Free Quarter Square by David Bridger

he told me to sit. Another policeman stood silently inside the door, and we waited.
    I studied the room, including the double-cassette tape recorder fixed to the wall at one end of the desk, and the pane of darkened glass set into the wall opposite me, which I assumed was a one-way window.
    The clock on the wall above the door said 5:00 p.m. when two detectives walked in and sat down, the man opposite me and the woman to his right, between him and the wall. Before a word was uttered, the woman unsealed two cassette tapes and placed them in the recorder. She turned on the machine and said in a clear North London accent, “Interview with Joseph Walker. Present are Detective Chief Inspector Ian Dawson and Detective Sergeant Jennifer Smith.”
    Dawson spoke directly to me. “I’ll remind you that you are under arrest and being interviewed as a suspect in the murders of Carole Walker and Tony Evans. Do you wish to have a legal representative or an impartial witness present in this interview?”
    Although his soft Scottish accent made him sound unthreatening, I was under no illusion about the danger he posed to me. As far as he was concerned, I was a murderer.
    “No.”
    “You may change your mind and ask for one at any time.”
    “Thank you.”
    “What I’d like you to do,” he said, “is account for your movements over this past week.”
    “I will. But first tell me what happened to Carole and Tony.”
    “I will. But first you need to account for your movements over this past week.”
    “When do you want me to start from?”
    “Anytime you like.”
    “Okay. I take it you know I stayed in Plymouth on Wednesday, when Carole and Tony came back to London.” I paused for him to confirm he did know this, but he just regarded me silently, so I carried on talking.
    “I spent the rest of Wednesday buying bedding, clothes, food and stuff. The next morning I started work on the theatre. And I’ve been working there ever since, until the policemen picked me up today.”
    I shrugged and looked innocently at him. I’d had plenty of time to think about this and had decided not to mention the insiders. They had nothing to do with any of this, and they certainly didn’t deserve to have the police invade their world just because my life had suddenly turned into a nightmare.
    “So what happened to Carole and Tony?”
    Dawson shook his head. “You need to give us more first. Tell us about your trip to Plymouth.”
    “We went down to the West Country to look at several properties Tony bought in a job lot at auction. The theatre in Plymouth was last on our list.”
    “Why were you there?”
    “Tony asked me to survey the buildings. It’s what I do.”
    “Yes. You’re a builder, aren’t you?”
    “Carpenter.”
    “And Carole? Why was she there?”
    “She decided to make a holiday out of the trip. That was the official version. Of course, now we all know she was there because she was shagging Tony.”
    “So I hear,” said Dawson. “This was the first you knew of that situation?”
    “Yes.”
    “So you found out about them on Wednesday, and that’s when they decided to come back without you? And you decided to stay put in Plymouth?”
    “I found out on Tuesday. I slept rough in the theatre that night and went back to talk to them on Wednesday morning. That’s the last time I saw them.”
    Dawson removed a few sheets of printed paper from his file and shuffled through them, glancing at me over the top of them from time to time. He kept me waiting before saying quietly, “You have quite a temper, don’t you?”
    “No.”
    He studied the papers. “Tony Evans’s postmortem revealed recent dental work, so we talked to his dentist. He says Tony went to his surgery for treatment to a damaged crown on Thursday morning. We also spoke to Tony’s solicitor, who told us his client had a cut lip when he visited on Thursday afternoon to instruct him that he wished to transfer ownership of the theatre to you. The solicitor