Dead Dream Girl (16 page)

‘Couldn’t afford to get myself shot,’ he said, faintly contemptuous. ‘She may only be a scatty dyke, but she might just have got lucky and hit me by mistake. Should have provided yourself with a MAC10, dear. Quite small, easily concealed, get off twelve hundred rounds a minute.’

‘You’d have got the full minute’s worth, you murdering swine,’ she said in a raw, bitter voice.

‘You’ll not get away,’ Crane told him. ‘Your car lights are smashed.’

‘I’d not thought of using it. I’m a fast runner. I’ll find a car in a side street I can hotwire. You mustn’t worry about that.’

‘And if I follow you?’

‘On that leg? You can barely walk man. And I disabled your car too, when you ran off into the undergrowth.’

He was right. Crane’s leg was so swollen and painful he’d have trouble even controlling the clutch for the next
two or three days. He glanced at Julia. She shrugged apathetically. ‘Give yourself up, Geoff,’ he said again. ‘I’m begging you. I’ll do everything in my power to help you. A good counsel …’

‘No chance, Frank.’ There seemed to be a genuine warmth in his eyes as they rested on Crane’s. ‘She did enough damage to my life just by living. It was good knowing you, even though you had me running shitless half the time. Sorry about your gammy leg and all that other stuff back there. Goodbye each.’

He suddenly turned then to make his dash for freedom. Equally suddenly the gun went off, with a deafening report in the silence.

A
nderson lay quite still in the film-set brilliance. Crane clutched his head with both hands. It had been his worst fear, that she might shoot at random and hit him by mistake. He didn’t understand how she’d made the gun fire at all when Anderson was supposed to have knocked out the shells. Maybe he’d been bluffing, as always. He knew she’d killed him. What a mess. What a bloody
mess
.

But then Anderson began to move. Began writhing in agony. Began cursing and yelping. Crane limped painfully to his side, got down awkwardly on one knee, yelping softly himself. Blood was seeping through Anderson’s trousers from wound in his left thigh. Julia came up behind them. She picked up the thick stick Anderson had abandoned when he’d turned to run off. She held it by the tip, with a hand wrapped in a handkerchief, tossed it at the wounded man’s side. ‘He was attacking you with that, right? He’d have killed you if I’d not brought him down.’ She smiled thinly. ‘Just so we’re both reading from the same script. He’ll survive, unfortunately. I should have killed him. God knows, I
wanted
to kill him, but it’s a simple flesh wound that’ll cause no lasting damage.’ She spoke with total, clipped assurance.

‘But he’d fixed it, the gun.’

‘He had indeed, but an experienced shot, Frank, always checks the state of the gun. I’d reloaded.’

‘You could have fooled me.’

‘Quite. I wanted him to go on thinking what a superior type he was and what a silly little featherhead I was.’

‘I’ll get the emergency services. For both of you.’

‘Bring a tea towel from the kitchen and I’ll make a tourniquet. I’ll watch him. Doesn’t seem quite the big confident Jack the Lad he thought he was now, does he?’

Anderson was rolling about in agony, still yelping, his expression a mixture of pain and irritation. Crane felt he was angrier about being unable to react with any kind of stoicism than being stopped from escaping.

Crane got himself up slowly. ‘You’re an incredible shot.’

‘My father taught me. Taught me how to shoot cleanly. I’ve shot over dogs with some of the best in the land. You see, having a daughter instead of a son was the biggest disappointment of my father’s life. So he liked to
pretend
I was a boy. Shooting, fishing, riding, fast cars. The stiff upper lip at all times, even when you fell off your horse … or someone clonks you over the head with a priceless piece of bronze.’

She ran a hand through her tousled, blood-matted hair and gazed despondently towards her fine old house. ‘He made a jolly good job of it. I’ve had problems with my gender ever since.’

Benson shook his head, grimaced. ‘All those statements, all those public appeals, the sheer man hours. And that arsehole, on the phone every verse end: any news, any
developments, has Mahon coughed? No wonder coppers end up distrusting everything that moves.’

‘What’s the form?’

‘Knows his rights, you bet. Won’t admit to anything. But he will.’

‘How’s the leg?’

‘Uncomplicated flesh wound; she was spot on. Pity she didn’t let her finger slip and blow the sod away. Save the taxpayer another load of moolah.’ Benson lit a new
cigarette
. ‘Anyway, we can nail him for being at the Raven with her the actual night she disappeared. We’ve had sight of a Barclay-card docket signed by him. And one of the waitresses recognized Donna from a photo as being with him around that time. It wasn’t a face you forgot. She doesn’t read the
Standard
or she might have picked up on it before.’

‘The sod had incredible luck, apart from anything else,’ Crane said. ‘Just managing to be in a Leaf and Petal vehicle Kirsty Hellewell had lent him the night Julia followed Donna and took the number of the Scenic. It seemed it
had
to be Hellewell then. And with him and Anderson having a bit of a resemblance.’

‘Ollie Stringer will be our star witness,’ Benson told him. ‘He still can’t speak, but we showed him a picture of Anderson and told him we’d got him banged up and would he identify him? He was nodding so hard fit to make his bloody head drop off. And if Ollie identifies him in court I reckon we’re home and dry.’ He ground out the cigarette angrily. ‘Christ, the last person in the frame was always going to be the
Standard
’s sodding crime reporter!’

‘His luck kicked in from day one,’ said Crane. ‘You lot
were certain Mahon had killed her. Me too. At the start I just felt it was my job to try and
prove
he’d killed her. Anderson’s off the hook, even though he was never really on it. He knows perfectly well Mahon must have had some other reason to stick with the story he was home that night. He gets so confident Mahon will always stick to it that he can even take me to the Goose and Guinea and pretend to ruffle his feathers a bit.

‘But he loathes Mahon personally, like all the men Donna had known, and makes his only real mistake. He feeds Mahon the stuff about the Willows pointing the bone. That blew the door open. Mahon confesses but you could clear him. I reckon that’s got to be Anderson’s worst hour. And then I get Adrian’s name from Ollie and he knows that if I get through to Adrian and put you on to him it’ll be Bobby Mahon all over again, in fact anyone I can turn up who just
might
have done it. He’s shitting bricks by now and terrified that sooner or later I might get through to him. He knows I don’t give in too easily and I bring a fresh mind. But then the luck’s with him again. Kirsty tells him Joe Hellewell is also known as Adrian. And Adrian’s dodgy lifestyle makes him seem so guilty as to almost rule out anyone else. So he makes Hellewell appear to leg it, which means he’s virtually admitting his guilt. Anderson’s home and dry. Except that now I’d turned up Julia Gregson.’

Crane drank some of his G and T. ‘Julia was the wild card and this
really
spooks him. She keeps a proper diary and he’s terrified his name might crop up in it, in the parts she’d not wanted me to read.’

‘And it’s him who breaks into Patsy’s?’

‘He’s got a good fix on the way my mind works now
and he gambles on me spotting the flip chart’s been tampered with. He’s certain I’ll decide it must have been Hellewell. Hellewell reads the chart, realizes he’s the chief suspect, and he too believes he has to get his hands on that diary. So he tries to steal it, only Julia surprises him, and in the struggle he accidentally kills her. He has to leg it for good then, because if he’s not nailed for one killing he’ll be nailed for another. That’s what we’re
meant
to think when Julia’s body’s found. What Anderson didn’t bargain for was me picking up on how crucial the diary could be
before
he’d managed to see off Julia. Well, you can’t think of everything, not even Anderson, who can have few equals for tying up loose ends. I was certain Julia might be in danger, and she was, but not from Hellewell.’

Benson lit another cigarette, inhaled deeply. ‘What we can’t figure is why Hellewell went off with Anderson the night he disappeared. We’ve enhanced the CCTV footage. Still can’t get the number but know it’s definitely a Honda Accord.’

‘I’ve not stopped kicking it around. We know why Anderson and Donna ended up at Tanglewood that night. He’d bought her a fancy meal, she’d be staying the night at his flat probably, but he wanted a neutral place in between where he could read her the riot act about sleeping around. Well, that’s where he lost it, throttled the poor kid and bunged her in the reservoir, where she’d be now if it hadn’t been for the youngster finding her. Well, I’m certain it was a crime of passion, but quick thinker that he is he knew how to make sure the body was weighted before he dumped it. But it must have struck him later that reservoirs make handy burial grounds. I began to wonder
if maybe he took Hellewell to the next reservoir along the line. That would be Scamworth. It’s very, very quiet and too far out for kids to get there on foot and use as a
swimming
pool.’

Benson’s mouth went down sceptically at the corners. ‘Can’t see it myself. Hellewell was a tough bloke, like Anderson. How’s he going to let himself be lured from Leaf and Petal?’

‘Lure’s a good word. It took me a while to get there, but we have to remember that Hellewell was a fiver each way, and that Anderson’s tall and good looking with a well made body. What if he told Hellewell he’d always fancied him, couldn’t get him off his mind, how did he feel about going somewhere quiet and doing something about it? Like a beauty spot with a reservoir attached? That’s only a theory, I’m trying to think like Anderson might have done.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ Benson said grudgingly. Crane knew he would and if the theory was acted on Benson would quietly claim it as his own, touchy as he was about Crane’s superior deductive skills, about his way of
obsessively
worrying at a problem till something gave. He knew Benson often felt exposed since he’d left the force, though would never admit it. It was very sad. They’d been a good team together, apart from their close friendship, as Benson had solid police skills of his own. It was just that a few things had gone adrift in Benson’s mind this past two or three years.

‘You’re right about his luck though,’ Benson said dourly.

‘Even with his car. I never even knew he
drove
a Honda. For one reason or another he was in a pool car or in my car or parked out of sight. And he made his own luck with the
flip chart. The sod simply sets it up, says it’ll keep us all in the picture. Keep
him
in the picture! It just meant he never lost track of what I was up to, not for a minute, because I was writing it all down even when he wasn’t there. It was a game he couldn’t lose.’

Benson shook his head. ‘Why did he go on like that? Pretending he’d never give in on the case till someone put their hand up?’

‘I think he saw it as a good way of drawing the fire well away from himself. Like those blokes who go on the telly now and then, tears in their eyes, appealing for
information
about a wife or a partner who’s bought it. And then it turns out that the guy who’s doing the appealing did the business.

‘I also think, in some part of his mind, once she was dead, he knew it was just about the best story he’d ever had. Apart from all the reports and articles he could write about it he was planning this big feature about the
innocent
victim he was going to make her out to be of a Willows going to the dogs. He was aiming to syndicate it and use it as a crucial part of his CV when he made his bid for a London job.’

‘Why did he write her up as such an innocent? He could maybe have shown the Willows in a worse light still if he’d said it had turned her into a tom.’

‘I don’t honestly think he could ever stop seeing her the way she was when he first got to know her, when she
seemed
innocent. A bit of a chatterbox, a bit empty-headed, but that was because of the Willows and poor schooling. And he could take her away from all that, make her over into a fit companion for a college man. Like Svengali, he’d soon have her singing in tune. But he twigged very
quickly about the whoring and the dodgy men and the vicious tongue, and yet in his mind I think he always wanted her to be the sweet little kid he’d seen in the clubs with the strobes flashing on her hair.’

‘He always seemed such a decent bloke. Everyone liked him at the nick. Especially the women.’

‘That was his trouble, the women had been there for him all his life. It wasn’t just his looks, he was clever, funny, bags of charm. And then the only woman he can’t get off his mind can take him or leave him. He might be good looking but he’s never going to be a millionaire, and funny and clever were never going to replace money in Donna’s mind. The very worst thing he could have done was to think he could educate her. He knew the glamour just wasn’t going to be enough. But all
she
wanted was a London address. He could stick the culture. I bet inside a fortnight she’d have been wondering if it was worth the hassle. She had a short fuse and she was masterclass at sticking the knife where it would do the most damage, and danger excited her. I reckon Anderson couldn’t believe it was happening to him, some chit of a girl telling him he had a crap future and wasn’t up to much under the duvet.’

‘All right,’ Benson growled, ‘he got carried away. It happens. Christ, we know if anyone does. But how did this clean cut college boy go on living with himself?’

‘The way most killers do these days, now that guilt and blame and remorse are out of fashion. I don’t think he regarded himself as being all that guilty, or that his future was worth ruining for a call girl. I think he’d virtually convinced himself that with the men she ran around with, and that mouth of hers, she was going to get herself
topped one day anyway; it was his bad luck he happened to be first in line. And then, writing about her so much I think it almost objectified her in his mind. I think she’d begun to transmute into the sweet innocent kid who’d been murdered, and the killer could have been anyone. Anyone but him, anyway.’

‘What about Ollie and Joe Hellewell? He’s going to objectify them too, is he?’

‘Give him time. Maybe it gets easier after you’ve done it once.’

‘Well, he’s going to have plenty of time to mull it all over, that’s for sure.’

‘The sad thing, the really sad thing is that he’d convinced himself he’d be rescuing Donna from her
background
. He could make her happy, give her a decent life. But she wasn’t
unhappy
. She was having a ball. She
liked
screwing around and making a few bob. And she had her life mapped out for when she got to London. She’d sleep with some big name photographer and she’d be up and running as a model all the magazines wanted. Inside six months she’d have nailed a stock exchange trader. She was a total realist. I reckon dream girls usually are. It was the blokes who were doing the real dreaming about those dazzling futures they had in mind for her.
She
was making meticulous plans for a future that would be exactly right for the type of woman she was. And why not, poor bitch?’

Benson nodded, finished his drink, got up to go. ‘Well, I’ll be off. We’ll keep you in the picture. See you.’ He’d begun to walk away, when he slowly turned back. ‘Well done, Frank, it’s saved us a hell of a lot of extra work.’