Free Death Dues by Geraldine Evans

his stool and said, ‘I’ll just see if he’s available.’ He knocked on a door at the back of the shop and disappeared. He came back in thirty seconds and opened up a door in the grille for them to pass through.
    Malcolm Forbes was sitting behind a shabby desk that looked as if it might have formed part of his early stock; the low-key nature of the furnishings, nothing over the top or showy to fuel the punters’ resentment, gave out the message that he was running a service that barely ticked over. A much-needed service for those down on their luck rather than a profiteering racket with a serial usurer at its head.
    ‘Ah, Inspector Rafferty. I learned from the officer you sent to see me yesterday that you were in charge of the murder investigation. John Harrison’s a sad loss.’ This was said with a suitably mournful demeanour. Then, mock mourning over, it was business as usual as he asked, ‘How’s the case going? Are you anywhere near catching the scum who killed him?’
    ‘The investigation is progressing as expected, Mr Forbes,’ Rafferty told him, keeping his feelings in check. He’d never liked Forbes. The man was an overbearing bully. It went against the grain to have to be polite to him. ‘All the residents of the street adjoining the alley where he was found have been questioned and will be so again.’
    Forbes was a big man, though clearly not in every sense, given his barely concealed lack of interest in the late John Harrison. He had a jowly red face that could have looked jolly but for the mean grey eyes. Still there was a surface bonhomie there. But scratch the surface and pretty soon the real Forbes emerged; the small town thug who thought he was Mr Big.
    Rafferty’s teeth grated together as he awaited some derogatory comment.
    But today, with them, Forbes was clearly in a magnanimous mood. He invited them to sit down and asked how he could help.
    With difficulty, they squeezed onto two narrow chairs wedged under the barred rear window. ‘We wondered what you could tell us about the victim,’ Rafferty began. ‘Whether anything about him can have contributed to his death.’
    Forbes frowned, turning his beetling brows into a mono-brow. ‘But surely this was just another mugging like the other two cases?’ The welcoming smile vanished with his question to be replaced by the ferocious scowl of the true thug. His expression made clear that no one damaged his business or his employees and got away with it. He was the one who doled out the violence and threats of violence. It made Rafferty hope that they caught the perpetrator before Forbes did: he wouldn’t like to be on the receiving end of Forbes’s retribution.
    ‘Had the late Mr Harrison worked for you for long?’ Rafferty asked.
    ‘Eighteen months or thereabouts. I can check my records if you like.’ It was a tight squeeze in the small office as he swivelled his chair round towards a filing cabinet, reached for a file and handed it over.
     ‘Tell me, had any of your clients made threats against him?’
    Forbes gave a cynical laugh. ‘Most of them, I should think, at one time or another. It goes with the territory. Our client base is not of the brightest and tend to relieve their anger at being expected to repay their loans by making empty threats. They’re happy enough to borrow money from me, but less happy when they’re asked to start paying the instalments. Such threats are part and parcel of the job.
    Forbes cracked his knuckles and said, ‘But I know how to deal with them. Let the punters backslide once and they’ll expect to be able to do it again. The trick is not to let them backslide at all. Gentle persuasion usually does the trick.’ Forbes’s irony was heavy handed and cynical. The persuasion was only gentle if broken arms and smashed jaws came into that category. ‘Nothing has ever come of any of their threats.’
    ‘Until now,’ Rafferty reminded him. Though, as yet, they had no clear evidence apart from their