Aftershock

Seventy-one

Inspector John Varley had been plucked from his garden. He was wearing a check shirt with rolled-up sleeves, tan shorts and a pair of ancient trainers that might once have been white. His grey-streaked hair was ruffled and stubble showed on his chin, accentuating his dark moustache. He sat at a small table, his big fists clenched and tense. A dirty bandage was wound round his left hand, strapping the middle fingers together. He glared at McGuire and McIlhenney as they stepped into the interview room at the back of the force headquarters building, and as the uniformed officer who had been guarding him stepped out.

‘You two,’ he said, as McIlhenney switched on a twin-deck recorder and spoke into its microphone. ‘I might have known.’

‘You’re in a bad place, Jock,’ the head of CID told him. ‘You should be pleased that it’s us who’ve come to interview you and not some young DS, eager to make a name for himself. We’re deferring to your rank by taking this on ourselves.’

‘You’re deferring to my rank? This is a fucking insult, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so. You send a woman I’ve never met to my house, and a boy straight from the playground, and they tell me to get straight into their car, without a word to my wife or anybody else. She won’t be happy, I’ll tell you.’

‘Bluster won’t work, Inspector,’ said McIlhenney, evenly. ‘My wife isn’t happy either.’ He jerked a thumb in McGuire’s direction. ‘And as for his partner. . his tea will be in the dog when he gets home, I promise you. What happened to your hand?’ he asked.

Varley held up his left fist. ‘This? I broke my ring finger a couple of weeks ago. They splinted it to the one next to it.’

‘How did you do that?’

‘I slipped on wet tiles at home, and caught it on the edge of the kitchen table.’

‘That was a bit careless. Did you have something on your mind at the time?’

Varley stared at the superintendent. ‘No, why should I? It was a pure accident.’

‘What did you have on your mind yesterday?’

He turned to McGuire. ‘What?’

‘You heard. What were you thinking of yesterday, about twenty-four hours ago?’

‘Is that what this is about?’ the inspector exclaimed. ‘Aw, Jesus.’

‘Did you think you wouldn’t be seen, Jock? We were watching the house.’

‘Aw, for fuck’s sake! I should have. .’

‘Guessed? Yes, you bloody should. Weekes was on bail on the strict condition that he stay away from potential witnesses. One of them’s an officer at your station. Of course we’d look after her. So tell me, for the record, why did you go there?’

‘Because I found out about that bastard and my Ella,’ he snarled, ‘about him having sex with her.’

‘That bastard being Theo Weekes?’

‘Of course.’

‘Jock, that happened two years ago.’

‘Maybe, but I only found out about it on Friday.’

‘How?’

‘I’ve got a contact.’

‘What do you mean, a contact?’

‘In the force. That’s how I found out.’

‘What?’

‘That you’d been checking on Weekes’s medical history and on Ella’s and mine. At the VD clinic.’

‘So you found out that Weekes had caught a disease from your wife? But I suppose you assumed it was the other way round, that he’d given it to her.’

Varley gazed at a point in the corner of the room. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s not how it was. It started with me. I had a. . a. . I don’t know what to call it, not a relationship or anything.’

‘Try sex,’ McIlhenney murmured. ‘You had sex with somebody, casual sex.’

‘That’ll do. I drink in a hotel, not far from the house. There was a woman there one night, a resident; she chatted me up in the bar and made me an offer. I took her up on it. Unfortunately, one of Ella’s pals was there, at the back of the bar. She saw me, I never saw her. About a week later, the bitch shopped me. Ella did a ballistic act, threatened to leave me. I got down on my knees, almost literally, and said I was sorry. It was just afterwards Weekes saw her in the Almondale Centre, laden down with bags, and offered her a lift home. He came on to her in the kitchen, after he’d carried the bags in, and, well, recent history and all, she took him on. At that point, we didn’t know about the disease. It can take a while for the symptoms to show.’

‘Ella didn’t tell you about Weekes at that time?’

‘No. I’d never have found out if the shite hadn’t mentioned her by name when you two interviewed him. That’s what made me angry, that he named her. God, I’m not mad with Ella. I’ve no right.’

‘He was being questioned in a murder inquiry, Jock,’ McGuire pointed out.

‘He didn’t have to name her. His medical record was there: it wouldn’t have hindered the investigation if he’d kept her out of it.’

‘True, but he volunteered her identity, under very little pressure.’

‘Who’s your contact in the force, Inspector?’ asked McIlhenney.

‘I’m not telling you. I’m not Theo Weekes. That can stay confidential.’

‘Unfortunately, Jock,’ said the head of CID, ‘it’s not that simple. Weekes’s allegations about your wife were checked out by Special Branch, under cover of a vetting operation. Your wife’s name doesn’t appear anywhere in the murder book; the investigating officers used discretion. So your contact has to be in SB, and I can’t allow that. I will find out; so save a lot of grief and tell us.’ He reached across and switched off the tape. ‘Just us, for now.’

Varley sighed. ‘Oh, bugger. It’s Alice Cowan, DI Shannon’s assistant. She’s my niece; she wanted to warn me that it might all come out in court.’

‘Damn it,’ McIlhenney growled. ‘Alice is a bloody good officer, but she can’t stay in SB now.’

‘No,’ said McGuire, ‘but after she’s had her arse kicked she’ll be an asset somewhere else. We’ll deal with it quietly.’ He switched the recorder on. ‘Back to business, Jock. So yesterday evening, blazing mad, you went to see Weekes. Tell us about it.’

‘What’s to tell? I rang his doorbell, and I got no answer. So I thumped the door, just about hard enough to knock it down, and eventually he opened it. He must have looked through the spyglass, for he knew who it was straight away.’

‘What happened next? Describe it in detail.’

‘I shoved him back into the hall. He knew what I was there for. He held up his hands and asked me, begged me almost, to hold on.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘Like fuck I did. I ripped right into him and I didn’t stop until I’d got my message across. Then I just turned around and left him there. I know, I shouldn’t have, but you must know what it’s like when the red mist comes down.’

McGuire leaned back in his seat. ‘There’s red mist, Jock. . and then there’s total complete loss of control. What did you do with the knife?’

Varley stared back at him. His mouth fell open as if a string had been cut. ‘Knife? What fucking knife?’

‘The knife you ripped him with.’

‘What? What the fuck is this?’

‘Jock, as soon as this interview is over, Neil’s going to front a press conference at which we’re going to confirm to the press that Theo Weekes was found dead in his home this afternoon, and that we’re treating his death as murder. He’s also going to say that a man is helping with our enquiries, that man being you.’

‘Sir,’ the inspector said earnestly, ‘I never touched him. When I said that I ripped into him, I meant verbally. I told him that I knew about him and Ella, and that the jail was the best place for him. But apart from shoving him back into the hall, I never laid a finger on him.’

‘Jock, you were there at the time Weekes was murdered. And by your own admission you were angry with him.’

‘I’m a serving police officer, man!’

‘So you will co-operate with our investigation. Yes?’

Varley nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘At any time yesterday did you go into Weekes’s kitchen?’

‘No, only the hall.’

‘Could you see into the kitchen?’

‘Yes, but I wasn’t looking there.’

‘How did you leave?’

‘The same way I went in. And I closed the door behind me.’

‘Could the back door have been open?’

‘It could, but I can’t say that it was.’

‘Okay. Jock, you’ll be held here while a search of your home is carried out, under warrant. We’re also taking your car for forensic examination. Once that’s complete, we’ll talk again. I hope to God that we don’t find any corroborating evidence, but if we turn up that knife, or bloodstains on your clothing and in your car, you know what we’ll have to do.’

The man sat there, stunned. ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘I know. But I promise, you won’t have to.’