Turner was losing his cool. He didn’t like to think of Geoff Morrison looking at anyone else. Max had to agree with him, though; psychiatrists and psychologists always brought everything round to sex.
‘I get plenty, thanks,’ Jill replied pleasantly. ‘More than you, I expect. Your boyfriend’s too busy out running, too busy keeping fit, and too busy watching boys swimming with erections or racing around a football field. He’s busy with the football team after school and at weekends. Why’s that, do you think? Because he enjoys football, or because he’d rather be surrounded by young boys than spend his time with you?’
‘Crap!’
‘Is it?’ She shrugged. ‘You never saw Martin Hayden, did you? Well, let me tell you, he was a good-looking boy. The photos in the paper and on TV didn’t do him justice. You had to see him in the flesh.’
‘I saw him in the flesh!’ He realized what he’d said, and a tide of red colour flooded his face.
‘Where?’ Max demanded.
‘In Benedict’s,’ he said quietly. ‘Only once. And yeah,’ he said, talking to Jill, ‘he had the hots for Geoff. I could see that. But Geoff wasn’t interested.’
Martin Hayden in a gay club? Never. Surely not. What in hell’s name would he be doing there?
‘Nice-looking boy, wasn’t he?’ Jill said. ‘And you’re telling me Geoff wasn’t interested? Ha! I don’t believe that. According to Martin, your boyfriend was all over him.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘Nope. He told his sister all about it. Said he was a perv.’ She smiled. ‘So what was he doing at Benedict’s? How many gays did he know apart from Geoff Morrison?’
‘Why should I know what he was doing there?’
‘Then I’ll tell you. He was after your boyfriend.’
‘‘No!’
‘Yes.’ She sat back in her chair, looking relaxed. ‘That’s rich, isn’t it? You give him an alibi say he was with you the morning Martin Hayden disappeared and all the while, he was probably with the boy anyway.’
His head flew up at that. ‘No!’
‘I imagine so,’ Jill said. ‘When did you see Martin Hayden in Benedict’s? I bet it wasn’t long before he vanished, was it?’
‘It was the night before,’ Turner admitted.
‘Thought so,’ Jill murmured. ‘So your boyfriend would have arranged to see Martin on Wednesday at school. I bet he left early that morning, didn’t he? Sure to have done. He’ll have wanted to be at the school waiting for Martin. He wasn’t with you that morning. You lied. He told you to lie, didn’t he? He told you to say you were with him but really, he was with Martin Hayden.’
‘No!’
‘Yes. Oh, I doubt they did much at the school. A kiss maybe, a bit of a fumble’
‘OK, OK,’ he cried. ‘I lied. Geoff wasn’t with me that morning. He did leave early, but he didn’t see the boy.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Jill scoffed.
‘Yes, I fucking do. Bitch!’
Finally, Turner looked as if he wanted to run and hide.
‘You followed him, didn’t you?’ Jill said suddenly. ‘You know he didn’t see Martin Hayden because you followed him. He left early, and you were suspicious, weren’t you?’
Turner nodded, and he looked close to tears.
‘He said he was going jogging,’ he admitted, all bluster gone, ‘and I didn’t believe him. So yeah, I followed him. He drove out towards the park he often runs there but then I lost him. I got stuck at traffic lights because the idiot in front of me well, that doesn’t matter. I lost him. But he was heading out towards Burnley. He couldn’t have been going to see the boy because he was driving in the wrong direction. He couldn’t have.’
‘What do you know about Lower Crags Farm?’ Max asked.
‘What? The farm where the boy came from? Well, nothing. I’ve never seen the place.’
‘Liar,’ Max scoffed.
‘On my life, I have never seen it. I know roughly where it is, but I’ve never been along that road. I’ve had no cause to. There’s nothing there.’
‘So you’ve never driven past?’
‘No.’
‘Not even out of curiosity?’ Jill said scornfully.
‘Never.’
‘So if you’ve never been past the place,’ Max said, ‘how would you know there are more police than residents there?’
He looked at Max as if he was speaking in Swahili. ‘I wouldn’t.’
‘Someone told me you’d said exactly that,’ Max informed him.
‘Well, I didn’t. I swear on my life that I never said that. Why would I? I’ve no idea how many police are there or how many people live there.’
‘So you’re saying the person who told me is a liar?’ Max asked.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’m saying they’ve got it wrong. I never said that. Either they’re confusing me with someone else or hell, I don’t know. I didn’t say it, haven’t thought it, wouldn’t say it.’
‘And we’re supposed to take your word for that?’ Jill said, shaking her head. ‘Why would we do that? You’ve lied to us before, why should we believe you now?’
‘You can believe what you like,’ he retorted, those full lips in pout mode now.
‘OK,’ Max said. ‘You’ve been most helpful. Thank you.’
‘Can I go then?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Yeah,’ Max told him, smiling. ‘Soon.’
Max nodded to Jill and they both left the room.
‘Thanks for that,’ Max said. ‘Do you believe he’s never been past Lower Crags Farm?’
‘If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t. Most people would have to look. They would see Martin Hayden as competition and go along to see where he lived. But Turner, I’m not so sure about. He was satisfied that Morrison didn’t go near Martin Hayden. That may have been enough.’
Max checked his watch. ‘I need to collect Harry and Ben from school, so I’ll have a chat with our friend Morrison while I’m there.’
‘Give the boys a hug from me, Max.’
‘I will.’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
‘That’s a nice sight,’ Max called out. Striding along the corridor at Harrington High School was none other than Donna Lord.
She turned round, smiling. ‘Well, well, well, if it’s not my favourite detective.’
‘How many do you know?’ he asked when he caught her up.
‘Just the one.’
She really was a nice sight. How young boys concentrated on their English studies, Max had no idea. She was wearing a tight black skirt that showed off those amazing legs of hers, and a crisp white blouse that embraced her breasts.
‘Where are you heading?’ she asked.
‘To the gym.’
‘Ah, you’re still talking to Geoff then. You’ve got that wrong, detective. He’s far too squeamish to make a killer. One of the girls cut her arm yesterday and he fainted.’ She laughed. ‘There wasn’t too much blood, but he had to spend the afternoon lying down.’
Max smiled at the story.
‘I owe you a drink,’ she reminded him, flashing white teeth from ruby red lips. ‘How about tonight?’
If he said no, he’d need his head examining.
‘I’d love to, really, but I can’t make it.’ It was official; he needed his head examining. ‘Some other time?’
‘Count on it, detective.’ She took a door on their left. ‘See you later.’
‘See you.’
He rid his mind of Ms Lord and carried on to the gym.
As luck would have it, the boys had finished their lesson and were putting the equipment away. Did Geoff Morrison look shifty? Max couldn’t decide. He certainly wasn’t pleased to see him.
‘Could I have another word?’ Max asked.
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘Not really, no.’
‘Right, you lot,’ he shouted. ‘No messing around. I want you changed in record time. And no leaving the changing rooms until I get there.’
‘So what is it now?’ Morrison asked, resigned.
‘We’ve been talking to your boyfriend,’ Max explained, ‘and he’s had a change of mind. He reckons he wasn’t with you the morning Martin Hayden vanished. He says you left early to go for a run.’
Morrison’s face flushed red. It was difficult to tell if he was embarrassed or furious. A bit of both perhaps.
‘OK,’ he said at last. ‘Yeah, he’s right. I left early. I left early that morning because I was sick of him and his jealous, petty tantrums.’
‘Oh?’ A lovers’ tiff. Great.
‘Did he tell you we saw Martin Hayden at Benedict’s on the Tuesday night?’ He sneered. ‘Yeah, I bet he did. He reckons Hayden was after me. I mean, for God’s sake. He was in a foul mood about it all night. He reckoned I encouraged the boy. Jesus H, I didn’t even recognize the kid until we were leaving and then I only said hello. I was too shocked to see him there, of all places, to say anything else. So we had hissy fits all bloody night.’
‘I see.’ The mind boggled. ‘So where did you go on that particular Wednesday morning?’
‘I just drove,’ he said. ‘Anything to get away from him. I ended up driving through Burnley. I stopped on the Burnley to Bacup road. There’s a pull-in on the left, as you head to Bacup. It has a nice view the hills and the wind farm. I sat there, looking at the view, until I headed back and went to the school.’
‘Can anyone confirm that?’
‘I very much doubt it.’
‘That’s a shame.’
‘It is,’ Morrison agreed. ‘You can arrest me, I’m past bloody caring, but if you do and the killer strikes again, you’re going to look pretty damn silly, aren’t you?’
‘I can live with that.’
Morrison, deathly pale now, took a quick step back.
‘OK, that’ll be all,’ Max told him. ‘You can go.’
‘I can?’
‘Yes.’
‘Gee, thanks.’ The bravado was back.
‘You’re welcome.’
Having driven Harry and Ben home and left them with Kate and DS Forrest, Max was on his way back to the nick when Fletch phoned.
‘Brian Taylor’s here, Max. Says he wants to make a statement. He’ll only talk to you, though.’
‘Really? What’s that all about?’
‘He wouldn’t say.’
‘OK, Fletch. I’ll be there in around fifteen minutes.’
What did Taylor want with him? His alibis really were ironclad. No way could he have killed Martin or Josie Hayden. So what the hell did he have to say?
Max was sitting opposite him less than fifteen minutes later. If Max looked shattered, Brian Taylor looked even worse. He was still chain-smoking, too.
‘You want to talk to me?’
Taylor nodded. ‘Yes.’ He stubbed out a cigarette. ‘I wasn’t completely honest with you, Chief Inspector.’
You and a few dozen others, Max thought grimly.
‘Let’s hear it then.’
Taylor lit another cigarette. ‘Martin I did meet him. I met him a few times before he was killed.’
Oh, for . . . ‘Why the hell didn’t you say so before?’
‘How would it have looked?’ Taylor cried.
‘The same as it looks now! Bloody suspicious!’ Max tried to calm himself. ‘How did you get to meet him?’
‘As you know, I occasionally watched him leave the school.’ Taylor didn’t look at Max as he spoke. Instead, he concentrated on his cigarette. ‘One day, I deliberately bumped into him. We struck up a conversation of sorts and I offered him a lift home. When he saw my car, the BMW, he quickly accepted. I saw him a couple of times and . . .’
He cleared his throat. ‘I bought him his guitar and I used to pay for his lessons. He had no idea who I was though,’ he put in quickly. ‘He only knew me as Adam. I used my brother’s name. Anyway, I’d see him once a week and give him the money for his guitar lessons.’
‘He didn’t know you?’ Max scoffed. ‘Come on, he was a bright kid. Who the hell did he think you were? His fairy bloody godmother?’
‘He thought . . .’ He cleared his throat again. ‘He thought I was attracted to him. Sexually. He started taunting me, asking me what I thought his parents would make of it, what I thought the police would think if they knew.’
‘He was blackmailing you?’
‘Not as such, but I kept giving him money. I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t just not turn up, could I? In the end, I contacted Josie. I thought that, if I could see him, with everything above board, it would be OK.’
‘But Josie said no.’
‘She wouldn’t hear of it. But I didn’t kill him. I swear it. You have to believe me.’
Max tapped his fingers on the desk. ‘You see your son, he blackmails you and then ends up dead.’
‘I know,’ he whispered.
‘Could he have been blackmailing anyone else?’
‘Quite probably,’ he answered immediately.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Look, Chief Inspector, he may have been my son, but he wasn’t a good person. He looked out for himself and didn’t give a shit about anyone else.’
So everyone said. At least it explained the money Martin Hayden had. It explained damn all else, though. Brian Taylor hadn’t killed Martin or Josie, so who the hell had?
‘What about cocaine?’ Max asked. ‘Would you know anything about that?’
Taylor’s face glowed scarlet. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it gain.
‘I’m conducting a murder inquiry,’ Max told him furiously, ‘and I want the truth. OK? I don’t give a damn about whether or not you snort coke. I want to know if you gave any to Martin Hayden.’
‘I did,’ Taylor whispered.
‘Thank you!’
Max slammed out of the room leaving a sobbing Brian Taylor saying, ‘I wish I’d never met him!’
Chapter Forty
Jill was at her cottage, wrapping Christmas presents, when her phone rang. She thought it might be Max again. He’d phoned an hour ago to tell her about Brian Taylor’s confession, but he phoned often to reassure her that Harry and Ben were safe. She was grateful for that.
However, it wasn’t Max.
‘Hello, stranger. I got your message.’
‘Babs, hi! Thanks for getting back to me. How are you?’
‘Dreading the obligatory Christmas overdraft. You?’
Jill, surrounded by wrapping paper and presents, had to smile. ‘About the same. Thanks for the card, by the way. You always send lovely cards.’
‘I bought them last January,’ Babs told her. ‘How’s that for efficiency?’
‘Sickening. Anyway, it would be no use me doing that. I’d have lost them long before Christmas.’
They spent a few minutes catching up on each other’s news. She and Babs had not only studied together at uni, they’d shared a flat. They’d had some wild times.
‘So what can I do for you?’ Babs asked.
‘It’s a long story.’ Jill filled her in and told her what they knew about Josie Hayden. ‘We must have contacted every clinic in England. However, it’s just possible that Josie went to Dublin around the right time. I wondered if you could pull a few strings and get old records checked. We think it was 1977. Josie would have been fourteen.’
Babs sucked in her breath at that.
‘I know,’ Jill murmured.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Babs promised.
‘Thanks. You’re a star!’
They chatted some more, and then Jill returned to her present-wrapping.
Her cottage was well decorated, and Christmas cards sat on every surface, but she couldn’t look forward to Christmas. None of them could. The Lord alone knew how the parents of James Murphy and Jason Keane would cope.
If only the boys could be found safe and sound. What a wonderful Christmas
present that would be.
She opened a bottle of wine, filled a glass and stretched out on the sofa with it.
Who had they missed?
Every member of the family had been checked out. Everyone associated with Harrington High School had been seen. Toby Campbell, John Higgs, the ex-music teacher everyone was innocent.
Brian Taylor wasn’t their man. In fact, Jill almost felt sorry for him. What must it be like to meet your son and discover that his only interest is in your money?
Her phone rang again and this time it was Max.
‘Anything new?’ she asked, dreading his answer.
‘Nothing.’
She breathed a sigh of relief. Every time he rang, her first thought was Harry. Her second thought was that either James Murphy’s or Jason Keane’s body had been found.
‘I’ve spoken to Babs,’ she told him, ‘and she’s going to see if she can find anything. It’s a long shot, I know, but you never know.’
‘It is, Jill. If Josie did have a child in Dublin, well, so what?’
‘I know.’
Max suddenly laughed at something. ‘This dog show on Sunday? It includes Christmas fancy dress, for the dogs that is. Fly is currently modelling his outfit.’
She smiled, wishing she could be with them. ‘Tell Ben I’ll look forward to seeing it.’
‘I will.’
She sighed. ‘Who have we missed, Max? We’ve spoken to the killer, we must have. There’s someone we’ve dismissed, and we’ve dismissed them because they don’t stand out, because they’re ordinary.’
‘That’s what I keep thinking. Martin Hayden was as good as blackmailing Taylor, and Taylor thinks, quite rightly probably, that he could easily have been blackmailing someone else. Martin Hayden thought Taylor was sexually attracted to him so if he thought someone else was’
‘Like Geoff Morrison or Toby Campbell?’
‘Yeah, exactly like them.’
‘If he was at Benedict’s, he could have met someone there. I expect that’s why he went. To find someone rich.’
‘We’ve spent hours in that place but we haven’t come up with anything. Bruce is there tonight doing his gay boy impression. We talked him out of the gold satin suit, but God knows what they’ll make of him.’
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