Ray shook his head. “Right, let’s get the picture straight. You go around to their house. You don’t talk to Janet Scott, but her husband instead. What did you say?”
“That I needed to talk to her in relation to a crime.”
“Did you say which crime?”
“A murder.”
“And he put two and two together, of course he did. Do you think he knew about Gerald then?” Ray’s tone changed subtly. The anger giving way to intrigue as he started to try and make sense of the new information, no matter how it had been acquired.
“I wasn’t sure. I don’t think he knew. It looked like news to him.”
“So you don’t think he’s our man?”
“I don’t. But more because of what Janet said when I did speak to her.”
“Which was?”
“Namely that he couldn’t have handled a man like Gerald. He would have lost.”
“Our attacker used a weapon of some sort, we know that. Janet Scott’s appraisal of who would have won a fight between her ne’er-do-well husband and new beau is hardly something I’d call considered.”
“It was more that she didn’t believe he’d go looking for a fight with someone who could beat him. Felt that he was happier intimidating women.” Joseph didn’t add “and me”, even though he thought he should. Saying it out loud made that fact inescapable. Alfie Scott had seen him as fair game and Janet Scott had said Alfie would never try and tackle a real man. So what did that make him?
“Pathetic,” Ray grunted, as Joseph wondered if he meant him. “I can’t stand men who hit women.”
“I’m sorry,” Joseph said. “I just wanted to get us ahead on it. I thought I could help.”
Ray shook his head sadly. “It wouldn’t be a problem if you’d run these bright ideas past me before hand, you know that, right?” He didn’t shout, but he made sure people would hear him being chewed out.
“I know.”
“So don’t be doing it again.”
“I won’t.”
They sat silently for a moment.
“Anything else you’ve not told me about?”
“She’s pregnant.”
“With Gerald’s or Alfie’s child?”
“She doesn’t know.”
“She’s got herself in a right mess there, hasn’t she?”
“I think she’s well aware.”
“And do you believe her when she says Alfie wasn’t the killer?”
“I think so,” Joseph said, and he honestly did. “But I wouldn’t shut any doors. Just because he might not have had it in him to do the deed himself, doesn’t mean he might not have found someone else to do it.”
“Say, like, he had a friend who worked at the docks or something?”
“It’s a possibility,” Joseph replied.
“Well, let’s find a way to work that out. See what you can dig out about his connections. Where he used to work and so on. Maybe we can get something from that. In the meantime, we also need to confirm whether Gerald Trainer kept up with the payments he was meant to be making with his flatmates’ money. If what we’re being told about him having money problems and falling in with Tommy Jay is true, maybe we can start to substantiate that. I’ve dug out the name and address of his landlord. Set up a meeting so that we can go over and look at the records for ourselves.”
“I will.”
Ray stood up from his desk. “I’m going to make a brew. Do you want one?”
“Yes please.”
“Okay. And Joseph. Don’t go off doing heroics by yourself again, you know? There’ll be a time for you to have my job, but you do it at the right pace, and at the right time. Not by trying to make me look like I don’t do the graft.”
Joseph’s face turned red. Did Ray really think Joseph might be angling for his job? He wanted to explain that it wasn’t the case at all. That he simply wanted to make Ray proud, but he knew that if he tried, the pleas would sound like platitudes. Who did that sort of thing to keep their boss happy in the real world anyway? No one. No one other than Joseph, anyway.
13.
“Thanks, mate,” Alfie Scott said cheerily as he boarded the bus that would take him back home. The conductor nodded a silent approval to him as he took his ticket and change and wandered towards the back of the vehicle, finding himself a seat. Alfie wouldn’t call himself a people person. He didn’t have time for the small talk that some people loved to make. Especially the old biddies. The ladies on their way back from market with their shawls drawn up over their heads, and trollies that had to dangle out into the aisle. He’d lost count of the number of times his shin had collided with one when he hadn’t been fully looking where he was going, especially in the darker months of winter. Bloody nightmare, those things.
This time, though, he could relax. At least for this stop. Or the next one. Or however long it took for someone to come in and burst his little happy bubble. And he was happy. Why wouldn’t he be? Alfie Scott was doing all right. He had a job that paid him well enough. Working as a foreman at the cabling factory gave him just the right amount of responsibility and power, and the right amount of money. Not too high up the food chain that things became his fault, but still above enough people to give him plenty of scapegoats when he did need to kick things down the ladder. Alfie treasured the ability to blame someone else. People talked about taking responsibility for one’s actions. He thought that was nonsense. They were the sort of people who had never made a mistake in their life. The sort of people for whom making a mistake didn’t carry consequences. They didn’t know the fear of having your job, your livelihood and therefore your life, ripped away from you, just for getting something wrong. They didn’t know accountability, not in the true sense of the word. The real world didn’t leave room for morals. You did what you had to do to stay alive and stay ahead and that’s what Alfie had done successfully all his life.
And it did make him happy, which was the most important thing. Alfie was a very happy man. He had a good family. A good wife, good kids. Even if his wife did make mistakes. He couldn’t escape that fact. Especially after what he’d learned in the last week. But it wasn’t a mistake she would likely make again. He’d taught her that there was no place for cheating. Not for her. She had crossed a line and he had forgiven her. He had punished her, of course, and it had made him feel better. Killed his anger in an instant.
There could be no such mercy for the man who had sullied his wife. The one who had led her astray. Alfie wouldn’t use his real name, even though it had been all over the paper. Alfie had always had concerns about those sorts of people coming into the country, but he’d never acted on it. Now he had been proven right. It had always been a mistake. Foreigners coming over and stealing their women. It had been warned about, but of course no one had listened.
