‘Harrington,’ he answered.
‘Come on, Charlie,’ he said. ‘Getting anything from you is like getting blood for a stone. Be a bit more precise, will you?’
‘Castle Street,’ he said, looking sulky now. ‘She was hanging around there looking for business. There’s often a couple of them there, no matter what time of day.’
‘You were in your car, right?’
‘No, I was walking.’
‘So where did you go?’
‘To her place,’ he answered.
‘Which was where?’ Max was rapidly running out of patience.
‘I don’t rightly know,’ Charlie said thoughtfully. ‘We walked up a couple of streets and up a flight of steps to her flat. It was quite a decent place. Considering.’
‘Considering what?’ Jill demanded. ‘That she was a whore?’
‘Well, yeah.’
‘Did you know Carol Blakely?’ Max asked him.
‘Nope. Oh, I know she ran the florist’s – I read about it in the paper. Murdered, like Nikki, wasn’t she?’
‘Ten out of ten, Charlie.’ Max emptied his plastic cup.
‘What about Ralph Atkins? Did you know him?’
‘I did, actually,’ Charlie said. ‘I sold him his car,’ he added proudly.
‘Did he pay for it?’ Max asked.
‘Of course. Why?’
‘Oh, I just wondered if you’d felt obliged to go and torch his house.’
The look of shock on Charlie’s face more or less convinced Max that he was innocent. More or less.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said, standing up, ‘I want you to come to the station and look through some photographs. I need to know how to contact the young lady you were with.’
‘Eh? I can’t do that. I have a business to run.’
‘And I have a murder to investigate,’ Max retorted. ‘Ten o’clock. And don’t be late!’
As they walked out of the showroom, a couple pulled up in an old Ford. Charlie strode across the forecourt to greet them.
Max pulled out on to the road, ignoring Charlie’s cheerful wave.
‘Bastard!’ Jill muttered. ‘The total bastard. God, I thought that Charlie was the best thing to happen to Louise. The man’s a –’
‘Total bastard,’ Max finished for her. ‘I agree, but did you believe his story?’
‘I don’t know. Did you?’
‘Probably.’
She sighed. ‘Yes, I think I did, too.’
It was after seven thirty and, at this time, Harrington’s one-way system was fairly easy to negotiate.
‘Are you coming back to our place tonight?’ he asked her.
She didn’t even hesitate. ‘If it’s OK, yes.’
It was more than OK. He only wished she was there because she wanted to be with them and not because she couldn’t bear the idea of going home to an empty cottage and dwelling on the events of the last few days.
‘In that case,’ he said, ‘we may as well leave your car at headquarters.’
‘I need to go home and check on the cats.’
‘That’s OK. I’ll drive us home via Kelton Bridge.’ Without waiting for further argument, he took the Kelton turning.
‘Do you want to call on Louise while we’re here?’ he asked as they neared the village
‘We should, shouldn’t we?’
‘Yes.’
‘But don’t mention Charlie,’ she said quietly.
‘I wasn’t going to.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The following evening, Max was ready to head home. Indeed, if he’d left ten minutes earlier, he wouldn’t have witnessed the kerfuffle as PCs Major and Buckingham brought in half a dozen youths.
Max would have left them to it. He could do without listening to lads who were no older than fifteen hurling abuse at everyone and everything. But he recognized one of the boys.
‘Darren? What are you doing here?’
Darren’s young face, suffused with the red of anger, swung round to face him. ‘I didn’t do nothing,’ he vowed furiously. ‘I shouldn’t be here!’
‘If you didn’t do nothing,’ Max pointed out, ‘you must have done something.’ But it was lost on Darren.
‘It’s on camera,’ PC Major, an enthusiastic young recruit, told Darren. ‘You were hurling bricks at –’
‘It weren’t me!’ Darren insisted.
It was mayhem, with everyone shouting at once, but eventually, Max gleaned the gist of it. The gang of lads had allegedly set fire to an old chair in the middle of the road, called out the fire crew and then proceeded to bombard crew and appliance with bricks, stones, chunks of wood and anything else they could lay their hands on. When PCs Major and Buckingham had arrived on the scene, they’d started throwing stuff at them.
‘Darren,’ Max said, ‘the fire engines have cameras on board. Whatever you did will be caught on film so there’s no point lying.’
‘It’s not a lie,’ he insisted. ‘I might have chucked a couple of bricks, but they were at Robbie Taylor, not the firemen. I wouldn’t have done that cos I’d seen the fireman before.’
Max could barely hear himself think as PCs Major and Buckingham tried to get names from their young criminals. One was claiming to be David Beckham while another insisted he was the Mayor of Bacup. In Max’s view, the whole thing was a waste of time, paper and manpower. Putting this lot through the youth courts would solve nothing. They had no respect for anything and would have benefited far more from a good old-fashioned clip round the ear.
‘Right, Darren, come with me and give me your story,’ he said, grabbing Darren by the shoulder and marching him to his office where he stood half a chance of being able to hear himself think.
‘I didn’t do nothing,’ Darren insisted again.
‘So you said.’ Max pushed open the door to his office and shoved Darren inside. ‘Right, tell me again what happened. And tell me the truth, eh? It’ll save us both a lot of time.’
Darren gazed around at his surroundings. It was a smart office and the lad was duly impressed.
‘Come on then, Darren. Out with it.’
Darren swung the swivel chair round on its stand.
‘Have a seat,’ Max offered, nodding at his executive chair.
‘Cool.’ Darren sat and swivelled himself round a few times – very much like Max had when the chair had first been delivered.
‘Come on,’ Max prompted and Darren, still now, sighed.
‘Someone had chucked an old chair out and Robbie Taylor and the rest of ’em dragged it into the road and set fire to it. One of ’em, don’t know who it were, phoned the fire brigade.’
‘And decided it would be fun to hurl stones at firemen?’
Darren shrugged. ‘Spose. It were just a laugh.’
‘Not a very good one, was it? You wouldn’t find it funny if someone threw bricks at you, would you?’
Darren shrugged again.
‘So these bricks you threw –’
‘I didn’t throw ’em at the firemen,’ Darren insisted again. ‘I chucked ’em at Robbie Taylor.’
‘And that’s all right?’
‘I was trying to stop him chucking stuff. I knows that fireman, you see. Well, I don’t know him, but I seen him before. There were a swan tangled up in some wire down at New Line and he got it free. There were a bloke from the RSPCA turned up, too. I thought he were a nice bloke so I didn’t want Robbie chucking stuff at him.’
‘I see. You like swans, do you?’
‘Yeah. I like all birds an’ all animals.’ His grubby face softened.
Max imagined a house overrun with cats, dogs, hamsters, rabbits and God knows what else.
‘I had a puppy once,’ Darren said wistfully, ‘but it went off.’
‘Yeah. It were a stray I found. I only had it three days. It peed on the carpet and me mam went mad. Then Dave, me stepdad, kicked hell out of it and it ran off. I couldn’t find it again.’
Max despaired. In ten years’ time, wh
en Darren was twenty-four and a hardened criminal, because that seemed to be his destiny, Max would be able to deal with him. But now, as a kid – God, he despaired. What hope was there for him? Dave Walsh would kick out at anything, dogs or stepsons included.
‘Went off?’
‘So pets aren’t allowed?’
‘No.’
‘You’ve got plenty of time on your hands,’ Max pointed out. ‘Why don’t you visit the rescue centre? I’m sure they’d be glad of another pair of hands. Dogs always need walking and feeding.’
Darren looked at him as if he’d suggested flying to Mars and back. For Darren, life trudged along with one day the same as the next. There was no point thinking abouttomorrow because it would be as grim as today. He had no dreams, no ambitions – everything had been knocked out of him by life with a mother and stepfather who didn’t give a toss.
‘You’ve got a bike, haven’t you?’ Max told him. ‘Weren’t you getting a new one?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then you could be there in no time.’
‘Who’d I see?’ he asked, unsure.
Max thought for a moment. ‘Leave it with me,’ he said at last. ‘Come and see me on Monday. OK?’
‘Do you reckon as they’d want me?’
‘I’ll ask.’
Max might have promised the lad the sun, the moon and the stars.
‘Aw, thanks, mister.’
‘Max.’
‘Max.’ Darren was grinning now.
‘Come on,’ Max said, ‘let’s go and sort out this business. You’re in trouble, Darren.’
‘Can’t you tell ’em it weren’t me?’
‘We’ll see . . .’
As Darren stood up, an iPod fell from his pocket. Max bent to pick it up.
The lad had nothing – no love, no guidance, no decent shoes. So how the hell did he come to have an iPod?
‘Very nice,’ Max murmured, turning it over in his hands. ‘Very expensive, too.’
‘Found it,’ Darren muttered, his face scarlet again.
‘Darren!’
‘Did, too,’ the lad protested. ‘There were a big box of ’em in our shed.’
‘Did they belong to your stepdad?’
‘Dunno.’
Max didn’t know either, but he had a damn good idea. He’d bet his life that this iPod had been taken from a certain computer and electrical shop in Kelton Bridge. And he’d bet that Dave Walsh’s shed also contained several MP3 players and an assortment of DVD players, as well as stuff pinched from private residences.
‘Right, Darren, listen carefully. I’ll get you out of here and then you’ll go straight home, right?’
Darren nodded.
‘And you won’t say a word to anyone – not your mother or your stepfather – about being here, right?’
Darren nodded again, eyes like saucers.
‘As for this . . .’ Max held out the iPod. ‘This stays here.’
‘OK.’ Darren shuffled his feet. ‘Will you still ask the kennels if I can go?’
The loss of the iPod was as nothing in comparison.
‘I will,’ Max promised.
But first, he’d get a search warrant organized.
Chapter Thirty
‘Jill, my darling girl!’
Jill, a bag of shopping in one hand and keys in the other, locked her car with the remote. ‘Hi, Finlay. How are you?’
‘All the better for seeing you. You’re a stranger to me.’
‘Just busy.’
There was no point telling him she’d been staying at Max’s. Thinking about it, though, he’d probably noticed her absence. Despite his happy-go-lucky exterior, she suspected he didn’t miss a lot.
‘Too busy for a drink? I’m about to stroll down to the pub.’
She was all set to decline the invitation, but it was another pleasant evening and she had nothing planned. ‘Yes, I’d like that. Give me two minutes, will you?’
‘As long as you like!’
He took her shopping bag from her, allowing her to open the front door of her cottage, then followed her inside.
All three cats gave her a royal welcome. They always did when she’d been out for a few hours, especially when their food bowl was empty. She fed them, grabbed a sweater and checked her purse for cash.
‘We’ll all rest a lot easier now those thieves have been caught,’ he said as she locked her door.
‘Until the next lot come along,’ she agreed.
But he was right. The village could relax again. Thanks to their finding Darren in possession of an iPod last week, Dave Walsh was now in custody.
That was often how crimes were solved. They could have the best officers and the best technology in the world yet, very often, all it needed was a piece of luck. Officers had spent hours trying to figure out how the burglar had known when people were going to be away. Dave Walsh hadn’t done a day’s work in his life. Consequently, he had the time to watch and listen. It was that simple. If he’d stuck to private houses instead of growing greedy and breaking into the local computer shop, he might have had a few more months of freedom.
‘So tell me, darling girl, will you miss me when I’m gone?’
The question took her completely by surprise. ‘You’re leaving?’
‘Of course. I only rented the cottage for three months. I’ll be gone on Sunday.’
She’d known it was a short-term let. It was the fact that those three months had passed so quickly that took her by surprise. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Who knows? I’ll do what I usually do and go where the whim takes me.’
‘What a lovely way to live.’
He laughed at that. ‘You’d hate it. You’re too settled here.’
She was settled. The locals might not agree, but Jill felt as if she belonged in Kelton Bridge.
‘It has its drawbacks, too,’ he added, grinning. ‘As a traveller, you’re always first on a list of suspects.’
She smiled, as was expected, but his nomadic lifestyle hadn’t put him on the list of suspects. His association with the murder victim had done that. As had the file found in his kitchen. And the fact that he’d bought red ribbon. Not the red ribbon admittedly, but red ribbon.
‘Your time in Kelton has been nothing if not eventful,’ she said.
‘And I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.’
She didn’t doubt that. For a while, he’d been the centre of attention and he’d revelled in it.
‘Will you be glad to leave?’
‘Three months in the same place is about my limit.’ Which didn’t answer her question.
He pushed open the door of the Weaver’s Retreat and the noise hit them. Early evening, there was usually a good crowd in. This evening, the locals were making fun of Barry who, once again, had backed the outsiders and lost a hefty sum. Barry was lucky; Jill hadn’t even had chance to look at the runners.
On A Whim. She was sure he was running tomorrow. In the morning, she might put a few pounds on that.
Finlay was popular with the locals, yet they were wary of him and kept him at a distance. They remained suspicious of newcomers for a long time, as she’d found out. If you gained their trust, however, you were soon accepted as part of the community.
She watched him as he bought their drinks and it struck her that he considered himself above other people. He was all charm, yet beneath that there was an aloofness, a cockiness. Just as he’d played with Max during the long hours he spent in the interview room, he played with the locals. He was big on mind games.
He must enjoy his work. What better way of playing with people’s minds than doing tarot readings? He could tell clients what they wanted to hear. Or he could tell them what they didn’t want to hear which, more likely than not, would have them returning for a second reading and a third.
‘How’s that policeman of yours?’ he asked as he put her drink on the table and sat beside her.
‘Max? He’s fine.’
Right now, she w
as terribly proud of him. True to his word, he’d taken Darren to the kennels on Monday night and Darren had hardly left the place since. He was in his own idea of heaven – feeding the dogs and taking them for walks.
On Wednesday night, Ben, who must have forgotten he was banned from the place, visited and, the next thing, Darren was sitting down to dinner at Max’s place.
It was exactly what Darren needed to help him stick to the straight and narrow . . .
‘He’s too busy catching burglars to catch killers, I suppose,’ Finlay broke into her thoughts.
‘That wasn’t his case, but sometimes you get a stroke of luck.’ She didn’t want to answer his questions; she would rather he answered hers. ‘How’s your business going, Finlay?’
‘Very well,’ he answered with satisfaction.
‘You’ll have to do a reading for me,’ she said lightly.
‘Any time, sweetheart. What is it you’re wanting to know from the cards?’
She wanted to know who had killed Nikki and Carol Blakely. And she wanted to know about the man she was currently sitting with. She didn’t like him. It was the first time she had admitted that. He was charming enough, but she was aware of depths to his personality that disturbed her. She didn’t trust him. At one point, she had been as convinced as Max that he was guilty of Carol Blakely’s murder.
She brushed the thought aside. He wasn’t guilty. Luckily for him, the real killer had struck while he’d been detained.
‘I’d like to know if I’ll be going to Spain for my holiday,’ she answered his question. ‘I’d like to know which horses are going to win tomorrow, and I would really love to know which lottery numbers will come up.’
‘Wouldn’t we all.’ The idea made him laugh.
‘And the cards can’t tell me?’
‘’Fraid not.’ He took a large swallow from his pint of beer. ‘They can tell you whether it’s the right time for you to go on holiday, just as they can suggest the right time to back horses or buy a lottery ticket. They can suggest the path you should take on the road to happiness.’
Jill wanted more than suggestions; she wanted answers.
Over a week had passed since Nikki’s body had been found and, despite having questioned literally thousands of people, they had no strong suspects.
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