‘Yes sir.’ He handed the paperwork over.
‘Get me and Sergeant Llewellyn some tea, son, there’s a good lad. Have you managed to dry out?’
Tim Smales smiled and nodded. ‘I use the old plastic bag inside the shoe trick. Keeps the feet nice and dry.’
Rafferty grinned. ‘You’ll do. Getting as savvy as an old timer.’ Though not this old timer, unfortunately, Rafferty thought. The dignity of rank meant his feet had to go plastic-bag-less. It wouldn’t do for the plastic to peep over his shoes.
Mission accomplished, Rafferty returned to his chair. The ceiling, having proved unhelpful as a provider of answers, he contemplated his navel instead. But all it told him was that he was getting the beginnings of a paunch. He was glad when Lizzie knocked on the door and brought in the list of Primrose Avenue debtors.
Six of those in the odd side of the street who were at home and had the opportunity to kill also had large debts with Malcolm Forbes. The rest, on the surface at least, had no motive that they had yet discerned. But it was early days. Too soon to be leaping to conclusions as Llewellyn would undoubtedly tell him if he was foolish enough to voice another theory so early in the investigation.
Still, he reasoned, those six were the most interesting to a suspicious policeman. Questioning them was a matter of urgency, but he’d postpone that until after the post mortem. He wanted to be armed with a more certain idea of the time of death than he currently had before he questioned anyone further, apart from the four street corner hanging youths.
As soon as Sam Dally had provided a description of the likely weapon, Rafferty had set a couple of the uniforms on checking out back gates and shed doors for locks. None of the back gates had either locks or bolts and few of the sheds. Anyone with a mind to could have entered the back garden of one of the houses, helped themselves to a hammer or some other tool, and waited for Jaws to come along. On the surface, those with gardens that backed on to the alley where it curved would have had the best chance of killing him out of sight of the youths at the top of the alley. But the youths would doubtless have spent their time moving and mucking about so wouldn’t necessarily have a view down the alley all the time so he couldn’t remove the residents of the lower house numbers from his suspect list.
Any one of the residents of the entire row could have waited their chance, nipped along the alley while the youths amused themselves further up the street and then slipped around the curve in the alley and into a neighbour’s back garden while they waited for the collector.
So far, they had eight possible suspects; even the very pregnant Tracey Stubbs could have wielded a hammer from behind the victim without too much strain. So could everyone else. That was the problem. But at least the five students in number seven had, it had been discovered, all gone back to their family homes for the holidays. They had been checked out and exonerated.
Tea finished, Rafferty heaved himself to his feet. ‘Time to have a little chat with the Likely Lads,’ he told Llewellyn and they headed for the custody suite on the ground floor.
Tony Moran, one of the less cocky of the four youths, provided some answers. After a brief show of bravado, Moran admitted to hanging around the street corner for most of the afternoon, mucking about and being rude to passers-by.
'It was only a bit of fun, like,' he artlessly confided.
'I presume you saw the victim, Mr Harrison, enter the alley?'
Moran nodded.
'And did you see anyone leave Primrose Avenue after you'd seen Mr Harrison?'
'Yeah. I saw a few women going to the shops. Two, no, three.'
'And do you know their names?' Llewellyn asked.
Moran shook his head. 'I'm no good with names.'
'Can you describe them?'
'Yeah, I suppose.' He proceeded to do so and Llewellyn nodded to confirm he recognised the women concerned.
'So,' said Rafferty as they left Tony Moran to be escorted back to his cell and Llewellyn had confided the identities of the women Moran had described, 'if we fail to find the weapon, one of the three women who left the street for a short time: Mrs Jones, Mrs Parker and Josie McBride, were the only ones who could have disposed of it away from Primrose Avenue.
‘Check whether we’ve got any previous for any of the residents, Dafyd, plus the two youths who don’t live on the street: Des Arnott and Tony Moran. You’ll probably find a few drunk and disorderlies and affrays as well, but I’m looking for something more meaty. It might give us a lead.’
Leaving Llewellyn to make for their shared office and his computer, Rafferty veered off in the direction of the canteen in search of more tea and a bacon butty. Mission accomplished, he returned to his office and addressed himself to his tea with the desperation of the addict denied his craving. Having rapidly consumed his tea, piping hot as it was, he searched his pockets and found the electronic cigarette that he had recently purchased. He sat back and drew deep, still mildly disconcerted that the end glowed green. Who thought that was a good idea, he wondered? Cravings temporarily sated, Rafferty asked Llewellyn how he was getting on.
It seemed. Jake, the elder of the two Sterling boys was well in the frame for a mugging gone wrong as he’d had a chequered criminal career for one so young.
‘Apart from Jake Sterling and his friend, Des Arnott, no one has been up on any serious charges. A certain amount of brawling is the worst,’ Llewellyn said.
‘And that’s just the women,’ Rafferty joked. ‘A one-off killer then. It always pointed that way. Oh well, now you’ve dashed my hopes, can you attempt to replace them with better ones?’
‘I can but try.’ Llewellyn studied him for a moment with his serious brown eyes.’ The psychological angle—’ he began.
‘No,’ Rafferty groaned. ‘Spare me that. No mumbo jumbo about Oedipus complexes and the like. If this isn't the first shot in a turf war, this is your typical act of madness with a certain amount of premeditation thrown in, to my way of thinking. The weapon at the ready suggests that.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Llewellyn contradicted. ‘The murderer, like Mr Jones at number five, could simply have been innocently doing a few odd jobs in the garden when he or she saw their chance.’
‘And grabbed it. Mmm. I suppose you’re right.’ Frustratingly, Llewellyn usually was. ‘OK. Scrub that theory. Any other ideas?’
‘To return to the psychological angle—’
‘Let’s not. I told you, it’s something meaty I want. How many hammers are we missing?’
‘Three. One each from the sheds of numbers one, three and eleven. But as those sheds were as lacking in locks as the back gates it gets us no further forward. Anyone could have helped themselves from most of the garden sheds along the row.’
‘You’re no use, are you? I ask you to give me hope and all you do is give me facts I already know.’ Rafferty slumped back in his chair and returned to his study of the ceiling. ‘Throw me a few straws I can clutch at, for God’s sake.’
‘I’m not a great believer in straw-clutching.’
Rafferty lowered his gaze from his ceiling-study and stared at his sergeant for a few seconds. He sighed and said, ‘No, you’re not, are you? Perhaps I should try young Timmy Smales? I might at least find a straw behind his wet ear.’ Though even that hope evaporated as he recalled that Smales’s ears were beginning to dry up nicely. Which were more than his own were doing as he felt like he had half the Atlantic lodged there. He found a grubby tissue in his drawer and poked about for a bit, shaking his head vigorously to dislodge any lingering puddles.
The murder had occurred in a part of town which frequently required the presence of uniform: domestics, neighbourly disputes and troublesome youths causing a nuisance.
Rafferty’s Ma’s house, only a few streets away, was different again. Most of the residents of her road were older and had bought their houses from the Council. They had a pride in keeping them spruce. Primrose Avenue conjured up an aura of faded gentility that was at odds with reality. The terraced h
ousing had been built after the war and the land had originally been fields adjoining a stream which had been drained at the time the houses went up. There were few primroses to be seen there now.
He turned back to Llewellyn who was studying the batch of early statements. ‘None of Malcolm Forbes’s debtors mentioned Jaws Harrison knocking on their doors?’
Llewellyn shook his head. ‘Not according to house-to-house.’ The Welshman’s intelligent brown eyes were thoughtful. ‘I’d like to know what he was doing in that alleyway where he died.’
Rafferty smiled. Experience always told. That one was easy, as he told his sergeant. ‘I imagine he was in that alleyway because he knew he wouldn’t get an answer if he knocked on the front door. Probably, he had nous enough to know that debtor families with kids leave the back door unlocked. Likely, he didn’t keep to a strict routine on his collection round, either. If he had any sense, he would have liked the element of surprise. He was also probably scared of getting mugged given the two cases last week. He’d usually have a tidy sum, I imagine, by the time he’d finished his collections.’
‘So nobody could have known precisely when he’d turn up?’
‘That’s what I’m thinking. But we can check it out. If I’m right, it must have made it more difficult to plan his murder — if planning was actually involved and it wasn’t just an opportunistic assault.’
‘Clearly not too difficult, considering he’s dead.’
‘True.’ Rafferty put his feet up on his desk. His shoes were dulled from their contact with the deep puddles in Primrose Avenue. He’d have felt aggrieved at that if they hadn’t been pretty dull to begin with. No Beau Brummel, him. ‘Perhaps the adults used the kids as lookouts and got warning of his arrival?’ The children on the street were currently on their Easter holidays from school, and even though the weather had been cold and wet most of them would have been playing out on their own and neighbouring streets and easily able to warn mum and dad of Jaws’ arrival.
‘Our victim was killed in broad daylight yet no one saw a thing. Or so they claim. Can his killer really not have appreciated that their tormentor would be quickly replaced? Or did fear and desperation simply cloud their judgement? Was any break from the debt collection, however brief, a welcome respite? Overcome by misery, despair and hatred of their persecutor, did the killer just strike out at the local face of their tormentor when the opportunity presented itself, so that, for once, someone else was the victim?’
Slowly, Llewellyn nodded his head. ‘Plausible. Desperation can drive people to commit all sorts of illogical acts.’
‘Mmm. It would have made more sense if they’d targeted the boss man himself, Malcolm Forbes. A petrol bomb lobbed through his window in the middle of the night, home and office both, would have removed him and the debtors’ records.’
Instead, the killer — whom Rafferty was convinced must be numbered amongst those who owed Forbes money — had chosen to remove one of Forbes’s collectors. Pointless really.
It indicated that the killer wasn’t very bright. Unless it meant that Jaws had been murdered for reasons other than debt.
Rafferty frowned. Was he letting the debtor issue obscure other possibilities? Maybe someone with entirely different motives had used the debtor angle and the recent spate of loan shark muggings for their own ends?
Which would indicate that their killer might be bright enough to get away with it
.
Chapter Four
‘It’s time I got over to Jaws Harrison’s home and broke the news of his death,’ Rafferty said as, regretfully, he metaphorically stubbed out his electronic cigarette. ‘You stay here and carry on reading through those statements,’ he told Llewellyn. ‘I’ll take Lizzie Green with me. You can give me the gist of the rest of them when I get back.’
John Jaws Harrison had lived in a small first floor flat off the High Street. A slatternly-looking bleached blonde with a cigarette dangling from her lip, answered the door. Her low-cut top and short skirt made Rafferty wonder if Jaws had done a bit of pimping on the side.
‘Yeah? What do you want?’ she asked after they had shown her their IDs. Her expression was sullen and unwelcoming. It seemed police officers were not her favourite people.
Rafferty braced himself. ‘If we could come in for a few minutes? I’m afraid we have some bad news for you.’
‘Bad news? What bad news?’ She stood, arms folded, barring their way, her expression suspicious as if she thought they were trying to gain entry under false pretences.
Rafferty tried again. ‘It’s about Mr Harrison,’ he began. ‘He–’
‘What’s happened to him? Tell me.’ Her thin, bony hands were clenched into fists as if she was considering striking them. ‘If you’ve arrested him—‘
‘It’s nothing like that.’ Gently, Rafferty took her arm and persuaded her up the stairs and down the narrow hall to the living room. Once he’d got her seated, he broke the news.
‘Dead? He can’t be dead. I only saw him this morning.’
‘I’m afraid it’s true, Ms Pulman.’
She took a few moments to absorb this, then she asked, ‘So how did he die? Did he have an accident in his car?’
‘No. I’m afraid we have reason to believe he was murdered.’
Her eyes with their thick surround of eyeliner and lashings of mascara rounded at this. Then she began to sob loudly and messily.
‘I’ll make some tea,’ Lizzie volunteered, to Rafferty’s dismay leaving him with the sobbing woman. He patted Annie Pulman’s stiff back with a tentative hand. But the tea was quickly made and Lizzie was soon back.
‘Did Mr Harrison have any enemies that you know of?’ he asked Annie Pulman’s bowed head. It shook in response. Her eye make up had smeared and run, making black tracks with her tears through the thick foundation on her face. Rafferty looked around for a box of tissues, and seeing none, he went in search of the bathroom and came back trailing a length of toilet paper. Silently, he handed it to her.
Clearly she was in denial, given Harrison’s job was designed to make enemies. ‘Have you lived together long?’
‘Six months,’ she spluttered between gulping sobs.
She could tell them little; she knew nothing about Harrison’s job beyond that he was a debt collector.
‘Did he have any family? Parents? Brothers or sisters?’
‘No, his parents are dead. He had one brother, but he emigrated to Australia ten years ago. I don’t know where he lives. John hasn’t heard from him in ages.’
It didn’t leave much choice about who would have to do the formal identifying. Tentatively, he mentioned this to Annie Pulman, but all he received in return was a shocked stare. ‘Maybe later,’ he murmured soothingly.
After another five minutes of this, Rafferty said, ‘I’ll leave Constable Green with you. Let her know if there’s anyone she can call to be with you.’
He received no acknowledgement to this. But as there was nothing else he could do here for the moment, he nodded to Lizzie to get her out on to the landing so he could have a private word. ‘See if you can have a look around. Ms Pulman might give you permission, but if not…’ He left the ‘if not’ open-ended, confident that Lizzie Green would grasp his meaning. But, with or without Ms Pulman’s permission, the murder of her partner gave them carte blanche to give the place a thorough going over.
After bidding the still sobbing Annie Pulman a polite ‘good evening,’ Rafferty left. He needed to get back to the station.
Jake Sterling and Des Arnott, the two cockiest of the leather-clad youths who had been hanging around on the corner of Primrose Avenue with Jake’s brother and another mate, were just as cocky an hour later as, one after the other, they sat in interview room two.
Rafferty had seen numerous youths like this pair pass through the police station; the country had an entire generation of them; those who knew all about their “rights”, but nothing at all about their responsibilities.
All four you
ths had been interviewed separately. So far, all the two cockiest had contributed were sneering “no comment”s to Rafferty and Llewellyn’s questions. Rafferty blamed the police programmes on the telly, which were full of youths like these two with their own “no comment”s.
‘You know I could charge you with wasting police time?’ he told Jake Sterling.
Sterling gave a careless shrug of his head with its No 1 haircut. The gesture said it was all the same to him.
It probably was, too. Jake Sterling and Des Arnott knew the score. They’d been here before, both of them. So had Jake’s brother, Jason, though Tony Moran, the youngest of the quartet, so far had a clean score sheet.
The duty solicitor — Jake, knowing his rights, had demanded a brief from the off — looked as bored with the proceedings as Jake Sterling himself. He gazed into space, his pen poised to jot down anything of interest that Sterling chose to say. So far, his lined pad was as pristine as a fluffy summer cloud.
‘You don’t deny giving me a false name?’ Llewellyn asked.
Sterling gave another shrug.
‘Was that a “yes” shrug or a “no” shrug?’ Rafferty asked, beginning to lose his temper. He’d had his fill of surly youths like Sterling. His brother Jason was coming along nicely in the same mould. Doubtless in a few months, Jason, too, would have the business of frustrating the police down to a fine art.
This was a waste of time, Rafferty acknowledged to himself. He stood up and was about to formally suspend the interview when Jake demanded:
‘I can go, right?’
Death Dues Page 25
