“I told you, it was a different bloke!”
Banks sighed. “Les, don’t give me this crap. I’m tired and I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten since elevenses, and here I am sticking around out of the goodness of my heart just to talk to you. I’m trying to be very civilized about this. That’s why we’re in my nice comfortable office just having a friendly chat instead of in some smelly interview room. Listen, Les, we’ve got prison records, we’ve got fingerprints, we’ve got warders who remember. Believe me, it was the same person.”
“Well, bugger me!” Les said, sitting up sharply. “What a turn-up for the book. Poor old Carl, eh? And here was me hoping it must have been someone else.”
Banks sighed. “Very touching, Les. When did you last see him?”
“Oh, years ago. How long was it you said? Four years.”
“You haven’t seen him since you came out?”
“No. Why should I?”
“No reason, I suppose. Except maybe that you both live in the same town?”
“Eastvale ain’t that small.”
“Still,” said Banks, “it’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? He’s been in Eastvale a few months now. It strikes me that, given your records, the two of you might have got together to do a little creative thievery. Like the Fletcher’s warehouse job, for example. I’m sure Carl was versatile enough for that.”
“Now there you go again, accusing me of that. I ain’t done nothing.”
“Les, we could drive down to your house right now, pick up the television and the compact music centre, maybe even the video, too, and likely as not prove they came from that job.”
“Brenda bought those in good faith!”
“Bollocks, Les. What’s it to be?”
Poole licked his lips. “You wouldn’t,” he said. “You wouldn’t dare go and take them away, not after what’s happened to poor Brenda.” A sly smile came to his face. “Think how bad it would look in the papers.”
“Don’t push me, Les.” Banks spoke quietly, but the menace in his voice came through clearly. “What we’re dealing with here is a man who was gutted. Ever been fishing, Les? Ever cleaned a fish? You take one of those sharp knives and slit its gullet open to empty the entrails. Well, someone took a knife like that, someone who must have known Carl Johnson pretty well to get so close to him in such a remote spot, and stuck the knife in just above his balls and dragged it slowly up his guts, sliced his belly button in two, until it got stuck on the chest bone. And Carl’s insides opened up and spilled like a bag of offal, Les. If his jacket hadn’t been zipped up afterwards they’d have spilled all over the bloody dale.” He pointed at Poole’s beer-belly. “Do you know how many yards of intestine you’ve got in there? Are you seriously telling me that I’ll let a few stolen electrical goods get in the way of my finding out who did that?”
Poole held his stomach and paled. “It wasn’t me, Mr Banks. Honest, it wasn’t. I’ve got to go to the toilet. I need a piss.”
Banks turned away. “Go.”
Poole opened the door, and Banks asked the uniformed PC standing there to escort him to the gents.
Banks turned to Susan. “What do you think?”
“I think he’s close, sir,” she said.
“To what?”
“To telling us what he knows.”
“Mm,” said Banks. “Some of it, maybe. He’s a slippery bugger is Les.”
He lit a cigarette. A short while later, Poole returned and resumed his seat.
“You were saying, Les?”
“That I’d nothing to do with it.”
“No,” said Banks. “I don’t believe you had. For one thing, you haven’t got the bottle. Just for the record, though, where were you last Thursday evening?”
“Thursday?… Let me see. I was helping my mate in his shop on Rampart Street.”
“You seem to spend a lot of time at this place, Les. I never took you for a hard worker before, maybe I was wrong. What do you do there?”
“This and that.”
“Be more specific, Les.”
“I help out, don’t I? Make deliveries, serve customers, lug stuff around.”
“What’s your mate’s name again?”
“John.”
“John what.”
“John Fairley. It’s just a junk shop. You know, old 78s, second-hand furniture, the odd antique. Nothing really valuable. We empty out old people’s houses, when they snuff it, like.”
“Nothing new? No televisions, stereos, videos?”
“You’re at it again. I told you I had nothing to do with that. Let it drop.”
“What’s he look like, this John Fairley?”
“Pretty ordinary.”
“You can do better than that.”
“I’m not very good at this sort of thing. He’s strong, you know, stocky, muscular. He’s a nice bloke, John, decent as they come.”
“What colour’s his hair?”
“Black. Like yours.”
But Banks could see the guilt and anxiety in Poole’s eyes. John’s shop was where they fenced the stuff, all right, and John Fairley’s description matched that of the man Edwina Whixley had seen coming down from Carl Johnson’s flat, vague as it was.
“Do we know him, Les?”
“Shouldn’t think so. I told you, he’s straight.”
“If I went to see this mate of yours, this John, he’d tell me you were in the shop all evening Thursday, would he?”
“Well, not all evening. We worked a bit late, unloading a van full of stuff from some old codger from the Leaview Estate who croaked a few weeks back.”
“What time did you finish?”
“About seven o’clock.”
“And where did you go after that?”
“Pub.”
“Of course. Which one?”
“Well, first we went to The Oak. That’s the nearest to Rampart Street. Had a couple there, just to rinse the dust out of my mouth, like, then later we went down the local, The Barleycorn.”
“I assume you were seen at these places?”
“I suppose so. That’s what I did. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“I wouldn’t do that, Les.”
“What?”
“Hope to die. Look what happened to Carl Johnson.” Poole swallowed. “That’s got nothing to do with me.”
“But we don’t know why he was killed, do we? Let’s just take a hypothetical scenario, all right? A sort of falling out among thieves. Say Carl was involved in the Fletcher’s warehouse job, and say there were two or three others in on it as well. Now, maybe Carl got too greedy, or maybe he tried to stick away a few pieces of merchandise for himself — like one of his accomplices might have done, too — you know, a nice new telly, and maybe a stereo. Follow my drift so far?”
Poole nodded.
“Good. So let’s say one of these thieves doesn’t have much regard for human life. He gets mad at Carl, arranges to meet him to discuss the problem, persuades him to go for a ride, then guts him. Now, what do you think this bloke, who’s already killed once, might do if he gets wind there’s a problem with another of his accomplices?”
Poole’s jaw dropped.
“What’s wrong, Les? Cat got your tongue?”
Poole shook his head. “Nothing. I ain’t done nothing.”
“So you keep saying. Say it often enough and you might believe it, but I won’t. Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me, Les? Maybe you met this bloke, or maybe Carl talked about him. I’d hate to have to hang around some filthy old lead mine while the doc tried to stuff you into a body sack without spilling your guts all over the dirt.”
Poole put his hands over his ears. “Stop it!” he yelled. “It’s not bloody fair. You can’t do this to me!”
Banks slammed the desk. “Yes, I bloody well can,” he said. “And I’ll go on doing it until I find out the truth. If I have to, I’ll lock you up. More likely I’ll just let you go and tell the press you were kind enough to give us a few tips on the warehouse job. What’s it to be, Les? Your choice.”