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‘Well, I remember setting out, but the rest of it’s a bit blurred.’

The group erupted in laughter.

Sophie steered Pillay away. ‘You see, Lydia? They’re human underneath. As mad as hatters.’

She spoke to some of the other guests, then navigated her way across to Florence.

‘Gran, can I stay with you tonight? Change of plan.’

‘Of course, my dear. And Martin as well? But don’t you both have work tomorrow?’

‘Just me, Gran. There’s someone I need to visit in hospital in Wolverhampton, and I’ve only just found out. It’ll be easier to get there from your place.’

‘It will be lovely to have you with us for an evening, Sophie. We’re both getting on and we don’t have too much time left. We want to make the most we can of every day left to us. And that means seeing you and Martin and the girls as much as possible. It’s a blessing that’s come totally out of the blue.’

Chapter 20: Visit to a Dying Man

Friday, Week 2

Billy Thompson was a pale shadow of the man Sophie remembered. He’d been a thickset, fleshy individual with an intimidating manner. Little of that remained now.

He lay partly propped up in bed, and opened his eyes when she sat down. He looked her up and down. His eyes still have that shrewd, calculating glint, she thought.

‘Hello, Billy. Long time no see.’

‘Well, I’ll be damned.’

‘You’re certainly not bound for the better place, that’s for sure.’

He cackled and reached for the oxygen mask that lay beside him on the bed.

‘I hear things aren’t so good. Lung cancer, is it?’

He nodded. ‘Too many fags for too many years. Bloody death sticks, that’s what they are.’

‘I also heard that Bobby died last year. I’m sorry about that, Billy.’

‘Car crash. He always was a lousy driver. Trying to get away from you lot, apparently.’

‘So the old days are over, Billy. It’s the end of an era, isn’t it?’

‘Seems that way. Not that you’ll be sorry. It’s what you always wanted, isn’t it?’

‘No, Billy. What I wanted was both of you put in front of a jury and locked up. Not dead.’

‘So what are you now? No longer a sergeant, I’ll bet.’

‘No, I’m a DCI. In Dorset. Down at the seaside.’

‘Archie Campbell will be missing you. He’s up near the top now. All change, eh?’

He coughed, gasped and continued. ‘What brings you all the way up here then?’

‘To thank you for the flowers. To see you. To ask you one last favour. I’m calling on your sense of family, Billy. I desperately need some information that only you can provide. And you owe it to me.’

‘I don’t think I owe you anything, little Miss Prim.’

‘Yes you do. Your gang stole my father from me.’

‘What the fuck do you mean, stole your father? What kind of crap is that? And what flowers are you talking about? Is this Campbell’s doing?’

‘Billy, everything I’m going to tell you is God’s own truth. I had no father. He disappeared before I was born. And I hated him. I despised the man who was capable of getting a young girl pregnant and then walking out on her. She was only sixteen when I was conceived. As a small girl, when I said my prayers each night, I’d go through a list of people for God to bless. I’d leave him out. I even cursed him. Every single day. Because he’d left my mum and me to fend for ourselves. I could never understand why he did it. My mum was lovely. Everyone said so. I was lovely. I knew that because all my teachers told my mum.’ She paused. ‘I knew it anyway. I tried so hard to be good. And my mum was a naturally kind person. So why would any man choose to walk out on us? He must have been no good, that’s what I thought. He must have been a nasty one, to do something like that. Disappear and never come back. So I hated him with all my being. It became part of what I am.’

By now her tears were welling up. She’d never told anyone this, not even Martin.

‘But he hadn’t walked out on her, had he, Billy? He’d gone to Gloucester to visit his parents, and late at night one of your gang shot him. You dumped his body down a disused shaft where it’s lain for forty long, cold years. And I’ve spent those forty years hating and cursing a man who didn’t deserve it. Do you know how that makes me feel? Have you any idea what this is doing to me? All that hate? I feel sickened at myself. I despise myself, because I let him down. My own father. He got nothing but loathing from me all that time, and now I discover he didn’t deserve any of it. He only ever deserved my love and sympathy. And where does that leave me? I want that killer, Billy. I want the man who did it. I want to feel his life in my hands because of what he’s put me through.’ She breathed deeply for a moment. ‘That funeral was my father’s, Billy. And I saw the flowers you sent.’

He coughed again. Then he regarded her, silent. It was a long time before he said, ‘Charlie. His name was Charlie. He was tall and skinny, a youngster with sandy-coloured hair. I can’t remember anything else about him, because he never worked for us again, not after that night. I didn’t even know he had a gun with him. I couldn’t be doing with crazies like him. He fucked off out of the area once I’d finished with him, and good riddance. Stupid, unreliable bastard.’

‘How come he was working for you that night, Billy?’

‘I think Andy brought him in. I can’t remember why.’

‘Who’s Andy?’

‘My brother.’

‘But I thought there were only two of you. You and Bobby. I never came across any Andy, and I was up against you for quite a few years.’

‘Andy was the youngest, our step-brother. Our Dad remarried after Mum died, and Andy was the result. But he had no common sense, no savvy. He could be a right fucking nuisance at times.’ Thompson wheezed. He took a sip of water. ‘He should have stayed up here with us. But he kept saying two was enough and he was just getting in the way. He was chummy with a bloke he met at a young offenders’ place he spent time in as a teenager. They headed down to the South Coast area together, and he only came back for Christmas. Then he vanished completely. We could never trace him. Bobby even tried to get his pal Blossom onto it, and he couldn’t find him either.’

Sophie felt a tremor run down her spine. ‘Blossom? A woman?’

‘No. He was a short, thickset, ugly bloke Bobby knew from school. God knows why he was called Blossom. He spent a lot of his time along the South Coast, running rackets, so Bobby asked him to find Andy. But no luck. There was no trace.’

‘Do you remember anything else about this Blossom?’

‘I’ve given you what you wanted. You won’t get anything else out of me. I’ve still got my pride, even if the rest of me’s rotting away.’ He coughed.

Sophie leant forward and squeezed his hand. ‘Thanks for telling me, Billy. Maybe you’ve a slight chance of the better place after all.’

‘I suppose you’ll tell that bastard Campbell now.’

She looked at him and shook her head.

‘You’re not going to? You’re gonna go after him yourself? Fuck. I’d take my hat off to you if I had one on.’

He dissolved into a fit of weak coughs and took another draught of oxygen. Sophie got up to leave.

‘I hope you find him. That’s if he isn’t already dead. And if you do, will you come back and tell me?’

‘Sure.’

‘I’ll stay alive for that. And I won’t tell anyone. Trust me. Maybe you’re not little Miss Prim after all.’

‘No. I never was.’

Sophie left the ward, passing a well-dressed young woman who was on her way in. The woman sat beside the bed and smoothed her dark ponytail.

‘Who was that, Uncle Billy?’

‘A copper, Jennie. A very clever copper from down your way. I gave her more information than I meant to. Just be careful, will you? And make sure you find him first.’

* * *

Where should she go from here?

Sophie was sitting at her desk in the small office in Swanage. It was mid-evening and most of the team had gone home, apart from Barry Marsh. He was still logged on to his computer out in the main room, writing up a report on the day’s activities. Sophie looked at her own screen, seeing nothing. All she knew was that the killer’s name had been Charlie, and that he had been a relatively inexperienced youngster when he’d shot her father. It didn’t seem very much to go on. Well, it was more than she’d known before, she supposed. All she had to do was apply some logic, think about the problem rationally.

Billy Thompson had said that Charlie had been a youngster. So what would his age have been? Eighteen to twenty-four? If he were still alive, that would put him at sixty-two to sixty-eight. He’d have been born in the mid to late forties, possibly as late as 1950.

He’d been tall and thin. Would that have changed as he got older? She’d work on the assumption that he would still be leaner than average. He’d had sandy-coloured hair. Would it still be sandy, or would it have gone grey?

If he’d been recruited by the Thompsons, then he would have come from the West Midlands somewhere. She’d have to do a bit of reading to check where the gang had been based in their early years. She seemed to remember that they had lived in Dudley at one time, but that could have been later in their criminal careers.

Finally, she knew that her quarry had been undisciplined and unpredictable. Not in itself uncommon in criminals, but in this case probably worse than most. The Thompsons would have laid down the guidelines for the break-in. But this young man, Charlie, had gone against their instructions. He’d been too wild, so had been ejected from the gang. She guessed that this would also mean he’d been forced to leave their territory. The chances were that he’d have been in some kind of trouble with the police wherever he’d ended up. If he was violent and careless, surely he’d have been arrested at some time? So where would he have gone? London? She couldn’t recall anyone who fitted that profile from her brief stint as a DC in the Met, although that had been years ago. What about Bristol and the South West? Or maybe he’d moved to the East Midlands? For some reason she thought there was less chance of him going north, so she’d leave out Manchester or Leeds for the moment.

What was needed now was some work on the database. She had something to go on, at least.

She knew as she logged on that all of her searches would be monitored, but she wasn’t doing anything unprofessional — not yet, anyway. She built up her search, step by step. Male, white, tall, thin. Born between 1944 and 1950. Hair colour light brown or sandy, or grey. Area restricted to West Midlands or South West. Name Charles or Charlie or Charley. She clicked the search button and waited.

Marsh popped his head round the door. ‘I’ll be off, ma’am. I think that’s all I can do this evening. We didn’t manage to get anything new out of that old chap I saw at the Poole warehouse. What he told me on Wednesday was probably all he knew. But at least we have a formal statement from him.’

‘Fine, Barry. I’ll be another hour or so, then I’ll be following you. I’m doing some tinkering on the database, looking for clues about who killed my father.’

‘Well, I wish you luck. It was a long time ago. Shouldn’t you be leaving it to the Gloucester crew?’

‘I’m an obsessive, Barry. Surely you’ve realised that?’

‘No comment, ma’am. Bye.’

Sophie sipped her mug of tea and watched the short list of names that were appearing on the screen in front of her.

‘Oh, my dear God!’ she said aloud. There was no one to hear her.

One of the names matched. It matched everything. The name ran through her brain like an electric spark, igniting fuses as it went.

* * *

Sophie was very quiet that evening. When Martin commented on it she gave him a weak smile. She lay awake until three in the morning, her head churning. She was up at six. She took a shower and had laid the breakfast table ready for the family when they rose an hour later. She was sitting outside on the rear veranda, sipping a mug of tea, when the first footsteps sounded on the stairs.

‘Mum! What are you doing? It’s freezing out here.’ Jade popped her head out of the French windows.

‘I’m fine, Jade. I’m well wrapped up. I just needed some cold air to clear my head.’

She came into the kitchen wearing a bright smile.

‘You’re in danger of becoming a nut, Mum. You’re starting to show the signs.’

‘Oh? And what are they?’

‘Calling the cat Greymalkin. Muttering about eye of newt while you’re stirring the soup. Hissing “Out damned spot” when you were washing my PE kit last weekend. You know, little things like that.’

‘And I really thought I’d escaped undetected, Jade. Can’t fool you, can I?’

‘No, Mum. I’m just too sharp.’

‘And revising Macbeth, I take it?’

‘Yup. Test in English on Monday.’

‘Well, it looks like you know your stuff. And don’t worry. I have a lot on my mind, but I’m not going into mental overload just yet. I just discovered something about the case yesterday evening that has potentially massive implications.’

‘But you can’t talk about it?’

‘Afraid not. Not to a mere mortal, anyway.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Well. I’d better have something to eat before I grab my broomstick and fly off into the wide blue yonder. And, Jade, in case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have a cat.’