Chapter 4 #2
Tufty shrugged one shoulder. ‘And he only fought back cos the ASDG bloke punched him.’
She waved her vape about. ‘They want to go from school to university and straight into sodding government, don’t pass go, don’t get a proper job, don’t learn how real people live – just hop on the gravy train and lord it over us plebs, with your crappy degree and sharny micro-moustache.’
The wee loon nodded, agreeing with himself. ‘I does think we should let him go.’
‘This is why we invented the guillotine.’ She poked Tufty. ‘Where’s that BWV?’
‘I did downloaded it, but we does not has no stabbing on film.’ Shrinking away, hands up. ‘Which is totes not my faults, before you start biffing people!’
She gave him a glower instead. Seething and vaping. Surrounding herself with clouds of billowing fog, the end of her vape glowing hot red in the mist. Like the eye of Sauron.
‘Erm . . .’ Tufty jerked his head back towards the interview room. ‘So, Derek Wickham: we’re letting him go . . . right?’
‘Our murder victim – Jane Doe, AKA: Body-In-The-Bin – she was pregnant.’
Took a moment for that to sink in, then Tufty sagged. ‘Oh . . . poop.’
Roberta pointed at the interview-room door. ‘Turn the boy loose and bring the next bumhole up here. Let’s get this over with.’
A bluebottle buzzed its lazy symphony, trapped between the interview room’s unopenable window and the vertical blinds, casting a big black shadow as T-Shirt Number Two scowled back at Roberta from the Naughty Seat.
About the same age as the first one, with sideburns on his cheeks and a whole poke of chips on his shoulder.
A heavy jaw lent him a belligerent air, an underbite, and a teeny bit of a lisp, while his hair stood up in lopsided clumps on one side – matted with blood, from a couple of tiny cuts to his scalp, courtesy of a Polo-Shirt’s placard.
Or, rather, the chunk of wood it was stapled to.
He had the same sour-dairy smell as the last one.
Which was either some new foul scent of deodorant, or something to do with getting his face washed in semi-skimmed milk, after the riot.
‘Wait . . .’ Roberta blinked at him, cos that couldn’t possibly be right. ‘No, but seriously . . . your mum and dad named you “Paddington”? Paddington MacInver?’
The scowl darkened. ‘I go by “Paddy”.’
‘Don’t blame you. But “Paddington”?’
‘He proposed to her under the station clock on Platform One, OK? And this was before any of the films came out, so can we not, please?’ Arms crossed, glaring now.
It was probably meant to be one of those famous Paddington hard stares, but came off more like a dyspeptic Winnie-The-Pooh.
Probably wouldn’t help to tell him that, or laugh in his face.
Tempting, though.
Instead, she just sat there, in silence, smiling at him for long enough to make it really uncomfortable. Then: ‘So . . . Paddy: where were you when Billie Nesbit got stabbed?’
He made a big show of thinking about that. ‘Me and Ringpull – that’s Declan Tinworth – were over by the bins. I remember, cos there were wasps, and I hate wasps. Always following you about.’ Curling his lip. ‘Nasty, thieving, stingy little bastards.’
Probably after his marmalade sandwiches.
‘And . . .?’
‘We had this fascist cock-slap sticking his chest out at us, waving his stupid placard.’ Frown. ‘What was it . . . Yeah: “Stop immigration, this is our nation”. Prick.’
Roberta raised an eyebrow.
‘Not you – the guy. Looks like a rabid thumb?’
Which could’ve been any of the Polo-Shirts.
‘So then what happened?’
‘Pfff . . . I was staring him down, you know?’ Paddington MacInver pulled his shoulders back, making himself look bigger. ‘Yeah, I’m putting the fear of a just and fair society into the wanker, when I hear Billie scream: “He’s got a knife!” You know?’
Silence.
Tufty looked up from his pad, pen poised. ‘And did you see the knife?’
‘. . . No?’
The wee loon wrote that down.
More silence.
Roberta did her sit-and-stare routine again.
Paddington’s shoulders sagged a little, then a lot, as he wriggled in the Naughty Seat, picking at a ‘COCKWANK’ carved into the tabletop. Until, finally, that big chin of his drooped. ‘Sorry.’
She tapped the file – ominous, menacing. ‘Tell us about your relationship with Billie Nesbit.’
‘Yeah . . .’ He stared at the file. Licked his lips.
Wriggled some more. ‘Yeah, it was OK. I mean, we weren’t in a relationship, just volunteering on the same campaign.
You know, sort of unpaid interns, for the extra credit?
We both go to Aberdeen Uni. Other than that .
. . I mean, I never laid a hand on her.’ His eyes didn’t leave the prop file.
‘Did someone say something? It’s not true!
’ Fidgeting. Hands leaving sweaty palmprints on the tabletop.
A shifty look left and right, then Paddington lowered his voice.
‘You should ask Vivian. Vivian and Billie were like . . .’ He made his greasy paws into claws, jabbing them at each other, as if they were fighting.
‘You know? Ask her. But I was . . . nope. And yeah, Billie’s really pretty, but she’s only moist for the cause, you know what I mean? ’
Tufty curled his lip.
Roberta leaned forwards; voice cold as an icepick to the crotch. ‘Oh I know exactly what you mean.’
The sexist moron smiled as if that was a good thing. Then it must’ve sunk in that it really wasn’t, because he shrank in his seat. No longer quite so keen to be big. He cleared his throat and stared at his sweaty hands. ‘Sorry. Erm . . . Can we start over?’
Nope.
Ethan Rattray had a downy blond beard, round cheeks, and little pink eyes that darted about the place.
Curls framed his chubby wee face, making him look a bit like a hamster who did a lot of coke.
He’d been the one at the protest with the ‘SMASH SEXISM’ placard – swinging it about, trying to take a Polo-Shirt’s head off.
Maybe even the very same Polo-Shirt who’d enrolled Ethan in the Broken-Nose-Boys’ club, leaving him dabbing at his crusted nostrils with a succession of napkins that had grown into a grisly little pile on the interview-room table.
He added another one to the collection. ‘And then Billie collapsed, and I couldn’t believe it.
I mean, she was . . . is always so upbeat, you know?
And she’s got all this experience and knows all the lingo, and you can always rely on her to know how things are meant to work, cos she was on Lady Fordyce’s team at the last Scottish election, which is so cool, cos you don’t usually get that kind of opportunity when you’re only sixteen, and there we are working – side by side – on a long campaign for the next general election, years away, when Old Murdoch Irvine pops an aneurism in the House of Commons last week and suddenly we’re fighting a by-election, and Billie’s all, “I know what we need to do!” And we’re—’
‘OK, yes, right, we get it.’ Roberta gritted her teeth and tried again. ‘Did. You. See. Who. Stabbed. Her?’
A little shrug. ‘Well . . . it all happened so quick, and . . .’ Ethan pursed his lips.
‘I think it might’ve been the ugly one. Well, they’re all ugly, aren’t they?
Hate does that to your soul. But anyway, he had a placard with “No more libtard lefties” on it, if that helps?
Cos that’s a tremendously insulting portmanteau, isn’t it?
Anyone who’s using “retard” as a pejorative in this day and age is, quite frankly, an absolute fuckspanner.
’ Pink flushed Ethan’s cheeks. ‘Sorry.’ He winced at the cameras.
‘Can we edit that bit out? I don’t want my mum to know I swear. ’
In the name of Jesus.
Deep breath.
Do not scream.
Or batter him to death with the fake file.
Roberta hissed the air from her lungs.
And went in for another go: ‘Did you actually see someone stab Billie Nesbit?’
‘Erm . . .’ Ethan poked a finger at the tabletop, twisting it from side to side, as if he was trying to screw his digit into the Formica. ‘When you say “see”, do you mean see, see?’
Roberta folded forward and banged her head off the file again. ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!’
The interview-room door hung wide open, to let a bit of heat out, as Roberta sipped at a fresh cup of tea. Munching on a biscuit that tasted of dust and disappointment.
Tufty bimbled back into the room. ‘Guv?’
Sip, crunch, crunch. ‘Well?’
‘Went through all the footage again, and . . .’ He held up a printout – grainy and slightly blurred, of an ugly balding middle-aged dick, mouth open in a snarling yell. The placards in his gammony fists: ‘NO MORE LIBTARD LEFTIES!’ ‘MR THE SUSPECT IS ONE TOBY FORBES.’
She sat back and smiled. ‘And just like that, renowned policing genius Roberta Steel solves the case.’
‘Only Toby Forbes is about twenty feets away from Billie Nesbit when she screams “knife!”, there’s three people between them, and he has his back to her. So, unless he am some sort of knife-throwing-magician-ninja person . . .?’
‘It wasn’t him.’
Sod.
That’s what she got for listening to bloody students . . .