Jennings received this dispassionate summing-up in silence and did not respond for some time. When he did speak he sounded nervy and uncertain.
‘I do realise how extraordinarily things seem to have fallen out against me. But that in itself, though unfortunate, is hardly a proof of guilt. Isn’t all of it what’s known as circumstantial evidence?’
He was right, but Barnaby who was not running a comfort station had no intention of saying so. Instead he offered a mildly encouraging smile and turned the conversation around once more to face the past.
‘Given that all these events could, by wildly stretching the bounds of possibility, have happened coincidentally, there is still the matter of your earlier connection with Hadleigh. I presume you’re no longer going to keep up the fiction that you knew him only slightly.’
‘Our past relationship has nothing to do with this case. I give you my word.’
‘I’m afraid your word isn’t good enough, Mr Jennings. And, even if what you say is true, the fact remains that you are the only person known to us with any knowledge of Hadleigh’s background. I’m sure you wouldn’t wish to deliberately obstruct a police investigation.’
‘Naturally not.’
‘Especially when it is so plainly in your own interests to help us in any way you can.’
‘Yes, I can see that.’ His face folded in on itself. Barnaby watched him weigh and balance, assess a chance here, a dead end there, all behind a frown of deepening uncertainty. It was like watching someone trying to read a map in the dark. Eventually Jennings said, ‘All right. But I need a smoke, a wash, something to eat and, if that was the best coffee you can produce, a cup of decent tea.’
It was almost half an hour later. Jennings had been escorted to the men’s lavatory, where he had washed and shaved and smoked a couple of his cigarillos. Troy had gladly accepted one when it was offered, but found it a sad disappointment. Bitter, with a fragrance rather like rotting leaves. He smoked half, then, minding his manners for once, flushed the rest discreetly down the loo.
Settled once more in the interview room a WPC entered with a tray holding two rounds of sandwiches, three cups of tea and a fresh jug of water. It was a large tray and obviously extremely heavy, but Troy made no move to take it from her. If equality was what they wanted - the tray descended with a crash to the table - equality was what they could have.
Jennings ate a little, drank his tea and settled back, arms folded, looking more relaxed. ‘So,’ he said, ‘where do you want me to start?’
‘From the beginning,’ said Barnaby, apparently not at all discouraged by his interviewee’s renewed insouciance. He moved his chair slightly so that the remaining sandwich was outside his line of vision, for he was extremely hungry and had no wish to be distracted. ‘From when you first met Hadleigh.’
‘Right.’ Jennings paused, his expression reflective and quite grave. Yet there was something anticipatory about it, too. He looked pleased that it was within his gift to unlock and unravel the mystery of another man’s life.
‘I met Gerald at my thirtieth birthday bash. A girl from Barts, where I was working at the time, brought him along.’
‘Barts?’ repeated the chief inspector. ‘You mean the hospital?’
‘Bartle Bogle Hegerty.’
‘Ah.’ He was none the wiser.
‘The advertising agency. I was one of their copywriters. Had a garden flat in Maida Vale.’
‘And you became friends.’
‘Not spontaneously. In fact I didn’t see him again for some weeks. Then we ran into each other - accidentally on purpose as I discovered later - in the booking hall at Warwick Avenue underground. I can see him now, feeding money into the automatic ticket machine. Knife-creased flannels, navy blazer, open-necked shirt and cravat. Barely forty and he looked like some retired colonel from central casting.
‘We discovered we were travelling in the same direction and started talking about writing. We’d touched on this at our first meeting but only briefly, parties being what they are. Gerald was attending Creative Writing classes at the City Lit. I, in common with just about everyone else in advertising, was wrestling with my first novel. Before he got off, at Kensal Green, he asked if we could meet and talk further.
‘My first inclination was to refuse. I don’t really think there’s much point in discussing the actual process of writing. It’s a peculiar and essentially solitary business and you have to do it yourself to get the feel of it. Like swimming or riding a bike. But there was that about him which intrigued me. I can best describe it as a hugely concentrated carefulness. He was the most watchful man I ever met. So I agreed, largely out of curiosity. I wanted to find out more about him.
‘I suggested a drink to keep things casual and he seemed happy with that. In fact on the first occasion he only stayed twenty minutes. Said he had a date and rushed off. We met a few more times. Had a meal once at his place, a completely characterless flat in a mansion block near Westminster cathedral. Mainly we discussed the authors we admired. He always talked about books in a purely technical way. He thought you could take them apart, discover how they’d been put together and then assemble one yourself rather like the engine of a car. He didn’t understand their mystery at all. The fact that the best ones had a secret life that forever slipped through your fingers.’
Barnaby shifted restlessly. ‘We seem to be drifting away from the main issue, Mr Jennings.’
‘Not at all. This is absolutely germane, as you will shortly see. He read me a couple of his stories. Rigor mortis, inspector. Neatly typed. A beginning, middle and end and dead as mutton from line one. I did not respond in kind. I’ve never read my work to anyone. To do so would make me feel uncomfortable. Precious. Like one of those dreadful Bloomsburies.
‘These casual meetings went on for about three months. I asked questions, the way one does with a new acquaintance, but he’d answer only grudgingly, a crumb at a time. I discovered he’d been brought up in Kent, the only child of middle-class parents now both dead. That he’d gone to a minor public school and had a dullish job in the Civil Service. I couldn’t decide whether I’d lost my knack of being able to prise people apart and winkle out their secrets or if he was simply a bore with hidden shallows. God knows there’s enough of them about. In any event I came to the conclusion I’d wasted enough time on him and decided to call it a day.’
Callous bugger, thought Sergeant Troy. He could see how the bloke earned a good screw telling stories though. Even though nothing very dramatic had happened so far Jennings had the trick of implying that, any minute now, it just might. Troy said, ‘How did Mr Hadleigh take that?’
‘I didn’t put it so bluntly of course. Implied it was only temporary. Told him I was on a roll with the writing and didn’t want to risk losing it. As I still had my day job and very little spare time that wasn’t an unreasonable excuse. After I told him he hung up. Didn’t say anything at all. There was this rather heavy silence then - click.’
‘I must say, Mr Jennings,’ said Barnaby, ‘you have excellent recall for something that happened so long ago.’
‘I remember it clearly because of what came next. I suppose half an hour must have passed. I was getting ready to go out. I had met Ava by then and was taking her to dinner at the Caprice. The doorbell rang. It was Gerald. He pushed straight past me into the flat. He was as white as a sheet. His face, always so smooth and tight, was all broken up. He looked crazed. His hair was on end as if be’d been tugging at it and his eyes were unfocused. He didn’t seem to see me, just started striding about in a jerky way as if someone was goading him. Then he began shouting, disjointed questions and declarations all garbled up together in a sick sort of muddle. I tried to calm him down. To find out what the matter was. But every time I attempted to speak he drowned me out. Why was I doing this? What had he done wrong? Was I trying to kill him?
‘Then he slumped into my armchair and started gasping. Desolate wheezing sounds, fighting for breath. Up till then, though annoyed at being held up, I must admit I was also rather excited by the eruptive and dramatic nature of the event. But now I became really alarmed. I thought he might be having a fit. I got some whisky, made him drink it and poured another. I suppose I felt that if I got him drunk I could calm him down and find out just what the hell was going on. He gulped the stuff, splashing it all over his shirt and trousers. His clothes already looked as if they’d been thrown on. One of his cufflinks was missing. His shoe laces weren’t properly tied. While I was in the bedroom, ringing Ava, he started to cry.
‘I had left the door slightly open and could see him, reflected in a looking glass, though he couldn’t see me. He picked up a scarf that was lying, together with my coat, over the back of the chair. I remember thinking, he’s going to mop his face with it which just showed how far gone he was, for his manners were always so archaically elaborate as to be almost a joke. But instead he laid the scarf against his cheek and then to his lips.’
Here Max Jennings paused, helping himself to some water, half filling a tumbler. Troy watched, his foxy features screwed up with distaste.
‘You may all,’ continued Jennings, once more seated, ‘have been way ahead of me on this one. I don’t think I was at all unsophisticated, yet it simply never occurred to me that Gerald might be harbouring such feelings. Firstly, there was absolutely nothing in his manner or appearance to suggest homosexuality - at least to a heterosexual like myself. Then there was the fact that, the first time we met, he was with a female date. Anyway, as you can imagine, I was now doubly determined to be rid of him. And, if humanly possible, without provoking any sort of declaration on his part. So I strode back into the sitting room, all brisk and rugger bugger, and said that my girlfriend had given me a hell of a rocket for keeping her waiting and I had to shoot off instantly.
‘He took not the slightest notice. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t bring myself to touch him. To try and coax him out of his chair and through the front door. And I certainly wasn’t going to leave him there. I decided to call a cab, thinking if I said he’d been taken ill the driver might help me shift him. But when I picked up the phone Gerald leapt up, ran across the room and snatched at the receiver. He cried out, “Don’t send me away”, burst into a positive avalanche of tears and fell to the carpet grasping me round the knees and practically knocking me over. It was ludicrous and pathetic and also a bit unnerving. I mean, he was a big bloke.
‘I said fatuous things like, “Come on now, Gerald” and, “Pull yourself together” - all the while trying to walk away with him bumping on his knees after me. Then he seized my hand and when he did that everything changed. Because there was nothing even remotely sexual about it. It was simply desperate, like someone hanging from their fingertips to the edge of a cliff. I stopped feeling threatened and helped him to his feet. We went into the kitchen, where I sat him down and made some coffee. Before he had a chance to launch into any sort of declaration I made it plain that the idea of being loved by another man was wholly repugnant to me. And that if he spoke a single word along those lines I would have nothing more to do with him. Of course this was my intention anyway but I could see he’d never go if I said as much.
‘Once I’d made the decision to give this bizarre and rather unpleasant incident as much time as it took to sort it out and clear it permanently away the whole atmosphere lightened. Gerald became more relaxed, if still very anxious. He was by then extremely drunk. If he hadn’t been I doubt very much if what followed would have taken place.’
‘And what was that, Mr Jennings?’ asked Barnaby.
‘He told me all about himself,’ said Max Jennings. ‘But this time it was the truth.’
At this point in Max Jennings’ revelations the tape ran out, illustrating, as he himself was the first to remark, a grasp of narrative technique that many a human storyteller might envy.
Barnaby inserted the new one in a highly ambivalent state of mind. He found it difficult to take Jennings’ measure. The man seemed to be talking freely enough, but was that only because he had been pushed, almost threatened, into doing so? And although what had been said so far sounded convincing it had to be remembered that Jennings told convincing lies for a living.
Even so the chief inspector could not deny a slightly queasy frisson of expectation at the thought that the true life story of Gerald Hadleigh was (perhaps) about to be unrolled before him. He girded his attention and marshalled his wits. Concentrated listening, especially to an extended monologue, is a tiring business. The chief inspector was surprised to find he still felt quite crisp and wondered briefly if this could in any way be connected to his spartan diet.
As he started the tape, giving the date and time of the interview and listing those present, Barnaby watched Jennings closely. He had once more shifted to the edge of his seat, where he perched trembling slightly. His shoulders were hunched and his hands, fingers loosely meshed, lay motionless in his lap. There was no attempt to re-establish the previous ‘candid’ eye contact. This time, as he began to speak, he stared fixedly at the floor.
‘The Gerald Hadleigh who came to my party was an invention. Even the name was false. He was born Liam Hanlon in Southern Ireland. The only child of a poor family. Literally a potato patch, a pig and a shotgun for the rabbits. His father was a monstrous man, a drunkard who beat his wife half to death on more than one occasion and the child too if he got in the way. As you can imagine, during this wretchedly cruel existence the boy and his mother grew very close, though they were careful never to show affection for each other in front of her husband. Somehow they both survived. The neighbours, such as they were, for it was a scattered community, knew what was going on but didn’t interfere. If a man’s fist sometimes slipped - well, that was between him and his wife. The priest, the Garda, all knew and did nothing.