Through a Narrow Door (11 page)

‘Could be,’ Janine mused. ‘Losing the wife could have sent him a bit funny. And if he knew or suspected that Billy wanted Heather to get rid of his grandson or
granddaughter
, it might have been enough to tip him over the edge. He’s obviously still a man in mourning.’

Hillary agreed. She’d seen ample examples of how an otherwise sane and emotionally well-balanced person could do extraordinary things when in the grip of grief. ‘Mind you, he didn’t strike me as the type who liked to get hands on. Notice the briefcase? I think he sees himself as strictly managerial. So if he was in the office, make sure you question the secretary well. Does his office have another exit? Could he have slipped out? How often did she see him? If he was on the phone, who with and for how long? I want Francis Soames’s whereabouts for the whole afternoon of Billy’s death tied up with pink ribbons.’

‘Boss,’ Janine said, and turned the ignition key.

Back at HQ, the desk sergeant nobbled her the moment she walked through the door.

‘Hey, Hill. DI Parker wants you over her neck of the woods ASAP.’

Hillary shook her head at Janine silently telling her not to bother accompanying her, and turned and headed off towards Juvie. It wasn’t yet eleven, and she was curious to hear what Melanie wanted.

The unit dealing with Juvenile crime was a large one, and – a typical sign of the times – growing larger all the time. The number of criminals caught TWOKING, ram-raiding, drug-dealing, stealing and mugging, would soon all be under the age of sixteen – or so Hillary sometimes felt. She didn’t envy Melanie her posting, or have any desire to join her.

Melanie Parker wasn’t at her desk, and a fresh-faced DC
(who looked about ten, and was probably used to infiltrate raves on a nightly basis) quickly pointed her in the direction of the interview rooms. There she was met by a DS Vernon, who knocked on a door and ushered her in, before leaving them to it.

Melanie was sat at a table smoking in blatant violation of anti-smoking laws. Opposite her a teenager with so much metal clipped, clamped, threaded and pierced on to his face that he must set off metal alarms at a distance of twelve feet, puffed as enthusiastically away. Hillary felt the back of her throat tickle and bit back the urge to cough.

‘Ah, DI Greene. Kevin, this is the officer I was telling you about. Kevin is a pusher at Bicester Comp. Why don’t you tell DI Greene what you were just telling me?’

‘First off, I ain’t no pusher, right?’ Kevin said, stubbing out his cigarette in an ashtray, displaying the spiderweb tattoo on the back of his hand to perfect advantage. ‘That’s just a little joke the inspector here likes to play. I never done time for dealing, yeah?’

Melanie Parker smiled beatifically. ‘Just give us time, Kev,’ she said softly. ‘We’re only waiting until you turn eighteen when we get to send you down to the big boy’s prison.’

Kevin snickered, but his eyes flicked nervously between the two women. Hillary pulled out a seat and made herself comfortable. ‘Just so’s we’re clear. I’m just here doing my bit. Being a good citizen, like.’

‘You’re here because we pulled you, Kevin,’ Melanie corrected flatly. ‘And don’t think that, even now, officers aren’t pulling the plumbing apart to find out exactly what it was you flushed down the loo.’

‘Can’t prove it was nothing to do with me,’ Kevin said at once. And accurately. Hillary knew that Melanie’s people wouldn’t really be inspecting the loos. It would be a waste of time and effort. And with what genuine plumbers cost nowadays, the budget would never stretch to it.

‘Just get on with it,’ Melanie said, almost affectionately,
as she lit up another cigarette. Hillary felt her eyes smarting, and blinked furiously. She hoped they’d get down to it soon, or else she was going to start breaking out in a rash. She was mildly allergic to cigarette smoke.

‘Right. But I ain’t no grass or nothing,’ Kevin reiterated. He had dyed blue hair with a zigzag cut straight across the top of his dome, and matching zigzagging blue eyes. Hillary wondered what he was on. No doubt Melanie could tell her if she asked.

‘That’s understood,’ Melanie said impatiently. ‘Stop mucking around like a junkie at an Oasis concert and get on with it.’

‘Who’s Oasis?’ he asked, genuinely puzzled, making both women feel about a hundred-and-six years old.

‘You want to spend a couple of days in Branston House?’ Melanie snapped, naming a notorious young offenders’ institute near the lunatic asylum in Broadmoor.

‘Hey, OK,’ Kevin held up his hands defensively. ‘You was asking me about the kid that got his throat cut, yeah?’

‘It was a stabbing to the chest, but close enough,’ Melanie said. ‘Now get on with it.’

‘Right, well, he wasn’t dealing. Not that I’d know from experience, like, but some of my friends ain’t as clever as me, and they sometimes buy the odd naughty tablet or two, know what I mean. And that kid that got offed never did no offering.’

‘We already know that,’ Melanie said, letting her impatience show. ‘I wouldn’t drag DI Greene over here just to listen to you snivelling. Tell her what you told me, and cut the acting performance. This isn’t the BAFTAs.’

‘Yeah. OK. No come back on me, we agreed.’

Melanie sighed elaborately and nodded.

‘Yeah, well, this kid I know, he thought Billy-Boy might be interested in making a few quid, right, so he asked him if he wanted in. But Billy-Boy got really sniffy, and said it was a mug’s game. The bigger boys got all the profit, and kids like my mate got thrown into Juvie if they got caught.
Said he didn’t need no dim-wit, two-bit dealer to help him get his hands on readies. He was doing all right as it was.’ Kevin ran the back of his tattooed hand under his leaking nose and sniffed. ‘This really pissed my friend off, right. I mean, who did he think he was? Thing is, Billy-Boy had just come to school on this mean bike, and everyone knew he was boffing the choicest babe in school, giving her gold bracelets and stuff. So he was coining it somehow, right enough.’

Hillary leaned forward on the table. ‘Did your friend know how?’

‘Nope. He only knew he wasn’t doing it by dealing. Didn’t reckon he was thieving either, since his brother has the patch around here. But Billy was cocky, you know? The kind of cocky you only get when you’re doing all right for yourself. Know what I mean?’

Hillary did. She also wondered why Heather Soames hadn’t mentioned any gold bracelets, then supposed that they hadn’t really had much time to chat before her father had appeared on the scene. Besides, to be fair, she had mentioned that Billy liked buying her expensive gifts. Perhaps a diamond pendant hadn’t been just wishful thinking after all.

‘Didn’t your friend lean on Billy a bit?’ Hillary cajoled craftily. ‘After all, if he had a source of income, surely your friend wanted a slice of the action? No crook likes independent operators on his patch.’

‘Naw,’ Kevin said. ‘He’d been told by his main man to keep things nice and easy, right. Don’t frighten the chickens. Don’t do nothing to attract the law. He couldn’t have had Billy-Boy kneecapped without drawing attention to himself like. And certain people wouldn’t have stood for that.’

Hillary saw Melanie twist her lips in a grim smile and shook her head.

‘No,’ Hillary agreed flatly. ‘You got any idea what Billy was into?’

‘Me?’ Kev squeaked in surprise. ‘Nope. Not unless it was
selling porn. He had a way with the camera, I’ll tell you that. And his girlfriends were always lookers.’

Hillary nodded. It was possible, she supposed. Nowadays, porn didn’t pay all that well – there was too much of it about and cheap at the price. But to a boy of fifteen, selling pictures of nude girls for twenty quid a pop could make him feel as if he’d hit the jackpot. And it would all mount up.

‘OK Kevin,’ Hillary said. ‘If you hear anything let me know, yeah?’

Kevin snorted, ‘Yeah right,’ and Melanie Parker cleared her throat loudly, and his cheesy grin quickly faded.

‘Go on then, sod off,’ Melanie Parker said, stubbing out her cigarette in a tin ashtray. And when the boy had got to the door added cheerfully, ‘Catch you next time, Kevin.’

Hillary returned to her desk thoughtfully. Melanie had assured her that the intelligence, in spite of the unprepossessing source, was probably good. She’d also promised to keep an ear out for any gossip concerning the dead boy and pass it on.

Hillary sat down at her desk and quickly explained to her team about the possible porn angle, finishing briskly, ‘Frank, this is right up your alley. Find out if Billy-Boy had any contacts he might have been selling to regularly.’

‘Right, guv,’ Frank grinned. ‘Mind you, he could have been selling directly to Playboy and what not. That “Readers Wives” racket would stretch to nubile teenage girlfriends, I reckon. I’ll have to buy a range of mags and get in touch direct. Any chance of raiding the slush fund?’

Hillary was still laughing over that when her phone rang. ‘Yes? What? Here now? OK, no, send him up.’ She hung up then frowned. ‘George Davies is downstairs. He probably wants an update on his son’s case.’

Janine gave her a double take. According to protocol, they should have talked to him downstairs in an interview room but, after a moment, she thought she understood why
the boss had asked to have him brought up here. The room was big and full of busy men and women, working flat out. If you’d had a child murdered, the sight of computers being used and phones ringing would reinforce the impression that something was being done.

Hillary stood up when a uniformed WPC ushered in George Davies. The garage mechanic looked around, but his eyes were dull. To her surprise, he didn’t speak, not even in answer to her greeting, but dug his right hand into his back pocket and came out with a small, dark blue book. Hillary recognized it straight away as the kind that building societies handed out to savers.

‘I found this hidden at our place,’ George Davies said flatly. ‘It’s Billy’s. I know all his hiding places. He thought I didn’t, but I found it this morning. Thought I’d better bring it in. I haven’t told his mother,’ he added, the short staccato sentences betraying how agitated he really was. ‘I gotta get back to work,’ he finished, backing away, then turned and walked quickly to the door.

Tommy looked at her quickly, wanting to know if she wanted him to stop him, but Hillary shook her head.

She reached for the book instead and opened it. The building society was a high-street name, and the book belonged to their Bicester branch. Hillary opened it and ran a quick eye down the columns. In the ten months since he’d opened it, Billy had amassed just over £1,550. There were a few withdrawals, but by far the most interesting item was a regular payment of £150. It had been paid in at the beginning of every month for the last six months. There were also lesser, but still regular payments of between £60 and £30.

She tossed it to Janine who scanned it, whistled, then passed it to Tommy, who had it snatched out of his hand by Frank.

Frank snorted. ‘Nice work if you can get it.’

‘It’s got to be blackmail,’ Hillary said flatly. Porno by itself wouldn’t pay so regularly. ‘Janine, I want you to bring
in Marty Warrender. We’ll start with him, really sweat him, then go on to the rest of the neighbours. If one of them doesn’t know something about this, then I’m Peter Pan.’

Marty Warrender looked around the interview room
nervously
. His gaze skidded off the uniformed PC stood at the door and dropped back down to his cup of tea. He’d never been in a police station before, and he wasn’t quite sure how he was supposed to behave.

Even when the shop he’d been working in a few years ago had been broken into, it had been the then manager, Clifford Waythorpe, who’d had to deal with it all.

It was so quiet he had to fight the urge to cough, just to hear a reassuring human sound. He began to feel just a little bit sick, and pushed the cup of tea away from him, across the scarred and somewhat battered table.

When the pretty blonde sergeant had called into the dry cleaners to ask him if he could come down to the police station in Kidlington to answer a few questions, he’d thought at first that she was joking, but it had taken only a few moments to realize that she wasn’t. He’d had to ask Sylvia Dodd, the woman who worked with him, to take over for an hour or so, very much aware that she’d been watching the whole procedure with her mouth hanging open, and barely able to contain her excitement.

Sylvia had worked at the dry cleaner’s since the year dot, and although hard working and very knowledgeable about what shifted gravy from linen, she was an inveterate gossip. He cringed, wondering what she was telling the customers, even now. Unless, of course, she was on the phone chatting
to her endless list of equally gossiping friends. It would
probably
be all around Banbury by now that he’d been asked to ‘help the police with their inquiries’.

Thinking of what that ominous phrase usually meant – at least to most people’s minds – Marty felt the nausea roll around in his stomach and hoped he wasn’t going to make a spectacle of himself. He took a deep breath and tried to calm down, but he could feel his hands shaking, and slipped them out of sight on to his lap and underneath the table.

Surely they weren’t going to actually arrest him? He’d done nothing wrong! And they hadn’t read him his rights or anything. Perhaps he should just get up and go? If he had more gumption, he’d do just that, he thought miserably. How long had he been in here, anyway? He checked his watch, and saw that it was nearly half-past twelve. The drive from Banbury had taken over half an hour and it would be the same back, no doubt. And it wasn’t as if he didn’t have work to do.

‘All right, let’s get on with it,’ Hillary Greene said at last. She was standing in the observation room, and, from the suspect’s body language, she gauged that he was wound up good and tight. Beside her, Janine nodded.

Marty looked up, almost in relief, when two women finally walked in through the door. The blonde he
recognized
at once, and the older, attractive brunette with the curvy figure he instinctively pegged as someone with clout. He found himself straightening up in the chair.

‘Mr Warrender? I’m Detective Inspector Hillary Greene. I’m the senior investigating officer on the William Davies inquiry. Thank you for taking the time to come in and see us. Something has come up, and we need your help. It shouldn’t take long.’

Marty Warrender let out a long, tense breath. He saw the older woman notice, and shrugged sheepishly. ‘I was thinking it was something serious. You know, getting a bit worked up.’

Hillary smiled briefly and nodded. ‘Well, it is serious, Mr
Warrender. The murder of a fifteen-year-old boy is bound to be. And I’m sure you’ll help us in any way you can.’

‘Oh, of course,’ Marty said, reaching for his cup again, but merely fiddled with it, turning it around and around on the saucer. Funny, he’d expected them to give him a mug, not a cup and saucer.

‘We’ve been building up a picture of young Billy during the last few days,’ Hillary began, opening the folder she’d brought in with her and turning a page or two as she spoke. ‘And the picture that’s coming through isn’t altogether a kind one. Billy seems to have been a bit of a lad. Oh, not outright criminal. That is, nothing that we’ve been able to pinpoint yet.’ She suddenly looked up and caught him nodding. ‘None of this surprises you, I can see, Mr Warrender.’

‘No. Well, not really. I mean, we all knew Billy was a bit of a handful. But George and Marilyn are so nice, and young Celia’s a poppet. You don’t, you know, like to say anything unkind, for the family’s sake, do you?’

Hillary nodded understandingly. ‘I suppose not. But when it comes down to it, the police have the responsibility of solving Billy’s murder. And we can’t always afford to speak well of the dead, especially if we have reason to believe that flaws in the victim’s character are what led to the fatality in the first place. You see what I’m getting at?’

Marty Warrender felt his stomach roll again, and
swallowed
hard. He could feel bile biting at the back of his throat, and forced himself to take a sip of the tea. The
attractive
brunette was harder, and sharper, than he’d first thought. He’d allowed her soothing voice and reasonable manner to fool him.

‘Yes,’ Hillary carried on, giving him the uncanny feeling that she’d just read his mind. ‘Now, in Billy’s case, we know he was up to no good, but there’s nothing obvious to help us. For instance, he wasn’t dealing drugs, or stealing, or even, as far as we can tell, hanging about with a bad crowd.’

She cocked an eye at him, and again Marty Warrender
nodded. ‘But, you see—’ Hillary pulled out a piece of paper and turned it around on the table to face Marty Warrender. ‘Here’s our problem.’ She tapped one finger on the
photocopied
sheet of paper, which showed Billy Davies’s bank balance. ‘Somebody was paying Billy regular and quite
sizeable
sums of money.’

Marty didn’t want to look down, but felt himself compelled to. The amount of savings indicated wasn’t huge by today’s standards, but when he realized that it belonged to a fifteen-year-old boy – moreover, one from a
working-class
family that was struggling to make ends meet – then it became shocking.

‘And Billy Davies had no paying job that we’ve been able to discover,’ Hillary carried on smoothly. ‘So we have to wonder where it all came from. Don’t we?’

He knew he must have gone pale, and took another long, shuddering breath. When he looked up both women were staring at him and he felt his stomach heave. Again he hastily swallowed. ‘Don’t look at me,’ he said at once. ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’

‘Of course, to us, this bank account screams blackmail,’ Hillary said, almost conversationally, and turned the sheet of paper back towards her. ‘Now, Billy didn’t have much of a social life,’ Hillary smiled. ‘He spent the vast majority of his time either at school, at a friend’s place or at home in Aston Lea. And since I can’t see that schoolchildren could come up with such sums of money, the only place William Davies could have got his hooks into someone was in Aston Lea. You follow our logic?’

Marty Warrender slowly leaned back in his chair and frowned. Janine wondered where he’d suddenly got his spine from, and frowned herself when he began to shake his head from side to side. ‘Not me,’ he said flatly, a look of triumph flashing across his face. ‘I refused to pay the little bugger so much as a penny.’ Now that it was all out in the open he felt, oddly enough, far happier and much more able to cope.

Hillary, who’d met this phenomenon before, merely
nodded. ‘So he did try to blackmail you,’ she said matter-
of-factly
. ‘Over what exactly?’

‘None of your business,’ Marty Warrender snapped right back. ‘And I didn’t kill him, so that’s that. I’m not saying anything more. I want a solicitor.’

Hillary smiled gently. ‘You’re not under arrest, Mr Warrender,’ she pointed out gently. ‘But you do realize, I hope, that we can get a court order to check your bank records. And if you have any withdrawals which match the deposits in this book,’ she tapped again the photocopy with her finger, ‘then that situation may well change.’

‘Go ahead,’ Marty Warrender said, again with that surprising flash of triumph. ‘You won’t find any payments that match. Me and June work hard, what with our full-time jobs and the property developing we do. We plan to retire when we’re both fifty-five, and find a place by the sea. Enjoy ourselves while we’re still young. And I wouldn’t let that sly little hooligan get his hands on a penny. Lazy little bugger, let him work for it, the same as the rest of us have to. That’s what I told him.’

Hillary nodded and closed the folder with a snap. Then she stood up and smiled. ‘Janine, would you like to run Mr Warrender back to his place of business?’ She glanced at Janine, indicating she wanted a quick word. ‘Mr Warrender, if you’d like to wait outside a moment?’

Marty Warrender got quickly to his feet. His knees felt distinctly weak, but he moved quickly across the floor and out the door that the uniformed policeman held open for him. He looked both vastly relieved and pleased with himself.

‘Take him back to Banbury, then have a word with his staff,’ Hillary instructed quietly. ‘Billy had something on him all right, and I’m betting he had some sort of photographic evidence to back it up. Him and that camera of his seemed to be joined at the hip, and I can’t see a wannabe paparazzi not making the most of photographs to put the bite on someone. I want to know what it was he had on Warrender.
Then get that court order for his bank records. I don’t think he actually did pay out any money: he seemed too pleased with himself about that not to have been telling the truth. But we need to check anyway. Besides, the fact that we can tell everyone that we’ve been able to gain access to
his
accounts might help loosen a few stiff upper-lips when it comes time to talk to the
other
neighbours.’

Janine nodded, scribbling furiously in her notebook. ‘Right, boss.’

Hillary more or less followed behind Janine’s car for ten miles or so back towards Banbury, but then veered off at the Adderbury traffic lights, to head towards the Davenridge Dairy. Situated on a small, rural industrial park not far from the village of Aynho, it was a large square building with fake-orange brickwork and a lot of smoky glass. Beyond it, lay huge storage facilities, and rows of white milk tankers.

Darren Cleaver looked surprised to see the police again, especially at his place of work. His secretary though, a smart, tiny woman, showed her efficiently into his office and came back almost at once with a pot of excellent coffee and some shortbread biscuits.

‘Please, sit down, er, Inspector.’ Darren Cleaver pointed to the comfortable, ergonomically designed swivel leather chair that was situated in front of his desk. His office was large and airy and – almost inevitably – was painted pristine white. Large, smoke-glassed windows gave a darkened view out on to the surrounding countryside. ‘I believe I saw a colleague of yours a few nights ago? A blonde woman?’

‘DS Tyler, yes sir,’ Hillary said. ‘I’m the officer in charge of the investigation, however, and some new details have come to light. So I’m doing follow-up interviews on all of Billy’s neighbours.’

‘Oh, I see,’ he said, and sat down. He was wearing a navy blue suit and white shirt with a mother-of-pearl coloured silk tie. Hillary could understand why Janine had called him a prime hunk; although men who were prettier than herself
had never appealed to her. Into her mind flashed the
somewhat
battered face of Mike Regis, with his cat-green eyes and attractive crow’s feet. Instantly, she shook the image away.

‘It seems Billy may have been something of an amateur blackmailer, Mr Cleaver. We’ve reason to suspect that he had approached at least one of his neighbours in Aston Lea and attempted to extort money. I was wondering if he had approached you?’

‘Good grief, no!’

‘Or your wife?’

‘I hardly think so,’ Darren Cleaver blinked hard and fast. ‘Are you sure? Poor George and Marilyn! Mind you that probably explains …’ He broke off abruptly, and reached for the coffee pot. ‘Biscuit, Inspector?’

‘Explains what, Mr Cleaver?’ Hillary pressed, accepting both a cup of coffee and a finger of shortbread.

‘Hmmm? Oh, nothing. Just thinking aloud.’

‘Mr Cleaver, I don’t have to remind you that this is a murder inquiry, do I?’ Hillary asked, still using her flat, calm voice, but this time injecting just a hint of steel into it. Darren Cleaver heard it, glanced at her uncertainly, then looked down at the coffee cup in his hand.

Eventually he sighed. ‘I suppose not. It’s just that, well, I don’t want to get the poor man into any trouble. Not after all that’s happened, he doesn’t need any more hassle. And with the new laws they have nowadays and everything I suppose it was, strictly speaking, illegal. But really, after what you’ve told me, I can understand why he did it.’

Hillary smiled patiently. ‘Do you think you could make yourself just a little bit clearer, sir? And start at the
beginning
?’

Darren Cleaver sighed. ‘It was earlier this year. Sometime in March, I think. I was driving past the Davies’s place. The council had the road up just outside, and I was having to be careful getting around the bollards, otherwise I don’t suppose I would have seen. I’d just bought this new Saab,
you see, and I was a bit paranoid about scratching it. Anyway, I had to glance across towards the Davies bungalow, to see how close my paintwork was to the hedge on that side, and I just happened to see into the window. It would be the … kitchen, I think. Or maybe their lounge. I’m not sure.’

Hillary nodded. ‘Go on.’

‘Look, like I said, it’s going to sound worse than it
actually
was. Only I saw George giving his boy a bit of a walloping. Oh, not with his fists or anything!’ Darren Cleaver added hastily. ‘I’m not talking about child abuse. I would have reported that right away. No, I mean a good
old-fashioned
bum-smacking. Had the lad over his knee and was paddling his arse. I thought at the time, he should be careful about that. I mean, Billy could have sued him or something, and he was just the type to … well, never mind. As I said, I just saw it in passing, and only the once. Next day I saw Billy and he was right as rain and cocky as ever so I know his dad didn’t really hurt him. Not bruise him or anything, you know? And now, after what you told me he’d been up to … well, you can’t really blame George can you? Trying to knock some sense into the lad. I mean, I know it’s the law and all that, but I have to say I think it’s gone too far when a father can’t discipline his kids without being scared of being jailed for violating their human rights or what have you.’