Текст книги "Dead Dream Girl"

Автор книги: Richard Haley

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FOUR

‘It would have saved us such a lot of heartache if he’d owned up right at the start.’ Connie wiped away tears. ‘We couldn’t begin to cope with it in the first place, our lovely girl … but to have him swaggering round the Willows, giving out it had nothing to do with him …’

‘Oh, Mam.’ Patsy put a hand on her arm. ‘He didn’t swagger, you know he didn’t, not with folks turning their backs on him, pretending he wasn’t there. He knew what a terrible thing he’d done, knew as well as we did. He couldn’t have meant to do it.’

‘Won’t bring her back though!’ Malc broke out, face crumpled in grief. ‘Whether he meant it or not. I’d see the bugger hang. It’s only a pity they ever done away with it. He’ll be out in his thirties, they don’t even serve a proper sentence these days. I’d see the bugger hang.’ He put hands over his face and began to sob.

‘Malc, love, don’t take on …’

Crane could detect both sadness and exasperation in Patsy’s glance. She’d have to go through it all again and she’d already had too much, even though she’d loved Donna too – when she wasn’t bitterly envying her her glamour.

‘We don’t know how to thank you, Frank,’ Connie said in a tremulous tone. ‘I can’t think what you did.’

‘Not a lot, Connie, to be honest,’ Crane said, putting a hand over hers. ‘He was in a state when Geoff and I talked to him. We could see it was all beginning to get on top of him, the way people on the Willows were treating him. And then Geoff telling him you’d set me on to make a fresh start and that I didn’t give in too easily …’

Silence fell again, one of the many during the past emotional half-hour. Crane couldn’t get it together, couldn’t quite believe it. The Mahons were a criminal family. They didn’t do guilty pleas. If you were up for a crime, any crime, murder included, and you got away with it that was an end of the matter. You’d won.

But that powerful image Anderson had conjured up. The community of the Willows pointing the bone. It could be that the reporter had swung it. How much longer could Mahon have stood it before he’d had to slink away? And how he would survive away from the society that was all he’d ever known? He’d have ended up living rough, the English equivalent of an Aborigine taking himself wretchedly off to die alone in the outback. Prison must have seemed the better option.

‘He’ll know he’s born if they bang him up in Armley!’ Malc broke out again, ending the silence. ‘If you’re in for thieving join the club, but killing an innocent little kid like Donna …’

‘Leave it now, love,’ Connie said quietly. As Crane got up to go, she jumped to her feet, put her arms round him and kissed him on the cheek. ‘We all thank you, Frank, from the bottom of our hearts.’

They went with him into the narrow hall. ‘Would you drop me at the Conway, Frank?’ Patsy asked. ‘I walked over tonight.’

He nodded, waved goodbye to Connie and Malc, people he’d probably never see again, as with so many of the people he’d known briefly as they went through their bad times. But he’d not forget them.

‘I like your new hairdo,’ he told her, as he saw her into the car.

She flushed, shrugged, feigned indifference. ‘Just thought I’d try something new.’

It fell in a straight simple style. The tousled look had emphasized the plainness of her features, but the new look had given them depth. She made Crane think of those actresses destined from girlhood to play mature parts, and who would only really come into their own in their thirties. As with luck, she might.

‘The supervisor likes it, but the girls think it doesn’t suit me,’ she said uneasily.

‘Probably just jealous,’ he said, drawing up outside Conway House.

‘You’ll be too busy to come in for a drink,’ she said flatly. There was no hope in her voice. Crane had gone back once. Plain girls from the Willows learnt very early not to get carried away.

‘I’d like a drink.’

She gave him one of her confused glances. It renewed his sense of guilt. She’d had it right, he was too busy to go for a drink. The case was over, and so was her usefulness. Except for the one thing he still needed help with. He wondered why she’d suddenly had this costly new hairdo. It was almost as if she’d picked up on the bad vibes he’d had for the bird’s nest it had been before. She’d also toned down the mask of make-up as if realizing it didn’t go with the hair. Odd. She knew he’d want a G and T. When they were sitting down he couldn’t stifle a groan of pain.

‘Whatever’s the matter?’

‘When I got home last night, someone belted me in the guts.’

She gasped in shock, eyes widening.

‘There were two of them. Hoodies. There was something funny about it. The one who gave me the knuckles, I think it could have been a woman. I got a smell of scent. If it was a woman she was tough, but if the bloke holding me had been doing the punching I’d have been in A and E.’

‘What … did it smell like?’

‘Strong. Sort of spicy.’

‘It could have been Myrtle Mahon,’ she said slowly. ‘She goes in for the heavy perfumes. Hefty too, knows how to take care of herself. A punter once tried to short-change her and she did put him in A and E.’

‘The bloke said I had to lay off Donna’s case. Well-built, about your height. Too big to be Dougie, as I remember him.’

‘You’re right. Dougie’s small, wiry. Never gets involved in the kickings himself. Has minders for that.’

‘Any idea who it could be then?’

She watched him in a long rueful silence, then sighed heavily. ‘It was probably Marvin.’

‘Your … brother?’

‘As if Mam and Dad hadn’t enough on their plate. When I heard the whispers about Dougie and those fancy guns I just knew Marvin would be involved. He once worked for a security firm, servicing intruder alarms. He knows how to fix them so they don’t go off and ring through to the bobbies. He’s always been in with Dougie. What will you do?’

He watched her for a few seconds. He’d once been police and his every instinct was to get Marvin’s collar felt. He said, ‘I’m going to forget it, Patsy, if it’s your brother. I just wondered what their game was, duffing me up like that. I reckon I know now.’

‘Don’t worry about him on my account,’ she said brusquely. ‘If he had to go inside again I honestly think he’d pack it in, the knock-off. He’d have a better living going straight, they all would.’ She fell silent for a time, then added, with reluctance, ‘I don’t like saying this, and I’ve only ever said it to you, but I think it was a weight off his mind when Donna went in the reservoir.’ Crane watched her again and waited. She said, ‘I can’t be sure, but I think Donna might have been leaning on him. He could make decent money now and then. He’d drive for Dougie, fix the alarms. He was a key bloke, really. I think Donna could find out what he was up to from Bobby. I’d not put it past her to have wheedled money out of him so she’d not spread it about. She always used the poor bugger. Effie hated her.’

‘Effie?’

‘Marvin’s live-in.’

‘Donna wasn’t really very nice, was she?’

She sighed again. ‘You needed to know her. She could twist people round her little finger. Not just blokes. She always looked such an innocent kid, as if she didn’t know the way to the end of the street. She could get you to do things for her and make it seem she was doing you a favour.’

‘I know the type well.’ He got to his feet, wincing.

‘Are you badly bruised? I’ve got some arnica, it’s really, really good for bruising. I’ll get it.’

‘That’s very thoughtful, Patsy.’

When he’d gone she sat over another drink, thinking about him and what a lovely bloke he was. Tough, not complaining about his injuries though he must still have been in pain. So good with Mam and Dad. Never saying anything he didn’t mean. But he liked her new hairdo, so that must mean he’d disliked the way she’d had it before. There was something about Frank Crane that made you feel good. He just needed to be around. He hardly ever smiled, but when he did …

Benson stood at the bar. The second Crane joined him he said, ‘Look, Frank, this Bobby Mahon carry-on, it’s solved nothing, it’s just made things a bloody sight worse.’

Crane watched him, absently handing the barman a note.

‘The silly sod comes down the nick, right, tears running down his face, says yes, it was him throttled her. So we dig out the file, get the tape going, tell him to get on with it.’ He stabbed out his cigarette, felt for another. ‘And we begin to find that nothing adds up, not one detail. Christ, we’ve got the SOC diagrams and measurements in front of us, we know the exact spot her body was fished out, the things she was wearing, how the bag of stones was attached, all of that. And nothing he told us, nothing at all, tallied with the facts.’

He inhaled smoke deeply. ‘What a bloody mess. He just kept saying, “I done it, I done it, what more do you want?” and weeping and sobbing, but he couldn’t tell it like it was. We rushed the bugger up to Tanglewood, said show us exactly where you dumped her, but he couldn’t. He was nearly off his head by then. “Just charge me,” he kept shouting. “Charge me and have done with it.” But he got it wrong by twenty yards.’

Crane stood in stunned silence. Finally he said, ‘Maybe he just forgot the exact place. It’s been a year, after all.’

‘Agreed. So we took him to the sluice-way end. That’s where the stones came from, the buttressing. Hadn’t a clue where they’d been gathered.’

‘He … could have forgotten that too. He struck me as a bloke who’d have trouble remembering what he did yesterday.’

He nodded wearily. ‘We took all of that into account. So then we talked about the body. And when he wasn’t weeping and wailing he couldn’t get any of that right either. Hadn’t a clue where he was supposed to have attached the bag of stones. Said he’d tied it to her ankles with rope.’ He stared at Crane irritably. ‘It was attached to her waist with a plastic-covered clothes line. Said the stones were in a black plastic bin bag; we’ve got the bloody things stored in the chamber of horrors and they’re in a clear plastic sack. He said she was in jeans and a short jacket. Well, she was in a floral summer dress.’

Crane stood again in baffled silence. ‘He no more killed the kid than I did, Frank,’ Benson said finally.

Crane knew he was right. The police had to have proof. They had to have the same proof for an innocent man who said he was guilty as for a guilty man who said he was innocent.

‘Crazy sod,’ Benson said. ‘Crazy sod! If he’d given us this crap last year we’d have had the bugger out of the mowing and kept at it. With him sticking to that fucking alibi we could never see it being anyone else.’

He stood flushed and angry. He’d be thinking of all the wasted hours, the overtime, the cancelled leave. Crane thought about the meeting at the Goose and Guinea, Anderson’s kindly words about Aborigines. ‘It could be a lot to do with the Willows pointing the bone, Ted.’ He told him about the meeting. ‘He was in a state. He’d had months of being given the elbow. Apart from that I think he was genuinely crazy about her. And then Geoff starts giving him the needle. I think he must have decided he’d have an easier life inside. Saying he’d done it and taking the porridge. At least he’d get his self-respect back. Sounds crazy but I can’t think why else he’d do it.’

‘Stupid arsehole! He still wouldn’t tell us where he really was the night she went missing. He certainly wasn’t at home with Dougie and that lot.’

‘You’re right. But he had to pretend he was. He was actually alibiing Dougie.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You didn’t hear this. The bloke who told me was Cliff Greenwood, Bobby’s one-time best mate. He’s a decent lad, going straight now. The night Donna fell in the pond Dougie was taking delivery of a van-load of expensive antique guns. The big house Morton way, yes?’

‘Come again.’ It was Benson’s turn to look stunned.

‘Did none of you tie Dougie to it? It had his dabs on, according to Greenwood.’

‘We think Dougie Mahon’s involved in everything to do with posh gear. Like Greenwood says, it had his dabs on. The guns were the sort of clean, careful job he sets up. But we had no proof, we never do with that bugger, and the burglary didn’t come to light till a week later with the owner being away. By that time it was a back-burner job anyway, it was all Donna Jackson then.’

‘Well, Dougie made doubly sure he was fire proof. Told Bobby and his mates to say everyone was at the Mahons’ place that night. That’s why Bobby daren’t admit where he really was himself. Until now. There’s a good chance he was clubbing in Leeds with some French totty called Nicole. If you want to have another go with the guns you could try putting the arm on Marvin Jackson. He’s going to find it hard to prove he wasn’t disabling intruder alarms at a big moorland house that night.’

‘We’ll get him in, those guns were worth a fortune. If we can tie him to the house we can tie him to Dougie.’

‘If Marvin wasn’t out thieving he could be in another kind of serious shit, now Bobby looks to be off the hook. I’ll get back to you on that. It was certainly him who duffed me up. Him and Dougie’s wife.’

Benson glanced at him. ‘You OK now? She’s given out the muscle before on Dougie’s behalf, him being nine stone wet through. Christ knows why blokes want to give her one, must be like humping a rhino.’

Crane said, ‘What happens now, about Donna?’

‘Terry wants to re-assemble the team who worked on it the first time round. It’ll take time, but so what, we’ve lost months already with that dozy bastard. I’ve got to go, Frank. Keep in touch.’

Crane watched him move off. No word of thanks for handing him valuable information that could see the guns recovered, brownie points to Benson. But then he’d not expected any thanks. Benson owed him for a lot more than information. He owed him for a debt he could never repay and debts of that size killed friendship. And Benson had once been his closest friend.

As Crane walked across the marble tiling of the reception area, the dark-haired girl called Carol was collecting a package from the desk. ‘Frank, hi,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’ve come looking for Doctor Watson, though I suspect he sees himself more as Sherlock himself.’

He grinned. ‘Is he about? If not I’ll catch him later.’

‘Yes he is, and I was hoping I might just talk him into taking me out tonight. So you’ve got to be seriously bad news, turning up like this.’

‘I take it you and Geoff are an item?’

‘I thought we were, but since he got his teeth into the DJ story it’s not been the same.’ She tossed her curly hair. ‘I suppose you’ve got to admire the big dope,’ she said, with rueful fondness, ‘the way he clings on with it. He’ll not forgive you, you know, if you sort it all out before he does. I know him. I’ll tell him you’re here.’

She went off before he could tell her the case would soon be back with the police and her chance of a night out with Anderson looked good.

‘Frank!’ Anderson walked rapidly across reception. Everything he did was rapid. Crane was sorry about the case being over as far as he was concerned, but relieved not to have to go on uneasily cooperating with a bumptious reporter.

‘Geoff, it’s good news, bad news, depending which way you look at it. Mahon. He’s confessed to killing Donna, but the police aren’t buying it.’

Anderson’s mobile face became totally still, and when Crane had given him the story he watched him in a lengthy silence, and that was unusual too in a man who thought and talked so fast. The news had clearly given him a big shock, just as it had Crane. He finally gave a wry smile. ‘You don’t think this could be Mahon-type cunning? He puts his hand up and then deliberately gives all the wrong answers, so they have to let him go? He’s cleared his name and he’s off the hook for good.’

Crane shook his head. ‘He’s not got that kind of brain, we both know it. And with skilled CID men knowing all the ways to flush out the truth … they’re as certain now it wasn’t Mahon as they were once certain it was. My feeling is he just couldn’t go on facing any more of that shit the Willows was throwing at him. Benson says he was in a state of near-hysteria.’

‘Christ,’ he said softly. ‘I was damn certain it was him, just like the police and the Willows, and one day I was sure someone would nail the bugger. I had that big write-up all there in my mind, you know, boy meets girl, all that stuff. Then girl begins to outclass boy. She’s very popular and it’s obvious she’s going to make it as a model, probably a very good one. Boy can’t hack it. He gets red-jealous, starts knocking her about, finally does her in; if he can’t have her no one can. All set against the slagheap the Willows is these days. It’s a classic.’

Crane watched him. It had to be the born journalist’s mind in action. It was a classic, only there were real flesh and blood people involved: a dead beautiful kid, parents who endlessly grieved, a boyfriend off his trolley, a sister who’d had to handle most of the fallout despite having problems of her own.

Anderson shrugged. ‘I shouldn’t imagine Mahon’s heard of Karl Popper’s law of unintended consequences. He puts his hand up to a killing everyone’s desperate to get off the books and no one’ll let him go near a slammer.’

Crane was to remember about Karl Popper and his ironic law very forcibly not long after.

FIVE

The second he opened the door Crane pushed him firmly backwards into the hall, stepped inside himself, then closed the door behind him.

‘Hey, what’s your game!’ There was a savage glint in his eyes and his fists were clenched.

‘I wouldn’t, Marvin,’ Crane said calmly. ‘There’s just you and me today, not you, me and Myrtle.’

That stopped him. Then he gave a sneery smile. ‘No flies on you is there? I hope you don’t think it’s payback time. For your sake.’

‘I’m not looking for trouble, Marvin, but I should warn you I don’t smoke, don’t drink a lot, and work out on a regular basis.’

‘Either go now, pal, or get thrown through the door.’

‘I’d do yourself a big favour and chill out, if I were you.’

But the other took a swing at him, which Crane was ready for and avoided. He then gave Jackson his right fist into the belly. It was a soft belly, with all the pints the man saw off, and air left his lungs like a burst tyre. He fell to his knees, cursing and groaning and clutching himself. It looked as if he should have done himself a favour and chilled out.

‘What was that you were saying about the tooth fairy, Marvin?’

Crane saw the woman then, standing at the kitchen door at the end of the hall. She was small and spare and had sharp, close set features. She wore a grubby yellow T-shirt and drawstring shorts. Her reddish hair was in rollers. She looked as if she’d seen it all before. ‘You silly sod!’ she cried, in a piercing voice. ‘Who do you owe money to now?’

Still clutching himself, Jackson muttered through clenched teeth, ‘All right, so it was payback time. Now piss off, will you.’

‘I told you I wasn’t looking for trouble. I’m here to ask you a couple of questions.’

‘Hey, mister, who the hell are you, anyway?’

‘Shut it, Effie.’

‘Don’t tell me to shut it, you big dozy sod.’

‘Just where were you the night your sister died, Marvin?’

He looked at Crane uneasily through slate-blue eyes. He had the plain Jackson features, not helped by the shaved head. ‘What’s it to you?’ he said, as he got wincing to his feet.

‘A lot, take my word.’

‘How would I know? It must be a year.’

‘Everyone on the Willows knew what they were doing when they found out Donna hadn’t come home, she was so well-known. It’s a bit like the Sunday morning we heard the news about Princess Di, isn’t it? It kind of sticks in the mind, And you were Donna’s brother.’

‘Don’t say you’re digging all the crap up again,’ Effie cried. ‘Not that trollop—’

‘Effie, will you for fuck’s sake keep your neb out?’

‘Nothing but trouble. Well, tell him, nothing but trouble and aggravation, that one, day she was born.’

‘You know they’ve had Bobby Mahon down at the nick, don’t you? There’s not much you miss on the Willows. Well, did you know they’re certain to release him, because they don’t believe he did it, even though he says he did.’

He hadn’t heard. He watched Crane in a puzzled silence. ‘So?’

‘So that’s why I need to know where you were that night.’

‘Here, you’re not making out it were anything to do with me?’

‘She was into you for money, wasn’t she, for some reason?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘I get paid to find things out.’

‘Into him for money!’ Effie screeched. ‘The little twat was never off his back: twenty here, twenty there, then there’s not enough to pay the sodding rent book.’

‘I’m warning you, Effie—’

‘I was glad! I was glad some bugger threw her in the frigging reservoir. Couldn’t see why he’d left it so long.’

‘One more word—’

‘Go on, you daft clown, you fancied her yourself. Think I’m blind? I know you think I’m stupid.’ Her shrill, cawing tones were suddenly raw with a distilled bitterness. Her voice resounded in the silence. Jackson had reddened, his eyes fell from Crane’s.

‘Is that what she put the bite on you far?’ Crane said, in a voice too soft for Effie to catch. ‘Did something happen between you and Donna when she was under age and you were over? Something she wanted hush money for? Something Malc would have put you in A and E about, if not a coffin?’

Jackson still couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘She didn’t need no encouragement,’ he muttered. ‘Fourteen or not.’

‘What’s going on?’ Effie scuttled along the hall. ‘What you whispering about? I’m supposed to be your partner.’

‘I was just telling him what’s likely to happen if he doesn’t get his story right about where he was the night Donna died,’ Crane told her. ‘Because now Bobby’s out of the frame they’re going to take a closer at all her other contacts’ – he gave each of them in turn a hard stare – ‘who might have been glad to see Donna out of it for one reason or another.’

Her pinched features were now as flushed as Jackson’s beneath the line of rollers. ‘He was with me, mister,’ she said hurriedly. ‘As true as God’s my judge.’

‘I don’t believe you, Effie. It was the antique guns, Marvin, yes, Dougie’s big one? You want my advice, you’ll put your hand up to that or they’re going to go after you for Donna’s killing. They’ll dig it all up, about her being into you for money and … all the rest. I reckon you’ve got two choices.’

‘Oh, shit!’ Effie wailed. ‘He’s trying to go straight, for fuck’s sake. He’s already been inside.’

‘I know, Effie, but there’s one job he’s not paid for.’

He left them standing in the hall in a numbed and wretched silence.

Crane’s mobile rang. ‘Frank Crane.’

‘Ted here, Frank. Mahon’s completely cleared. We knew he would be, but we told the silly sod that if he’d really cared about Donna it’d help us to find the real killer if he told us the truth. Well, he really had been in Leeds with the French totty. He finally came up with a postcard he’d got from her. She’d written from Fontainebleu with a full address. It’s dated four days after the Saturday in question and actually refers to the clubbing last Saturday and him being most of the night with her. He must have given her a belt round the chops so she’d not forget him …’

Once again he sat with the Jacksons in their cramped living room. Once again emotion seemed to thicken the air. ‘Dear God,’ Malc muttered, hunched in his chair and staring into space, features expressionless. ‘We were positive it were him, every last one of us.’

‘These things sometimes happen, Malc,’ Crane told him. ‘I’m very sorry. It means starting from scratch, I’m afraid. The police are aiming to re-assemble the original team who worked on it. I think we can safely leave it to them now.’

‘No, carry on, Frank,’ Connie said, in a sad, firm voice. ‘You got things going, when no one else did, even if it only showed it wasn’t Bobby.’

‘I’d like to stay with it, Connie, but you need to think about the cost.’

‘It doesn’t matter, the money. We’d not have another day’s peace of mind if we didn’t think we’d done everything we could. We owe it to our darling daughter, God rest her.’ The skin around her eyes seemed permanently roughened and red with the endless weeping of the last twelve months.

‘You go right ahead, Frank,’ Malc said in a wavering tone, dabbing his own eyes with a handkerchief. ‘It’s what we both want.’

Crane glanced at Patsy. She was as impassive as before, unable to dredge up any more emotion for her dead sister, even though she’d loved her too, with a love Crane felt was maybe surer than theirs, based as it was on her wry acceptance of what she’d known the real Donna to be like.

He got up. ‘All right, I’ll give it my best shot. I’ll be in touch. Need a lift, Patsy?’

‘Please.’

Connie and Malc saw them out as usual, standing in the light of the small lamp above the front door, Malc’s arm protectively about Connie’s bowed form. Crane had seen much human misery in his time with the force but had never been able to handle it as professionally as he should. He thought, ‘Christ, I’ll nail the bastard if it’s the last thing I do.’ He wasn’t to know that it very nearly was.

Anderson was holding centre stage again at the Glasshouse. ‘That’s right,’ he was saying, ‘and if a Chinese kid wants to learn the piano they get him going on a simple piece called “Knives and Forks”.’

He had the others laughing, but Carol knew he was in a mood. It was almost impossible to spot unless you knew him well. There’d be that faintly abstract look in his eyes, the slightest impression that he wasn’t giving his full attention to being the life and soul of the party, although his brain spun at such a speed that he was always able to deal with any number of conflicting thoughts at the same time.

‘You want to come back to my place for a bite, Carol?’ he said, when the others were talking generally.

‘You’re not working tonight?’

‘I should be, but all work and no play …’

Yet Carol knew he never played, not these days, and though he’d be jolly and chatty back at his flat, she’d know in the occasional silences that he was brooding about the Donna Jackson business, brooding with a new intensity now that Bobby Mahon had been cleared.

‘We’ll have one more before we go then.’ And he was off to the bar, though not bouncing with his usual restless energy.

Carol knew that Mahon being out of it had messed up that big feature he’d wanted to write, that he was positive would help him in his ambition to be an investigative journalist on a paper like The Sunday Times. There’d be another ending to the Donna killing and he’d dig it all out brilliantly, but they both knew it wasn’t going to have the same impact. Frank Crane was bugging him too, though she knew he also reluctantly admired him, the way he could ferret things out that Geoff was kicking himself that he’d not picked up on. He was so competitive, forever wanting to spot the bad lots before the police did. He’d be impossible to live with if Crane got ahead of him now, after all the work he’d put in, though Crane was probably off the case with the police reopening their files. She wished to God Geoff was. It had been nothing but Donna Jackson since they’d pulled the poor kid out of Tanglewood. She sighed. A flesh and blood rival she could cope with, but a dead beauty? Yet she couldn’t help loving the big dope. Things would be different when he made it to London. Then that provoked another dismal thought: would he take her with him?

At the bar, Anderson could brood in peace, not feeling he had to be the amiable charmer he’d spent his working life perfecting. He just couldn’t get Mahon’s innocence out of his head. It messed everything up, every bloody thing. Donna and that piece of rubbish had been the story. The way he’d decided to write the big feature was carefully to imply that it couldn’t have been anyone else but Mahon, let the reader draw his own conclusions. And then Mahon was suddenly out of the frame. What was the story going to be now? Would it have anything like the same force? He doubted it. He switched on a cheery smile for the bar girl who brought his drinks, who he knew fancied him. Well, at least it must mean that clever sod Crane was off the case, he could do without him turning up the leads that should have been his. That break Crane had had with Cliff Greenwood still stung.

He sat down with Carol, faithful Carol, whose body had stopped turning him on some time ago, though her clever, well-read mind was still a big draw, and the tasty meals she cooked for him. It would be all over when he went to London. Alone, definitely alone. London would solve everything.

Patsy could hardly believe it, but Frank was in her little flat a third time! It couldn’t be the new hairstyle, could it, and the care she was taking with her clothes and make-up? She went off to get the drinks, leaving Crane with a renewed sense of guilt. He had an idea the kid was getting a little struck on him, when the only reason he was back here again was the original one – her knowledge of the Willows and the people Donna had mixed with. He’d need her help and also the help of that brash, talented prat, Anderson.

When she came back with the drinks, she said, ‘Where will you go from here, Frank?’

‘Talk it over with Geoff first. He said he’d always be willing to help. It’s in his own interests, of course, wanting to break a story he’s spent so much time on.’

‘He’s a nice bloke. He was very kind with Mam and Dad.’

‘I’ll try and pin him down this evening, though I daresay he’ll be on some job or other. People like me and him don’t do time off.’

‘You … could ask him to come here, if you like. I might be able to help.’

‘You know, Patsy, that’s a very good idea,’ Crane said, and meant it. ‘You had the inside track on Donna, if anyone.’

‘I don’t think anyone had the real inside track on that little madam.’ But she looked very pleased he’d taken the suggestion seriously. Crane began to key Anderson’s number.

‘Geoff Anderson.’

‘Frank Crane, Geoff. Look, Connie and Malc want me to stay on the case. It shouldn’t affect the new police investigation, it’ll probably take them a week to get people off other things and back on to this. I’m at Patsy’s place. I wondered if you could find a little time to spend with us and talk the thing through?’