Free Crying Out Loud by Cath Staincliffe Page B

weapon.’
    â€˜Never found.’ He pulled a face. ‘Beswick said he’d chucked it away – wouldn’t or couldn’t say where.’
    â€˜Was it his knife?’
    â€˜No. He said it was at the cottage, on the work surface. When Charlie came at him, Beswick grabbed it. One stab wound to the stomach. But Beswick’s narrative of events matched everything at the scene. Everything,’ he repeated, locking those large eyes on mine. ‘There were no loose ends, no discrepancies. He’s wasting your time.’
    Personally I thought the absence of the murder weapon was rather a loose end but I didn’t want to aggravate him. I wasn’t going to just drop it, though. ‘Did you interview him?’ I asked.
    â€˜No.’ He took another sip of his tea.
    I was disappointed, thinking he wouldn’t have as much information if he hadn’t heard it first-hand. ‘But Damien was at the cottage,’ I pointed out. ‘He’d have picked up details from being there, wouldn’t he, even if he hadn’t been the one to attack Charlie? Like where the body was and the fact that Charlie had been stabbed?’
    Sinclair’s eyes, wide and glassy, like blue mints, bore into me. ‘It’s possible,’ he allowed. His long fingers curled round his mug.
    â€˜How much detail did he give?’ I asked. ‘He could barely remember anything when I asked him to talk me through it,’ I said. ‘Surely the police would expect it to be coherent and detailed.’
    â€˜He’d taken drugs that day, on the way to the cottage – did he tell you that?’
    Annoyance flickered inside me; Sinclair noticed and gave a little nod. If Damien had been doped up, it could well affect his recollection of events.
    â€˜What you’re not taking into account,’ Sinclair said, ‘is that the detectives talking to him would have been trained in advanced interview techniques. You have a suspect who says they can’t remember and there are ways and means to access those memories.’
    â€˜Like what?’ I was interested professionally, although a major difference between my role and that of the police when talking to people is that I have no authority. The people I speak to can clam up, get up and walk away, refuse to let me over the threshold. I can’t ‘detain’ anyone for questioning.
    Sinclair set down the cup and winced: an irritable, grumpy old man not wanting to explain. Nevertheless, he began to answer my question, his hands gesturing expressively as he spoke. His wrists were bony, jutting from his pullover, and I wondered if he lived alone, and if he’d let mealtimes slide in the weeks since he’d retired.
    â€˜Take a mugging,’ he began. ‘It’s all a blur to the victim – didn’t get a good look at the mugger and so on. But they do mention it had just started raining. Well, we take that one concrete detail and build on it: what sounds were there when it started raining? Was it cold or warm? Had anyone just passed them? Do they remember what colour coat the person was wearing?’
    â€˜Appealing to the senses?’ I saw what he meant.
    â€˜That’s what memories are made of.’
    Like a smell bringing back a particular time in life, or a piece of music triggering a memory. I thought about it. There had been precious few sense memories in Damien’s story when I spoke to him: ‘it was freezing’ was one, the smell in the cottage another.
    â€˜I wasn’t in on those interviews,’ Sinclair said. ‘Beswick’s recollection was hazy at times because of the drugs, but it still fit the known facts. Fit like a glove. Now, if his new version is a load of tripe, then keeping it vague, ill-defined and sketchy is safer for him. If you’re lying you keep it simple, say the minimum, so there’s less to trip you up. Telling the truth you can elaborate, illustrate your