The Murder Code Read Online Free PDF Page B

convictions you have. Short temper, haven’t we?’
    He glared at me. ‘Sometimes.’
    ‘Sometimes.’
    While none of the charges relating to Vicki Gibson had stuck, others had. He had three convictions for assault and two for violent disorder. The usual drunken bar fights. One count of criminal damage too. Suspended sentence and fine for each offence.
    ‘Lose it when you’ve had a few, yeah?’
    ‘Sometimes.’
    ‘Anger-management issues.’ I shook my head. ‘You’re funny, aren’t you? People like you.’
    ‘Funny?’
    ‘Yeah. You always say you have trouble controlling yourselves. The red mist descends and you can’t help it. All that bullshit. But I don’t see you losing it with me. Controlling ourselves, are we?’
    ‘Maybe I’m counting to ten.’
    ‘Maybe you can. No, I don’t think so. The truth is that people like you are cowards. Right? For some reason, you only lose control when you can get away with it. Funny that, isn’t it? It makes me laugh.’
    Tom Gregory just looked at me. I stared back, letting the silence pan out. Rattling his cage was more enjoyable than it probably should have been, but I was angry. Partly it was what he’d done in the past—the kind of man he was—and partly the attitude. Maybe it was also the fact that, deep down, I suspected he was telling the truth—that he hadn’t killed her—and the possibility bothered me.
    I settled back in my chair.
    ‘I didn’t kill her,’ he said. ‘I was at—’
    ‘Yeah, you said. Shut up.’
    Gregory had already given his whereabouts the previous evening to the officers who’d arrested him earlier on. He’d then given them to us as soon as we’d walked into the interview suite. He’d been in O’Reilly’s bar from six until throwing-out time, somewhere between two and three, before leaving in the company of a middle-aged woman from the eastern quarter. He’d spent the night at her flat. We’d picked him up at the end of his walk of shame, assuming he was capable of that emotion.
    On the face of it, it was a solid alibi. He certainly stank of alcohol, and none of his clothes were bloodstained, despite it being obvious he’d been wearing them for a good twenty-four hours. O’Reilly’s was a shitty, bare-boards half-club—a bar, pool tables and a floodlit dance floor by the toilets’—but it saw enough trouble for the owner to have installed CCTV. It was also a fair distance from the grids. The address he’d given for the anonymous lady of spectacularly poor taste was even further away. I knew that area, and many of the blocks of flats there had cameras too.
    So it was either a very good alibi or a very bad one indeed.
    I said, ‘You were drunk last night.’
    ‘Yeah. So? That’s not a crime.’
    ‘But you managed to get through the evening without the red mist descending, yeah?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘You sure about that?’
    He didn’t reply.
    The door opened then, and a young WPC pushed her head in and jutted out her chin, indicating that she’d like a word. Laura and I pushed back our chairs. But I didn’t need to speak to the WPC to read the expression on her face.
    Tom Gregory had a very good alibi.
    In the observation room, I ran my hand through my hair and stared at the small monitor, which showed Gregory still sitting in the interview suite. Needless to say, my hair didn’t fall back down anything as neatly as Laura’s would have done. I don’t primp for such eventualities. I rarely face them.
    ‘He has to have done it,’ I said. ‘He has to.’
    ‘But he didn’t. Face facts, Hicks. We have camera footage of him being everywhere he claims to have been. Putting it all together, it makes it impossible he did it.’
    ‘He could have paid someone.’
    But that was grasping at straws. Deep down, I knew my theory was wrong, and I was going to need to rethink this whole thing.
    ‘He can barely pay his rent,’ Laura said. ‘Besides, the whole point of his record is he does things like that himself.