AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Wrigglesworth gave him a blank expression. “I couldn’t really tell you. I didn’t know him that well. I worked days, he worked nights. We didn’t cross paths that much. When we did, he never said much, but he were always pleasant. I never had any problems with the rent, or otherwise.”
“You never saw him with a woman? Small, blonde, mid-to-late twenties?” Reilly asked.
The butcher shook his head. “No. Like I said, I didn’t know him that well.”
“How did you two meet?” asked Gardener.
“One of my staff used to live above the shop. Eventually he got married and moved on. I ran an advert in the local paper for a tenant. Morrison turned up. He seemed okay to me, and when I found out he had a car pitch and a taxi business with his brother, I thought he sounded professional enough.”
“You ever meet his brother?”
“Aye. Bought a couple of cars from him over the years.”
“What’s he like?” Reilly asked.
“The complete opposite to him downstairs. Slim, works out at the gym by the look of him. Came in the shop regular and bought meat and the like. No rubbish, mind, always the best stuff.”
Gardener placed the bills and the letters back in the drawer. Before the day was out the flat would be stripped by SOCO and everything would be given a closer inspection at the station. Something about Barry Morrison did not add up. In fact, something about the whole sordid business didn’t add up, thought Gardener.
“Okay, Mr Wrigglesworth, that’s all for now. Would you wait outside the flat for a few minutes? I need to talk to my sergeant.”
The butcher did as he was asked.
“What do you think?”
Reilly shook his head. “He wasn’t killed here.”
“No. Too clean.”
Gardener glanced around again. “It doesn’t make sense. He owns the house that Nicola Stapleton lives in. Yet he chooses to live here in a small flat above a shop. Why?”
“He’s hiding something.”
“He’s her pimp?”
“Maybe, with more like her on the books.”
“So maybe it’s not a client who killed her. Maybe he did.”
“Maybe he was a client, and it all went wrong, so he finished her off.”
“I wonder why?” asked Gardener. “Perhaps she gave him something.”
“Even so, if he killed her, who killed him?”
“And how?”
“Look at all this stuff. None of it’s cheap. You don’t get stuff like this unless you have plenty of money, or you load up the plastic.”
“I don’t think it’s on plastic, Sean. There’s a stack of receipts in that drawer, and the ones I saw were marked as cash sales. The butcher says he paid for everything in cash, so how is this man making his money?”
“Drugs?” suggested Reilly.
“Could answer for the syringe under Nicola Stapleton. So where does the photograph of the five-year-old girl fit in?”
“Trafficking?”
Gardener sighed. “Well, whatever he’s doing, it pays well. We both know that to earn that kind of money, it’s probably illegal, which covers one if not all of the things we’ve mentioned.”
