Dead Dream Girl (6 page)

She gave a sour grin. ‘A bloke from the Willows? Do me a favour. They all
promise
to, once you’re in a place of your own. Only problem is, they never seem to hang about that long.’

Crane gave her a sympathetic smile. She at least had those lavender eyes. Decent figure too. Small-breasted and slightly boyish, but it was the sort of figure that stayed where it was when the curvy ones were getting
middle-aged
and hefty. She sipped her drink.

‘It cuts both ways. If they don’t marry you they can’t take anything when they do a runner. I bought this gear, on the weekly. All he had was that bloody car and I hope he’s living in it.’

‘How do you get to work? Bus?’

‘No, I bought a Fiesta, on the drip, like the furniture. It’s old but it goes. I could just about run to it once I didn’t need to pay for everything, with Ronnie never managing to get his hand in his pocket. I put a lot of
overtime
in and I’ll always work Sundays.’ The fate of plain girls on the Willows seemed to be that if you could get a man at all he expected to be bought and paid for. Crane’s mobile rang.

‘Geoff here, Frank,’ Anderson said breezily. ‘Just wondered if you’d got any further since we saw Mahon?’

Crane swore silently. He supposed he’d better get used to this, hard as it was for a man like him. ‘Oh hello, Geoff,’ he said evenly. ‘It could be I have made some kind of a breakthrough. I picked up on you asking Mahon where Cliff was. It struck me it might be worth talking to him. I asked Patsy Jackson if she could put me in touch. I’m at Patsy’s place now.’

There was a brief silence. ‘What … made you think he could tell you anything? He was one of those—’

‘Because of their bust up,’ Crane cut him off. ‘I wondered
why
there was a bust up. Well, it was because Greenwood also believed Mahon had seen off Donna.’ Crane filled him in on the rest.

There was a longer silence. Then, ‘Bugger!’

‘Come again?’

‘I should have seen that. But even if I had I’d never have thought Greenwood would grass him.’

‘I got lucky. Patsy filled me in on his going straight. He’d had a bellyful of being in trouble with the law. It gave me a lever. I also promised him I’d keep his name out of anything.’

Another silence and then Anderson said, ‘I knew you were good, Frank, but there was no need to rub my nose in it.’

He spoke lightly and Crane knew he’d be grinning, but he also knew that Anderson’s professional pride had had a hole kicked through it. This gave him a small smile of his own. He’d got one over on the whiz kid who’d lived with the case since the body had left the water. At the same time, it had gone against all his own professional instincts
to let the information on Greenwood go. He just didn’t work that way. Other people could be a distraction,
especially
a clever reporter who, according to Carol at the Glass-house, had a compulsion to take over and run things. But he had to keep reminding himself that Anderson’s brain was stocked with information about the Donna Jackson affair that could take Crane many hours to assemble.

Anderson’s grin was wiped away as he cleared his phone. How could he have slipped up on a detail like that? He’d been convinced he knew
everything
about everyone involved in Donna’s killing? Why hadn’t he checked out Greenwood himself: Why had he assumed that none of Mahon’s mates would ever go straight? What else was Crane going to pick up on? He
had
to know, and know as it was happening, to be able to make that final
award-winning
feature absolutely authentic, apart from anything else. He wondered how he could get in closer with Crane. But then, why had a man who tended to be as close with information as he himself was, let go the details of Greenwood’s confession? Because Crane was forcing himself into a quid pro quo for what
he
knew. It gave him an idea and his grin began to return.

‘That was Geoff Anderson, Patsy. We’re pooling
information
, as he knows so much about the case, possibly even more than the police. He was a bit miffed about me getting ahead of him, thanks to you.’

‘He’s a good looking bloke, that Geoff. They must be queuing up to loofah his back. What will you do now? About Bobby?’

He shrugged. ‘I need to find a way of proving he wasn’t at home that night, without involving Cliff. It won’t be easy, but if I can I can hand it back to the police. If he wasn’t at home he’ll have to prove he wasn’t with Donna, and if he is guilty I don’t think he’ll be able to, the state he’s in just now.’

She sighed, her face in shadow, her hair back-lit in an untidy halo from one of the table lamps. ‘Poor Bobby, he’s been a silly beggar, but it does upset me to see him wandering round the Willows and everyone pretending he’s the Invisible Man. He’d
never
have done that to her, not Bobby, not if she hadn’t set out to upset him so badly he …’ The sentence dangled.

‘He could be trying to convince himself he
hasn’t
done it. Too much to cope with. I’ve known it happen. The mind’s a funny thing.’

‘He’s nothing like as bad as they paint him. It’s that crap home life. Fancy another drink?’

‘No, thanks all the same. With the driving …’

She nodded with a small fatalistic smile. Expecting nothing she was never going to be disappointed.

Crane put on his jacket, touched her arm. ‘Thanks for everything, Patsy, you knowing Cliff was going straight swung it for me. I hope you’ll go on helping me, if I need more information.’

She flushed again. ‘I’ll help any way I can. But all I really know is the Willows and the folk on it.’

‘Exactly. No one knows the place like you do.’

When he’d gone, Patsy thought what a great bloke he was. Tall, tough, nothing in the way of looks, but his manner … so polite. Opening car doors for you, praising you when you didn’t think you’d done anything much. She knew he didn’t like her hair, she could tell by the way
he’d looked at it back at Mam’s that first time. It had made her angry, really angry. But later she’d thought, well, at least he’d looked. Men on the Willows couldn’t care less what she looked like, if they’d go out with her at all. All they were bothered about was getting her into bed, and they never seemed to think that was any big deal either. She gave herself another drink, looked at herself in a glass, wiped away a tear. If only she could get off with a bloke like Crane. If only she’d never had a sister like Donna …

Crane drove back to his house on Bentham Terrace, put away his Renault. As he left the garage, someone pinioned him from behind. Then someone else jumped in front of him and punched him in the belly. The man holding him had a grasp like a straitjacket, and though Crane kicked backwards he couldn’t locate either of his legs. The fist went into his belly again. Then again and again. Five or six times until his guts felt as if they’d burst into flames.

‘Let it go, mister,’ a soft hoarse voice whispered in his ear. ‘Donna Jackson. Otherwise, next time we’ve finished you’ll have the tooth fairy round. It’ll take her five minutes to pick ’em all up.’

Then they were off, running on soft-soled shoes to some car they’d have parked two streets away. Crane would have run after them except that he could barely walk, let alone run. He limped painfully to the back door, let himself in, slid gingerly down on to the kitchen tiles. He sat for ten minutes until the raging fire in his insides had settled to a steady burn. Then he levered himself up. He’d lie in a hot bath, smooth something on to ease the pain. At least it hadn’t been blows to the head, which could be very bad news, as he knew from his police days.

His mobile rang. ‘Frank … Crane.’

‘It’s Ted. You all right? You sound funny.’

‘I’ve just had a kicking. Some scrotes telling me to lay off the Jackson case.’

‘Go on! How long ago was it? Want me to get a car round?’

‘Don’t bother, Ted. They’ll be long gone.’

‘Well, if you’re sure.’ He was silent for a short time. ‘Thing is, you needn’t have had it, the kicking. This Mahon. He walked in the station late afternoon. Admitted to topping her. Put his hand up to the lot.’

‘
I
t 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.