Headlong, p.18
Headlong, page 18
‘The girls?’
‘The prostitutes you picked up, who Simon Haig says were respectable Australian job seekers.’
‘Oh, look – that’s easy to explain. Simon’s a bit of a prude. He didn’t want to admit we picked up a couple of hookers. He wants everyone to think well of him – even you.’
Atherton shook his head. ‘I’m afraid that’s not good enough. I’m going to have to ask you to come along to the station and make a statement, and you will remember all the details, and we will check them—’
‘I haven’t got time for this nonsense!’ Knudsen exploded, making as if to leave.
Atherton moved slightly to be in front of him. ‘I know, you’re going to the States tomorrow. Which means I’ll have to ask you to come with me now. I can’t risk having you run away.’
‘Run away?’ Knudsen exclaimed in outrage.
The door behind them opened, and the young man Atherton had seen with him in the Groucho presented an anxious, humble face. ‘Oliver, we really ought to get on,’ he began.
‘Five minutes!’ Knudsen bellowed, and the face disappeared. He looked at Atherton. ‘All right. Come with me.’
He led the way into another room, off the other side of the corridor, furnished with a battered table and chairs, brown lino on the floor, walls painted dark green to dado line, dirty cream above. It was just like the other room, but smaller. Knudsen whipped out a chair and sat, and gestured to Atherton to do the same.
‘Look,’ he said, and sincerity was the facial expression that went with this one, ‘I’ll tell you the truth, but it’s not to go any further.’
‘That’s not for you to decide,’ said Atherton.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be such a jack!’ Knudsen said impatiently. ‘I didn’t kill Ed Wiseman – though I’ve often wanted to – and nor did Simon. Simon’s a rabbit. He couldn’t kill a wasp at a picnic. He wouldn’t even send back a corked bottle of wine until I put some spine into him.’
‘So why all the lies? Where were you on Monday night?’
Knusden made a spreading gesture with his hands. ‘It’s a thing Simon and I do. We worked it out years ago. If either of us needs an alibi, we quote each other, and it’s always the same. We were out on a bender down the Earl’s Court Road. That way, we don’t have to check with each other on what to say.’ His eyes shifted away. ‘I’m afraid I got a bit carried away and embroidered a bit, with the two tarts. Caught old Simon on the hop.’ He tried a rueful grin. ‘It’s all the scripts I get involved with. I’m always trying to improve the story, make it more realistic.’
‘More dramatic,’ Atherton suggested, tonelessly.
‘Well – if you like. It’s just a habit of mine. I look for stories everywhere. It’s the job.’
‘Lying to the police is a serious matter.’
‘Oh, come on!’ He appealed. ‘No harm done, eh?’
‘Police time was wasted checking on your lies. It could be construed as attempting to pervert the course of justice. And I still don’t know what you were doing.’
‘I don’t see why I should tell you,’ Knudsen said. He seemed sullen now.
‘Because I will keep asking until I find out.’ He locked eyes. He could do this all day.
At last Knudsen sighed. ‘There’s a girl. I was with her all evening and all night. But obviously I don’t want my wife to know. And it would be like you lot to go prancing round there and asking her about it. So I used the Simon story, knowing he’d back me up. And before you start pontificating about “lying to the police” again, it’s none of your damn business where I was on Monday. I wasn’t out killing Ed Wiseman, that’s all you need to know.’
Atherton listened to this impassively. ‘Name and address, please.’
‘Oh come on!’
‘I have to check your story.’
‘I don’t want her bothered.’
Atherton gave him the steely look, straight into his eyes. ‘Mr Knudsen, your wife told us that she is very well aware of your sexual activities, and she told us, moreover, that you know she knows – that it is an agreement between you that you both see other people. So saying you’re worried about your wife finding out doesn’t hold water. You will give me the name and address of the person you claim is your alibi, or I will arrest you for obstruction. And,’ he continued, seeing some bluster on the horizon, ‘I must warn you that if I check it out and it proves to be false, I can still arrest you for obstruction. One of the definitions is “where the offender’s actions result in a significant waste of resources”. In fact,’ he concluded, getting to his feet, ‘considering the time I’ve already wasted on you, I’m minded to nick you anyway, right now, and be done with it.’
Knudsen surged to his feet too. He was angry, but thoughtful. He said, ‘I’ve got a reputation to maintain. My career could be ruined. You don’t know what it’s like, always being in the public eye. The press would have a field day – they follow you like ravening hyenas, just waiting for you to slip. Look, I’ll tell you, but you mustn’t let it get out.’ He was pleading now. ‘For God’s sake – there’s no reason to ruin me, just because …! Swear to me you’ll keep it to yourself.’
‘Whatever your alibi is, I will have to check it.’
Knudsen shook his head, goaded. ‘I didn’t kill him! You’ve got no reason on earth to think I did.’
‘Only the lying. And the obstructing.’
Knudsen sighed, looked down at his hands, and then shrugged. ‘All right. I suppose I let myself down. But I swear to you, if this gets out, I’ll know who spread it.’
‘You really don’t want to be threatening me,’ Atherton began.
But Knudsen said, ‘Oh shut up,’ not violently, but wearily. ‘I was at a club, a special club I go to. In Soho. They cater for people with special tastes. You can check with them. They’ll confirm I was there. And that’s all you need to know. Do not,’ he concluded, trying for menace, ‘let this go any further. If it gets out, I know it won’t come from them. They know how to be discreet – they have to.’
SIXTEEN
White Vin Man
It turned out to be surprisingly easy to trace Gary Burke from his telephone call to Liana, because he had made it from a landline, and unlike mobile phones, landlines can’t be switched off. Hart snorted at the clever-cloggsery that had missed something so obvious. She snorted again when the landline came back registered to Mrs Abigail Burke with an address in Brixton. Gary Burke had gone running straight round his mum’s. The address proved to be a flat in one of those 1930’s LCC blocks, just like those in White City; and like those in White City, they had been sold off by the council into private ownership.
This being Brixton, there were not a lot of white faces around, so Hart fitted right in. Certainly when the door was opened to her ring, the woman before her showed no concern or alarm until she said, ‘Mrs Burke? Police, love. Can I come in and have a word?’ She held up her brief, and there was an instant of panic in Mrs Burke’s eyes, and the brief contemplation of a slammed door, before wisdom overtook, and she said, ‘He’s not done anything, I can tell you that now for nothing!’
‘That’s good,’ said Hart. ‘Then it won’t ’urt to ’ave a chat, will it?’
Mrs Burke sighed and yielded. She was a short, stout woman in her fifties, well-corseted and neatly dressed, with a fair amount of gold about her, enough make-up for self-respect, and a hairstyle done at a salon – a puffball on top of her head which the stylist had probably told her would make her look taller. She was achingly familiar to Hart, who had older female relatives galore who looked just like that. The layout of the flat was also familiar, for all these estates were much the same – she could have found her way about it with her eyes shut. She knew exactly where the sitting room was, and it was in the sitting room that she found Gary Burke, in grey tracky bottoms, T-shirt and bare feet – no surprises there – though all three elements were clean, which made a nice change.
He was sitting on the sofa, staring at the football on the television. At the sight of Hart he jumped to his feet and cried a protesting, ‘Mu-u-um!’
But Mrs Burke said, ‘They were bound to find you sooner or later, baby. You know that.’
‘But Mum!’
‘You haven’t done anything,’ Mrs Burke said sternly. ‘You talk to this young lady and clear it all up. I told you from the first to do that. Get it over with now, Garfield, or you’ll have me to answer to, so I warn you. I’m not going to hide you anymore.’
He subsided onto the sofa again, and ran his hands through his hair distractedly. He looked as though he hadn’t been sleeping well.
‘Yeah, get it off your chest, Gaz, mate,’ Hart added her two cents. ‘Poor old Liana’s been dead worried about you, y’know.’
Mrs Burke snorted audibly. ‘That girl,’ she muttered disapprovingly. ‘What she got to worry about?’
‘Look,’ said Gary in desperate tones, ‘I didn’t do anything!’
‘Can I sit down?’ said Hart. ‘All right, so tell us, then, why did you run away?’ He didn’t seem to know how to start. Hart, who had taken the armchair catty-corner to him, leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and said kindly, ‘You had a big fight with Liana Monday night, right?’ He nodded reluctantly. ‘About the baby.’
Mrs Burke jumped in. ‘That’s not Gary’s baby! She’s not a good girl, that Liana, and he doesn’t have to worry ’bout her when she does a thing like that. I didn’t like lying for him when you rung up before, but I’m telling you, he’s better off out of it. He doesn’t have to go back to her after that.’
Hart threw her a minatory look. ‘How about making Gary a cup o’ tea? He looks like he could do with it.’
Mrs Burke gave her a suspicious look, but after a hesitation she stalked away. Hart turned back to Gary, urgent to get it done before she came back. ‘You had a big row with Liana about the baby,’ she urged. ‘You thought she’d been messing around with Ed Wiseman.’
‘Well, she had. I know it in me guts,’ he said.
‘You guts might’ve lied, did that ever occur to you?’
He hunched up his shoulders defensively, looking like a bedraggled owl. ‘It’s not my baby. We used condoms.’
‘So did he.’
‘Sometimes they don’t work,’ he said uncertainly, as though realising where that argument trended.
‘Well, it probably is yours,’ Hart said, ‘and there’s ways to find out. But that’s not the point, is it? The point is you had a big row, you said some ’orrible things to Liana, and then you run out the flat in a temper and went straight round to Ed Wiseman’s.’
He stepped straight into it. ‘But I never done anything!’ he wailed. ‘I went round there but I never went in. I rung the bell but no one answered.’
Inside, various bits of Hart slumped with relief that he had admitted it. Outwardly, she was unmoved. ‘What’d you go round for, Gaz?’ she asked. ‘Have a little word with him?’
‘I wanted to know if it was true. If he’d – you know – with Li.’
‘And if he said yes, what then? You got a bit of a temper, haven’t you? You was gonna bash him up, wasn’t you?’
She thought he would cry no, protest, deny it, but he only looked sullen. ‘Blokes like him, they think they can do whatever they want and get away with it. They think no one can touch ’em. Yeah, I’d have given him what was coming to him. But I tell you, I never got in the house. There were lights on inside, but no one answered.’
Hart shook her head. ‘I think you did get in. I think he let you in, and you went upstairs to talk. You lost your temper, hit him too hard, found you’d killed him, panicked, and had to cover your tracks. Isn’t that what happened, Gaz, old mate? You can tell me.’
‘No!’ he cried. He leaned forward, pushing his face at her, jaw gritted. ‘I’m telling you the truth. I went round his house, but there was no one in. I rang and knocked but no one answered. So I went away. I was still mad, so I went and had a few drinks, and walked about a bit. I didn’t want to go back home. I was mad at Li, I was afraid I might – you know …’
‘Hit her?’
He scowled. ‘I’ve never hit her in my life. But I was mad at her. So I came over Brixton, had a few more drinks with some mates – I know a lot of people round here—’
‘Which pub?’ Hart slipped in.
‘The Prince Albert,’ he answered without hesitation. ‘Used to be my local. Then I come here to Mum’s to sleep. I was pretty ratted, so I slept late, and by the time I got up it was all over everywhere about Ed being murdered. Then I got scared.’ He raised brown eyes to Hart’s like an apprehensive puppy. ‘I thought you’d think it was me. I thought someone might’ve seen me.’
‘Someone did,’ said Hart.
He looked startled. ‘What? But – who? Where?’
‘In Penkridge Gardens. On Monday evening. At just about the right time – the time when Ed Wiseman was killed.’
‘I didn’t do it!’ he wailed. ‘I didn’t do anything!’
Hart got out a mugshot of Langley and pushed it at him. ‘Who’s this, Gaz? Your partner in crime? Maybe you were in it together. Did you keep nick while he went in? Or was it the other way round?’
Burke stared at the picture at first blankly, and then with vague recollection. ‘I think I’ve seen this bloke before. Is he big – really big?’ Hart nodded. ‘I passed him,’ said Burke. ‘I was going towards Ed’s house and he was coming the other way. But I don’t know him. Never seen him before that.’
‘So why did you look at him?’
‘Wouldn’t you?’ Burke said. ‘Bloke that size, that face. And he was wearing yellow trousers. I mean …’ A thought crossed his face. ‘Wait!’ he said. ‘He was coming from that direction. Maybe he did it.’ A huge relief came over his face. ‘Yeah, he looked like the sort, rough as a bagful o’ spanners. He’s the one you want, not me.’
‘I dunno, boss, I kind of believe him,’ Hart said reluctantly. After some more questions she had brought Burke in to make his statement. ‘It makes sense the way he tells it. He lay low until it was on the news about Langley being arrested, then he felt safe to ring Liana. But she said the police had been round looking for him, so he rung off again in a panic.’
‘But all that would fit just as well if he and Langley had been in it together,’ Slider mused.
‘No, because he wouldn’t know what Langley’d said about him. He’d have kept his head down, in case Langley’d shopped him. But anyway, I’ve been through his emails and his phone log and I can’t find any contact between him and Langley. I’d like to do him for something, but I think he’s just a stupid git.’ She watched Slider’s thoughtful face for a moment, then said, ‘I could check up whether he was at the Prince Albert that night.’
‘But by his own admission, he went there after Wiseman’s, so it wouldn’t be an alibi.’
‘No, s’pose not. But if he was there, witnesses might say what sort of a state he was in.’
‘What did he say about Langley? Did you ask him how he seemed?’
‘Yeah, boss, but he said he didn’t notice particularly. It was just a glance as the bloke passed.’
‘And Langley’s face doesn’t show much anyway,’ Slider said. ‘Or at least, it pretty much always looks the same.’
‘If Burke was guilty, he could’ve said Langley was in a state, or covered in blood – tossed him overboard. He’s stupid enough to’ve. You know how hard it is for ’em not to say too much, if they’re hiding something.’
‘Yes, I get it. You believe him.’ Slider ran a distracted hand backwards through his hair, leaving the front sticking up. ‘The time he said he was in Penkridge Gardens – around half past eight?’
‘Between eight and eight thirty, but it’s a guess. He never looked at his watch. It makes sense from Liana’s story, with her coming home from work, them having a row, and him having to get to Shepherd’s Bush from Wandsworth.’
‘But Langley left home around half past six. So if they passed in the street, he must have gone somewhere else before going to Wiseman’s,’ said Slider.
‘Another pub’d be my guess,’ said Hart.
‘Mine too,’ said Slider. ‘He’d want to prime the pump. I’ll see if I can get him to say where – otherwise we’ll have to try all the likely pubs in between, and that’s a lot.’
Hart nodded. It didn’t help that they didn’t know how he’d made the journey, or by what route. Still, she thought, given that his local was the Dunstan, he would probably avoid the more trendy places, which would cut it down quite a lot. ‘What’ll I do with Burke for now, boss?’ she asked.
‘Let him go,’ said Slider. ‘We know between a guess or two where he’ll be.’
‘Yeah, and I’ve got his laptop,’ Hart said. ‘He’s not going to do a runner and leave that as a hostage.’
She had only just gone out when Tony Allnutt came in, carrying George. One look at his son’s eyes showed Slider he was ready to drop off right there and then, exhausted by an excess of pleasure.
‘Ashley’s visiting with her mum for a minute,’ Allnutt said, ‘but I’m taking her home now. It’s been quite a day. What would you like me to do with this little tearaway?’
Slider stood up, and George gave him a weary smile and held out his arms for the transfer. ‘Come here, you sybarite. Did you have a nice time?’ Slider took the warm weight of him onto one hip. George nodded, too tired to speak. ‘Say thank you nicely.’
‘’nk you,’ George managed. The heavy head came down on Slider’s shoulder.
Tony Allnutt regarded Slider with a slight tilt of the head. ‘What’ll you do?’ he asked quietly. ‘I know there isn’t a crèche.’ He would know that, of course. It was a problem. You couldn’t have little children littering up a police station. ‘What time’s your wife home?’ he asked helpfully.
‘Ten thirty-ish,’ Slider said hopelessly. ‘I suppose I’ll have to take him home myself.’ And stay there – knock off early. But there was so much he needed to do here. And what sort of message did that send the troops? It was unprofessional. He had a moment of resentment against Joanna. If she’d only given him more notice! But of course, it was he who’d had the last-minute call-in. He realised, his normal sense of fair play restoring itself, that she must have to juggle with this problem all the time. It had never arisen with Irene, because Irene didn’t work.
