‘Yes, but, um, how is he with computers?’
‘Computers?’
I explained the wizard’s game-virus theory.
‘Oh, no,’ she said positively. ‘I’d never let him near your computer and, to be honest he wouldn’t know how to load data in our machine.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘A hundred per cent.’
Another good theory down the drain.
‘Did anyone else,’ I asked, ‘know enough to get near enough to the computer last Friday to feed any disk into it?’
‘I’ve thought and thought...’ She stopped. ‘Why last Friday?’
‘Or Saturday,’ I said. ‘Our computer wizard thinks we picked up the infection as late as that.’
‘Oh golly.’
‘Nothing comes to your mind?’
‘No.’ It was a wail of regret and worry. ‘I wish I knew.’
‘Did you leave any of those people on your list of visitors alone in your office?’
‘But... but... oh dear. I can’t remember. I might have done. I wouldn’t have seen anything wrong in it. I mean, there weren’t any strangers there, not right in my office, and I can’t believe...’
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Don’t think about it.’
‘I can’t help it.’
I put the phone down just as Sandy Smith rolled onto my tarmac. He came towards the back door taking off his peaked cap and combing his flattened hair with his fingers.
‘Come in,’ I said, meeting him. ‘Whisky?’
‘I’m on duty,’ he said doubtfully.
‘Who’s to know?’
He squared it with his conscience and took the Scotch with water. We sat in the kitchen, one on each side of the table, and he relaxed as far as unbuttoning his tunic.
‘It’s about Jogger,’ he said. He frowned at his glass, his rounded face troubled. ‘About rust.’
His gloom spread to me fast. ‘What did they find?’ I asked.
‘I’ve heard,’ he began, and I reflected that this was Sandy’s semaphore at its best. ‘I’ve... er... unofficially heard that they did find rust all round the pit and on the edges. But the rust was everywhere mixed with oil and grease. And there wasn’t any oil or grease in the wound on Jogger’s head.’
‘Damn,’ I said.
‘They’re going to treat it as murder. Don’t say I told you.’
‘No. Thanks, Sandy.’
‘They’ll be asking you questions.’
‘They’ve asked questions already,’ I said.
‘They’ll want to know who had it in for Jogger.’
‘I want to know that too.’
‘I knew old Jog for years,’ Sandy said. ‘He wasn’t one to have enemies.’
‘I would think,’ I said neutrally, ‘that he may have done what I did on Tuesday night, which was to walk in to the farmyard unexpectedly. Maybe both of us were hit on the head to prevent us seeing... whatever... but Jogger died, and was put into the pit to make it look like an accident.’
Sandy gazed at me thoughtfully.
‘What’s going on there, in the farmyard?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. I bloody don’t know, and it’s driving me crazy.’
‘Did Jogger know?’
‘It’s possible he found out. That’s perhaps why he died, and I didn’t want it to be that. I’ve been sort of praying for it to be proved an accident.’
‘You’ve thought all along, though, that it was murder.’ He scratched his neck absentmindedly. ‘What did Jogger mean about lone rangers under your lorries? My colleagues will want to know.’
‘I’ll show you,’ I said. ‘Come into the sitting-room.’
We went into the jumbled wreckage and I led him across to where I’d left the cash box Jogger had prised from under the nine-box a week ago.
I led Sandy to the place, but the cash box wasn’t there.
‘That’s odd,’ I said. ‘It was right here on this spot on the newspaper...’
‘What was?’
I described the cash box: grey metal, ordinary, fresh-smelling inside, empty, unlocked by Jogger, the round mark of where it had been held onto a magnet the only bright section on its filthy grime-laden exterior.
I looked round the room for it and so did Sandy, poking about in the general mess.
No cash box.
‘When did you last see it?’ Sandy asked.
‘Tuesday, I suppose. I showed it to my sister.’ I frowned. ‘When this room was done over, I didn’t think to look for the cash box.’
He supposed, he said, that he could understand that, and asked if anything else was missing.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Jogger said lone rangers. Plural. There must have been more than one.’
‘Two of the other boxes have been trundling about with containers fixed to their undersides: but the containers are empty, same as the cash box was.’
Sandy said doubtfully, ‘Everyone in the pub last Saturday heard him talking about it. I mean, he can’t have been killed to stop him telling anyone about them because he’d already done it.’
‘What’s more,’ I said, ‘Dave, Harve and Brett, besides Jogger, saw the cash box here in this room, just after Jogger levered it off the nine-box. It was on my desk at that point, in plain sight. I put it down on the floor sometime later.’
‘You must have an idea what it was for,’ Sandy said, a policemanlike suspicion creeping into his voice despite the non-adversarial status between us.
‘We thought of drugs, if that’s what you mean? Harve, Jogger and I discussed that. But drugs don’t just appear out of thin air. Someone had to supply them. Harve and I don’t believe that any of our drivers deal in drugs. I mean, there would be signs, wouldn’t there? And money going around. We would notice.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about this last Tuesday?’ Still the suspicious tone. ‘You should have told me, I reckon.’
‘I wanted to find out for myself what’s happening. I still do, but I haven’t much chance if there’s a murder investigation going on. You’ll have to admit that once your colleagues get to looking at the containers under the lorries, those containers will never be used again. I wanted to leave them in place, to keep quiet about them and to wait. I implored Jogger not to talk about them in the pub, but the beer got the better of him. I’m afraid that he said too much. I’m afraid he blew the whole operation and frightened the fish away. I’ve been hoping he didn’t. But your colleagues will certainly frighten him away for ever and I will never find out... and that’s why I didn’t tell you, because you’re a policeman first and a friend second, and your conscience wouldn’t have let you keep silent.’
He said slowly, ‘You’re right about that.’
‘It’s Friday evening,’ I said. ‘How long can you sit on what I’ve told you?’
‘Freddie...’ He was unhappy.
‘Till Monday?’
‘Oh shit. What do you want to do before then?’
‘To get some answers.’
‘You have to ask the right questions,’ he said.
He didn’t promise even temporary silence and I didn’t try to crowd him with a decision. He would do whatever sat comfortably in his own mind.
He buttoned his tunic round his solid waist. He said he’d better be going. On his way out he picked up his peaked cap and put it on, reaching his car as a fully uniformed and thorough policeman, looking uncompromising in his vocation.
I poured the remains of his whisky down the kitchen sink and hoped our friendship wasn’t sliding away with it down the drain.
Chapter 11
I drove along to the farmyard when Nina phoned to say she was back, and found her filling her tanks, yawning as before.