Death Dues

by Evans, Geraldine

‘I see. And you told my officers that you never saw Mr Harrison?’

  Briefly, Harry Jones’s gaze strayed in Allbright’s direction before it turned to meet Rafferty’s squarely. ‘That’s right,’ he said firmly. ‘Never saw hide nor hair of him, did we, Peter?’

  Peter Allbright twisted his hands even more tightly together round his mug and shook his head. So far, he’d not uttered a word. Rafferty was beginning to wonder if he was dumb.

  ‘I had the money all ready for him, ours and Peters, behind the clock on the mantelpiece in an envelope,’ Margaret Jones put in from where she was comfortably cushioned on the beige settee, ‘but he didn’t knock at the front, either.’

  ‘Wasn’t that unusual? I understood Mr Harrison came round for his money every Friday afternoon even if the times varied.’

  ‘Yes. It was unusual. I can’t understand it. I’ve already told all this to the other officers. Unless he decided to start his collection at the farthest end of the street and was killed before he reached us, though none of the neighbours saw him either. Not according to Emily Parker. I suppose he must have died before he could collect a penny. It’s the only explanation, don’t you think, Inspector?’

  Rafferty didn’t think it was the only explanation at all. He sipped his tea, then asked, ‘Did you hear any cries? Or anything at all while you were out in the garden?’ he asked the two men.

  ‘No,’ said Harry Jones, while Allbright just shook his head again. ‘But Tracey Stubbs’s kids at number nine were in the garden making their usual racket,’ Harry went on. ‘That family can’t do anything without a lot of shouting and hollering. They’d have masked any cries.’

  This, Rafferty recalled, was one of the houses that were missing a hammer and Margaret Jones had been one of several women who had left the street on some errand before the murder had been reported. Had the men, one or both, killed Harrison and given her the hammer to dispose of under the pretext of popping to the local parade of shops?

  It was certainly a possibility. All three had debts they must have struggled to repay and judging from the few ornaments in the living room, little or nothing worth selling to make the payments. Killing Jaws Harrison and robbing him of the money in his wallet and the cash in his collection pouch would have tided them over for a bit.

  Rafferty had checked out Harrison's collection round with Malcolm Forbes. He'd have collected a tidy sum by the time he reached Primrose Avenue. All the debtors on his rounds were being questioned. He'd considered organising a reconstruction of the man's Friday routine, but he had thought it would reveal nothing further and would cause Superintendent Bradley to scream blue murder at the costs involved, so had put it off for future consideration in the event that they failed to solve the crime in the ensuing few weeks.

  He and Llewellyn questioned the three for several more minutes before Rafferty accepted that none of them was going to be shifted from the stance they’d adopted. It wasn’t a good start.

  ‘Hope we have better luck with the rest,’ Rafferty commented as the door of number five shut behind them. Through the cheap front door, he heard someone, presumably the shy and retiring Allbright, thumping up the stairs. ‘Let’s do the pensioner, Mrs Parker, next. Number thirteen. Then we’ll work our way back down the row.’

  After a bright start, the day had turned overcast. It was raining heavily as they left number five and they hurried up the path and round to Mrs Parker’s front door.

  Emily Parker looked to be in her late sixties. She was a plump woman with arms like hams and inquisitive little eyes that looked as if they’d miss nothing. Unlike Allbright, she was far from dumb and started chatting away at them before they’d got over the step.

  Warned of their visit, she’d taken the trouble to put on some face powder and lipstick. Even her hair looked as if it had been specially brushed just so for the occasion with hairspray liberally applied. The perfume coming from it made Rafferty’s nose twitch.

  Strangely, given the circumstances, she seemed pleased to see them, for she chattered with barely a pause for breath, about the murder and poor John Harrison and wasn’t it a wicked shame and so on, ad infinitum. The kitchen was just off the living room and she continued in this vein all the while she was making tea and bringing the digestives, even though they’d both said they needed nothing. If it wasn’t for his Ma’s pre-knowledge that Emily Parker spent most of her time in the neighbours’ homes, he would have surmised that she was lonely, but, given her dropping-in activities, she could have barely given herself the chance to feel such an emotion. Still, she couldn’t have had much of an outlet for socialising with her only neighbour, the other pensioner, Jim Jenkins at number eleven. He’d more or less admitted at their first chat that he did his best to avoid her. Given that she’d barely paused for breath since their arrival, Rafferty could hardly blame Jenkins his avoidance of her. The woman’s words came out in such a relentless torrent they were like a physical entity one had to fight against. But eventually, Rafferty managed to force a break in the flow to pose a question.

  ‘See Mr Harrison?’ she repeated. ‘No. I didn’t. It’s very strange. I’ve been talking about it to the neighbours and they all think it odd. I’ve still got my money waiting for him under the clock.’ She nodded over to the unattractive fifties tiled fireplace.

  Emily Parker only owed Forbes a thousand pounds, though presumably, as she was a pensioner, it was enough. According to Forbes’s accounts, she was paying the debt off regularly, though there had been several weeks in the last few months when she had failed to make a payment.

  She must find it a struggle as she admitted she only had her pension. But, like Jim Jenkins, she was of the generation who believed in paying their dues. Though, to judge from the lack of knick knacks, she had perhaps been selling her treasures in order to make the repayments.

  ‘Tell me, Mrs Parker, why did you take out a loan,’ Rafferty asked. He thought he might as well get the background.

  She signed. ‘It’s the grandchildren, Inspector. I’ve six of them and it’s so difficult to manage to afford to buy them something nice for their birthdays and for Christmas. It was the eldest’s eighteenth birthday in December. Two of them were born then and another at the beginning of January. All clumped together around Christmas with all its extra expense. Of course I had to get him something nice for such a special birthday. I didn’t have the money, even though I try to put something by out of my pension each month. It was such a worry.’

  ‘You could have applied for a credit card, Mrs Parker,’ Llewellyn put in. ‘The interest would have been less onerous than that which Mr Forbes charges.’

  She nodded. ‘I know that. But I was reluctant to apply for one. Tracey Stubbs at number nine has several and she has a terrible time juggling the payments. I was worried that once I had one I might keep using it. I didn’t want the temptation. At least by taking a loan out with Mr Forbes, I don’t have a card always there and handy.’

  Rafferty could see her point. It was the same reason his Ma gave for not using credit cards. It was a good argument, until, as Llewellyn had pointed out, you looked at the interest rates and the potential threat of violence from the alternatives. At least the credit card companies stopped short at sending the boys round, though, he supposed, they’d do that as well eventually, if they had to have debts chased by debt collectors.

  ‘Why don’t you explain your financial position to your family?’ Llewellyn asked gently. ‘I’m sure they wouldn’t expect expensive gifts if they realised your situation.’

  ‘Oh, no. I couldn’t do that. I don’t like to worry them. And they have their own troubles without loading mine onto their shoulders, too.’

  It was pride, Rafferty assumed. A lot of people didn’t like to admit they couldn’t afford to buy the youngsters in the family the expensive trainers and other designer gear they clamoured for. Let the little buggers get Saturday jobs and pay for them themselves if they were such must haves, was his reasoning. When his nieces and nephews we
re younger, his Ma would organise all the present buying for him. But generally nowadays, he just put a tenner in the card and left it at that, his lack of knowledge about teen fashion matched his reluctance to pay for it. But he supposed he was lucky as men in general and the Rafferty males in particular, were seldom expected to make much effort in the gifts’ department.

  But, he reminded himself, they weren’t here as social workers. They were here to try to solve a murder and now he reapplied himself to the purpose of their visit.

  Like the Joneses and Peter Allbright, Emily Parker claimed not to have set eyes or ears on Harrison on Friday. Not one of the residents had so far admitted to seeing him or to hearing any cries other than those from Tracey Stubbs’s children. He was beginning to believe they had all got together to agree their stories in the time between Eric Lewis finding the body and his dialling 999 at five o’clock. He could understand why the murderer would be happy to collude in such a plan, but not why the rest might have gone along with it. Unless they were all — bar one — telling the truth and Harrison had been killed before he’d had a chance to collect any of the money owed.

  They received the same answers from the soon-to-be married Josie McBride at number three and the Smiths’ ‘ology’ student lodger, Samantha Dicker at number one.

  Both young women were in Josie’s home when they went to question her, which was convenient.

  In spite of the recent too close murder, the two girls seemed far away from doom and death and had clearly been deeply immersed in honeymoon holiday brochures filled, as were Rafferty’s, with exotic holiday destinations. The brochures were spread all over the floor, on the table and chairs. With a little moue of annoyance at having her wedding planning interrupted, Josie McBride cleared some of the clutter away so they could sit down.

  ‘Ms McBride, Ms Dicker,’ Rafferty began. ‘As you probably know, we’ve been questioning the other residents and—’

  ‘Yes,’ Josie McBride broke in. ‘We wondered when you’d get around to us. Not that we can tell you anything.’

  The fair-haired Samantha Dicker put in, ‘I was studying all afternoon and didn’t notice a thing.’

  ‘And what about you, Ms McBride?’ Rafferty asked. ‘What were you doing?’

  She laughed and tossed back her thick dark hair. ‘Probably what I spend most of my spare time doing — planning my wedding.’

  My wedding, she’d called it. Briefly, Rafferty wondered if that was how Abra thought of their big day. As her wedding, rather than theirs. It might explain a lot.

  ‘You were both alone, I take it?’

  The two girls looked at one another and nodded. ‘My fiancé was around my mother’s house doing some DIY for her,’ Josie explained. ‘But I already told the other officers that.’

  ‘I’m afraid something as serious as a murder inquiry brings a lot of repetitive questions.’

  ‘Hoping to catch us out?’ the vivacious Josie put in.

  ‘Only if there’s anything you can be caught out about,’ Llewellyn quietly reminded her.

  ‘Well, there’s not. And neither is there for Sam. Neither of us saw or heard a thing. It’s not as if he died down our end of the alley, so we wouldn’t have been likely to hear anything. I doubt if I would anyway as I had some music on while I was finishing the wedding present list.’

  Rafferty nodded. ‘So, when’s the happy day?’

  ‘Not till September next year. But you’ve got to get organised early these days if you want your first choice of venue, photographer and the rest.’

  As Rafferty had learned to his cost. He’d been a little too relaxed about the whole thing. But so many weddings nowadays were such crazed and costly affairs. So different from his first wedding, which had, of course, because of Angie’s pregnancy, been quickly arranged and done relatively cheaply. It hadn’t cost much more than a thousand pounds, even Angie’s dress had been a second hand and never before worn outfit from an ad in the local paper. But at the time he’d thought it all costly enough. They’d had the reception in one of the local pubs with a wannabe DJ friend spinning the discs.

  He hadn’t told any of this to Abra. He’d implied that he’d let Angie have her way on everything, mainly because he didn’t want Abra to think him a wedding cheapskate on both occasions, something he was beginning to realise hadn’t been one of his best ideas. But it was true that he’d begrudged every penny he’d been forced to spend on that wedding because he hadn’t wanted to get married. Talk about being careful about where you planted your seed…

  He came to from his reverie to find Josie McBride, Samantha Dicker and Llewellyn staring at him expectantly. He rose from his chair. ‘We’ll be off,’ he said. ‘If you remember anything. Anything at all—’

  ‘We know. Contact you,’ Josie said pertly. ‘But as there’s nothing for us to remember…’

  Rafferty mused about the two young women after they took their leave of them.

  Samantha Dicker was the quieter of the two, every inch the ‘ology’ student, from her owl-like glasses to her dowdy, calf-length brown skirt.

  Both girls were in debt. Josie McBride had taken a loan out from Malcolm Forbes to pay part of her wedding costs and Samantha Dicker had taken one out when she’d exceeded her student loan limit. It seemed likely that both might be having trouble meeting the repayments. The two seemed very close, the one so dark and the other so fair and both so deeply in debt.

  Had they colluded in killing Harrison? There again, both seemed bright girls and must surely have realised killing Harrison would only delay their repayment problems rather than remove them. It would probably only be a matter of days before Forbes rearranged his collection routes or took on and minimally-trained a replacement collector.

  Still, Josie’s shed was missing its hammer, as was the Smiths’ where Samantha lodged. Josie had also been one of the three women who had left the street after the murder and before uniform’s arrival and so could have disposed of the murder weapon.

  But, Rafferty reflected, as he and Llewellyn shut the gate and crossed the street, all the maybes and ifs were only that. Many maybes and ifs clung to the other residents too, several of whom were far more likely to resort to violence than these two. Like Leslie Sterling, for instance, the ‘waster’ father of Jake and Jason.

  Chapter Ten

  Sterling’s wife was at work when they called, as she had been on the day of the murder. They found Les Sterling in his vest with the racing blaring out on the television. There was no sign of his two sons.

  The house, as they walked through from the hall, had an uncared-for air. Even Rafferty, not usually one to notice such things, couldn’t help but see the dust thick on the skirting boards and the plentiful spiders’ webs draped from the ceiling corners. Clean clothes were piled in heaps on the arm and back of the worn settee waiting for someone, presumably Mrs Sterling, the only working member of the family, to take them upstairs and put them away.

  Sterling had a stack of betting slips and several empty lager cans on the table beside his chair into which he slumped immediately after letting them in. He looked set for the day. Perhaps he spent every day like that. He was inclined to be surly, a surliness doubtless fuelled by the cans of alcohol he had already consumed. After meeting his two sons, Rafferty had half-expected a less than gracious welcome. The apples certainly hadn’t fallen far from the tree in his case. Sterling owed Forbes six thousand pounds. It looked like he was trying to solve his problems by gambling his way through them. But, to judge from the number of torn up betting slips littering the floor, his plan was going awry.

  ‘It’s never a good idea to look to the bookies to solve your money problems, Mr Sterling,’ Rafferty pointed out. He got no thanks for this piece of gratuitous advice however.

  ‘What’s it got to do with you?’ Sterling rubbed pork sausage fingers through his thinning reddish-blond locks and glared at him from bloodshot brown eyes. He took a swig from the open lager can and then demanded belligerently, ‘And why ar
en’t you interviewing anyone else but me on this side of the street? I saw you across the road. You made a beeline for my place after questioning the lot across the way.’

  The Sterlings lived at number ten, not, as he said, on the side of the street that backed on to the alley where Harrison’s body had been found. It was clear he felt he was being picked on. But given his family’s history he could scarcely be surprised at that.

  ‘Your neighbours in this row have already been questioned once, Mr Sterling and will be so again.’ He didn’t add that Sterling was the only resident on this side of the street to owe Forbes money.

  ‘But you decided to do me first the second time around, is that it?’

  That was exactly it, but Rafferty felt exonerated from the accusation that he was picking on Sterling Senior in view of the fact that not only was he yet another of Forbes’s debtors, but he had also had two of his sons hanging round at the top of the street, either of whom could have tipped him the wink on Harrison’s arrival. The day of the murder had been wet, chilly and blustery; not one in which anyone would choose to go out if they didn’t have to. Les Sterling could have slipped out of his back door and up the right-hand-side alley with a good chance, for a betting man, that none of his neighbours would see him. Of course, any of his neighbours could also have slipped out. But none of them had two sons perfectly positioned to monitor arrivals and departures.

  Sterling, as expected, denied leaving the house.

  ‘Killing someone? Not me. And certainly not that bastard Malcolm Forbes’s man. Kick your head in soon as look at you that lot. If I was worried about not being able to pay my bills I’d go for the head honcho not his lackey. I’d petrol bomb the bastard where he keeps his records. What would be the point of going for one of the lackeys? It would be stupid. And I’m not stupid.’

  No, thought Rafferty. You’re just a bone idle sponger. But Sterling had made the same point he had himself hit on early in the case. And he was right. Petrol bombs would have settled the debt problem nicely. With the records destroyed who was to say who were the debtors?