be true.
‘Aye, he’s here, but he’s turned in for the night. Poor chap was jiggered.’
‘Only it’s right important I have a word.’
‘I’ll go up and ask. But if he says no, he says no.’
‘Right.’
Sykes waited. In the room where the soup had been dished up, a little half-hearted singing began.
Eric returned. ‘Look sharp. Speak to him before the others go up. He wouldn’t want to be spotted talking to the law.’
‘I’m not the law.’
‘You look like the law, you sound like the law, you’re the law. Upstairs, first on your left.’
Sykes half ran up the stairs, glad that he had been the one to find Charley. The CID men, especially the London lot, would scare him into silence. If they took against him because the enquiry was going nowhere fast, heaven help him.
It was a room with eight beds, and only one occupied. Charley was sitting up, a folded coat behind him. Sykes guessed he slept that way, so that he could breathe.
‘Charley, I’m Jim Sykes. Thanks for talking to me.’
‘I’ve said nowt.’
‘You sometimes go up by the Hotel Metropole.’
‘I’ve done nowt. I go there to flog matches.’
‘You haven’t been up there for a few days. Why’s that?’
‘No reason.’
‘Could it be you were there when someone broke into the hat shop?’
Charley said nothing.
‘I’m hoping you were there. There’s a reward for anyone that can help with enquiries and I’d like it to go to you.’
‘I’m no nark.’
‘The man who was there, it wasn’t to steal hats. A man was murdered.’
‘I heard about that.’
‘And you put two and two together didn’t you? Faster than the detectives did.’
Charley gave a hoarse laugh. ‘I might’ve made three with my two and two. I might’ve made seven.’
‘Why haven’t you been up there lately?’
‘It’s too far from here. I don’t allus have the puff to drag meself back here for a bed, so I’ve stopped away.’
‘On the nights you’re up that end and don’t have the puff, you kip down there, in the alley, or the shop doorway.’
‘What if I do?’
‘Come on, Charley, have a heart. Eric’s keeping the poor buggers downstairs singing till we’ve had our chat. No one will know, and if they did they wouldn’t blame you. Were you there that night? Did you see anyone?’
Charley started to cough. It took him a few minutes to recover and get his breath.
‘I were there all right. I heard him coming and dodged up t’ alley. I’ve a snout for trouble.’
‘Go on.’
‘He rode a motorbike. Wheeled it up, outa sight. He went into t’ doorway. Had summat with him, mebbe a crowbar. He forced shop door. That were it. I were off, out other end of t’ alley. It were too late to find a bed.’
The man started to wheeze. His breath came in short bursts. Sykes opened the window, to give him a little more air.
‘Did you get much of a look at him?’
Talking seemed too much for the man now. He shook his head and gave a weak but emphatic, ‘No.’
‘Pity.’
The breathing steadied a little. ‘Only that he were a big chap. His motorbike, it were a two-stroke Enfield.’
‘Are you sure of that?’
Charley nodded. It took a great effort for him to speak again. ‘I rode despatch on one.’
Sykes put his hand in his pocket. He pulled out a packet of cigarettes and a half crown, his week’s spends.
‘You should be in the infirmary, old lad.’
The man gave something like a laugh. ‘You go there to die. I’m not ready yet.’
He began to cough. He turned red in the face as he tried to shift something that would not come.
Sykes said, ‘It’s not me who talked to you. It’s Constable Millen, and he’ll look out for you.’
Charley said, ‘No bugger talked to me. I’ve said nowt.’
Mr Duffield was at his desk in the newspaper library, giving instructions to a young clerk. When the clerk retreated behind distant shelves, I approached, wondering why he had asked me to call so urgently.
As usual, his manner was calm and unhurried. Knowing him well, I sensed his deep agitation. His nervousness betrayed itself in the tightness of his smile and the stiffness of his gait as he brought a chair for me.
We had not seen each other since the day we found Len Diamond’s body. I hoped there would be other, more social, occasions when we would meet, and soon, so as to overlay that dreadful shared experience.
Mr Duffield took a folder from his drawer. He explained that in the absence of near relations, he had