Текст книги "Dead Dream Girl"

Автор книги: Richard Haley

Соавторы: Richard Haley
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‘Standard’s crime reporter? Took over from old Harold? The Jacksons mentioned him.’

‘He gave it the column inches. It was a story that had everything going for it anyway, but he was like a dog with a bone. He’s young, bright, very ambitious. Sharp – he couldn’t have been more than five minutes behind us at the SOC.’

‘How could he manage that?’

‘He sweet-talks the WPCs into dropping him the word. Charm the knickers off a Carmelite nun. Anyway, he lived and breathed the story. Can’t be faulted for following it up either. Rings every week: any developments?’

‘The Jacksons think it might help to have a word with him.’

‘He went into the background of everyone involved with a toothcomb. What he doesn’t know about the Jackson killing isn’t worth knowing.’

‘I’ll look him up.’

‘All the best,’ Benson said flatly. ‘All you need to do is break Mahon’s alibi.’

Crane was to remember those words before very long with a wry smile.

TWO

The Standard’s library was both state-of-the-art and user friendly. There was a small room where people wanting to study back numbers could sit at a VDU undisturbed.

Crane was rapidly able to key to the relevant editions, scroll through the pages and bring up the reports on Donna’s death. He started with the front page splash, when Liam Patterson, the underwater swimmer, had touched first a plastic bag that seemed full of something hard and uneven, which was connected by a cord to something soft and smooth. ‘DONNA’S BODY FOUND’, the headline blared.

A body was discovered in the lower of the Tanglewood reservoirs, a well-known local beauty spot, and has been identified as that of Donna Jackson missing from home for three months. The discovery was made by an eleven-year-old boy swimming in the reservoir, despite being forbidden to do so on many occasions by rangers. The police, while taking a strong line on this dangerous practice, admit that in this case it has enabled them, however tragically, to bring their long, dedicated search for Donna to an end. They can reveal that they are to begin immediately re-interviewing everyone known to have been in contact with her, and are optimistic of being able to make an early arrest of the person responsible for the savage killing of this pretty and popular young woman …

There was a quarter-page photo of Donna Jackson’s face. The expert lighting and technique indicated professionalism. Maybe the man called Fletcher had taken it. She really had been incredibly attractive. Smooth, silky, shoulder-length hair in a highlighted honey colour, perfect regular teeth, a small, well-shaped nose, big round eyes that would have seemed luminous even without a key light. The eyes riveted. They seemed to hint at an odd soulful quality, a refinement, an innocence even, that seemed well out of synch with what Crane was beginning to learn about her. He held an old envelope over the left side of her face, then transferred it to the right. Each side seemed a perfect, near geometrical match for the other. He’d read that this precision of feature in an already attractive woman was an extra subliminal turn-on for men.

The man he kept hearing about, Geoff Anderson, was bylined at the head of the report, and on the ones that followed. They became briefer as the search for the killer went on, and though a man was reported to be ‘helping the police with their enquiries’, no other reference was made to him.

Earlier reports, those published when Donna had simply been missing, included interviews Anderson had had with the Jacksons, plus several with various of Donna’s friends and work mates. He’d described her more than once as a high-spirited and outgoing eighteen-year-old with dazzling looks, who was highly regarded at the Leaf and Petal garden centre, and quite possibly on the verge of a brilliant career as a fashion model. She liked to be out and about a lot, but had never been in any kind of trouble and had always been seen at home as an ideal and much-loved daughter and sister.

Crane sat back sceptically. It was all too anodyne. He’d been given the impression Anderson had his ear to the ground. The young woman he was writing about could have been any one of the bright kids you could see most nights in the city pubs and clubs. But there’d been a darker side to Donna Jackson. A Donna who was streetwise and needed no lessons in pulling the men. A Donna who seemed to have a dangerous fascination for being handed a bunch of fives. No hint of any of that in Anderson’s reports, though he was said to have researched her background intensively. Could that mean he’d taken Connie and Malc’s rose-tinted view of their younger daughter at face value? Acrime reporter supposed to have a hard nose?

‘I’d not read on. They never do get their man.’ Crane turned around. ‘Geoff Anderson, Mr Crane. I saw your name in the book. I’ve heard quite a bit about you.’

Crane gave a crooked smile. ‘None of it good, I daresay.’

‘Terry Jones always speaks very highly of you.’

‘Until my spot of trouble, yes, I know.’

Crane didn’t want to talk about it and Anderson could tell. He perched on the edge of a side table. He looked to be mid-twenties and had fair wavy hair, dark blue eyes, a bluntish nose and a full wide mouth. He was strongly built and near six foot but carried no extra weight. He wore a pale blue poplin shirt, open at the neck, fawn woollen trousers and brown loafers.

‘I don’t see a man in your line looking up the Donna Jackson story out of idle curiosity,’ Anderson said, smiling.

‘I was aiming to contact you, Geoff. Connie and Malc, you obviously know them well, have hired me and want me to see if I can turn up anything new about the killing.’

‘About Bobby Mahon?’

‘Everyone’s keen to write his name on the charge sheet.’

He shrugged. ‘He’s not helped himself. If he’s innocent why not admit where he really was the night she disappeared? He certainly wasn’t at home playing three-card brag. I had a go at them myself, Mahon’s pals. Were they really at his place that night? I had a go at the neighbours: brick wall. They said that if the Mahons said they were at home that night they were at home, wherever they really were. On the Willows no one messes with the Mahons. But if they weren’t at home where were they, especially master Bobby? Nowhere I could find out.’

‘You really have given it a lot of time,’ Crane said evenly, not wanting to give any hint of the frustration the case was already giving him.

‘The story had legs. A local cause célèbre. Just about everyone on the Willows knew her, because of those incredible looks. It was like someone had killed a rare butterfly. It got everyone worried about their own teenage daughters, in case the killer struck again.’

‘Knew her yourself?’

He shook his head. ‘I’d seen her around. I trawl the scene: the pubs, the clubs, the casinos. You couldn’t miss her, seemed to be everywhere. You should have seen her, strutting her stuff with the strobes flickering on her hair. Out of this world. Why do you ask?’

Crane gave him a steady look. ‘It seems to me you’ve written her up like the girl next door. I’ve already picked up that that wasn’t the case.’

He gave Crane a wry grin. ‘You’re right, it wasn’t. She had a taste for the wild side. Could have been doing flesh-market photos for Fletcher, if not worse, we’ll never know for sure. I’m pretty certain she was screwing around, probably for the loot, but no punter’s going to come forward and put his hand up. On top of that, she played her cards incredibly close, so close even her pals didn’t really know what she was up to, even if they had a bloody good idea.’

‘Why not write some of that up, or at least hint at it? She certainly wasn’t helping herself to stay out of trouble.’

Anderson watched him in a brief silence. ‘The wench was dead, Frank, and I’d spent a lot of time with Connie and Malc. They had such a shed-load of misery on their backs I felt it would finish them off if there was any hint their beautiful girl was less than perfect. I couldn’t prove anything, it was all hints and murmurs, after all, so I wrote her up as they wanted her to be seen. You’re looking cynical.’ He smiled in the engaging way he had. Crane guessed it must have got him across many a hostile doorstep.

He said, ‘When did a seasoned reporter ever worry too much what anyone thought if he believed he was telling the truth?’

Anderson shook his head, still smiling. ‘You don’t miss too many tricks do you? All right, I left out the dodgy bits. And why, because the editor wanted it that way, and he said the public wanted it that way. You’ve seen her picture, no one wanted to believe that that innocent-looking slip of a kid was anything other than she seemed. The killing was big local news. It was also a circulation booster. So I didn’t bend the truth, I just left bits out. We call it editing.’

‘And that’s why you’re so keen for a result? Another circulation boost? Benson says you follow it up on a weekly basis.’

The reporter was again silent for a short time. ‘Between you and me, Frank,’ he said finally, ‘I see London as my next career move, working for one of the nationals. Sounds a bit of a cliché, I know. And whether Donna’s killer’s nailed or not, I’m aiming to write the big one, the in-depth feature about Donna’s life and times. The Willows is falling apart and we know why: unemployment, broken homes, drugs, teenage pregnancies, apathy. The situation with the inner cities has been written up endlessly. Well, I want my feature to be based on Donna’s short tragic life. Donna will symbolize the Willows’ decline and the Willows in the end destroying one of its rarest possessions. Even if it wasn’t Mahon who killed her, I’m certain her fate was dictated by her environment. I want this article to touch the spot, maybe even taken up and syndicated. It could do wonders for my CV.’

Crane nodded. That had to be the real reason he’d not wanted to write up Donna as a streetwise tramp, or even hint at it. He needed an apparently artless innocent to contrast with the slum the Willows was becoming. Journalists were an odd breed. He accepted that they had feelings like everyone else, yet people’s tragedies were their livelihood and their ambitions were based on them. Though Crane had to remind himself that he also was using Donna’s fate as his own livelihood, if not a welcome change from routine.

‘Did you have any dealings with Mahon?’ he asked.

‘I talked to him when they let him go. Asked him about their relationship and whether he suspected anyone himself. Tried to catch him out. Fat chance, if two bobbies hammering away couldn’t break his story. He just banged on about it not being him, he’d been at home, the same old bullshit. Near to tears at times.’

‘I’d heard he could get emotional.’

‘You aim to see him yourself?’

‘I’ll have to. If I can’t break that alibi of his I can forget it. He just might not be guilty, but there’s no point in looking any further until I know for certain. Where do I find him? The Goose and Guinea?’

‘I’ll go with you, if you like. He’s always there early doors, except when he’s sitting quietly at home the one night his girlfriend ends up at the bottom of a reservoir.’

Crane’s instinct was to turn him down. He worked alone and Anderson could be a distraction. On the other hand, it might help if the ice was broken with Mahon by someone who knew him. ‘You can find the time?’

‘No problem. Mahon might think he’s off the hook now. Could give him a nice little turn, me drifting back into his life with a PI.’

The sort of turn that might just get him to let something slip.

‘Free this evening?’

‘Unless something comes up between now and then. I’ll contact you.’

‘Thanks a lot.’ Crane gave him his card, gave a final glance at the VDU, then cleared the screen. ‘I’m finished here.’

They walked from the library and halted at the top of the steps, Crane to leave, Anderson to return to the big open-plan office he shared with the other journalists, from where the soft endless sound of phone bells could just be heard.

‘Look,’ Anderson said, ‘there’s not much I haven’t ferreted out about Donna and who she knew. I’ll do anything I can to help. And, like you, I don’t work nine to five.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Crane said evenly, still not keen to get too involved with a reporter who would very much have his own agenda. At the same time, he had to admit that Anderson was sitting on gold-plated information it would take him hours to put together himself.

They stood on the balcony overlooking the reception area. A sepia-tinted wall of glass encased the ultra modern complex and silent cars and buses seemed to float along the road below, their windows and brightwork flashing in the afternoon sun. ‘It’s not just the brownie points, Frank,’ Anderson said, as if he’d sensed what Crane had been thinking earlier. ‘I really did feel sorry about the kid. We all did. She wasn’t a very nice girl, but I honestly think she was a victim of her background. The Willows has a lot to answer for.’

Just then, three young women came out of the open-plan room, all prettyish and cheerful looking. ‘Geoff, you’re back?’ one of them said. ‘Now you see him, now you don’t. You are coming to the Tav, aren’t you?’

‘Darlings, how could I refuse?’ he said, giving them his peculiarly endearing smile. Apart from being good looking he was also fanciable, going by the way they clustered round him. Crane knew the two things didn’t always go together. One of the women, who had green eyes, rosy cheeks and black curly hair, was clearly mad about the bloke.

‘All right,’ she said, ‘see you there then, and if anything should pop up let’s hope it’s nothing to do with work.’

‘Saucy.…’

They went off giggling, the dark-haired one turning back for a last glance.

‘Tell you what,’ Anderson said, still grinning faintly, ‘it’s a custom here, meeting up at the Tavern, whoever’s around, about six. Your office is in the Old Quarter, why not drop in? I’ll know by then if I’m free and we can go on to the Goose.’

The Tavern occupied the ground floor of what had once been a wool warehouse. It had become known as the Glass-house. There was glass everywhere, along the walls and the bar facings. The tables were glass, the chandeliers dripped shards of it, partitions had frosted glass panels. It drew a young crowd.

Eight or nine people sat at one of the oblong central tables when Crane walked in, and he could hear the rapid gun fire of Anderson’s voice. ‘Some things just are,’ he was saying. ‘There’s no rational explanation, they just are. Why are women called Dawn always overweight and have badly bleached hair? Have you ever known a man called Bernard to be entirely right in the head? Have you ever been able to watch any film that had heart in the title? See what I mean?’

‘How about wind?’ Crane said from behind him. ‘I have the same trouble with films that have wind in the title. Gone with the being the exception that proves the rule.’

‘Frank!’ He jumped to his feet. ‘Let me get you a drink. This is Frank Crane, folks, and we’re helping each other on a piece of work. What are you drinking, pal?’

He went off to the bar and the others smiled and nodded. Crane recognized one or two of the faces from the little photos that went with their bylines at the top of articles on education and entertainment and community affairs.

‘Your face rings some kind of a bell.’ It was the woman with the black curly hair Crane had seen earlier. The seat he’d taken was next to hers.

‘I’m ex-police,’ he told her, ‘and now working as a PI. I’ve been involved in a recent high profile case that got my face in your paper, though I try very hard to keep it out.’

‘I see. I’m Carol. What are you two cooperating on?’

‘Donna Jackson, yes? Her people have hired me to see if I can turn up anything new on the killer. Geoff has a lot of useful information.’

She sighed, her eyes leaving Crane’s to rest on Anderson’s lean form where he stood at the bar. ‘I might have known.’ She looked back at him. ‘They’ve all got one, you know,’ she said ruefully. ‘Crime reporters. An outsize bee in the bonnet. There’s always one that’s insoluble and causes a hell of a stir that they’ll never let go. There are crime reporters with grey hair and paunches who are still hell-bent on tracing Lord Lucan, for God’s sake, and he’s been declared officially dead.’

Crane shrugged. ‘I’m sure you’re right, but his information is valuable to me if he’s willing to share it.’

‘Oh, Donna Jackson …’

Crane seemed to hear an echo of Patsy’s voice when they’d sat in his car. Maybe Anderson had given so much time to the story that Carol had begun to feel very neglected. Assuming she was his girlfriend.

Then she gave him a little impish grin. ‘You’ll have to watch him, you know, our Geoff. He’s a great guy, but he tends to take over and run things. He’s also got a clever line in implying his information gathering was more than useful in bringing certain villains to a court room.’

He watched her. None of that worried him much. He’d be working alone on the Jackson case, whatever Anderson imagined, with this single exception of going with him to see Mahon. He’d already sensed his nuisance value, having had experience of handling reporters from his days in the force, when flawed reporting at the wrong moment could damage a sensitive investigation. All he wanted from Anderson was what he knew, and as far as he was concerned, if Donna’s killer was ever found, the reporter could then claim all the glory going. Crane was a man who’s anonymity was crucial to the work he did.

He knew Anderson was back by the way Carol’s grin suddenly ignited into a warm smile. ‘There you go, Frank,’ Anderson said, putting down a gin and tonic in front of him. ‘Any amusing deaths, you guys, as Bowra used to say?’ he said to the others. ‘Any juicy bits of scandal among the city fathers? I’m picking up a rumour from a London chum who reckons a heavily married Blair Babe is finding her way to the pied-à-terre of a heavily married junior minister on a career path. He thinks they sit in the dark when they’re not playing gee-gees in the dark. Now who does that remind you of?’

Fifteen minutes passed, with Anderson’s rapid delivery keeping them amused and intrigued by turns. Apart from being attractive to women he seemed also to be very much a man’s man. It was the engaging smile, the hand that briefly touched an arm. He was also a good listener, despite being so irrepressible himself. He had charm in spades. Crane distrusted charm, as it could have an ugly side when it didn’t work, but he had to admit that in Anderson’s game it was virtually essential.

‘Are you free tonight, Geoff?’ Carol said, at a brief pause in the animated chat. ‘There’s The Constant Gardener showing at the Odeon. Fancy a bite at Frère Antoine’s and catching the second house?’

‘Carol, beloved, I should have explained. I’m going on somewhere from here with Frank. Another night, yes?’

‘Right you are,’ she said, with a brightness that didn’t quite cover what Crane could tell was intense disappointment.

‘Let’s go then, Frank. Chummy should now be ensconced. My car’s in Vicar Lane so I’ll see you up there in about fifteen, OK?’

The Goose and Guinea had been built when the Willows was being developed in the late 1930s. It ran catty-cornered to the main road and at the end of the estate’s principal drive. Apart from being dated it also had no style. Built of shiny, yellowish brick, it had a flat roof, odd, rounded corners and long, narrow, metal-framed windows. It had a dubious reputation but was well run, mainly because the landlord was built like a medium-sized wardrobe.

They went in and Crane bought drinks. The pub was open-plan, with an annexe at the rear in which a few young T-shirted men played pool. Another man sat watching them gloomily.

‘Mahon’s the one sitting. Must have been played out. That’s handy. Let’s go sit with him.’

Crane followed him across the main room, quiet at present, to the banquette seating beyond the table.

‘Hello, Bobby. Thought I might find you here. Mind if we join you for a few minutes? How are you doing these days, old son?’

Crane had to hand it to him, his manner with a possible killer was exactly as warm as it had been with his colleagues at the Glass-house. Mahon peered slightly in the gloom that surrounded the sharp even glare of the pool table’s canopied lamps.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said flatly.

‘This is Frank Crane, Bobby. He’s a very skilled private investigator. Malc and Connie have engaged him to see if he can throw any light on Donna’s murder, seeing as the police have got nowhere.’

Mahon gave an indifferent nod. ‘So ’e can try and prove it was me?’ he muttered. ‘That’s why they’ve taken ’im on. Malc and Connie never thought it was no one else.’

‘I’ve got an open mind, Bobby,’ Crane said quietly. ‘I doubt there’ll be much the police missed. I’m just going to take a fresh look and talk to the people who knew her.’

‘No good talking to me, mister. I don’t know nothing about that murder. I only wish I did. The police never stopped trying to pin it on me, even though I were sat at ’ome with me mates.’

On an instinct, both Crane and Anderson let the silence roll, in the hope that it might encourage Mahon to say something, anything else that might give them a lead. But Mahon seemed sunk in apathy. He had pale blue eyes and thick fair hair scraped back from his forehead in the ponytail Donna had been so scathing about. It was knotted by a narrow blue ribbon, a grotesquely demure touch. He had a broad nose and thick lips that gave him a slightly feral appearance, though it didn’t detract from his roughish good looks. He was strongly built and wore a T-shirt of an unattractive shade of green, faded jeans and black moccasin boots. He had what the police tended to call a ‘building site’ tan.

Finally breaking the silence, he said in a low voice, ‘You don’t know what it’s like.’

‘What’s that, Bobby?’ Anderson asked in a kindly tone.

‘No fucker believing you. Not just the police, they never believe no one. It’s Connie and Malc and them.’

‘It can be very upsetting. I’ve talked to an awful lot of people who’ve had the same problem. They’ve got a perfectly honest alibi but because they knew the victim so well it gets the Chinese whispers going.’

‘I didn’t feel good that night, Geoff. I wasn’t up for it, getting a few down in ’ere and then doing the clubs. I’d come over all shivery. I told the lads I was ’aving a night in, so they said they’d ’ave one as well, we’d play some poker.’

Mahon’s words sounded rehearsed even now, a year on. Crane wondered how many times he’d recited them to the police. He found it impossible to believe that the sort of men Mahon knocked about with would sacrifice a Saturday night out because a mate had come over all shivery.

Crane spoke in as sympathetic a tone as Anderson’s. ‘These things happen, Bobby. I don’t suppose it helped much that your mum and dad had decided to stay in too that night.’

‘Me mam were worried about me! I’m never sick. I only wish they ’ad gone out. Folk wouldn’t keep saying we’d all ’ad our ’eads together.’

Crane had expected to find a Mahon who’d be intensely guarded, if not hostile, but he seemed to want to talk, if only to justify himself. His friends would have heard enough, months ago, about the Donna killing, and probably wouldn’t listen any more. And maybe Mahon still wanted to talk so compulsively he was even ready to make do with him and Anderson.

‘Look, Bobby,’ Crane said, ‘I’d be really grateful for any help you could give me. You know who Donna’s contacts were. You must have your own suspicions?’

His pale blue eyes moodily met Crane’s. ‘Never trusted that arsehole she worked for. Leaf and Petal bloke. Seemed fond to me, know what I mean? Kept ’er on that winter. I thought aye aye, ’cause she knew fuck all about plants and that. They ’ad a Christmas do and I picked ’er up. Didn’t like the way ’e was eyeballing ’er in that tight dress. Fond. I could ’ave flattened the bugger.’

‘You think he might have been trying to get off with her?’

‘Sure of it. Mind you,’ he said dolefully, ‘who wasn’t with Donna?’ His eyes had a haunted look in the smoky dimness.

‘Trouble is, Bobby, Joe Hellewell’s alibi’s rock solid, just like yours,’ Anderson pointed out in his friendly way.

‘Fletcher then. I told ’er time and again not to ’ave nothing to do with the slimy sod.’

‘Same problem there, old son. The police cleared him.’

Crane said, ‘Bobby, I don’t want to upset you more than I have to, but do you think it’s possible Donna was seeing someone else on a regular basis? She was quite young, wasn’t she? Maybe she didn’t feel ready for a settled relationship.’

‘That’s what all the bother were about, weren’t it?’ he broke out. ‘Er seeing other blokes behind me back. All right, I ’ad a one-night-stand now and then, didn’t I, but that’s different, innit?’

Crane knew it was, in the male dinosaur climate of the Willows. ‘Do you know who any of these blokes might have been? It could be very important.’

‘She’d never let on to me, mister. She were always so close. She thought I’d go and put ’em in ’ospital. Too right.’

‘It must have made you very cross, Bobby,’ Anderson said mildly, in his deceptively leading way.

Mahon looked irritably from one to the other of them. ‘I didn’t ’it ’er ’cause of that,’ he said shortly. ‘That’s what they tried to make out, that I knocked ’er about ’cause of the two-timing. Well, I never. I only ’it ’er two or three times and that was ’cause she wound me up rotten. You don’t know what she could be like: said I weren’t going nowhere and me family were crap and me wheels should be on the tip and … and …’ He broke off, reddening. Crane guessed she’d probably jeered at his sexual technique too. If she’d slept around she’d be able to make value judgements. He felt no sympathy for a man who’d knock a woman about, but Mahon was only saying what Patsy had said, that Donna had had a fatal instinct for picking on all those things about yourself you least wanted to hear.

He caught Anderson’s eye, shrugged. They were getting nowhere. Crane didn’t even have an instinct about Mahon’s innocence or guilt. Bobby came from a criminal background, that was the trouble. It put him ahead of the game when it came to lying his way out of things, including murder. Yet for once in a blue moon he just could have been at home on a Saturday night and had the bad luck to choose a blue moon night when his girlfriend’s body was hitting the bottom of a reservoir.

‘Well, thanks for your help, Bobby,’ he said politely. ‘And I really am very sorry about Donna.’

‘We’ll let you get on with your pool,’ Anderson added. ‘Where’s Cliff, by the way? Unusual not to see you two together.’

That seemed to leave him even more depressed. ‘Don’t know,’ he muttered. ‘’aven’t seen ’im in weeks.’

‘Don’t say you’ve had a bust up with your best friend on top of everything else?’

Mahon took out a cigarette and lit it from a disposable lighter with a trembling hand. He sat slumped on the banquette, gazing with unfocused eyes over the pool table, where the others were chalking the tips of their cues and sipping from fresh pints.

‘Coming in, Bobby mate?’

He shook his head. ‘Next frame, Heppo.’

As the balls began clicking again, he suddenly started to cry, the tears rapidly welling and trickling down his tanned cheeks. He looked to be in a state of total despair, and maybe he was, but Crane knew from long experience that guilty men could weep just as bitterly as the innocent.

‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ he said once more, in a thin mewing tone. ‘All of ’em, the ’ole bleeding Willows, looking at you like you was shit. Crossing the street when they see you coming. Reckoning you’re not there. People you’ve known all your fucking life. Mrs Bateson … she were like a nana to me once, last week she spit at me! None of the totty’ll go near me, I’m that bad news. It gets round the clubs and them bitches won’t even dance with me, let alone …’

Crane thought, who could blame them? The story would be about that if you glanced at another man Bobby gave you a mouthful of signet rings and if you went out with one he topped you. And this would have gone on since Donna’s body had been winched up nine months ago. No wonder he seemed near-suicidal.

Anderson touched Mahon’s arm. ‘We know how you’re feeling, Bobby. We’ve seen it all. People can be very unfair. The police have cleared you, why won’t they accept it? In Australia the Aborigines call it pointing the bone. If they decide someone’s done something really bad in one of their little communities they actually point a bone at him, and after that no one will have anything to do with him. He’s out of it. They sometimes go off and die because they’re so unhappy. It’s a lousy deal, being cut off by your own people and that’s what they’re doing to you on the Willows. They’re not even trying to give you a fair shake and it’s just not on.’

Crane glanced at the reporter. He sounded sympathetic, but he’d managed to come up with an image that had left Mahon even more distressed. He’d gone pale, the cigarette smouldering between stained fingers. He wondered if this was the flip side of the Anderson charm. He’d spent untold hours on the story, maybe he was convinced it could only be Mahon. And if Mahon wasn’t going in front of a jury, why not rub it in that the jury of the Willows wouldn’t be a soft touch?

‘I didn’t do it, Geoff,’ he gasped. ‘I were crackers about ’er. I wanted ’er to live with me, we could ’ave put us name down for a council flat. It done me ’ead in, just clipping ’er them one or two times, I felt that bad about it. I couldn’t ’ave done that carry-on at Tanglewood, couldn’t ’ave. Christ, why won’t no one believe me?’

The two men walked across the car park to claim their motors. Crane still wasn’t entirely sure about Mahon’s guilt, though he’d not known a case where the evidence for it stacked up so credibly. No wonder the police had shelved it and moved on, having made every possible check. There was an outside chance the killer was someone who’d covered his tracks too well, but if the police couldn’t get Mahon out of the frame he knew they’d not look further, their resources were too limited. He said, ‘Well, thanks, Geoff. At least I got the measure of the beast, if nothing else.’