She swivelled her eyes, ‘Then why report the car stolen, why not keep schtum?’
‘OK, scotch that. Besides,’ he admitted, ‘we can tie Gleason and Stone to the car and to the dumping of the body.’
‘We’ll run background checks on Harper – see if that throws up anything. I trust my instincts…’ She opened the passenger door.
Richard raised his eyebrows, waiting for more.
‘… and my instincts say he’s involved.’ She settled back into the seat. She looked at Richard as he got behind the wheel. ‘All we need to do is find out how.’
‘Piece of cake,’ he laughed.
‘Well, it might not be easy,’ she granted, ‘but all things are possible and we’re not going to let Mr Harper so much as draw a breath without looking into it.’
Lee Stone’s known family (ex-foster mother, two sisters and a half brother) had been visited – none of them had seen or heard from him.
‘No, love. He never kept in touch,’ said his foster mother. ‘Shock seeing him on the telly like that. And you reckon he shot this other bloke?’
‘Haven’t seen him for years,’ his half-brother said when the officers talked to him in the pub he ran. ‘We’re not exactly close. In fact the last time I saw him he tried to flog us a dodgy motor. I told him I wasn’t interested. And I’m still not.’
‘If he does get in touch you’ll let us know?’
‘My pleasure.’
‘Might do.’ Stone’s younger sister offered when asked the same question at the launderette where she worked. ‘Would there be any money in it? A reward like?’ She was twenty and heavily overweight, her eyes darkened with kohl, her hair straw-like, high gloss on her lips. Her tongue worried at a cold sore at the corner of her mouth.
‘Not at this stage.’
She grunted. ‘He’s a bit handy with his fists, our Lee. I wouldn’t want to make an enemy of him. If he knew I’d put you onto him…’ She shuddered.
‘We wouldn’t divulge any names.’
‘He might guess though. I know it’s not right if he’s ‘owt to do with that shooting…’ she wrinkled her nose, shrugged, ‘but it might never happen.’
The elder sister, contacted at a call centre in Hyde, was more succinct. ‘Fuck off, he’s my brother, and I’m no grass.’
Discreet enquiries were made at The King’s Head and The Willows as well as the Pool Hall on the main road. No one had seen hide nor hair of the man. And no one had a good word to say about him.
