‘Rose Faversham. Who the bloody hell’s she when she’s at home? Never heard of her.’

‘You might have known her as Mad Maggie.’

‘Mad Maggie. Now why would a bloke like me want to break into her house? That’s assuming he did things like that in the first place, hypnotically, like.’

Hypnotically? Did he mean hypothetically? I didn’t even ask. ‘To rob her, perhaps?’

‘Nah. You reckon a woman who went around looking like she did would have anything worth stealing? Hypnotically, again, of course.’

‘Of course, Fingers. This entire conversation is hypnotic. I understand that.’

‘Mad Maggie hardly draws attention to herself as a person worth robbing. Not unless you’re into antiques.’

‘And you’re not?’

‘Wouldn’t know a Chippendale from a Gainsborough.’

‘Know anybody who is?’

‘Nah.’

‘What about the thousands of pounds they say she had hidden in her mattress?’

‘And pigs can fly, Constable Bascombe.’

‘What about silverware?’

‘There’s a bob or two in a nice canteen of cutlery. Hypnotically, of course.’

The one thing that might have been of value to someone other than herself was Rose’s silverware, and that had been left alone. Even if Fingers had been surprised by her and killed her, he would hardly have left his sole prize behind when he ran off. On the other hand, with a murder charge hanging over it, the silverware might have turned out to be more of a liability than an asset. I looked at his face, into his eyes, trying to decide whether he was telling the truth. You couldn’t tell anything from Fin-negan’s face, though; it was like a ferret mask.

‘Look,’ he said, licking his lips, ‘I might be able to help you.’

‘Help me?’

‘Yeah. But… you know… not standing here, like this…’

I realized I was still holding him by the lapels, and I had hoisted him so high he had to stand on his tiptoes. I relaxed my grip. ‘What do you have in mind?’

‘We could go to the Prince Albert, have a nice quiet drink. They’ll still be open.’

I thought for a moment. The hard way hadn’t got me very far. Maybe a little diplomacy was in order. Though it galled me to be going for a drink with a thieving illiterate like Fingers Finnegan, there were larger things at stake. I swallowed my pride and said, ‘Why not?’

Nobody paid us a second glance, which was all right by me. I bought us both a pint, and we took a quiet table by the empty fireplace. Fingers brought a packet of Woodbines out of his pocket and lit up. His smoke burned my lungs and caused me a minor coughing fit, but he didn’t seem concerned by it.

‘What makes you think you can help me?’ I asked him when I’d recovered.

‘I’ll bet you’re after Mad Maggie’s murderer, aren’t you?’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Word gets around. The real police think it was gypsies, you know. They’ve got one of them in the cells right now. Found some silver candlesticks in his possession.’

‘How did they know whether Rose had any silver candlesticks?’

He curled his lip and looked at me as if I were stupid. ‘They don’t, but they don’t know that she didn’t, do they? All they need’s a confession, and he’s a brute in the interrogation room is that short-arse bastard.’

‘Who?’

‘Longbottom. It’s what we call him. Longbottom. Short-arse. Get it?’

‘I’m falling off my chair with laughter. Have you got anything interesting to tell me or haven’t you?’

‘I might have seen someone, mightn’t I?’

‘Seen someone? Who? Where?’

He rattled his empty glass on the table. ‘That’d be telling, wouldn’t it?’

I sighed, pushed back the disgust I felt rising like vomit in my craw and bought him another pint. He was smirking all over his ferret face when I got back.

‘Ta very much, Constable Bascombe. You’re a true gentleman, you are.’

The bugger was enjoying this. ‘Fingers,’ I said, ‘you don’t know how much your praise means to me. Now, to get back to what you were saying.’

‘It’s Michael. I told you. And none of your Micks or Mikes. My name’s Michael.’

‘Right, Michael. You know, I’m a patient man, but I’m beginning to feel just a wee bit let down here. I’m thinking that perhaps it might not be a bad idea for me to take you to Detective Sergeant Longbottom and see if he can’t persuade you to tell him what you know.’

Fingers jerked upright. ‘Hang on a minute. There’s no need for anything drastic like that. I’m just having my little bit of fun, that’s all. You wouldn’t deny a fellow his little bit of fun, would you?’

‘Heaven forbid,’ I muttered. ‘So now you’ve had your fun, Fin- er… Michael, perhaps we can get back to business?’

‘Right… well… theatrically speaking, of course, I might have been in Aston Place on the night you’re talking about.’

Theatrically? Let it go, Frank. ‘Last Wednesday, during the air raid?’

‘Right. Well I might have been, just, you know, being a concerned citizen and all, going round checking up all the women and kids was in the shelters, like.’

‘And the old people. Don’t forget the old people.’

‘Especially the old people. Anyway, like I said, I just might have been passing down Aston Place during the air raid, seeing that everyone was all right, like, and I might just have seen someone coming out of Mad Maggie’s house.’

‘Did you?’

‘Well, it was dark, and that bloody smoke from the power station doesn’t make things any better. Like a real pea-souper, that is. Anyway, I might just have seen this figure, like, a quick glimpse.’

‘I understand. Any idea who it was?’

‘Not at first I hadn’t, but now I’ve an idea. I just hadn’t seen him for a long time.’

‘Where were you?’

‘Coming out of- Can’t have been more than two or three houses away. When I saw him he gave me a real fright, so I pressed myself back in the doorway, like, so he couldn’t see me.’

‘But you got a look at him?’

‘Not a good one. First thing I noticed, though, is he was wearing a uniform.’

‘What kind of uniform?’

‘I don’t know, do I? Soldier’s, I suppose.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Well, he moved off sort of sideways, like.’

‘Crabwise?’

‘Come again?’

‘Like a crab?’

‘If you say so, Constable Bascombe.’

Something about all this was beginning to make sense, but I wasn’t sure I liked the sense it made. ‘Did you notice anything else?’

‘I saw him go into a house across the street.’

‘Which one?’ I asked, half of me not wanting to know the answer.

‘The milkman’s,’ he said.

I didn’t want to, but I had to see this through. Tommy Markham. My own godson. All afternoon I thought about it, and I could see no way out of confronting Harry and Tommy. No matter how much thinking I did, I couldn’t come up with an explanation, and if Tommy had murdered Rose Faversham, I wanted to know why. He had certainly been acting oddly since he came back from the army hospital, but I had acted rather strangely myself after they released me from the hospital in Manchester in 1918. I knew better than to judge a man by the way he reacts to war.

I consoled myself with the fact that Tommy might not have killed Rose, that she was already dead when he went to see her, but I knew in my heart that didn’t make sense. Nobody just dropped in on Mad Maggie to see how she was doing, and the idea of two people going to see her in one night was absurd. No, I knew that the person Fingers had seen coming out of Rose’s house had to be her killer, and he swore that person was Tommy Markham.

Fingers could have been lying, but that didn’t make sense, either. For a start, he wasn’t that clever. He must also know that I would confront Tommy and that, one way or another, I’d find out the truth. No, if Fingers had killed Mad Maggie and wanted to escape blame, all he had to do was deny that he had been anywhere near her house and let the gypsy take the fall.