Free One Foot in the Grave by Peter Dickinson Page B

that the question interested him more than the others. If he’d been a policeman he’d probably have been bent, but he’d still have been more effective than a lot of the straight ones.
    â€œWhy do you want to know?” said Pibble.
    â€œI’m curious.”
    â€œThat doesn’t … unless you think that whoever shot Tosca might, er, have been looking for you.”
    This time the pale eyes didn’t flicker, but still somehow acknowledged the guess. It was as though their impassivity, till now habitual and unconscious, had become deliberate.
    â€œShouldn’t of made his rounds that regular,” said Wilson.
    â€œHe didn’t that—” said Pibble, and cut himself off too late.
    â€œCouldn’t of, not that night, could he? Dead by then. But before that you could of set your watch by the time he went in and out under here. Stupid. Don’t tell me as you hadn’t noticed.”
    â€œI suppose I had. They run this place on a pretty tight routine, though …”
    â€œCourse they do, but George didn’t have to pay no attention to that, did he? Trouble with him, he thought he knew it all. Look, when he was training, they must of told him not to do things all regular. That’s right, innit?”
    The question was not rhetorical, but spoken as though Pibble should know the answer. Wilson, leaning across to interfere with one corner of Pibble’s jigsaw, had nudged a loose piece with his cuff, and now, with the slightly altered angle, what had so far been abstract smudges and blurs became plainly representational—a bit of blue uniform with a belt across it. Of course. Tosca had been a policeman. Yes, the licenses for the guns, for one thing, and Mike’s attitude to that. Mike being here at all. A Chief Super.
    â€œSo what was you up to that night?” said Wilson. “You still haven’t told me.”
    â€œI don’t know myself,” snapped Pibble, irritated by the interruption to his thoughts. Tomorrow, in an hour’s time, even these sharp-edged and potentially interlocking perceptions might have reverted to the usual slithering fuzz.
    â€œYou don’t know,” said Wilson impassively.
    â€œI probably didn’t know at the time, and I certainly don’t now. All I can tell you is that a bit after Jenny left me I started to get up and dress, and while I was doing that I began to tell myself that I was doing it because of something I’d heard, in spite of the wind. I thought it was a shot. Even then I didn’t know if it was true, and I certainly don’t now.”
    â€œHunch!”
    â€œI don’t believe in hunches. I never did. They always let you down.”
    â€œRight. Remember Ferdy Greer?”
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    â€œAfter your time, perhaps. Hit man for the Blue Bear crowd. Drugged a bit. Mary Lou Isaacs told me this—she and me was quite good pals, once. Forget it. Ferdy. It was after some job, the payout. Everything gone like clockwork. Some very hard boys in the Blue Bear lot, so Mary Lou liked to have Ferdy around case one of ’em tried something. But that night there hadn’t been no arguments and they was all sitting around having a drink and relaxing when Ferdy jumps up and says, ‘I’m getting out of this.’ Summing in the way he says it, so Mary Lou looks at him, and he’s dead white, and all he’ll say is summing bad’s coming, summing really bad. Born in a gypsy van, Ferdy, so Mary Lou shrugs and gives him a stack of tenners, and that’s the last she sees of him. Couple of hours later he’s out at the airport with his passport and a ticket, getting on to a plane for Jamaica. Now, there’s a rozzer in plain clothes on the gangway, looking for someone else, not Ferdy at all. Ferdy sees him and knows him but he walks past and is going up the gangway when the rozzer does a double take and calls out to him to come back.