Cooper produced his identification. Mr Hicklin should have asked for it before he let him into the house, of course. But Cooper had felt reluctant to use it, and it might not have got him in any more easily.
‘You probably don’t remember me,’ he said. ‘I’m a police officer.’
‘I thought you were,’ said Hicklin.
‘I dealt with a case some years ago that you were involved in. You were a victim of the Gibson brothers.’
‘They bled me dry,’ said Hicklin. ‘I should have stood up to them, I suppose.’
‘Sometimes it’s not so easy, sir.’
‘Has something happened?’
‘I’m following up on a new inquiry.’
It was a vague enough statement, but he would have a hard job justifying it if he was ever challenged on the truth of it. ‘They were blackmailing you, weren’t they?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Well, you’ll know all about it. Ryan was the one who put the squeeze on me, and enjoyed doing it too. He has a brother, who was just as nasty.’
‘Sean.’
‘Yes, Sean. Ryan and Sean Gibson. Two signs that we’re living in a cesspit, if ever I saw them.’
‘What they were blackmailing you for – it wasn’t very serious, as I recall,’ said Cooper.
‘No. I was only siphoning off a few stores – an air filter, a box of washers, some small electrical items. And farmers have all kinds of uses for a length of conveyor belt. I was just trying to make a bit extra to keep us going. It might seem like nothing to some people now. What’s a bit of thieving these days? But I felt ashamed of what I was doing. And I knew it would have killed Mary if she’d found out where the money came from. She thought I was working overtime.’
‘Mary. Yes, that’s your wife.’
Hicklin followed his gaze as he looked round the old cottage, taking in the damp wallpaper, the dirty curtains, the carpet covered with rubbish.
‘Yes, Mary died anyway,’ said Hicklin quietly. ‘A heart attack. And I lost my job. So it was all for nothing.’
Cooper shifted uncomfortably. ‘Mr Hicklin, I remember you, and I think I know the sort of man you are. You believe in justice, don’t you?’
‘I believe in it,’ said Hicklin. ‘But I don’t expect it. Not any more.’
‘But I think you might have kept track of what happened to the Gibson brothers. Their court cases, the length of their sentences, when they were released. Perhaps where they’re living now?’
With suddenly astute eyes, Hicklin studied him for a long moment. ‘What is this about really?’
‘I can’t tell you exactly, sir.’
Hicklin seemed to come to a decision, just the way he had when he first saw Cooper standing on his doorstep. He heaved himself out of his chair and shuffled off into another room. Cooper heard him opening a drawer. He came back with an old yellow pocket file, well worn around the edges and repaired with a bit of sellotape.
‘This will be what you mean,’ he said.
‘Can I borrow it, please?’
‘Aye,’ said Hicklin. ‘Just bring it back when you can. If the world hasn’t ended by then.’
Cooper stood up and slid the file under his coat, then said, ‘Ryan Gibson worked just over there at A.J. Morton and Sons, didn’t he?’
‘Still does,’ said Hicklin. ‘I see him occasionally. You can imagine how that feels.’
A few minutes later, Cooper left Mr Hicklin in his old house with its leaky roof. Outside, the downpour was torrential. He might even have said biblical. The landscape had disappeared behind dense curtains of rain, and large pools of water had formed in Hicklin’s overgrown garden, almost blocking access to the gate.
‘You’re not in danger of flooding here, are you, sir?’ he asked.
‘I hope not,’ said Hicklin. ‘I can’t afford the insurance.’
Ryan Gibson was on his forklift truck in the huge storage yard at A.J. Morton & Sons. The site was well screened from the nearby roads. Even from the entrance, you would never guess the size of it. Everywhere he looked, Cooper saw stacks of crusher and screening spares, conveyor belt sections and rubber skirting, boxes of bearings and filters.
Cooper stood in front of the forklift and waved him down. Gibson stopped in surprise and turned off the engine.
‘What do you want? You’ll have to go into the office.’
Gibson looked over his shoulder and began to swing the steering wheel to reverse away from him.
‘Ryan?’ said Cooper.
Gibson turned and stared at him. Recognition was a long time coming, but it reached his face eventually. ‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ he said. ‘I never talk to the coppers. And I’m not supposed to stop work to chat anyway. So you might as well be on your way.’