‘Will Miss Hartmann be all right?’ Miller asked.

She looked up, her eyes swollen from weeping and nodded briefly. ‘Don’t worry about me. Will you come back for me, Jack?’

‘I’ll leave you my car.’ He dropped the keys on top of the bar.

‘Nothing to say, Joanna?’ Faulkner demanded.

She turned away, her shoulders shaking and he started to laugh. Miller turned him round, gave him a solid push out on to the landing and Morgan closed the door on the sound of that terrible weeping.

19

It was quiet in the Interrogation Room. The constable at the door picked his nose impassively and thunder sounded again in the distance, a little nearer this time. Harold held the mug of tea in both hands and lifted it to his lips. It was almost cold, the surface covered by a kind of unpleasant scum that filled him with disgust. He shuddered and put the mug down on the table.

‘How much longer?’ he demanded and the door opened.

Mallory moved to the window and stood there staring out into the rain. Wade positioned himself at the other end of the table and waited, the trousers neatly folded over one arm.

Harold was aware of a strange, choking sensation in his throat. He wrenched at his collar and glanced appealingly at Brady who had closed the door after the constable who had discreetly withdrawn. The big Irishman looked troubled. He held Harold’s glance for only a moment, then dropped his gaze.

‘What did you do with the tenner?’ Mallory asked without turning round.

‘Tenner? What tenner?’ Harold said.

Mallory turned to face him. ‘The ten-pound note the girl had in her stocking top – what did you do with it?’

‘I’ve never handled a ten-pound note in my life.’

‘If you’d had any sense you’d have destroyed it, but not you.’ Mallory carried on as if there had been no interruption. ‘Where would you change it at that time of night – a pub? Or what about the station buffet – you said you were there.’

The flesh seemed to shrink visibly on Harold’s bones. ‘What the hell are you trying to prove?’

Mallory picked up the phone and rang through to the C.I.D. general office. ‘Mallory here,’ he told the Duty Inspector. ‘I want you to get in touch with the manager of the buffet at the Central Station right away. Find out if anyone changed a ten-pound note last night. Yes, that’s right – a ten-pound note.’

Harold’s eyes burned in a face that was as white as paper. ‘You’re wasting your time.’ He was suddenly belligerent again. ‘They could have had half a dozen ten-pound notes through their hands on a Saturday night for all you know, so what does it prove?’

‘We’ll wait and see shall we?’