O J 1 O ‘ J
at most.
‘Just a few questions, Mrs Sherratt,’ he said.
‘He’s not back.’
‘I know. Has he been in touch?’
‘No.’
‘There are some things I need to ask you.’
Molly Sherratt looked down the road at the children gawping and nudging each other.
‘For God’s sake, come in then,’ she said.
Tailby ducked to go through the door and picked his way through a hallway cluttered with bicycles and shoes and piles of clothes. Mrs Sherratt led him into a tiny kitchen with fitted teak effect units and a brand-new automatic washer. The remains of somebody’s breakfast still stood on the counter — an open packet of cornflakes, half a carton of milk, a knife sticky with butter, and a toaster sitting amid a sea of blackened breadcrumbs.
‘I was just washing up,’ said Mrs Sherratt defensively, watching the detective’s instinctive survey of the room.
J
‘Carry on. Don’t let me interrupt.’
‘I don’t see that you could be doing anything else.’
‘I’ll try not to be long,’ said Tailby politely.
She turned on a tap and began to squirt washing-up liquid into a blue plastic bowrl until the suds concealed anything that might have been in there. Tailby saw that the door of the washing
103
machine stood slightly open, and the interior was packed tight with dirty clothes. Presumably Mrs Sherratt had been just about to do the weekly wash as well.
‘I’ve told your lot all I’ve got to say already,’ she said.
‘We need to know as much as we can about Lee so that we can find him. That’s the reason for all the questions, I’m afraid. It is important that we find him.’
‘To eliminate him from enquiries. That’s what the other ones said.’
‘That’s right, Mrs Sherratt.’
o ‘
She clutched the washing-up liquid bottle to her bosom without closing the cap, so that a small squirt of sticky green liquid spurted on to her pink smock. She seemed not to notice.
‘Lee hasn’t done anything,’ she said.
‘He worked at the Mount,’ said Tailby, ‘so he knew Laura Vernon. And since his whereabouts are unknown …’ ‘I know. I know, that’s what the others kept saving. But it
‘ ‘ r j o
means nothing. He often goes off for a day or two. He’s a devil for wandering off for a bit, is Lee. But that doesn’t mean he’s done anything wrong, does it?’
‘If you could help us find him, Mrs Sherratt, we’ll soon be able to establish that, won’t we?’
‘Anyway, he didn’t work there any more. At that place.
They gave him the push last Thursday. Them Vernons. Unfair,
^ o r j ‘
it was.’
‘Did he resent the fact he had been sacked?’
“Course he did. He was unfairly dismissed. He’d done nothing wrong.’
In Tailby’s experience, nobody’s son or daughter had ever done anything wrong. They were all angels, pure as the driven snow, every one of them. It was a wonder there was any crime at all.
‘Mr Vernon claims that Lee was pestering his daughter.’
‘Rubbish. Lee has a steady girlfriend. They might be getting married.’
‘Might they?’
‘That’s why he was set on getting a bit of a job, earning some money. There’s nothing round here for the young ones, you
104
know. God knows, them Vernons didn’t pav him much, hut at least he was trying.’
J O
‘I’m sure vou’rc ri^ht. But it doesn’t prevent him from havina
CD i O
taken a fancy to Laura Vernon, does it?’
