19. AN INTERVIEW WITH REUBEN

Oh dear. Something is going very wrong.

William Hampton had never needed a criminal solicitor before, and so he accepted the duty solicitor offered by the police Inspector when he was put into a small Interview room and faced with Inspector Richards and Sergeant Gingleton. The solicitor he was presented with was a wiry young fellow with pebble spectacles and delayed acne called Kevin Dooley.

“Right,” began Reuben Richards when the four of them were seated and he’s switched on the recording device meant to ensure accuracy should the interview need to be transcribed.

“Why am I here?” asked William. He’d already asked that question several times, but felt it would be to his advantage to have everything, even minor matters already dealt with, on the recording.

“You know why you’re here,” replied the Inspector, irritated that he hadn’t set the ball rolling himself.

“Answer the question if you please,” put in the solicitor keenly, “my client has every right to know why you’ve pulled him in here, wasting his time whilst he’s got a business to run.”

“We’re looking into the death of an ice cream salesman, namely David Stokesey,” said Reuben, “and you’re here because we believe you can contribute to our enquiry. Did you know Mr Stokesey?”

“I knew who he was if I chanced to see him on the street,” came the reply.

“And you disliked him?”

“You can’t dislike somebody you barely recognise!”

“But you had reason to dislike him?”

The solicitor coughed. “There’s no need for you to answer that,” he said.

“It’s all right. I had no reason to either like him or dislike him. The fact is, he made my wife happy, so I suppose on balance I liked him, though I can’t say he was my sort.”

“What do you mean, made your wife happy?”

“What do you think I meant?”

“Did he have a joke with her, maybe? Did he whistle as she passed by because he admired her legs...”

The solicitor coughed again. “Really, Inspector, I must protest!” he said.

“It’s all right. I don’t know whether he joked with her. I don’t know whether he whistled at her or whether he liked or disliked her legs! But he did make a fuss of her, and that was something I couldn’t so easily do.”

“He made a fuss of her? You mean, he touched her intimately?”

“How would I know?”

“Can we stick to what my client may properly be expected to know,” interjected Kevin Dooley.

“Did you see them at it?” asked the Inspector.

“At what?”

“At whatever they did that riled you?”

“They didn’t do anything that riled me, so how can I answer that question?”

“But weren’t their activities the kind that would upset most husbands?”

“I’m not most husbands.”

“Did they upset you?”

“Not at all.”

“Then why did you sometimes follow her when she was going to meet her?”

“I didn’t follow her sometimes.”

“How often, then?”

“Once. Only once.”

“And why did you follow her that once?”

“To see if she was going to the Shell and Cockle public house.”

“And was she?”

“She wasn’t there when I got there.

“So where did she go?”

“How would I know? I went back to Happy Valley. There’s a dog walker who can confirm that, if he can remember.”

“And she met Mr Stokesey?”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so.”

“Then you know more than I know. All I know is that she met somebody and, to be honest, it could have been any one of two or three men.”

“And this didn’t bother you?”

“Look, Inspector, I’ve explained all this to you, and I find it distressing to talk about it. I’m not the sort of man to offer her what she needs, and as she needs it she must find it elsewhere.”

“Do you love your wife?”

“Yes. Yes I do. Very much. She’s an angel.”

“And yet you’re happy to see her cavorting with other men?”

“I don’t see her doing anything of the sort.”

“But you know that she does?”

“She says so and as she’s an honest woman I’ve no reason to disbelieve her.”

“She’s an honest woman, you say? Does every honest woman seek comfort outside her marriage?”

“Please Inspector,” interrupted the solicitor, “that’s a very improper question and my client need not answer it or anything remotely like it.”

“Is that why you killed David Stokesey?” asked Reuben, fixing his eyes on William Hampton’s own eyes.

“I didn’t. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t,” growled William.

“Then why is he dead?”

The solicitor stood up, outraged. “Really Inspector! If this line of supposition is all you’ve got then you must allow my client to go free!”

“I’ve not finished yet.”

“I rather think you have, Inspector, if you can’t mention one shred of real evidence to associate my client with the deceased then as far as I’m concerned we’re done here.”

Inspector Richards felt, suddenly, quite low because he had no physical evidence at all. No finger prints (any left on the body would have been washed away by the cleansing seas), no DNA, nothing. Just a dislike for this man with a beautiful wife who apparently was allowed to do whatever she liked because he had something psychologically wrong with him. He wasn’t normal, and Reuben didn’t like men who weren’t normal.

oo0oo

Desmond Dingbat had seen the police car leave Happy Valley as he mooched along the rocks looking for evidence that he’d once had a grandson who’d died before his time. And he’d seen who was in the police car with the policeman: that boss man of the nudist camp site.

Desmond liked the site. He liked looking at undressed women even though most of them at Happy Velley had passed the first bloom of youth and were sagging where they didn’t want to. But that didn’t matter to a man who’d spent far too many years of his life behind bars.

But that wasn’t why he was watching Happy Valley this time. There was a rumour going around, one that he didn’t like, that the pretty woman from ther Naturist Camp had been having a fling with his grandson. They’d been seen together, and there were some who muttered that what had been seen was hardly decent. And in the open, in public too. It was, he had heard, disgusting and the man would have been locked up for it if he hadn’t been murdered.

So the man who had been seen in flagrante delicto was his own flesh and blood and the woman was a renowned beauty. Well, what else would she be, the lad being made in his granddad’s image and with his granddad’s high standards when it came to sins of the flesh?

And the woman’s husband must have found out.

And that’s why that snooty Inspector was carting him off to the police station in Southwesthampton. That must be what was happening. They’d found the killer of poor David (poor David who he’d never seen, but still poor David) and he’s be arraigned before the judge and sentenced to life.

He’d become a prisoner, and he, Desmond Dingbat, knew all about what it was like to be a prisoner. And as a lifer he’d become respected, maybe even have a few screws under his thumb, bringing him illicit luxuries under the radar. Prison would be no punishment! No punishment at all!

He mooched his way back to a bus stop where he caught a service bus into town. He’d take a look at that police station, maybe even go in and offer evidence that would get the murderer a very certain sentence. Life. He liked the sound of that. Life.

He hovered around outside the police station. He wasn’t keen on places like this, and there were coppers going in and out all the time and he didn’t like them, either.

He was on the cusp of sighing to himself and going back to the cheap hotel where he was staying and from which he’d have to abscond because there was no way he could pay more than the deposit that he’d had to put down, when the object of his hatred emerged with a spotty young man with bottle-bottom glasses.

There was the killer!

There was the very man who had drained the last dregs of blood from his blood-line! Or it would be, when he himself gave up the ghost and was carted off in a wooden box.

Without thinking one minuscule thought about it he pulled a penknife from his pocked, opened the slighly rusted blade up, and fell onto the object of his hatred while the soiled tip of his ancient blade searched for a beating heart, to still it.

© Peter Rogerson 06.04.19