Death Dues (9 page)

Not realising it could hold some value for her, she had no interest in the notebook. He doubted it would have meant more to her than it did to him. If the notebook did indeed contain the names of those Harrison could have been blackmailing it was unlikely the dead man would have shared any information about them with Annie Pulman. He’d have kept that and the money he prised out of his victims strictly to himself.

There was nothing else of interest in the flat. Before they left, Rafferty asked her again where she had been on the afternoon of the murder. Clearly, she’d thought better of her earlier hasty and evasive replies and said, ‘I was at my mum’s, wasn’t I? It was my day off and I thought I’d go round and see her. I stayed for lunch and tea. I got back around six.’

They obtained her mother’s name and address after a little effort and told her they’d check with Mrs Pulman. They’d check with her mother’s neighbours also, Rafferty decided, seeing as he didn’t think it beyond the realms of possibility that Annie Pulman wasn’t a stranger to lies when it suited her and would prime her mother with them by phone as soon as they had left.

‘This notebook adds an extra dimension to the case,’ Rafferty confided to Llewellyn as they left Annie Pulman’s flat. ‘Looks like our late lamented could have been a blackmailer. Shame the blasted thing’s written in some weird schoolboy code.’

‘May I have a look?’

Rafferty nodded and handed the notebook over. But even though he needed to understand the mystery of its coded contents he couldn’t help a little leap of pleasure when Llewellyn also proved incapable of making anything of it.

Llewellyn went to hand it back, but Rafferty told him to hang on to it. ‘Work on it,’ he told him. ‘I’m no great shakes at word puzzles. I’m sure your great brain will have better luck than mine in figuring out what it says.’

Chapter Six

The answer to the question of the identity of their ‘suited and booked’ smartly dressed mystery man whom Tony Moran saw enter Tracey Stubbs’s house on Primrose Avenue on the afternoon of Jaws Harrison’s murder was answered later that day when they resumed the questioning of the residents. The mystery man turned out to be a collector for a rival firm of loan sharks, as they discovered when they questioned Tracey Stubbs.

Ms Stubbs was a young woman in her mid-twenties with a nose stud and an assortment of tattoos decorating her bare shoulders and midriff. Her hair was worn in a longer version of the spikes of Jake Sterling and his cohorts. In spite of her rather aggressive looking style, she proved helpful.

‘You say you didn’t obtain your loan from Malcolm Forbes?’ Strangely, she had been on the list Forbes had supplied. Though perhaps the business took less trouble in keeping their paperwork straight than they did in keeping the money coming in.

Tracey Stubbs shook her head. ‘I did apply, but then I read a small ad in the local paper and got a loan from them instead.’

Rafferty strained to hear above the children shouting in the other room; it seemed as if Ms Stubbs had half the neighbourhood children in the house. They were running up and downstairs, whooping and yelling, but Tracey Stubbs didn’t bat an eyelid or even admonish them. The house was as untidy as only a houseful of kids could make it, with skateboards and footballs and bikes left where they’d been dropped. Tracey had made a half-hearted attempt to tidy after their arrival, but it had made little difference to the mess and she’d quickly abandoned her labours, clearly seeing her efforts as being insufficient to create order out of chaos.

‘Do you still have the ad?’ he asked. If she had got a loan out from another firm it was possible that this other collector and Jaws Harrison had run into one another. If they were in direct competition they might learn something useful from the other firm.

‘I think so.’ She looked vaguely around, then headed over to an overflowing brass magazine rack. After hunting through various local free sheets, TV listings and celebrity magazines, she found the paper she was looking for and handed it over. ‘I ringed the ad.’

Rafferty studied it. It was the usual cajoling come on of such things, with “Debt Problems?” at the top of the ad in a bold heading and a sympathetic portrayal of how helpful they could be to those at the end of their tether. Like Forbes, this false-sympathy would be in short supply if one of their customers failed on the paying front. There was a mobile phone number as well as a post office box number for replies, but no address, which would have immediately put Rafferty on the alert if he was looking for a loan – which, with the wedding, he well might be in the near future. ‘All right if I take this?’ he asked.

Tracey nodded. ‘Though I don’t know what use it can be to you as it’s a different firm of money lenders to the one the dead bloke collected for. I know Malcolm Forbes operates out of his shop on the High Street. After I’d applied, but before I signed up for a loan with him, I heard bad things about him and how he operates from some of the neighbours, so I changed my mind about going to him for a loan.’

Rafferty thought it likely the firm she’d opted for instead carried out its business in a similar way to Forbes with exorbitant interest rates and threats topping the agenda. Didn’t they always? Loan sharks seldom altered their repertoire. ‘Do you recall the name of the people who gave you a loan?’

‘Not off the top of my head. I can probably find the paperwork.’ Again, she gazed vaguely round the untidy living room. In a clearly random choice, she pulled out the middle drawer in the bike-scuffed sideboard and began to go through its mountainous contents. They mostly seemed to consist of takeaway menus.

Her search didn’t look promising, so Rafferty said, ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure we can find the details for ourselves. Tell me, do you go to the offices of the people who gave you the loan to make the payments or do they come and collect?’

‘They call every week on a Friday.’

‘So what time did they call this week?’

‘Around three fifteen. They generally call in the afternoon after I’ve collected the younger kids from play school.’

Rafferty waved the newspaper she had given him in the air. ‘Can I keep this?’

Tracey nodded.

Once back outside on the pavement, Rafferty gave Llewellyn the newspaper. He jabbed his finger at the circled ad and said, ‘Check these people out. It’s possible their collector saw something. Got to be pretty sharp to do their job. Unlike the residents of Primrose Avenue, we can hope he has no axe to grind, so we may get something approaching the truth if he knows anything.’

Llewellyn looked strangely pleased with himself when he returned to the station and Rafferty’s office.

‘Don’t tell me Lizzie Green goosed you?’ Rafferty teased as he glanced up. ‘Lucky man.’

‘No. I hope she knows better than to goose a sergeant. It’s something much better. It might amuse you, too. Or maybe not. As you asked, I’ve been checking out the firm of loan sharks from whom Tracey Stubbs took out a loan. I found out their details from the local sorting office. Their offices are here in Elmhurst and are housed in Blythe’s Estate Agents.’

‘No.’ Rafferty groaned. ‘Don’t tell me–’

‘I’m afraid so. It seems your cousin Nigel Blythe has branched out from that estate agency of his.’

Rafferty scowled. What was Nigel doing getting involved in money lending? Most of the time he was hard-pressed to keep himself in the style to which he had become accustomed, never mind lending cash to perfect strangers. Had he come into money? Rafferty doubted it. He would surely have heard via the family grapevine if so.

Nigel was the family pariah, even more so than Rafferty as a copper was, probably because, as an estate agent, he was a bent one. Rafferty's family – some of them anyway – would have preferred him to be a bent copper, though as a straight police officer, he earned a grudging respect.

Doubtless it was the prospect of easy money and high interest rates that had attracted Nigel to the loan sharking business. Always, even as a lad, he'd had an eye for the main chance and would somehow manage to cheat the other school kids out of their dinner money. He and Rafferty had never been particularly close. It was more a toleration than anything else, a toleration that had increased with the years when both, in their different ways, had broken out from the family's usual pursuits of working in the building trade, Rafferty as a policeman and Nigel as an estate agent. Then their paths had also crossed at family weddings, christenings and funerals and in several of Rafferty’s investigations over the years. They both had secrets about the other which sometimes gave a little leeway one way or the other.

‘So what did Nigel have to say for himself? You have seen him, I take it?’

‘No. I thought I’d save that particular treat for you, though I did telephone him.’

‘Did he give you the name of his collector who called on Tracey Stubbs?’

‘He did indeed. The collector was none other than Mr Blythe himself. It seems his regular collector isn’t as regular or dependable as Mr Blythe would like, so he was forced to do that day’s rounds himself.’

Probably couldn’t bring himself to trust someone else when it came to collecting his money, thought Rafferty. Nigel thought everyone was as bent as he was. This was a turn up and no mistake. ‘And did our Nigel have anything helpful to say?’

‘The conversation went much as I expected. Mr Blythe claims he saw nothing untoward, though he did admit to seeing John “Jaws” Harrison enter the alley. He’d apparently been keeping him in view so he didn’t bump into him. I gather there had been a little unpleasantness between Mr Forbes’s collector and the one Mr Blythe used. A certain intimidation over whose ‘turf’ it was, I gather.’

Nigel was taking a risk trying to muscle in on Forbes The Enforcer’s patch. It wasn’t like Nigel to put his handsome face and even handsomer suits at risk from fisticuffs or worse. Nigel was more likely to put a million miles and a thousand smarms between himself and such dangers. So had the lure of filthy lucre changed his mind? It was the only thing likely to, in Rafferty’s judgement.

‘You’re right,’ he told Llewellyn. ‘I need to speak to Mr Blythe myself.’ He glanced at the clock. ‘It’s too late to catch him now. He’ll probably be out on the town with one of his lady friends. ‘I’ll have to try tomorrow. Maybe he’ll tell me more than he told you.’

‘Do you really think so?’

Rafferty didn’t. Knowing Nigel, or Jerry Kelly as was, the name with which he had been bestowed at birth and which he had discarded along with his lowly roots, he would be more likely to tell him even less than he’d confided to Llewellyn. Still, it would be worth it to get a feel for his cousin’s latest entrepreneurial enterprise. He wondered who Nigel used as his regular collector down Primrose Avenue. He also wondered how long his latest business venture had been going. It couldn’t have been long otherwise he would surely have heard of it. ‘Good work, Daff,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it amazing what worms come out of the ground when you do a bit of digging?’

Llewellyn, who knew this particular worm quite well, gave a nod.

‘Let’s speak to Mr Jenkins at number eleven next,’ Rafferty said. ‘We’ve just got time to fit him in.’

A young blonde woman in her early twenties answered when they knocked on Jim Jenkins’s door to follow up the house-to-house interviews. Mr Jenkins made brief introductions.

‘This is my granddaughter, Kim.’

Kim smiled, kissed her grandfather and said, ‘I’ll leave you to it, Pops. And thanks again.’

 ‘Get along with you girl. What are granddads for?’ In spite of his disclaimer, he looked pleased, the crepey skin around his blue eyes crinkled even more as he patted her hand affectionately.

As she passed Rafferty, she said in a low murmur, ‘Go easy on him, Inspector. He’s neither a young nor a well man.’

Rafferty could see that Jim Jenkins moved with difficulty around his living room, hanging on to the table and a chair back as he settled himself into a clean but neatly patched up armchair after insisting on seeing his granddaughter out. Invited to sit down, Rafferty did so. Llewellyn perched beside him.

‘I understand, Sir, that you aren’t numbered amongst those who took out a loan with Malcolm Forbes’s company?’

‘Certainly not. I don’t believe in taking out loans. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”, was what my old mum taught me and it’s held me in good stead throughout my life.’

Although looking well over ninety and far from sprightly, Jim Jenkins’s voice was strong and held the timbre of command. Rafferty guessed from the few pictures of old soldiers hanging on the walls that Jim Jenkins was a World War Two veteran. He could just glimpse what must be a chestful of medals through the partly open drawer of the old Welsh dresser. Rafferty nodded at the photos and asked, ‘Which regiment were you in, Sir?’

‘Royal Marines, young man. But I rarely talk about my war experiences. It was all a very long time ago. Now, tell me how I can help you.’

Rafferty nodded. ‘I know you told the house-to-house team that you saw nothing on the day Mr Harrison was murdered, but I wondered if you might have heard anything that you’ve since remembered. A cry or a scuffle. Anything, no matter how trivial you might think it.’

‘My faculties aren’t what they were, Inspector. I heard nothing out of the ordinary. Friday was just another day to be got through to me until the policeman knocked on my back door. I’m not one of those forever peering through the curtains to see what the neighbours are up to. I keep myself to myself. The neighbourhood isn’t what it was when my late wife and I bought this house.’

He didn’t add: ‘neither are the neighbours’, but he might as well have done.

‘I gather you lent one of the neighbours, a Mr Eric Lewis, your hedge-trimmer?’

‘That’s correct. He kept it for weeks. Most annoying as I had my own hedges to trim. I thought I’d have to ask him for it back. I was going to, but with all the rumpus this man Harrison’s death has caused, it went out of my mind. I like to keep a tidy garden, you see.’

Rafferty did see. In spite of his age and poor mobility, Jim Jenkins’s garden was the best-kept in the street and was a symbol of the neighbourhood’s previous standards whilst most of the other gardens were weed-strewn evidence of its decline.