care.”
“Who are you working with?” I don’t immediately answer, so he prods away. “Gethin Matthews probably. Him or Cerys Howells, I should think.”
“Matthews.”
He acknowledges the answer with a grunt, but he’s already sacrificed a little of his authority. He’s managed to establish that I have answers he wants, and he’s reminded himself that baby-faced D.C. Griffiths here is representing grizzled old D.C.I. Matthews. It’s the first tiny victory I’ve won. He must know that somewhere, because he reverts to silence. I hear the slightly asthmatic whine in his breaths, the only thing you could hear on the interview tapes.
I let the pause continue. It’s my pause now. I own it, and I ride that fact for all it’s worth. When I do speak, I say this:
“The thing is, we’re both coppers, so we both know the deal. You stole money. We found out. You’re going to jail. The only question is how long for. That’s the only factor you can influence.
“And we both know that the less cooperative you are, the longer you go down for. In a way, your life is fucked up whatever, but you can choose just how fucked up to make it. Anywhere on a range from quite a bit to quite a lot.
“With ordinary crooks, I don’t expect too much. They don’t cooperate because they’re not being rational, or they can’t bear to help us out, or whatever else it is. You’re not like that. You’re a pro, so you’ll be hardheaded about these things. And the fact that you’re telling us nothing makes me curious about a few things. And if you care to know what I’m curious about, then I’ll tell you.”
The silence in the room now has a frozen quality to it, as though it might crack like ice if you tried to move against it. Penry can’t tell me that he’s hungry for information, because that would offend against his crappy little power games. On the other hand, he can’t say anything else, because he wants to hear what I have to say. Once again, I let the silence do its work.
“Number one, where did your money come from? Some of it came from the school all right, but you spent more money than you stole, or your friend Mr. ap Penri did anyway.
“Now I’m going to take a wild guess and say I know the answer to that. I think the money came from Brendan Rattigan. But that brings us to question number two: What services were rendered in exchange for that money? As far as I know, multimillionaires aren’t in the habit of giving something for nothing.
“And number three, just how much precisely do you know about this?”
From my case, I extract the evidence bag with Rattigan’s platinum card inside it. Penry reaches for it, stares at it, then hands it back. He’s not even pretending to be uninterested now. His brown eyes have a complexity in them that was missing before.
“You might also like to know where we found it. We found it at Number 86 Allison Street. An address where we found a woman dead and her daughter murdered. The mother may have been murdered too. We can’t yet say for definite.
“So you see why I’m curious. If it were only the debit card and only the fact that you happened to share an interest in racing with its owner, then I’d say it was all a coincidence. Something worth investigating maybe, but not the sort of thing that Gethin Matthews would start throwing resources at. As it is, though, your silence kind of connects you to that house, doesn’t it? Any reasonable ex-policeman in your position would be cooperating with us to bring his sentence down. And you haven’t cooperated at all. And the more you don’t tell us, the more you’re telling us that we have to investigate as closely as we possibly can. Which turns an ordinary little bit of embezzlement into something altogether more interesting. Something that’s maybe just a step or two away from murder.”
I finish.
I say nothing. Penry says nothing. As a way of gathering information, this trip has not precisely yielded a rich
“Who are you working with?” I don’t immediately answer, so he prods away. “Gethin Matthews probably. Him or Cerys Howells, I should think.”
“Matthews.”
He acknowledges the answer with a grunt, but he’s already sacrificed a little of his authority. He’s managed to establish that I have answers he wants, and he’s reminded himself that baby-faced D.C. Griffiths here is representing grizzled old D.C.I. Matthews. It’s the first tiny victory I’ve won. He must know that somewhere, because he reverts to silence. I hear the slightly asthmatic whine in his breaths, the only thing you could hear on the interview tapes.
I let the pause continue. It’s my pause now. I own it, and I ride that fact for all it’s worth. When I do speak, I say this:
“The thing is, we’re both coppers, so we both know the deal. You stole money. We found out. You’re going to jail. The only question is how long for. That’s the only factor you can influence.
“And we both know that the less cooperative you are, the longer you go down for. In a way, your life is fucked up whatever, but you can choose just how fucked up to make it. Anywhere on a range from quite a bit to quite a lot.
“With ordinary crooks, I don’t expect too much. They don’t cooperate because they’re not being rational, or they can’t bear to help us out, or whatever else it is. You’re not like that. You’re a pro, so you’ll be hardheaded about these things. And the fact that you’re telling us nothing makes me curious about a few things. And if you care to know what I’m curious about, then I’ll tell you.”
The silence in the room now has a frozen quality to it, as though it might crack like ice if you tried to move against it. Penry can’t tell me that he’s hungry for information, because that would offend against his crappy little power games. On the other hand, he can’t say anything else, because he wants to hear what I have to say. Once again, I let the silence do its work.
“Number one, where did your money come from? Some of it came from the school all right, but you spent more money than you stole, or your friend Mr. ap Penri did anyway.
“Now I’m going to take a wild guess and say I know the answer to that. I think the money came from Brendan Rattigan. But that brings us to question number two: What services were rendered in exchange for that money? As far as I know, multimillionaires aren’t in the habit of giving something for nothing.
“And number three, just how much precisely do you know about this?”
From my case, I extract the evidence bag with Rattigan’s platinum card inside it. Penry reaches for it, stares at it, then hands it back. He’s not even pretending to be uninterested now. His brown eyes have a complexity in them that was missing before.
“You might also like to know where we found it. We found it at Number 86 Allison Street. An address where we found a woman dead and her daughter murdered. The mother may have been murdered too. We can’t yet say for definite.
“So you see why I’m curious. If it were only the debit card and only the fact that you happened to share an interest in racing with its owner, then I’d say it was all a coincidence. Something worth investigating maybe, but not the sort of thing that Gethin Matthews would start throwing resources at. As it is, though, your silence kind of connects you to that house, doesn’t it? Any reasonable ex-policeman in your position would be cooperating with us to bring his sentence down. And you haven’t cooperated at all. And the more you don’t tell us, the more you’re telling us that we have to investigate as closely as we possibly can. Which turns an ordinary little bit of embezzlement into something altogether more interesting. Something that’s maybe just a step or two away from murder.”
I finish.
I say nothing. Penry says nothing. As a way of gathering information, this trip has not precisely yielded a rich
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