Page 21 of Hang on St. Christopher

“Did he ever talk to you about any friends, relations—anything like that? We’d like to ascertain the next of kin as soon as possible.”

Mr. Franklin shook his head. “Look, here’s the thing. I offered to mow his lawn when I was out doing mine and he said yes. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting him to say yes. Nobody around here would say yes. They might borrow your petrol mower, but they wouldn’t actually let you mow the grass for them!”

“It was good exercise for you!” Mrs. Franklin insisted.

“It was exercise, aye. Good exercise? I don’t know about that.”

“But you spoke to Mr. Townes,” I said.

“Yeah. He wasn’t what I’d call a chatterbox, but we talked on occasion.”

“What about?”

“The usual things.”

“What are the usual things?”

“Football, weather.”

The usual things men discussed when they didn’t want to talk about reality.

“What was his team?”

“Liverpool.”

I turned to McCrabban. “Clearly, he was a man of taste and discretion. The suit, the car, Liverpool.”

“Liverpool is in long-term decline. That’s what theMirrorsays,” Crabbie muttered.

I ignored this and turned back to Mr. Franklin. “He ever talk about siblings, next of kin?”

“Nah. Never spoke about it. But there were no next of kin. I sort of gathered that. No friends either. No one ever came ’round, did they? No wife, no kids, no mother, no brothers. A wee bit suspicious, if you ask me. Around here we like to know where somebody comes from, you know? But Mr. Townes, he arrives in the street, dead of night, moves in, sets himself up as a painter, and nobody knows him from Adam.”

“You’re talking a lot of nonsense, Kenneth!” Mrs. Franklin said. “He arrived on a Monday morning. I saw him move in myself.”

“Paid for all his bills in cash. Said he didn’t trust the banks,” Mr. Franklin said.

“I don’t trust them either!” Mrs. Franklin countered.

Mr. Franklin shook his head and tapped his finger to his nose. “You can’t use a bank unless you have ID, am I right?”

“Aye,” Crabbie agreed.

“Am I also right in thinking you haven’t found a driver’s license or a passport yet?” Mr. Franklin asked.

“We haven’t done a really thorough search of the house,” I said.

“You won’t find any either. I was over there doing his lawn one Friday, and the detector vans boys came to check to see if he had a TV license. He didn’t, and when they asked to see some ID, he said he didn’t have any form of identification in the house. And they said he had a twenty-four-hour grace period to go to the post office and get a license and he said he would, but I don’t think he ever did. Quentin, he called himself. That part I believe. If you’re going to make up a name, you wouldn’t make up Quentin.”

Mrs. Franklin was deeply irritated now. “I am sorry I brought you down, Kenneth. These are police officers conducting a very serious investigation and you’re filling their heads with a load of nonsense!”

“You’re the one talking nonsense!”

“Kenneth, lower your voice!”

“I can raise my voice in my own house, so I can!”

Crabbie was looking uncomfortable now and wanted us away from this. He nodded his head toward the door. He was probably right. A thorough search of Mr. Townes’s house would likely give us all the answers we needed.