‘How gaga is she?’ she asked.
‘Totally!’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It was early evening when, after a lot of arguing, Jill and Max arrived at the Blue Lodge Care Home.
Blue Lodge was a luxurious home offering respite, residential and full nursing care, and was only for those who could afford it. A large, stone building, it was set well back from the road and hidden by tall trees.
It made Jill shudder and she prayed that she never ended up in such a place. Like most people, she supposed, she hoped that a simple, quick heart attack would finish her off. Although not for some time, obviously.
‘Home of the living dead,’ Max said on a sigh. ‘If I ever ended up in a place like this’ He broke off, and continued more cheerfully, ‘But I won’t. At the slightest hint that I might be coming here, I’ll put a few bullets in myself.’
‘I think I will, too.’ Another thought struck Jill. ‘Who’s paying for all this?’
‘Her parents’ house sale,’ Max replied. ‘They lived in a big terraced place for most of their lives. Rose lived on the Brook estate, but her parents’ place fetched a good sum. She inherited it five years ago. Mind you, it wasn’t a fortune, so I don’t know what happens if the money runs out and she’s still alive.’
Max parked the car in a bay marked Emergency Vehicles Only and they climbed out.
‘This place doesn’t come cheap,’ he murmured.
Wide steps led to a huge blue front door. Beneath a bell set into the wall was a small plaque: Please ring the bell before entering. They did so.
On the right-hand side of a large hallway was a reception desk.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Max Trentham and Jill Kennedy, Harrington CID,’ Max introduced them, showing his ID to the girl behind the desk. ‘We’ve come to talk to Mrs Rose Dee.’
‘Ah, yes. If you can just hang on a second, I’ll give Julie a buzz. She’s expecting you. She can tell you how Mrs Dee is today.’
Literally seconds later, Julie burst into reception. She was in her mid to late forties, one of the ‘jolly hockey sticks’ types whose energy and joie de vivre would soon have driven Jill mad. She could imagine Julie persuading the residents to sing ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’. Or perhaps the elderly sang Status Quo’s ‘Rocking All Over The World’ these days.
‘Rose has been quite lucid today,’ she informed them, beaming at them. ‘She recognized me and she talked of her garden.’
‘That’s encouraging then,’ Jill responded, not very encouraged. ‘How long do her lucid periods last?’
‘It depends. Some days, she doesn’t have any. Yesterday, for example, she was quite agitated because she thought we were letting rabbits into her room. Heaven knows what put the idea of rabbits in her head, but there, we don’t know, do we?’
She looked to them both for an answer.
‘No,’ Max said.
‘She’s in the conservatory,’ Julie told them, ‘and she’s quite alone, so perhaps you’d like to talk to her there? Yes?’
‘Fine,’ Max said, smiling.
‘As you know,’ Julie said in a whisper as she led the way to the conservatory, ‘we did tell her about her daughter, but I don’t think it sunk in. We don’t know, do we?’
‘No,’ Jill said to save Max the bother.
The conservatory was a huge, Victorian affair, filled with tall ferns and cane furniture, and lit by stark, fluorescent tubes. It was a cold place.
‘Rose,’ Julie boomed out, ‘you have visitors. Do you remember I told you they were coming?’
Rose looked up with blank eyes.
‘You didn’t tell me,’ she argued. ‘Who are they? I don’t want to talk to anyone.’
‘Yes, you do,’ Julie scolded with a teasing laugh. ‘You’re always complaining that you don’t get visitors. Now, you talk to these nice people and I’ll go and make you all a lovely pot of tea. How’s that?’
‘Hurry up about it,’ Rose told her. ‘You know I have to be at work soon. What time is it now?’
‘A quarter to six,’ Julie answered, ‘and you don’t go to work any more. You’ve retired now, don’t you remember?’
‘Of course I remember,’ Rose said, rolling her eyes at such stupidity.
She looked a little like her daughter, Jill thought, surprised, but Rose, she suspected, was a far stronger character. Her hair was long and white, and it had been combed neatly and tied back. Her hands were thin and the skin almost translucent. She was wearing a black skirt and a pink cardigan over a white blouse.
Jill pulled up a chair opposite her.
‘I’m Jill,’ she explained, while Max got his own chair, ‘and we’ve come to ask you a few questions. Is that all right, Rose? May I call you Rose?’
‘You can call me what you like. But I’ll need to get Robbie’s tea on soon. He gets mad if his tea’s not on the table when he gets in.’
‘Robbie? Who’s Robbie?’
‘Pork chops are his favourite. He won’t eat them without apple sauce though. Mind, he won’t eat lamb without mint jelly, either. Mint sauce is no good. It has to be jelly. I buy that from the shop. He don’t know if I make it or not.’
‘Does Robbie work?’
‘What time is it? I’ve got to be at work soon.’
Jill’s spirits sank. They’d be lucky to get anything useful out of Rose.
But at least they had a name. Robbie could be Josie’s father. On the other hand, he could be a figment of Rose’s imagination.
‘What time does Robbie come home, Rose?’ she asked.
Rose leaned toward her and her voice rasped in Jill’s ear. ‘Don’t drink the tea when she brings it. She’s trying to poison me.’
‘I’m sure she isn’t. Why would she do that?’
‘She sent him away, you know,’ Rose confided.
‘Sent who away?’ Jill asked.
Rose stared out through the glass to the darkness beyond.
‘Who did she send away, Rose? Was it Robbie? Did she send him away?’
‘She didn’t know Robbie. I made sure of that.’
The door opened and Julie appeared with a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits.
‘There we are, Rose. Isn’t this nice? You like visitors, don’t you?’
Rose’s hand, painfully thin, shot out and took a biscuit. She was like a starved cat, grabbing food before someone took it away. At least she didn’t think the biscuits were poisoned.
Julie beamed at Jill. ‘Shall I let you be mother?’
‘Yes.’ Be mother indeed. Max was right; the best option was a quick bullet.
When the tea was poured and Rose had eaten all the biscuits, Jill tried to talk to her again.
‘Did they tell you about Josie?’ she asked gently.
‘Josie?’ She looked blank, as if she’d never heard the name before.
‘Your daughter,’ Jill prompted her. ‘You remember Josie, don’t you?’
Rose ignored that. She looked at Max, and then grinned at Jill. ‘Is he your fella?’
‘No.’ Bloody hell! Rose didn’t know what day it was, but she automatically assumed that she and Max were an item.
‘Was Josie a good daughter, Rose?’ she persisted.
‘Daughter? I don’t know any daughters.’ Rose thought for a moment. ‘Are you muddling her up with the one that married the farmer?’
Jill heard Max sigh. He’d been right, and he knew it. Even if Rose gave them a wealth of information, they wouldn’t know if it was real or imaginary.
But Josie was the key. Jill was convinced of it.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Josie married George, the farmer. She had three children, didn’t she? Did you see them? There was Andy, Sarah and Martin.’
‘She married a farmer.’
‘That’s right,’ Jill agreed.
‘She didn’t know Robbie, I made sure of that. It was because she sent him away.’
‘If she didn’t know Robbie, how could she send him away, Rose?’
&
nbsp; ‘Not Robbie. She didn’t send him away.’
‘Who did she send away?’
‘She told lies about him.’
‘What sort of lies?’
‘That’s why I had to send her away,’ Rose said.
‘Josie? Where did you send Josie?’
‘She married the farmer, you know.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
Rose looked at her right wrist. ‘My watch! It’s gone! Who’s stolen my watch?’
Max patted her other arm. ‘It’s on this hand.’
‘Oh, yes.’ She began humming to herself as she rocked in her chair. ‘I’ve got to go now. I need to be at work soon. What time do I have to be there, do you know?’
‘You don’t work now, Rose,’ Max reminded her. ‘You’ve retired. You’re lucky, aren’t you? I wish I was retired.’
She looked at him for a moment. ‘Why aren’t you her fella?’
‘I’m working on it,’ Max told her in a whisper. ‘What about your fella, Rose? Is his name Robbie?’
‘I’ve got to go to work now,’ she said vaguely.
For the next half-hour, they talked to Rose. Her answer was always the same. She had to go to work.
In the end, they said their goodbyes and left her in Julie’s capable hands.
‘Come again soon,’ Julie called as they were leaving. It was a relief to drive away from Blue Lodge, but Jill could still smell the place.
‘OK, you win,’ she said on a sigh. ‘It was worth a try, though. And I still think it would be worth finding out who this Robbie is or was and ’
‘Robbie Williams probably.’
‘It could be,’ she admitted, ‘but perhaps Josie did send someone away. Who could that be? Perhaps Rose had a boyfriend and Josie, used to having her mum to herself, was difficult. This man if indeed there was a man might have thought better of it and done a runner. Robbie might have been another boyfriend one she didn’t tell Josie about in case she started behaving badly.’
‘Or it might be the ravings of an old, sick woman,’ Max pointed out.
‘That’s what I love about you, Max. You’re such an optimist.’
‘Tsk! And I thought it was my skill with a barbecue.’
Chapter Thirty
On Monday, Jill was at the station early and she went straight to Max’s office.
‘I’ve been thinking.’ She’d been doing little else and she’d hardly slept at all last night. ‘I’d like to talk to some of Josie Hayden’s old neighbours.’ She knew he’d argue, say it was a waste of time. Perhaps he was right. ‘I know she hadn’t lived there for years, and I know her mother has Alzheimer’s and isn’t reliable, but there might be something.’
Max gathered up papers off his desk, gave them a scathing glance and put them on the pile that was already teetering in his in-tray.
‘If we can find out about this Robbie,’ she said, ‘it might lead us to ’
‘He probably doesn’t exist. Rose was getting ready to go to work at God knows where. She didn’t even know who her daughter was so this Robbie . . .’ He shrugged.
He had a point. On the other hand, they had nothing to work with, nothing at all, so anything would be a bonus. She’d had enough sarcastic comments from Meredith about her inability to build a profile.
A profile? Ha. She had nothing to go on. Nothing. Only the fact that their killer was half out of his mind with anger. More angry with Josie than with Martin? Yes.
‘What do you want to do?’ he asked.
At least he was prepared to discuss it.
‘Josie grew up on the Brook estate,’ she said, ‘and if it’s anything like River View, and they seem much the same, someone will know something. I have my mum on the phone on a daily basis telling me the goings-on at River View. Everyone knows everyone else’s business.’
‘They might know it,’ Max muttered, ‘but they won’t talk, and certainly not to us. They stick together on the Brook.’
That was true. The residents were born with a loathing of the police.
‘It’s worth a try, Max.’
He leaned back in his chair and tapped his pen against his desk. ‘It’ll cost you,’ he said at last.
‘What?’
‘Dinner tonight. It’s Kate’s birthday and she’d love it if you came along.’
She’d planned to call on his mother-in-law on her way home to hand over the card and present she’d bought, but it would be good to be part of the celebration.
‘Who else is going?’ she asked.
‘Only me, Kate and the boys. Why?’
‘Just curious.’
He was frowning at her, trying to read her mind.
‘I thought your favourite teacher might have made her move by now,’ she said casually.
That was something else that had kept her awake. She’d convinced herself, rightly or wrongly, that his ‘business appointment’ on Thursday night had been with her.
‘Donna Lord?’ He sounded as if he’d never heard the name, yet he looked shifty. ‘What makes you think she’s planning a move?’
She could tell from the way he couldn’t meet her gaze that she already had.
‘Oh, just a hunch. Must have been something to do with the way she was all over you like a rash.’
A smug smile touched his lips at that. ‘Was she?’
‘Yeah, it’s a copper thing,’ she told him, hoping to dent his ego. ‘The macho testosterone-fuelled bloke who’s keeping our streets safe is always a turn-on. Except in this case, of course, he’s not keeping our streets safe.’ She needed to get out of his office before she threw something at him. ‘So I can go to the Brook estate?’
‘You’ll come along this evening?’
She nodded.
‘OK,’ he said, resigned. ‘Tell you what, take Grace with you.’
‘Right.’
She was at the door, and almost had it open when he spoke.
‘I turned her down.’
She didn’t look back at him. ‘You do surprise me. Too young for you, I suppose? Afraid you wouldn’t be able to keep up with her?’
Before he could see the smile that insisted on curving her mouth, she walked out of his office, closing the door quietly behind her.
Why had he turned down Donna Lord? Much as Jill hated to admit it, Ms Lord had everything going for her. She was stunning to look at with her envious figure and her neatly trimmed, natural blonde hair. She was also young and clever, of course.
Jill caught sight of herself as she approached the glass doors in the corridor. Her hair was naturally blonde, but it was a mess today. Still, wasn’t the messed-up look in fashion? Her jeans were clean, as was her shirt. True, her shirt could have done with a good iron . . .
What the hell? Max had turned down Donna Lord and it was she who’d be with him for Kate’s birthday celebration.
Without wasting time on analysing why that made her feel so good, she put her mind to the more important matter of brutal murders and went in search of Grace.
The Brook estate was rough. As soon as Grace turned the car into Byron Way, Jill’s spirits sank. Gardens were overgrown and crammed with rusting junk. Children’s toys lay abandoned with grass growing around them. Scruffy cars littered drives and the road. Despite this, almost every house boasted garish Christmas decorations.
Giant inflatable snowmen swayed in gardens. Santas climbed the walls.
‘It’s just like going home,’ she quipped to Grace.
‘Yeah, me, too.’ Grace looked up and down the road.
‘Where shall we start?’
‘Keats Avenue. Josie grew up at number eleven.’
‘The boss thinks you’re wasting time.’
Jill had to smile. ‘The annoying thing is that he’s probably right.’
Grace parked the car and they were soon knocking on doors. Most people were out, or ignoring them, but the girl at number nineteen, the first to answer the door, invited them inside. The carpets and walls were filthy but at least a tho
usand pounds’ worth of television sat in one corner of the lounge. In front of the window and totally obscuring the view was a huge plastic Christmas tree adorned with flashing, musical lights.
The girl’s name was Sally and she looked as if she hadn’t combed her hair in days.
‘We’re trying to find anyone who knows anything about a Mrs Josie Hayden,’ Jill explained.
‘The one who were done in?’ Sally clearly relished being, as she saw it, part of a real-life drama. She wasn’t even dressed yet and Jill suspected her life was a mundane round of daytime television.
‘Yes. When she lived round here, she was Miss Dee, Josie Dee.’
The girl looked blank. ‘I know Rose Dee. A strange old cow she were. She’s in a home now.’
‘That’s the woman’s mother,’ Jill explained. ‘How well do you know her, Sally?’
‘It’s not me. Me aunt were friendly with her. Not friendly perhaps, but they worked at Reno’s. It weren’t called Reno’s then, it were Rockafella’s.’
‘Rose Dee worked at Rockafella’s?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Doing what?’ Jill was amazed. Reno’s, or Rockafella’s as it once was, was Harrington’s trendiest nightclub.
‘They worked behind the bar,’ Sally told her. ‘I don’t know about Rose Dee, but my aunt thought it were great. All the blokes bought ’em drinks not that they had the drinks, of course, but they put the money aside.’
‘Where does your aunt live?’
‘She died a couple of years ago,’ Sally said. ‘Breast cancer, it were. I keep checking for lumps, I can tell you. I don’t want to go like her. I reckon it runs in our family because me cousin had it an’ all. She’s all right now, though.’
‘Make sure your doctor checks you out,’ Jill said, getting ready to leave.
‘They’re not interested.’ Sally dismissed the medical profession and reached for a cigarette.
Once outside, Jill wasn’t sure where to go next. Did they carry on along the estate, or did they head for Reno’s? The estate was the best bet. It was unlikely that anyone working at Reno’s these days had any recollection of Rose.
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