‘Tell me about your jacket,’ she said, ‘Class of 88. Where did you get it?’
He hesitated a fraction, then said, ‘Online, they make ’em to order. You tell ’em what you want.’
‘So they’re unique?’
‘I suppose,’ he said, frowning slightly. Realizing perhaps that unique might not be so great when it came to witness identification.
‘What website are they from?’
‘Don’t remember,’ he said.
‘We can check on your computer,’ Janet said. ‘Have you ever been in the Old Chapel?’
‘No.’
‘What about in the grounds, the land around it?’
‘No.’ He scratched his side again.
‘You possess a firearm, a gun?’
‘No,’ he said, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He felt comfortable, cocky about the weapon. Why?
‘Tell me what you did earlier on Wednesday.’
‘Just in the flat,’ he said.
‘Doing what?’
‘Gaming, with Neil.’
‘And the day before, Tuesday?’
‘Same,’ he said.
‘You’re unemployed,’ Janet said, ‘signing on?’
‘Yeah,’ he nodded.
‘When did you last sign on?’
He took a slow breath, pulled a face, screwed up his eyes. ‘Monday,’ he said, eventually. ‘Last Monday.’
He was slow-witted, Janet saw, maybe a side effect of his lifestyle: drugs, steroids messing with his concentration. Or by nature. He was definitely on the slow side.
‘Thick as pigshit,’ Rachel said to Janet in the custody suite, ‘mine was. Starved of oxygen or inbred or something.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ Janet hissed, flaring her eyes at Rachel, aware of a solicitor passing by on the way to the next call of duty.
He’d sat there, his big head reminding Rachel of a teddy bear, those old-fashioned ones, stuffed with straw or whatever, and he’d answered her in monosyllables. Saying the minimum. Less you said, less you could make a mistake. His longest reply in response to a question about his tattoos. He’d read out quotes on his forearms, ‘It is not truth that matters but victory,’ and ‘If you want to shine like the sun then first burn like it.’ Nodded and added, ‘Mein Kampf.’ Then pointed to his neck. ‘That’s a lion and that’s a unicorn.’ Rachel thought they looked like meerkats. Said nothing.
‘Not thick enough to admit being there, being involved,’ Janet said when they were alone. ‘But they’re both giving their nan as their alibi. Meanwhile Mam’s saying they were with her. Story’s all over the place. If they are our killers they’ve really not thought it through. Same old, same old,’ Janet said, gesturing to the stairs to indicate that they should go out for a bit.
‘I know,’ Rachel agreed. Most of the crimes they dealt with were sad, savage and often pointless. The culprits similar. Grubby little arguments leading to loss of life. Families riven by violence and raised on crime. She thought fleetingly of Dom, twenty-eight years. Pushed it away.