Gently with the Ladies (Inspector George Gently 13)

innocence. Then there’s the character of the deceased, and alternatives with opportunity and motive. No, unless Fazakerly confesses I can’t see us winning this one.’
    ‘Would he confess?’
    ‘Most unlikely.’
    ‘Have you talked to him since this morning?’
    ‘No. But he was decided enough then. And he’s a long way from being stupid.’
    Another pause. By now the A.C. would have swivelled his chair a little, would be resting his elbow on the desk and throwing a dirty look at the window. He had played much mental chess with Gently. These days he studied the board with care.
    ‘I think you’d better talk to him again, Gently.’
    ‘Yes, I’ve one or two things to ask him.’
    ‘I daresay you have. But what I’m suggesting is putting pressure on him for a confession.’
    ‘I’m not the man to do that—’
    ‘Oh yes you are, Gently, no one more so. He obviously trusts you or he wouldn’t have come to you, so he’ll perhaps respond to your advice.’
    ‘But that’s doing the dirty—!’
    ‘He’s guilty isn’t he?’
    ‘He’ll get the verdict if he keeps his mouth shut!’
    ‘Tsk, tsk,’ the A.C. said. ‘A mere technicality, Gently. I assume you are still interested in villains getting their deserts? Anyway, that’s what you’ll do.’
    ‘I’ll suggest a confession. No more.’
    ‘And I trust you’ll get it, with your ability. My best men usually get results.’
    Gently left the phone-box without his smile and stood glowering some moments at the kerbside. The A.C. had come back very neatly – Gently really should have foreseen that one! Not that Fazakerly was likely to confess, either under pressure or treachery, but it was a stinging
quid pro quo
and the A.C. was probably still chuckling.
    Gently got in the Sceptre, his current enthusiasm, and belted away with a surge of gas. Outside a café two streets away he spotted a parking-space, and slammed into it under the bumper of a Mark 10 Jaguar.
     
    ‘You’re not still kicking it around are you?’
    He was alone with Fazakerly in the interrogation room. Reynolds, who’d brought Fazakerly in, had caught a stony glance and had hastily bowed himself out of the presence. Fazakerly was looking sprucer, more wholesome. They’d fetched him some clothes from the flat. He’d shaved, and the abrasion across his forehead was covered with a strip of pink plaster. His eyes were still ringed and looking tired but now there was more life in them. His suit was expensive. He wore a Yacht Club tie of dark blue silk, perfectly knotted.
    ‘Take a seat,’ Gently said.
    ‘But I thought you’d washed your hands of me. You should, you know. I’m a lost soul. It’s really not worth your wasting time on me.’
    ‘All the same, I’m doing just that.’
    ‘I should never have come to you in the first place.’
    ‘But you did.’
    ‘Yes, and now I feel bad about it. I’d sooner you forgot the whole thing.’
    ‘Just sit down.’
    Fazakerly sat. He had a feline grace of movement. In the suit he appeared more slender and it revealed an elegant slope of the shoulder. Colour had returned to his sallow cheeks and the absence of fuzz hardened his jaw-line. He had curious, fine-boned, bred-out good-looks of the sort which other men find irritating. His assurance had returned.
    ‘Did you know they haven’t charged me?’
    ‘Don’t pin any hopes on that,’ Gently grunted.
    ‘Oh, I don’t. I haven’t any hopes. I know they’re only digging my grave a bit deeper.’
    ‘So what are you pleased about?’
    ‘I’m damned if I know. I’m feeling a tremendous sense of release. It’s as though – yes, that’s it! – as though I’m being reborn. And all that’s happened is I’ve killed my wife.’
    ‘You – did kill her?’ Gently said.
    ‘Yes. I mean, as far as everyone knows. They think I did it, which amounts to the same thing. When they look at me they see a wife-killer.’
    ‘And that gives you release?’
    ‘I can’t describe it. You’d need my background to understand. To have been a worthless, degraded bum without a shred of self-respect. And then suddenly you’re not a bum, it’s all forgotten and swallowed up, you’re someone different, a wife-killer, and that’s the only way people think of you. Can’t you see that? I suddenly don’t care. Or rather, I want to go on being that thing.’
    ‘You didn’t want to go on being it this morning.’
    ‘Not this morning. I was scared stiff. When you can see your life about