Kennedy 04 - The Broken Circle (28 page)

‘What happened when he moved to the village?’ Jill asked her. ‘How often did you see him?’

‘I didn’t,’ she replied. ‘Well, only if I was with Gordon, or in the company of others. We had invites to his parties, but I always had excuses at the ready.’ She twisted a tissue in her fingers. ‘I did see him in the street once. That was about eight weeks before he was killed. He’d just heard I was pregnant and he asked if I was planning to let this one live.’

Jill felt her stomach clench. Even without allowing for Hannah’s miscarriage, that was cruel beyond words.

‘He said I wasn’t to worry about him letting the cat out of the bag, as he put it. He told me he would keep quiet.’

‘At a price?’ Max guessed.

‘Yes.’

‘How much?’

‘Ten grand.’

‘Did you pay him?’ Max asked.

‘No. I kept stalling him. I’d arrange to meet him and not turn up. Once, I told him I was trying to get the money together.’

‘And he accepted that?’ Max was doubtful.

‘He knew I was scared and that must have been enough for him.’ She paused, briefly. ‘Then he began sending notes. He pushed them through the letterbox. Two, sometimes three a week.’

She looked straight at Max. ‘As I appear to have little else to lose, I’ll tell you something else. The day he was killed? I saw him. We passed each other on Ryan Walk. He must have been in a hurry because all he said was, “Well, well, if it’s not my Pregnant Hannah.” I told him—I told him to fuck off, if you must know. He carried on his way and—do you know what he did? He laughed.’

The colour had returned to Hannah’s face. Shock and fear had been replaced by fury.

‘That man was all set to take everything from me,’ she rushed on, ‘and he had the audacity to laugh at me.’

‘What did you do?’ Jill guessed Hannah hadn’t taken kindly to that.

‘I didn’t kill him if that’s what you’re thinking. I could have—cheerfully—but I didn’t. I ran after him, all set to give him a piece of my mind, to tell him that if he exposed me, I’d tell the world what
he
was.’

That tissue was in shreds now. Tiny pieces were scattered across her skirt like snowflakes.

‘Before I caught up with him,’ she continued, ‘Ella Gardner came out of the wood and stopped to talk to him. I turned around and came home.’

She buried her face in her hands. Jill thought she was going to break down, but, no, her emotions were still firmly in check.

‘The notes he sent you,’ Max asked, ‘what did they say?’

‘Stuff like, “When’s Hannah going to hand over the money?” Another said, “Abortion is murder, Pregnant Hannah.” They were all short.’

Jill shuddered. Bradley Johnson had played with Hannah in the same way that her cats sometimes played with mice.

‘I don’t suppose you still have those notes?’ Max asked.

‘No. I destroyed them.’

‘Who else knew about this?’ Jill asked her.

‘No one.’

‘Your grandfather knows,’ Max said. ‘As sure as night follows day, Jack Taylor knows.’

She sighed. ‘Yes, he does. I told him. But no one else knows.’

Hannah stood up and brushed specks of tissue from her skirt.

‘So Chief Inspector, Jill, that’s it. If all this comes out, I’ll have lost everything. I’ve already lost my baby—’

‘And your marriage!’ Gordon was clearly past caring about Max’s threats. He stormed from the room and out of the house, slamming the front door after him.

Max quickly brought things to a close and, within a couple of minutes, they were back in the car.

‘I want to get to Jack Taylor’s before Gordon gets there,’ he explained.

‘You think he’s going there?’ Jill didn’t. She thought Gordon would be licking his wounds alone. They were extremely deep wounds that would take a long time to heal.

‘I don’t know.’ Max fired the engine. ‘But I’m damned if I’m giving them time to get their stories straight.’

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Jill was exhausted by Hannah’s story. Saddened, too. She sometimes wished she’d chosen any career in the world other than one that brought her into contact with murderers and their victims. She heard stories that were too terrible, saw things that time could never erase. It must be bliss, she thought, to arrive at Asda at eight o’clock, and sit on the check-out all day talking of nothing deeper than the weather and the price of milk.

Max said nothing as he drove them to Jack Taylor’s house. Perhaps he, too, was wishing he had a job sweeping the streets or cutting grass.

He stopped the car at the T-junction and turned briefly to look at her. ‘I’ll treat you to dinner after this, kiddo.’

‘On one condition,’ she told him, ‘that we don’t discuss this case. In fact, I refuse to talk about anything depressing.’

‘It’s a deal,’ he said as he swung the car into Jack’s road. ‘Blimey, for a minute there, I thought you were going to insist on paying.’

‘With the nags I’ve backed lately? You’ve got to be kidding.’

Jill considered herself a fairly optimistic character. She’d seen it all, little surprised her, and it took a lot to get her down. Yet, as they got out of the car and walked up the path to Jack Taylor’s house, she was thoroughly depressed.

It seemed unlikely, but she wondered if Max guessed at her feelings because he gave her shoulder a squeeze and said, ‘Take it from me, Jack makes the best cup of tea in Kelton.’

She must pull herself together as, sadly, she didn’t have the luxury of sitting on a check-out all day.

Jack answered the door and ushered them inside. He was alone, except for the collie, and he was in the middle of washing up at the old, ceramic sink.

His dog licked Jill’s hand with a gentleness that touched her. Animals were far superior to humans, she thought. They were above all this.

‘Have you seen your son-in-law?’ Max asked him.

‘Gordon?’ Jack had been about to carry on washing up, but that stopped him. ‘No. Should I have?’

‘We’ve just come from Hannah and Gordon’s house,’ Max explained. ‘Gordon left. He was a bit upset by what he heard and we wondered if he might have come here.’

‘Ah.’ In that short word was a wealth of understanding. ‘No, I haven’t seen him.’

‘I expect he’s gone for a walk to calm himself down.’ Jill didn’t want Jack worrying unnecessarily.

‘Probably,’ he agreed. ‘How’s Hannah?’

‘She’s OK,’ Jill promised.

Jack, for once, was lost for words.

‘I think we all need one of your special cups of tea, Jack,’ Max said.

‘I think you’re right, lad.’

Jill watched, eyes widening, as Jack reached for a bottle of whisky.

‘Do women drink whisky?’ he asked Max doubtfully.

‘This one does,’ Jill told him.

‘Really? My, how things change.’ Shaking his head at the state of the world, Jack poured generous measures of whisky into large mugs. ‘Let’s see if this helps, shall we?’

He put the tea on the kitchen table and sat down.

Jill, very gingerly, took a sip from her mug. Surprisingly, it tasted good.

‘Hannah’s told you everything then?’ Jack guessed.

‘She has,’ Max said, ‘but I’d like to hear your version.’

‘My version? That’ll be the same as Hannah’s. She might not tell me things for years, twelve years in this case, but when she finally spills the beans, you get the lot. She wouldn’t lie to me,’ he added hastily.

‘So tell us your version of events,’ Max suggested, taking a swig of his drink.

‘If you like,’ Jack agreed. ‘My Hannah went off to university, with proud parents looking on, and found herself like a fish out of water. She’d lived a simple, decent life in the village till then. She met that bugger Johnson and—’ His knuckles were white as he gripped his mug more tightly than ever. ‘She were putty in his hands. Next thing, he’s buggered off back to America and she’s in the family way. So she gets rid of the baby.’

He broke off and stroked his collie.

‘That were her decision,’ he said at last. ‘It wouldn’t have been mine, and I don’t know what her gran would have thought of it, but the world’s different now. Right or wrong, that’s what she did.’

He fell silent.

‘Go on, Jack,’ Jill urged him.

‘She hears nothing from him until he realizes she’s standing as the Tory candidate. Then the evil bugger—pardon my French, Jill, but that’s what he were—follows her here and tries to blackmail her. He phones her and sends her notes.’

‘Did you see the notes?’ Max asked.

‘Yes. Saw ’em and burnt ’em!’

Jill suddenly recalled seeing a spiral of smoke rising from Jack’s incinerator when she called here with Ella.

‘Memories and truth remain,’ she quoted softly, and he looked straight at her.

‘You were here,’ he remembered. ‘You and Ella were here the day I burnt them.’

‘That’s destroying evidence,’ Max told him.

‘I’d have burned that bugger along with ’em if he hadn’t been dead already,’ Jack assured him. ‘And before you ask, Sherlock, no, I didn’t kill him. Nothing would have pleased me more, but I didn’t do it.’

‘I know.’

‘Oh? How’s that?’

‘We’ve been checking a lot of CCTV footage and your smiling face was caught on camera in Rochdale,’ Max told him.

‘Was it? Well, I’m buggered. You lot aren’t as daft as you look.’

But not clever enough, Jill thought, as Max began asking him about McQueen, Khalil and Tessa Bailey. Max was convinced there was a connection; Jill wasn’t.

All the same, it was coincidental that, three weeks after Bradley Johnson’s body was found, Thomas McQueen was filled full of bullets. And Bradley Johnson, they knew, enjoyed a spot of blackmail. If he’d found out who had killed Khalil, and if he knew McQueen had been mixed up in it—

Round and round they went in ever-decreasing circles. She was tired, hungry and thoroughly depressed, and she wasn’t sorry when they left Jack’s house.

‘Dinner,’ Max said, taking her arm and guiding her to his car.

‘And not a word about any of it,’ she warned him.

‘Scouts’ honour.’

‘Oh, yeah, like you were ever in the Scouts.’

‘I was! I’ll have you know that my sheepshank had to be seen to be believed. As for my Hunter’s Bend and Buntline Hitch, remarkable. King of the knots, I was.’

She smiled at that and slowly began to relax.

It was cold in the car and the heater blew out icy air before Max switched off the fan.

‘Where to?’ he asked her.

‘The Red Chilli in Bacup. And don’t spare the horses.’

The Chinese restaurant was always Jill’s choice when she was famished. It was impossible to leave the place hungry. Added to that, the food was exquisite and the service first-rate.

An hour later, with her appetite sated and with copious amounts of wine consumed, she felt much better. True to his word, Max hadn’t mentioned the case.

And then he took a phone call.

When it was over, he snapped his phone shut and returned it to his pocket. ‘Well, well, well. Who’d have thought it?’ He put up his hand. ‘Sorry, I forgot we weren’t talking work.’

‘Now what’s happened?’ she asked, wary. ‘We haven’t got another corpse, have we?’

But he didn’t look concerned. ‘It’ll keep till tomorrow. We’re not talking work, remember?’

Damn him, he knew she wouldn’t rest.

‘Come on. Tell me.’

‘Peter Lawrence was arrested in the early hours of this morning,’ he said.

She sagged with relief. Peter Lawrence was arrested on a regular basis.

‘Drunk and disorderly?’

‘Nope. Breaking and entering.’

‘Blimey.’ She had to smile. ‘That’s a new one. Into a pub or an off-licence?’

‘Neither. West Mercia Constabulary caught him trying to gain access to a narrowboat in Worcestershire.’

‘What? You’re kidding me.’ She couldn’t believe it. ‘But I didn’t mention anything about boats. All I did was try and get him to come up with names of Claire’s friends.’

She simply couldn’t believe it.

‘The owners returned to it to find him,’ Max explained.

‘Really? Who are they?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Who the hell might Claire know who owns a narrowboat?’

Of course, it could be nothing more than Peter Lawrence finding himself in Worcestershire without a bed for the night and trying his luck on the river. No, that was too much of a coincidence.

‘I need to get down there to see him,’ she said.

And she had no intention of leaving until she had a name from him. He must know something.

Chapter Thirty

Jill often arrived at HMP Styal with time to spare, but today she was in a rush. All the same, as she’d skipped breakfast, she ate a Cadbury’s Flake and had a quick look at the day’s runners and riders. If she didn’t have a winner today, she may as well admit defeat. Gambling was a mug’s game anyway.

Not that a mug would have backed Manor Boy and netted themselves three hundred quid, she reminded herself. However, that had been her last decent win.

None of the horses leapt off the page at her. Her dad had told her to back Swansong but, despite his claims that it was a dead cert, she wasn’t convinced. Her dad’s luck was no better than hers right now. But if she didn’t back it, the animal was sure to romp home leaving the rest of the field furlongs behind. She may as well squander a tenner on it. Maybe twenty, just in case.

Minutes were ticking by and, without much hope, she phoned through her bets. Six fine racehorses or six wornout nags? Time would tell.

Ten minutes later, she was with Claire Lawrence.

‘Your husband was arrested yesterday.’ Jill came straight to the point.

‘Again?’ Claire wasn’t interested.

‘Yes, breaking and entering. In Worcestershire of all places.’ She brushed an imaginary speck from her shirt before saying casually, ‘Apparently, he was trying to get inside a narrowboat on the river down there.’

Claire was interested now. She didn’t say anything, but her fingers were wrapping themselves around a strand of hair in an extremely agitated fashion.

‘I wonder what he was looking for,’ Jill said carelessly.

‘A drink, I expect.’

‘It’s a long way to go for a drink. Even for Peter. Anyway, he was arrested before he had a chance to find anything and he wouldn’t say what he was looking for.’