Ace Taxis of Mold was not a huge operation. There was no office as such, just a phone, an answerphone and a ring-file of booking sheets in the kitchen of one of the smart new houses on the estate that had sprung up behind the public library and adjacent nursery, right off the main road which ran west out of town. Terry Jenkins drove the cab. His wife Sonia took the calls. Fortunately for Francis, Terry was at home having his lunch, before heading out to deal with the day’s festival pick-ups and drop-offs.
Francis had been surprised to be let into the house at all, fully expecting a brush-off or a door slammed in his face. But no, when he’d explained why he was calling, Sonia was welcoming. She was a thin, rather nervy woman, dressed in black trousers and polo-neck, with heavy green eyeshadow above her dark eyes. Inviting Francis to step inside, she showed him along a parquet-floored corridor that smelt strongly of wood polish, past the kitchen, and into a lounge where shiny black leather sofas were grouped around a large flat-screen TV. In one corner of the room there was a trombone by a hefty sound system that looked as if it dated from the 1980s, complete with separate amplifier, tape and CD player, radio tuner and turntable for vinyl. A collection of such records was stacked on the big open shelves behind: plenty of obvious classics with a heavy preponderance of jazz. On narrower shelves above, there was an equally comprehensive stash of CDs.
‘Fine selection of listening material you’ve got here,’ said Francis, when Terry came through, still holding a mug of tea that read DADDIO in purple letters on the side. He was burly in his black T-shirt, his tight grey curls bouffant.
‘The old vinyl. Should get rid of it really. Just can’t bring myself to, somehow.’
‘You’re a practitioner too, by the looks of it?’
Terry smiled. ‘I play in a little local band. We call ourselves the Four Musketeers. Weddings, bar mitzvahs, funerals, that kind of thing. But you can’t make a proper living doing that down here.’
‘Not enough bar mitzvahs?’
‘You can say that again.’
‘Hence the taxi business?’
‘Spot on, mate.’ Terry lowered his backside into a leather armchair. ‘So how can I help you?’
Francis repeated the explanation he’d given Sonia.
‘We don’t really expect this kind of thing down here,’ Terry said, ‘even during festival time. I think a feller got drunk and punched another feller a couple of years ago. But that’s about it. These literary types are pretty well behaved – that’s why we like ’em. Now as to these two that you’re talking about – I do remember them, as it happens. I picked ’em up from the Hall at around nine thirty on Saturday. I remember the time because I was kept waiting for about twenty minutes. I was about to give the guy up as a bad job. But I reckoned that if I stuck around I’d get another fare anyway. Big party going on. Sooner or later someone was going to want to go into town.’
‘It was Bryce Peabody who called you out?’
‘If that was his name. Sonia puts the calls through to my mobile, so I just pick ’em up as I’m driving round.’
‘But then someone else came out?’
‘Yes. Tallish chap. Not your typical arty-farty type. Cropped hair, muscly. Looked more like a bouncer than anything else.’
That was Dan all right. ‘So he saw you there and helped himself …’
‘He came over, yes, and I gave him the name and he confirmed that was him. But as I was turning round the circle to leave, this other shortarsed fellow comes running out in front of me, waving his arms in my headlights and shouting. He claimed it was his taxi. Then it turned out he knew the guy in the back, so after a bit of argy-bargy they agreed to go into town together.’
‘Just describe how the other guy looked.’
‘Bit older, I’d say. Short dark curls and quite a lived-in face, if you follow me. If you told me he used the old Grecian 2000 I wouldn’t be surprised. So in he gets. They don’t say a thing until we’re halfway back to Mold. Then they start talking and suddenly it all kicks off. Screaming at each other, they were. I was supposed to be taking them up to the White Hart but I let them off at the bridge. I can’t be dealing with fights.’
‘But you got your fare?’
‘More than, as it happened. It was like something out of Monty Python.’ Terry grinned. ‘I stopped the cab and told them to get out and they shut up immediately like a couple of naughty schoolboys. Then they had a right barney about who was paying, shoving tenners at me and telling me to keep the change. As I drove off, they got back to it.’
‘Arguing?’
‘Fighting, pretty much. The bouncer guy had the older one up against the wall of the bridge. I think he might have thrown a punch.’
‘You didn’t think of calling the police?’
‘During the festival? You’ve got to be joking. Anyway, they were both grown men – I thought they could look after themselves.’
‘You can’t remember what they said – what started it?’
‘To be honest, I can’t. Bear in mind I’m working ten-hour shifts over the festival period.’
‘Not even the odd line?’
‘Come to think of it, there was one thing that did stick in my head. Something about “They’re not yours”.’
‘“They’re not yours”,’ Francis repeated slowly. ‘Said by who? The bouncer?’
‘It was him, you’re right. The only reason I remember it is that it silenced them both for about half a minute, then they went back to it.’
‘And you can’t recall anything else?’
‘Went in one ear and out the other. Most of it was to do with books, writers, who was good, who wasn’t’ – Terry grinned – ‘not that I was bothering to listen …’
Francis’s eyes scanned the row of publications above the CDs. There was Nelson Mandela’s autobiography and Bravo Two Zero and a couple of books about jazz, then a long row of alphabetically arranged chick-lit novels, which he assumed were Sonia’s. No, he decided, a fight about contemporary literature was hardly going to interest Terry.
‘Just for the record,’ he asked, ‘how late do you normally carry on after midnight?’
‘One o’clock’s about the latest. There’s not much call for taxis after that.’
‘Even during festival time?’
‘The pubs shut at eleven. You get the rush and then it quietens down.’
‘What about last Saturday? How late did you stay out?’
‘Not that late. I did a few more runs after that Wyveridge one, then I called it a night.’
‘Finishing when?’
‘Half twelve, oneish. Come to think of it, it was one when I got in, because I watched a bit of that Jazz Greats series they’ve got on BBC Four. Terrific stuff, have you seen it?’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t. But you’d have switched your phone off by then?’
‘Once I’m in front of the TV, that’s it. Sometimes I hear them come through on the main answerphone and I ignore them. I’m not greedy.’
As he drove off, ten minutes later, Francis wondered how much Terry Jenkins might have recalled of Dan and Bryce’s conversation under torture. But a lurking suspicion of his had been resurrected and now he urgently needed to talk to someone else in the case. First he stopped to pick up two essential items: a sandwich and a pair of pliers. Fortunately Mold was one of those rare English towns that still had a basic collection of real shops: Simpson’s Bakery, selling long filled rolls worthy of Subway; then, three doors down, two hardware merchants side by side – one of which, the father and son team of A & P Ness, had, unbeknownst to Francis, kept the local schoolboys in giggles for years.