The Delicate Storm. Giles Blunt

him. I’m asking a simple question.’

      ‘We have nicknames for a lot of our customers,’ Cardinal said. ‘They’re not intended for public consumption.’

      ‘I’m not interested in your other customers, as you call them. What is my client’s nickname, please?’

      ‘Wudky.’

      ‘Wudky. An unusual cognomen. Could you spell that for us, please?’

      ‘W, D, C.’

      ‘W, D, C. An unusual spelling, too. What do the letters stand for?’

      ‘I’d really rather not say with Robert in the room.’

      Brackett smiled. It was a smile of great benevolence and gave not one inch of ground. ‘Nevertheless, Detective, we await your answer.’

      ‘It stands for World’s Dumbest Criminal. Sorry, Robert.’

      ‘That’s okay.’ Hewitt was slumped over the conference table, his chin resting on both folded hands. Speech made his head bob up and down.

      ‘World’s Dumbest Criminal. And you call him that why, exactly?’ Brackett’s round face was devoid of guile, just asking for information, please.

      ‘I thought we were going to discuss this just the three of us.’

      ‘Oh, no, that was never on the table,’ Brackett said. ‘Please tell us why you call my client the World’s Dumbest Criminal.’

      ‘Because he’s just not competent. He makes dumb mistakes.’

      ‘Well, yes. Mr Rose has the holdup note as Exhibit A.’

      Rose tapped his legal pad with the eraser end of his pencil. ‘Your client has been found in previous trials to be mentally competent to contribute to his legal defence and to understand the nature of his crimes. Do you expect that to suddenly change?’

      Brackett’s smile was cherubic. ‘You’re so ferocious in the pursuit of the retarded, Mr Rose. Perhaps you’d prefer to ship my client to the United States. They execute them down there.’

      ‘Not for robbery, last I heard.’

      ‘May I continue?’

      ‘I wish you would.’

      ‘Detective Cardinal, despite my client’s intellectual limitations, I believe he has recently been extremely helpful to the police. Is that correct?’

      At last, Cardinal thought. ‘He was a little off on the details. He told us of a conversation he’d had with a known felon named Thierry Ferand. And Ferand told him that a man from down south somewhere had killed Paul Bressard and got rid of the body in the woods.’

      The Crown tossed his pencil onto his pad so hard it bounced onto the floor. ‘Paul Bressard is alive and kicking. I saw him this morning. You can’t miss him in that raccoon coat, for God’s sake.’

      ‘Like I say, Robert was wrong on the details.’

      ‘The details? It’s a completely false statement.’

      Mr Brackett twiddled pudgy fingers in the air. ‘Stop. Could we stop, please, and just move on to how much of Mr Hewitt’s information turned out to be correct?’

      ‘Well, once we figured out that he had some names mixed up, it turned out he was right. That is to say, Paul Bressard wasn’t murdered and buried in the woods, but Bressard does admit to disposing of a body in the woods. And the body is indeed from down south – an American named Howard Matlock. So you see, Robert just kind of had things reversed.’

      ‘Thank you, Detective. That’s extraordinarily helpful.’ Brackett removed his glasses and polished them with the back of his tie, another gesture that emphasized his pure harmlessness. ‘Would it also be fair to say you wouldn’t have known about this murder without my client’s help?’

      ‘Not exactly. It’s true he told us about it before we knew about it for ourselves, but we did hear of it from the person who found the body – part of it, anyway. But Robert also gave us the name of Paul Bressard, which made him a suspect sooner than he might have been otherwise. So all in all, yes, I would say he was very helpful and co-operative.’

      ‘Thank you, Detective.’ Brackett turned to the crown. ‘So, Mr Rose, it would appear the Crown attorney’s office has a choice: it can throw the book at a mentally challenged young man, or it can offer a deal to an extraordinarily helpful citizen.’