‘And anyway,’ Jill’s mum was saying, ‘they’ve got four little girls now. How daft is that? He’s a bone idle, work-shy bugger and she’s fit for nothing but letting the kids run around screaming while she sits on her fat arse watching telly.’
Jill had to smile. There was nothing like hearing the gossip from River View estate.
Little input was required so Jill had switched on the speakerphone and was doing other things. She’d already cleaned the inside of the kitchen window and now she was eating toast before Max arrived.
‘That’s good then, Mum,’ she said, taking a bite of toast. ‘It’s reassuring to know you’ve got such nice neighbours.’
‘Ha! And you’ll remember young Freda Tomms. She’d be about the same age as you, wouldn’t she? Yes, I remember her going to school with you. Well, she’s expecting again. That’ll be four kids with four different fathers.’
Jill thought her mum was wrong. The name Freda Tomms meant nothing to her. But she wasn’t going to argue.
‘The first was with that Gerry. Remember him? He wasn’t a bad bloke really . . .’
While Mum recited the Tomms children’s family tree, Jill saw Max’s car pull up outside. She held the door open for him and gave a helpless shrug as she nodded at the phone.
‘That Gerry was the best of a bad bunch,’ Mum went on. ‘Oh, and you’ll never guess what I found yesterday. Remember those photos your dad took when you and Max came for the day? When your dad and Max were trying to get the barbecue going?’
‘Yes.’ Jill felt a rush of colour invade her face. ‘Look, Mum’
‘I found those,’ Mum said fondly. ‘Ah, happy days. Max was a wonder with that barbecue, wasn’t he?’
It must have been a couple of years ago now, but Jill could remember that day as clearly as if it had been yesterday. She and Max had been living together and the boys had been spending the weekend on a camping trip. It was the first time Max had met her parents, and she could remember that they’d been anxious at the prospect of meeting her ‘fancy friend’.
After days of rain, the sun had shone and her dad and Max had been hell-bent on having a barbecue. They’d had to find the thing first, and then clean it. That they had escaped without food poisoning never failed to amaze Jill.
It had been a good day, though. They’d eventually eaten burnt sausages with salad, and then sat in the sunshine. She’d been drinking wine. Max had been driving so he’d stuck to her mum’s home-made cordial . . .
‘Yes. Anyway, I have to dash, Mum,’ she said, pushing the memories aside, and unable to look at Max. ‘Life’s very hectic here at the moment, but as soon as everything calms down, I’ll drive over and visit. Give my love to Dad . . .’
Jill cut the connection and grabbed her bag. She still couldn’t look at Max. ‘Right,’ she murmured, face burning, ‘I’m ready.’
‘Your mum’s well, I take it?’ he said as she locked up her cottage.
‘Fine, thanks.’ She strode over to his car, asking over her shoulder, ‘Anything new?’
‘Nah, I’m still a wonder with a barbecue,’ he said softly.
Damn him!
She refused to get wound up in memories. Other people managed to work with ex-lovers; she could, too.
‘Let’s get going then,’ she said briskly. ‘There are plenty of other ways I could be spending my Saturday.’
‘Me, too,’ he replied with a sigh, flicking the remote to unlock his car.
She wasn’t even going to think about what he meant by that . . .
It was a cold, damp morning but at least his car was warm. As he drove, she forced her mind to concentrate on Martin Hayden, James Murphy and Jason Keane.
She was sure the answer was at Lower Crags Farm. But what if she was wrong?
Martin Hayden and James Murphy couldn’t have been more different. Martin believed himself to be special; James believed himself to be the same as hundreds of other boys at Harrington High School. Martin was ambitious and chose friends who might benefit him; James chose friends that he could confide in and have fun with. Martin had made enemies; James appeared to have no enemies. Martin came from a private family who kept its feelings hidden; James came from a loving, close family that didn’t care if the world saw its terror. Martin was out to make an impression; James was out to enjoy life. Martin had siblings; James was an only child.
Jason Keane was different again, yet he had been Martin’s best friend. He’d known about Toby Campbell. In fact, it was Jason who’d put them on to him.
No, there had to be something else, something they had overlooked.
Unlike Max, she didn’t believe Campbell was their link. His coming into contact with two of the boys was merely coincidence. As they lived in the same area, attended the same school and had only a year between their ages, it was natural that they would come into contact with the same people.
There was something else. There had to be.
‘Isn’t this the most dismal place in the world?’ she said, as Max turned the steering wheel to avoid the deep potholes in the track leading to Lower Crags Farm.
‘The house of bloody death,’ he muttered grimly.
After bumping their way up to the farmhouse, Max parked alongside a police car and killed the engine.
‘Look.’ Jill pointed to a low stone wall at the side of the old barn where George Hayden was sitting. ‘You go inside and I’ll have a word with him there. He might be more accommodating away from everyone.’
‘OK.’
Max walked off and Jill approached George Hayden.
All she could think about was the killer’s anger. The answer to this nightmare had to be hidden in Josie Hayden’s past.
If the killer had been connected to Josie from the start, maybe he’d killed Martin to make her suffer. Surely, far worse than death, was for a mother to lose her child in such a brutal way. Then, the killer must have thought she hadn’t suffered enough.
Max, of course, thought she was talking nonsense and she had to admit that her theory didn’t make allowances for James Murphy or Jason Keane. How were they connected? Connected they must be . . .
As if aware he had company, George Hayden looked up. ‘Good morning,’ he called out.
She had only seen him once since Josie had been murdered, and then only briefly, and she was amazed by the change in him. All his bluff, domineering manner was missing. He was as meek as a lamb. It was as if Josie had taken all his anger, his arrogance, his pigheadedness, his rudeness as if she’d taken it all with her.
‘Good morning, Mr Hayden. I hope I’m not intruding.’
‘I was just taking a breather. Thinking about things.’
‘How are you managing?’ She sat on the wall beside him.
‘We’re managing,’ he said abruptly. ‘We don’t have no choice, do we?’
No, they had no choice.
‘I wondered if I might talk to you about your wife,’ she began. ‘I don’t want to intrude into your grief, but I was thinking about her past family, relationships, that sort of thing.’
‘Family?’ He spat out the word. ‘Pah! Her mother paid her no attention at all, and she never did know who her father were. She never spoke about her childhood, but I don’t reckon the memories were pleasant.’
Brian Taylor had said something similar.
‘How did you meet her?’
‘It were at a dance,’ he told her. ‘An old pal of mine were getting married, and a gang of us had gone along to this dance. There were no stag night or anything like that, we were just going to have a few drinks and chat up the girls.’
‘And you chatted up Josie?’ she guessed.
‘She were different to the others,’ he explained, his thoughts miles away. ‘She’d had too much to drink, like everyone else, but you could tell she weren’t used to it. She were a shy little thing. She looked out of place and, to be honest, I felt sorry for her.’
Poor Josie. A woman wanted to feel desired, attractive and special. She didn’t want members of the opposite sex feeling sorry for her.
‘We had a couple of dances but neither of us were natural dancers and we both felt out of place. Then we I took her out to my car for, well, you know.’
‘I can imagine,’ Jill said, struggling to keep the shock from her voice.
‘Ay, well, as I said, we’d both had too much to drink.’ He was clearly embarrassed, and she was surprised by such honesty from him. She would have expected him to keep such personal memories to himself.
‘How old was she then?’
He thought for a moment. ‘Eighteen or nineteen. I can’t rightly remember.’
He took a grubby handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. His eyes were moist, Jill noticed.
‘So she wasn’t as shy as you thought,’ Jill said lightly. ‘She must have been strongly attracted to you to make love on a first date.’‘
Nah, she were drunk. We both were.’
‘I hate to ask such personal questions, Mr Hayden, but we do need to find out as much as we can.’
He nodded. Jill preferred it when he was his usual belligerent self. Now, he looked weak and broken. Two murders in the family would break anyone, though. Anyone except a man who had killed before, who had engineered his brother’s death . . .
‘Was she a virgin?’
‘No.’ He clearly didn’t like talking about such personal matters, and Jill didn’t blame him. ‘I don’t think she liked well, you know. If she hadn’t been drunk, she wouldn’t have let me touch her.’
‘What makes you say that? That she didn’t like sex?’
He shrugged, growing more and more uncomfortable by the second.
‘That first time, she were well, it were as if she felt she should do what I said.’ His face was scarlet. ‘Perhaps I were a bit too forceful.’
Was he talking rape?
‘Like I said, I were drunk.’
‘How forceful were you?’
‘I didn’t use force,’ he said immediately, ‘but I were a bit persuasive. Only talking, you know.’
‘And afterwards?’ Jill asked curiously. ‘How did she react afterwards?’
‘She wanted nothing to do with me. I phoned her at her home, and she gave me the brush-off. It were a while later that she phoned me asking to meet. She were pregnant with our Andy.’
Jill knew they had both felt duty bound to get married, and she knew that Josie had been grateful.
‘I did the right thing by her and asked her to marry me,’ George said, some of his gruffness returning. ‘I don’t suppose she were any happier about it than I were, but we got by.’
‘You did,’ Jill agreed. ‘For a long time, too. Did she ever mention past boyfriends? You said she wasn’t a virgin. Was there anyone special in her life before you?’
‘Not that I know of.’
There must have been. She wasn’t into having sex on first dates, yet she’d clearly been with someone before meeting George.
What a sad life she’d had. No wonder Brian Taylor had charmed her so easily.
‘Is that it?’ he asked, standing up. ‘I’ve got work to do.’
‘Yes, that’s about it.’
George Hayden was too private to give much away.
‘If you think of anything, Mr Hayden, about any names she mentioned from the past, let us know, will you?’
‘I will at that. I want this bugger caught,’ he assured her fiercely.
His sudden intensity surprised her.
‘I’m sick to death of the guilt that goes with it,’ he went on, eyes alight with anger. ‘First it were me brother, then me son well, the lad I thought were me son, then me wife.’
‘Guilt?’ she queried.
‘Aye, bloody guilt. When me brother died, it were a stupid accident but, all these years later, I still wonder if I could have done summat different. I’m sick of it!’
With that, he stomped off.
When he was about ten yards from her, he once again took that grubby handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose loudly. Was he shedding tears for Josie? Or for his brother? Or for himself?
Given that unexpected and rare display of emotion, Jill supposed he was innocent of his brother’s death after all. And of Martin’s and Josie’s . . .
Brian Taylor had said Josie was naive when it came to sex. George had claimed she hadn’t liked it. So who had made her that way? Who had given her that first disappointing or possibly worse experience of sex?
Clouds danced across the sky, blotting out the watery sun, and the temperature dropped dramatically.
Had Josie enjoyed sex with Brian Taylor? She had loved him, yes, but had she enjoyed the sex or had she been passive, letting him do as he wanted just to please him? She would have done anything to please that man.
Jill still had no answers when Max was driving them away from the farm.
‘There’s someone from Josie’s past, someone important,’ she told him. ‘She may even have been raped.’
He gave her a quick glance. ‘Who said that?’
‘She was a shy thing when George met her, yet she had sex with him on their first meeting. That was unlike her. He said she didn’t like sex particularly, yet she wasn’t a virgin. Someone must have put her off sex, Max. She may even have been raped. Or she may just have been disappointed, I suppose. Perhaps there was someone special in her life and the sex wasn’t very good. She was young perhaps the man in question was young. We need to find out who that person was.’
‘You’re on the wrong track, Jill,’ Max said. ‘It’s wasting time. No matter what happened to Josie Hayden, she had no ties with James Murphy or Jason Keane. None whatsoever.’
He was right; she knew that. All the same, she was convinced this revolved around Josie.
‘So what’s your theory?’
‘Ha!’ He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘If only I had a theory. One schoolboy has been murdered. Possibly three. Schoolboys. So where in hell does Josie Hayden come into it?’
Jill wished she knew.
‘On the other hand,’ he went on, ‘forty per cent of the Hayden family has been wiped out. So where in hell do James Murphy and Jason Keane come into that?’
‘What a bloody mess!’
He smiled at that. ‘That’s what I love about you, kiddo. The queen of the understatement.’
The traffic in Harrington’s centre was going nowhere fast. People were doing their Christmas shopping. Jill hadn’t even started hers . . .
‘What do we know about Josie’s past?’ she asked.
‘Not a lot. Let’s see, her mother’s suffering from Alzheimer’s. She’s in Blue Lodge. They didn’t have much to do with each other, though. Her mother attended her wedding to George, but that was about it. Josie was an only child and her father vanished before she was born.’