Kennedy 03 - Where Petals Fall (6 page)

‘As I said, I didn’t really know her. We had a brief chat and a laugh, but that was it.’

It wasn’t ‘it’. According to Ruth and Cass, he’d taken her out at least twice.

‘Hark at us,’ he said, smile firmly back in place. ‘It’s a beautiful evening and I’m sure you don’t want to talk work. Let me get you another drink.’

Jill put her hand over her glass. ‘Not for me, Finlay. I only called in for a quick one. I’ve got the car.’

‘A soft drink?’

‘No, thanks. Really.’

‘I don’t blame you. Soft drinks are the devil’s own brew.’

She smiled, as was expected, but her mind was racing. Why hadn’t he said he’d taken her out? Possibly because he thought it was none of her business, she answered her own question. In a way, he was right. She wasn’t working with the police officially.

She finished her drink. ‘Right, I’m off. Be seeing you, Finlay.’

‘See you later, darling girl!’

Chapter Six

Max forced open his eyes and focused on the alarm clock. Five forty-two. The knowledge that he could lie in bed for another hour was bliss. He closed his eyes and rolled over. All was quiet. There was nothing to keep him awake.

Nothing except case notes, witness statements, photographs of murdered women, and memories of the day Edward Marshall drove over that cliff to his death. Possible death . . .

It was Wednesday. Carol Blakely’s body had been found on Saturday evening, and they still had nothing concrete to work on.

This morning, he intended to have a chat with Edward Marshall’s widow, assuming she
was
a widow. He could remember her well. She had straggling black hair, missing teeth and short skirts that would have looked great on an eighteen-year-old but, on her, were enough to turn the stomach. There was also a mean streak running all the way through her.

He lay down and closed his eyes again, but it was a waste of time. He might as well get up and do something productive.

Ten minutes later, he’d showered, shaved and dressed. All done without waking Harry and Ben, too. Even the dogs hadn’t stirred. Holly had crept on to his bed and made herself comfortable, and Fly was no doubt on the foot of Ben’s bed dreaming up fresh acts of mayhem.

At least it was another beautiful morning which made being out of bed less painful. He stepped outsideto enjoy the peace, and the warmth of the early morning sun . . .

Despite what Ruth Asimacopoulos had believed, Carol Blakely had changed her will to make ‘my best friend, Ruth’ the main beneficiary eighteen months ago. Until then, there had been generous bequests to her sisters and the rest would have gone to Vince Blakely. Ruth was right in that Carol had amended her will a month ago, but the only change was to add a bequest of ten thousand pounds to the local hospice . . .

Looking around, it struck Max just how tidy his garden was. Full of summer colour, too. Max could take no credit. His mother-in-law must have spent hours filling the borders with bedding plants. They’d obviously been there a while, too. He really should pay more attention.

Sometimes, he thought it would be bliss to retire early and spend his days pottering in the garden. Reality soon kicked in, though, and he knew he would be bored rigid in no time. Today, however, was one of those days when pottering appealed.

Alas.

He went back inside and shouted up the stairs. ‘Come on, you two. Move it!’

Ben and Harry were soon up and dressed for school. Once downstairs, they were pushing toast down their throats as if they hadn’t eaten for weeks.

‘Don’t forget it’s parents’ evening on Friday,’ Harry reminded him between mouthfuls.

Ben pulled a face. ‘We don’t have to go, do we?’

‘Are we parents?’ Harry scoffed.

‘This Friday?’ Max asked in astonishment.

‘Yes.’ Harry wore his resigned expression and nodded at the notice, a bright sheet of A4, pinned to the fridge door.

‘I’ll be there,’ Max promised.

He’d forgotten all about it, but he would be there. It had to be a couple of years since he’d managed the last one, and there was nothing like hearing how academically challenged your kids were. Fortunately, Harry excelled on thesports field. Ben, three years younger than his brother, refused to excel at anything.

‘You’d better do some hard graft between now and Friday then,’ he added.

The newspaper was pushed through the letterbox.

‘Fetch!’ Ben said, and Fly, part labrador, part collie, part psychopath, raced off to collect it. When the dog dropped it, unchewed, at Ben’s feet, even Max thought he deserved the piece of toast that Ben slipped him.

‘Oh, shit!’

‘Dad!’

Two hands shot out. Somehow managing to keep a few more furious expletives to himself, Max dug into his pockets and handed over two fifty-pence pieces for the swear box. Ben and Harry were saving for their holiday in Spain. At this rate, they’d be able to fly all their mates out and put them up in five-star hotels . . .

But shit! Max wondered if his boss’s paper was delivered at breakfast time. Phil Meredith would go berserk when he saw it.

Undertaker still alive!

How in hell’s name had they got wind of that?

A leak, he answered his own question. Someone on Max’s team, someone he trusted, had talked. And if Max got hold of them, they’d be lucky to talk again. Or walk.

Hell and damnation.

Perhaps Edward Marshall
was
still alive and thought it was high time he received some credit for his actions. Or perhaps Marshall was dead and the real killer thought
he
was due some time under the spotlight.

It was no use speculating.

‘Come on, you two!’ He tossed the newspaper down on the table and grabbed his car keys. More than ever, he wished he could spend the day pottering in the garden. An hour later, Max was driving, very slowly, through a crowd of reporters gathered outside headquarters. He guessed that if he glanced up at the third floor, he would see his boss’s face glaring back at him. He didn’t look up.

* * *

As he stood no chance of getting into the building unmolested, he parked his car as close to the steps as possible, got out and waved his arms at the crowd to try and silence them. He felt like King Canute trying to stave off the waves.

‘We’ll issue a statement at 6 p.m.,’ he shouted at them. ‘Meanwhile, I’m sorry, but I can’t answer any questions.’

‘Is it The Undertaker?’

‘Should we warn women –’

‘Sorry,’ Max said pleasantly, ‘but, as I said, I can’t answer your questions at this particular time.’

With that, he lunged for the door and left them outside like a pack of baying wolves.

Frank Busby was behind the main desk. ‘They’ve been here for hours,’ he told Max.

‘Then get them bloody shifted!’ Max snapped.

‘Er, will do. Oh, and the boss wants to see you. Pronto.’

‘I bet he does.’

Max checked in his office to see if there was a ‘we’ve got him’ note waiting for him – there wasn’t, of course – and headed for the executive suite occupied by Phil Meredith.

Meredith must have been waiting, poised, because as soon as Max entered, he threw a newspaper on to the desk with as much force as he could muster. It wasn’t much. Newspapers are ineffectual when it comes to giving vent to rage. The heavy glass engraved paperweight that had pride of place on his desk would have had more effect.

‘Yes, I’ve seen it and no, I don’t know how they got hold of it.’ Max thought it was one of those occasions when stating the obvious wouldn’t go amiss.

‘Someone – someone on your bloody team has been talking to reporters!’

Meredith had just celebrated his fiftieth birthday, and there had been hopes among the staff that it might mellowhim a little. It hadn’t. His brown hair was thinning, he’d gained a little weight but was merely stocky as opposed to fat, and he’d recently changed his glasses so that now they were rimless, but he still peered over them to try and intimidate people, and he still lived for the job.

‘Not necessarily,’ Max argued. ‘When I can speak to that moron of an editor, we’ll know more.’

‘Didn’t you make it clear?’

‘Of course I did. They all know the score.’

‘Which makes it even worse. If it were some raw recruit – pah! It would still be no excuse. Find out who talked, Max.’

‘I’ll do my best, but it wasn’t necessarily someone from the force. Now, about the press –’

‘Bloody vultures!’

‘Indeed,’ Max agreed. ‘I’ve promised them a statement at six o’clock.’

‘Tell them nothing. Say you can’t imagine where such a damn fool notion came from.’ He straightened the already straight lapel on his jacket and considered this for a moment. ‘I’ll tell them, Max,’ he decided. ‘Leave it to me.’

Max had been hoping that vanity and a love of the small screen would win out. It usually did.

‘Great idea. Right, I’ll go and see what’s what.’

That had been surprisingly easy, Max thought, as he closed the office door behind him. However, the fact remained that someone had been talking to the press.

DS Warne was on her way to her car.

‘Press gone then, guv?’

‘For the time being, Grace, yes.’

‘I’m on my way to see your favourite newspaper editor. Any messages for him?’

‘I’ve already told him what I think of him. Bloody moron.’

She grinned at that and was about to carry on to her car when she stopped.

‘That’s Darren Barlow,’ she murmured, frowning.

Max looked across at the young lad sitting astride his cycle just outside the car park.

Grace and Fletch had gone to see the Barlow boys but, despite Annie Burton’s claims, the brothers denied being anywhere near the quarry last Saturday.

Just as young Darren looked set to cycle off, Grace called out to him. ‘Hi, Darren, everything all right?’

He was clearly undecided. However, he eventually leant his bike against the wall and walked, eyes on tatty trainers, towards them.

‘Everything all right?’ Grace asked again.

Grace was a good officer, one of the best. Having six brothers of her own, she was good with boys, too.

‘No school today?’ she asked casually. ‘Or have you nipped out because it’s lunchtime?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, I’ve done that,’ he said, grateful for the ready-made excuse. He scuffed his trainers on the tarmac. ‘Up at the quarry,’ he said at last, ‘it were me and Jake. I phoned you when we found that – body.’

‘We thought you probably did,’ Grace told him. ‘A lady saw you. She said her dog chased you.’

‘Oh.’

‘It was good that you phoned us,’ Max said.

The lad nodded.

‘Were you sick?’ Max asked him.

‘Yeah. It were horrid.’

‘It was,’ Max agreed.

Darren looked at him. ‘Can I go now?’

‘Of course you can,’ Max said. ‘Thanks for dropping by. We appreciate it.’

Darren nodded again. He was a boy of few words. Mainly, Max suspected, because his stepfather, Dave Walsh, had had too many run-ins with the law.

Max handed the lad a ten-pound note. ‘You’d better stopoff at McDonald’s on your way back to school. Missing meals isn’t good for you.’

‘Wow! Thanks, mister.’

Darren ran back to his bike and cycled off.

Irene Marshall had moved to Preston before her husband was released from prison. As Max stopped the car outside her house, he guessed she’d done nothing since. And that included cleaning the windows.

It was a red-brick terraced house with a small, walled front garden that was overgrown with weeds, and dotted with wind-blown carrier bags and beer cans that had been tossed there by passers-by.

‘I bet it’s a damn sight more attractive than its occupant,’ he replied.

‘Ha! And she always spoke so highly of you.’

‘Mm. So I recall.’ He looked at the house and shuddered. ‘Come on then, let’s get it over with. When I phoned her, she said she had to go out at eleven.’

The door – dark red flaking paint – swung open as they were negotiating their way up the path.

Irene Marshall had aged a lot, probably because she chain-smoked. Even make-up that looked as if it had been applied with a bricklayer’s trowel couldn’t hide her deep wrinkles. Her hair, usually black, was mostly grey, the colour having faded, and she was wearing a short, grubby, tight denim skirt and a top that might once have been white. Her teeth had been fixed, though. She now sported a full set of nicotine-stained false teeth. She was stick-thin and Max wouldn’t have been surprised to learn she was taking drugs of some description.

‘He’s alive, isn’t he?’ she greeted them, the obligatory cigarette glued between nicotine-stained fingers.

‘We don’t know that,’ Max replied. ‘Can we come inside and talk?’

‘Don’t have much choice, do I?’

Nice to see her natural charm was still intact.

They followed her down a narrow hallway where two black sacks of rubbish waited to be taken somewhere. A damp patch on the dingy brown carpet squelched as Max trod on it.

She took them to the filthiest kitchen Max had ever seen. Everything had a thick coating of grease, even the cheap wooden chair that he saw Jill inadvertently touch and then leap back as if she’d been burnt.

It was one of those houses where you wiped your feet on the way out. He wanted to be on the way out.

‘You know why we’re here,’ he said, ‘so you know that the murder of Carol Blakely was very similar to the murders we believe were carried out by your husband.’

She leaned back against the greasy cooker. ‘He’s still alive, isn’t he? Christ, what does that make me? One of them fucking bigamists?’

Max frowned. ‘You’ve remarried? I didn’t know that.’

‘Of course I haven’t. Bleeding ’ell, you don’t fall for that twice. I’ve been living with a bloke off and on, though.’

‘Then there’s nothing to worry about,’ Max assured her. ‘So can I take it that Eddie hasn’t been in touch with you?’

‘Course he hasn’t. Just as well. If he came back from the bloody grave, I’d bleedin’ top myself. And how would he find me? Eh?’

‘If he
was
alive,’ Max said, ‘who might he contact?’

‘Dunno.’ She thought for a moment. ‘He were short on friends. Not bloody surprising when you think of his temper.’ She inhaled deeply on her cigarette. ‘He can’t be alive. I’d have heard about it.’

For all that, she didn’t look convinced. She looked terrified that he might walk through the door at any moment.

‘We’re sure he isn’t,’ Jill said smoothly, ‘but the murder of Carol Blakely was too similar to ignore a connection. We can only imagine that Eddie talked to someone. Perhaps he bragged about the murders.’

She shrugged at that.

‘You had lots of fights with him,’ Jill went on. ‘How did he behave afterwards?’

‘As if sweet FA had bleedin’ happened,’ she replied scathingly. ‘He’d say sorry, if I were lucky, and then forget it. A fat lot of help that were to me. I couldn’t forget it, could I? Not with a busted jaw.’