‘What am I here for?’ she demanded. ‘You’re supposed to get me a lawyer. I know my rights.’
‘You can have a lawyer if you want one,’ Max replied easily. ‘As to why you’re here, that’s up to you. You can either tell me what you know about McQueen, or you can be charged. We’ll start with soliciting or benefit fraud, something like that.’ He shrugged in a friendly manner. ‘The choice is yours.’
She chewed on bitten fingernails while she considered her options.
‘I’ve never spoken to McQueen,’ she said at last.
‘You haven’t missed much. He owned the flat you shared with Muhammed Khalil, yes?’
She nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘Right. Now, McQueen claimed that Khalil paid four hundred pounds a month for the privilege. Is that right?’
‘If he says so.’
‘He does. He even produced a rent book showing the amounts paid.’
She shrugged at that.
‘The thing is,’ Max pushed on, ‘I don’t believe Khalil handed over that sort of cash every month. How could he? Most of the time he was out of work and, for some reason, he never got round to claiming benefit either.’
‘That were his business.’
‘And now I’m making it yours, Tessa. Did Muhammed pay rent?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Sort of? What the hell does that mean?’
‘It means—’ She stopped, probably to consider a benefit fraud charge, before continuing reluctantly. ‘He did pay for the flat. It’s just that—well, he did a few odd jobs for McQueen. It got took out of that.’
Now they were getting somewhere.
‘So he was on McQueen’s payroll?’
‘Nah.’ She looked at Max as if he were insane. ‘Muhammed got the flat cheap. Then, when he didn’t have the rent money, and McQueen put that up every month, McQueen said he could do a job for him.’
‘What sort of job?’
‘Dunno. He was doing odd jobs for him before I lived with him.’
‘So was he fetching and carrying? Selling? Something like that?’
She nodded and looked on the verge of tears now.
‘Is that a yes?’ Max asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘Drugs?’ Max asked.
‘I dunno about that.’
Perhaps she didn’t. She’d have a damn good idea though.
‘And Muhammed was happy with this arrangement, was he?’
She reached into the pocket of her denim jacket and pulled out a tissue that looked as if it had cleaned roads in a previous incarnation.
‘Here.’ Max took a white handkerchief from his own pocket and handed it over. ‘There will be less germs on that.’
‘Ta.’
She blew her nose and dabbed at eyes that swam in moisture.
‘No. He weren’t happy,’ she said finally. ‘He wanted to see McQueen and tell him he wanted paying properly. The trouble were, he couldn’t get near the bloke.’
‘I see. So what did he do?’
‘Nowt. Well, as far as I know. He did talk of breaking into McQueen’s house, but it meant nowt. That way, he said, the bloke’d have to listen to him. He wouldn’t, though. Blokes like him don’t listen to no one.’
‘Are you sure he didn’t try something like that?’
‘Course I am. McQueen’s got a bloody great guard dog for one thing.’
‘But he might have tried something else? Or he might have tried getting past the dog?’
She thought long and hard. ‘He decided he’d get money another way. There were some stuff he had to deliver and—’
‘What sort of stuff?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Tessa!’
‘Crack,’ she whispered finally.
So McQueen was dealing crack now. Why not? There was a growing market for it. Many addicts were using it alongside heroin.
‘Right. Carry on.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Muhammed decided he’d sell it on and then tell McQueen he were robbed. He got a mate to beat him up so it looked real.’
Max winced. That was a very foolish, not to say dangerous thing to do.
‘How did McQueen take that?’
‘Badly. He didn’t believe him. Muhammed thought the best thing to do were to pack up and clear off, just in case McQueen sent someone for him.’
‘And?’
She shook her head.
‘And then Muhammed was dead,’ Max guessed. ‘Right?’
‘Yeah.’ She blew her nose again.
‘There’s something else, isn’t there? Come on, Tessa. Out with it.’
‘After—after that, McQueen asked for me. He knew my spot on the street, and he asked the other girls if I were about.’
‘And? Did he find you?’
‘About a month later, yeah. He’d been with a couple of the other girls by then.’
‘Tom McQueen goes with prostitutes? Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. Bleeding hell. We didn’t play Scrabble.’
‘He went with you?’
‘Yeah. And it scared me to death, I can tell you. I thought it was cos of Muhammed, you see. It couldn’t have been, though. Well, he never mentioned it and I didn’t.’
Max was still trying to accept that Tom McQueen paid for sex. Why the hell hadn’t they discovered that particular gem?
He wanted every working girl questioned.
‘So what do you think, Tessa? Do you think McQueen killed Muhammed?’
‘Nah,’ she scoffed. ‘He’d have got one of his thugs to do it, wouldn’t he?’
He would. But McQueen would have issued the order and that was good enough for Max.
‘Who else was working for him, Tessa?’
‘Dunno.’ She spotted his doubtful expression. ‘I don’t. Honest. Muhammed never knew, neither. When McQueen wanted a job doing, he’d have a newspaper delivered to the flat. Muhammed knew then that he had to go to the phone box and call him. Even then, he never spoke to the man himself. It were a mobile he used to call and someone else answered it.’
‘I need names,’ Max urged her.
‘You won’t get any from me. I swear, I never knew. Muhammed didn’t, either.’
Max believed her. If McQueen was good at anything, it was covering his tracks.
‘Muhammed reckoned it were someone at Reno’s who answered it,’ she said, ‘but he weren’t sure. A couple of times, he could hear music and stuff. Reminded him of Reno’s.’
Reno’s was Harrington’s trendy nightclub and Max had thought a law-abiding management ran it. He’d get it checked.
‘Thanks for that. Now, does the name Bradley Johnson mean anything to you?’ he asked her.
‘The bloke who were killed? No. I don’t know him. I saw it in the paper, but I never knew him.’
‘McQueen did.’
‘Yeah, well, we ain’t on each other’s Christmas card list.’
‘That’s not a bad thing.’ He nodded at her untouched tea. ‘That’ll be cold.’
She took a sip and grinned at him. ‘No wonder you’re a detective.’
Max couldn’t help smiling. ‘Would you like another?’
‘No, ta.’ Cold or not, she drank it all. ‘McQueen won’t get to know I’ve talked to you, will he?’
‘Not from me he won’t.’
‘And me benefits—?’
‘Not my department, Tessa.’
‘Ta.’ She looked at him for a moment. ‘I’ll tell you summat else about McQueen. It’s only a rumour, and probably complete bollocks, but I’ve heard a couple of people say that he likes kids. Young kids, not teenagers, like them pedro—’
‘Paedophiles?’ Max asked in astonishment.
‘So folk reckon, yeah. He’s married,’ she added quickly, ‘well, you’d know that, and she’s supposed to be a looker. But people reckon it’s all for show.’ She pulled a face. ‘As I said, it’s probably just talk.’
‘Probably,’ Max agreed, thinking of the Barbara who had once longed for children and since changed her mind. ‘I don’t suppose you can give me the names of the people you heard that from, either?’
‘Sorry. I would if I could, but I don’t know them. It’s just talk.’
‘OK.’
‘So can I go now?’ she asked eagerly.
‘You can.’
‘Ta.’
Max returned to his office in the knowledge that they might, just might, be getting something on McQueen. He’d known, suspected at least, for some time that he was dealing. He simply couldn’t get hard evidence. And when McQueen was arrested, he wanted to make sure that all charges would stick. No mistakes could be made.
He thought of Barbara McQueen and wondered just how happily married she was. On that London to Manchester train journey, she’d been his for the taking. Or so he’d liked to believe at the time. Had he lost his touch? Or would his irresistible charm get him an invite to her home? McQueen was away a lot so perhaps she got lonely.
Max decided that if he couldn’t get into McQueen’s home by fair means, he would have to resort to foul.
Jill and Ella were warming themselves on the radiator in Jill’s kitchen. Ella had called in with sprigs of holly from her garden and was chilled. Jill, who’d been trying for over an hour to coax her boiler into life, thought she’d never be warm again. At the moment, the radiators were humming with warmth, but her cottage still felt cold.
‘You used to have a holly tree in your garden,’ Ella remarked, ‘but it was ripped out to make way for the shed. A shame.’
Jill looked out at her frozen garden. The shed must have been there for twenty years.
‘I’m going back a bit,’ Ella admitted, and Jill laughed.
Ella was often ‘going back a bit’. There was little she didn’t know about Kelton Bridge’s past.
‘Perhaps I’ll plant a new one.’ But Jill’s gardening skills were on a par with her culinary expertise. ‘Or perhaps I’ll leave well alone. I can pull up the odd weed and mow the lawn, but anything more technical is beyond me.’
‘There’s nothing technical about a holly tree,’ Ella pointed out. ‘Which reminds me, I’ve decided to get a computer.’
‘Never!’
‘Yes. You’ll have to give me lessons. I’ve signed up for a course at the college—six sessions especially for Luddites like me—so I’ll see how that goes.’
In the past, whenever Jill had told her how useful a computer would be, Ella had scoffed at the very idea.
‘You’ll be getting a mobile phone next, Ella.’
‘Not on your life. Let’s see if I can work this computer first.’
She gazed at Jill for a few moments. ‘I suppose you’re finding it quiet now that Max has gone home.’
‘It’s good to have my own space.’
Ella rolled her eyes at that. ‘You’re a hopeless liar.’
‘No. Really. It is.’
‘Perhaps it is,’ Ella allowed, ‘but you’d give all you had to have him back. I’m not blind, my girl.’
Jill was enjoying her own space. If things had been OK between them, she might have wanted him back at her cottage. But things weren’t OK. Max was having one of his distant phases. It wasn’t the first, not by a long way, but it was damned annoying. All Jill wanted was a normal, healthy relationship and that was practically impossible with Max. He came close enough for her to think that they had a future, and then he stepped right back.
She was about to say so, or words to that effect, when her doorbell rang.
‘Saved by the bell,’ Ella said drily.
Jill assumed it was the postman, but Jack Taylor and his dog were standing on her doorstep.
‘Is Ella here by any chance, Jill?’
‘She is, yes. Come in.’
‘No, I won’t do that. I’ve got the dog,’ he added unnecessarily. The dog was currently sniffing Jill’s hand in the hope that biscuits were hidden there.
‘That doesn’t matter. Come on in out of the wind. We’re in the kitchen.’
He hesitated long enough to let the last of that hard-won heat out of the cottage and then stepped inside.
‘I saw you walking this way,’ he greeted Ella, ‘so I guessed you’d be here. Gossiping,’ he added with a wry smile.
‘Gossiping? Now look here, Jack—’
‘Ella Thorpe, you’ve—’
‘Ella Thorpe? By, it’s been a long time since I’ve been Thorpe.’
‘Born a Thorpe and born a talker. That’s you.’
‘There’s a world of difference between talking and gossiping.’
‘Yes,’ he allowed, ‘so there is.’
He handed over the carrier bag he’d been holding. ‘I’ve brought those leeks I promised you. Or would you rather I took them to your place to save you carrying them? I can leave them on the step.’
‘No, I’ll take them. Knowing you, you’ll forget.’
‘Of course I won’t forget, woman. Streuth, I’m not senile yet.’
‘Yet,’ Ella teased. ‘I’ll take them. And thanks, Jack.’
Once again, the easy banter between the two surprised Jill. They’d both been born and brought up in the village, but even so, there was a closeness that, unless she was mistaken, went deeper than that.
‘Would you like a cup of tea or a coffee?’ she asked Jack.
‘Thanks, Jill, but no. I can’t stop. Thanks, though.’
With that, he was gone, letting another icy blast of air into the cottage.
‘Do you want some leeks?’ Ella asked.
‘And what would I do with them?’ she answered with an amused shake of her head. ‘I’m sure Jack’s an expert grower, but unless they come with a label stating the minutes and the power level required for a microwave, forget it.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Jill, surely you can cook a leek.’
‘Um, I don’t know. Never tried.’
‘Tell you what,’ Ella said, ‘you can give me computer lessons and I’ll teach you how to cook.’
‘It’s a lost cause. Truly.’
‘We’ll see.’ Ella nodded at Jill’s floor. ‘You’ll need to clean that now. Jack won’t go anywhere without that dog of his.’
‘It’s company for him.’
‘It is,’ Ella said softly, ‘and he’ll need as much of that as he can get when Archie’s gone.’
‘They’re close, aren’t they?’
‘Yes. They were the same at school. Had to do everything together. Archie,’ she added smiling at the memory, ‘was my first boyfriend.’ She laughed at Jill’s astonishment. ‘I was ten and he was twenty-one, but I had a dreadful crush on him. His friends teased him about me, but he didn’t mind. He was always kind to me. A lovely man. Jack’s the same.’ She picked up the carrier bag. ‘Anyway, enough of this gossiping. I’d better be going, Jill.’
Jill needed to get moving, too, and when Ella left, she set off for headquarters. There were a dozen jobs that had to be done before she could leave for Styal.
The place was heaving. At first, Jill thought something important had happened, but no, it was merely the usual organized chaos. People were shouting, phones were ringing and a couple of uniforms were playing football with a crumpled ball of paper.