Gently with the Ladies (Inspector George Gently 13)

to come apart you grasp at anything, like a drowning man. But even then I could see there was no hope, I mean of holding the bits together. Only just at that moment I was scared. I didn’t have the nerve to let go.’
    ‘And now you’re content to be a wife-killer.’
    ‘Better than that. I don’t care.’
    ‘In that case, you may as well confess.’
    ‘It doesn’t matter. They’re sure I did it.’
    Gently stared at him blankly. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You can smoke. I suppose the new Fazakerly does smoke?’
    ‘I’ve got the feeling I can do anything.’
    Reynolds had evidently leant over backwards to bend the rules for Gently’s protégé, for Fazakerly immediately produced a full cigarette-case and a gold-plated lighter. He offered the case to Gently. Gently quickly shook his head. Fazakerly sprang a light and lit his cigarette carefully.
    ‘You know, if you’re still trying to help me,’ he said, ‘don’t bother. I don’t want to be helped any more. I’m not sure that anyone could help me. If I got off, if I had Clytie’s money, I might drift back into being a bum. And just now I’m beyond all that. So let the balls run how they’re played.’
    ‘You’ll like being a prisoner?’ Gently said.
    Fazakerly puffed and shook his head. ‘It’s so difficult to make you understand. You wouldn’t believe me if I said I looked forward to it. You see, it’s not a prison, not to me. I shall be sentenced to freedom. It’s up till now I’ve been in prison, up till they fetched me away from your office. I was a prisoner in myself, a terrible solitary confinement, and I could see them coming to open the door and I was frantic to stop them doing it. It was you who kicked me through that door. You were the last thing I was clinging to. But you broke the hold and kicked me out, and suddenly I was outside the prison. Because you don’t think I’m innocent, do you?’
    Gently shrugged, watching him curiously.
    ‘No, you don’t. And that was the kick. When I knew that, I simply stopped struggling.’
    ‘You’re in a state of shock, Fazakerly. It won’t seem the same later on.’
    ‘You can’t see it. This isn’t hysteria, my mind is quite as calm as yours is.’
    ‘You know what your sentence would be, do you?’
    ‘Fourteen years, less remission.’
    ‘So you may be fifty before you come out.’
    ‘But – how can I put it? – that doesn’t signify!’ He leaned forward on the table. ‘You
must
see it: I’m a free person. Whether I’m quarrying stone on Dartmoor or sailing down-Channel I’m equally and inalienably free. You can’t do anything to me. What I am you can’t lock up. I’ve escaped. It’s all the same. I just let go, and I was free.’
    ‘You won’t find any women in Dartmoor.’
    Fazakerly shook his head. ‘You’re still not with me. And anyway, I never really wanted women. It was just compulsive, just pacing the cell.’
    ‘Prisons smell. They’re not pleasant places.’
    ‘Did you sniff around in the flat?’
    ‘You’ll find the life there degrading.’
    ‘I’ll find life. The rest is words.’
    ‘So if you’re looking forward to it so much, what’s the point of giving us trouble? Why not confess?’
    ‘Because I didn’t do it. And I’d simply rather not tell a lie.’
     
    Gently drew a deep breath. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘you didn’t do it. And if you didn’t do it, it’s still up to us to find the person who did. And you can’t mind us doing that, even though it dashes your prospects of Dartmoor, because on your own admission it’s the same to you whether you’re breaking stones or off on a spree. So perhaps you’ll come to earth for a moment and try to give us some assistance.’
    Fazakerly shrugged his neat shoulders. ‘I certainly owe you something,’ he said. ‘And you’ve every right to be annoyed with me. This must be very awkward for you.’
    ‘First, I’m not happy with the quarrel you had with your wife. There’s something about it doesn’t ring true. Half an hour earlier she was in a good mood and thinking only about dresses.’
    Fazakerly smiled faintly. ‘That sounds like Clytie,’ he said. ‘She spent the best part of her life chasing fashion trends. And mannequins.’
    ‘But when you came in she was in a rage.’
    ‘She was in a filthy temper. She was sitting there working it up, ready to clobber me when I walked in.’
    ‘And about this Rochester woman – nothing else?’
    ‘She was the text of the