Broken Lines by Jo Bannister Page B

of his alibi, you’ll be the first to know.’
    Donovan sniffed. ‘If I’m right about the leak, Roly Dickens’ll be the first to know.’
    After he’d gone Liz said, ‘Is he right, do you think – is someone here on more than a nodding acquaintance with the Dickenses?’
    Shapiro didn’t answer directly. One side of his lived-in face wrinkled up as if he’d sucked a lemon. ‘I think he’s right about last night – I think they knew what we were up to. Roly knew he had nothing to worry about. That might be because the gun was where it couldn’t be found, but we can’t discount the possibility that he heard it from someone here. I’d sooner think it was carelessness than corruption, but either way we need to be aware of it. Next move we make stays in this room till it’s too late to matter.’
    He pushed his chair away from the desk and got up. ‘Well, young Dickens and his solicitor are waiting in Interview Room One, and since he’s here out of the simple goodness of his heart it would be discourteous of me to keep them any longer.’

Chapter Nine
    His brush with death had made a better man of Mikey Dickens. Almost, Shapiro thought sourly, he seemed to be soliciting for some kind of Good Citizen award. Every question he asked, every time he sought a fuller explanation, Mikey’s brows knit in concentration and he answered as comprehensively as he could.
    Normally that would have pleased the detective: the more complex the lie, the sooner it breaks down. But Shapiro soon realized that although Mikey was saying a lot he was just repeating the same words, and Shapiro had heard them before. Mikey’s bladder, the man in the grey coat, the gun: it all sounded terribly familiar. Afraid for his life, Mikey had done what he was told. None of what happened was his fault. He never knew who his passenger was, wouldn’t recognize him if they met again.
    It wasn’t true. Shapiro knew it wasn’t true, but that wasn’t the point. It could be true, and without proof to the contrary Mikey was entitled to the benefit of the doubt. His solicitor was there to remind the superintendent should he chance to forget.
    Ms Holloway seemed surprised that Shapiro was still handling this personally. No one was dead, no one was badly injured: she’d expected that by now the matter would have been delegated to an inspector.
    â€˜I like to keep my hand in, Miss Holloway,’ Shapiro explained affably – carefully pronouncing the vowel in her title for no better reason than that it seemed to annoy her. ‘New Year’s a good chance: it takes a couple of weeks for business to pick up again after the holiday.’
    She smiled thinly. ‘I suppose even criminals like to spend Christmas with the family.’ She said Christmas to annoy him in return: with a name like his he wasn’t likely to have been at Midnight Mass.
    Shapiro replied sunnily, ‘Don’t we all, Miss Holloway – don’t we all?’
    He moved on to the missing gun, the posse that rode out of The Jubilee in the early hours of Monday morning, and last night’s pantomime at the corner of Jubilee Terrace.
    Mikey affected total innocence. He wasn’t discharged from the hospital until Tuesday so events in The Jubilee prior to that were a closed book to him. He didn’t know what became of the gun: he assumed the robber took it with him. He went out to Donovan last night because he was afraid he must be getting cold, and after all, he did owe Mr Donovan his life. He had no other motive, didn’t even know what the superintendent was getting at. Honest.
    Shapiro gave a weary sigh. ‘If you’d just stop saying that, Mikey, people might be more inclined to believe you.’
    Mikey was puzzled. ‘What’s that, Mr Shapiro?’
    â€˜Honest. It’s a dead give-away. It’s like saying, “You can trust me.” It