Bad Sons (Booker & Cash Book 1) (16 page)

‘Is it really your day off?’

‘Yes.’

I didn’t know her well enough to tell whether she was lying and it didn’t seem the polite thing to do to call her on it. So I had to accept it.

‘Why did you call me last night?’

‘Maybe I fancied a drink after all.’

Again, I was lost to her honesty and again I had to accept what she said. I changed tack.

‘You’re not married, are you?’

She shook her head.

‘Boyfriend?’

More head-shaking.

‘Girlfriend?’

She cocked an eyebrow and gave me a look.

‘You know I’m married?’

We held each other’s gaze as she nodded and I was none the wiser about anything. I got the feeling she was just putting up with my male stupidity; my ego thinking that because she was here on her day off she must have a thing for me.

‘How’s the packing going?’

‘Slowly.’

‘It’ll be slower now with your ribs. Want some help?’

‘Are you serious?’

She nodded.

‘Today?’

‘Yes, today.’

She must have read something in my look. ‘I understand that ordinary people, like me, have no idea of how to handle a book. I mean, books aren’t meant for normal people to read and enjoy, to touch, are they?’

‘OK. OK.’ I was smiling. ‘I’ll show you what needs doing. If you’re offering help then I’m grateful for it. But there are two conditions.’

She waited.

‘Number one: you wash your hands first. Number two: you’ve got to agree to let me buy you dinner when we’re finished.’

‘Number one’s doable. But I’ll have to decline the meal. I’m busy tonight.’

I was disappointed. ‘Another time, maybe?’

‘We’ll see.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’ve got five hours. You want to make a start or not?’

I spent the next ten minutes going over the system I’d been working on. I started her packing on less important titles. I thought that, despite her goodwill, it would be better to keep the more valuable stuff for myself to do.

She was good. She worked quickly and efficiently and carefully. My injuries slowed me down. After a while she peeled off her top layer. Underneath she wore a sleeveless shirt that clung to her trim frame. She went in and out in all the right places. I noticed a long scar running down the inside of her left forearm. I used it as an excuse to stop and talk. I asked her where she got it.

She ran a finger down it. ‘Pushing through a door in too much of a hurry. This isn’t going to turn into a
‘Jaws’
moment, is it?’

‘What?’

‘You know, my scar’s bigger than your scar.’ In response to my blank look she said, ‘Dreyfuss, Scheider and Shaw sitting around the table drinking beer and comparing scars?’

I remembered and laughed a little, which hurt my side, which made me stop.

‘No. I don’t have any impressive scars. Sorry. Not yet.’

We used the moment to take a break. I offered to get a couple of cold drinks from the shop around the corner. She said she’d go; it might be quicker. When she returned I sat down. She leaned against the wall.

‘Any ideas yet about who used you as a football?’

I shook my head. I wasn’t sharing about Pike.

‘I don’t think you’re being honest with me.’ She didn’t say it nastily. ‘If you don’t help the police, we can’t help you.’

‘I know. Look, it might have something to do with someone I upset in the pub the other night.’

‘Is that where you got the eye?’

I nodded.  ‘I started it. There are plenty of witnesses to that. He said something I didn’t like about my relatives and I hit him. His mate hit me. If I try to bring charges against them for this, something I’m not even certain they did, he has a lot of witnesses to be able to bring charges against me for assault. I don’t want trouble with the law. I’d rather just leave it where it is.’

‘You had trouble before, didn’t you?’

‘You know I did.’

‘What was that about?’

‘Impetuous youth, stupidity and testosterone.’

‘Will you, though?’

‘Leave it?’

She nodded and she was staring quite intently at me.

‘Yeah, I’ll leave it.’ I don’t think she believed me any more than I did. I changed the subject. ‘It’s been nearly a week now since my aunt died and my uncle went missing. Where are the police with it?’

‘I shouldn’t talk to you about it, but if I do, you must promise me to keep what I say between us. It would look very bad for me if things came to light that only the police would know.’

‘Incidentally, how would it look for you if you were caught here now?’

‘It’s my day off. What I do on my day off is my business.’

‘Even when it involves consorting with suspects in a murder investigation?’

‘I don’t think you’re a suspect.’

‘I promise I won’t say anything.’ I meant it.

‘When your aunt was found with your uncle missing the initial reaction based on the how-it-looked kind of evidence was a possible domestic incident that had got out of hand. That didn’t last long as a theory because you came along. Naturally, your position has been considered. But for one reason and another you’re not a great fit – my governor’s words. Of course, then your uncle turned up with a broken neck and in the sea. He couldn’t have done that to himself and then jumped into the English Channel, so there must have been at least one other person involved. The spotlight swings back to you. But there is no evidence to suggest you are implicated and your uncle must have been kept somewhere for the period of time that he went missing and was found on the beach. It wasn’t here.’

‘What makes you so sure of that?’

‘Forensic evidence and because we searched the place very thoroughly.’

‘Just that?’

‘No. Not just that.’ She gave me a half-smile.

‘Tell me.’

‘I can’t go that far.’

‘Why? Please. They are my family. I have a right to know.’

‘Actually, you don’t. Not legally.’ She studied me for a moment before saying, ‘And it wouldn’t be pleasant for you to hear.’

‘I’m a big boy, in case you hadn’t noticed. I want to know. It might mean something to me that could help you.’

She looked uncomfortable but she finally said, ‘Wherever he had been kept between Wednesday night and Saturday morning he had been tied up. His wrists and ankles. Also, there are other traces of specific and unusual forensic evidence that showed up on his clothing – and don’t even bother asking because that I am not sharing. Nothing that matches was found here.’

‘Tied up! For two days! Christ! What sort of a person would do that to an old man?’

‘Why would be a better place to start. We find the why and then we have a better chance of finding the who.’

‘So the police are treating both of their deaths as murder?’

‘Unofficially, yes.’

‘Why unofficially?’

‘Because of the nature of their deaths. If the police give the investigation a high public profile their killer, or killers, might be frightened off. We don’t want to alarm anyone into flight. Not when we don’t have the first idea of who we should be watching.’

‘Why doesn’t that make sense to me? Two people are murdered and the police don’t want to make a song and dance about it. Strikes me it should be the other way around.’

‘Given the circumstances of their deaths – i.e. they appear to have been snatched out of their home in their slippers, as you pointed out – we have to consider that whoever wanted them out of the way was in a hurry. Your visit could have something to do with it. It could have been the impetus.’

‘What do you mean?’

She sighed heavily. ‘You’d better be able to keep your mouth shut, Mr Booker.’

‘I can. Why don’t you call me David? Don’t you think we’re past Mr and Detective?’

After a moment and a little exhalation she said, ‘Jo, then.’

‘Short for?’

‘Jo will do. I have a big enough problem sharing police business with you. I’m not divulging those kinds of personal secrets.’

‘It must be bad then?’

‘Worse than you can imagine.’

We’d taken a big personal step but given the context of our discussion it meant as much as a spit in the ocean.

‘Let me ask you a question and please try to look at it as just a question, not an accusation. Could your relatives have been involved in anything illegal?’

‘Are you serious? No. Absolutely not. No way. Never. Impossible.’

‘Right. Let’s assume you’re correct and, incidentally, we have found nothing to suggest the contrary. What other reasons could there possibly be for them to have been snatched, one of them killed straight away – drowned and hooked on to the ironwork at the outfall for us to find – yes, we checked that all out, of course, and you were right. Another reason that makes you look less likely to be involved by the way – and the other victim, your uncle, kept hidden away alive for days before having his neck broken?’

‘I have no idea. Maybe to confuse the issue?’

‘Maybe. It’s also possible your uncle was kept alive because whoever it was wanted information from him. When they got it, or didn’t because he didn’t have it, they killed him.’

‘You make this sound like some New York Times best-seller. Is there something you aren’t telling me?’

‘There is necessarily a lot I’m not telling you because you don’t need to know it. I think you are entitled to know about what happened to your relatives but you are not entitled to know things that might jeopardise our investigation into their deaths. Is that clear enough for you?’

She was so neutral, objective and professional with her delivery that I found it hard to find something to take issue with her over. She was a hard person to get emotional with. I sensed she just wasn’t that much into feelings, her own or other people’s. Maybe that made her a good copper.

‘So, we let whoever it was go on believing we don’t have a clue, maybe even that we believe their deaths are a terrible accident, and we keep digging, looking for something.’

Her arguments made a kind of sense but she was holding something back. I was sure of that. I thought of the money I was set to inherit in the form of stocks and shares and refused to associate it with anything illegal. But I would have to check on how long my relatives had been nest-egg building.

She hadn’t finished. ‘On that note, I don’t know whether you have any ideas about getting proactive, but I’m warning you officially to stay clear. Understand?’

‘You said it’s your day off.’

‘The police are never off duty, Mr Booker.’

‘David.’

‘The police are never off duty, David.’ She was serious.

I changed the subject. ‘You said this morning you weren’t sure why you were helping me. Do you know now?’

She put her hands on her hips and, with her hips, deliberately or not, it was a very provocative pose. She narrowed her eyes at me, cocked her head to the side and made a bit of a face.

‘What if I said I felt sorry for you?’

‘Pity?’ I shook my head. ‘I’d be crushed.’

‘How about I had nothing better to do?’

I shook my head again. ‘Insulted.’

‘Victim support initiative?’ she tried.

I gave her my is-that-the-best-you-can-do face.

‘Maybe it’s a bit of all three. Or maybe it’s something entirely different. Didn’t your mum teach you not to look a gift horse in the mouth?’

‘We never got the chance to be that close. She died when I was in my early teens.’

‘Shit. Sorry.’

‘Forget it.’ I was suddenly exhausted. ‘Look, you’ve done a great job, been a brilliant help and I really appreciate it. But to be honest, I’m knackered. I think last night is properly catching up with me. I’m going to call it a day down here.’

She didn’t seem overly bothered by that. She took it as a cue to leave and I didn’t try to talk her out of it. I hadn’t been lying. It was all catching up with me and all I wanted was to just lie down and rest.

I thanked her as profusely as I could find the words for and meant every one of them. After seeing her out and waving her off – even though it hurt – I took myself back upstairs opened a can, popped some more pills and went to lie down on the sofa. It was the middle of the afternoon.

***

24

The sofa was turning out to be something of an irresistible soporific. I woke in the dark. There was no traffic to hear. It felt like small-hours-late. I went to sit up and the pain in my side made me yelp. I took it slowly and with much grimacing got upright. I experimented with the limits of my available movement, just so I knew, and decided to head for bed before I came fully awake.

It took me a few minutes to navigate my way in the dark. Turning lights on would have risked a keener state of wakefulness, something I wished to avoid.