Reynolds looked at his notes. ‘He says you told him you’d break his bloody legs if he didn’t pay you.’
‘Yur,’ said Haddon defiantly. ‘And I still will.’
‘I’m sure you could find a better way to resolve the dispute, Mr Haddon,’ said Reynolds sharply.
‘Maybe better. Not faster.’
‘You do know that we could arrest you right now for making threats, don’t you?’
Haddon simply gave Reynolds a baleful stare.
‘And you do know that Mr Took’s daughter is missing?’
‘Well,’ said Haddon, looking a little uncertain for the first time, ‘I’d wait until she were back, like.’
Rice snorted with laughter and tried to turn it into a cough. Reynolds frowned but Haddon looked at Rice and winked. The laugh had relaxed him.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘Took is an arsehole. Ask anyone. He owes money right across the moor, but he’s driving around in those big bloody cars and keeping six horses while my van’s falling apart. Gets up your nose, that’s all. And I know his type – whoever scares him best will get paid first. That’s all it is. You ask Bill Merchant up at Dulverton Farm Feeds – Took owes him thousands but he never makes a fuss, so he can whistle Dixie for
Haddon stopped, looking surprised at his own loquacity, and stared from Rice to Reynolds and back again – daring them to challenge his truth.
They couldn’t.
‘So you have no idea where Jess Took might be?’ said Reynolds a little weakly.
Haddon looked genuinely surprised. ‘You think I took his kid to make him pay up?’
‘It’s just a routine question, Mr Haddon.’
Haddon frowned and shook his head. ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘But I tell you what – I bet
Of the four less obviously threatening creditors on John Took’s list, all were exasperated but seemed resigned to having to wait for their money.
‘Other creditors have threatened Mr Took,’ Reynolds told Wilf Cooper, who had supplied nine hundred pounds’ worth of timber to Took to repair his manège.
Cooper smiled. ‘There’s no need for the Mafia. I just started small claims proceedings against him, like I do with all my late payers. One month, one letter and then they get notice of proceedings. He’ll pay now or then; I’m not worried. Happens all the time with men like him.’
‘What do you mean, “men like him”?’ asked Rice.
‘Men who get divorced and get a younger girlfriend. Suddenly they start to spend money like it’s going out of fashion. Took’s girlfriend – what’s her name?’
‘Rebecca,’ said Reynolds.
‘Rachel,’ said Rice.
‘Yur, well, whatever it is, she wants to ride, see? Not to hounds, like – which would be sensible, given he’s the Master – but in shows, doing dressage and the like. So suddenly he’s got to get a new
Rice shrugged it away.
‘And it’s not just the horses,’ Cooper continued. ‘You seen what he wears now? Come into the yard a few months back wearing
Cooper seemed so affable that Reynolds was confused as to why he was on the list at all.
‘Who knows,’ Cooper said with an expansive shrug. ‘Took’s a right paranoid tit.’
To the surprise of both Reynolds and Rice, the ninth person on Took’s list was not a creditor. It was Jonas Holly’s elderly neighbour, Mrs Paddon.
‘She must be eighty if she’s a day,’ said Rice. ‘How’s she an enemy?’
‘He said she was a leader in the campaign to get the local hunt disbanded.’
‘Good for her,’ murmured Rice.
Reynolds remembered Mrs Paddon. A tough old bird. They’d speak to her first thing in the morning; he had no doubt she was an early riser.
‘Let me handle the interview,’ he told Rice. He fancied he got on well with old folk. His mother’s friends adored him.
Mrs Paddon didn’t.
Mrs Paddon was as wary of Rice and Reynolds as if they’d been Jehovah’s Witnesses – only reluctantly opening her door wide enough for them actually to enter her home, instead of conducting the interview on the stone doorstep.
