Passing Strange by Catherine Aird

Author:Catherine Aird
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

11

Ophicleide

There were undoubtedly regimes in other parts of the world where the police had ways of making people talk. And had men on their staff who specialized in doing so. They existed in those countries where the police could treat suspects just as they liked: without awkward questions being asked in the Houses of Parliament. Where, in fact, it was pretty much routine also to lock up those who even asked those awkward questions.

There were techniques – highly sophisticated techniques – for getting useful information out of people when they were being interviewed. These owed almost everything to art and almost nothing to intimidation. They were used by every law enforcement agency there was.

And in England there was no way short of torture – peine forte et dure had been tried on Guy Fawkes – of compelling anyone to tell the truth. A man could be sent to prison for seven years for not telling it – but that was something different.

None of these facts was of the slightest use to Detective-Inspector Sloan now. Truth didn’t even enter into the matter at this stage because there was no way at all of questioning someone who was not prepared to speak. Non-verbal communication had its limitations.

Superintendent Leeyes wasn’t at the Police Station any more. He’d gone home but at least Sloan was able to be sitting at his own desk again when Crosby reported to him.

Having declared that she had nothing to say, Richenda Hilary Pemberton Mellows proceeded – with notable strongmindedness – to say nothing.

“Not even name and number,” said Crosby, who was an avid cinema-goer. In all the best war films soldiers who were taken prisoner always gave their name and number before refusing to answer the enemy’s questions. Richenda Mellows did not seem to have heard of the Geneva Convention.

And if – in an earlier tradition – like Greta Garbo she only wanted to be alone she did not say so.

“She said nothing at all,” repeated Crosby.

It was all very well for police in other countries to say that they had ways of making people talk. That was no help to Sloan now. In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Neither he nor anyone else was able to raise a peep out of Richenda Mellows. Questioning was essentially a two-way business. Without a response it became suspiciously like a harangue. And after a little while a man began to feel a trifle foolish talking to a girl who would not answer back.

Sloan discarded the idea of one ploy straightaway.

Sometimes back-chat between police officers succeeded where straightforward questioning of suspects failed. Lesser criminal fry could occasionally be drawn into giving themselves away by the badinage of a couple of alert policemen. Unless well done it tended to sound perilously like the act of a stage comedian and his feedman.

First policeman: Hullo, hullo, who have we here?

Second policeman: Little Bill Sikes.

And what has little Bill Sikes done this time?

Stolen the lead from the church roof.

What, him steal the lead from the church roof? (Pause for rich chuckle).

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