Peter Lovesey - Swing, Swing Together

“Pity,” said Cribb. “It brings me back to my problem. Putting myself in the murderers’ place-and it sometimes helps to try, sir-if I wanted to make sure you took your boat to one particular backwater, I’d try to tempt you there, let you know that there was good fishing to be had in that locality.”

“I think you would do better to confine yourself to facts, not flights of your imagination,” Fernandez commented.

“I might send a message through a third party,” Cribb doggedly went on, “or a letter, anonymous of course. Might even offer to take you to the spot, or meet you there. A dedicated angler like yourself would find it difficult to resist an offer like that.”

Fernandez inhaled sharply and audibly, and said, “This is entirely hypothetical and I object to your implication that I am withholding information from you. If you have any other questions to address to me, my man, kindly state them now, in a decent, straightforward fashion, before I altogether lose my temper.”

Cribb looked contrite. “I’m sorry, sir. Went beyond myself.” In his experience it was almost a law of interrogation that a straight apology evinced a magnanimous response.

“I must admit I’m not quite myself either,” said Fernandez. “It’s a shock to be told that you were meant to be murdered, even if you don’t altogether believe it.”

“Nasty shock,” Cribb agreed. “You won’t feel very comfortable in your boat for a while after this. Be looking over your shoulder half the time. Mind, I don’t think Bonner-Hill was murdered in the punt. He was taken aboard another boat. Went freely, too, I think. There were no signs of a struggle on the punt. Makes me think of two possibilities-either he knew the murderers, or he was meeting them by arrangement.”

Fernandez brought his hands together with a muted clap. “If he knew them, they must have known him, and they couldn’t have mistaken him for me.”

“That’s why I favour the second possibility,” said Cribb. “The hired assassin baiting his hook, if I might borrow the expression, but catching Bonner-Hill instead of you. Can you think of anyone who bears a grudge against you? I think you might be in need of protection, you see. I can probably arrange for a constable to keep watch here, if you like.”

“In Merton? Good Heavens, Sergeant, this is in the realm of fantasy. No, I can’t think of anyone who would like to kill me, and no, I don’t want a policeman in the passage, thank you.”

Cribb rubbed the back of his neck. “This is very awkward, sir. You must forgive me if I press the question further. You haven’t any enemies, in Oxford, or anywhere else?”

“How does one know one’s enemies? I shall begin to think I have, if you persist.”

“You’re a single man, sir.” Cribb smiled. “A ladies’ man, they tell me, though.” He winked. “No jealous husbands lurking in the shadows, I would hope?”

“Certainly not,” said Fernandez, without smiling.

“It’s a conundrum, sir. It really is. I’m trying my best. What about your family? Are your parents alive?”

“Both dead. I have two brothers serving in the army and an uncle in London. If you’re as desperate as you appear to be to find a motive, you may wish to speculate on the fact that he is Deputy Governor of Coldbath Fields House of Correction.”

“The Steel, sir?” Cribb’s eyes lit up as if mention had been made of his school. “I know it well. My word, this is a small world! You’re right, though. It’s not impossible for someone to have seen a way of taking revenge on your uncle by attacking you. Old lags get a lot of time to work up hatred, and to scheme. I’ll think about that. His name is the same as yours, is it?”

“Matthew Fernandez. But I’ve no reason to believe-”

“Nor me, sir. I shan’t discount it, though. You’ve been extremely patient with me. I’m an irritating sort of cove.”

Fernandez fumbled for an appropriately civil response. “Not at all. Not irritating. Well, you must admit it sounds deucedly far-fetched to suggest that three men came all the way from London in a boat to do away with a harmless don in modern history.”

Cribb smiled. The smile remained on his face as he passed through the Fellows’ Quad to the Front Quad. It was still there when he started down Merton Street.

At no point in the interview had he suggested to Fernandez that the three men had started from London.

He marched into Oxford Police Station and announced to Thackeray that he was catching the next train to Paddington. “I’m going to see the Deputy Governor at the Steel,” he said. “If anything develops here, you can use the telephone set to leave a message at the Yard. I should be back tonight.”

“Cribb, you don’t look a day older than you did in the infantry,” said Mr. Barry, warder-in-chief of Coldbath Fields House of Correction. “Police work evidently keeps you young. What are you now-inspector?”

“Sergeant only,” Cribb admitted. “Haven’t done so well as you, Sam. I still speak out of turn too regular to please the high-ups. I’ll tell you what I’m here for. I want to get a few words with a party named Fernandez-Deputy Governor, if my information’s right.”

“One of my high-ups.” Barry put down his mug of tea and walked to the window. “Take a look down there.”

The office was high at the top of the North Block. Cribb glanced down the shaft formed by adjacent buildings and saw something very like a string of pearls arranged in a box, except that they were moving, rotating slowly clockwise: the cropped heads of sixty convicts at exercise.

“How many have you got in the Steel?”

“Twelve hundred, give or take a few,” said Barry. “That’s three times the number in Holloway, and they’ve got twice the ground. We arrange the exercise in shifts. Mr. Fernandez, the one you mentioned, worked it out. He’s a rare one for organizing. The treadmill’s turning from eight in the morning till nine at night. Crank. Shot drill. Everything’s on the go.”

“Including the warders, I expect,” said Cribb, sensing acrimony.

“Keeps us occupied. Come downstairs and we’ll find him. Likely as not, he’s in one of the yards. He likes to keep an eye on the exercise.”

“Is he disliked in the prison?” Cribb ventured, as they started down a flight of iron stairs.

“He devised the system,” Barry tersely answered. “What do you want with him?”

“I’m interested in his nephew. Oxford don. Has he ever mentioned him?”

“Never a word. He’s too occupied with his own family, I expect. Five sons and eight daughters. They all appear in the prison chapel every Sunday. The two eldest girls are married.” Barry selected a key from the ring chained to his belt and let them through a door to another landing. “They say that’s how he worked out the shift system-spacing out the baths on Saturday night.”

After two more flights of stairs they reached ground level. More doors, more locks, and they were in the exercise yard they had overlooked from the office. The prisoners, unsuggestive of pearls at this level, trudged mindlessly round the perimeter, their boots rasping on the stone flags. A stench of sweat hung in the air. Any thoughts Cribb might have entertained of a career in the prison service were dispersed in that yard. “It’s known as the sorry-go-round,” Barry told him. “I’m told Mr. Fernandez is in the next block.”

He led Cribb up more stairs and along a catwalk between lines of cell doors, descending again to enter a yard no different on the ground from the other, with its own shuffling circle of misery watched by yawning warders. But here an activity was taking place in a gallery above the heads of the footsloggers. In twelve narrow stalls convicts were at the treadmill, forcing their feet to keep pace with steps that sank endlessly away as an unseen wheel turned, its revolutions fixed at a rate that took no account of aching calves and skinned ankles.