No Comebacks

'It all fits,' mused Hanley. 'She could well have been about to leave him when he found out and went at her a bit too hard. God knows, it's happened enough times.'

The postman had little more to add. He was a local man and used the local bar. Mrs Larkin had liked to have her noggin on a Saturday night, had even helped out as a barmaid one summer, but her husband soon put a stop to that. He recalled she was much younger than Larkin, bright and bubbly, not averse to a bit of flirting.

'Description?' asked Hanley.

'She was short, about five feet three inches. Rather plump, well-rounded anyway. Curling dark hair. Giggled a lot. Plenty of chest. Postman recalled when she pulled a pint of ale from those old-style beer pumps they used to have, it was worth watching. But Larkin went wild when he found out. Came in and pulled her home. She left him, or disappeared soon afterwards.'

Hanley rose and stretched. It was nearly midnight. He clapped a hand on the young detective's shoulder.

'It's late. Get yourself home. Write it all up in the morning.'

Hanley's last visitor of the night was his chief inspector, the scene-of-crime investigator.

'It's clean,' he told Hanley. The last brick removed, and not a sign of anything else that might be helpful.'

'Then it's up to the poor woman's body to tell us the rest of what we want to know,' said Hanley. 'Or Larkin himself.'

'Has he talked yet?' asked the chief inspector.

'Not yet,' said Hanley, 'but he will. They all talk in the end.'

The chief inspector went home. Hanley called his wife and told her he would be spending the night at the station. Just after midnight he went down to the cells. The old man was awake, sitting on the edge of his bunk, staring at the opposite wall. Hanley jerked his head at the police officer with him and they all trooped up to the interview room. The policeman sat in a corner with his notebook at the ready. Hanley faced the old man and read him the caution:

'Herbert James Larkin, you are not obliged to say anything. But anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence.'

Then he sat down opposite the old man.

'Fifteen years, Mr Larkin. That's long time to live with a thing like that. August of 1963, wasn't it? The neighbours remember it; the priest remembers it; even the postman remembers it. Now, why don't you tell me about it?'

The old man raised his eyes, held Hanley's gaze for a few seconds, then lowered his eyes to the table. He said nothing. Hanley kept it up almost until dawn. Larkin seemed not to tire, although the policeman in the corner yawned repeatedly. Larkin had been a night watchman for years, Hanley recalled. Probably more awake at night now than during the day.

There was a grey light filtering through the frosted-glass window of the interview room when he rose finally.

'Have it your own way,' he said. 'You may not talk, but your Violet will. Strange that, eh? Talking back from the grave behind the wall, fifteen years later. But she'll talk to the state pathologist, in a few hours now. She'll talk. She'll tell him in his laboratory what happened to her, when it happened, maybe even why it happened. Then we'll come here again, and I'll charge you.'

Slow to anger though he was, he was becoming irritated by the silence of the old man. It was not that he said little; he said abs

olutely nothing. Just stared back at Hanley with that strange look in his eyes. What was that look, Hanley asked himself. Trepidation? Fear of him, Hanley? Remorse? Mockery? No, not mockery. The man's number was up.

Finally he rose, rubbed a large hand round the stubble on his chin and went back to his office. Larkin went back to the cell.

Hanley snatched three hours' sleep in his chair, head tilted back, feet out, snoring loudly. At eight he rose, went to the rest room and washed and shaved. Two startled young police cadets surprised him there at half past eight as they came on duty and went about their business like two dormice in carpet slippers. At nine he was breakfasted and working his way through a mountain of accumulated paperwork. At 9.30 the contractor's foreman at the Mayo Road job came on the line. Hanley considered his request.

'All right,' he said at last, 'you can fence it in and concrete over.'

Twenty minutes later, Professor McCarthy was on the line.

'I've got the limbs straightened out,' he said cheerfully. 'And the skin is soft enough to take the scalpel. We're draining and drying it off now. I'll begin in an hour.'

'When can you give me a report?' asked Hanley.

'Depends what you mean,' came the voice down the line. 'The official report will take two to three days. Unofficially, I should have something just after lunch. Cause of death at least. We've confirmed the ligature round the neck. It was a stocking, as I suspected yesterday.'

The pathologist agreed to come the mile from the Store Street morgue to Hanley's office by 2.30.

The morning was uninterrupted, save by Major Dawkins, who phoned at midday.

'Bit of luck,' he said. 'Found an old friend of mine in the records office at the War House. He gave me priority.'