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My next port of call was downtown, to the 14th precinct, to present myself to the cops and make a formal statement. There always seems to be a huge amount of hanging around associated with any visit to a police station and I resigned myself to a boring afternoon in the waiting room after fortifying myself with a late lunch. To my surprise, Inspector Harriet Luncardy appeared less than a minute after I had checked in at the front desk. She looked faintly harassed, a departure from her accustomed air of cool and unruffled elegance. If I could detect it at all, she must have been seething inside. "Come on then," she said, gesturing irritably. She led the way through to the usual interview suite: a table and two uncomfortable chairs in the exact centre of the otherwise bare room, bright lights set into the ceiling and a mirror running the entire length of one wall which was not, of course, in any way, actually a section of one-way glass. I sat in one chair and dictated and recorded a statement. It was transcribed by a uniformed copper who seemed a model of stolid professionalism sitting on the other side of the table. I said what I said before, leaving out the business with the briefcase, and my more recent discovery of Hosh and the widow Vale making the beast with two backs. Luncardy stood behind me, leaning nonchalantly against the wall and affecting an air of boredom which was transparently fake. Something was eating her. I hand-wrote the usual declaration of truth and completeness on the bottom of the statements, and signed them in the usual way. They were immediately counter-signed by Luncardy herself. She snapped off the recorder, walked across the room and opened the door, then waved the uniform out. He left smartly, clutching the signed papers. The Inspector sat down in the recently vacated chair, crossed her long thin legs and ran a hand over the smooth polished dome of her head, ignoring me, and stared at the wall for a long moment. Finally, she turned to me. She really did look distinctly worried. She produced a packet of cigarettes and her holder from a pocket of her mannish jacket, screwed one into the holder, then almost as an afterthought offered the packet to me. I took one, lit first hers and then mine with a match from the book I had taken from the Starfield Club. "We're writing this one down as a suicide," she said, blowing smoke, "We know he was being blackmailed. He must have seen no way out. If he handed over the accounts then Hosh would have had him rubbed out - there's no way a hoodlum in his business would let that one pass, and Hosh would be bound to find out what had happened and who had done it. If he refused, his wife gets to find out about his play-away activities. It would have ruined his personal life, and his professional career too." I pricked up my ears - quite literally - at this last remark. "How so?" "Didn't you know," she laughed, "Alva is old man Madderfy's daughter; his son is the junior partner at the firm. The old man retired from active practice a few years ago, but you can bet your bottom dollar that he still keeps a close eye on what happens in those offices." I nodded, digesting this nugget of information. Then I stared levelly across the table at Luncardy. "I don't believe Vale killed himself," I said bluntly, "Sure, he was in a bind, but he struck me a fighter, not one to take an easy way out. After all, he hired me to track down his blackmailer." "And much good it did him," she said in a tired attempt at a riposte. I let that one ride. "But why kill himself in my office?" I said, "And with my good scotch, too? No suicide note. I think it was an attempt to frame me in a murder. And I take that kind of thing personally." Just at that moment the uniformed copper stuck his head back into the interview room. "Boss wants to see you," he said to Luncardy. She stood up. "Wait here," she instructed me, then added to the uniform, "Keep an eye on him." Five minutes later, she was back, looking conspicuously rattled. "Come with me," she said brusquely. I followed her through the open office area which was filled with police officers toiling at desks, grunting into telephones or losing a fight with a typewriter. As I passed by, one copper tore a sheet of paper from a typewriter with an oath that nearly turned the air blue, screwed it up angrily and hurled it forcefully into a nearby waste paper basket. Luncardy's boss, one Fowlis Wester according to the nameplate on his desk, looked up at me and glared as I entered the office. Police captains have a reputation as unyielding bastards to maintain, likely to inflict a severe tongue-lashing for even the most minor of infractions. Wester was no exception to this rule. He was a grizzled veteran, about my weight but half a head shorter, bulky in the shoulder and bulging at the gut. I was wheeled into the office by Luncardy and left standing on the worn and slightly sticky carpet. Wester came around the desk and pressed his face up close to mine. He might have thought he was intimidating me, but I've been glared at by experts. My old granny used to try to put the fear of God into me when I was a child. By the time I was twelve I was already more-or-less immune to this kind of treatment. “Why are you still sticking your nose into this business?" he thundered from point-blank range. "I have a client," I replied calmly, adding with conscious irony, thinking about the bill that Clunie had given me, "A live one. Paid money up front and everything."
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Part 17