Death Dues

by Evans, Geraldine

  ‘What a veritable found of benevolence you are. I must put you forward for an award.’

  ‘You might sneer,’ said Nigel, ‘though I don’t know why you think yourself so superior. After all, debt is something your family is familiar with.’

  ‘And yours,’ Rafferty shot back, even as he said it, he was aware that he was being juvenile and unprofessional. But there was something about Nigel that tended to bring out the worst in him. For a moment, he thought Nigel was about to add some other taunt, but he clearly thought better of it for his lips clamped shut and he merely stared at Rafferty with dislike. At least he no longer leant back gazing at them with that infuriating condescension. ‘So where did you get the funding to get started?’

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  This looked like turning into a grudge match. Llewellyn stepped in to referee. ‘Mr Blythe, we’re here as part of our investigation into the death of a Mr John Harrison who worked as a collector for Malcolm Forbes. He was found dead after being brutally attacked in the alleyway that runs behind one of the rows of houses in Primrose Avenue. You told me on the phone that you saw him enter the alley and took pains that he didn’t see you. Did you see anyone or anything else?’

  Mollified at Llewellyn’s gentler tones, Nigel sat back again. ‘No. I saw nothing but what I’ve already told you. And yes, of course I took pains that he didn’t see me. I saw no point in antagonising him or his boss.’ He leaned back in his seat. ‘Now, if that’s all, I’d like to get on. I do have a business to run.’

  ‘Wanted to avoid another confrontation about whose turf it was? Very wise,’ Rafferty put in.

  ‘I’ve always found that a little discretion goes a long way to reducing any potential hostility.’

  ‘So you didn’t follow Harrison into the alley and bop him on the back of the head?’

  ‘Certainly not. I dislike alleys. They’re dreadfully muddy places usually and can ruin a decent pair of shoes.’

  Llewellyn once again intervened. ‘Did you see anything at all, Sir?’

  ‘A pretty lady is all. A Ms Tracey Stubbs. One of my clientele. Oh,’ he added. ‘And a few scruffy brats. There was a gang of youths hanging around the corner, too, when I arrived. I didn’t see anyone else. I was more concerned that one of the brats might scratch my car than with doing your job for you.’ This last was, of course, directed at Rafferty.

  Immediately, he shot back, ‘That’s a shame because you’re on our suspect list. You were in the right place at the right time. Maybe you decided to bump off one of your rival’s men.’

  ‘Who do you think I am? Al Capone?’ Nigel clearly didn’t deign this worthy of any other reply.

  Rafferty didn’t really believe that Nigel was the guilty party anyway. He couldn’t see his immaculately dressed cousin attacking the large outhouse that was Jaws Harrison. Certainly not in broad daylight and in a muddy alley. There’d be too much risk of getting mud on his pretty suit.

  This interview was turning out to be as much of a waste of time as his visit to The Elmhurst had been. It made him short tempered and he didn’t have any hesitation in taking it out on Nigel.

  ‘Coming the heavy yourself, aren’t you coz?’ Nigel drawled sarcastically. ‘Perhaps I should call my solicitor?’

  ‘Perhaps you should, coz. If you think you need him.’

  Nigel sat up straight and glared at Rafferty. ‘I’m beginning to think I might. You come in here, flinging accusations about and—’

  ‘No accusations, coz. I was merely doing the politeness of informing you of your position. No accusation in that.’ Rafferty’s voice became sharper. ‘Did you see anything? Anything at all?’

  ‘Only Tracey Stubbs, the kids, the back of Jaws Harrison’s head – not in close-up, whatever you might think – and the cool dude youths, as I told you.’

  ‘According to our information you were with Ms Stubbs for some time.’

  ‘She was trying to give me the run around.’

  ‘So what happened? Did you decide to take payment in kind? As I said, we heard you were in there some time.’

  ‘My dear Inspector, please. Payment in kind? From little Tracey? I hardly think so. Of course she might suit you. I, on the other hand, as you know, have more discerning tastes. I’d only to click my fingers and I could have a dozen Traceys. If I wanted them. Which I don’t. No. From her all I wanted was what was due and that was money.’

  ‘And did you get it? The money, I mean?’

  ‘Oh yes. Calm your fears, dear boy. I got my money.’

  Rafferty didn’t doubt it. Nigel never let more tender feelings come between himself and his first love. ‘Don’t forget to let me know if you hear anything,’ Rafferty reminded him as he got up.

  ‘Always glad to help the police.’

  Yeah, right, thought Rafferty as he walked through the modern chrome and black leather outer office and left Nigel to his empire building.

  By now they were well into the third day of the investigation. The case plodded its slow way on. More people were questioned and their answers checked, but they were no nearer to a solution. The murder weapon still hadn’t turned up. Rafferty was beginning to doubt they’d ever find it. There had certainly been no trace of it in Primrose Avenue or anywhere in the immediate vicinity. The search for this elusive item had now spread further afield.

  Time, he thought, to question the four youths again. They were the only ones on the spot both before and after the murder. The only ones able if not willing to tell them who else had entered the alley. Who were they protecting? The only thing he could think of was that the youths had some connection to Malcolm Forbes. He seemed just the sort of man who would make use of such youths for his own purposes. Had they seen one of Forbes’s other men follow Jaws with intent to extract retribution for some suspected felony? Had Jaws been helping himself to some of Forbes’s collection money?

  Rafferty didn’t know. And the only way they would have any possible hope of finding out was to question the four youths again. They only ones – apart from the murderer – unless he was one of them, able to tell them more.

  They found them in their usual haunt on the corner of Primrose Avenue. But, like Nigel, their memories didn’t improve with further questioning.

  'Come on lads,' Rafferty encouraged. 'You must have seen something else."

  'Well we didn't,' Jake Spalding told him truculently. 'Why do you keep picking on us? We haven't done nothing.'

  'So it follows that you must have done something,' Llewellyn said. ‘Double negative,’ he explained.

  'Don't you twist my words with your clever copper’s talk.' Jake came forward a few paces and stood practically nose to nose with Llewellyn. 'I told you we've done nothing. You can believe us or not. My old man knows the law. You can't charge us. You've no evidence.'

  Frustrated that they seemed to find murder a subject for aggression rather than horror, Rafferty said, 'Come on, Dafyd. It's clear we're going to get nothing of value from them.'

  He turned to the group of youngsters who were hanging around some yards from the youths. One of the kids even sported a leather jacket. Hoping to learn how to be hard and cool, too, thought Rafferty, noting down yet another probable future youth crime statistic.

  ‘Hey, copper,’ one of these youngsters, a stocky, ginger-haired lad of about ten, shouted. ‘Have you questioned that fatso, Forbes, yet?’

  Rafferty wondered whether to grace this mannerless question with a reply, but then he thought, why not? ‘And why would I want to question Mr Forbes? Apart from asking him what he knows about his dead employee?’

  ‘You wanna try asking him how he came to be dead,’ the boy scornfully replied. ‘Reckon he might know more about it than he’s told you.’

  ‘You do, do you? And why might that be?’

  ‘I saw him, didn’t I?’

  His friends tried to shush him. But it was clear that here was a Malcolm Forbes in miniature; fearless, pugnacious and sure of himself. He was big f
or his age and his cocky demeanour demanded he show both no fear and a knowledge greater than the rest.

  ‘You saw him you said? Where was this? And what time?’

  His sharp tone did nothing to discourage the boy. The massed freckles of the true redhead seemed to dance about across his nose and cheeks in his determined effort not to betray his excitement. ‘Yeah. I saw him. He came waddling along the street after he got out of that flash Merc he drives. It was around quarter past three. He headed down the alley straight after Jaws had gone down there. When he came out he had something in his hand.’

  ‘What? And where were you that you were able to see him?’

  ‘I was in my bedroom, wasn’t I? I live in one of the houses opposite the alley. I was playing a computer game.’

  ‘You didn’t say what he had in his hand.’

  The freckles seemed to dim with his disappointment as he said, ‘That’s ‘cos I couldn’t see it. He had it on the side away from me. Maybe he was hiding whatever it was?’ In a fortissimo whisper that betrayed his excitement, he added, ‘Maybe he sensed me watching him? Maybe it was the murder weapon?’

  And maybe you’re just making it all up in order to have a bit of fun at my expense, Rafferty thought as he asked, ‘Is your mother in?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Your evidence could be important,’ he told the boy, who gave a gap-toothed grin. ‘I need to check it out.’

  The grin vanished. ‘Are you saying I’m a liar?’

  ‘No. Not at all. But it’s never wise for a policeman to take everything as gospel. For instance, how do you know Mr Forbes?’

  The boy gave as good a sneer as Jake Spalding, he of the cool leather jacket. ‘My mum spends enough time in his pawnshop trying to sweet talk old skinny who works there into giving her more money for her stuff. She always drags me and my brother with her. She only got my computer out of hock last week.’ He gave a hard done by sigh. ‘I suppose it’ll be going back next week when she can’t pay the rent.’

  ‘I see. What number do you live at, sonny?’

  ‘Don’t “Sonny” me. My name’s Bazza. And I live at number thirteen.’

  There was that number again. He shivered, then gave himself a shake. Superstitious rot. ‘I’ll see what your mum has to say and then I may want to speak to you again.’

  Bazza shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. But I know what I saw and what time I saw it an’ all.’

  If the boy’s evidence was true it could mean the case made a big push forward. He’d been very definite about the times too. ‘You said you saw the victim, Mr Harrison, a little before Mr Forbes?’

  Bazza nodded. ‘No more than a minute or so earlier.’

  ‘Did you see him come out of the alley as well?’ It didn’t seem likely that he had done so, seeing as Jaws had died there, but seeing as he had such a willing witness he might as well check.

  ‘Nah. I only saw him go in. I never saw him come out again, though I waited so I could warn my mum he’d be round. He always does Primrose Ave before he does our street. I knew she didn’t have the money to pay him. She’d been moaning about it earlier.’

  ‘OK Bazza. Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.’

  ‘Think he’s telling the truth?’ Llewellyn asked as they crossed the road to number thirteen in the street that formed the cross bar of the ‘T’ with Primrose Avenue.

  ‘God knows. If he copies the example of the big boys in the street, lying will be a way of life. Though why even a kid of his age should be so keen to get on the wrong side of Malcolm Forbes… But if his mum confirms he was in his bedroom and that he’d got a good view of the alley, we’ll have to take what he says seriously.’

  As it turned out, Bazza had told them the truth. Or, at least, he had been in his front-facing bedroom at the time he claimed. His mum, a Ms Lomond, confirmed that her eldest had been in his bedroom from around two-thirty to the time the police had turned up when, like the rest of the neighbourhood, he went out to gawp. She was obliging enough to lead them up the stairs to Bazza’s bedroom and he did, indeed, have a bird’s eye view of the alley in which the murder had occurred, though high hedging obscured the further reaches of the alley where it curved before meeting the high blank wall of the factory.

  It seemed they now, in Malcolm “The Enforcer” Forbes, had another suspect to add to those in Primrose Avenue. A suspect, moreover, who it seemed certain wouldn’t shy away from committing a violent murder if it suited his purposes. And if Jaws had been stealing from him, Rafferty could imagine murder would, by Forbes, be considered a suitable punishment.

  Chapter Eight

  Another visit to Malcolm Forbes was indicated, but Rafferty said as Bazza’s front door shut behind them, ‘I think we’ll leave it till tomorrow. If he thinks he’s got away with lying to us he might just become over-confident in the interim and let something slip.’

  ‘You know he’s likely to deny being in that alley,’ Llewellyn put in. ‘We have only young Bazza’s word that he was there at all. Even Tony Moran didn’t mention his presence.’

  ‘That’s why it’ll be interesting to see what he says when we question him. Hopefully, his car will show up on CCTV as he passed through the town. In the meantime, we need to see if anyone other than Bazza Lomond saw him. The four youths, for instance. As you say, it’s strange that Tony Moran never mentioned him. Though I suppose he was more concerned with saving his skin if he mentioned Forbes than he was with bringing Harrison’s killer to justice. Get the house-to-house team on to questioning around the neighbourhood again, will you, Daff? Someone else in Bazza’s street might have seen him drive up.’

  Rafferty, conscious that they might have found the breakthrough that would provide the answers they sought, did his best to quell the burgeoning excitement.

  ‘I hear you’re looking for a cheap florist,’ Constable Bill Beard said to Rafferty as he and Llewellyn entered the station reception.

  ‘Not a cheap florist, no,’ Rafferty corrected him. ‘I’m looking for a professional florist who’ll do a good job cheaply for my wedding. Why? Know any?’

  ‘My auntie used to be a florist. She’d long since retired, of course. But she likes to keep her hand in. How much were you thinking of paying?’

  Rafferty called to mind the quotes he’d had and halved the cheapest. It wasn’t as if Bill’s auntie had the overheads of shop and staff to pay for. A bit of pin money was probably all she’d require.

  ‘I’ll give her a bell. You want the usual, I take it? Flowers for the church and reception hall and bouquets and buttonholes?’

  Rafferty nodded. ‘I can let you know how many nearer the time.’

  ‘Numbers aren’t a problem. My auntie can always call in the help of a few of her old muckers in the trade. Of course I’ll expect an agent’s fee.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Not the usual fifteen per cent. Not even ten. To you it’s five per cent. Can’t say fairer than that. Does a lovely job. You’ll be pleased with the result. It’s in her blood.’

  Rafferty couldn’t believe that strangling a bunch of innocent flowers with wire could be in anyone’s blood. ‘It’s my fiancée who needs to be pleased. One bouquet looks much the same as another to me.’

  ‘Leave it with me. I’ll get it sorted for you.’ Beard prised his bulk off the reception counter and picked up the phone, looking far more willing and enthusiastic about tackling this little side-line than he ever did about his real job.

  Rafferty nodded his thanks and followed Llewellyn upstairs to his office.

  Malcolm Forbes said very little at first when they questioned him again at the police station. He waited while Rafferty placed the two tapes in the recorder, sitting silently while Rafferty spoke their names into the tape.

  But once Rafferty began questioning him he was quick to deny being in Primrose Avenue at the time Bazza Lomond claimed to have seen him enter the alley.

  ‘What would I need to go there
for?’ he not unreasonably asked as he leant back in his chair. He seemed enclosed in an aura of confidence as if he couldn’t envisage anyone being foolhardy enough to place him in the vicinity of a murder. And if someone had, his manner implied, that someone could easily be persuaded to change their mind. ‘I don’t do the collections. That’s what I hire staff for. I’ve got more important things to do with my time.’

  ‘OK, Mr Forbes. So if you weren’t in the alley or its vicinity around the time of Mr Harrison’s murder, which occurred roughly between two-thirty and three-thirty, where were you?’

  ‘I was in my office, Inspector. Where I’m normally to be found on a weekday. And where I should be now if you hadn't called me into the station to question me on this unfortunate business. You can’t trust the staff to provide a decent valuation on people’s more valuable little trinkets. I see to most of that side of things.’

  Decent for whom? Rafferty wondered, though he doubted the decent valuations went to benefit Forbes’s customers. He challenged Forbes’s claim. ‘You were seen, you know, going into that alley.’

  Forbes’s mean grey eyes swivelled between them for a second before his gaze turned even meaner and he fixed it intimidatingly on Rafferty. It was clear he wasn’t used to being contradicted. It was also clear that he meant someone to pay for the necessity of extracting himself from the mire.

  ‘Nonsense,’ he barked. ‘Seen? How could I have been seen? I told you. I wasn’t there. Seen by whom, anyway?’

  Rafferty smiled. ‘You know I can’t tell you that, Sir.’ No chance of that and give him the opportunity to put the frighteners on the bombastic Bazza Lomond. Though Bazza had been far from discreet in confiding his news and it must have been overheard by Jake Sterling and his friends. If they thought there was money in it they might repeat Bazza’a words to Forbes. For all they knew, the four youths were already in Forbes’s pay; certainly, not one of them had mentioned the loan shark being in the vicinity of the alley on the afternoon of the murder. ‘Which of your staff was on duty that afternoon?’