Текст книги "Dead Dream Girl"

Автор книги: Richard Haley

Соавторы: Richard Haley
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Dead Dream Girl

Richard Haley

Contents

Title Page

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

By the Same Author

Copyright

ONE

The body was winched out of the water very slowly on a flat board. Skilled divers had manoeuvred it on to the board with great care, after first untying the cords that had attached the body to a bag of stones. The frogmen had been anxious to ensure that no further damage was accidentally caused to the body than happened at the time it was thrown in. Autopsy examinations in the search for clues to a possible identity of the killer would be complicated enough as it was.

The body still wore a summer dress. It was torn and mud-stained, but a woman among the small group looking on was able to detect that it hadn’t been cheap. It was drop-waisted and had elegant button work down the bodice and a finely etched floral pattern.

The body’s face was bloated and had the sort of pitting and scarring that had probably been inflicted by predatory pond life. It was just possible, in the nearly autumn sunlight, to tell that the hair was honey coloured. The SOC team, standing grim faced on the reservoir bank, needed none of these sparse details to tell them whose body it was. It could only be that of Donna Jackson, a woman their CID colleagues had been searching for for weeks. A boy, a keen underwater swimmer, had found it. Children were forbidden to swim in the reservoir, but they did anyway. If it hadn’t been for the boy, one of the onlookers muttered sourly, the poor kid’s body would have been down there for good.

Frank Crane drove on to Willow Tree Park on an evening in June. It was an attractive name for what was a council estate, always known by locals as the Willows. It was on the edge of Bradford and near the green belt, but that hadn’t stopped it going to the dogs exactly like the inner city ones. It had just taken longer, that was all. There were still pockets of respectability, but too many problem families had sidled their way in, who used the gardens as storage dumps for old tyres and rusting car parts, and kept vicious-looking dogs on chains. Their children lived a life of their own, mainly in packs of ten on street corners.

Garden Drive was in the middle of the estate and looked to be one of the better bits. The Jacksons lived at number 27. Crane had been told they were decent, hardworking people, and this seemed to be confirmed by a neatly clipped hedge, a newly mown lawn and flowered borders. The house was a small boxy semi, like all the others, and Crane could only park his car with difficulty about twenty yards away on the crowded road side.

He walked up a narrow, flagged pathway and pressed the bell of a cream-painted door. He didn’t hear a ring tone and it went unanswered. He knocked. The door was then slowly drawn open, as if not much used. He guessed that the Jacksons’ normal visitors knew to use the side door.

‘Mrs Jackson? I’m Frank Crane.’

‘Oh … hello,’ she said nervously. ‘Come in, please.’

She was spare and smallish and had dark brown hair which had an inch-wide strand of grey running from the right temple. Hollow cheeks emphasized a knobbly bone structure and her hazel eyes were haunted looking above a long nose. She wore a faded zip-front navy shirt and well-worn, stone-coloured cords.

She turned and led him along a short narrow hallway and into the back room. It looked like it doubled as living and dining room. A man sat at a small drop-leaf table in front of the window and a young woman sat in an armchair watching Coronation Street. She reluctantly switched it off with a remote. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, to no one in particular. ‘I’m taping it anyway.’

‘This is Mr Crane, Malc,’ Mrs Jackson said, still nervous.

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Crane,’ he said, getting up and holding out a hand. He was smallish but stocky, in trousers and T-shirt, with heavy glasses that slightly enlarged pale blue eyes, blunt, reddish features and greying dark hair. His hand shook slightly. He seemed as uneasy as his wife.

‘And this is Patsy,’ Mrs Jackson went on. Patsy gave him an indifferent smile, her eyes not quite meeting his.

‘I’m sorry you’ve had to come in the evening,’ Jackson said, ‘but with us all working … Connie could have had some time off, but we all wanted to be here, know what I mean?’

‘Don’t worry, Mr Jackson. I do a good deal of my work in the evening.’

‘Call me Malc. And this is Connie.’

‘And I’m Frank.’

‘Will you take a drink, Frank? Beer? Whisky?’

Crane never normally drank while working, but he felt drinks would help them to relax for what could be a demanding interview. ‘A beer would be fine.’

‘I’ll see to it, Dad.’ Patsy got up. ‘How about you, Mam?’

Connie shrugged indifferently. ‘I’ll have a small Bristol Cream, pet, if there’s any left.’

Patsy went through to the kitchen and the three of them stood in silence. Crane was used to this awkward moment, when people were steeling themselves to talk about emotional or embarrassing situations. He had ways of putting them at their ease, but Connie suddenly said, ‘Show him the papers, Malc.’

‘They’re here, Frank. I got them ready.’

The papers were insurance statements. Crane caught the figure £10,000 Sum Assured, and the words ‘plus accumulated bonus to date’. Puzzled, he glanced from the papers to Malc’s uneasy, enlarged eyes. ‘It’s due in a week or two, Frank, do you see?’ he said anxiously. ‘So we can pay you, no problem, if you don’t mind hanging on till they pay us.’

‘We don’t care how much it costs,’ Connie said flatly. ‘We wanted it for a down payment on a house of our own, right away from the Willows, but nothing comes before putting that swine behind bars where he belongs.’

‘That’s right, Frank,’ Malc said, his voice breaking slightly. We couldn’t live with ourselves if we didn’t do everything possible.’

Crane looked at their anxious faces. He’d thought long and hard about coming here. Terry Jones had already told him they’d have to break into their nest egg to pay his fees. But he’d also said they were determined to have a private man and if Crane didn’t take the case they might land themselves with someone who’d take the money and walk through it. In the end he knew it was the challenge that had drawn him. His challenge, their tragedy, that was the sad bit.

‘I don’t need any proof you have the money. I know respectable people when I see them. What I need to tell you is that I can only accept the work when I’ve talked it over carefully with you. I need to decide if I can be of genuine help. If I do act for you I’ll explain exactly how much it will cost. And … well … I’d also like to say how deeply sorry I am about your daughter.’

Neither spoke, their faces impassive, their eyes unfocused, but a sense of powerful emotion seemed to thicken the air like humidity. It was a relief when Patsy came in with the drinks on a battered tin tray. She offered it to Crane with the same non-connecting smile as before. She was tall, with her mother’s brown hair, which she’d sprayed into a tousled style that did nothing for her. She had regular but completely plain features, apart from eyes that were a shade of lavender. She was aggressively made up as if trying to force prettiness on to her modest looks. She wore a wrinkled slash-neck cotton sweater in green and white stripes and grubby white bell-bottom trousers.

‘Sit down, Frank,’ Connie said finally, on a near-strangled note. A small three piece had been crammed into the little room, which also had a sideboard and a stereo, as well as the television. The wall pictures were of the type that came from chain stores. Crane sat in one of the armchairs, Malc in the other, the women on the sofa. They seemed as packed together as people sitting in the corner of a crowded pub.

‘You will take it, Frank, won’t you?’ Connie spoke in a low urgent voice. ‘Mr Benson wouldn’t have mentioned your name if he’d not thought you could help.’

‘Worked the clock round, DS Benson,’ Malc said huskily. ‘Couldn’t have done no more. None of them lads could.’

Crane nodded, remembering the time when Benson had been grey with fatigue, when there’d been a task force, an incident room, endless overtime. He said, ‘I’m going to have to bring back painful memories. I know there’s been a question mark hanging over Donna’s boyfriend – Bobby Mahon, wasn’t it?’

‘He did it, Frank,’ Malc broke out. ‘No question. Even DS Benson said they weren’t looking for no one else in the end. I tell you, I’d have seen to the sod myself, except it’d only have brought more upset to Mam here and Patsy.’

‘Dad …’ Patsy put a hand on his trembling arm.

‘It’s the truth, Frank,’ Connie almost whispered, her eyes moist in declining sunlight. ‘She … she came home with bruises more than once, a black eye, a swollen face. We had to keep her out of Malc’s way till we got her looking right again, he’d have gone round there and smashed him.’

‘Too right,’ he muttered. ‘Too bloody right.’

‘He said she was two-timing him, that Mahon,’ Connie went on. ‘But she wasn’t. She was a bonny girl. She couldn’t help it if men couldn’t take their eyes off her.’

Crane caught Patsy’s glance. Her face was expressionless. She said, ‘Anyway, he was two-timing her. Seemed to think he could do as he chose.’

Crane said, ‘How did he take it … when Donna was found?’

‘Cracked on to be heartbroken,’ Malc said bitterly. ‘Round here every verse end when they had to let him go. Swearing it wasn’t him, over and over again. He could even turn the waterworks on. Crying. Always round here crying.’

‘I think it was genuine, Dad,’ Patsy said. ‘I’m sure he was upset, even if he did do it. That was Bobby’s trouble, it was just the same when he landed her one, pleading and sobbing for her to take him back.’

Crane glanced at her. It was a good point. He knew from experience that bad hats often did show remorse about a killing while stubbornly denying it was down to them. It didn’t mean the remorse was any less valid. He took out his notebook. ‘What was Donna’s job?’

‘She worked at Leaf and Petal.’

‘Garden centre, off Back Lane?’

‘That’s the one,’ Malc said heavily. ‘Helped in and among. Told folk where things were, worked a checkout, gave a hand in the café.’

‘She was doing grand,’ Connie said, wiping an eye with a knuckle. ‘She was doing grand. It’s seasonal for most of the young ones, what with the winter months being so quiet, but Mr Hellewell said he’d keep her on that last winter, teach her about the plants and the young trees. Told her she had a really good future.’

Patsy’s face was expressionless again.

‘Nice bloke, Joe Hellewell,’ Malc said. ‘Really took Donna under his wing.’

‘She did some modelling work as well,’ Connie added.

‘That was Clive,’ Malc told him. ‘Just calls himself Clive. Has that photography shop on Shilling Street.’

‘He was positive he could make a name for her,’ Connie said, with the same sad pride as before. ‘He was sending pictures of her to the people who do the mail-order catalogues. That would be a start, he told her, there was no telling where she’d end up.’

Crane didn’t need to check Patsy’s expression this time. He knew it would be stonier than ever.

‘So … she worked at Leaf and Petal during the day and did her modelling in her spare time … evenings, days off?’

They nodded. ‘She were never in,’ Malc said, trying to mask his pain with an indulgent smile. ‘Never in. Off to her work, off to her modelling, off clubbing. I used to say, “The only time you spend an evening with your mum and dad, young lady, is when you’re poorly.”’

‘And she hardly ever was poorly,’ Patsy added. ‘Can’t remember the last time she had a cold.’

‘Should have caught pneumonia,’ Malc said, forcing a chuckle, ‘some of the skimpy things she’d go off in, middle of winter.’

‘How long had she known Bobby Mahon?’

‘He’d always been around. Lives in the next road. She got to know him properly at the Goose and Guinea. We never liked her going, not with the class of riff-raff goes in there these days, but what can you do?’

‘Tanglewood,’ Crane said. ‘Did she ever go along by the reservoir before she …?’

‘They’d go Sunday afternoons now and then, to walk the Mahons’ dog. It’s popular with folk who keep a dog.’

‘Is it likely she’d go there after dark? Of her own free will?’

Malc sighed, clearly struggling for self-control. ‘Mahon … he could talk her into things.’

‘She’d not have gone, left to herself,’ Connie said harshly. ‘Apart from anything else, you don’t know who goes in there after dark.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, Mam,’ Patsy said evenly. ‘She could be more than a bit wild, you know she could.’

‘She wasn’t wild, Patsy. She was just high-spirited, liked a laugh, that’s all. I’m positive she’d not have wanted to go in that spooky place after dark.’

‘Get me another drink, Patsy love,’ Malc said, his voice wavering. ‘I’m sorry, Frank, it’s always the same when we start talking about our precious little Donna.’

Patsy glanced at Crane’s glass. Seeing it was still half-full she went off without a word. Crane said, ‘I really am very sorry to have to put you through it all again.’

‘You need to know the details,’ Connie said, tears now trickling steadily down her hollow cheeks. ‘She was so pretty, Frank, so full of life. How anyone could …’

Crane worked hard to detach himself from the unhappiness of some of the people he dealt with, but didn’t always succeed when the emotion was this raw. ‘I … think I have everything I need to be going on with,’ he said. ‘I just needed an outline of her life and work.’

Patsy put Malc’s refilled glass into his trembling hand. She said, ‘There was a lot in the Standard about it.’

‘Yes, I remember the reports.’

‘The bloke who wrote them, they call him Geoff Anderson. He spent an awful lot of time on it. Came here once or twice to talk to Mam and Dad. Keen as mustard to see someone nailed. Might be worth your while having a word with him. Nice bloke.’

‘I’ll do that.’

‘Lived and breathed it, Frank, same as DS Benson. Spent a long time with Mam and me, just going over her life so he could write it all up. There were times he could hardly get a word out himself, what with being that upset over Mam and me in tears, but Patsy managed to tell him what he needed to know.’

Crane stood up. ‘Well, I’ll do the best I can.’

‘You’ll work for us?’

‘I have to remind you, Malc, that a team of highly skilled policemen have spent a lot of time on Donna’s death. All I can really do is go over the ground again and see if there’s anything they might just have missed.’

‘You might be able to find enough for us to bring a private prosecution. Mr Benson explained that to us as well.’

‘You’d go that far?’

‘As far as it takes.’

‘All right, Malc. Now I must explain my charges.’

He gave them detailed figures, and an estimate of expenses. Even middle-class people usually winced at the bottom line, but the Jacksons took it without reaction. ‘Whatever it costs, Frank,’ Malc said, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. ‘As long as you don’t mind hanging on till the Pru poppies up. We’ll spend it all, if need be.’

‘We couldn’t live with ourselves if we didn’t feel we’d done everything we could,’ Connie said quietly. ‘If you can’t get anywhere either we’ll call it a day.’

Patsy, who’d been briefly absent, came back into the small room wearing a lightweight indigo parka. ‘I’ll see you out, she said. ‘Then I’ll go on to Debbie’s, Mam.’

Crane said his goodbyes and walked with her along the short path. ‘Can I give you a lift?’

‘No, she just lives on the end. Thanks all the same.’

It was in Crane’s direction so they walked together. ‘It’s been a bad business for you all,’ he said.

‘They need to get right away from the Willows,’ she said in a blunt, near aggressive tone. ‘It’s full of awful memories. Dad’s drinking too much. They’ve seen a little bungalow in Wyke. They’d need every penny of the insurance money as a down payment. They don’t earn enough to handle a big mortgage.’

He glanced at her as they passed between the row of identical red-brick houses and the line of kerb-side cars. She was flushed, looking straight ahead. ‘Couldn’t you have talked them out of hiring me then?’

‘Couldn’t you? Told them it was bloody pointless?’ They’d halted at Crane’s Megane, shoehorned between a Lada and an Escort, both years old. ‘You don’t look as if you’re desperate for the money.’ Her glance took in his car.

‘I think you know as well as I do that if I turned them down they’d go to someone else, and there’s no one as experienced as me in the city.’

‘You think no end of yourself, don’t you?’

‘I know I’m good, yes,’ he said shortly.

She flushed again, looked away. ‘You know they’ve fed you a load of crap, don’t you?’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘There’s no point starting the sodding job if you believe anything they say about her.’

‘Get in the car and give me your version then.’

‘I just want you to turn them down,’ she snapped. ‘Let the poor devils buy their bungalow and get away from this dump.’

‘Are you getting in the car or not?’ he said bluntly.

Biting her bottom lip, she got in. Sitting behind the wheel, Crane said, ‘Look, I’d turn them down if I didn’t think they’d go to another PI who’d take the money and do half a job. I can do without this hassle. I’ll do them a no frills job but this kind of work never comes cheap.’

She sat in sullen silence, gazing with unfocused eyes along a street just beginning to edge into twilight. Crane sensed an old envy she couldn’t shake off. She was plain, her sister had been a stunner, even going by the grainy newspaper pictures he remembered. He glanced at her face again. She had decent bone structure, but that was it, beneath the frightful hairdo and thick coating of make-up. Maybe she’d come into her own a bit more when she was older. A mature comeliness. Even if she did he didn’t think it would be much comfort to her, not whenever she thought of her sister. Dying young had meant she’d be a stunner for ever.

‘She asked for it, Frank,’ she said at last in a low voice.

‘You could say that about plenty of young women, provocatively dressed, when the clubs start to empty. It excuses nothing.’

‘You know why Joe Hellewell kept her on at Leaf and Petal? She didn’t know one plant from another, not even when she’d been there six months. I’d have done anything for a chance like that. He kept her on because they fancied her rotten, the old married men the wives trailed round. If they had to go to a bleeding garden centre they’d go to the one Donna was at, with her big come-on smiles. She loved it. That’s why he kept her on through the winter, when no bugger goes. Apart from wanting to get into her knickers himself, nasty creep.’ Her voice rasped with grievance, but Crane had found that that was how the real truth often came wrapped.

‘You’re saying she hadn’t a genuine future there?’

‘She only had a future till Hellewell got his eye on someone else. He wasn’t keeping her on for what she knew about flowers, that’s for sure, as she couldn’t tell a dahlia from a frigging geranium.’

‘This Clive Fletcher—’

‘Well, you know what he’s all about, don’t you? Starts off with glamour pics for the catalogues and magazines and then it’s why not just one or two with your tits showing, darling, and then it’s skinflicks, right?’

‘Go on.’

‘There’s only ever him and the girl there when he tries it on. And if they give him the nod he gets the camcorder going. He pays well, so they keep their traps shut. And he tells them that if anything gets out about it they’d better start worrying about their looks.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘You get it together. You pick up the whispers at the Goose.’

‘You told DS Benson about it?’

She shook her head. ‘Clive’s respectable, what you can see of the evil swine. He does normal things most of the time: babies, weddings, family groups. Mam and Dad were always there when Mr Benson was asking about Donna’s contacts. I didn’t want them to hear any rumours she might be into …’ She let the sentence dangle.

‘Do you think she was? Nude photos, porn videos?’

‘No. I think he wanted to try for the straight stuff first. I honestly think he felt he could get her face going big time. If they’ve already done nudies, the agencies don’t want to know. I think he thought if that didn’t work he could get her into the other stuff later.’

‘But you’re not sure she wasn’t already into the other stuff?’

‘No. She was really, really secretive, even with me, though we always got on all right. She liked the smackeroonies. Clothes, jewellery, the latest mobile. She had a nice little Mini. It wasn’t too old but she was sick for a convertible.’

‘These other blokes that Mahon thought she was two-timing with …’

‘He wasn’t wrong. She liked posh restaurants and Bobby couldn’t afford them. Not with being on the Social and what he could make pushing.’

‘Why bother with a bloke who’d take a swing at her?’

She sighed, shrugged. ‘You tell me, with looks like she had. And Bobby wasn’t all bad. He’d come to the house with flowers now and then, fill her tank, pay for repairs when he had the bread. But Donna could aggravate a bloody saint. Forget what they say. I’ve heard her and Bobby rowing. She could latch on to all those things you didn’t want to hear about yourself, the things that really, really bug you. She’d throw that cruddy family in his face, and how no one would ever give a dork like him a decent job, and what a total arsehole he looked with the pony-tail. And Bobby would take it for long enough, take it for a bloody sight longer than most of the blokes round here, and then she’d go that bit too far and he’d lash out. Funny,’ she said then in an almost musing tone, ‘she seemed to get off on it.’

Crane watched her. She’d summed up the relationship with skill. What woman would have risked Donna’s kind of looks with a man she knew she could provoke to violence unless she was hooked on the dangerous thrill? Perhaps that was how she’d liked to live her life: on the edge, taking chances, tempting fate. Perhaps she really had asked for it, death at Tanglewood.

Tears suddenly began to well along her eyelids. She shook her head irritably. ‘Christ, I’m so sick of it,’ she said, in a low harsh voice. ‘Donna, Donna, bloody Donna! It was always her when she was alive and it’s just the same now she’s dead. She had everything, every mortal thing: looks, blokes, jobs, anything she wanted. And me and Marvin, we could forget it. If they’d given us a bit more attention I know we’d have done better. Know what I’ve been this last four years? A bloody checkout. That’s about all I’m good for. And whoever looked at me when she was around?’

The bitter tears made her eyeliner run, which had done nothing for her looks anyway. Crane reluctantly put a hand on hers. He felt he’d coped with enough emotion for one night. But he was learning things from her he guessed he’d not get from others. And he felt sorry for the poor, blokeless kid with the tousled hair and the plain Jane looks who, life being the callous bastard it was, had given her Donna for a sister.

‘I loved her too,’ she whimpered. ‘God’s honest truth. Even though she had everything and I had sod all. She was such a pretty baby. I think Mam and Dad couldn’t figure out how people who looked like them could have had someone who looked like her. I’d help to push her buggy and dress her and play with her. We were always together. It was when she began to grow up. She changed. When the blokes came sniffing around. I told her to go canny, over and over, she could get herself into serious bother. She just thought I was putting the mockers on. Maybe I was, a lot of the time. I still loved her but there were times when I hated her as well. God, I’ve felt so guilty since. That’s why I can’t bring myself to knock poor Bobby like they do, even if he did do it.’

‘Don’t take on Patsy.’ He gave her hand a squeeze. ‘That’s what families are like, nearly all of them, and I’ve been involved with dozens. It’s all hate and love and loyalty and guilt. You know what they say: you can choose your friends but you have to make do with the family you’re given.’

Benson was sitting at the bar when Crane got there, smoking as usual and sipping a half of bitter. Dave, behind the bar, didn’t need to be told to set up a gin and tonic for Crane.

‘I was with the Jacksons last evening.’

Benson nodded. They got on a little better these days, but Crane knew the Donna Jackson business was going to cause resentment. Knew why and to some extent could sympathize. ‘Yes, well,’ he said, ‘they’ll not let it go, and if they’re hell-bent on using a private man it had better be you.’

‘I just wish they didn’t have to break into their bit of savings.’

Benson sighed. ‘We wanted a result on Donna more than anything we did last year, well, you’ve seen what decent people the Jacksons are, salt of the earth. But we got nowhere and neither will you, Frank. That’s not sour grapes.’

But it was, partly. Crane said, ‘Why did it take this youngster to find the body? Surely strollers must have seen it? In summer, vertical sunlight?’

‘Too murky. That’s why they don’t want kids swimming in it. You can only see clearly for five or six feet. It must be ten, twelve deep.’

‘Just how was the body weighted?’

‘Plastic sack, full of biggish stones.’

‘Does that mean he’d taken the stones with him? Which would mean it wasn’t a spur of the moment thing.’

‘No, there were plenty of stones available. There are two reservoirs at Tanglewood, yes? One above and beyond the other. Well, they buttress the banks at the sluice-way end of each reservoir with tons of stones, all a nice handy size. So we don’t think it needed to be premeditated. He’d probably need to go back to his car for the sack to put the stones in and the cord to attach the sack to the body, but plenty of blokes carry stuff like that around in the boot.’

‘Agreed, but if he throttled her on the spur of the moment he showed plenty of presence of mind in getting shot of the body. She was strangled, I seem to remember?’

Benson nodded grudgingly. He didn’t much like any of this, but he reported to Terry Jones, and Terry Jones would have told him to tell Crane anything he wanted to know.

‘They can prove that, if nothing else. Her being in the water for three months did nothing for the forensics. You’re right, he did know how to use his noddle in a tight situation. But the low life we had in the frame could have scored on both counts. Capable of losing it and doing her in and finding the bottle to make a fair fist of getting shot of the body.’

‘We’re talking Bobby Mahon?’

‘We know it’s him. We both know most homicides are by people connected to the victim: lovers, spouses, offspring, neighbours. He fits the pattern like a wet T-shirt. Known to be crazy jealous and too handy with the dukes. We’ve seen everyone else that Donna knew that we could trace, but none of them had reason to be with her at Tanglewood the night she went missing and they all had alibis anyway.’

‘Where does Mahon say he was?’

‘At home, breaking out the six-packs. And his mum, his dad and three of his mates were breaking them out with him, and they all give him the get out.’

‘So they’re all lying?’

‘We’re talking people who are never in. And on a Saturday? Do me a favour. And with his dad being that evil, lying scrote Dougie Mahon—’

‘Not Dougie the Fence?’

‘See what I mean? And Myrtle Mahon, she does her pocket money tricks on Saturdays. Can you see her in the house Saturday night playing knock-out whist? Well, we can’t put the bugger inside without any kind of evidence, but we know it’s him. I didn’t say this, but we stopped looking for anyone else months ago. But no one on the Willows thinks it was anyone but Mahon. Not just us.’

‘Late evening,’ Crane said, ‘the gays drift into the reservoir area. Did you give any of them a shake? One of them might have seen Mahon.’

‘Christ, you were in the force. They’re like the toms, blind, deaf and dumb unless it concerns one of their own. They don’t even admit to going there, not to us. Apart from that they do their cruising on the upper level. The kid was dumped on the lower.’

Crane felt like sighing but didn’t. Benson would love any sign of how impossible he felt it was to wring any more from a case a bunch of skilled policemen and women had given up on so long ago. ‘You want another drink, Ted?’

‘Best not. Said I’d try and be in early tonight. The kids …’

One day, maybe they would buy each other drinks as they’d done in the past, and only then would Crane know their old close friendship was genuinely on the mend. He said, ‘I had a private word with Patsy Jackson last night. She mentioned a Marvin.’

‘The brother. Comes between Patsy and Donna age-wise. He has a very nice dark suit he wears for court appearances.’

‘He’s done time?’

‘Burglary, more than one conviction. He mixes with the Dougie Mahon mob too. The rotten apple in the Jackson barrel, the others are as straight as a stick.’

‘And he doesn’t figure in any of this? Wouldn’t he know where Bobby really was that night if he’s in bed with the Mahons?’

‘We don’t think so. We had him in, Christ, we had half the Willows in. But he wasn’t at the Mahons that night and checks out, and the Mahons aren’t pretending he was one of the ones who was. There’s nowhere to go, Frank.’

Crane wasn’t prepared to agree, not if he was going to take the Jacksons’ money. ‘Donna herself, Ted. Patsy reckoned she might already have been living a dodgy life.’

‘We’re certain she was putting it about, but no definite proof. I mean, he’s seriously bad news that photography bloke, Clive Fletcher. We know he’s into video filth, but we can’t prove that either, and that’s another story. As far as Donna goes, he checks out. But we got bad vibes about her, felt she might have been her own worst enemy.’

It was the second time Crane had heard similar words. ‘What about Hellewell? Leaf and Petal man?’

Benson said, ‘He seemed kosher. Good looker. I reckon he had the hots for her. He wasn’t alone, not by a long shot. But he looked to be in a stable marriage and his story for where he was that night’s as tight as a crab’s arse.’ He stubbed out his final cigarette, prepared to go. ‘Do you know Geoff Anderson?’