Jill rose to her feet before she was blamed for making Rose break her beads and clog up the vacuum cleaner.
‘Perhaps I’ll call again one day,’ she ventured.
No one answered. Rose was still sobbing and Julie was still tutting over the pile of beads, so Jill crept out of the conservatory and left the building.
It was a relief to sit in her car, start the engine and drive away.
Her mind was full of what Rose had said. Max thought Rose was simply gaga, as he put it. Jill believed there was something much deeper. The more she thought about it, the more she thought that Terry had left Rose because Josie had accused him of what? Sexual abuse? Rape?
Terry? Terry who?
If Terry still had such an effect on Rose, they needed to find out who he was. And fast.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The following afternoon, Jill was chatting to Max in his office and about to head for home, when Grace sought them out.
‘I’ve found your Terry!’ she announced triumphantly.
Jill’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Really? Brilliant! Where is he?’
‘Currently pushing up daisies in Blackpool,’ Grace said with a grin.
‘Oh, for –’ Jill had pinned every hope on the mysterious Terry, and now he was dead.
‘His name was Terry Potter, and he died four years ago,’ Grace went on, ‘but he has a sister. She’s alive and well and, as far as we know, fully compos mentis and living in Blackpool. Here’s her address.’
‘Thanks.’ Jill looked at the slip of paper. ‘How did you find them?’
‘I spoke to the old manager of Reno’s,’ she said, ‘and, about fifty phone calls later, I came across a woman who remembered him. She’d been going out with him, apparently, before Rose came along and whisked him away from her.’
Jill looked at Max.
‘I think it’s a load of crap,’ he said, not for the first time, ‘but as I have sod all else to go on, we may as well pay her a visit.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I need to collect the boys from school now, but . . .’ He looked at Jill, his expression coaxing. ‘How do you fancy a trip to Blackpool this evening? I’ll buy you a stick of rock.’
‘You’re on.’‘
OK, I’ll pick you up from your place if you like. Thanks, Grace. Good work,’ he added.
‘You’re welcome, boss!’ Grace left the office even more pleased with his praise than she was with herself, if that were possible.
Jill drove home, fed her cats, tidied her cottage, sighed at the pile of work on her desk that she couldn’t find time for, and went to run a bath.
She got in and lay back in the hot water, determined to relax. She couldn’t, though. Her mind was like a tumble dryer filled with a million pieces of paper on which was written an abstract thought. Round and round, over and over, it went.
Terry Potter could tell them nothing. He was dead.
And why, having killed Josie and Martin Hayden, had the killer turned to James Murphy and Jason Keane? Why had Harry been threatened?
While they were chasing dead ends in Blackpool, anything could happen.
She shivered, despite the hot water.
‘It’s just as well we can see her tonight,’ Max said, as he eased the car into the line of fast-moving traffic on the motorway, ‘because she’s going on holiday in the morning.’
‘What did she sound like?’
‘Bitter.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah. She said she wondered when us lot coppers, I assume would start sniffing round.’
‘So she connected Josie Hayden with her brother?’
‘Must have.’
‘That’s interesting.’
‘Hmm. Anyway, she’s more than willing to talk to us.’
‘That makes a refreshing change,’ Jill said with a wry smile.
When Max stopped the car outside Alice Potter’s home, Jill was amazed by the size of the place. Every other house in the street was a bed and breakfast business, but this was a private residence. Tall, thick hedges shielded the house from the street.
They got out of the car, and walked up three stone steps to the front door. Max rang the bell and it was answered immediately, as if she’d been standing on the other side of it, waiting for them.
‘You’ll be the police?’
She was a large woman whose face was dominated by thick spectacles. Her hair was black with an inch of grey roots showing. She was wearing a pale green dress with a large floral pattern on it.
‘Yes,’ Max replied, showing his ID. She inspected it closely, and nodded her approval. ‘Come in, then.’
She showed them along a wide hallway and into a sitting room. Like Josie Hayden’s home, this too was cluttered with a lifetime’s collection of bric-a-brac. Two shelves were crammed with Blackpool souvenirs.
‘Thank you for agreeing to see us,’ Max said, taking the armchair she offered.
Jill was offered another armchair opposite him.
‘I gather you were expecting us to call,’ Jill began, as Alice Potter sat on the sofa where she could best see both of them. ‘How did you connect Josie Hayden with your brother?’
‘I didn’t, not at first,’ she explained. ‘It was a friend who put me on to it. When I knew her or when Terry knew her she was Josie Dee. Terry was as good as gold to her.’
‘Was he seeing her mother?’ Jill asked curiously.
‘Yes. Rose Dee was working at some nightclub or other,’ Alice Potter said, ‘and Terry met her there. He was besotted with her. Nothing I said would make him see that she was trouble.’
‘Was she trouble?’ Max asked.
‘Trouble? Ha! Men can be such fools, can’t they?’
‘They can,’ Jill murmured, lips twitching.
‘That was my Terry. A fool when it came to her. No matter what I said to him, he wouldn’t believe she was using him. She had a string of other blokes in tow.’
‘Really?’ Jill said.
‘Yes, I know her sort. But my Terry was blind when it came to her. Her daughter that’ll be Josie was around eleven or twelve and, to help her out, he used to sit with the kid until Rose got back from the club. Terry and me were brought up proper, you know, and he didn’t like to think of the girl being in that house on her own. Ha! He soon found out the error of his ways.’
‘What happened?’ Jill asked.
‘The daughter, like I said, was only a young kid, but she must have been as wicked as her mother. She got herself pregnant. Or claimed she was pregnant. Rose Dee was a drama queen and her daughter was the same. So Josie, the crafty little cow pardon my French, but, well she only went and blamed it on my Terry. She said he forced her to have sex with him.’
Alice Potter gathered her ample bosom.
‘Even now, all these years later, it makes my blood boil to think about it. My Terry’s only fault was that he was daft. At least, he was daft when it came to women, and he was downright simple when it came to Rose Dee. How that Josie could accuse him of that, I can’t imagine.’
‘What happened?’ Jill asked.
‘Well, Rose, to give her her due, didn’t believe the girl any more than we did,’ she explained, ‘but she sent Terry away. Then she went off for a few months vanished completely. My Terry didn’t have anything to do with her again. Rose kept herself pretty much to herself after that, so I heard. Went a bit queer in the head if you ask me.’
‘What about Terry?’ Max asked. ‘What did he do after that?’
‘He kept himself pretty much to himself too,’ Alice told them. ‘In the end, we moved here, right away from Rose Dee and her lying, conniving daughter. Terry kept away from women after that. I told him, you don’t know what sort of trouble they’ll get you into.’
‘He never married?’ Jill said.
‘No. He had me,’ Alice said with satisfaction. ‘I was better to him than any wife would have been.’
She brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the arm of the sofa.
‘If you ask me,
’ she went on in a confidential tone, ‘that Josie Dee Josie Hayden was asking for trouble all her life. She made up those dreadful tales about my Terry and got away with it. I bet you any money she tried on the same thing with someone else. It stands to reason in my mind. She deserved all she got.’ She paused. ‘Not that I like to speak ill of the dead,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘Our old dad always used to say, if you can’t find something good to say about someone, you should keep quiet. And normally I would have. But you did ask.’
‘We did,’ Max said, and Jill spotted the amusement in his eyes. ‘Well, thank you. You’ve been most helpful.’
He looked questioningly at Jill, but she had nothing further to ask. Like him, she stood up. She’d be glad to get out of this cramped, dark room.
‘That place gave me the creeps,’ Max said as they walked back to his car. ‘Fancy a coffee?’
‘Yeah. And fish and chips. On the sea front.’
‘At this time of night?’
‘Yep.’
She loved the seaside. Even Blackpool. Everyone said it was tacky, and it was, but she still loved to be beside the sea. It had to stem from holidays in Rhyl she’d had as a child. Her sister, Prue, would want to spend her time swimming whereas Jill had always headed for the beach and the donkey rides. She associated the seaside with fun with donkey rides, toffee apples, candy floss, boat trips, amusement arcades and all the rest of it. Tacky or not, she loved it.
Blackpool was deserted on this chilly December evening, and Max parked on the sea front. They were soon sitting on the wall, huddled in their coats, with a tray of fish and chips each and polystyrene cups filled with hot coffee.
‘What did you think of Alice then?’ Max asked, throwing a chip to a seagull.
‘I thought she was a vindictive old bitch who liked to keep her brother in tow.’
‘Hey, don’t sit on the fence. Say what you really mean.’
‘I doubt she has a good word to say about anyone,’ Jill muttered.
‘A waste of time?’ he asked.
‘No. Not a waste of time,’ Jill answered thoughtfully.
‘If you think about Josie Hayden,’ Max said, and they were surrounded by squawking seagulls now, ‘she said that Terry had made her pregnant, then she fell pregnant by George and got him to marry her, then she told Brian Taylor that he’s about to become a father . . .’
‘And your point is?’
‘George, as we know, felt conned into marriage, Brian Taylor thought she was trying to con him into marriage . . .’ He shrugged. ‘She had a pretty impressive track record, our Josie.’
‘Or a very unlucky life,’ Jill argued.
‘Maybe.’ Max threw his last few chips to the seagulls and then started on his coffee.
He had a point, Jill supposed. Three men had cause to dislike Josie . . .
Chapter Thirty-Six
Alice Potter hadn’t been able to settle since that detective and his sidekick had left. She had guessed they would come sniffing around sooner or later and she’d been ready for them.
They should be grateful she’d spoken to them at all. She could easily have denied all knowledge of Rose Dee and her deceitful cow of a daughter. Thinking about it, perhaps she should have done just that. At the time, though, she’d felt better for being able to give vent to her feelings.
What did it matter, anyway? They couldn’t prove anything. Not now. Terry was dead, as was that lying bitch Josie Dee. She’d got what was coming to her all right.
It was thanks to her and her lies that Alice and Terry had been forced to leave Harrington. They’d been happy there, but Alice had known they needed to get away. She certainly hadn’t wanted her Terry hanging around there as the target for more lies.
So they’d upped sticks. They moved to Manchester, right away from Harrington. Terry got a job at the factory, and Alice managed to clean a couple of days a week. They’d soon settled down, and Alice had thought they could be happy there.
Two years later though, it all started again.
This time, it was an eleven-year-old, Heather Irvine, who caused trouble. Little bitch she was. Alice blamed the schools for filling their heads with such filth. At the same age, Alice had known nothing about sex. She knew little more now.
Heather Irvine had run to her dad with her disgusting lies. The little madam had said that Terry had taken her into the bushes and meddled with her. She’d said all the kids knew he used to hang around the playing field. That was a downright lie. If the weather was good, he used to eat his sandwiches there at lunchtime. There was no crime in that.
The Irvine girl claimed he used to take sweets for the girls. Perhaps he did. That was Terry all over. He was too soft for his own good.
Not content with taking sweets off him, the lying little bitch had said he took her into the bushes and touched her.
It was all lies. The little madam should have had her mouth washed out with soap and water. Instead, she’d run to her dad with her lies and he, a big thug of a bloke who spoke with his fists, had knocked Terry about.
Poor Terry had crawled home with his nose and jaw broken and a couple of cracked ribs. It had been left to Rose to clean him up.
Word got out and the next thing, people were spraying filthy obscenities on the outside of their house.
In the end, they’d been forced to move on again.
Alice had decided it was time to make a complete change so they’d headed for the seaside. Blackpool had suited them from the start.
Terry was a fool, though. He didn’t learn. One summer’s day, Alice saw him talking to a young girl and she watched, horrified, as he handed over a packet of sweets.
It was the last straw.
Oh, Alice knew it was only kindness. She also knew that others wouldn’t see it that way. They would soon start spewing out their malicious filth.
‘You’re to stay indoors,’ she’d instructed Terry firmly. ‘We’ll go out together. I’m not having people telling lies about you again. I won’t stand for it . . .’
That’s how they’d been forced to live, like prisoners in their own home. All because young girls had their heads filled with disgusting nonsense. It was nonsense. Of course it was.
Terry had no children of his own so it was only natural he should take an interest in other people’s. That wasn’t a crime, was it?
He’d been a good man - soft, gentle, kind and generous. He wouldn’t have done anything bad because he knew it would have hurt his sister. Alice had always watched out for him, right from the moment he was born, and he wouldn’t have done anything to hurt her. He wouldn’t!
She wished she’d never heard of Rose Dee and her cheating daughter, just as she wished she’d never heard of Heather Irvine.
She’d had Terry, and he’d been enough for her so that she’d never wanted a husband or children. If that’s how the little devils behaved, she was glad about that.
That policeman and the woman had unsettled her, though. Why did they have to rake it all over? It was all lies. Filthy, unfounded lies.
Alice refused to spare it another thought.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The following morning, Jill and Max stood in Phil’s office. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Phil was in a foul mood and he was less than happy about their trip to Blackpool.
‘I suppose you took in the sodding illuminations!’ he snapped.
They ignored that.
‘What I’d like to do’ Jill began.
‘And what I’d like,’ Phil cut her off, ‘is a profile. Is that too much to ask? Even a vague bloody profile. Just who in hell’s name are we looking for, Jill?’
‘I don’t know.’ How could she know? ‘We have two murders, both members of the Hayden family,’ she reminded him, ‘and two missing schoolboys. For the moment, I have to concentrate on the murders. I have nothing else to go on. So I’d like to check out places offering terminations in the area around the time Josie Hayden was fourteen. The more I think about this, the more convinc
ed I am that Terry Potter did get her pregnant.’
‘Oh, for’
‘Listen, Phil. Josie didn’t wrongly accuse George of getting her pregnant. We know that because Andy is the image of his dad. It’s the same with Brian Taylor. Martin was a ringer for him.’
‘So what if Potter did get her pregnant?’ Phil cried, exasperated. ‘The bloke’s dead. And what the hell does it have to do with James Murphy or Jason Keane?’
‘Possibly nothing,’ she admitted.
‘Jill, we have two boys missing and the parents are in a right bloody state as you can imagine.’
He was wrong. Jill couldn’t even begin to imagine the state they were in. Nor could she imagine how Max was feeling right now.
‘I’d still like to get the local clinics checked out. It’ll be time-consuming, I know, but it might be worth it.’
‘You liked Josie Hayden from the start.’ He spoke in an accusing way.
‘I did, yes, but that has nothing to do with anything.’
Phil grunted, which possibly translated as ‘Fine, use all the staff and resources you need.’ She doubted it.
‘You’ll need to give a bloody convincing statement to the media, Max,’ Phil said, turning his attention in Max’s direction. ‘Don’t give them the impression that we don’t have a clue what we’re doing!’
‘Right,’ Max said.
‘Even if it is bloody true,’ Phil said, determined to have the last word. ‘We’ve got every available officer on this case,’ he reminded them both. ‘Every resource available is in place. What more do you need, for Christ’s sake?’
‘I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we get a decent lead,’ Max said.
Jill was surprised he was sounding so calm. She was a wreck.
‘Why James Murphy? Why Jason Keane? Hmm?’ Phil wanted to know.
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘Guess? Christ, you’re not even bloody guessing, Max.’
‘Right, well, we can’t waste time,’ Max murmured, taking a step towards the door.
Kennedy 02 - A Darker Side Page 20
