Kennedy 02 - A Darker Side

by Shirley Wells

  ‘There has to be. We just haven’t found it yet.’

  ‘Jill.’ Phil spoke as if he were addressing a five-year-old. ‘A schoolboy is murdered. His mother is murdered. Another schoolboy is ’

  ‘He’s missing,’ she said. ‘That’s all. Missing. He’s not necessarily dead.’ Although she guessed that the three of them feared the worst. She hoped not, for Gerald and Emma Murphy’s sakes. ‘The answer has to be at Lower Crags Farm.’

  ‘We can’t afford to waste time on the farm, Jill!’

  ‘Grace is going to the school after she’s been to the postmortem,’ Max told Phil, speaking calmly, ‘to see if we can establish a link between Martin Hayden and James Murphy.’

  ‘And Brian Taylor was brought in last night so we’ll go to town on him,’ Jill said.

  ‘We’ve got divers in the canal, just in case,’ Max went on, ‘and we’ve got people talking to parents. They might supply that link.’

  ‘He vanished straight after football practice at the school,’ Jill put in, ‘and he’s another good-looking boy so it may be sexual. That puts Geoff Morrison high up the list.’

  Phil shook his head in despair. ‘A forty-four-year-old woman has been butchered. That wasn’t some bloke with a liking for boys, was it?’

  ‘She might have found out who the killer was,’ Max pointed out.

  ‘Then it’s a pity she wasn’t working in this bloody place!’ Phil glared at them both. ‘I want some answers and bloody soon,’ he snapped, waving in the direction of the door.

  Max looked at Jill, and she shrugged. Presumably, Phil had finished with them for the moment.

  ‘Oh, I’ve told everyone that overtime payments have been authorized,’ Max remarked casually. ‘That’s OK, isn’t it?’

  ‘Just get on with it!’ Meredith snapped.

  He was a pain. First, he didn’t want Jill on the case; then he decides he not only wants her on the case, he wants her to have all the answers yesterday.

  ‘I need a coffee,’ she said as she closed Meredith’s door behind them.

  Max grinned at her. ‘You wanna go easy on the booze in future, kiddo.’

  ‘Yes, well. I don’t get as much practice as you.’

  He glanced at his watch. ‘You get a coffee, and I’ll see if Taylor’s been given another brew. It’ll do his nerves good to wait around a bit.’

  ‘Does he have a brief with him?’

  ‘He hadn’t the last I heard. Why? Are you hoping to see the boyfriend?’

  The boyfriend? Her love life, or lack thereof, was the last thing on her mind right now.

  ‘No.’ She refused to rise to it. There was no need to tell him that Scott was in the States . . .

  Her second coffee helped, and she gazed at the photographs they’d been given of James Murphy. She didn’t need photographs, she knew him too well, but they interested her. Unlike Martin Hayden, there was nothing posed about James. One photo showed him standing by his father’s car pointing to the L-plates. It had been taken three months ago on his seventeenth birthday. He hadn’t got the looks of Martin Hayden, but he was an attractive boy all the same. Tall, and dark-haired. He might appeal to Geoff Morrison, and he was good at sport. He was in the school’s football team.

  She knew he was a typical seventeen-year-old. He was destined for university, but did only the minimum to get there. He was planning on a gap year first.

  He didn’t have the same teachers as Martin Hayden. Apart from Bill Hicks who taught Maths, Donna Lord who taught English, and Geoff Morrison who looked after the football team, their teachers were different.

  He played the guitar which was interesting. Apparently, he’d taught himself from an early age and he’d just formed a band with three other schoolboys. At least it was some sort of link. It wasn’t a great one, as dozens of boys played the guitar, but it was a link. It was the best they had so far.

  George and Andy Hayden both had watertight alibis. But Jill, like everyone else on the force, had seen watertight alibis before. Those alibis were being checked, double-checked and checked again.

  Was the answer at the farm? At times, she was convinced it was.

  She’d been wrong before, though. Rodney Hill had reminded her of that when he’d been found hanged in his prison cell . . .

  Brian Taylor had been given bacon sandwiches and cups of tea, and was chain-smoking when Jill and Max arrived to interview him. Having been assured that he wasn’t being charged as yet, he had waived his rights to a lawyer.

  He looked shaken and very nervous. Nervous because he had something to hide? Or nervous because he’d been waiting for hours in this interview room?

  He’d emptied one packet of cigarettes and went to his pocket for another while Max went through the necessary procedures and made sure the tapes were running.

  ‘Sorry, do you mind if I smoke?’ he asked, addressing Jill.

  ‘Not at all.’ Being stuck in a smoke-filled room always reminded her of home. Her mother might have quit smoking recently, but all Jill’s memories of her mother included the obligatory cigarette in her mouth. Which was why she’d just had an operation on her lung.

  ‘Yesterday morning, Mr Taylor, can you tell us where you were?’ Max began.

  ‘Yesterday? Well’ he took a huge drag on his cigarette ‘I was talking to you, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Before that,’ Max said patiently.

  ‘At home. My flight landed just after eight o’clock the night before, as you know. I drove straight home and I was there until you arrived to see me.’

  ‘You didn’t go anywhere before I called?’ Max asked.

  ‘No. Why?’

  Max ignored that. ‘So you’ve no witnesses?’

  ‘None. Oh, the postman delivered a letter I had to sign for. He might remember. Well, whether he remembers or not, my signature and the time will be on the form at the post office. That was about eight thirty.’

  ‘You hadn’t seen or spoken to Mrs Hayden since you returned to England?’ Max asked.

  ‘No.’ He stubbed out his cigarette with hands that were shaking. ‘I filled the car with diesel when I got off the plane,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a fuel card so have to provide the current mileage figure when I fill up. If you check that, you’ll see that I drove home and haven’t used up any more miles.’

  ‘We’ll check it.’

  ‘Look,’ Taylor said, ‘I know it looks a bit coincidental, me trying to see Martin and then this happening, but I didn’t do anything. Why would I? I wanted to see him, that’s all.

  Why would I kill him? My own son?’

  ‘It is very coincidental,’ Max agreed. ‘You remain silent for seventeen years and within a short time of you contacting the boy’s mother, he’s brutally murdered.’

  ‘It has nothing to do with me. I swear it.’ He frowned. ‘And why do you care what I was doing yesterday morning?’

  ‘Mrs Hayden was murdered,’ Max said simply.

  Either Brian Taylor was an actor worthy of an Oscar, Jill thought, or he hadn’t known that.

  ‘Murdered?’ He fumbled for another cigarette. ‘I had no idea.’

  Jill and Max watched him.

  ‘Really,’ he said, squirming. ‘I honestly didn’t know.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want a lawyer?’ Max asked him.

  He considered it for a moment.

  ‘Well, no. I mean, if it happened yesterday morning, I’ve got proof that I was at home. All you need to do is check with the post office and check my car’s mileage. What time did you arrive? I was on the phone to Sue in the office. The time of the call will be on my mobile. And I sent some faxes and emails,’ he added, talking quickly, ‘so the time will be on those. I spoke to a lot of people.’

  Jill and Max said nothing.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘How did she die? Oh, I suppose you can’t say.’ Brian Taylor shook his head. He looked dazed, confused and frightened. Jill, however, had seen killers look like that before. Just as she’d seen watertight al
ibis.

  ‘Mr Taylor,’ she began, ‘tell me about your affair with Mrs Hayden.’

  He sat back in his seat slightly, sweat on his brow and his fingers hanging on to his cigarette like grim death.

  ‘I was a salesman I still am covering the Lancashire area,’ he explained, ‘and I was taking a short-cut home one day when my car broke down. I walked about half a mile and came to the farm. I called and asked if I might use their phone to call the AA.’

  ‘Mrs Hayden was alone?’

  ‘Yes. She made me a cup of tea while I waited for the breakdown man to appear and we chatted.’

  ‘About what?’ Jill asked.

  ‘Just trivia, I seem to recall. The weather, the farm, parking in Harrington, her family, my family – that sort of thing.’

  ‘You were married to your first wife at the time, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was it a happy marriage?’

  ‘Not really, no. To be honest, we’d talked about a divorce.’

  ‘And then what happened? The AA arrived?’

  ‘Yes. The chap couldn’t fix the car, so he took me home and dropped the car off at a garage.’

  ‘And when did you next see Mrs Hayden?’‘

  A week or so later,’ he explained. ‘I was doing the same short-cut and stopped off at the farm to thank her.’

  And he just happened to have red roses in the car? No. He was lying.

  ‘A spur of the moment thing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You took her flowers, I believe? Do you always drive around with flowers in your car?’

  He frowned for a moment. ‘Did I take her flowers? I honestly don’t remember that.’

  ‘Red roses and white gypsophila,’ Jill told him. ‘Strange that she can remember and you can’t.’

  ‘Then I must have stopped somewhere to buy them,’ he said. ‘It’s a long time ago,’ he added.

  ‘So with or without flowers you called at the farm to thank her. Then what?’

  ‘We chatted. I suggested we meet in town one day. She was quite eager, I recall, although terrified of her husband finding out. A week or so after that, I phoned her and we met in town.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At the Harrington Hotel. I booked a room so that she’d feel safer.’

  ‘You made love?’

  He nodded, which would mean nothing to people listening to the tape afterwards.

  ‘Was that a yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was she in love with you?’ Jill asked.

  ‘She said she was, but . . .’ He shook his head. ‘I think she was more in love with my lifestyle. I travelled around a bit, went to parties, socialized she was stuck on the farm with a man who seemed to ignore her for the most part.’

  ‘What happened when you realized she was pregnant?’

  He had the grace to look ashamed.

  ‘I’m afraid I was angry,’ he admitted. ‘I thought she was lying. We’d been so careful, you see. I thought she wanted me to leave my wife and set up home with her. I didn’t believe her.’

  ‘How did she take that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘We were at the hotel. We had a row, and I stormed off.’

  ‘So how did you know the child was yours?’

  ‘I saw her in town about eighteen months later,’ he explained. ‘She had the boy in a pushchair. Even at that age, he was the image of me.’ His hands were shaking even more now. ‘She was different proud and angry. She’d always been a quiet thing, but she was angry. She went her way, and I went mine.’

  ‘How did you feel, knowing you had a child of your own?’

  ‘Strange,’ he admitted. ‘I kept thinking I should do something about it financially, if nothing else. But I didn’t want to wreck the boy’s home life. And if I’m honest, I didn’t want to get involved with Josie Mrs Hayden. She was fun for a while, but I’m afraid that’s all she meant to me.’

  Jill gave him a pleasant smile. ‘Do you have any more children scattered across the country?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just Martin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How often did you see him?’

  ‘I told you.’ He frowned. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘What? You’re telling me that you weren’t curious about him? You didn’t hang around his school, watching out for him? Come on, I’m sure you did. You will have parked opposite the gates, waiting for him to walk down the drive, watching to see if he still looked like you, to see if he was a handsome boy.’

  ‘I might have seen him a couple of times,’ he admitted at last.

  ‘A couple? Is that twice?’

  ‘Maybe a few more times.’

  ‘So is that what you did? Hung around the school gates waiting for him to appear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He was a good-looking boy, wasn’t he? You must have been proud of him.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say proud,’ he answered. ‘Apart from giving him his looks, I never did anything for him.’

  ‘Were you spotted when you hung around outside the school? Did any of the other children see you? Anyone ask you what you were doing?’

  ‘No. I wasn’t there that often.’

  ‘Are you sure? You must have been easy enough to spot. Wouldn’t some of Martin’s friends be curious about the man who looked just like him?’

  ‘I don’t believe anyone ever noticed me,’ he insisted. ‘If they did, they didn’t say anything to me.’

  ‘Did you try to talk to him?’ Jill asked.

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Why not? He was your son. Your own flesh and blood. Didn’t you want to hear the sound of his voice? Didn’t you want to know all about him?’

  ‘Not enough to confront him,’ he said grimly. ‘Yes, I did want to get to know him, but I wouldn’t have done it without going through Josie. I owed her that much at least.’

  ‘And she said no, didn’t she?’

  ‘At first, yes. But she was coming round to it. She just didn’t want her husband to find out.’

  ‘And how would she prevent that?’ Jill asked. ‘Surely, if you’d met Martin, he would have gone straight to his father the man he’d thought of as his father for the last seventeen years.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  No way would Josie have let him near Martin. No way!

  ‘I don’t believe she was coming round to it, as you put it, at all,’ Jill said frankly. ‘I think she would have said no, and kept on saying no. Let’s face it, you weren’t going to pick up the pieces when her husband found out, were you? No, you’d be going back to your lovely wife and your lovely home.’

  He looked Jill straight in the eye.

  ‘We’ll never know, will we?’

  He was more calm now. Why? Because he knew they had nothing they could pin on him?

  ‘What did you and Josie talk about?’ she asked. ‘I know you spent most of your time in bed - hotel rooms don’t come cheap, do they? - but you must have talked of something. You must have got to know each other a little. What about Josie’s past? What did she say about that?’

  His expression changed, became very thoughtful.

  ‘She wouldn’t talk about it,’ he said. ‘As soon as I mentioned her life before she married, she’d clam up. I always had the impression that she’d had a bad childhood. I don’t know. As I said, she refused to talk about it. She’d clam up and get quite edgy about it.’

  ‘She wouldn’t even tell you?’ Jill scoffed. ‘But she loved you. She would have told you anything.’

  ‘She wouldn’t tell me about her past,’ he said firmly. ‘And to be honest, I was never interested enough to pry.’

  Jill’s head was still aching. Now, she wasn’t sure if that was the alcohol or her frustration at getting nowhere with Brian Taylor.

  Max asked him more questions, but they drew a blank. There was nothing with which to charge him.

  Yet.

  Chapter Twenty

  It w
as just before three o’clock that afternoon when Max drove them to the school.

  ‘Are we sure about George and Andy Hayden?’ Jill asked, frowning. ‘Are their alibis really as ironclad as they claim?’

  ‘Seems like it,’ Max said. ‘Fletch and Grace have spent ages talking to them, but there’s nothing odd about it. They were up in Cumbria at an auction. They even bought a couple of items.’

  ‘What have you managed to find out about Josie’s past?’ she asked him.

  ‘Not a lot. Mind you, we haven’t put too much effort into it.’

  ‘I think you should,’ Jill murmured. ‘If Brian Taylor is telling the truth, and something did happen in Josie’s past, it will be worth finding out about.’

  ‘Do you think he is telling the truth?’

  ‘Yes, I think he is. A shame really, because I can’t take to the bloke at all, but yes, I think he’s telling the truth.’ She gave him a curious glance. ‘Don’t you?’

  Max sighed as he turned into the school’s car park. ‘I don’t know what to think.’

  The school had a sombre air about it and, without bothering to ask, Jill could see from empty seats in several classrooms that some pupils hadn’t turned up. She wasn’t surprised. If Phil Meredith was right about nothing else, he knew there would be panic in Harrington.

  They spoke to a class filled with fellow pupils of James Murphy. All said he was a good sort of boy. He was well liked by the other pupils. They were dazed, nervous.

  It was depressing.

  They then sought out Geoff Morrison.

  ‘I’d like to bring him in,’ Max said, ‘but he’d be sure to want a brief there and it’s not worth the effort. Besides, he’s more likely to talk if he thinks he’s helping us.’

  ‘He won’t talk,’ Jill muttered. ‘He’s too well contained. A bit of a loner really. Oh, I know he lives with his boyfriend, but he’s still a bit of a loner.’

  There was a small room next to the school’s gym. It contained a desk, half a dozen stacked plastic chairs, odd pieces of team kit, team jackets and the like. On a notice-board were fixtures lists for the school’s various sports teams.

  Geoff Morrison looked as uncomfortable as ever.

  ‘The choice is yours,’ Max told him pleasantly. ‘We can either have an informal chat here, or you can come down to the station and we can talk there.’