Finders Keepers Read Online Free PDF Page B

and they’re replaced every six or eight weeks.’
    Rice’s mouth dropped open and Reynolds was amused to see her groping for some grasp on the sheer waste of shoe-money. As for himself, he wondered whether it was really enough to motivate abduction.
    ‘That doesn’t seem like an awful lot,’ he mused.
    ‘Is to
me
,’ said Haddon with a disparaging look. ‘Would be to you too, if you’d earned it in the snow with a half ton of horse on your bloody back.’
    He had a point.
    ‘So you threatened Mr Took?’
    Haddon was still for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Yur.’
    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
his
money. Before you know it, Took’ll say he’s bankrupt and we’ll find out everything’s in his girlfriend’s name or some bollocks, and where will we all be then? Up the bloody creek without a bloody paddle, that’s where.’
    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
that
’d bloody work!’
    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
type
of poncey horse and a new
type
of poncey saddle, and he’s got to build a manège and employ a poncey trainer and blah-de-blah-de-blah, you see? Just so’s she’ll keep tupping him and pretend she’s liking it, pardon me, Miss.’
    Rice shrugged it away.
    ‘And it’s not just the horses,’ Cooper continued. ‘You seen what he wears now? Come into the