The Devil's Trinity by Parker Michael

Author:Parker, Michael [Parker, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2012-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

The police picked up Sweeting Maclean about mid-day; bounced him on a traffic violation and suspicion of a crime committed the previous day. The officers claimed he fitted the description given by a witness and was required for an identity parade.

It was easy picking Maclean up because men of his character broke the rules as regularly as drawing breath. He protested vigorously when they told him they wanted him down at police headquarters for the identity parade, but all his protestations about human rights, being allowed to contact his lawyer, arrest warrants and claims that they couldn’t do this to him simply fell on deaf ears and he ended up at police H.Q.

Inspector Bain knew they had no real grounds to hold the man, but they were buying time and needed him out of the way while they searched his house during the process of recording his traffic violation and putting him into a line-up of five, off duty policemen.

There was nothing grand about the place Maclean lived in. It was situated in the poorer district of Freeport, but men like Maclean had no use for grandeur; their money was usually spent on drink, women, drugs and fast cars.

The police searched Maclean’s place thoroughly. It didn’t take long and they made sure that everything they touched was returned to its proper place. The two men searching noticed that the bed appeared to have been slept on, rather than slept in; as though somebody had lain there. The room itself was typically male but there was a pair of ladies shoes that looked as though they had been tossed carelessly on to the floor. One of the men picked them up.

“Look at these,” he said to his colleague. “And the bed.”

The other policeman was puzzled. “What am I supposed to see?” he asked.

“Girl’s shoes. If Maclean had a woman here last night, the bed would have been in one helluva mess. But the bed’s made. If a woman had made the bed before she left this room, it would have been tidy, and she wouldn’t have left her shoes behind.”

The other man nodded. “I see what you mean; the girl’s been here and gone.”

His companion put the shoes down and shrugged. “Might as well get back to the station; tell the inspector what we’ve seen.”

They let Maclean go, not because they had nothing on which to hold or charge him, but because they needed him back out on the street: he was their only lead to Helen Walsh.

He left the building with the air of someone who had cocked a snook at the police, but beneath the veneer, Maclean was angry. He was like a disturbed wildcat. He climbed into his car. It wasn’t the Buick; that was now a pile of scrap, and pulled away from the parking lot. He drove back to his house, parked the car on the roadway outside and let himself in through the front door.

The moment he stepped inside he could sense there was something wrong.

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