Wolf to the Slaughter by Ruth Rendell Page B

comfortable house to kip down in, for one thing. May Be you’re putting the squeeze on this Smith and you only made your “real sacrifice” when he wouldn’t play.’
    ‘It’s a dirty lie,’ said Monkey passionately. ‘I tell you I never saw him. I thought that young bloke of yours was him. God knows, I reckoned I could spot a copper a mile off, but then they tog themselves up so funny these days. Rube and me we’d been scared stiff and then there he was, poking his long nose over the wall. I tell you, I thought my number was up. Put the squeeze on him! That’s a proper laugh. How could I put the squeeze on him when I never set foot in Rube’s place before Wednesday?’ More ape-like than ever, he scowled at Burden, his eyes growing bulbous. ‘I’ll have another fag,’ he said in an injured tone.
    ‘When did you write the letter?’
    ‘Thursday morning while Rube was out working.’
    ‘So you were all by yourself?’
    ‘Yes, on my tod. I wasn’t putting Mr Geoff Smith through the third degree if that’s what you’re getting at. I leave that kind of thing to you.’ Indignation brought on a coughing fit and he covered his mouth with deeply stained yellowish-brown fingers.
    ‘I reckon you must have DTs of the lungs,’ Burden said disgustedly. ‘What d’you do when you’re – er, behind bars? Start screaming like an addict in a rehabilitation centre?’
    ‘It’s my nerves,’ Monkey said. ‘I’ve been a mass of nerves ever since I saw that blood.’
    ‘How did you know what to put in the letter?’
    ‘If you’re going to trap me,’ Monkey said with distant scorn, ‘you’ll have to be more bloody subtle than that. Rube told me, of course. Be your age. Young, dark and got a black car, she says. Name of Geoff Smith. Come in at eight and was due out at eleven.’
    His dog-end was stubbed out on the base of the glass sculpture. Lacking for a brief moment its customary cigarette, Monkey’s face reminded the inspector of a short-sighted man without his glasses. There was about it something naked yet unnatural.
    ‘OK,’ he said. ‘You know all this about him, because Ruby told you, but you never saw him and you never saw the girl.’ At the last word Monkey’s indignant eyes wavered. Burden was not sure whether this was from apprehension or because he was in need of further stimulation. He snatched the cigarette box and put it in a drawer. ‘How did you know her name was Ann?’ he said.

7
    ‘How did you know her name was Ann?’ Wexford asked.
    The look Ruby Branch gave him was one of simple incomprehension. She appeared not merely unwilling to answer his question; she was utterly at sea. With Geoff Smith and his description she had been on firm ground. Now he had plunged her into uncharted and, for some reason possibly known to her, dangerous waters. She turned away her eyes and contemplated one of her veined legs as if she expected to see a ladder running up the stocking.
    ‘You never even saw that letter, did you, Ruby?’ He waited. Silence was the worst thing, the thing all policemen fear. Speech, no matter how clever and how subtly phrased, is necessarily a betrayal. ‘Geoff Smith never told you that girl’s name. How did you know? How does Matthews know?’
    ‘I don’t know what you’re getting at,’ Ruby cried. She clutched her handbag and shrank away from him, her mouth trembling. ‘All those sarcastic things you say, they go in one ear and out the other. I’ve told you all I know and I’ve got a splitting headache.’
    Wexford left her and went to find Burden. ‘I don’t even begin to understand this,’ he said. ‘Why does Geoff Smith tell her his name? She didn’t want to know. “No names, no pack drill” is what she said to Drayton.’
    ‘Of course it’s an assumed name.’
    ‘Yes, I expect it is. He’s an exhibitionist who uses an alias for fun, even when no one’s interested.’
    ‘Not only does he give his name unasked, he gives his girlfriend’s