corridor. Muddyman sealed the tape and asked Jason to countersign and date it. The young man did so, the pen shaking in his hand. He was still deathly pale, and looked sick to his stomach.
“Would you like a car to take you home?” Tennison asked, concerned about him.
“It’s all right, thanks.” He raised his head and took a deep breath. “I’d rather walk.”
They watched him trail off down the corridor, looking lost and aimless, but he turned the corner heading for reception, so that seemed okay. Muddyman stuffed the tape in his raincoat pocket and turned to Tennison with a fat grin.
“Well done! Nailed the bastard’s balls to the floor.”
“You think so?”
Muddyman lit up and hungrily sucked in smoke. “Know so.”
Tennison nodded, as if in agreement. She’d have given a month’s pay for Muddyman’s complete, unwavering certainty, but she couldn’t make it jell. Something nagged at her. Some of the details Harvey had spilled she kept returning to, worrying at like a loose tooth.
But it had been a long, grueling pig of a day and she was exhausted. And somehow depressed on top of it. All her mind could focus on right this minute were the hot shower and the large brandy.
As they went down the stairs to the parking lot, Tennison said dully, “God, hospitals depress me.”
Having finally got someone to babysit for her, Esta flew down to Southampton Row and barged into the waiting room. “Have you seen him?” she asked them, huddled there on the bench. “Have you seen him?”
Esme shook her head tearfully. “They won’t… let me see my boy,” she wailed. “My Tony…”
Esta stormed up to the counter. She banged on it with both fists. Through the glass panel she could see two or three uniformed officers sitting at desks in the back room. Beating on the counter, she yelled at them, “I want to see somebody now! I want to see the person in charge! Come here-where is he!”
Vernon waved to her. “They say somebody is just coming.”
Esta banged again, harder, louder.
“Come and sit down,” Vernon pleaded. “Take it easy…”
Esta ignored him. She had no intention of taking it easy.
Tony was leaning his elbows on the table, his head in his hands. His voice was muffled.
“I’m a black bastard. I deserve all I get… I’m a black bastard, I deserve all I get…”
Standing opposite him, Oswalde thumped the table. “Tony, just stop it, man!”
“I’m a black bastard, I deserve all I get… I’m a black bastard, I deserve all I get…”
“Tony, stop it! Just stop it, man…”
“That’s enough,” Burkin said curtly. He strode to the door. “Can I have a word with you, Sergeant Oswalde?”
“In a minute.”
“Now, Sergeant Oswalde!” Burkin went out.
Oswalde looked at his watch. “I’m concluding this interview at eleven-twenty-five p.m.” He switched off the machine and followed Burkin out.
Tony’s hands came away from his face and clenched into fists.
“No, don’t leave me alone! Don’t leave me alone in here!”
In the corridor Burkin faced Oswalde. He had to raise his voice to be heard above Tony Allen’s terrified, near-hysterical cries.
“What’s all this about?”
“What?” Oswalde said. He was an inch or two taller than DI Burkin, and he stared into his eyes, knowing the man for the racist he was.
Burkin held up a warning finger. “I don’t know what’s going on between you two…”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean?” Burkin’s eyes bulged. He jerked his thumb at the pitiful, wavering sobs coming from the room-“Don’t leave me alone. . . please don’t leave me alone, please . . .”
“He’s off his head!”
Oswalde looked down his nose at Burkin with narrowed eyes. “That’s your considered psychological opinion, is it?” he sneered.