“Over here, Moggie.” I pulled him into an alcove out of sight. I wasn’t really worried about anybody seeing us, but Nuala was putting me off.
“There ain’t nothing I can tell you, Stones. Honest.”
When people start saying ‘honest’, I know they’re lying. I do it myself. Moggie Carr was only honest when he was really leaned on hard, and I hadn’t started leaning yet.
“Josh Lee,” I said. “Tell me about him. Everything you know.”
“Well, I can tell you he’s one of the Lees.”
“Yeah, yeah. Even I can figure that one out, pillock.”
“He lives at the caravan site out at Highbrook.”
“The Lees run that place themselves, don’t they?”
“Old man Daniel Lee runs it. He’s the gaffer. Josh is his grandson.”
“And Josh is into drugs? That’s a bit out of the usual for the Lees, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, right. If old Daniel found out, Josh would be out on his ear. If he still had any ears by then.”
“Not their scene then, the Lees?”
“No way. Anything else, but not drugs. Try the Nottingham Yardies. Or there’s Craig, of course. But I don’t need to tell you that, Stones.”
“Yeah. Craig.”
I let Moggie go, but his jacket stayed crumpled.
“What about a bloke called Rawlings then?”
He shook his head firmly. “Never heard of him. Is he new?”
I didn’t like the way Moggie was turning the conversation round so that he could get information out of me. That was a knack he had, a bit of a talent. Everybody has to have a talent. Moggie would make a good television interviewer, if they could smarten him up enough not to break the camera.
I was about to turn away and find my back to Nuala when Moggie made his mistake. He’d been thinking about Rawlings, trying to file him away in his mental filing cabinet, and he let something slip.
“Maybe he’s working with the other bloke then.”
I turned round again so fast that he didn’t have time to back off, and we collided hard enough to make his glasses fall off and land in his beer.
“Shit. Now look what you’ve done.”
“What other bloke?”
Moggie fished around in his pint with a finger and dragged the glasses out. “The lenses will be all sticky now.”
“What other new bloke, Moggie?”
“I won’t be able to see my way to the bar to get myself another drink. You’ve ruined my beer as well.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll buy you a drink,” I said through gritted teeth. “But first you tell me — what other bloke?”
“Well, I dunno really.”
“Moggie, I’m getting seriously pissed off.”
“It’s just one or two things I’ve heard around. No names. Just that some of the blokes have been getting work from somewhere. Not from Craig. They ain’t talking about it too much. It’s been going on for a bit, but word is that the outfit is expanding now. Starting to exercise a bit of muscle. Maybe that’s where Josh Lee fits in. Does that help?”
“I need a name, Moggie.”
“I told you, no one’s saying.”
“Who’s not saying?”
“Well, there’s Mick Kelk for one. He’s had a driving job this week, I think. For God’s sake, Stones, don’t tell him you found that out from me.”
“Course not.”
I bought Moggie the drink I’d promised. It always saddens me when greed gets results where threats fail. Then I remembered Nuala. To my surprise, she was still there. I thought by now she would have stamped out in disgust. But she was sitting at the same table where I’d left her. The only trouble was, now she had company. I could see her mouth going nineteen to the dozen, spilling her guts to the nice, polite bloke who’d just bought her a vodka and who had no doubt told her that he knew Stones McClure very well, that he was an old friend in fact. Yes, that’s just the sort of trick DI Frank Moxon would pull. It should be in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act — the use of intrusive and unwarranted niceness strictly prohibited.
I was torn now, between a reluctance to encounter Moxon face to face and a tearing anxiety about what Nuala might be telling him. At the rate she talked, she could have given him my entire life history already, if she actually knew it. Rapidly, I reviewed what she did know about me, what she might have noticed during the short course of our relationship. I’m careful, but sometimes there are moments when I stop thinking too clearly, and Nuala has been intimately involved in one or two of these moments, if the truth be known.
The drive home was tense. In my mind, all I could see was Frank Moxon’s oily smile as he’d slithered away from the table and slimed his way out of the door of the Cow.
“He told me you had a nickname,” said Nuala, blissfully unaware of my mood. “Not Stones, I mean. Another one. One that you don’t tell people and you don’t use any more, because you don’t like it. But Frank knows it — he knows a lot of things about you, he said.”
I bet he did. My only worry now was whether he knew even more about me since his long chat with Nuala. Also hearing her call the bloke Frank was starting to turn my stomach.
“He’s talking through his backside.”
But Nuala just smirked.
“Tufty. I thought that was really sweet. Can I call you that?”
She giggled loudly. One vodka too many, by the sound of it. I said nothing, but concentrated on driving. We’d be home soon, and then I thought I might be able to find a way to shut her up.
“Frank said it was because of your hair cut. I can’t imagine it now. Tufty. How sweet.”
“Stay away from Moxon, Nuala.”
I hadn’t intended to speak, but it needed saying. Her eyes lit up, loving it. She thought I was jealous, the silly tart.
“Oh, but he’s ever so nice. And he knows a lot about you.”
“Yeah, you said.”
“He says he’s met a lot of your friends too. He’s going to tell me about them next time we meet.”
“Yeah?”
“Tufty.”
That giggle again. It was a good job Nuala had compensating qualities, otherwise I would have had her out of the car right there and then, without slowing down. When a woman thinks she has power over you, you’re sunk if you don’t get out immediately. And here she was thinking I was worried about a deadly rival for her favours in the shape of Detective Inspector Frank Moxon. Me, jealous of the Bill Gates of the Nottinghamshire Constabulary, the supernerd of the CID?
“He’s a plonker.”
“Now, tut, tut. Why are you calling him names? He was very nice about you. He said you were old friends. He couldn’t understand why you didn’t come over to talk to him. Did you have to speak to all those people at the bar, Stones? I’m sure you were only pretending. Some of them looked quite surprised. You even bought them drinks. It was almost as if you were trying to avoid Frank. I told him that, and he laughed. He said he couldn’t believe it, not of an old friend like you. It was then he told me your nickname. Tufty.”
By now, my hands were gripping the steering wheel so hard that my fingers were leaving impressions in the rubber. I realised I’d been imagining the wheel was Frank Moxon’s neck.
The fact was, Moxon had hit me where he knew I was vulnerable. I couldn’t tell Nuala to stay away from him because he was copper. She had no idea I was the sort of person who needed to avoid coppers, and that was the way I preferred to keep it. Ignorance is bliss, but it’s also security.
“Oh, I nearly forgot, I’ve got to call in at the church,” I said.