Dead Dream Girl (2 page)

Crane stood up. ‘Well, I’ll do the best I can.’

‘You’ll work for us?’

‘I have to remind you, Malc, that a team of highly skilled policemen have spent a lot of time on Donna’s death. All I can really do is go over the ground again and see if there’s anything they might just have missed.’

‘You might be able to find enough for us to bring a private prosecution. Mr Benson explained that to us as well.’

‘You’d go that far?’

‘As far as it takes.’

‘All right, Malc. Now I must explain my charges.’

He gave them detailed figures, and an estimate of expenses. Even middle-class people usually winced at the bottom line, but the Jacksons took it without reaction. ‘Whatever it costs, Frank,’ Malc said, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. ‘As long as you don’t mind hanging on till the Pru poppies up. We’ll spend it all, if need be.’

‘We couldn’t live with ourselves if we didn’t feel we’d done everything we could,’ Connie said quietly. ‘If you can’t get anywhere either we’ll call it a day.’

Patsy, who’d been briefly absent, came back into the small room wearing a lightweight indigo parka. ‘I’ll see you out, she said. ‘Then I’ll go on to Debbie’s, Mam.’

Crane said his goodbyes and walked with her along the short path. ‘Can I give you a lift?’

‘No, she just lives on the end. Thanks all the same.’

It was in Crane’s direction so they walked together. ‘It’s been a bad business for you all,’ he said.

‘They need to get right away from the Willows,’ she said in a blunt, near aggressive tone. ‘It’s full of awful
memories
. Dad’s drinking too much. They’ve seen a little bungalow in Wyke. They’d need every penny of the
insurance
money as a down payment. They don’t earn enough to handle a big mortgage.’

He glanced at her as they passed between the row of identical red-brick houses and the line of kerb-side cars. She was flushed, looking straight ahead. ‘Couldn’t you have talked them out of hiring me then?’

‘Couldn’t
you
? Told them it was bloody pointless?’ They’d halted at Crane’s Megane, shoehorned between a Lada and an Escort, both years old. ‘You don’t look as if you’re desperate for the money.’ Her glance took in his car.

‘I think you know as well as I do that if I turned them down they’d go to someone else, and there’s no one as experienced as me in the city.’

‘You think no end of yourself, don’t you?’

‘I know I’m good, yes,’ he said shortly.

She flushed again, looked away. ‘You know they’ve fed you a load of crap, don’t you?’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘There’s no point starting the sodding job if you believe anything
they
say about her.’

‘Get in the car and give me your version then.’

‘I just want you to turn them down,’ she snapped. ‘Let the poor devils buy their bungalow and get away from this dump.’

‘Are you getting in the car or not?’ he said bluntly.

Biting her bottom lip, she got in. Sitting behind the wheel, Crane said, ‘Look, I’d turn them down if I didn’t think they’d go to another PI who’d take the money and do half a job. I can do without this hassle. I’ll do them a no frills job but this kind of work never comes cheap.’

She sat in sullen silence, gazing with unfocused eyes along a street just beginning to edge into twilight. Crane
sensed an old envy she couldn’t shake off. She was plain, her sister had been a stunner, even going by the grainy newspaper pictures he remembered. He glanced at her face again. She had decent bone structure, but that was it, beneath the frightful hairdo and thick coating of make-up. Maybe she’d come into her own a bit more when she was older. A mature comeliness. Even if she did he didn’t think it would be much comfort to her, not whenever she thought of her sister. Dying young had meant she’d be a stunner for ever.

‘She asked for it, Frank,’ she said at last in a low voice.

‘You could say that about plenty of young women, provocatively dressed, when the clubs start to empty. It excuses nothing.’

‘You know why Joe Hellewell kept her on at Leaf and Petal? She didn’t know one plant from another, not even when she’d been there six months. I’d have done anything for a chance like that. He kept her on because they fancied her rotten, the old married men the wives trailed round. If they
had
to go to a bleeding garden centre they’d go to the one Donna was at, with her big come-on smiles. She loved it. That’s why he kept her on through the winter, when no bugger goes. Apart from wanting to get into her knickers himself, nasty creep.’ Her voice rasped with grievance, but Crane had found that that was how the real truth often came wrapped.

‘You’re saying she hadn’t a genuine future there?’

‘She only had a future till Hellewell got his eye on someone else. He wasn’t keeping her on for what she knew about flowers, that’s for sure, as she couldn’t tell a dahlia from a frigging geranium.’

‘This Clive Fletcher—’

‘Well, you know what
he’s
all about, don’t you? Starts off with glamour pics for the catalogues and magazines and then it’s why not just one or two with your tits showing, darling, and then it’s skinflicks, right?’

‘Go on.’

‘There’s only ever him and the girl there when he tries it on. And if they give him the nod he gets the camcorder going. He pays well, so they keep their traps shut. And he tells them that if anything gets out about it they’d better start worrying about their looks.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘You get it together. You pick up the whispers at the Goose.’

‘You told DS Benson about it?’

She shook her head. ‘Clive’s respectable, what you can see of the evil swine. He does normal things most of the time: babies, weddings, family groups. Mam and Dad were always there when Mr Benson was asking about Donna’s contacts. I didn’t want them to hear any rumours she might be into …’ She let the sentence dangle.

‘Do
you
think she was? Nude photos, porn videos?’

‘No. I think he wanted to try for the straight stuff first. I honestly think he felt he could get her face going big time. If they’ve already done nudies, the agencies don’t want to know.
I
think he thought if that didn’t work he could get her into the other stuff later.’

‘But you’re not sure she wasn’t already into the other stuff?’

‘No. She was really, really secretive, even with me, though we always got on all right. She liked the smackeroonies. Clothes, jewellery, the latest mobile. She had a nice little Mini. It wasn’t too old but she was sick for a convertible.’

‘These other blokes that Mahon thought she was
two-timing
with …’

‘He wasn’t wrong. She liked posh restaurants and Bobby couldn’t afford them. Not with being on the Social and what he could make pushing.’

‘Why bother with a bloke who’d take a swing at her?’

She sighed, shrugged. ‘You tell me, with looks like she had. And Bobby wasn’t all bad. He’d come to the house with flowers now and then, fill her tank, pay for repairs when he had the bread. But Donna could aggravate a bloody saint. Forget what
they
say. I’ve heard her and Bobby rowing. She could latch on to all those things you didn’t want to hear about yourself, the things that really, really bug you. She’d throw that cruddy family in his face, and how no one would ever give a dork like him a decent job, and what a total arsehole he looked with the pony-tail. And Bobby would take it for long enough, take it for a bloody sight longer than most of the blokes round here, and then she’d go that bit too far and he’d lash out. Funny,’ she said then in an almost musing tone, ‘she seemed to get off on it.’

Crane watched her. She’d summed up the relationship with skill. What woman would have risked Donna’s kind of looks with a man she knew she could provoke to violence unless she was hooked on the dangerous thrill? Perhaps that was how she’d liked to live her life: on the edge, taking chances, tempting fate. Perhaps she really had asked for it, death at Tanglewood.

Tears suddenly began to well along her eyelids. She shook her head irritably. ‘Christ, I’m so
sick
of it,’ she said, in a low harsh voice. ‘Donna, Donna, bloody
Donna
! It was always her when she was alive and it’s just the same now
she’s dead. She had everything, every mortal thing: looks, blokes, jobs, anything she wanted. And me and Marvin, we could forget it. If they’d given
us
a bit more attention I know we’d have done better. Know what I’ve been this last four years? A bloody checkout. That’s about all I’m good for. And whoever looked at me when she was around?’

The bitter tears made her eyeliner run, which had done nothing for her looks anyway. Crane reluctantly put a hand on hers. He felt he’d coped with enough emotion for one night. But he was learning things from her he guessed he’d not get from others. And he felt sorry for the poor, blokeless kid with the tousled hair and the plain Jane looks who, life being the callous bastard it was, had given her Donna for a sister.

‘I loved her
too
,’ she whimpered. ‘God’s honest truth. Even though she had everything and I had sod all. She was such a pretty baby. I think Mam and Dad couldn’t figure out how people who looked like them could have had someone who looked like her. I’d help to push her buggy and dress her and play with her. We were always together. It was when she began to grow up. She changed. When the blokes came sniffing around. I told her to go canny, over and over, she could get herself into serious bother. She just thought I was putting the mockers on. Maybe I was, a lot of the time. I still loved her but there were times when I hated her as well. God, I’ve felt so guilty since. That’s why I can’t bring myself to knock poor Bobby like they do, even if he did do it.’

‘Don’t take on Patsy.’ He gave her hand a squeeze. ‘That’s what families are like, nearly all of them, and I’ve been involved with dozens. It’s all hate and love and
loyalty and guilt. You know what they say: you can choose your friends but you have to make do with the family you’re given.’

Benson was sitting at the bar when Crane got there, smoking as usual and sipping a half of bitter. Dave, behind the bar, didn’t need to be told to set up a gin and tonic for Crane.

‘I was with the Jacksons last evening.’

Benson nodded. They got on a little better these days, but Crane knew the Donna Jackson business was going to cause resentment. Knew why and to some extent could sympathize. ‘Yes, well,’ he said, ‘they’ll not let it go, and if they’re hell-bent on using a private man it had better be you.’

‘I just wish they didn’t have to break into their bit of savings.’

Benson sighed. ‘We wanted a result on Donna more than anything we did last year, well, you’ve seen what decent people the Jacksons are, salt of the earth. But we got nowhere and neither will you, Frank. That’s not sour grapes.’

But it was, partly. Crane said, ‘Why did it take this youngster to find the body? Surely strollers must have seen it? In summer, vertical sunlight?’

‘Too murky. That’s why they don’t want kids swimming in it. You can only see clearly for five or six feet. It must be ten, twelve deep.’

‘Just how was the body weighted?’

‘Plastic sack, full of biggish stones.’

‘Does that mean he’d taken the stones with him? Which would mean it wasn’t a spur of the moment thing.’

‘No, there were plenty of stones available. There are two reservoirs at Tanglewood, yes? One above and beyond the other. Well, they buttress the banks at the sluice-way end of each reservoir with tons of stones, all a nice handy size. So we don’t think it needed to be premeditated. He’d probably need to go back to his car for the sack to put the stones in and the cord to attach the sack to the body, but plenty of blokes carry stuff like that around in the boot.’

‘Agreed, but if he throttled her on the spur of the moment he showed plenty of presence of mind in getting shot of the body. She
was
strangled, I seem to remember?’

Benson nodded grudgingly. He didn’t much like any of this, but he reported to Terry Jones, and Terry Jones would have told him to tell Crane anything he wanted to know.

‘They can prove that, if nothing else. Her being in the water for three months did nothing for the forensics. You’re right, he did know how to use his noddle in a tight situation. But the low life we had in the frame could have scored on both counts. Capable of losing it and doing her in
and
finding the bottle to make a fair fist of getting shot of the body.’

‘We’re talking Bobby Mahon?’

‘We know it’s him. We both know most homicides are by people connected to the victim: lovers, spouses, offspring, neighbours. He fits the pattern like a wet T-shirt. Known to be crazy jealous and too handy with the dukes. We’ve seen everyone else that Donna knew that we could trace, but none of them had reason to be with her at Tanglewood the night she went missing and they all had alibis anyway.’

‘Where does Mahon say he was?’

‘At home, breaking out the six-packs. And his mum, his
dad and three of his mates were breaking them out with him, and they all give him the get out.’

‘So they’re all lying?’

‘We’re talking people who are never in. And on a Saturday? Do me a favour. And with his dad being that evil, lying scrote
Dougie
Mahon—’

‘Not Dougie the Fence?’

‘See what I mean? And Myrtle Mahon, she does her pocket money tricks on Saturdays. Can you see
her
in the house Saturday night playing knock-out whist? Well, we can’t put the bugger inside without any kind of evidence, but we know it’s him. I didn’t say this, but we stopped looking for anyone else months ago. But no one on the Willows thinks it was anyone but Mahon. Not just us.’

‘Late evening,’ Crane said, ‘the gays drift into the
reservoir
area. Did you give any of them a shake? One of them might have seen Mahon.’

‘Christ, you were in the force. They’re like the toms, blind, deaf and dumb unless it concerns one of their own. They don’t even admit to going there, not to us. Apart from that they do their cruising on the upper level. The kid was dumped on the lower.’