Free The Frightened Man by Kenneth Cameron Page A

make of that - if you don’t mind.’
    ‘Munro said that was a tale, taking me along to see what I’d remember.’
    ‘That’s Donald’s word, tale , not mine.’
    ‘My God - you really do suspect me of something!’
    Guillam hunched forward. ‘Mr Denton, if we really suspected you, we’d have you at the Yard. Now tell me about Mulcahy being frightened out of his wits.’
    He went through that, then through Mulcahy’s flight, which Guillam said was ‘convenient’, then through Mulcahy’s arrival and his choice of Denton for his ‘babbling’. The more Denton talked, the weaker it sounded. The more questions Guillam asked, the more Denton thought that he was being looked at as one of those loonies who rush to the police after every sensational crime.
    ‘City Police didn’t find your tale about this Mulcahy very helpful.’ Guillam gave a glimmer of a smile. ‘I did send a couple of telegrams to check out what you say he told you, nonetheless.’ He looked up at Denton, his huge face on his left fist.
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Yorkshire, Paris, Berlin.’ He made a circle with his right thumb and forefinger. ‘Nothing yet.’ Guillam shifted, put both forearms in their heavy tweed sleeves on the little table. ‘You write stories, Mr Denton, fanciful stuff full of ghosts and fairies. Tempting to think your brain’s been too active, it is.’ He held up his left hand again to shush Denton before he could speak. ‘Don’t get your dander up. I know that’s insulting. But see it from my perspective - in walks this gent, feeds Willey a tale that doesn’t help anything, gent turns out to be a professional storyteller, maybe one wanting his name in the papers. Willey’s being run ragged, trying to fend off the press scum and satisfy his masters and solve a crime all at once; what he doesn’t need is a fanciful invention from somebody who then wants to see the victim’s body! Get it? You came across as a -’ he shrugged - ‘as eccentric.’ He cocked an eyebrow. ‘And maybe a bit more so when you turn up at the post-mortem.’
    There is a stage in a hangover where the pain subsides and the nausea goes away and a curious serenity replaces them. Denton had suddenly reached that pleasant place, he found, perhaps helped by the ale. He let himself laugh again. He saw the figure he must make to men like these. ‘Mulcahy isn’t one of my inventions, Sergeant.’
    Guillam glanced at Munro, then put his hands flat on the table. ‘Let’s go and look at the crime scene.’
    ‘I passed the test?’
    ‘There’s been no test.’ Guillam was standing over him now. ‘But you didn’t pass it, either.’
    They came out of the cul-de-sac where the Haymow hid and turned left into Jewry Street, then right and almost immediately left again into a long, very narrow passage that his Baedeker’s later told him was Vine Street. The sky, darkening now towards evening, was a mere slice overhead, the buildings on each side built almost to the kerbs, with paved walks only wide enough for one of them at a time. The street, macadam now but not so long ago cobbled, was itself used as a walkway, men and women moving aside for the barrows that came rolling up as if they would roll right over them. Guillam led them down past one narrow street that went off to their left and joined a thoroughfare that must be, Denton thought, the Minories; a hundred feet beyond, a constable was standing at another opening.
    Guillam, walking in front, turned and looked at each of them. He muttered something to the constable, who pointed behind him. Denton expected again to be looking down a narrow street into the Minories, but what he saw instead was a gap between the buildings no more than a dozen feet wide, which opened into a court that was closed on the far end - Priory Close Alley. It was neither particularly clean nor particularly sordid; it was more or less quiet compared with the street; it had two skinny cats, several blown newspapers, weeds in the