Twenty-Seven

A thuggish-looking man with a shaved head, Bruce Burke did his arrest photo justice. A tattoo in poisonous green ink of a rattlesnake, poised to strike, coiled around his thick neck above the collar of his black sweatshirt.

“Thanks for meeting me,” Rex said, surprised that Burke had agreed to give up part of his Friday afternoon at relative short notice.

The man’s piercing grey eyes swept the teashop as he moved towards a corner table and selected a chair facing the entrance.

A woman in a full apron, with ginger hair pulled back in a sloppy ponytail, flicked a damp rag around the Formica table top. “Your usual, luv?” she asked Burke.

“No, just tea, ta.” Burke spoke with a southern English accent and was missing two teeth from the bottom row.

“Same for me,” Rex said.

She ambled away, greeting customers by name.

“You’re not from here originally, are you?” Rex enquired.

“Kent.”

“Been back there since your release?”

“Not yet. I have roots here now.”

“You have a brother in Canterbury.”

“I do,” Burke said cautiously. “I thought you said on the phone this was about Dan Sutter.”

“It is, but I heard that your brother Alan is the handyman of an acquaintance of mine, whose father sentenced Sutter to ten years in prison.”

“Judge Murder sentenced me, and all. Al said he did odd jobs at his house and joked about doing something to make it look like the old geezer met with an accident. ‘Course, he was only joking.”

“Of course,” Rex said, betraying no sarcasm.

“Al told me he died in his sleep.”

“Are you glad he’s dead?”

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t.”

“Do you keep in regular contact with your brother?”

Burke leaned back in his chair, his hands loosely clasped on the table. “We talk on the phone about once a month. He came to visit me in prison a couple of times, once with my niece. There’s a ten-year age difference between me and Al, me being the youngest. Tim, our middle brother, died of a drug overdose. I was headed the same way before I was sent down for holding up a jeweller’s. Daft, that was.”

He clenched a giant fist stamped with gothic lettering across the knuckles, which Rex could not read. “There was cameras all over the shop, but I was high on ice and desperate for cash.” His hand spread open in a gesture of resignation.

“Can you tell me how you got on with Dan Sutter? I understand you were cell mates.”

“We had adjoining cells for a time. You try to get on with everyone inside, if you know what’s good for you, but Dan wasn’t what you’d call friendly. And he wasn’t one to make confessions, not him. So, if that’s what you wanted from me, you’re out of luck. Sorry.”

“What did he talk aboot?”

“His sister mostly. Said he should’ve been a better brother. Said what a monster his dad was. A lot of blokes inside talk about their girlfriends and wives. With him it was his sister. Whatever gets you through your stretch.”

“Did he ever say he wanted to harm Judge Murgatroyd?”

“We all did. Everyone up before Judge Murder knew they were for it.”

“Did he get into specifics?”

“Said how he’d like to carve him up in small pieces. I didn’t pay much attention to the talk that went on inside, just did my time and got early release last year for good behaviour. And I won’t be going back in neither. I got a decent paying job round the corner from this caffe, and me and the missus are going to have a baby. A bit late in life to start a family, you might be thinking, but I’ve a lot of time to make up for.”

The waitress reappeared with the tea. Burke hunched forward and looped his hands around his mug protectively, no doubt a habit formed in prison.

“How old is the niece who came to visit you?” Rex asked.

“Petra? Twenty-two.”

“What does she do?”

“Right now she’s stocking shelves at Tesco’s, but she’s going to night school. Wants to do hair. Why’re you interested in her?”

Rex took up the glass container of sugar and tipped the metal chute into his mug without comment.