“You’re daft. The kid can’t tell you anything. He knows nowt-not me neither.”
“Well, if he knows nothing, he must have had a middling shrewd suspicion. We’ve already got Lolly Jakes.”
Laurie’s watchful eyes did not even flicker. “Who’s Lolly Jakes, when he’s at home?”
Martineau moved away from the table, and let Laurie see the wads of money which he had so recently regarded as his own. The prisoner looked at them for a moment, then returned his hard gaze to Martineau. Apart from the swift glance, not a muscle of his face moved.
“Sit down,” said the inspector, himself taking a chair. And when Laurie faced him across the table he suddenly smiled, and offered a cigarette.
“Don’t think I’m softening you,” he said, when they were both smoking. “I don’t think I need your statement. Statements by accused persons are sometimes a nuisance at a trial, and I believe I’ve got you right, without any words from you. I’ll tell you now, I’m going to prove that you were the driver of that Buick car; the murder car.”
Laurie blew smoke at him.
Martineau reached across the table and deftly took the cigarette from Laurie’s fingers, and threw it into a corner of the room. Then he went on calmly: “You made a good job of wiping off the Buick when you dumped it in the quarry, but you forgot one thing.” He paused to take a pull at his own cigarette, and said: “The driving mirror, you know. A very common omission. When you pinched the car you adjusted the mirror to your own height and then forgot about it. You left a lovely thumb print on it. At least, I’m betting it’s your print, when we come to make a comparison. Yours, or your brother’s.”
Laurie remained silent.
“We’ve got that, and this money which you hid so artfully, and your green fingers…”
Laurie did not look at his fingers.
“… I expect you’ve been wondering what the green stuff is. It’s a dye. You got it from the stolen money, and from nowhere else. It’s on your fingers, and Lolly Jakes’s, and Don Starling’s, and it’s on the fingers of that poor murdered girl. Green evidence. I’m hoping we shall find some of it on Gordon’s hands when he washes the dirt off, but he hasn’t handled as much of the money as you have. He’s only had his ten-pound allowance.”
“You’ve got nothing against the kid. Nothing.”
“He seems to think we have. He’s in a blue funk. And it all fits so nicely. There were four men in the Buick. You want four men, we’ve got ’em. Starling, Jakes, you and your brother.”
“Nothing of the kind. I’m admitting nothing, but I can tell you this: you’ll make a fool of yourself over our Gordon. He’s innocent. Absolutely innocent.”
“Then who was the fourth man?”
“How-how do I know?”
“You mean, how can you tell me without implicitly admitting that you were there? We know you were there, man. And if there was another man instead of your brother, I want to be knowing, before he hears of these arrests and clears off.”
“You’ll get nothing from me,” said Laurie.
Martineau rose from his chair and paced about. He made an almost imperceptible signal to the clerk at the little desk, then he turned to Lovett.
“Listen,” he stormed, throwing down his cigarette, “I want four men and I’m going to have ’em. If I don’t get a fourth man, I’ll have Gordon. And don’t think I won’t get him. It’s my guess that all he did was to pick you up near the Moorcock and bring you back to town, after you’d driven your taxi out there and left it. But it’s a guess I can easily forget. Gordon has guilty knowledge, he’s in possession of some of the stolen money, and he’s your brother. And you’re in it up to the neck. He’ll do for me.”
For the first time, Laurie’s face showed a faint trace of humor. “You can’t kid me, Inspector,” he said. “I’ve heard of you. If that’s all you think my brother did, you’ll not blacken the evidence against him. You’re just trying to make me think you will.”
Martineau stopped pacing. He glared. “Now who’s softening who?” he wanted to know. He put a cigarette in his mouth and threw one to the prisoner, and sat down again. For a while he did not speak.
Then he said quietly: “I’m offering no inducements. But with good counsel Gordon might get off Scot free. It all depends how much grilling he gets while he’s in our midst. All he did was to pick up his brother at the Moorcock. What is the name of the fourth man?”
“Clogger Roach.”
“Thanks. And the finger?”
“Peter Purchas.”
“That’s the lot?”
“Yes.”
“Now, would you like to make a statement?”
“No. You’ve got all you’re going to get from me. And I’m admitting nothing.”
“Fair enough,” said Martineau. “Now you can go and sit down quietly while you try to remember the name of a good lawyer. You’re certainly going to need one.”
14
Strangely enough, of the five men arrested, the only one to retain some honor among thieves was young Gordon Lovett. Somehow, while he waited in the charge of a silent detective, he gathered enough resolution to face Martineau and remain defiantly unhelpful.
“I’m saying nowt,” he said, “because I know nowt.”
“You haven’t any sort of alibi,” Martineau reminded him. “You won’t tell me what you were doing on Saturday morning.”
“I can’t tell you. I don’t remember.”
“You keep a record of journeys, don’t you?”
“Aye, but I’m a bit behindhand. I haven’t made out Saturday’s sheet yet.”
“Are you going to make it out?”
“I don’t know, now. I’d have had to make something up, anyway, ’cause I’ve forgot what jobs I did.”
“I’ll refresh your memory, Gordon. You went out to the Moorcock and picked up your brother somewhere around there, and brought him to town.”
“No I didn’t. I never went near the Moorcock.”
“Then where did you go?”
“I’ve forgot, but I never went near the Moorcock.” Martineau was not deeply concerned about that denial. Having laid hands on four out of five older men, he could afford to let this boy escape him. But he persisted a little while longer. He had to make a show of interrogating Gordon; a few pages of questions and answers for the eyes of Higher Authority.
“Laurie employs you,” he said. “What wages does he pay you?”
“That’s none o’ your business.”
“He gave you ten pounds yesterday. That was wages; the wages of sin.”
“No it wasn’t. Laurie didn’t give me that money. I had ten pounds yesterday, what I’d saved up.”
Martineau reflected that Gordon was fortunate. The money from his wallet had been examined, and the numbers of the notes did not correspond with any of the numbers received from the Hallam police. He had not received even one dusted note, and his hands were not stained.
“You say you’d saved ten pounds, but this morning you had less than eight. That’s not saving, is it? Did you spend two pounds on a Sunday night?”
“No, I spent a pound. I–I lent a pound to a girl.”
“Who was the girl?”
“I’m not saying. She has a husband. He wouldn’t like it.”
“I guess he wouldn’t,” said Martineau. “I suppose she repaid you, not in money but in kindness. You’re young to be starting on that game, Gordon.”
Gordon had the grace to look ashamed. He avoided the inspector’s glance.
He wouldn’t stand comparison with a sound, honest lad, Martineau thought, but he wasn’t really a bad kid. But, good or bad, there was no evidence against him. And if he remained consistent in his denials, there would be none. The police had failed to find a witness who had seen either him or Laurie traveling between Granchester and the Moorcock on Saturday morning. The statement of Purchas was only hearsay in its references to Gordon’s activities.
So Laurie’s betrayal had been in vain. He had sacrificed his only principle-and two accomplices-to save a brother who did not need saving. There was something about that: not poetic justice perhaps, not any sort of justice, but something. Irony.