Kennedy 02 - A Darker Side (17 page)

Chapter Thirty-Four

It had been a long, anxious day and Jill was shattered. She wanted to get to her cottage, order a takeaway, put her feet up with the
Racing Post
and relax. Last night, she’d only dozed for a couple of hours on Max’s sofa.

She was driving through Harrington when she saw the sign for the Blue Lodge Care Home. She drove past it, then stopped the car. Maybe it was worth having another chat with Rose Dee. The place depressed her, and she really did want to get home, but half an hour there wouldn’t hurt.

She turned the car around, doubled back on herself, drove along the driveway and parked as near to the front door as she could get. Deciding she wouldn’t be sorry if she couldn’t see Rose, she got out of the car and walked up the front steps and into reception.

Julie was sitting at the main desk, tapping away at a computer keyboard. A smile of recognition crossed her face.

‘Hello, there, it’s . . .’

‘Jill. Jill Kennedy.’

‘Of course it is. And you’ve come to see Rose? Aw, that’s nice. She does like visitors. She’s in the conservatory where you saw her last time. Would you . . .’ She looked undecided for a moment. ‘I’d better come along with you,’ she said at last.

They walked along to the conservatory.

‘She’s had a very good day today,’ Julie told her. ‘She’s been quite lucid at times.’

‘That’s good then.’

The conservatory was cold again, but that wasn’t responsible for stopping Jill in her tracks. It was the sight of Rose. She looked like a jewellery stall.

‘She insisted on wearing her bits and bobs today,’ Julie told her in an over-bright voice. ‘It’s good to see them take care in their appearance, isn’t it?’

‘Er, yes,’ Jill agreed.

Julie reminded Rose who her visitor was, not that it meant anything to Rose, and left them alone to ‘have a nice chat’.

‘You’re looking very pretty today, Rose,’ Jill began. ‘Have you had visitors?’

‘I’ve got to go to work in a minute,’ she said, looking agitated.

Jill’s spirits sank. If this was lucid . . .

‘Where’s that? Where do you work, Rose? At Rockafella’s?’

Rose gazed at a gleaming rubber plant, her expression blank.

‘Did you like working at Rockafella’s?’ Jill asked her.

‘Had to leave,’ Rose said, her bottom lip quivering.

‘Yes, you had to leave, didn’t you? Why was that, Rose?’

‘Lies,’ she whispered. ‘It was lies.’ She began pulling at the string of beads around her neck. ‘She told lies!’

‘Who did, Rose?’

‘It was lies!’ The string snapped and plastic beads flew across the linoleum floor.

‘Oh, dear. Here, let me pick them up for you.’

While Jill went on her hands and knees, scrabbling under tables and chairs in an effort to gather up the beads, Rose rocked back and forth in her chair, tugging on another set of beads around her neck.

Jill wished she’d gone straight home . . .

‘Here we are,’ she said, putting the beads in a dish ashtray? on the table. ‘I’m sure Julie will be able to get them fixed for you.’

‘Lies,’ Rose whispered, still rocking back and forth.

Jill might as well not be there.

‘Who told lies about you, Rose?’ she asked softly.

‘She sent him away.’

They’d had this exact conversation before. Jill didn’t think it was due entirely to Alzheimer’s; this was something deeper, possibly brought on by Josie’s murder.

‘Who sent him away, Rose?’ There was no answer. ‘Was it Josie? Did Josie send him away?’

Rose started humming to herself, refusing to listen in a way that a temperamental child might.

‘Who did she send away, Rose? Was it Terry?’

Rose’s agonized scream rattled the conservatory’s glass. Her eyes were wide and blazing with passion.

‘Terry!’ she cried, and she burst into noisy, hysterical tears.

‘Now, now, there’s nothing to get upset about,’ Jill soothed her, putting an arm around those thin shoulders. ‘It’s all right now, Rose. There’s nothing wrong.’

After five minutes or so, with Jill expecting Julie to appear at any moment to evict her, Rose calmed down.

‘Brenda told me about Terry,’ Jill ventured, breath suspended. ‘She said you liked him a lot. He didn’t mind that you had a daughter, did he?’

‘Terry never touched her. Never.’ Each word was delivered with the force of a bullet. ‘She told lies about him. She made up filthy stories about him. He didn’t harm her. He wouldn’t, would he? She was only a baby. Only a baby.’

Rose began to howl again and, this time, the noise did bring Julie.

‘Have you upset her?’ she demanded, scowling at Jill.

‘Not knowingly,’ Jill said, ‘but perhaps I’d better go. She seems a little distraught.’

‘I think you had,’ Julie said, clicking her teeth. ‘Fancy upsetting her. And what happened to your beads, Rose? I’ve told you before about that. The last time this happened, you clogged up the Hoover. We can’t have that happening again, can we?’

Jill rose to her feet before she was blamed for making Rose break her beads and clog up the vacuum cleaner.

‘Perhaps I’ll call again one day,’ she ventured.

No one answered. Rose was still sobbing and Julie was still tutting over the pile of beads, so Jill crept out of the conservatory and left the building.

It was a relief to sit in her car, start the engine and drive away.

Her mind was full of what Rose had said. Max thought Rose was simply gaga, as he put it. Jill believed there was something much deeper. The more she thought about it, the more she thought that Terry had left Rose because Josie had accused him of what? Sexual abuse? Rape?

Terry? Terry who?

If Terry still had such an effect on Rose, they needed to find out who he was. And fast.

Chapter Thirty-Five

The following afternoon, Jill was chatting to Max in his office and about to head for home, when Grace sought them out.

‘I’ve found your Terry!’ she announced triumphantly.

Jill’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Really? Brilliant! Where is he?’

‘Currently pushing up daisies in Blackpool,’ Grace said with a grin.

‘Oh, for –’ Jill had pinned every hope on the mysterious Terry, and now he was dead.

‘His name was Terry Potter, and he died four years ago,’ Grace went on, ‘but he has a sister. She’s alive and well and, as far as we know, fully compos mentis and living in Blackpool. Here’s her address.’

‘Thanks.’ Jill looked at the slip of paper. ‘How did you find them?’

‘I spoke to the old manager of Reno’s,’ she said, ‘and, about fifty phone calls later, I came across a woman who remembered him. She’d been going out with him, apparently, before Rose came along and whisked him away from her.’

Jill looked at Max.

‘I think it’s a load of crap,’ he said, not for the first time, ‘but as I have sod all else to go on, we may as well pay her a visit.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I need to collect the boys from school now, but . . .’ He looked at Jill, his expression coaxing. ‘How do you fancy a trip to Blackpool this evening? I’ll buy you a stick of rock.’

‘You’re on.’‘

OK, I’ll pick you up from your place if you like. Thanks, Grace. Good work,’ he added.

‘You’re welcome, boss!’ Grace left the office even more pleased with his praise than she was with herself, if that were possible.

Jill drove home, fed her cats, tidied her cottage, sighed at the pile of work on her desk that she couldn’t find time for, and went to run a bath.

She got in and lay back in the hot water, determined to relax. She couldn’t, though. Her mind was like a tumble dryer filled with a million pieces of paper on which was written an abstract thought. Round and round, over and over, it went.

Terry Potter could tell them nothing. He was dead.

And why, having killed Josie and Martin Hayden, had the killer turned to James Murphy and Jason Keane? Why had Harry been threatened?

While they were chasing dead ends in Blackpool, anything could happen.

She shivered, despite the hot water.

‘What did she sound like?’

‘Bitter.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah. She said she wondered when us lot coppers, I assume would start sniffing round.’

‘So she connected Josie Hayden with her brother?’

‘Must have.’

‘That’s interesting.’

‘Hmm. Anyway, she’s more than willing to talk to us.’

‘That makes a refreshing change,’ Jill said with a wry smile.

When Max stopped the car outside Alice Potter’s home, Jill was amazed by the size of the place. Every other house in the street was a bed and breakfast business, but this was a private residence. Tall, thick hedges shielded the house from the street.

They got out of the car, and walked up three stone steps to the front door. Max rang the bell and it was answered immediately, as if she’d been standing on the other side of it, waiting for them.

‘You’ll be the police?’

She was a large woman whose face was dominated by thick spectacles. Her hair was black with an inch of grey roots showing. She was wearing a pale green dress with a large floral pattern on it.

‘Yes,’ Max replied, showing his ID. She inspected it closely, and nodded her approval. ‘Come in, then.’

She showed them along a wide hallway and into a sitting room. Like Josie Hayden’s home, this too was cluttered with a lifetime’s collection of bric-a-brac. Two shelves were crammed with Blackpool souvenirs.

‘Thank you for agreeing to see us,’ Max said, taking the armchair she offered.

Jill was offered another armchair opposite him.

‘I gather you were expecting us to call,’ Jill began, as Alice Potter sat on the sofa where she could best see both of them. ‘How did you connect Josie Hayden with your brother?’

‘I didn’t, not at first,’ she explained. ‘It was a friend who put me on to it. When I knew her or when Terry knew her she was Josie Dee. Terry was as good as gold to her.’

‘Was he seeing her mother?’ Jill asked curiously.

‘Yes. Rose Dee was working at some nightclub or other,’ Alice Potter said, ‘and Terry met her there. He was besotted with her. Nothing I said would make him see that she was trouble.’

‘Was she trouble?’ Max asked.

‘Trouble? Ha! Men can be such fools, can’t they?’

‘They can,’ Jill murmured, lips twitching.

‘That was my Terry. A fool when it came to her. No matter what I said to him, he wouldn’t believe she was using him. She had a string of other blokes in tow.’

‘Really?’ Jill said.

‘Yes, I know her sort. But my Terry was blind when it came to her. Her daughter that’ll be Josie was around eleven or twelve and, to help her out, he used to sit with the kid until Rose got back from the club. Terry and me were brought up proper, you know, and he didn’t like to think of the girl being in that house on her own. Ha! He soon found out the error of his ways.’

‘What happened?’ Jill asked.

‘The daughter, like I said, was only a young kid, but she must have been as wicked as her mother. She got herself pregnant. Or claimed she was pregnant. Rose Dee was a drama queen and her daughter was the same. So Josie, the crafty little cow pardon my French, but, well she only went and blamed it on my Terry. She said he forced her to have sex with him.’

Alice Potter gathered her ample bosom.

‘Even now, all these years later, it makes my blood boil to think about it. My Terry’s only fault was that he was daft. At least, he was daft when it came to women, and he was downright simple when it came to Rose Dee. How that Josie could accuse him of that, I can’t imagine.’

‘What happened?’ Jill asked.

‘Well, Rose, to give her her due, didn’t believe the girl any more than we did,’ she explained, ‘but she sent Terry away. Then she went off for a few months vanished completely. My Terry didn’t have anything to do with her again. Rose kept herself pretty much to herself after that, so I heard. Went a bit queer in the head if you ask me.’

‘What about Terry?’ Max asked. ‘What did he do after that?’

‘He kept himself pretty much to himself too,’ Alice told them. ‘In the end, we moved here, right away from Rose Dee and her lying, conniving daughter. Terry kept away from women after that. I told him, you don’t know what sort of trouble they’ll get you into.’

‘He never married?’ Jill said.

‘No. He had me,’ Alice said with satisfaction. ‘I was better to him than any wife would have been.’

She brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the arm of the sofa.

‘If you ask me,’ she went on in a confidential tone, ‘that Josie Dee Josie Hayden was asking for trouble all her life. She made up those dreadful tales about my Terry and got away with it. I bet you any money she tried on the same thing with someone else. It stands to reason in my mind. She deserved all she got.’ She paused. ‘Not that I like to speak ill of the dead,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘Our old dad always used to say, if you can’t find something good to say about someone, you should keep quiet. And normally I would have. But you did ask.’

‘We did,’ Max said, and Jill spotted the amusement in his eyes. ‘Well, thank you. You’ve been most helpful.’

He looked questioningly at Jill, but she had nothing further to ask. Like him, she stood up. She’d be glad to get out of this cramped, dark room.

‘That place gave me the creeps,’ Max said as they walked back to his car. ‘Fancy a coffee?’

‘Yeah. And fish and chips. On the sea front.’

‘At this time of night?’

‘Yep.’

She loved the seaside. Even Blackpool. Everyone said it was tacky, and it was, but she still loved to be beside the sea. It had to stem from holidays in Rhyl she’d had as a child. Her sister, Prue, would want to spend her time swimming whereas Jill had always headed for the beach and the donkey rides. She associated the seaside with fun with donkey rides, toffee apples, candy floss, boat trips, amusement arcades and all the rest of it. Tacky or not, she loved it.

Blackpool was deserted on this chilly December evening, and Max parked on the sea front. They were soon sitting on the wall, huddled in their coats, with a tray of fish and chips each and polystyrene cups filled with hot coffee.

‘What did you think of Alice then?’ Max asked, throwing a chip to a seagull.

‘I thought she was a vindictive old bitch who liked to keep her brother in tow.’

‘Hey, don’t sit on the fence. Say what you really mean.’

‘I doubt she has a good word to say about anyone,’ Jill muttered.

‘A waste of time?’ he asked.

‘No. Not a waste of time,’ Jill answered thoughtfully.

‘If you think about Josie Hayden,’ Max said, and they were surrounded by squawking seagulls now, ‘she said that Terry had made her pregnant, then she fell pregnant by George and got him to marry her, then she told Brian Taylor that he’s about to become a father . . .’

‘And your point is?’

‘George, as we know, felt conned into marriage, Brian Taylor thought she was trying to con him into marriage . . .’ He shrugged. ‘She had a pretty impressive track record, our Josie.’

‘Or a very unlucky life,’ Jill argued.

‘Maybe.’ Max threw his last few chips to the seagulls and then started on his coffee.

He had a point, Jill supposed. Three men had cause to dislike Josie . . .