"That's OK. There's more. This morning I followed him to his place of employment. He works in the town centre, for someone called Homes 4U.
That's number 4, capital U. Snappy, eh?"
"Speaks volumes about their clientele," I said. — "Quite. They're some sort of estate agents, special ising in cheap rentals, DHSS work, that sort of stuff. They're big around Manchester and are just expanding to this side of the Pennines. I rang them up and had a girl-to-girl chat with their receptionist. She sounded a bit dim.
Darryl is the local manager."
We were sitting at Nigel's desk and I'd straightened most of his paper clips as I listened to Maggie. I pulled at his middle drawer to find some more and saw the Guardian, open at the crossword. My proudest achievement is that I've created the only department in the force where officers dare to be seen reading the Guardian. I slid the drawer shut again.
"Now you've sorted that out," I said, "I don't suppose you'd like to have a go at this murder case would you? Sort that out, too?"
Maggie smiled and her cheeks flushed, just a little. "If you need me, but what I'd really like is a bacon sandwich in the canteen, if you don't mind."
I nodded my approval and she asked me if I was joining her. "No, I've just come from there," I said.
When she'd gone I pulled the crossword out and read through the clues.
They might as well have been written in Mandarin Chinese. One across was "Editor rejected ruse set out (6)." Possibly an anagram of set out, but nothing flashed into my brain. I put potato. Two lines below was nine across: "Comes down, about to fix forest in grand planned development (9,9)." The second nine referred to twelve across. I wrote apple pies and crocodile in the appropriate squares. For fifteen, nineteen, twenty-two and twenty-seven across I put: haddock, ruminant, frog spawn and Zatopek.
Then, with a blunt black fibre-tipped pen, I carefully drew a line through all the clues for the lines that I'd filled in. You need inspiration like that for the Guardian crossword.
I was admiring my work when a pair of hands fell on my shoulders. "Need any help?" Sparky asked.
"Er, n-no thanks," I stuttered, guiltily, "I, er, think that's as far as I can go."
"Read the clue out," he invited.
"Clue!" I gasped. "Clue! Since when did we bother with clues?"
He'd come to tell me that the interview room was set up and Skinner and the duty solicitor were waiting for us. We discussed tactics for ten minutes and went downstairs.
Skinner was smoking. We, the employees, are not allowed to smoke in the nick, but stopping our clients doing so would be to violate their civil liberties. I found him an ashtray. Sparky switched the tape recorder on and did the introductions. It was ten thirty a.m. and we had him for another twenty-three hours. I verified that he was Ged Skinner and his main place of residence was the squat.
"Did you know Dr. Give Jordan?" I asked.
"Yeah," he grunted.
"How did you know him?"
"Cos he was prescribing methadone for me."
"Why?"
He looked straight into my eyes and said: "Cos I'm a fucking dope-head, ain't I?"
I said: "I know why you were taking methadone. What I want to know is why was Dr. Jordan prescribing it for you? He wasn't your GP, was he?
And as far as we know he wasn't attached to any programme."
Skinner galloped his fingertips on the table. "Yeah," he said. "Sorry.
I, er, met him about five weeks ago, at the General. The wife was sent to see him, by her doctor. Women's problems. She was worried scared so I went in with her. He was good about it. Brilliant. Said she was pregnant but there was nothing to worry about, if she was careful with herself. Gave her some pills and told her to come back in a month. Then he looked at me and said: "That's her fixed up, now what are we going to do about you?" I said "How do you mean?" and he told me that if I didn't get off drugs I might not live to see my kid."
"Who told him you were on drugs?"
"Nobody, I don't think. He could see from the state I was in." He raised his arms and said: "This is sound, for me."
"Go on," I invited.
He folded his arms and sat for a few moments with his chin on his chest. "I've done all the cures," he began. "All the do-gooders have had a go at me. St. Hilda's, Project 2000, the City Limits Trust. You name it, I've done it. But nobody talked to me like he did. They're all sympathy and encouragement and "I know what you're going through."
He raised the pitch of his voice for the last bit and affected a posh accent. "There was none of that with the doc. He said:
"Get off it now or you're dead. D-E-A-D fucking dead!" He said he'd help me as much as he could, but he couldn't do it for me. It was up to me. I said right. Let's give it a go."
"So he started prescribing methadone for you."
"That's right. One day at a time. He'd leave a script for me either at the hospital or, later, I'd collect one from his flat. I'm down to twenty milligrams."
"From what?"
"From whatever I could get. "Bout hundred milligrams, plus horse."
"And you were doing OK?"
"Yeah. You don't gouch out on it, but it helps you through the bad times, which is all the H does, when you've been using it as long as me."
"So when did you last see him?"
"Day before Christmas Eve, 'bout half past six."
"At his house?"
"That's right'
"How long were you with him?"
"Not long. Two minutes. We just stood on the doorstep chatting for a while. He gave me a script for two days and a letter to take to this GP in London."
He was anticipating my questions. I sat back and let Sparky take over.
"What GP in London?" he asked.
"A GP in London. When I told him that I wanted to go there he persuaded me that a script for a week wasn't a good idea."
"Where were you going in London?"
"Wandsworth."
Sparky made an encouraging gesture with one hand. "You're allowed to elaborate," he said. The new caution has been a big help. Suspects now know that silence, or being obstructionist, might ruin their defence, so they usually give an answer of sorts, but Skinner was almost being helpful.
"Right," he said. "I have some good friends in Wandsworth. Jim and Mary. We was in care together, from being about ten. We split up when we were sixteen, but we've always kept in touch. I go see them every Christmas, if I can. I told the doctor and he asked me to find out the name of a GP down there. He rang him and did me a letter of introduction, so I got my scripts no problem."
"We need Jim and Mary's address, and the doctor's," Sparky told him.
Skinner recited them from memory and I wrote them down to save time waiting for the tape to be transcribed.
"So where were you at eight o'clock that night," Sparky went on.
"Easy. In a van on my way down south."
"Can you prove it?"
"My brother-in-law was driving it. Well, he's not really my brother-in-law. He picked me up at home just after six. We went round to the doc's and then set off. Will that do?"
"No."
"I don't want to drag him into it, if I can. He's not supposed to take passengers."
I chipped in with: "Did you stop anywhere?"
"Yeah. We stopped for a fry-up."
"Where?"
"Don't know the name of the place. It's on the Peterborough road, just after the long red wall, after you pass the airfield."
Sparky and I looked blank. There's a whole culture of travellers who never use a map, never remember a road number; they navigate by landmarks, like the early fliers did.
"Near the greenhouses," he explained.
"Right," I said. "And did you save the receipt?"
"No."
"What a pity."