Gently with the Ladies (Inspector George Gently 13)

me about the murder weapon?’
    ‘I don’t know about that. I don’t!’
    ‘Where was your wife when you left her?’
    ‘Where we had the row – in the lounge.’
    ‘That’s where she was found.’
    ‘I can’t help that!’
    ‘And where the murder weapon was kept. Nobody else was seen to visit the flat, only your prints are on the weapon. For the second time I’m asking you – if you didn’t kill her, who did?’
    Fazakerly’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. A colour that had begun to return to his washed-out face vanished, leaving it a pasty grey.
    ‘Well?’
    He swallowed. ‘You’re trying it on – that’s all you’re doing, isn’t it?’
    ‘You think so?’
    ‘Yes, a test. You want to see how I’ll stand up.’
    ‘I think you’re guilty.’
    ‘No you don’t! You’re testing me, seeing if I go to pieces. You know damned well it wasn’t me, I’m not the type, I wouldn’t kill anyone.’
    ‘So why are your prints all over the weapon.’
    ‘That’s another try-on!’
    ‘No it isn’t.’
    ‘Then it’s something I’ve handled at another time – that’s possible, isn’t it? If it belongs in the flat?’
    Gently looked at him, said nothing.
    ‘Yes, it’s something I’ve handled,’ Fazakerly said. ‘Something that would take a set of prints . . .’ He stopped. ‘Oh my God,’ he said. ‘Not that!’
    ‘Not what?’
    ‘Not the belaying-pin.’
    Gently said flatly: ‘The belaying-pin?’
    ‘A trophy – a silver-plated belaying-pin – it hung on the wall in the lounge!’
    ‘It did, did it,’ Gently said.
    Fazakerly’s pale eyes fixed on him. For a moment there was no sound in the office, not even of two men breathing. Then Fazakerly’s face seemed to crumple.
    He said hoarsely: ‘So that’s it, isn’t it? Not you nor anyone will believe me now, not if the weapon was my belaying-pin.’ His eyes closed. ‘Oh Christ,’ he said, ‘it’s coming home. That poor bitch.’
    Gently picked up the phone. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I have to do this.’
    ‘I thought there was a chance,’ Fazakerly said. ‘I didn’t know. It wasn’t in the paper.’
    ‘No, it wasn’t,’ Gently said, then he spoke into the phone. Fazakerly sat silently, his head in his hands, the abrasion livid on his pale forehead.
    Gently hung up. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘There’s only one thing I can do for you. This chat of ours is off the record. You can start afresh with Inspector Reynolds.’
    ‘But what’s the point?’
    Gently shrugged. ‘You let your hair down with me. Maybe you’ve learned what not to say, it could be a little help.’
    ‘But you’re through with me, aren’t you?’
    ‘Did you expect anything different?’
    ‘I didn’t kill her. I thought if I saw you, if I could tell you, you’d know it was true.’
    ‘I’m not psychic,’ Gently said.
    ‘Of course . . . but there must be a difference. Even with a lying bum like me, it must sound different when I’m telling the truth. When I’ve nothing to hide, when I’m right behind it, when I’m naked there with the fact. Something in my eyes, in my voice. God, there
has
to be a difference!’
    ‘Perhaps you’ll convince Inspector Reynolds.’
    ‘But you – you can’t tell?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Then I’m sunk. Because being innocent is all I’ve got.’
    He let his head sink into his hands again, but raised it again a moment later.
    ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘What shall I get . . . fourteen years, something like that?’
    Gently sighed, but said nothing.
    There was a knock on the door.
     
    After they’d taken him away Gently strode over to the window and stood looking out at the yellowy Thames. A patrol boat coming up was making heavy weather against the brute force of the ebb. The dull sky of the past few days was still heavy over the city, but the boisterous wind of yesterday had fallen almost to a flat calm. Gently returned to his desk and picked up the phone.
    ‘Put me through to Records.’
    Ellis, the organizing brain of Records, was also a keen yachtsman.
    ‘Hullo . . . Ellis?’
    ‘Oh – Gently.’
    ‘Look, I want some yachting information. If someone took a yacht out of Rochester last Monday p.m., would yesterday’s wind have affected him much?’
    ‘What moron did that?’
    ‘Would he need to be a moron?’
    ‘There were gale warnings out for the whole coast. He was either a moron or an intending suicide.’
    ‘Well, he might have been an intending suicide,’ Gently