Rope Enough (The Romney and Marsh Files Book 1) (15 page)

‘He’s not a complete idiot.’

‘I can pick you up, say threeish.’

‘Thanks. Look forward to it.’

Romney checked his watch and then told someone to find DS Marsh for him.

Five minutes later Marsh was at his door. ‘You wanted me, sir?’

‘When will those two be downstairs?’

‘Within the hour.’

‘Good. Let me know as soon as they’re in.’

Romney called for Grimes, who he had put in charge of overseeing the following up of contacts in Claire Stamp’s phone memory and collecting saliva samples from them. The idea that she had known her attacker well enough for him to have her phone number had been nibbling away intermittently at his thoughts all weekend.

While he was waiting for Grimes, he called in another DC and set him the task of coming up with a definitive list of ways that someone could get hold of another person’s mobile phone number.

Grimes reported that there were only two contacts from Stamp’s phone memory whose samples remained unaccounted for. One was on holiday in the Canary Islands and had been since before she was attacked. The other was based in Manchester. He had been contacted and had given assurances that he would attend his local police station to provide a sample that Grimes had arranged would be forwarded down to Dover. It was highly unlikely that the Manchester contact was their man, but as Grimes trotted out, people had travelled further than that to rape. There were always the Danes for examples.

*

Forty-five minutes later Marsh reported that both Nigel Holmes and Gary Moor were waiting in the cells below the station. As expected, neither was happy about their situation. Both had been pulled out of work. Both had demanded duty solicitors. Marsh said that she was organising them.

‘Excellent,’ said Romney. ‘Let’s let them sweat down there for a while. I’m going to lunch.’

*

Romney and Marsh sat across from Gary Moor and his appointed solicitor. Moor was a stocky, shaven headed man. He wore a good quality shirt and tie that was at odds with the mental image Romney had formed of him. He appeared anything but happy about being there. Nigel Holmes and his solicitor were in an adjacent interview room. Neither was aware of the presence of the other.

The formalities over, Romney began. ‘Well, Gary. You must be wondering what you’re doing here.’

‘Of course I am. That’s a stupid question.’

‘It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. I need to talk to you about the other night at The Castle.’

‘I’ve already made a statement about that.’

‘I know, but I’d like to hear about your involvement again.’

‘Why?’

Romney remained patient and affable. ‘It seems that one of the ethnic minority gentlemen injured in the fracas has taken a turn for the worse. He might die, in which case, as I’m sure you can appreciate, charges against whoever was identified as striking that gentleman would need to be altered to, well, we’d probably be looking at downgrading it to manslaughter, given the circumstances.’

Some colour drained from Moor’s already pasty face reminding Romney, under the glare of the artificial lighting, of a song by Procol Harum. He quickly recovered something of himself, as though something had clunked into place in his Neanderthal brain, and he remembered his original statement – the statement they’d all made. ‘Whatever happened in there was self-defence. Me and the lads were just enjoying a quiet couple of drinks and then they started on us.’

‘Yes, I read that in your statement,’ said Romney, looking over some typewritten documents. ‘Tell me, what can you remember of how a five foot three, nine stone, seventy-three year old man attacked you, a what, six foot something, sixteen stone plus, thirty-four year old?’ The man looked very unsure of himself: anxious, Romney thought, with some satisfaction.

‘You don’t need to answer that,’ said his solicitor.

‘Of course you don’t Gary,’ said Romney, smiling. ‘Save it for the jury if you like?’

Moor said, ‘I never hit no old bloke.’

Romney turned to Marsh. ‘Who is that in number five we just spoke to?’

‘Simon Avery, sir,’ lied Marsh.

‘Right,’ said Romney, turning back to Moor. ‘Someone is claiming that you did.’

On cue, a uniformed PC knocked and stuck his head around the door. ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir, but the officer in four says that you should come and listen to something, urgently.’ He said the last word of his sentence looking towards Gary Moor, who projected an aura, as Marsh and Romney excused themselves, of someone who was being left alone in the small room with a lion.

Romney performed exactly the same routine with Nigel Holmes in interview room four. The effect was less remarkable, but Romney sensed the same underlying anxiety when he left the room. He and Marsh went for a cup of tea and fifteen minutes later returned to Moor.

When the recording regulations had been observed Romney crossed his arms and leant his elbows on the table. He rocked forwards staring into Moors eyes. The man didn’t like it.

‘You’ve been in trouble with the police before, haven’t you, Gary? What was it, aggravated assault? Got a temper have you? What I really want to know is what a seventy-three year old man with advanced arthritis and virtually no English could possibly have said or done to make you so defensive?’

‘I told you,’ said Moor, calmer and more collected, ‘I never hit no old bloke.’

Romney stared at the man for a while and then with a sad resignation stood and said, ‘As you wish, Gary. You’ll have your day in court. For your sake I hope the old boy pulls through. Between you and me though, if he doesn’t, I’m not sure that self-defence will be your best defence.’

As they approached the door, Romney said to Marsh, ‘Take Mr Avery’s statement and then send him home, too.’

‘Wait,’ called Moor. His solicitor put his hand on his arm, but he shook it off. ‘Don’t touch me,’ he snarled.

Romney made a show of looking at his watch. ‘What is it?’

‘Avery couldn’t say I done it?’

‘Why?’ said Romney, affecting bored.

‘Cos he wasn’t even bleeding well there. That’s why.’

The gods were smiling on Romney that afternoon. Soon after Moor capitulated making a sworn statement detailing his assertion that Avery was nowhere near The Castle until after the police had arrived and broken up the brawl and so couldn’t possibly testify to him assaulting anyone, Holmes followed suit. When questioned by Romney regarding previous statements that the pair had made both – with helpful guidance from the DI, who seemed only too happy to help them avoid the accusation of perjuring themselves – stood by their original statements that Avery was there, but both chose to qualify and clarify those earlier statements with the additional details that Avery had not shown up at the incident until the police had already broken up the fighting and were making arrests. Romney got the added bonus from Holmes, seething at his belief that Avery had stabbed him in the back, that the whole thing had been planned by Avery as some sort of reprisal for what had happened to his girlfriend.

‘How do we explain his physical appearance then, sir? He looked like he’d been in a fight,’ said Marsh.

With a hint of disappointment, Romney said, ‘It doesn’t take much to fake yourself up, to make it look like you’ve been in a fight, does it? Not with the right motivation. If Avery was involved in the death of Claire Stamp, I reckon that that would prove quite a motivating force, don’t you?’

‘But he’d been hit. You saw that yourself.’

‘He looked like he’d been hit. If he had been, maybe Claire Stamp did it. Maybe he did it to himself. The main thing is that two key witnesses, who he was relying on to put him at the brawl from the beginning, have now clearly put him anywhere but. I think that our clever Mr Avery only just managed to arrive at the scene to get himself arrested. He must have been very relieved not to have missed the free shuttle to the station. I can only imagine that if he had we would have found him banging on the station front doors suffering an attack of conscience and remorse, begging to be arrested for a part in it.’

Romney left Marsh to the tidying up with the instruction that neither man was to be released before he phoned the all clear. That would be after he and DI Crow had finished questioning Avery at the pool hall.

*

The ‘Pool’ of the Dover Pool Hall neon sign was missing its ‘L’. It occurred to Romney, as he stood shoulder to shoulder with Crow in the light drizzle looking up at the building, that this revised version was no less accurate. The exterior promised little in the way of comfort and cleanliness and suggested strongly that the interior was not likely to contradict it. The long-ago whitewashed external walls were somewhere between brown and grey with neglect, streaked with the run-off from defective guttering and the splashing of puddle water from passing vehicles. The window frames were peeling revealing a rainbow of layers of previous paint jobs. Big chunks of putty in the Georgian frames were notable by their absence. From across the street it was depressing enough, Romney reflected, to make one take up snooker. 

Inside, as his eyes adjusted to the murky gloom, it was the cloying smell of the place that overwhelmed his senses. Evidently, there was a drains problem, but beneath that Romney could detect the unpleasant odour of damp plaster, the pungent reek of mildewed carpets, stale smoke and the acrid stench of long spilt beer. The decor appeared to be tipping its hat at neo-Victorian slum dwelling with grimy peeling walls where, in the first three feet up from the wainscoting, patches of sandy exposed render were the main feature. Bare low wattage bulbs completed the Fagin’s den ambience.

Only a couple of the tables were occupied. Those involved in the games cast furtive and doleful looks at the police officers as they followed their guide through the establishment to climb the open stairs to the offices that over-looked the ground floor in an open plan arrangement. The man who led them up the stairs tapped at the glazed office door and after receiving a nod from Avery – seated behind an expanse of Formica veneer – stood aside to admit the police to Avery’s inner sanctum.

The office was sparsely furnished. A gas heater gently roared away on three bars. Its fumes conveniently overpowered the stink from downstairs. Avery didn’t get up. His brow crinkled slightly on registering the presence of Romney.

‘Two detective inspectors. What an honour,’ he said. ‘Inspector Crow I was expecting, but not you Detective Inspector Romney. Business must be slow, eh?’

‘Not as slow as it would appear to be for you,’ said Crow.

‘I get by.’

Crow said, ‘This your only business interest, is it?’ He had a way of delivering his lines with just the right weighting of mockery to leave his audience wondering about his real meaning.

‘Yes. What is it I can do for the law today? As you can see, I’m a busy man.’ Neither would have guessed it.

It was a recognised downside of visiting scumbags on their own turf that one handed them a home advantage in the confidence stakes. Many were apt to become slightly to intolerably cocky, if not outright arrogant, when entertaining the police at home. But police work was often a necessary mixture of pragmatism, expediency and psychology. While calling villains into the intimidating and formal environment of the station had its place and its value, it could see them clam up knowing their rights and prove time consuming, awkward, and, of course, the ubiquitous legal presence could foul up the best of questioners. Comfortable at home without the obligatory interview room recording equipment and legal representatives, people could become less guarded, more talkative, and that could often reveal valuable information and insight to investigating officers that they would not have had a hope of getting at the station.

‘I’m sure you are,’ said Crow. ‘You can start by getting us a couple of chairs to sit down on, lad. Surely your mother told you it’s rude to make guests stand. Of course, if you can’t stretch to seats for us we can always do this down at the station. No skin off our noses, is it DI Romney?’

‘None at all,’ said Romney, warming to his senior colleague’s technique.

Avery picked up his phone and summoned chairs, which were brought quickly, almost as though they had only just been removed. Crow and Romney took their time making themselves comfortable.

Crow said, ‘You are familiar with a Mrs Helen Stamp, I believe?’

‘Yes, she was my late girlfriend’s mother.’

Crow leaned back in his chair, folded his arms and made a show of looking suspiciously at Avery. ‘Why would you say
‘was’
? ‘“
She was my late girlfriend’s mother.”
?’

Avery reddened slightly and fidgeted with his pen. ‘What I mean is, well, my girlfriend’s dead and so she isn’t her mother anymore.’

‘That’s a strange way to view it,’ said Crow, maintaining his air of deep suspicion. 

‘I can’t help that,’ said Avery.

‘When did you last see Mrs Stamp senior?’

Avery gave his best impression of deep thought. ‘The day that my girlfriend committed suicide,’ he said finally. ‘Last Wednesday.’