Death Dues (24 page)

Sterling led the way into his living room. He even invited them to sit down.

There was no sign of Mrs Sterling or his sons. Had they been banished so Les could unburden himself in private?

'The thing is,' Sterling began. 'I did have a few words with Jaws Harrison. The bastard had been trying to cheat me, hadn't he?'

'Cheat you?' Rafferty repeated. 'In what way?'

'He took the money I paid off the loan, but he didn't enter the payments. I only found out when I contacted the office and asked for an up-to-date statement.'

'I see. And you had it out with Mr Harrison?'

'Too right, I did. It's hard enough making the payments without being cheated out of those you do make. Bastard's lucky I didn't knock him into next week.'

'Did he admit it?'

'Didn't have to. I snatched the payments record book off him and shoved it under his nose. I knew I'd made those payments and so did he.'

‘Why didn’t you make sure he entered the payment in his book?’

‘I would have done. I’m not stupid. Not like the—‘ He broke off. ‘It was the wife who generally paid him. I’ve got better things to do with my time than wait in for the tally-man.’

'Did you complain to the office?'

'Course I bloody complained. What do you take me for? I told that Forbes his man was a thief. He tried to make out I was a liar. I'd no proof, of course, as I paid Harrison in cash from my betting winnings. It was my word and my wife’s word against his, wasn't it? Bastard. Even so, I tell you I was surprised when my boys told me they saw him again the next Friday, bold as brass. He never came here; must have been murdered before he finished across the way. He should have been sacked for what he did to me and so I told his boss. But people like that, they're all crooks, robbing innocent folk. I told Forbes, I said, I won't be taking another loan out with your lot. Not after this. He said he'd look into it, but he can't have done, can he? Not when Jaws turned up again the next week, large as life.'

It was clear that Les Sterling was a man with a grievance, though whether it was a justified one or just Sterling attempting and failing to try it on in order to get out of making a few payments, was debatable.

One thing though, as Rafferty told Llewellyn once they'd finally escaped Sterling and his hard-done-by tale, it gave Forbes the strong reason for murder that they'd been lacking before. He wouldn’t have wanted it to become general knowledge that Harrison had been cheating him. Certainly not without swift retribution following the theft. His hard man reputation would have made retribution obligatory.

Of course, if the tale of Harrison’s thieving was true, it also gave the aggressive Les Sterling good reason to want to do the thief serious damage.

'Though I can more easily imagine Sterling punching him in the face at the time of the row than creeping up behind him an entire week later and bashing him on the head. Not a man to defer his pleasures, our Leslie.'

'Mmm. Doesn't quite seem Forbes's style, either. It doesn’t fit his psychological profile. Surely his pride would demand something rather more dramatic as punishment for his erring collector than a few biffs on the head?'

'Psychological bollocks! Don't say that!' Rafferty protested, ignoring his own psychological conclusions about Sterling. 'We get a new piece of evidence that points the finger at two of our favourite suspects and here we are doing our damnedest to exonerate them both. Let's not go there. One thing, anyway, if Sterling killed him it would explain the theft of Harrison's wallet and collection money. Come on, let's get this meeting with Mr Palmer over and then we'll call it a day. It's been a long one.’

Their meeting with Mr Palmer didn't take above five minutes. He told them pretty much what Les Sterling had told them, thereby confirming that Sterling hadn’t tried to bamboozle Forbes into believing he’d been cheated, but had been telling the truth about the reason for the row. Palmer’s evidence also confirmed that Sterling had a very good reason to want to harm Harrison.

The next day, Rafferty, feeling surprisingly full of renewed vigour, decided to widen other lines of inquiry. For, as he told Llewellyn, there were a couple of areas they had neglected to look into very deeply: one the possibility of a turf war having broken out, with both Jaws Harrison and Izzy Barber, its victims, along with the other two men who had been the earlier victims of assault. The other thing he wanted to dig deeper into was the possibility that the two young women involved in the case, Samantha Dicker and Josie McBride, might not be as innocent as they claimed.

He had mainly dismissed them as suspects as he hadn't seen the murder as a woman's crime; the likelihood of either young woman being guilt of an attack on the brick outhouse that had been Jaws Harrison had seemed unlikely in the extreme. But in a murder investigation even the extremes of unlikelihood must be checked out. To this end, he set Gerry Hanks to delving into the young women's pasts.

At first, Hanks didn't discover anything, but as the young detective dug deeper and questioned the moneylenders in the area, he heard a curious tale: that Josie McBride wasn't quite the innocent young bride-to-be they had thought her to be.

He reported back to Rafferty that she had taken out a loan several years earlier with a rival firm to Forbes and had been accused of assaulting the collector when he had called for her latest instalment. No charges had been brought and it had gone no further, so the assault couldn't have been a serious one. Even so, it revealed more of Josie McBride's character than had previously been suspected.

'Not so butter wouldn't melt,' Rafferty commented, ‘as a smoke-detector setter-offer.’ He glanced at Llewellyn. ‘Maybe she took exception to Forbes's collector, too?’ Rafferty turned back to Hanks. ‘Did you find out why she assaulted the earlier collector?’

Hanks nodded. 'It seems he made improper suggestions to her.'

'Improper suggestions? How very old-fashioned. I suppose you mean he said that if she slept with him he'd knock a chunk off the debt.'

'That’s about the size of it, Sir,’ Hanks confirmed.

'Who'd have thought such things would go on in this day and age when young women seem to drop their drawers obligingly on the slightest acquaintance. Did you question Miss McBride about the incident?'

'Yes. She said all she did was slap the man across the face. It didn't hurt him. She said he laughed at her and went away still chuckling.'

'And who was this collector?'

'None other than Izzy Barber. He was working for Dean Everitt, another moneylender, at the time.'

'Well, well. What a small world we move in, to be sure. He seems to suffer particularly badly from the occupational hazard of being assaulted – hardly efficient when he and his ilk are meant to dole out the punishment.’

Rafferty thanked Hanks, dismissed him and turned back to Llewellyn. ‘I shouldn't wonder if cousin Nigel doesn't regard Izzy Barber as surplus to requirements, with hospitalization as a sackable offence. Thoroughly deserved, I'm sure.' He broke off, then asked, 'Any news on the turf war aspect?'

'Not as yet. But I instructed the team to put further feelers out. Hopefully, if there's anything in it, we'll hear shortly.'

Rafferty nodded. 'Let's have another word with Izzy Barber.'

They got over to the hospital. Barber was looking marginally better but clearly feeling a lot more sorry for himself and consequently more inclined to let something slip. He went as far as to admit that there had been bad feeling between Nigel Blythe's collectors and those of Malcolm Forbes.

'There was a certain resentment between the two teams,' he said. 'An antagonism. But it was an antagonism of words only,' he added at the spark of interest in Rafferty's eye. 'Not of action.' He was insistent on this last.

Given Jaws' death and Barber's assault and hospitalization, Rafferty wasn't sure he believed him. He thought it possible that both investigations — the murder and the muggings, might, after all, have been the result of this antagonism, with Jake Sterling’s little band guilty of the muggings under instruction from Forbes.

More determined now to discover the truth, he set the team to questioning those who frequented the local pubs that Izzy Barber, his colleagues and those of Jaws Harrison favoured. Gradually, there seeped back to him the news that Barber and his colleagues hadn't denied an involvement in Jaws' death.

It might, of course, merely be bravado on their part. A message sent out to the opposition that they were to be treated with respect.

Rafferty wasn't sure. It was still possible that Jake Sterling and his three friends had been responsible for Jaws Harrison's murder as well as the muggings. The one didn’t preclude the other. Nor did it take away the possibility that they had been put up to both attacks by Forbes himself; the muggings for the purposes of intimidation of the competition and the murder for reasons of punishment.

The trouble was that he still had no proof. He had proof of precious little apart from Tony Moran's confessions about the muggings and all these investigations into feuds and vendettas were taking up valuable time and man hours that should have been devoted to the core of the investigation.

It was a continuing frustration that seemed to have no end. He was weary of it.

Interrupted by the news about Les Sterling's argument with Jaws Harrison, Rafferty's previous plans had been rather put out of kilter. But now he resurrected them.

Once they were in the car and on the way, Rafferty said, ‘I think we’ll question Mrs Emily Parker first. As she’s the street’s nose for gossip we might get more out of her than the rest.’

As it turned out, Mrs Parker was unable to help them. ‘Visitors?’ she asked. ‘Visitors from Mr Forbes?’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve not seen anyone. No one’s been round to ask me questions, though I know they questioned some of the neighbours. Maybe they missed me? I was round my daughter’s for several hours yesterday.’

Having drawn a blank, they took their leave and tried Josie McBride. She admitted that she’d had a visit from a couple of men.

‘What did they say?’ Rafferty asked.

‘Very little. They seemed pretty cagey.’

‘Were they threatening at all?’

‘No. They simply asked me if I’d seen anything the day of the murder. I told them the same that I told you – that I’d seen and heard nothing and they went away.’

They questioned the other residents again, but they all said the same as Josie McBride.

‘Seems Forbes wasn’t getting his men to put the frighteners on his customers,’ said Rafferty as they drove back to the station. ‘Sounds like he decided to do some investigating of his own.’

‘There’s no law against it.’

‘Mores the pity. I don’t like him conducting his own investigation. I wouldn’t want him to discover something we missed and rub our noses in it.’

‘That doesn’t seem likely in view of what the residents said. Besides, it would be better if
someone
discovered some new evidence. Even if it is the pugnacious Mr Forbes.’

Rafferty just gave a reluctant nod to this. ‘I suppose so. Let’s pay him that visit, anyway. Let him know we don’t like our turf being invaded any more than he does.’

Malcolm Forbes didn’t even bother to make them wait while he fielded his brief. He merely bid them a good afternoon and asked what they wanted.

‘I hear your men have been questioning the residents of Primrose Avenue,’ Rafferty told him. ‘And I want to know why.’

Forbes stretched against the high back of his leather chair. His hands rested idly on the arms as he said, ‘The fact that one of my men has been murdered’s not reason enough?’ he countered.

‘No. Questioning witnesses and suspects is my job, Mr Forbes, not yours. We’ll find out who killed Mr Harrison. We don’t need your help.’

Forbes merely laughed as if he found this declaration amusing. ‘So you don’t want to know what my men found out?’

Rafferty would have preferred to say ‘No’. But he couldn’t allow himself the luxury of hubris. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Tell me. What did they find out?’

‘Only that one of Harry Jones’s sons makes a habit of climbing over the factory wall that backs on to the Avenue mornings to get to work and evenings and lunchtimes to go home. Saves walking round the long way.’

That would be Billy, the younger son who worked at the canning factory.

‘Maybe he climbed over at other times, too, and did more than go home for a bacon butty.’

‘And who told you that?’

Forbes was beginning to look bored by the conversation. ‘Do we really need to go into that?’ he asked. ‘The last thing I want is to get anyone into trouble.’

‘You seem happy enough to drop one of the Jones boys in it. Anyway, let me worry about that.’

Forbes shrugged his meaty shoulders. ‘Very well. I understand it was one of the kids who live in the street. At number nine, I believe. I don’t know the brat’s name.’

Number nine was Tracey Stubbs’s place. Forbes had supplied them with an interesting piece of information. If it was true. He thanked Forbes and left his pawnbroker’s shop, followed by Llewellyn. This information opened yet another line of investigation.

‘Let’s go and see Tracey Stubbs and her brood and see what we can learn,’ Rafferty said. ‘Like why her kid didn’t see fit to give us this piece of information.’

Tracey Stubbs was in the middle of a big wash when they called – getting the kids’ school uniforms and sports kits ready for the new term.

The house was as much of a tip as it had been the last time they’d called. In the kitchen, a pile of grubby white shirts and blouses awaited their turn in the washing machine. It was currently going through the spin cycle and making one hell of a racket. A tumble dryer was also on the go.

Rafferty was always amazed when people on benefits seemed able to afford all the gadgets and pay the sky-rocketing bills that resulted. He didn’t have a tumble dryer because they ate money, yet young Tracey was clearly able to afford one. He wished he knew how she did it. And, with a wedding still to pay for, he’d have asked her, were it not for Llewellyn’s presence and the likelihood that the Welshman would say such a question lowered the dignity of his office.