Silas Nash Book 1: Hush Hush Honeysuckle: Chapter 18 (b)

They went back to Paige.

‘You say you never saw Paige again, but you did go back looking for her, didn’t you? Did you find her? This girl very much your junior.’

‘No. Like I said, I never saw her again. But I did go back to the coffee shop.’

‘Really? Why was that?’ Max blushed, and to an old man like Nash, it made him seem vulnerable.

‘I told you. I liked her. Yes, she was younger than me, but does that really matter? It was only ten years. While I was there, I listened to her talking to the pensioners. No, not like that. I’m not a bloody stalker before you start. She was great with them, you know? I wanted to help her. I thought about offering her a job with training.’

‘Isn’t that, in itself, a bit creepy? A psychologist would call that grooming.’

‘No, you’re twisting it all out of shape. It was a good thing. I genuinely wanted her to make something of herself. I volunteer at a youth group to help young people find direction in their lives. I saw something good in Paige and wanted to give her a start.’

‘So that she’d sleep with you?’

‘No. I mean, I fancied her. And I wanted to sleep with her, but it wasn’t grooming. If she didn’t want to go for a drink with me, that would have been fine, and my job offer would still have been there. I’d have got to know her first. Natural, you know. Look, it was nothing. Just an idea I had, and then I went back to ask her out for a drink, and she wasn’t there.’

‘We have some witnesses that put you back in the café on the eighteenth. One of them said you stole a badge from behind the counter. And the assistant on that afternoon said you were shifty and acting strange. You made him uncomfortable. Why did you take her name badge?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘But you were seen taking it.’

‘No, the stupid old cow’s lying. She looked half-blind anyway.’

‘I didn’t say who saw you.’

‘You didn’t have to. There was only a load of old people in there. I didn’t steal anything.’

Nash slid the name badge in an evidence bag across the table.

‘Guess where we found this, Max?'

‘I don’t know.’

‘It was in your van.’

‘Okay, so I admit I took it, but I don’t know why.’

‘Why did you lie?’

‘Wouldn’t you, in my situation? You’ve made me feel as guilty as hell, even though I haven’t done anything.’

‘Fair point.’

An hour later and every murder had been laid out in front of him. The three murders prior to his arrest, as well as Henry Watson, Ryan Beck, the dog owner, the three young women in Morecambe and the two boys. Ten people were dead, and Nash was at a crossroads.

‘We need some answers, Max.’

‘I’ve told you everything I know.’

‘So let’s go through some stuff. We found dog hair at the scenes of all three girls and both boys. The hair matches the dog hair in your house. How do you explain that?’

‘It must be from Mia. But she was only in my house for one night. He must have been fast and got in while I took Mia to Jon’s because I vacuumed when I got home. I have no idea how it got to the murder scenes.’ Nash could see that Max was weary of the questions. Nash had gone in on him hard over the last hour and let him think that there was no doubt in the police’s mind that he killed ten people.

‘You have the dog tag from Ryan Beck, who was beaten to death. And a name tag from the bit of stuff you took a shine to. Do you know what we call that?’

‘Messed up?’

‘No, we call it taking trophies. How many other trophies do you have?’

‘None.’

They put another evidence bag on the table. It contained a silver locket.

‘That belonged to Chelsea Green. Are you saying it was in the bottom of your wardrobe for two years?’

‘No.’

‘Well, how did it get there?’

‘Get where?’

‘In your wardrobe.’

‘He must have put it there when he collected the dog hair.’

‘We have a problem with that because you’ve already told us that when you got back that day, you said that nothing had been disturbed in the bedroom.’

‘It must have been when they broke in and stole my laptop, then. They put the locket in my wardrobe to frame me and stole my stuff, again to frame me.’

‘And you never saw the locket there.’

‘When I go in my closet, Inspector, I keep my eyes at suit level. Where are your eyes when you’re in the closet?’

Nash sat up straighter, and Renshaw’s head came up to see why Nash had reacted.

‘One chance to change your answer before I throw the book at you, Jones.’

‘Go on, what have you got? It’s obviously something big. I’m going down anyway, so you might as well hit me with the lot. I can understand why criminals confess to things they haven’t done.’

Nash slammed the last evidence bag across the desk at him. This time he did it in anger.

‘What is it?’

‘Just a pair of red lace underwear belonging to Catherine Howard. Are you sure you never met her?’

‘Never. Not that I’m aware of.’

‘You replaced the carpet in your campervan the day you got it, didn’t you?’

‘No. There was no carpet. It has insulated flooring. It was stained in places. So I put a new piece of carpet down on top of it to make it look nice.’

‘Guess where we found these?’

‘Under the carpet?’

‘Worse. They were under the insulated flooring.’

‘That proves I didn’t put them there. Don’t you see? I’d just bought the van, had it an hour and went round the market for an offcut of carpet. I pulled up in the van, and my sister was in the drive, so I showed it to her. She stayed chatting—took every opportunity to look down her big bloody nose at me, as usual.’ Nash could see that Max was sweating. A thin line of perspiration appeared on his forehead, and he wiped it away with his sleeve. He was talking too much. ‘She’s had a nose job, but it’s still like an Alpine ski slope. Melissa was there when I put the carpet down. It only took me five minutes, and I sealed it with carpet glue. I never went near the floorboard, and if I had lifted it later, you’d be able to tell because of the glued edges of the piece of carpet.’

‘All verifiable, of course?’

‘Absolutely. I got the carpet from a bloke in a green flat cap, and he charged me twenty quid. That day, my sister wanted me to sign some papers that she needed for my mother’s Power of Attorney. She’ll tell you. And there was another witness, Linda Evans from the office, who came to drop some things off that she’d cleared from Henry’s desk. I said I’d give them to his wife.’

‘They’ve told us they were there. And Melissa says you argued.’

‘We bantered.’

‘She says that you threatened her.’

‘Bullshit.’

Nash wrote some notes and stared hard at Jones.

‘Hey. Here’s something else you can check. When I went to pick up the van, the man said somebody else had been there before me. The man took it for a test drive and said they definitely wanted it. They made arrangements to make payment and pick it up, but they never turned up. It must have been him.’

‘And this can all be verified?’

‘Yes, everything.’

Nash was sure. He’d been pretty sure for several days. Because some of the bodies turned up while Jones was in custody, the word in the station was that Jones had an accomplice—but Nash didn’t believe that for a second.

Bronwyn Lewis took some convincing, but with the evidence in front of her, she was willing to go with his plan.

Lewis came into the interview room and introduced herself. The tape had been switched off, and Nash saw Jones take a double take at the recorder.

‘Mr Jones, thank you for your cooperation in this investigation,’ Bronwyn said.

‘I didn’t kill anybody.’

‘Mr Jones. We’d like you to take a polygraph test. How would you feel about that?’

He didn’t pause or take time to consider his options, and that only solidified Nash’s belief that Maxwell Jones was innocent.

‘No problem. Yes. Hell yes. Yes, please, even. I want to do it.’

‘I must warn you that the results are inadmissible in court and won’t be used in your trial. They have been the catalyst of doom in many cases. I’ve seen a lot of guilty men who’ve thought they could beat the test, Mr Jones, and if you fail this test, we will move heaven and earth to put you away. Do you still want to do it?’

‘Yes.’

‘You must rest. The conditions have to be right, and we don’t want you saying that you were under duress from lack of sleep, do we? So I’ll arrange it for eight hours’ time,’ Nash said.

‘Rest, Mr Jones,’ Lewis said.