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‘I told you there was nothing much. I can’t think of any more . . . Oh, wait a minute. But it was nothing.’
       ‘We’ll have it just the same, Mr Carter.’
       George Carter shrugged impatiently. ‘I don’t even know what it was about. Nothing, I reckon. Maurice said - it was after the others had gone - Maurice said, “Seen much of McCloy lately, Charlie?” I think those were his words. I know the name was McCloy but it didn’t mean nothing to me. Jack didn’t like it and he was a bit shirty with Maurice. I reckon Charlie looked a bit sick. God, it was all so . . . well, it was nothing. But Charlie’d always rise. I expected him to rise. I don’t know why. He didn’t. He just made a crack about Maurice needing to sleep quiet in his bed. Said it was time he did, meaning that Maurice had so many kids and . . . well, you can get the message.’
       ‘Not altogether,’ said Wexford. ‘Had Cullam suggested that Hatton couldn’t sleep quiet in his?’
       ‘That’s right. I forgot that bit. I wish I could remember his words. Something like “I don’t have nothing to do with McCloy, I like to sleep quiet in my bed”.’
       Very interesting Wexford thought. Far from being popular, Hatton had evidently had a host of enemies. He had spent less than an hour in the Dragon and during that time he had succeeded in needling at least four men.
       ‘You mentioned all the money Hatton used to flash around,’ he said. ‘What money?’
       ‘He always had wads of it,’ said Carter. ‘I’ve known him three years and he was always flush. But he’d had more lately. He bought four rounds of double scotches last night and it didn’t even make a hole in what he’d got.’
       ‘How much had he got, Mr Carter?’
       ‘I didn’t count it, you know,’ Carter said with asperity. He blew his nose on his clean white wedding handkerchief. ‘He’d got his pay packet, but he didn’t touch that. Then he had this roll of notes. I told you I didn’t count them. How could I?’
       ‘Twenty pounds, thirty, more?’
       Carter wrinkled his forehead in an effort of concentration. ‘He paid for the first round out of a fiver and the third with another fiver. He’d got two fivers left, then. As well as that there was a wad of oncers.’ He indicated with two parted fingers a quarter of an inch. ‘I reckon he was carrying a hundred quid besides his pay.’

Chapter 4

    By lunchtime Wexford and Burden had interviewed all those members of the darts club that had been present at Jack Pertwee’s stag party with the exception of Maurice Cullam, but none of them had been able to do more than confirm that Hatton had been aggressive, vain and malicious and that he had been carrying a great deal of money.
       They returned to the police station, passing the parish church on whose steps a June bride and her attendants were being photographed. The bridegroom moved out of the throng and Wexford felt a strange sentimental pang because it was not Jack Pertwee. Then he pulled himself together and said, as they mounted the station steps under the concrete canopy:
       ‘Now if we were cops inside the covers of a detective story, Mike, we’d know for sure that Hatton was killed to stop Pertwee getting married today.’
       Burden gave a sour smile. ‘Easier to kill Pertwee, I’d have thought.’
       ‘Ah, but that’s your author’s subtlety. Still, we aren’t and he wasn’t. The chances are he was killed for the money he was carrying. There was nothing in his wallet when I found him.’
       The foyer of the police station enclosed them. Behind the long black sweep of counter Sergeant Camb sat fanning himself with a newspaper, the sweat dripping down his fore head. ‘Wexford made for the stairs.
       ‘Why not use the lift, sir?’ said Burden.
       The police station was not yet half a dozen years old, but ever since its completion the powers that be, like fussy housewives, had been unable