Chicken and fish being grilled

Physical weakness as much as from the tobacco he had been given. But he looked down, resisting false friendship from men who must be his enemies by their calling. He shook his head stubbornly, then drew again upon the cigarette. ‘You see, Tommy, we know you were there. When you deny it, naturally we have to think bad things about you.’ Hook would not buy instagram followers admit that their ‘witness’ was a prostitute who thought she had glimpsed him through the darkness: scarcely the most reliable of sightings. He saw Clinton’s little start of fear at his use of ‘bad things’, which the man obviously considered a euphemism. ‘My mum’ll tell you. I was at home.’ ‘I don’t think we’ll even bother to ask her, Tommy. Old ladies like her should be left with clear consciences, I always feel.’ Clinton said sullenly, trying to disguise his fear, ‘I was nowhere near that murder. I didn’t see anything. I can’t help you nail the man who did it.’ It was the first perceptible switch of ground, and all of them were expert enough in these exchanges to detect it. Hook, playing this nervous fish which had taken his fly, did not hurry. ‘You see, Tommy, if we can just eliminate you as a suspect, we can concentrate on others. And because you were in the area that night, you will probably have seen some little thing which will be of interest to us, even though it doesn’t seem significant to you.’ On the surface at least, Clinton was being treated almost as an equal; he liked the big words, the careful explanation. He was not used to being treated by many men with anything more than a routine contempt, and he did not find it easy to deal with this. He rose a little in his chair, as a cat rises a little under the knuckles which gently stroke its head. ‘If I was in that area, it was much earlier in the evening.’ The brains of the men opposite him, trained over many years to dissect such vagaries, wondered automatically how much information the Press Officer had dispensed to the press about the time of the murder. ‘All right, Tommy. Let’s accept for the moment that you were tucked up in bed at home like a good boy when poor Julie Salmon was killed. Where were you earlier that night?’ Clinton looked hard at the hands which would not be stilled, as though watching carefully for their reaction to what he was going to say. ‘I was in the Grapes. Having a buy instagram followers couple of drinks.’ ‘And who was with you there, Tommy?’ ‘I – I don’t