‘He’s probably on one of his binges,’ Jill said, excited. ‘I want to know the minute he’s found.’
‘Count on it,’ Grace said.
They walked on to Meredith’s office.
‘When are you at Styal next?’ Max asked.
‘Monday morning.’
It would be wonderful if she could tell Claire that they had found Peter. That might wake her up a bit.
Jill had it all planned out. She knew exactly what she intended to say to Claire. Word for word.
Yet when she arrived at HMP Styal and saw Claire, she knew it was going to be one of those days when Claire was impossible to deal with. Something had happened—and she still thought the staff needed to check that Claire wasn’t being bullied—because Claire was fidgety and unsettled. Physically, she was in the same room as Jill. Mentally, she was in a world of her own.
‘What’s the news from Styal then?’ Jill asked lightly. ‘Has anything been happening here?’
‘Nothing ever happens here.’
‘You look—upset,’ Jill pointed out.
‘Do I?’
‘How do you get on with the other women?’ Jill asked. ‘Are they OK?’
‘I keep away from them,’ Claire said.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Half of ’em are mad and the other half are as high as kites.’
‘Drugs, you mean?’
‘Yeah.’ Claire’s hands were visibly shaking. ‘I’m clean,’ she reminded Jill, as she often did. ‘Have been for almost a year now.’
‘I know. That’s great, isn’t it? Daisy will be proud of you.’
Her use of the present tense had Claire focusing on her. For the first time since coming to this room, she gave Jill her full attention. Yet she didn’t comment.
‘What’s been happening in the outside world?’ she asked instead.
‘Not a lot,’ Jill replied.
‘I saw on the telly that McQueen, the bloke you were asking me about, had been killed.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘He won’t be dead. He’ll be faking it.’
‘He’s dead all right,’ Jill assured her. ‘Two people found him and one of them was DCI Trentham of Harrington CID.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Claire said.
‘Believe it or not, it’s true.’
‘Nah.’ Claire wasn’t convinced. ‘They said someone shot him.’
‘That’s right.’ Jill nodded. ‘He was found in his house with six bullets inside him.’
‘It won’t have been him.’
‘Of course it was him,’ Jill insisted, wondering why Claire was so difficult to convince. ‘His wife and DCI Trentham found him. Believe me, Claire, he’s as dead as it’s possible to be.’
‘You’ll see.’
Claire was scratching at that scab on her arm again. Soon, it would be bleeding. Her hands, still shaking, refused to be still. If she wasn’t scratching her arm, she was winding a strand of hair round her finger or chewing on her bottom lip.
‘I’ll be talking to Peter later today,’ Jill said casually. ‘Any messages for him?’
‘Peter?’
‘Yes. He was arrested in Rochdale last night—drunk and disorderly. Assuming he’s sobered up enough, I’m going to have a little chat with him.’
Claire was breathing heavily, her emotions all over the place.
‘He’ll be delighted to know his daughter isn’t dead after all,’ Jill said quietly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You didn’t kill Daisy.’
‘I did. Who says I didn’t, eh? McQueen? He’s a liar. Daisy is dead. She’s gone. No one can touch her now. I killed her. That’s why I’m here.’
McQueen again. What the hell did he have to do with anything?
‘I don’t believe you,’ Jill said.
‘She’s dead.’
‘No. She isn’t. Perhaps Peter will know where she is.
He’s sure to come up with a few ideas. He idolized her, didn’t he?’
‘He buggered off and left us!’
‘Yes, but he still idolized Daisy.’
‘She’s dead. Gone.’
‘Nope, I still don’t believe you. Of course,’ Jill added, ‘if you told me what you’d done with her body, I’d have to believe you, wouldn’t I?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Of course you can’t. You can’t tell me because there isn’t a body. Daisy is alive. All we need to do now is find her. And we will.’
‘Go to hell!’ Claire pushed back her chair and staggered to her feet. ‘You can go to hell. And don’t come back. I’ll refuse to speak to you. They can’t make me. I’ll kill myself before I speak to you again!’
It was almost two o’clock that afternoon when Jill arrived at headquarters. Shortly after that, she and Grace went to interview room two to see a sober Peter Lawrence.
He looked nothing like the photographs Jill had been shown, but she supposed that was because he was sporting long, greasy hair and an untidy beard now. He had also put on a lot of weight, not only around his girth but in his face, too.
If she’d had to guess his age, she would have gone for late forties or even early fifties. She knew for a fact that he was thirty-three.
His clothes—black jeans, grey T-shirt and blue anorak—were filthy.
‘Why am I being kept here?’ he demanded sulkily.
‘We want to ask you some questions,’ Grace told him.
Grace was tall and reed-thin, and she stood no nonsense from anyone. Even the most hardened criminals didn’t knock her from her stride.
‘Where have you been for the past six months?’ she asked him.
‘What’s it to you?’
‘I’m curious,’ she told him.
‘Here and there,’ he answered with a cocky smile.
‘Could you be more precise?’ Jill asked him.
‘I had a spell in Liverpool—lorry driving,’ he said, jeans-clad legs stretched out under the table. ‘And I’ve been up north. Scotland.’
‘Why?’
‘Why not?’
‘Have you made any attempts to see your wife since you came back to the area?’ she asked him.
‘That bitch? She can rot in hell for all I care.’
‘What about Daisy?’ she asked quietly.
‘What about her?’
‘Where do you think she might be?’
‘How should I know what that lunatic did with her?’
Jill took a breath and hoped to God she was right. If she was wrong, and Daisy
was
dead, she was going to cause a lot of heartache.
‘I think she may be alive, Peter.’
The cockiness left him and every emotion flitted across his face. His eyes filled with moisture and his bottom lip trembled.
‘Alive?’ His voice was a hoarse, frightened whisper.
It had crossed Jill’s mind that, maybe, Peter was involved with Daisy’s disappearance. She could see now that he firmly believed his daughter to be dead. The possibility that she might be alive was almost more than he dared to think about.
‘I don’t know for sure,’ Jill told him, ‘but I think it’s possible. I’ve spoken to Claire, but she’s frightened for some reason. Do you know why that might be?’
‘She’s a lunatic. Totally insane.’
‘But why would she be frightened?’ Jill asked again.
‘Dunno. A bad trip or summat, maybe.’
‘She’s clean, Peter. She’s no longer using.’
‘So she says. I’ve heard that before.’
‘She’s been tested in prison and she’s clean.’ Even Claire couldn’t fake that.
A thousand questions hovered on his lips, but he was too frightened to ask a single one. Too frightened to believe that his daughter might be alive.
‘Why did you leave Claire and Daisy?’ Jill asked him.
‘Because I couldn’t stand her,’ he said simply. ‘Claire, that is. She was a lunatic. She used to beat me around. I know how that sounds, her being a woman and all that, but it’s the truth. She had one hell of a temper.’
They knew that.
‘And you used to drink a lot,’ Jill said.
‘You would have, too, if you’d had to put up with her.’
‘But why did you abandon Daisy?’ she asked him.
‘I had no choice, did I? I couldn’t live with Claire. Even Daisy used to stay out of the house as much as she could, poor kid. You want to try living with a lunatic.’
He pulled his fingers through greasy, tangled hair.
‘What makes you think Daisy’s alive?’ he asked at last. ‘Is that what Claire’s told you?’
‘No,’ Jill told him. ‘Claire is adamant that Daisy is dead. I just have a feeling that she’s alive. I believe—and I could be wrong—’ she warned him, ‘that Claire was frightened. Still is frightened. Frightened for herself and for Daisy, I imagine.’
‘What of?’
Jill hadn’t the remotest idea. ‘That’s what I was hoping you would tell me.’
But where did they begin? Claire refused to see Peter and no one could force her. Besides, even if they could, she wouldn’t speak to him. Added to that, Peter had abandoned his family almost a year before Claire walked into that police station claiming she had murdered her own daughter. Anything could have happened to Claire in the interim.
‘When you were together,’ Jill began, ‘how was she?’
‘I’ve told you, she was a lunatic.’
‘That’s not much help,’ she pointed out. ‘How was she with you? With Daisy?’
‘I dunno.’ He thought for a moment. ‘She was OK at first,’ he said at last. ‘She had one hell of a temper and when I went out drinking with me mates, she’d think nothing of belting me. Hit me with a saucepan once.’
Jill could believe that.
‘You said at first,’ she reminded him. ‘What was she like before you left?’
‘Crazy. She was off her head a lot of the time so—’
‘Heroin?’ Grace put in.
‘Yeah. Drink’s one thing. I mean, most people like a drink. Some people, me included, like a lot of drinks. There’s no harm in that, is there? “Have a drink,” I’d tell Claire, “it’s a lot cheaper.” We hadn’t got no money for heroin. But she wouldn’t.’
‘Where did she get her heroin?’ Jill asked him.
‘Anywhere she could.’
‘Tell me about Thomas McQueen?’ Jill suggested.
‘
The
Thomas McQueen. Him who was shot?’
‘The very same.’
‘I don’t know anything about him. Why the hell should I?’
‘Claire knows—knew him. She becomes quite agitated when his name is mentioned. She can’t believe he’s dead. She’s convinced herself that it’s just a story put about by someone.’
He pulled a face at that. ‘If she knows him, he’ll be someone who pays for sex. That’s the only people Claire ever knew. That was summat else she told me she’d given up. She never did, though. She’d go with anyone for money.’
‘We’re not sure that Tom McQueen went with prostitutes,’ Jill said.
Only Tessa Bailey had claimed he did. None of the other girls on the street had admitted to going with him.
‘If Claire knows him, he must have.’
‘Flat four, Rose House, Jubilee Avenue,’ she said, refreshing his memory. ‘You lived there for a couple of months, remember? That belonged to McQueen.’
‘I’m not friggin’ stupid,’ he said. ‘I know that.’
‘So Claire could easily have met him?’
Peter laughed at that. ‘Oh, yeah, like he’d come calling. Christ, woman, he owns half of Harrington. Most folk have lived in his flats or houses at some time or other.’
That was a valid point.
‘He didn’t call round to see if we were pinching the silver,’ he added scathingly.
‘But it’s possible Claire could have met him?’
‘No, of course it’s not. Bloody hell. Are you crazy or what? She never knew him.’
‘When I suggested to her that Daisy was still alive,’ Jill told him quietly, ‘she demanded to know who had said such a thing. She thought Thomas McQueen might have told me. Now, why do you think she would have thought that?’
That shook him.
‘I dunno,’ he said, not quite as confident. But then he shrugged it off. ‘I tell you, Claire’s as mad as they come. She’s one crazy woman. You can’t believe a word she says.’
The following evening, as Max was driving into Kelton Bridge, he saw that the whole village was in darkness. A blizzard was blowing and he guessed one of the power lines had been brought down.
Driving was hazardous with visibility so poor.
His headlights picked out a shadowy figure. It was Jack Taylor and his ever-present dog. Jack, his head bent into the wind, was walking quickly, a big bag in his hand.
He was heading towards Black’s Wood.
Why the hell was he going there at this time of night and in such appalling conditions? No one in their right mind would take a dog for a walk in this weather.
Sometimes, Max wished he’d been born with a less inquiring mind. He wished he could simply think that Jack Taylor had gone mad, carry on his way without giving the matter a second thought, walk into the warmth of Jill’s cottage and pour himself a stiff drink. Sadly, he couldn’t. His curiosity was aroused.
He drove on for a few yards, then parked his car.
As luck would have it, his overcoat was on the back seat. He checked the boot and realized that the gods really were smiling on him. He had a torch, a working torch at that.
He pulled on his coat and buttoned it. It was a pity he didn’t have walking boots in the back. Still, no point hoping for miracles.
Not wanting to alert Jack to his presence, he didn’t switch on the torch. The snow provided a light of sorts and that would have to suffice.
All he could see was the shape of a man and an animal. It was enough; it could only be Jack and the dog. The shapes entered Black’s Wood. Still wishing he’d never laid eyes on the bloke, Max followed.
He couldn’t see anyone now, but he could hear footsteps crunching on the snow.
Snow had drifted and it engulfed Max’s shoes. Twice he stumbled over a branch. Fortunately, he managed to keep all expletives to himself. All the same, he’d be black, blue and bleeding at the end of this escapade.
Only a man who knew every square inch of this wood would venture here in these conditions.
Jill had said they were looking for someone who knew the wood well and he’d stake his life on no one knowing it better than Jack Taylor.
But that was madness. No way could Jack be involved in something this big. That, of course, was assuming the deaths of Khalil, McQueen and Bradley were linked.
They had to be.
A branch caught Max in the face, almost taking his right eye with it. The wind had eased a little, although it still howled through the trees, but the snow gave an illusion of light. The trees were huge dark shadows and the path nowhere to be seen.