A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [98]
‘No one wants to believe Alfie done it more than me,’ Johnny said, thumping his big fists down on the bar. ‘But it certainly ain’t cut ’n’ dried that ’e did. The Old Bill took fingerprints from all the bleedin’ glasses in the card room, but so far they ain’t matched them up wiv any names. Why’s that? Surely any mate of Alfie’s would ’ave a record? And why would a piece of shit like Alfie shield those geezers? ’E must be scared of ’em, that’s why.’
Fifi didn’t get to hear the rest of Johnny’s thoughts on the investigation because Dan whisked her out of the pub in a hurry. He said he’d heard quite enough on the subject and Fifi was to stop dwelling on it.
But she couldn’t stop dwelling on it. It was on her mind from the moment she woke up in the morning until she fell asleep. She went over and over what she’d seen that day, and analysed it painstakingly. Yet there were still more questions than there were answers, and Johnny had only added to them.
She tried to picture the scene at number 11 that morning. Angela lying in bed crying because she was hurt. The rest of the family calmly getting dressed up in their best clothes to go out for the day.
Alfie was a brute, there was no question about that, but was it humanly possible for him to have gone upstairs just before they left, put a pillow over Angela’s face and smothered her, then gone off for a picnic at the seaside?
Somehow a pillow seemed the most unlikely weapon for a man who normally used fists, pokers or sticks.
Yet if Alfie was innocent of this charge, why on earth was he refusing to name the other men? She would have expected a rat like him to squeal immediately when his own life was at risk. That suggested to her that there was something far bigger behind all this, or that Alfie knew the police didn’t have enough evidence to convict him.
The police had come back to her just a few days ago, asking if she knew or would recognize any of the men she had seen going into one of Alfie’s card parties. The only one she remembered reasonably well was a big man of perhaps fifty or so. But she couldn’t recall his face, only that he wore a very smart grey suit and it seemed incongruous to be wearing it to go slumming at Alfie’s. But she hadn’t seen anyone arrive for that last card game because she and Dan were watching television and the evening sun was so bright they’d pulled the curtains over to get a better picture.
Fifi had asked the police point-blank if it was true they thought Alfie and Molly might be innocent. To her disappointment they would not offer a personal opinion. One officer said in a very tight-lipped manner that everyone was innocent until proved guilty and they were still following various lines of enquiry. That hadn’t been any help at all.
It didn’t help either that Dan wouldn’t discuss any of this with her. Every time she mentioned it he went all silent on her. A few times he’d actually stomped off out. And she worried that one night he wouldn’t come back.
‘I’m going to work all day tomorrow,’ Dan announced that night as they were getting ready for bed.
Fifi was just pulling her nightdress over her head, and as soon as she’d got it on properly, she rounded on him and asked why.
‘For the extra money of course, sweetheart,’ he said wearily, as if that was obvious. ‘We can’t move away without it. Why don’t you spend the day going round some flat-letting agencies and putting our name down?’
One side of Fifi’s mind told her Dan was being sensible, but the other side was suspicious of him. Saturday afternoons had always been special to them. Dan would have a bath and change when he got home at noon, then they’d have some lunch together and often go out somewhere.
Even when she was pregnant and he was working late for extra money, he wouldn’t work on Saturday afternoons because he said the time with Fifi was far more important. The only occasion he’d ever worked a Saturday afternoon before was the day Angela