Reckless Endangerment(18)

‘She seems to be holding up,’ I said. In fact I thought she was holding up all too well.

‘Come on in.’ Miller led us into a large, pleasantly furnished sitting room with a couple of sofas, two or three armchairs, a long coffee table, an iPod player and a 40-inch television set. Dave looked around and nodded enviously.

‘Make yourselves comfortable,’ said Miller. ‘I was just about to have some tea. D’you fancy some?’

‘Thank you, yes,’ I said. ‘I hope we haven’t kept you from your work, Mr Miller.’

‘Kept me from my work?’ Miller shot me a puzzled look and then chuckled. ‘I’m a plumber, guv’nor, but I don’t work on Sundays. Unlike you blokes.’

‘Of course,’ I said with a laugh. ‘I’d quite forgotten that it was still Sunday.’

‘I suppose it happens in your job,’ said Miller. ‘Hang on, and I’ll get the missus to organize the tea.’

‘A plumber!’ exclaimed Dave, after Miller had left the room. ‘I knew I’d made a wrong career choice, guv. I’d never be able to afford a car like his.’

‘Didn’t you notice it last night?’

‘It was dark, sir.’ Dave always called me ‘sir’ when I’d posed a fatuous question.

‘Right, the tea will be here soon.’ Miller returned, rubbing his hands together, and took a seat opposite us. ‘Now then, gents, what d’you want to know?’

‘Perhaps you could run through exactly what happened last night, Mr Miller. Right from when you heard the screaming that attracted your attention. Sergeant Poole will take down what you say in the form of a written statement, and then I’ll ask you to sign it.’

‘Yeah, sure. It must’ve been about a quarter to midnight. The missus had already gone to bed, but I’d stayed up late to watch some crap on the TV. I don’t know why I bothered really. There’s never anything worth watching these days, and it’s mostly repeats. Anyway, I’d just turned off the telly and was about to shut the downstairs windows before going up to bed when I heard this screaming. It was really loud, but not the sort of screams you hear when a group of drunken tarts are making their way home after a night of binge drinking, if you know what I mean. And we get quite a lot of that, our road being a short cut from the nearest pub to a council estate.’

‘Mrs Gregory told us about the pub,’ I said.

‘Well, at first that’s what I thought it was, and so I—’

‘Could you go a bit slower, Mr Miller,’ said Dave, looking up from the statement form on which he was writing. ‘I’m having a job keeping up with you.’

‘Oh, sorry, yes. I forgot you chaps have to write everything down, even though Mr Brock just told me. As a matter of fact, I thought about joining your lot when I left school, but all that paperwork would do my head in. So I got an apprenticeship with a plumber. Best decision I ever made. And it pays better.’

‘All right, Mr Miller, carry on,’ said Dave. ‘I’ve caught up with you now.’

‘OK. So I went outside to see what it was all about, and realized straight away that it was coming from Cliff and Sharon’s house. Their front door was open; well, not so much open as slightly ajar really. I went in and there was poor Sharon lying on the floor all tied up.’

At that point we were interrupted by the arrival of a well-endowed faux blonde bearing a tray of tea. She appeared to be quite a bit younger than her husband and I put her age at about thirty. Even so, the skirt she was wearing was too short and a bit too tight to suit her figure, and her make-up was definitely over the top; there was certainly an excessive amount of green eye shadow.

‘Oh, this is the wife,’ said Miller. ‘These gents are from Scotland Yard dealing with poor Cliff’s murder, doll.’

‘Oh, that’s nice,’ said Miller’s wife, seemingly unimpressed by our arrival or the reason for our being there. ‘I’ll leave you to do the honours, Sid.’ She put the tray on a coffee table. ‘Unless you want to ask me something about it,’ she said, smiling at me.

‘Do you know anything about what happened, Mrs Miller?’ I asked.

‘No, dear, I must’ve slept right through it all. I’m such a heavy sleeper that Sid always has a job waking me up in the morning. But it was the police sirens and all the noise outside that eventually brought me to life. I never knew nothing about it till Sid got back and told me what’d happened. Terrible, isn’t it?’ Miller’s wife glanced at me and turned towards the door.