They drove back to Police H.Q. Bixley had been cooling his heels there for an hour. He’d been picked up straight away at the First and Last cafe where two detective constables had found him engaged in the usual jukebox session. Deeming wasn’t among those present and there had been a little trouble. Bixley had collected a black eye to add to his thick lip. He had been abusive as well as violent. One of the detective constables was attending him.
‘A pity,’ Setters observed, ‘we drew a blank at his house.’
He got on the phone to the local magistrate to request the new warrants. Gently lit his pipe, sat smoking, drawing patterns on Setters’ desk-pad. Ralphs, who had missed his tea, had departed to make a quick meal.
‘It’s going to be tricky,’ Setters said. ‘If we keep drawing a blank. We’ve got no handle for Bixley, he can laugh in our face.’
‘Yes,’ Gently said. He kept drawing on the pad.
‘We can’t hold him,’ Setters continued. ‘And it would be a good idea to hold him.’
‘Very good,’ Gently agreed.
‘So what’s the routine?’ Setters said.
‘I’ll have a chat with him,’ Gently said. ‘Now. I’ll leave you to look after the searches.’
‘Hmn,’ Setters said. ‘Well, if you think it will do any good. But me, I’d sooner have a charge to throw at him before I tried to go to work. But then, I’m just a bucolic. I’ll leave you Baynes to sit in.’
‘Is he a shorthand writer?’ Gently asked.
‘Yeah,’ Setters said. ‘Expecting a confession?’
‘Window-dressing,’ Gently said. ‘It never hurts to dress the window.’
Setters went out to collect his warrants and sent in Detective Constable Baynes. Baynes was a heavy-featured man with a fresh complexion and slow, blue eyes. He had a bruise on the side of his chin. He grinned sheepishly when Gently noticed it.
‘Chummie copped me a fourpenny one, sir,’ he said. ‘Didn’t take to the idea of coming down here.’
Gently gave him his instructions, sent him to fetch in Bixley. While he was gone Gently placed a chair in the centre of the floor in front of the desk. Setters had got an adjustable desk-lamp. Gently trained it on the chair. Then he switched off the overhead light and retired to the gloom behind the desk.
A few moments later he heard Baynes’s footsteps marching briskly down the corridor. The door was tapped and thrown open and Baynes clicked his heels.
‘Bixley, sir.’
He gave Bixley a nudge which sent him staggeringly into the office. Bixley nearly collided with the chair. He stood holding the back of it, blinking furiously.
‘Sit down, Bixley,’ Gently said.
‘Like what’s this about?’ Bixley began.
Baynes laid two large hands on Bixley’s shoulders and sat him down on the chair.
‘Lock the door, please,’ Gently said.
Baynes made a business of locking the door. In point of fact there wasn’t a key, but Baynes made a convincing sound with the latch.
‘Now if you’ll bring your book to the desk here,’ Gently said, ‘I’d like a transcript of Bixley’s answers.’
Baynes took a chair to the end of the desk, scuffed through a notebook, laid out three pencils.
‘Good,’ Gently said.
‘Like what’s going on?’ Bixley broke out again.
Baynes immediately seized a pencil and commenced a ferocious scribble.
‘I think,’ Gently said, ‘you’d better listen to me and simply answer my questions, Bixley. That way you won’t go saying things you wouldn’t like to see in a report afterwards. Do you understand me?’
Bixley glared at the light. His pupils were contracted and he was sweating.
‘Like tell me, screw,’ he said, ‘and tell me straight. What’s this jazz all about?’
‘Take it down,’ said Gently unnecessarily.
‘Take nothing down!’ Bixley bawled. ‘I ain’t done nothing and like you know it, so why am I hung up in here?’
‘Have you finished?’ Gently asked.
‘No I haven’t,’ Bixley said. ‘I’m asking you, screw, and I want an answer. You ain’t got no right to keep me down here.’
‘When you have finished,’ Gently said, ‘I’ll do the talking if you don’t mind, Bixley. And just remember that this is a police station. It’ll be to your advantage not to forget it.’
Bixley swore at him obscenely.
‘Take it down,’ Gently said.
Baynes went scribbling down the page, flipped it over and scribbled some more.
‘Now,’ Gently said. ‘Is that all?’
It apparently was. Bixley only glared.
‘Right,’ Gently said. ‘You’re being sensible. Let’s see if you can answer a few questions. Where were you this morning?’
‘You know where I was,’ Bixley snarled.
‘I think I do,’ Gently said. ‘You were in Castlebridge, weren’t you?’
‘Like I wasn’t, then,’ Bixley said. ‘I wasn’t nowhere near Castlebridge. I was out riding like you said. And nobody can’t prove different.’
‘Where were you riding?’ Gently asked.
‘I was out on the heath,’ Bixley said.
‘Where out on the heath?’
‘Just out on the heath,’ Bixley said.
‘Then you couldn’t have been recognized,’ Gently said, ‘by a man you talked to in Castlebridge?’
‘I wasn’t there,’ Bixley said.
‘Make sure you’ve got that answer,’ Gently said to Baynes.
He gave Baynes time for plenty of scribbling.
‘Do you know a man named Leach?’ he asked.
‘Like suppose I do,’ Bixley said. ‘He only keeps a cafe, don’t he?’
‘He used to keep one,’ Gently said. ‘Just at this moment he’s keeping a cell warm. He was arrested at about nine a.m. this morning, around the time when you weren’t in Castlebridge.’
‘So what’s that to do with me?’ Bixley said.
‘We’ve been asking him questions,’ Gently said. ‘And we’ve been going through some of his records. Did you know that Leach kept records?’
‘He wouldn’t have said nothing,’ Bixley said.
‘He,’ Gently said, ‘couldn’t help it. And he wasn’t quite quick enough hiding his records. I got hold of a notebook I shouldn’t have seen.’
‘He’s a stupid git,’ Bixley said.
‘He knew quite a lot about Tuesday.’
‘He didn’t know-’ Bixley began. He stopped, tried to pierce the haze beside the lamp.
‘What didn’t he know?’ Gently asked. ‘That some of his chocolates had gone astray?’
‘Like I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Bixley said. ‘What’s this jazz about chocolates?’
Gently turned in Baynes’s direction. Baynes’s pencil scuttered, halted with a dab.
‘Yuh, what’s it about?’ Bixley demanded. ‘I don’t know nothing about his chocolates. Like he used to give chocolates for prizes, he did. Put a spot on someone, that sort of action.’
‘And you used to win them,’ Gently said.
‘Yuh,’ Bixley said. ‘I sometimes won one.’
‘Every Tuesday,’ Gently said. ‘Including the Tuesday of last week. Only last Tuesday you had some trouble with them. Maybe Lister thought it was his turn for a prize.’
Bixley was silent. He kept blinking in the lamp-glare. His eyes had puckers round them. The puckers were twitching. At first his hands had been clenched into fists but now they lay hot and thick-looking on his knees. He opened his mouth and closed it again.
‘You’d been a little careless,’ Gently said. ‘You put those chocolates on a table for a moment. Then when you looked for them they weren’t there. And Lister wasn’t there. They’d gone off together. And you’re telling me Leach didn’t know about that?’
‘He didn’t know nothing about-’ Bixley jerked.
‘Not about Lister being the culprit?’
‘He was bleeding guessing!’ Bixley said.
‘If he said that Lister had taken the chocolates?’
‘Yuh — no!’ Bixley said. ‘I keep telling you I don’t know nothing about it. I didn’t have no chocolates pinched, nor nothing like that happened at all.’
‘You collected a box on Tuesday, didn’t you?’
‘No,’ Bixley said. ‘I never did.’
‘So nobody could have seen you with a box?’
‘It ain’t a crime, is it?’ Bixley said. ‘Being given a box of chocolates?’
‘But you had one?’
‘All right!’ he said. ‘So Leachy give me a box of chocolates.’
‘And you gave Leachy forty quid.’
‘No!’ Bixley shouted. ‘I never.’
‘Even though he says you did?’
‘The bloody rat!’ Bixley said.
‘Verbatim,’ Gently said to Baynes. ‘I don’t want any of this lost.’
He sat back in the chair, a dark presence, concealedly studying the sweating Bixley. Bixley was breathing very heavily, he’d stopped trying to see Gently through the light.
‘Of course,’ Gently said smoothly, ‘you’d want those chocolates back again, wouldn’t you? After you’d spent forty quid on them and had a chocolate-monopoly here in Latchford. You could afford the forty quid, but not Lister muscling in on your racket. So you had to get that box back from him. I can see how important that was.’
‘I didn’t go after him,’ Bixley said. ‘I got an alibi, I have.’
‘Don’t interrupt,’ Gently said. ‘Let’s do some thinking about this, shall we? There’s Elton, he left soon after Lister, he could have caught him up easily. And no doubt Elton had his reasons for doing what you might ask of him. When you’ve acquired a taste for chocolates you have to toe the line, don’t you? So you might have sent Elton after Lister. It seems a reasonable assumption.’
‘I tell you I never-!’ Bixley howled.
No,’ Gently said. ‘I’m coming to that. You didn’t send Elton after Lister because you couldn’t trust him to do the job. He’d have to stop Lister as well as catch him, and after stopping him he’d have to get the chocolates. But Elton wasn’t an expert rider, nor was he a very formidable person. Not like you yourself, Bixley. You fit the bill much better.’
Bixley was halfway to his feet. Gently crashed his fist on the desk.
‘Keep your seat, please,’ he said mildly. ‘We’re coming to the interesting part now.’
‘But it’s a bleeding lie!’ Bixley shouted.
‘You’ll kindly sit down, all the same.’
‘I got my alibi!’ Bixley shouted.
‘You had fifteen minutes,’ Gently said.
Bixley sank on the chair again, his cheeks flushed, his eyes staring. He leaned forward towards the desk as though he’d got a stitch in his stomach.
‘Fifteen minutes,’ Gently continued. ‘That sounds a lot on a fast motorcycle. But you can ride a motorcycle fast or slowly, you aren’t compelled to go at full throttle. Then sometimes you stop to pick up petrol, or maybe to buy some fish and chips. Or you might have a girlfriend on the back who wasn’t so keen on mad driving. There’s one or a number of possible reasons why fifteen minutes wasn’t a safe margin — not for Lister, that is. It might have looked safe enough as an alibi. So, you gave him that fifteen minutes. The way you ride, you could make it up. Then, if as was likely, you had trouble with him, you had your alibi ready to hand.’
‘I tell you it’s crazy!’ Bixley bawled. ‘I never thought nothing like that at all. You’re making it up, that’s what you’re doing. I couldn’t never catch him after quarter of an hour.’
‘You ride a new Matchless six-fifty,’ Gently said.
‘So what if I do!’ Bixley shouted.
‘Lister’s bike was an Aerial five hundred, two years old. And he was carrying a passenger.’
‘But I didn’t go after him!’ Bixley shouted.
‘I think you did,’ Gently said. ‘And I think you caught him at Five Mile Drove and you didn’t care how you stopped him. Elton was there. You passed Elton. Elton was the witness and Elton’s missing. He saw you ride those two off the road, and stop, and take that box from the wreckage. And you made Elton swear to keep his mouth shut, or he’d finish up like Lister. And when it looked as though we’d pin it on Elton, you put Elton in a place where he couldn’t talk.’
Bixley rocked back in the chair, his face greyish. His eyes were straining at their sockets.
‘I never,’ he croaked, ‘I never! You’ll never hang that one on me, screw.’
Gently’s fist smashed the desk again.
‘What happened to Elton, Bixley?’ he said.
‘He’s gone, cleared out,’ Bixley gabbled. ‘I don’t know nothing. I didn’t do it.’
‘Where’s he gone?’
‘I don’t know,’ Bixley said.
‘I think you do.’
‘No,’ Bixley said, ‘no.’
‘He’s not very far from here, is he, Bixley?’
‘I don’t know,’ Bixley said. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’
‘He’s not very far, but he’s very quiet.’
‘I don’t know nothing,’ Bixley said. ‘I don’t know nothing.’
‘It’ll come to you later,’ Gently said. ‘Now we’ll get on to Leo. Leo Slavinovsky.’
Baynes scribbled away industriously, dabbed, and stopped. After the scratching of his pencil one heard nothing but Bixley’s breathing. The room seemed heavy round the directed light, a place of infinite insulation. Bixley sat in the light under the weight of the room like an illuminated object on a slide. From the shadows eyes examined him, applied a stimulus, made a note.
‘When did you last see Leo?’ Gently asked.
‘Who — what Leo?’ Bixley said hoarsely.
‘Little Leo back in Bethnal. The big brain,’ Gently said.
‘I don’t know any Leo,’ Bixley said.
‘He’d be hurt,’ Gently said. ‘I’m sure he had big hopes for you, Bixley. You were an up-an-coming gang-boy.’
‘I ain’t had nothing to do with him,’ Bixley said. ‘I never had. I don’t know him. That job I was pulled for I did on me own, I don’t know no Leo.’
‘Your cousin knows him,’ Gently said.
‘I ain’t seen my cousin, not since I come here.’
‘Once,’ Gently said, ‘you saw him. About the time when work was getting too heavy for you.’
‘That’s a bloody lie,’ Bixley said.
‘Is your mother a liar?’ Gently asked.
‘She — she’s a stupid so-and-so,’ Bixley said. ‘She got things mixed, that’s all it is.’
‘Percy Waters was arrested today.’
‘So what?’ Bixley said. ‘He’s another stupid.’
‘Leo Slavinovsky was arrested today.’
‘I tell you I don’t know nothing about him.’
‘Listen,’ Gently said. ‘I’m going to do some more thinking.’
‘I’ve had enough of this!’ Bixley yelped. ‘You bleeding let me out of here. I ain’t done nothing, you know I ain’t. I got alibis and you can’t touch me. I ain’t going to sit here having it shot at me, I bleeding ain’t. You let me out!’
‘But you aren’t going anywhere,’ Gently said.
‘I’ll get a lawyer!’ Bixley shouted.
‘You’ll be good business, too,’ Gently said. ‘Only right at this moment you’re going to listen to me.’
‘I bloody won’t listen!’
‘You’d better,’ Gently said. ‘Otherwise you won’t know what to tell your lawyer.’
Bixley swore.
‘Are we going too fast?’ Gently asked Baynes.
Baynes shook his head. ‘I can do a hundred and sixty, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a special set of lettergrams for use with swear words. Very useful they are in this line of business.’
‘Stop me if you’re getting behind,’ Gently said.
‘Yes, sir. But I’ve had no trouble so far.’
Bixley sat trembling, worrying his thick lip. There was sweat on his cheeks, down each side of his chin.
‘Right,’ Gently said. ‘Are you listening to what I say to you, Bixley?’
‘I ought to have done you,’ Bixley muttered. ‘Christ, if I’d only done you, screw.’
‘You’re in trouble enough,’ Gently said. ‘Another thick lip wouldn’t have helped you. So let’s do some thinking about Leo and Cousin Perce.’
Bixley moaned, said nothing.
‘I think you heard from Perce,’ Gently said. ‘I think he told you he’d got something for you and that you’d better look him up. So you did, you went to Bethnal, you saw Perce and Leo. You heard that business was flourishing with Leo and that he was planning a little expansion. He was going to put Leach in Castlebridge to run a chocolate depot there — it was a good place for pushing chocolates, a university town. And Leo had remembered his old gang-boy who’d gone to live here in Latchford, and Leo thought that perhaps Latchford could absorb a few chocolates, too. So he proposed that you took care of that district for him, drawing your supplies from Leach on some weekly excursion to Castlebridge. And you liked that proposal, didn’t you, Bixley? It might have been made to measure for you. It meant a return to the easy money you’d been missing — and it flattered you, Leo choosing you for a job like that.’
Bixley croaked: It’s bloody lies, bloody lies, that’s what it is.’
‘Leo and Perce,’ Gently said, ‘haven’t got much left to lie about now.’
‘I only know what you tell me,’ Bixley said. ‘I know screws. Bloody liars. It’s all lies, every bit of it.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ Gently said, ‘back that horse, if I were you. We didn’t guess about Leo and his trade in chocolates. Suppose you start brightening up a little, give us a little cooperation. You’re on your own now, Bixley. All your pals are inside.’
‘They ain’t my pals. I didn’t never know them.’
‘Where did Lister come into it?’ Gently asked.
‘I don’t know about Lister.’
‘Why did he whip that box of chocolates?’
‘I don’t know nothing about that,’ Bixley said. ‘It’s lies, all lies.’
‘We’re out looking for your chocolate-store, Bixley.’
‘Yuh,’ Bixley said. ‘Bloody look for it.’
‘We’ll find it, too,’ Gently said.
‘Yuh,’ Bixley said. ‘I ain’t got one.’
‘Not at Tony’s,’ Gently said.
‘I ain’t got one,’ Bixley repeated.
‘Not at Dicky’s,’ Gently said.
‘You’ve a bleeding hope.’ Bixley said.
‘How will you manage without chocolates?’ Gently said.
‘Crap on your chocolates,’ Bixley said.
‘You’ve smoked your last one,’ Gently said. ‘It’s going to be tough if you’ve been at them heavy.’
‘I don’t smoke sticks,’ Bixley said.
‘Oh, yes,’ Gently said. ‘I think you do.’
‘I ain’t never had nothing to do with them.’
‘We’ll see,’ Gently said. ‘Your pockets will tell us.’
Bixley got unsteadily to his feet. ‘They bloody won’t,’ he said. ‘They won’t, because I ain’t got none. So you can search as much as you like.’
‘You’ll let me search you?’ Gently asked.
‘Yuh,’ Bixley said. ‘You search me.’
‘You can sit down again,’ Gently said. ‘That’s all I want to know for the moment.’
‘I tell you you can search me,’ Bixley said.
Gently ignored him, turned to Baynes.
‘Go and look in the waiting room,’ he told him. ‘Bring back anything interesting you find there.’
Baynes nodded, got up, departed. Bixley came up to the desk, put his hands on it.
‘I’ll get you for this,’ he said. ‘If it’s the last bloody thing. I’ll get you, screw. I don’t care if I swing for it.’
‘You’ve been watching too much TV,’ Gently said.
‘I mean it,’ Bixley said. ‘I’m going to get you. I mean it.’
He kept standing there, leaning, glaring at Gently.
‘I mean it,’ he kept saying. ‘I mean it, I mean it.’
Baynes returned, carrying in his hand a cigarette case which combined a petrol-lighter. His hands were sooty and there was soot on the case.
‘It was stuffed up the chimney of the stove,’ he said. ‘He’d had the soot-door off. It’s a finger-screw job.’
Gently took the lighter. It was flamboyantly engraved: S.A.B. He sprang it open. It contained twenty-three of the reefers.
‘Somebody else’s?’ He asked Bixley.
‘I mean it,’ said Bixley. ‘I mean it.’
‘And I mean this,’ Gently said. ‘I’m charging you with having possession of prohibited drugs. You don’t need to say anything in answer to the charge.’
‘I ain’t saying anything,’ Bixley said. ‘Not nothing at all.’
Nobody was saying anything. Gently rang the Yard again and got in touch with the Chief Inspector in charge of the Slavinovsky interrogations. There they were having an all-night session, but it hadn’t got them much further. Slavinovsky himself, a Polish Jew, hadn’t breathed a word in five hours. Some of the smaller fry had squeaked and a few more arrests had been made. Two experts were working on the code in which Slavinovsky kept his records.
‘We’re getting the impression,’ the C.I. told Gently ‘that there were other depots like the one in Castlebridge. But we still haven’t got a clue as to how the stuff was coming in. It’s Cyprus hemp we seized in Bethnal, we’re checking all the known channels. I think Slavinovsky’s building his hopes on us not cracking the code.’
‘Has Percy Waters talked?’ Gently inquired.
‘Not as yet,’ the C.I. replied. ‘Pagram briefed me on your interest and I’m doing my best to get you something. The trouble is, we want everything quickly. You understand that, don’t you? Time’s against us, we have to keep plugging away at the main issues.’
‘I’ve got a murder at this end,’ Gently said.
‘We’re doing our best,’ said the C.I. ‘The moment Bixley’s name comes up I’ll give you a ring at Latchford.’
It was just after ten when Setters got back, dirtier than ever and looking bushed. He dropped on the visitor’s chair in the office, lit a cigarette, and took several deep drags.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just the fun.’
‘How did Deeming take it?’ Gently asked.
‘Dicky,’ said Setters, ‘played records, did some typing, made light conversation. I’ve had a basinful of Dicky. I was bloody polite to him. Bloody.’
‘And Tony?’ Gently asked.
‘He was throwing a fit the whole time. And we had the jeebies on our necks, though they were quiet, for a change.’
Gently nodded, told Setters how his interrogation had gone. Setters sat very quiet when he heard that Bixley had been charged.
‘Yep,’ he said at last. ‘That was good. Me, I’d have searched him and risked the rap. Or maybe I wouldn’t, I’d have fallen down on it. I don’t aspire to such class.’
Gently grinned. ‘I can take it,’ he said.
Setters grinned too. ‘I’m whacked,’ he said. ‘Just reprimand me and let me go home. I need a bath to set me up.’
But he got on the phone and made the arrangements for Bixley’s appearance in court in the morning.
Gently drove him home, to Ashgrove Road, drove to the Sun, parked, smoked a last pipe.