Dead Dream Girl (11 page)

‘You’ll be doing me and Donna’s parents a big favour if we could just talk a little, Mr Hellewell,’ Crane said quietly. ‘They’re very distressed that someone’s not facing justice. To be honest, they haven’t much money to spend on employing people like me.’

To refuse would seem callous and he knew it. Hellewell sighed again in exasperation. They’d clearly handed him a nasty shock and it was giving Crane a lot more of a buzz than he’d had from Fletcher. There’d always been a puzzle about Hellewell. Was he the J who’d shown in Donna’s diary, even sometimes at weekends? If so, being a married man, how had he managed to get away with such a regular affair with an employee?

‘You’d better come this way,’ he said reluctantly.

They followed him between the crowded plant displays to a tiny corner office. A woman standing near it watched their progress, her eyes on Anderson. She had dark wavy hair and strongly defined looks: thick eyebrows, a straight sharp nose, a full firm mouth. She wore jeans and a white blouse piped in red and bearing the Leaf and Petal logo on the breast pocket.

‘
Hello
, Geoff,’ she said warmly. ‘What brings
you
here? Not to buy any exotics, I’m sure.’ She gave him a wide smile that held the sort of warmth Crane had seen in Carol’s.

‘It’s about Donna again,’ Hellewell said irritably. ‘It seems it’s not down to that piece of garbage, Mahon, after all.’

‘Oh … shall I sit in?’

‘I can’t spare you off the floor,’ he told her in a curt tone.

‘I shall be here if needed, Geoff,’ she said pointedly.

‘That was Mrs Hellewell,’ Anderson told Craned as they went in; it was clear Hellewell wasn’t going to bother explaining her. They sat on canvas chairs in the tiny
partitioned
room, their knees against a self-assembly desk. Hellewell faced them across it.

‘We’ll make it as brief as possible, sir,’ Crane said. ‘Just to get things clear in my own mind, would you mind telling us where you were yourself the night Donna went missing?’

‘I was with a man called Clement Hebden,’ he said shortly. ‘I’d finished late on the Saturday and gone to his place with a proposed layout for landscaping his garden. It’s a sideline. We got engrossed, had a few Scotches and then I realized I was over the limit. I was going to take a taxi and pick my own up later, but he said why didn’t we go on talking and I could sleep in one of the spares. Kirsty was away visiting her mother, so I accepted the offer.’

Crane nodded. Alibis didn’t come more bullet-proof than that. ‘Thank you, sir. I believe Donna was working here that day?’

‘She left at five.’

‘Did she form a strong friendship with any of the men she worked with, would you know?’

‘No chance.’

‘You seem very sure.’

‘I am sure. Catch Donna with—’ He broke off abruptly.

‘What I’m saying is that I
need
to be sure. Staff chat-up can lead to problems and I have to know what’s going on.’

But the slight sneer had been there, which had seemed to hint that Donna hadn’t wanted to waste her time on men who hadn’t got money to spend or favours to grant.

‘Just what were her duties, Mr Hellewell?’

He shrugged. ‘Same as the others. Took a turn on the checkouts, helped in the café, advised customers about plants and trees.’

‘She had a good grasp of nursery work?’ Anderson chipped in.

He began to look faintly sheepish. Crane recalled Patsy saying she’d barely known one plant from another. ‘Well, she was in learning mode.’

‘So she’d just work spring and summer, I suppose, not being one of the skilled staff?’

He coloured very slightly. ‘No, she had a permanent position. People do still come, even in winter. And house plants and fir trees at Christmas, we’re pulled—’

‘But wouldn’t your core staff be able to cope with the reduced demand?’ Anderson asked, and Crane had to admire his knack for feigned ignorance.

‘I can’t see what my staff arrangements have to do with anything!’ he burst out.

‘Perhaps I’m missing something,’ Crane said politely, ‘but why keep on an unskilled person when there really wouldn’t be much for her to do?’

He looked to be biting back another outburst. Then he forced a smile, his first. ‘Look, boys, give me a break, the kid looked like a film star, for Christ’s sake. She pulled in the punters. She had charm. She’d give the blokes the big dazzling smiles and they kept on coming back here
instead of going elsewhere.’ His gaze passed between them unfocused. ‘I had big ideas for Donna Jackson,’ he said, and Crane heard the same catch in his voice he’d heard before in the voices of other men. ‘I was aiming to get that Fletcher guy to photograph her in a Leaf and Petal blouse and transpose her image over a view of the nursery. I was going to run it week in, week out in an advert in the
Standard
. I was going to have a big blow up version on a billboard over the main entrance, so that every time you saw that kid’s marvellous face you thought of Leaf and Petal.’

‘Great idea, Mr Hellewell,’ Anderson said with a sympathetic nod.

‘Did … Donna have any other duties, sir, apart from those you mentioned?’ Crane spoke hesitantly, as if
regretting
having to break into Hellewell’s mood of sad reverie.

His eyes refocused with an effort. ‘She did deliveries. We do those for a few seniors and people who bring a lot of business.’

‘Would there be a record of deliveries?’

Crane felt Anderson stirring and could sense his
watchfulness
. What new ball was the PI running with
now
?

‘We keep a book,’ Hellewell told them. ‘The accounts are drawn up from it as we bill the people we deliver to. The initials of the person who delivers go in the book. What’s that got to do with anything?’ He looked genuinely puzzled, but Crane guessed Anderson knew.

‘I’d just be interested to see where Donna made those deliveries. It might be worth checking out some of the people she made them to. Would you mind letting us see the delivery book?’

Hellewell’s wary eyes left Crane’s and he keyed a
phone. ‘Gail, a man called Mr Crane would like to see the delivery books. It’s to do with the audit. He’ll be along presently.’ He looked back at Crane. ‘You’ll find her in the checkout area.’

‘Thank you. One last point, sir. Do you know of a man Donna might have known called Adrian?’

That was the query that did the business. Hellewell might have had his throat cut the way healthy colour drained rapidly from his face. He shook his head, then shook it again and again. ‘I don’t know
anyone
Donna knew, apart from Mahon and Clive Fletcher,’ he said, through lips he could barely control. ‘Any … anyone at all. The name means absolutely nothing to me.’

‘Are you sure, Mr Hellewell?’ Anderson asked softly. ‘You seem a little agitated.’

‘It’s you lot,’ he almost whispered. ‘PIs, reporters, police, bombarding me with questions, raking it all up about that lovely kid. I’m sorry, I’m finding it hard to cope.’

It seemed to Crane he’d coped pretty well until he’d heard that single word: Adrian. He knew from experience the value of leaving someone like Hellewell, who clearly knew something and was running scared, to sweat it out for a while. He got up. ‘Well, if the name should come back to you in any context, sir, I’d be very glad to know. It’s very, very important. Perhaps I could check with you tomorrow?’

‘There’d be no point!’ he yelped. ‘I don’t
know
any Adrian.’

‘Thank you for your time, sir. Anything else you need to ask Mr Hellewell, Geoff?’

They left him staring into space.

‘Brother,’ Anderson said, ‘did
that
touch the spot. His face changed like a traffic light. That bloody technique of yours, just tossing it in when he thought he was out of the woods. How do you always manage to make it look so easy? And that delivery business, it never crossed my mind. She just might have met someone that way.’

There was a petulance in Anderson’s tone that he fought hard to contain. Crane was certain the possibility of Hellewell being linked to an Adrian had to be their hottest lead yet, and should have been the total focus of both their minds, but as usual Anderson was brooding more about Crane’s superior skills.

‘Geoff,’ he said patiently, ‘I’ve been at it for years and I’ve learnt to let nothing go by default. Checking out
deliveries
is bound to be a blind alley, but I’ll do it anyway. It doesn’t begin to compare with him throwing a wobbly about Adrian.’

‘You’re right,’ he said, striving to mask the grudging note. ‘OK, this Adrian—’

‘Geoff?’ Someone spoke from behind them as they made for the checkout area. It was Mrs Hellewell. ‘Could I have a word?’

‘Of course, Kirsty,’ he said, giving her that instant
flattering
concentration he showed all women. ‘This is Frank Crane. We’re working together on Donna’s case now that Mahon’s out of it. He’s a private investigator.’

‘Hello,’ she said absently to Crane. ‘I’ve got my own little cubbyhole off the café. Perhaps we could go in there.’

‘Lead the way.’

‘It’s … well, it’s very private. I need your advice.’

‘They don’t come more discreet than Frank, Kirsty.’

‘Please, Geoff. I’m sorry, Mr Crane, no offence.’

‘None taken, Mrs Hellewell. I’ll go chat to Gail, Geoff.’

Crane watched them walk off. Mrs Hellewell appeared to be looking warily around her. He wasn’t happy about this. He couldn’t be sure he could trust Anderson not to keep some vital card up his sleeve to put one over on him, in that intense, competitive way he had, and waste him time. Assuming what she had to tell him had any
relevance
to the case.

Gail was a mousy haired hefty young woman with a cheerful smile. They sat down with the delivery book at a display garden table in the entrance hall.

‘You’re not the usual auditor, are you?’

‘I’m just helping out with the debtor’s tab. There are one or two queries that go back to the time when Miss Jackson was here.’

She sighed. ‘Poor Donna. She was really, really good on the money side too, making sure everything was invoiced properly.’

He nodded, not needing to be assured of her expert touch on the money side. ‘Her initials went against the deliveries she made, yes? So what sort of people did you deliver to?’

‘Elderly folk mainly. Wealthy business types short on time. We had to know them really well for Joe – Mr Hellewell – to deliver.’

They began to sift through the names in the months leading up to Donna’s death. They all seemed above
suspicion
, going by Gail’s description. ‘It was mostly seniors, you see. Some of the business folk did forget to settle their accounts occasionally, that’s true. Now then … Miss Julia Gregson, that was one address she went to several times.’ She flicked over pages. ‘Funny,’ she murmured, ‘I remembered
thinking at the time what a lot of stuff we sent to Cheyney Hall.’

‘Miss Gregson being another elderly lady?’

She shook her head. ‘Mid-thirties, I’d say. Pots of brass. Doesn’t need to work, I believe. I should be so lucky.’

Instinct told him that this might just be worth checking out, but some thing more positive prompted him,
something
he couldn’t quite pin down. ‘Were all Miss Gregson’s deliveries made by Donna?’

She nodded. ‘Look, there’s a little note here in Joe’s writing: “Miss Gregson requests that all her deliveries be made by Donna.” That explains it. She had such a nice way with customers.’

‘You’ve been a great help, Gail.’ He scribbled down the address of Cheyney Hall. ‘I think we’ve isolated the debt; I’m sure she’s just overlooked it. Would you know if Miss Gregson lives alone? No partner?’

‘Can’t help you there,’ she said, grinning. ‘Donna never let on. Didn’t let on about anything much, to be honest. I should think Miss Gregson’s beating them off, with all that lovely dosh, but I only ever saw her here on her own.’

‘She’s not been in recently?’

She frowned. ‘Now there’s a funny thing. I don’t remember seeing her all season, now you mention it.’

Crane stood near the entrance, waiting for Anderson, though the reporter had his own wheels this afternoon. He was curious about Kirsty Hellewell. Then suddenly, Anderson came careering across the entrance hall, jacket flying about him with the momentum. ‘Can’t stop, Frank, they’ve just got me on my mobile. Some nutter in Cutler Heights has a woman and two kids under siege.
Threatening the uniforms with a gun. We’ll touch base at Patsy’s, OK?’

Crane followed him out, but he went off at an angle. ‘My car’s in the lower park,’ he said. Crane had never seen him so animated and didn’t believe it was much to do with a nutter with a gun. Anderson suddenly turned and ran back a few yards, his cocky, triumphant grin an ominous sign. ‘I’ve got fantastic news,’ he said in a lowered voice. ‘I think we’re there, Frank, I think we’re there!’

Crane ruefully watched him lope off. It was churlish to feel so disappointed and he knew it. The killer had to be caught and what did it matter who got the lead that counted? But Crane was the pro and he’d wanted it to be him. He got in his car. The reporter had clearly had a stroke of luck. And if he was so charming that women told him things, well, that was part of his luck too. But what could she have told him? Whatever it was, it had to be dynamite.

Anderson drove as rapidly as he dared to join the city ring road. He grinned, the look on Crane’s face! He knew this was a ball they could run with. He was almost certain in his own mind that it would solve everything and leave him with a story nearly as good as the original one. Boy, would he be glad when it was all over and he could begin work on the final draft of his big feature, and start to put out feelers to the
Sunday Times
. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind he would eventually get what he wanted. He always had. But the look on Crane’s face!

C
rane went to Ilkley by the moor road. The sun shone from a clear sky and the rooftops of Ben Rhydding were as sharply defined as an engraving. He drove rapidly, the greeny-brown mass of the moor’s terrain rising to his left. He was tense, restless, impatient to know what Anderson had learnt. He had to admit that he was a bright bloke, he’d not be crowing that he thought they were there if he’d not got the strongest lead of all. Crane couldn’t shake off his disappointment that a young reporter could get ahead of a police-trained PI. All right, he’d had a massive stroke of luck. It didn’t make him feel any better.

He knew this would probably be a pointless journey, but he couldn’t settle. He’d decided to see Julia Gregson if only to eliminate someone else who appeared to have got to know Donna rather well, going by the deliveries she’d had her make. That other detail still nagged at his mind, some connection he couldn’t quite make.

‘Miss Gregson?’ he’d asked on the phone.

‘Who is this?’ she’d said sharply, in the imperious way moneyed people often had.

‘The name’s Frank Crane. I’m investigating the murder
of Miss Donna Jackson on behalf of her parents. The
original
suspect has been cleared. Could you spare me a little time if I called on you?’

The silence was so lengthy he thought he’d been cut off. Then, ‘I … fail to see what help I can give you. All she did for me was deliver shrubs and bedding plants.’ There was a decided tremor behind the assured hauteur.

‘She made an awful lot of deliveries.’

‘I’ve got an extremely large garden.’

‘Did you become friends, Miss Gregson?’ he said, in a soft tone.

‘There’s nothing I can help you with, Mr Crane. Goodbye.’

‘I’m liaising with the police,’ he said quickly. ‘I shall have to pass on to them this information, and as they’re now on the point of reinvestigating the case themselves I think you’ll find they’ll insist on talking to you. I could possibly spare you that.’

After another silence, she said in a subdued tone, ‘Oh, very well, I’m in all evening.’

The house was off the Ilkley-Skipton road, isolated and standing in extensive grounds, around which ran a high perimeter wall. He drove in through an archway with ornamental gates that stood open. Cheyney Hall was a very grand residence: gabled, chimneyed, stone-built and with a delicately-columned portico sheltering the main entrance. The front garden was mainly sweeping lawn and mature trees, but a central fountain played into a carved stone basin.

She opened the door herself. ‘Come in, Mr Crane.’

She led him across a spacious hall, half-panelled and hung with landscapes in oil, and heavy with the scent of
freshly cut flowers, which stood in ornate vases. There were more flowers in the lofty reception room she took him into, in more vases standing on carefully polished antique tables: roses, lilies, marguerites, sweet pea and many more he couldn’t put names to. It brought to Crane’s mind a French tag he’d once read somewhere:
Qui fleurit sa maison fleurit son coeur.

Aphone sounded in a distant corner. She excused herself and left him standing by the window. It was rear facing and the spread of land on this side of the house seemed as vast as a park. It was overlooked by a balustraded terrace and in the foreground the garden was formal and geometrical in the precision of its layout, with a pool that was more like a small lake. Beyond it stretched walkways, tapestried hedges, a gazebo and tiny, separate, secluded gardens, shrouded by cherry, apple and laburnum trees. A distant strip of dense woodland formed a boundary. A lengthy, lavishly stocked conservatory ran from the left of the house at right angles. It was the largest garden Crane had ever seen enclosing a private house. He was so absorbed by the scale of the place that for a few seconds he was unaware of her return. She stood watching him in a wary silence.

‘Miss Gregson,’ he said politely, ‘may I ask why you had all those deliveries made of plants and shrubs you didn’t really need?’

She went on watching him in silence. She was about five-six and had dark brown hair looped back into an elegant bun, slightly protruding brown eyes, a rather aquiline nose and an olive complexion. She wore a black rib cardigan and a straight, black, ankle-length skirt. He seemed to detect in her eyes the same bottomless sadness he’d seen several times before in the Donna Jackson case.

‘I … yes … you’re right,’ she said heavily at last. ‘I ordered many things I didn’t need. Would never need. I … I liked to see her. I grew to care for her. She was so very sweet, such a friendly little thing. That’s really all there is to know about Donna and me.’

‘You had deliveries made simply to see her for a short time?’

She turned away, absently adjusted an already perfect flower arrangement. ‘Well, obviously I’d ask her in for coffee. I live a rather solitary existence. She’d stay and chat for a quarter of an hour. They seemed not to mind at Leaf and Petal.’

‘She never talked about boyfriends at all, Miss Gregson? Apart from Mahon, the man the police originally thought responsible for her death?’

For a second, he thought she was going to faint. She closed her eyes, swayed. He caught her arm.

‘Are you all right?’

She took several deep breaths, plucked his hand away with a look of distaste. ‘She never talked about men. Never.’

‘Not even a man called Adrian?’

‘She never talked about
men
! She … she knew …’ She let the sentence dangle.

The outburst abruptly supplied the key Crane hadn’t stopped searching for. Her name was Julia and there was a J in Donna’s diary he and Patsy had been unable to fit a name to. Crane had assumed it could only be another man. Until now.

‘Did you ever see Donna apart from when she made deliveries, Miss Gregson?’ he said carefully.

She shook her head, began swallowing. ‘Of course not. Why should—’

‘She didn’t come back in the evening now and then? Or at the weekend?’

She shook her head again, but was now swallowing so rapidly she couldn’t speak. She burst into tears. He’d seen few women cry as she did. She cried noisily, endlessly, crouching as if in barely endurable physical pain, the tears streaming down her cheeks and dripping off the end of her chin. Few cases he’d known had involved such
heartbreak
. He crossed to a sideboard, poured brandy from a decanter, returned and put it carefully into her shaking hand. She gradually calmed herself, taking sips of the liquor between sobs. She sat on a shield-back chair beside one of the flower-bearing tables.

‘You must have guessed what I am,’ she said, in a thin, wavering tone.

‘You fell for her?’

‘She’d come at weekends now and then. I adored her. I begged her to be my secretary-companion. I’d take her all over the world. My father was in property. I couldn’t spend what he left me in two lifetimes. But she … she wasn’t as I am. She’d stay with me, even sleep with me, but …’ Her haggard gaze passed over the flawless
precision
of the formal garden. Crane guessed she’d dressed in black since the discovery of Donna’s body. ‘We both wept one night because she was, well, she was normal, couldn’t commit to …’

He looked down ruefully at her bowed head. He could have told her that the only reason Donna had wept was because she couldn’t hack it permanently with another woman, even if that woman happened to be one of the wealthiest in the West Riding.

‘Did you give her money, Julia?’

Her eyes rested on his. ‘Not for sleeping with her. Never for that. She’d not have taken it. She was too genuine, too caring. Sleeping together was simply part of our close friendship. But … yes, I did give her a little money now and then. I’m wealthy, she was poor. The family depended on what she made at the nursery. You’ll probably know her father’s too ill to work. She’d only ever take money, and so very reluctantly, to help her parents.’

Her eyes began to well with tears once more. It struck Crane then what an incredible inspirer of dreams Donna had proved to be: a companion for Julia, a star model for Fletcher, a billboard queen for Hellewell. She seemed to embody dreams like those legendary actresses who appeared so sensitive, spiritual and pure, and yet, away from the screen, always seemed to live the raciest lives.

‘How did it end?’ He spoke with deliberate bluntness.

There was a sudden brooding look in her eyes, startling in its intensity. ‘I thought it was just me,’ she said, in a low raw tone. ‘I accepted that we weren’t the same, knew she’d have to leave me one day. Some man, children, all that nonsense. All I asked, while we were together, was for it just to be me.’ She fell silent for seconds. ‘But … but she
was
seeing someone else. A man. A
man
!’ She ended on a note of near-anguish.

‘Any idea who the man was?’

Another silence, her gaze unfocused. ‘We were … she was coming to me on Saturday after work. She cancelled, said Joe wanted her to work late, they were so busy. I was very upset. Couldn’t quite believe her. I drove to Leaf and Petal and waited in a corner of the car park the staff use. She came out at the usual time, but didn’t drive her car, took a taxi. I followed it. It took her to the Raven, out
towards Kirby Overblow. He was waiting for her in the car park.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘I only saw him from a distance, and only from behind. I daren’t be seen, I might never have seen Donna again.’ Her face looked crumpled in the gathering dusk, as if she’d developed age lines. ‘He was fair, well-built, tallish. I took the number of his car when they’d gone inside, then came home. I don’t know why I took the number – to
challenge
her with it, I suppose. I never did, of course.’ Her voice had fallen to a whisper.

‘Have you still got it?’

‘You can have it, for what it’s worth.’

It may not be worth spit now. Crane was beginning to feel very uneasy, was beginning to wonder if he’d possibly begun to get ahead of Anderson. She’d been crazy about Donna, like so many others, but it had begun to turn ugly at the point where a man had entered the equation.

‘Did you ever visit Tanglewood reservoir with Donna?’ he said flatly.

She flushed. ‘What can you be thinking?’ she said. ‘What can you be
thinking
?’

‘Well, did you?’

‘You can’t imagine I had anything to do with—’

‘I’m asking if you went to Tanglewood with her.’

Shaking now and agitated, she watched him again in one of her silences, bottom lip caught in teeth. ‘She … once came here by taxi,’ she muttered reluctantly. ‘Her motor wasn’t very reliable. She couldn’t stay over, it was
mid-week
. I drove her home. She didn’t want me to see where she lived, not that I’d have minded. We … we said our goodbyes at Tanglewood. Sitting on a bench near the
lower one. Then I dropped her off on the outskirts of, what do they call it, the Willows?’ Her eyes brimmed with tears yet again.

‘Julia,’ he said, still bluntly, ‘Donna kept a diary.’

Her mouth fell open, her moist eyes suddenly wide with shock. ‘Oh, no,’ she whispered. ‘Dear God,
no
…!’

Crane let the silence roll. Then he said, ‘She didn’t enter names in it or how she spent her time, she just used single initials. The initial J occurs again and again. It gives the impression that up to the day she died she was here every weekend.’

Mouth still open, the pupils of her eyes rimmed in white, she cried, ‘But she didn’t! She came a lot, perhaps one weekend in three, but not every
week
.’

She spoke with a vehemence that threw Crane. ‘I … think you’ll find the police will put the same interpretation on the diary as me, Julia.’

She fell silent yet again, giving an impression of some kind of mental struggle. Finally, she said, ‘Wait,’ in a voice of intense reluctance. She got up, crossed to a chiffonier, opened a drawer, returned. She held an inch-thick, leather-bound book. ‘If you won’t believe me … I kept a diary too.’ She held it out, but hesitantly, as if prepared to snatch it back if he tried to take it. ‘Look at it, if you must,’ she said sighing.

He drew it slowly from her, turned to the Saturday Donna had last been seen alive. ‘Donna,’ the entry read, ‘didn’t come today …

Crane said, ‘Do you mind if I look back for three months?’

‘Only … only to check out the weekends. As you can imagine, no one was ever intended to see it.’

The diary provided a complete sheet for each day. He flicked back through the pages covering each Saturday and Sunday beneath her watchful gaze, to check the
weekends
Donna was present. If the diary was accurate, she really had seen her only about once every two or three weeks. In which case, who was the other J Donna had recorded? Hellewell? The entry for the Saturday Donna went missing was the last. He guessed she’d have written that on the Sunday before she’d heard the news.

‘I was too distraught to write anything at all when I was told the police were searching for her,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve never kept a diary since.’

‘Well,’ he said, in a gentler tone, ‘thank you for your time, Julia. I’m sorry for the distress I’ve had to cause you.’

She showed him out. ‘Can I be allowed to put all this behind me?’ she said in an almost pleading tone, as they stood on the marble tiling beneath the front door’s portico.

‘I’m … sorry. I’m afraid, your involvement with her was such that the police will have to know about it.’