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.’
Crane felt like sighing but didn’t. Benson would love any sign of how impossible he felt it was to wring any more from a case a bunch of skilled policemen and women had given up on so long ago. ‘You want another drink, Ted?’
‘Best not. Said I’d try and be in early tonight. The kids …’
One day, maybe they would buy each other drinks as they’d done in the past, and only then would Crane know their old close friendship was genuinely on the mend. He said, ‘I had a private word with Patsy Jackson last night. She mentioned a Marvin.’
‘The brother. Comes between Patsy and Donna age-wise. He has a very nice dark suit he wears for court appearances.’
‘He’s done time?’
‘Burglary, more than one conviction. He mixes with the Dougie Mahon mob too. The rotten apple in the Jackson barrel, the others are as straight as a stick.’
‘And he doesn’t figure in any of this? Wouldn’t he know where Bobby really was that night if he’s in bed with the Mahons?’
‘We don’t think so. We had him in, Christ, we had half the Willows in. But he wasn’t at the Mahons that night and checks out, and the Mahons aren’t pretending he was one of the ones who was. There’s nowhere to go, Frank.’
Crane wasn’t prepared to agree, not if he was going to take the Jacksons’ money. ‘Donna herself, Ted. Patsy reckoned she might already have been living a dodgy life.’
‘We’re certain she was putting it about, but no definite proof. I mean, he’s seriously bad news that photography bloke, Clive Fletcher. We know he’s into video filth, but we can’t prove that either, and that’s another story. As far as Donna goes, he checks out. But we got bad vibes about her, felt she might have been her own worst enemy.’
It was the second time Crane had heard similar words. ‘What about Hellewell? Leaf and Petal man?’
Benson said, ‘He seemed kosher. Good looker. I reckon he had the hots for her. He wasn’t alone, not by a long shot. But he looked to be in a stable marriage and his story for where he was that night’s as tight as a crab’s arse.’ He stubbed out his final cigarette, prepared to go. ‘Do you know Geoff Anderson?’
‘Standard’s crime reporter? Took over from old Harold? The Jacksons mentioned him.’
‘He gave it the column inches. It was a story that had everything going for it anyway, but he was like a dog with a bone. He’s young, bright, very ambitious. Sharp – he couldn’t have been more than five minutes behind us at the SOC.’