A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [189]
‘Fight on the wing,’ Alfie said with a feeble attempt at bravado. ‘I tried to break it up and this is what I got.’
‘No friends in here then?’ Roper asked once Alfie was seated opposite him and Wallis at the table. ‘You ain’t gotta
lot anywhere else either. Your old woman keeps slagging you off, and so does Jack Trueman.’
At the mention of Trueman’s name Alfie looked startled.
‘Yup, we’ve got him,’ Roper said gleefully. ‘He’s been singing like a canary too. Sez you sold Angela for two ton at the card party, and Molly reckons she pleaded with you to stop.’
Wallis glanced at Roper, almost certainly rather startled by such an outrageous lie. Trueman hadn’t said one word as yet.
‘That’s a fuckin’ lie,’ Alfie roared out.
‘What’s a lie? That he wasn’t there, or about Molly?’
‘He were there all right,’ Alfie growled. ‘But it were Molly that sold Angie, I was too pissed to do anything.’
Alfie stiffened as he suddenly realized what he’d admitted, a hunted look coming into his eyes.
Roper was pleased to see Wallis sitting up straight now, a faint smirk on his lips.
‘You don’t have anything to fear from Trueman now,’ Roper said soothingly. ‘He’s in hospital after a good kicking, handcuffed to the bed with an officer on the door. Soon as he’s well enough to move he’ll be inside. We won’t bring him here of course, not if you give us a hand sorting out the last loose ends.’
Roper paused just long enough for that to sink in, then carried on. ‘We’ve known for some time he was at your house that night. Molly told us she was having it off with him.’
‘She told you that?’ Alfie said incredulously. ‘’E wouldn’t touch’er with someone else’s!’
‘Come on, Alfie,’ Roper wheedled. ‘Molly’s an attractive woman, you can’t blame her for being tempted to go off and live with him, and he could give her a much better life
than you could.’
Wallis blew his nose noisily, probably to cover up a snigger, and Alfie rose from his chair, clearly rattled. ‘She’s lying through her teeth,’ he burst out. ‘Jack Trueman likes ’em young, boys or girls.’E wouldn’t even look at an old boiler like’er.’
‘That’s not what he told me.’ Roper shook his head. ‘He said when you were upstairs with Angela, he was screwing Molly in the front room.’
‘’E’s fucking lyin’. I never went upstairs with Angela. It was ’im!’ He bought her for two hundred nicker and shagged’er.’
Much as Roper wanted the truth out of Alfie, it made his stomach churn to hear the man speak so flippantly of his daughter’s rape. But he had to fight down his disgust and carry on. ‘Come on, Alfie!’ he exclaimed. ‘You expect me to believe that? I’ve talked to you dozens of times and you’ve told me all sorts, but never that before. Are you just mad because he was screwing Molly behind your back?’
‘’E could screw Molly in front of me and I wouldn’t care,’ Alfie raged, white foam gathering on his lips. ‘But I ain’t gonna’ave it said I touched our Angela, cos I didn’t. I was so pissed that night I couldn’t have got it up if Jayne Mansfield came in and begged me.’
Roper half smiled. Alfie had consistently denied raping Angela, the only part of his version of the events of that evening that was consistent. Yet even after learning the truth about who raped and who killed her, Roper had no intention of letting the louse off the hook. He wanted to get him so angry that he’d reveal more of his foul secrets.
‘Trueman reckons you were frightened of Molly leaving you because she’s the one that got you young birds.’
‘She fuckin’ got ’im them, fer money,’ Alfie exploded, banging on the table. ‘And boys too. I likes real women, not some skinny little piece.’
Roper kept this up for some time, with each question bringing up some insulting and totally untrue statement that Trueman or Molly was supposed to have made. Alfie got angrier and