“Thought I might see the two of you again.”
“Well, shall we dive straight in?” starts Chris. “What were you doing at Tony Curran’s house on the day he was murdered?”
“None of your business,” says Jason. He nearly has the first skate off, though it’s a struggle.
“But you agree you were there?” asks Donna.
“Am I under arrest?”
“Not yet,” says Donna.
“Then it’s none of your business if I was or I wasn’t.” The first skate is finally off. Jason puffs like he’s gone three rounds.
“Just so you have the full picture,” says Chris, pulling out his phone from his pocket and swiping it into life. “We’d been trying to find Ian Ventham’s car on the traffic cameras near Tony Curran’s house. A nice open-and-shut case. But Ian Ventham didn’t visit Tony Curran that afternoon. But we found something even more interesting. The first traffic camera catches your car, Jason, about four hundred yards east of Tony’s house at three twenty-six, and then the next camera, on the other side of Tony’s house, catches you at three thirty-eight. So either you took twelve minutes to drive half a mile, or you stopped somewhere in between.”
Jason looks at Chris very calmly, then shrugs and starts on his right skate.
“Okay, I’ve got one too,” says Donna. “The day that Tony Curran was murdered. Did you ring him?”
“Don’t remember, I’m afraid.” Jason is picking at what seems to be an impossible knot in his laces.
“You’d remember that, though, Jason, wouldn’t you?” asks Donna. “Ringing Tony Curran? One of the old gang, wasn’t he?”
“Never been in a gang,” he says, finally making a breakthrough with the knot.
Chris nods. “But here’s our issue, Jason. A mystery number phones Tony Curran three times on the morning of his death. A number we couldn’t trace, thanks to Vodafone, and to human rights legislation. But a number that, thankfully, you had personally written down and handed to PC De Freitas. So your number, Jason?”
Jason finally has the second skate off. He nods. “That was silly of me.”
“And then, that very afternoon, you are driving along the road outside Tony Curran’s house, at which point you stop to perform some sort of errand, which takes around ten minutes. At the exact time that Tony Curran was murdered.” Chris looks at Jason for a response.
“Yep. Sounds like you’ve got yourself a mystery there,” says Jason. “Now I’ve got these skates off, I’m going to head back.”
Jason stands. Chris and Donna do too.
“I wonder if you’d like to come in and give us some fingerprints and a bit of DNA?” says Chris. “Just to eliminate you from our inquiries? We could eliminate you from two murders at once. That would be nice.”
“You should probably ask yourself why you don’t have my prints and DNA already,” says Jason. “Maybe because I’ve never been arrested for anything?”
“Never been caught, Jason,” says Chris. “That’s different.”
“Be interesting to hear a motive too,” says Jason.
“Robbery?” says Chris. “Man like that has a lot of money lying around. You got any money worries at the moment?”
“I think time’s up here, don’t you?” says Jason, starting to climb the stairs to the changing room. Chris and Donna don’t follow.
“Or are you doingCelebrity Ice Dancefor the prestige, Jason?” asks Donna. To which Jason turns and gives a genuine smile. Then he raises his middle finger, turns again, and continues toward the dressing room.
Chris and Donna see him disappear, then sit back down on their plastic chairs and look out over the empty ice.
“What do you make of that?” asks Chris.
“If he did it, why on earth would he leave a photo with him in it by the body?” asks Donna.
Chris shakes his head. “Perhaps some people are just stupid?”
“He doesn’t seem stupid,” says Donna.
