Jack Culverhouse had a fire in his belly and a new sense of purpose in his eyes as he strode up the corridor and opened the door to the incident room. He looked around, and noticed that the other officers hadn’t even registered his arrival.
‘Where’s Taylor?’ he asked, of no-one in particular. Tony Robson was the only one who spoke.
‘Interviewing McCann. Trying to clear up the mess you left, no doubt. Trying to pin something on him other than witness statements. Courts don’t put as much sway on witnesses as you might think.’
‘I know,’ Jack said. ‘I didn’t join the police force yesterday.’
‘No, but you’ll be out on your ear by tomorrow lunchtime if you carry on like that.’
‘We’ll see.’ Jack forced a smile and left the room.
He headed for the stairs, which he descended two at a time, before jogging down the corridor to the interview rooms. ‘Which one’s Taylor in?’ he asked the officer on the desk.
‘Room two. Although I wouldn’t go barging in if I were you. He’s not exactly in a—’
Jack didn’t hang around to hear the rest of the sentence. As soon as he’d heard the room number, he’d yanked the handle and pushed open the door to Interview Room 2. He wasn’t sure whether the look of contempt was more obvious on the face of Taylor or McCann.
‘Detective Constable, if you wouldn’t mind...’ Taylor said, before shooing him back towards the door.
‘Just a moment, DI Taylor. Gary, do you have a solicitor?’ Jack asked.
McCann shook his head.
‘He declined one,’ Taylor said, before speaking mutedly to Jack. ‘Probably for the best, if you catch my drift. They tend not to take too kindly to their clients being leant on. Just like I don’t take too kindly to having my interviews interrupted.’
‘Oh, it won’t take long, Detective Inspector,’ Jack replied, taking a seat at the table next to where Taylor had been sitting. Jack leaned forward and cupped his hands together on the desk. ‘Gary, you told me and DI Taylor that you’d been sunbathing in the back garden up until four-thirty in the afternoon the day before we came to visit you.’
‘That’s right.’
‘You got a good tan from it.’
‘Was a sunny day.’
‘It was. The morning was particularly hot, if I remember rightly. Must have got pretty warm down at the far end of the garden. Where the sunbed was, I mean. You’ve got a west-facing garden, so the lawn must be drowning in sunshine around eleven-ish, no?’
‘It’s alright, yeah.’
‘I imagine after that, once the sun’s moved round and gone behind those big oak trees, the best area for sunbathing would be the patio.’
Gary McCann not only stayed silent, but seemed to purse his lips as he cottoned on to Jack’s line of questioning.
‘Yeah, I can imagine it’d be pretty nice on the patio after lunch,’ Jack continued. ‘Especially if your sunbed was facing south. Not down the end of the garden, on the lawn, facing west. Which is where it would have been if you’d been sunbathing, say, in the morning, as opposed to four-thirty in the afternoon.’
‘I wanted to sit in the shade for a bit,’ McCann said. ‘No harm in that.’
‘You sunbathe in the shade?’ Taylor said, speaking for the first time since Jack had begun his questioning.
‘I wondered about that, too,’ Jack said. ‘Which made me also wonder why you’d drag a sunbed down the end of the garden rather than just put up the parasol on the patio. Boom. Instant shade.’
By now, Jack had enough experience to know when someone was fishing for desperate excuses as they felt the net closing in. He could see that Taylor had spotted it too.
Taylor leant forward on the desk and cocked his head slightly as he considered McCann.
‘You know you did it, son. I know you did it. And Detective Constable Culverhouse bloody well knows you did it. But d’you know what? It really doesn’t matter. We don’t need to prove a thing. At the end of the day, this is just a bit of housebreaking. Yeah, so you bashed a granny over the head. You were seen leaving the house. Sounds like Charlie Emerson wasn’t the most loyal old schoolfriend, so we’ve got you bang to rights. We could charge you. Mary Stokes’ll probably recover, and you could claim self-defence if you didn’t mind looking like someone who couldn’t get away from an old biddy with a handbag. You’d probably get, what — a suspended sentence? Doesn’t do me much good, nor does it reassure the good people of Mildenheath that their houses are safe — not to mention their grannies.
‘No, we could pin that on some other local scrote. Someone more prolific. Someone who’s only another burglary away from breaking his own suspended sentence and being put inside for a couple of years. It’s amazing what you can do when you’ve got unfettered access to the evidence stores. You see, next time there’s a burglary in Mildenheath, whether you did it or not, whether you were even in the fucking country or not, that nice reformed lad who’s getting his life back on track after getting away with it at court all those months ago, he’s going down for it. And he’s taking the rap for yours, too. You, on the other hand, wouldn’t be let off the hook. Not by a long shot. I’ll chuck something else at you instead. Something a lot worse than bashing an old granny over the head. Do you know what a nonce is, Gary?’
McCann didn’t react. There was nothing other than a vaguely scared look of anger in his eyes, but both detectives knew he was following their train of thought.
‘You see, Gary, nonces tend to get jail time regardless. It’s frowned upon, see. And they don’t tend to fare much better inside. I’m talking razor blades in your porridge. Nails in your soap. Not to mention a daily cock up your arse. That sort of thing’s child’s play for me, Gary. It’s easy. It’s a case of switching a couple of bags, changing a couple of numbers on the records. It goes on all the time. If you think you’re the Billy Big Bollocks playing the system, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
‘So. In a minute we’re all going to stand up. We’re going to shake hands. Then I’m going to open the door and we’re going to walk up to the desk. I’m going to let the custody sergeant know I’m releasing you without charge. You’re going to leave here and tell all your mates on the Northwood Road estate that Mildenheath is now a burglary-free zone. You’re all going to go out and get hobbies. You might take up horse riding, or tiddlywinks. But the burglary game’s over. Because Big Tony’s waiting for you in his cell, and he’s got a raging hard-on.’
McCann didn’t need to say a word. It was clear from the look on his face that he understood.
Taylor stood up and extended his hand, which McCann shook. McCann then held his hand out to Jack, who returned the handshake.
Once McCann had been given back his personal belongings and let out through the back door, Taylor took Jack to one side.
‘This game’s not as difficult as it seems,’ the DI said. ‘Sometimes you just need a little something to swing the balance of power in your favour. You managed to provide that today.’ Taylor started laughing. ‘Fucking sunbed, though. Where the hell did you pluck that one from?’
Jack shrugged. ‘Call it divine intervention.’
‘Well you’d better keep saying your prayers, then. Looks like it’s working.’ Taylor looked at his watch. ‘Fuck a duck. Almost five. Get upstairs and grab my coat, will you? Grab yours, too. The Prince Albert’s calling.’