fine.” Hazel sat up. She looked round at the moaning form of Harry Sanford stretched out on the pavement. “Read him his right and then I’ll work out what we do with him.
“I’m not really sure what we can do with him.” Michelle Russo was part of the crown prosecution service. She was not quite as tall as Hazel's 1.8 metres, and she looked slimmer without being overly skinny. She had a reassuringly Scottish accent and carefully prepared shoulder length hair. Today she was in a dark wine coloured business suit. Hazel was in the black jeans and sweater she had worn earlier, her coat being over the chair in her office. “I mean, the man’s an idiot.” She and Hazel were looking at Harry Sanford through a viewer linked to the camera in the interview room. Usually the criminals knew they were being watched. Harry, on some level, was probably aware of it but he didn’t seem to care. He looked finished, sitting on the not very comfortable chair, his elbows on the desk, head in hands. He’d been relieved of his overcoat and the few personal items he came on with. Now he wore a cheap, badly fitted suit and tie. The shirt collar was open. The stringy dark coloured tie pulled loose. Soon that would be removed in case he decided to kill himself.
“Idiot is a strong word.” Hazel said.
“You think so? Most criminals would be bright enough to want legal representation by now.”
“Harry is in trouble.” Hazel said, “I doubt if he wants his usual solicitor.”
Michelle Russo shook her head, “It won’t be long before Eddie Symes knows we have one of his men here. Do you even know what’s going on?” She leaned casually against the wall. “You never seem to know, Hazel.”
“I know Harry isn’t going to want to go back to working for Eddie Symes. Not even if we could let him out. He’s not an idiot and he’s not so stupid as to think his friends are his friends any more.” Hazel pushed open the door and went in with Russo right behind. “Hello, Harry, how are you feeling.”
“Don’t bleeding ask.” He looked up at Hazel, “You nearly broke my back. I ache all over.”
“So you should.” Hazel sat down. Russo also sat and said, to the listening microphone “Detective Sergeant Vernon and Michelle Russo have entered the room.” Then she gave the time.
“I know who she is.” Harry said, “She’s the girl who wants to lock me up.”
“The judge does that.” Hazel said. She let the “girl” comment pass. Harry wasn’t very bright, and he was also old fashioned. To him any woman younger than himself was a girl. She opened the file she’d brought in with her. “She just puts the evidence together.” She shook her head, “What have you gone and got yourself into Harry? This stuff is way out of your league.”
“Tony said….” He immediately stopped talking.
“Tony Symes?” Hazel said. Harry shook his head forcefully, “You’ve been taking orders from Eddie’s brother?”
“I never said Tony Symes. I never did.”
“Harry, Tony doesn’t believe in employing anyone more intelligent than he is, and he is not the brains of that family.” Tony was Eddie’s younger brother. His younger, less intelligent and far less capable brother. The working of the local gangs was a bit outside Hazel’s usual sphere of knowledge but even she knew Eddie let his little brother handle only the simple things in life. By most standards Tony was quite the legitimate businessman in the literal sense of the word. If only because he was too unreliable to be trusted in a criminal capacity.
“I didn’t say Tony Symes.” Harry said between clenched teeth.
“All right, Harry.” Hazel said calmly, “You never said Tony Symes. For no reason that we can imagine you and your friend, Charlie Harris, decided to go out and kill two men at random.” She selected a couple of mug shots from the folder. “These two men.”
“No, I didn’t. You can’t prove that. You can’t prove it.”
“Scotty Mayne.” Hazel showed him one of the mugshots. “Not the most pleasant man who ever walked the Earth perhaps. Multiple arrests for affray, grievous bodily harm, threatening behaviour. Two convictions for assault. His real name was Hamish but everyone called him Scotty.”
“Very original.” Michelle said in her Scottish accent.
“Then we have Mark Wells.” Hazel showed him the second mugshot, “Mark wasn’t as bad as Scotty. He wasn’t a violent man. He might sell some drugs now and then. He might hang out with bad people but he wasn’t really bad.!
“I don’t know them, never seen them before. You can’t prove anything.”
“How is your friend, Charlie Harris, these days, Harry? We’ve been looking for him, but we can’t find him anywhere. Not as easily as we found you anyway.”
“He’s fine. I don’t know, I’ve not seen him.”
“Not dead is he. By any chance?”
“What? Charlie? No, he’s not dead. He isn’t. Not Charlie.”
“The reason I ask,” Hazel said, “is because these two men.” She tapped the mug shots.
“I don’t know them, I told you, I never seen them before.”
“These men that you don’t know and have never seen before in your life, they worked for a man named Victor Monk.”
“I don’t know…”
“I don’t expect you have met him.” Hazel said, she had never met Victor Monk and she only knew of three people who had actually met him. “But you know who he is, don’t you? Every person I know has heard of Victor Monk. I even know a vicar who has heard of Monk.” In that case the vicar was one of the few people who had actually met Monk.
“I know who he is.” Sanford admitted. “Of course I know.”
“You and Charlie killed a couple of men who worked for the biggest gangster in town, Harry. I mean Monk is right at the top of the tree. I know your boss, Eddie Symes, is new in town and I know his brother isn’t all that bright, but I cannot believe Eddie would sanction something like that. Monk could take out Eddie, his brother, you, the whole gang before breakfast. But maybe he just wants the two men who killed his two men. You and Charlie Harris.”
“We didn’t…”
“So you keep telling me, Harry, and so I keep not believing what you say.” Hazel said, “You and Charlie are local boys, you’re not like Eddie and tony, they just breezed in because there was a gap in the market. You and Charlie go back years, the two of you were at school together. Where is he, Harry? Where’s Charlie?”
“I don’t bloody well know, you stupid bitch.” The handcuffs kept him where he was. which was good. Hazel didn’t want to hurt him again.
“To bring the conversation to a more reasonable level,” Michelle said, “On the question of proof, we can and will prove you killed those men.”
“I didn’t.”
“We have the murder weapons, a couple of flick knives, we have the dealer you, personally, bought them off.”
“No,
