The Swap - By Antony Moore Page 0,110

the fuck was Jeff Cooper doing here? Why wasn't Maisie jumping into his arms and what in fuck was Jeff doing with her? When you invite your lover for a rendezvous prior to running away to New York to start a new life together you don't expect her to bring her husband. What the fuck?

'Er, hi, Maisie,' he said.

'Hello, Harvey.' Shit. Her voice was low and sad, like his mother's that time he swore at the vicar.

'You all right?'

'Yes, I'm all right. Are you all right, Harvey?'

'Er, yeah, yeah, no problem. All right, Jeff?'

'Hello, Harvey, how are you?'

'Good ta. Yeah. Nice one. Right, so . . . you OK, Inspector?'

'The reason we are searching your shop, Mr Briscow,' – Jarvin refused to enter into the spirit of the reunion – 'is that something was found here that we are having trouble explaining.' He turned and pointed. Moving with eerie silence, Allen had returned from the office, unnoticed by Harvey, and was standing behind the counter. Like an auctioneer's assistant he was holding a Superman One in a gloved hand, its plastic slip cover still smudged with Mrs Odd's blood.

Harvey nodded. He felt very relieved, actually. That must be what Josh was looking guilty about: squealing on him to the pigs. While a dubious thing for a shop assistant to do, it was at least better than more Pokemon, or for that matter the Whip Dancers Trilogy.

'Yeah, the Superman One.' He tried to sound airy, although in fact he could feel his bowels tightening to the point where he badly needed the toilet. 'You found that, yeah?'

'Yes, we did, and of course we don't know this, but we are assuming it is the same one that Charles Odd owned and that was missing from the house in St Ives after his mother was murdered.'

'Right, yeah, good call.' Harvey nodded.

'Now, Mrs Cooper has told us an interesting story, Mr Briscow, about you visiting the house after the murder was committed, intending to steal this comic. However, since then it has been suggested that perhaps you had a motive for murder; that you carried a grudge against Mrs Odd; that you killed her and then returned later to steal the comic and to clean up your tracks. I wonder what you think about that, Mr Briscow.'

What Harvey thought was that it was a bit of a public place for such a deeply humiliating statement to be made. Couldn't they do this in private somewhere? He was aware of Maisie trying to catch his eye with what he feared was a look of deepest concern. But for some reason he was thinking about Josh. All the showing-off he'd done about having a girlfriend and now this. He did the sigh, which involved closing his eyes for a moment. When he opened them he became aware that two of the uniformed constables had quietly moved behind him to block the door. He shook his head hard to clear the Watneys a bit. If ever there was a moment for clarity, this was it.

'Look,' he said, 'let's get this straight. I did go to the house, yeah? I saw the body; I did a bit of cleaning up, OK I admit that. But I didn't steal the comic, I just happen to sort of have that and I'll explain that in a minute, and I didn't kill Mrs Odd for reasons that I will go into. And I don't have a motive – Maisie, you can't really believe that.' He looked at her; did she believe that? She was sort of shaking her head but in a way that seemed dangerously non-committal under the circumstances. He shook his in return. 'Look, honestly, everything is OK.'

Harvey noticed two things at once. One was that Allen's radio had crackled and he had repaired to the back office once more. The other was that Jeff Cooper was moving towards him. He tried to step backwards but trod on the toe of one of the policemen who was standing rather too close behind him.

'Um, sorry.' He stepped forward again, but Jeff was still approaching. Were all these policemen just going to let him be assaulted? He began to panic, Jeff was looking bigger than ever in a threatening pink polo shirt. 'No, no.' Harvey put his hands up to his face as Jeff moved in. Then he felt Jeff 's arms go round his neck. He was going to throw him. Harvey braced himself and waited to be wrestled to