Chapter Six

The third time I felt as if I was interviewing Detective Inspector Mitchell. As he made me tell the story all over again, he shifted in his chair, fidgeted with a pen, rubbed his scalp, adjusted his tie, failed to meet my gaze.

‘There we are,’ I said, when I’d finished. ‘The same story. Told in the same words.’

‘No,’ he muttered. ‘It’s not the same.’

‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘Did I get something wrong?’

He reached into a bag on the floor, removed a file and pushed it across the desk. He nodded at me, so I opened it. There was page after typewritten page. ‘What’s this?’

‘It’s the physical-traces report from the crime scene.’

‘It looks very detailed.’

‘If you read page four, you’ll see an account of the glass fragments found on Mrs Farrell’s coat.’

‘So?’

‘They’re from a supermarket-brand vodka bottle. The fragments were scattered round her body and underneath it. Hence they became attached to the material of her coat. One such bottle is duly referred to on the receipt found in Mrs Farrell’s car.’

‘Well, I’m glad that’s been cleared up,’ I said. ‘I was wondering where the bottle of vodka had got to.’

‘Shut up,’ said Mitchell.

‘What?’

He got up and paced the room. ‘I hate this fucking case,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘Everything’s wrong,’ he said. ‘The yobs who stole the property aren’t the people who killed her. And now this.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t see…’

He sat down and jabbed a plump finger at me. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You remember our scenario?’

‘Your scenario.’

‘Mrs Farrell knocks you over. She attends to you, leaving her car unlocked, her shopping inside. She is attacked, robbed, murdered, dumped. Then, some hours later, the gang from William Morris help themselves to the alcohol. As we now know, they drink the vodka on the spot and toss it down into the recess in front of number fifty-four, where it smashed.’

He paused and stared at me meaningfully.

‘Is this a problem?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s a problem. When they threw the bottle down, it should have landed on Mrs Farrell’s body.’

‘So it missed her.’

‘What?’ said Mitchell, sarcastically. ‘And the fragments lifted her body and positioned themselves under it?’

‘Maybe somebody else took the vodka. It could have been the same person who killed her.’

Mitchell tossed another file across the table. ‘Fingerprint report,’ he said. ‘It was them, all right. Her body fell, or was placed there, after the bottle had been smashed.’

‘If that’s true, the gang could have killed her after all.’

‘So she sat in her car for three hours?’

‘People do strange things. She might have been locked out.’

‘Oh, stop that,’ said Mitchell, wearily. ‘She had her keys. She wasn’t in her bloody car. So where was she for those hours? With her car unlocked and her shopping in it? And why did she come back?’

‘Is that what you’ve brought me in to ask?’

He leaned across the table. ‘I want you to be sure, absolutely sure, that you’ve told me everything you know.’

‘I have,’ I said.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Tell me again.’

I was on my way to my room and looked up to see Dario peering down through the banisters, beckoning me, his face a parody of conspiratorial secrecy. ‘What is it?’

‘Up here,’ he hissed.

I shrugged and made my way up to the second floor where he and Mick had rooms. As always, Mick’s door was closed, but Dario’s was wide open. Probably he couldn’t even shut it any more: half-empty paint pots, hardened brushes, bottles of turpentine and a rusty saw blocked the entrance and spilled out into the corridor, along with the strange items he collected from skips and dumps all round East London. I stepped over a tennis racket with broken strings and made my way round a small trestle table, into the unspeakable squalor and sweet stench of the room. It was hard even to make out the bed, amid the stacks of old furniture he’d amassed: two desks, on top of each other, one without any legs; a wooden towel rack; a fraying wicker Moses basket filled to overflowing with pewter plates and mugs; a large blue trunk with brass handles; three ladder-backed chairs in various stages of disintegration; an armchair piled with clothes; a supermarket trolley on its side, one wheel missing; a little carved chest; two cardboard suitcases. Dario always said he was going to do them up and sell them.

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘Take a seat?’

‘Where?’

‘You could lie in the hammock,’ he said. ‘Or I’ve got some deckchairs I found the other day I could open up. They’re a bit cobwebby, though.’

‘I’ll stand. What’s up?’

‘I just wanted to know what they were after this time?’

As I gave a brief account of Mitchell, his anguish and confusion, Dario lit a joint and took a deep drag. The sweet smell filled the room. He flicked ash on to the floor and offered it to me, but I shook my head.

‘Does my head in,’ he said.

‘He has this feeling that we were there when it happened. I don’t exactly know how. Nor does he.’

‘It’s going to end badly,’ Dario said. ‘For me probably.’

‘You know,’ I said, ‘I’ve gone over and over it in my mind and I’ve tried and tried to remember.’

‘Yeah, you said.’

‘There’s just one thing, but when I came off my bike and you and Davy came over, I’ve got some memory that someone else was there. Or maybe I was concussed.’

‘That was some bang when you hit the road.’

I gave up. ‘I can’t think about this any more. It makes my brain hurt. I’m going to go and get myself a coffee.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ he said, and followed me down three flights of stairs into the kitchen. Mick was sitting at the table, shelling monkey nuts and then, with a look of great determination, throwing each one high into the air and trying to catch it in his mouth. I said hello to him but he didn’t stop, though a nut bounced off his nose. I went over to the back door and gazed out on to the long strip of garden. ‘Let’s go out somewhere, to a club or the movies or something,’ I said. ‘I don’t feel like hanging round here talking about dead people.

But then we heard the front door opening and closing, and footsteps coming down the stairs: Miles and Leah, both cool and elegant. Leah had a couple of bottles of chilled white wine for the household, which was nice of her, but she also had one of those metal tape measures that extend for metres, then kink in the middle, and a notebook. She poured herself some wine and opened the tape measure.

‘Right,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Let’s get to work.’

‘Plans?’ I asked.

‘We thought we could make this room really lovely,’ said Leah.

‘It is really lovely,’ said Dario, dolefully. ‘I’ve only just finished painting it.’

‘It’s too dark. We need to open it up, make the most of its size. It should be full of light, leading into the garden like it does,’ Leah continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘It should almost feel like being outside when you’re inside.’

‘Architects’ fucking bollocks,’ said Mick.

Leah stared at him and Mick stared back, then threw a nut at the window.

‘What did he just say?’ Leah asked Miles, who shrugged uncomfortably. ‘As I was saying,’ she continued, with a visible effort, turning away from Miles and talking to me, though I really wasn’t interested in hearing her ideal-home plans. ‘Then if we make that first bit of garden a patio area with benches and chairs and pots, it’ll be like a continuation of the room.’

‘You mean where the vegetable patch is?’ I said.

‘That’s right.’

There was a pause, like when you’re waiting for a firework to go off.

‘I tell you what,’ I said, getting up from my chair and putting a hand on Dario’s bony shoulder, ‘I think we shouldn’t go to a film. I think we should go and have a picnic in the park. Right now. It’s such a gorgeous evening.’