At last, Max was out of the wood. There was no sign of Jack Taylor or his dog. Max took a moment to get his bearings. He’d never walked this way before. In the past, he’d taken the track through the wood from Ryan Walk until it came out almost opposite the pub.
Now, he was nowhere near the pub. He was—he was right at the side of Archie Weston’s cottage.
Instead of heading north to south in that wood, he’d obviously veered off to the west. No wonder the track hadn’t been visible.
With Jack out of sight, he switched on his torch. His light was the only one to be seen. Kelton Bridge, or at least the row of houses where Archie lived, was in total darkness.
He hesitated briefly, then walked up the path and knocked on the front door.
Archie was quick to answer and looked at Max in complete amazement.
‘You’d better come in, lad.’
‘Thanks.’
He walked into the sitting room, where Jack Taylor stood warming himself in front of the fire. The two dogs were leaping all over each other and ignored Max totally.
‘Well?’ Jack greeted him.
‘I was passing,’ Max said, ‘and thought I’d call and see if Archie was all right—with the power cut, I mean.’
Jack looked Max up and down, from the windswept hair to the sodden shoes and trousers.
‘Just passing?’ he repeated. ‘My, you must think I’m senile. If I’d known you were following me, I’d have kept to the road. You don’t want to be wandering through the wood at this time of night, Sherlock. You never know who might leap out and hit you over the head. Besides,’ he added drily, ‘it’ll be better for your shoes.’
‘What’s that?’ Archie asked, coming into the room, having bolted the front door.
‘I was telling Sherlock here to keep away from the wood at this time of night. Look at the state of his shoes.’
‘Ah.’ Archie laughed at that, a dry, rasping, painful sound. ‘I expect,’ he said to Jack, ‘that he spotted you and thought you were up to no good.’
‘No bloody doubt,’ Jack said with a scowl. ‘I came here,’ he explained to Max, ‘because I didn’t know if Archie had enough candles or enough food in. Now that he can’t get out much, we have to look after him.’
‘Indeed,’ Max agreed. ‘And are you all right for everything, Archie? I can easily nip to the shop.’
‘I’m not a bloody invalid,’ Archie assured them both in a sharp tone. ‘I’m no worse now than before they made their diagnosis. Christ, if I hadn’t been to the blasted doctor ’s, people’d still think I’d just got a bad cough.’
Jack grunted at that and Max kept quiet.
The room was surprisingly well lit given that there were only half a dozen candles and the glow from the coal fire.
‘Well, this is quite a party,’ Archie said, his tone more cheerful. ‘Would anyone like a dram?’
‘May as well, now we’re here,’ Jack agreed.
‘That would be very welcome, Archie. Thanks.’ If Max was going to be humiliated by Jack Taylor, he’d far rather suffer it with a drink in his hand.
‘I’ll get ’em.’ Jack was halfway to the kitchen.
‘Sit by the fire,’ Archie told Max. ‘You’ll dry off. Mind you, I expect your shoes will be ruined.’
‘Never mind,’ Max murmured, taking the old, upright armchair next to the fire.
‘I wonder how long the power will be off,’ Archie mused, sitting opposite him. ‘I don’t suppose the workmen will want to go out in this weather. On the other hand, the overtime payments will be nice, especially if they can hang it out till after midnight.’
‘Let’s hope it’s soon fixed, Archie.’
‘Yes. You get used to electricity, don’t you? I’m not so bad, but these people without a coal fire, or without any means of making a hot drink, must find it hard. Then there are those who can’t go five minutes without their televisions.’ He shook his head at such stupidity.
Jack came back carrying a tray on which sat three large glasses of whisky, the whisky bottle and a jug of water. Elderly they might be, but they knew how to live.
‘This is very civilized,’ Max said.
‘Oh, yes. You need something in this weather,’ Archie said.
‘So how’s it going, Sherlock?’ Jack pulled an old wooden chair closer to the fire and sat on that. ‘It seems to me that you’ve got dead bodies turning up left, right and centre. First Johnson, and now that bloke from Harrington.’
‘Thomas McQueen, yes. Did you know him?’
‘No,’ Jack scoffed. ‘What would a bloke like that want with the likes of us?’
‘Another wealthy man,’ Archie pointed out. ‘They say that the love of money is the root of all evil.’
‘They do,’ Max agreed, ‘and they’re right.’
‘You should visit the pub,’ Archie suggested. ‘They’ve all got their theories there, haven’t they, Jack?’
‘They have.’ Jack chuckled at that.
‘And what might those theories be?’ Max asked.
‘Some are a bit colourful,’ Archie warned him. ‘Someone reckoned you were looking for a gang from London.’
‘Really?’
The two collies had worn themselves out with their antics and made their way to the fire, managing, without being noticed, to grab the dark brown rug to themselves.
‘You’re not then, do we take it?’ Archie asked.
‘No. I think it’s more local than that.’
‘Someone else reckoned those lads of Johnson’s might be guilty,’ Jack informed him. ‘Mind you, they reckoned the boys would inherit his money. They won’t, will they? Well, not unless they kill the mother, too.’ He grinned at Max. ‘You’d better keep a close watch on her or you’ll have another corpse on your hands.’
‘It wasn’t only that,’ Archie reminded Jack. ‘They reckoned the boys were dubious characters. Capable of murder. Mind, one theory was that the wife, Phoebe, did it. Now she would inherit the lot.’
‘Does she have an alibi, Sherlock?’ Jack asked.
‘Not a very good one,’ Max said. ‘Who thought she might have killed her husband?’
‘Can’t remember,’ Jack said, looking to Archie.
‘I can’t either. She might be your culprit though,’ Archie said.
The whisky was warming, as was the fire. In fact, with the shadows from the candles dancing on the walls, it was extremely cosy.
‘You said it was blackmail,’ Jack reminded Max.
‘It’s one theory, yes. We know Johnson had blackmailed someone in the village—someone else who doesn’t have a decent alibi—’ he added, ‘and blackmail is a very dangerous occupation. Some people pay up, some have the good sense to contact the police, but others—’
‘Take the law into their own hands,’ Jack finished for him. ‘Ay, well, I’d fall into the latter camp. I certainly wouldn’t pay up, and it’d be a waste of time expecting you lot to sort it out. I reckon I’d have to take the law into my own hands.’
‘And there’s you without a decent alibi, Jack,’ Max said with mock disapproval.
He believed Jack’s story of being in Rochdale at the time of the murder. At least, he wanted to. He supposed he must keep an open mind.
‘Blackmail’s a nasty, deceitful occupation,’ Archie said grimly. ‘Folk like that deserve all they get. Not,’ he added, almost wistfully, ‘that anyone would have anything on me. My life has been a very quiet, simple one.’
‘An honest one,’ Jack corrected him. ‘Like mine.’ He turned and looked at Max. ‘Our generation—we were more content with our lot. We left school, took jobs—usually in the pit—we married and we brought up kids. We didn’t change jobs at the drop of a hat, abandon our kids or flit from one wife to the next like your generation does.’
‘And that’s all very commendable,’ Max said.
‘It’s how we live,’ Jack said simply.
‘It were whatshername,’ Archie remembered, wriggling sock-covered feet on his dog’s back. ‘That young lass—what were her name, Jack? Fred and Martha’s granddaughter?’
‘Melanie,’ Jack said. ‘Melanie Bishop.’
‘Ah, that’s it. It were her who reckoned the wife had done it. She worked at the manor, cleaning and helping them unpack. I don’t know much about it, but she didn’t like the job and she didn’t like her employers.’
‘Oh?’ The name Melanie Bishop meant nothing to Max.
‘She’s living in Rochdale now,’ Jack put in. ‘Twenty she is, and living with some lad in Rochdale. She works in one of those shops there. Wilkinson’s probably. Somewhere like that anyway.’
Max made a mental note to send someone to find her. She might, although it was doubtful, be able to tell them something of interest.
‘She reckoned they were all crazy,’ Archie said with amusement.
‘Why was that?’ Max asked.
‘I don’t know really,’ Archie admitted. ‘She reckoned they were always shouting at each other. Said they both had violent tempers. The wife, Phoebe, threw a vase at her husband once. Well, so she said. But you know what these kids are like. You can’t get any sense out of them.’
Archie refilled their glasses and Max made another mental note. He must buy the old boys a bottle of Scotch each.
They liked to play games with him, and they found him a great source of amusement, but he did like them. Both of them. He just hoped the whisky loosened their tongues a little and they gave him something of use.
But talk moved on to cop shows on TV.
‘When we first had a telly,’ Jack was saying, ‘we used to watch
Dixon of Dock Green
. Now he were a good copper. Could catch anyone, he could.’
Max smiled at that. He’d watched repeats of the programme. In black and white.
‘Then came
Z-Cars
,’ Archie said. ‘I always used to watch that. That were OK, although in one episode, the dog got shot. Shame that. I hate to see animals hurt on the telly. Oh, I know it’s not real or anything, but all the same.’
Max wasn’t surprised by that. Archie was a gentle old soul.
The two men reminisced about old TV programmes, and Max knew he was wasting his time. He’d get someone to talk to Melanie Bishop but, other than that, they weren’t going to be of any help whatsoever.
All the same, he’d keep well in with them. They heard things in the village, and they saw things. It could be that they’d hear something of use. And that’s what he desperately needed. He’d had enough lectures from his boss about the lack of progress in this case.
With her deadline upon her, Jill was hoping to finish a chapter of her book, but her computer’s battery ran down and put paid to that. She had plenty of candles and, thankfully, her gas fire was working well, so she was warm. She would have been warmer still if she could have moved closer to the fire, but three cats were sprawled in front of it and Sam, in particular, never took kindly to being evicted from a prime spot.
She was minutes away from going to bed when Max turned up. No phone call, no warning, no nothing.
She had to work with him, and she was professional enough to do that. What she didn’t have to do was put up with him treating her home like his own. That was yet another problem with their relationship: they were too familiar with each other.
She hadn’t seen him since Friday, when they’d both been too shocked by McQueen’s murder and too busy trying to pacify Phil Meredith to worry about anything else. But his relationship with Barbara McQueen was still the most interesting piece of gossip at the nick.
‘Streuth,’ he said, pulling a face, ‘it smells like a brothel in here.’
‘You’d know that better than me.’
‘I’ll get us a drink, shall I?’ He dumped several files on her sofa and shrugged out of his jacket.
While Jill watched, admiring his nerve if nothing else, he went to the kitchen, filled two glasses with whisky, added a generous amount of water to hers and returned to the sitting room.
He stopped then and looked at her. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘What could possibly be wrong?’
Even the cats, detecting her change of mood perhaps, had given up their places by the fire and wandered off.
Max handed her a glass of whisky. ‘Come on then. Out with it. What have I done now?’
‘You? Why should you have done anything? God, my life doesn’t revolve around you, you know.’
‘So if I’ve done nothing wrong, how come I’m taking the flak?’ he asked drily.
‘Flak? I haven’t said a word.’
‘No,’ he agreed slowly, and Jill could almost hear his brain ticking over. ‘I bet a shag’s out of the question, though.’
‘With me? Good grief, I am honoured. I thought you had other fish to fry these days.’
His eyes widened at that, before dark eyebrows crinkled into a frown. ‘What?’
‘I suppose I should admire your bravery,’ she said, sitting down and taking a big swallow of whisky. ‘Not many men would have been brave enough, or insane enough, to mess with Tom McQueen’s wife.’
‘Ah,’ he said, understanding finally dawning. ‘So we’re back to that.’
A slow smile broke out and Jill wanted to hit him. Bloody hard.
‘It’s still the talk of the nick,’ she pointed out. ‘The DCI’s love-life is always a matter for speculation and when he’s having an affair with—’
‘Hey, steady on. Having an affair?’
‘So rumour has it.’ She nodded.
‘Is that what they’re saying? Me and Barbara McQueen?’
‘They are. And why not? She shared a bed with Tom,’ Jill pointed out, ‘so she’s obviously not fussy.’
Another infuriating smile at that.
‘Ah, but a copper’s pay wouldn’t keep Babs in visits to beauty salons. Not,’ he added quickly, ‘that I have any interest in her.’
‘Really? So what exactly is this past you had?’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake! This crackpot rumour started with Grace. She was with me when we realized we’d met.’
‘It must have been a memorable meeting.’
‘Yes, it was actually,’ he replied, nodding. ‘We were on a train coming back from London. I’d been to a funeral, and she’d been dumped by her boyfriend of the moment. I was going back to Linda, she was going to stay with an aunt. We both needed our spirits lifting.’ He raised his glass. ‘So we had a couple of drinks on the train.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then nothing. She took a taxi to her aunt’s and I drove home to Linda and the boys.’
She didn’t know whether to believe him or not. The fact was, she did believe him. So why was everyone making such a big thing of it? And how come, if nothing happened, he could still remember it? Why did he agree that it had been memorable?