‘Trouble is, Bobby, Joe Hellewell’s alibi’s rock solid, just like yours,’ Anderson pointed out in his friendly way.
‘Fletcher then. I told ’er time and again not to ’ave nothing to do with the slimy sod.’
‘Same problem there, old son. The police cleared him.’
Crane said, ‘Bobby, I don’t want to upset you more than I have to, but do you think it’s possible Donna was seeing someone else on a regular basis? She was quite young, wasn’t she? Maybe she didn’t feel ready for a settled relationship.’
‘That’s what all the bother were about, weren’t it?’ he broke out. ‘Er seeing other blokes behind me back. All right, I ’ad a one-night-stand now and then, didn’t I, but that’s different, innit?’
Crane knew it was, in the male dinosaur climate of the Willows. ‘Do you know who any of these blokes might have been? It could be very important.’
‘She’d never let on to me, mister. She were always so close. She thought I’d go and put ’em in ’ospital. Too right.’
‘It must have made you very cross, Bobby,’ Anderson said mildly, in his deceptively leading way.
Mahon looked irritably from one to the other of them. ‘I didn’t ’it ’er ’cause of that,’ he said shortly. ‘That’s what they tried to make out, that I knocked ’er about ’cause of the two-timing. Well, I never. I only ’it ’er two or three times and that was ’cause she wound me up rotten. You don’t know what she could be like: said I weren’t going nowhere and me family were crap and me wheels should be on the tip and … and …’ He broke off, reddening. Crane guessed she’d probably jeered at his sexual technique too. If she’d slept around she’d be able to make value judgements. He felt no sympathy for a man who’d knock a woman about, but Mahon was only saying what Patsy had said, that Donna had had a fatal instinct for picking on all those things about yourself you least wanted to hear.
He caught Anderson’s eye, shrugged. They were getting nowhere. Crane didn’t even have an instinct about Mahon’s innocence or guilt. Bobby came from a criminal background, that was the trouble. It put him ahead of the game when it came to lying his way out of things, including murder. Yet for once in a blue moon he just could have been at home on a Saturday night and had the bad luck to choose a blue moon night when his girlfriend’s body was hitting the bottom of a reservoir.
‘Well, thanks for your help, Bobby,’ he said politely. ‘And I really am very sorry about Donna.’
‘We’ll let you get on with your pool,’ Anderson added. ‘Where’s Cliff, by the way? Unusual not to see you two together.’
That seemed to leave him even more depressed. ‘Don’t know,’ he muttered. ‘’aven’t seen ’im in weeks.’
‘Don’t say you’ve had a bust up with your best friend on top of everything else?’
Mahon took out a cigarette and lit it from a disposable lighter with a trembling hand. He sat slumped on the banquette, gazing with unfocused eyes over the pool table, where the others were chalking the tips of their cues and sipping from fresh pints.
‘Coming in, Bobby mate?’
He shook his head. ‘Next frame, Heppo.’
As the balls began clicking again, he suddenly started to cry, the tears rapidly welling and trickling down his tanned cheeks. He looked to be in a state of total despair, and maybe he was, but Crane knew from long experience that guilty men could weep just as bitterly as the innocent.
‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ he said once more, in a thin mewing tone. ‘All of ’em, the ’ole bleeding Willows, looking at you like you was shit. Crossing the street when they see you coming. Reckoning you’re not there. People you’ve known all your fucking life. Mrs Bateson … she were like a nana to me once, last week she spit at me! None of the totty’ll go near me, I’m that bad news. It gets round the clubs and them bitches won’t even dance with me, let alone …’
Crane thought, who could blame them? The story would be about that if you glanced at another man Bobby gave you a mouthful of signet rings and if you went out with one he topped you. And this would have gone on since Donna’s body had been winched up nine months ago. No wonder he seemed near-suicidal.
Anderson touched Mahon’s arm. ‘We know how you’re feeling, Bobby. We’ve seen it all. People can be very unfair. The police have cleared you, why won’t they accept it? In Australia the Aborigines call it pointing the bone. If they decide someone’s done something really bad in one of their little communities they actually point a bone at him, and after that no one will have anything to do with him. He’s out of it. They sometimes go off and die because they’re so unhappy. It’s a lousy deal, being cut off by your own people and that’s what they’re doing to you on the Willows. They’re not even trying to give you a fair shake and it’s just not on.’
Crane glanced at the reporter. He sounded sympathetic, but he’d managed to come up with an image that had left Mahon even more distressed. He’d gone pale, the cigarette smouldering between stained fingers. He wondered if this was the flip side of the Anderson charm. He’d spent untold hours on the story, maybe he was convinced it could only be Mahon. And if Mahon wasn’t going in front of a jury, why not rub it in that the jury of the Willows wouldn’t be a soft touch?
‘I didn’t do it, Geoff,’ he gasped. ‘I were crackers about ’er. I wanted ’er to live with me, we could ’ave put us name down for a council flat. It done me ’ead in, just clipping ’er them one or two times, I felt that bad about it. I couldn’t ’ave done that carry-on at Tanglewood, couldn’t ’ave. Christ, why won’t no one believe me?’
The two men walked across the car park to claim their motors. Crane still wasn’t entirely sure about Mahon’s guilt, though he’d not known a case where the evidence for it stacked up so credibly. No wonder the police had shelved it and moved on, having made every possible check. There was an outside chance the killer was someone who’d covered his tracks too well, but if the police couldn’t get Mahon out of the frame he knew they’d not look further, their resources were too limited. He said, ‘Well, thanks, Geoff. At least I got the measure of the beast, if nothing else.’
‘That stuff about the Abos. I thought it might loosen him up a bit, with him being already in a low state.’
‘There could be a delayed reaction.’ But he was certain there wouldn’t be. Mahon would get over it and the Willows would get over it, because that’s how life went on the estate. And for all his tears, Mahon had shown no anxiety about Crane making a fresh start on the case. That meant he either felt totally secure in his alibi, or might, just might, be as innocent as he protested he was.
Anderson peered round the car park. ‘Hell, what’s happened to my car?’ he said. Then he tapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘I’m losing it. I’m in the office runabout, my wheels are in for repair.’ He opened the door of an elderly Astra. ‘I thought for a second one of Mahon’s low life chums had nicked mine while we were talking to him. They’re full of tricks like that. Keep in touch, Frank.’
Crane muttered, ‘In your dreams,’ as he got into his Megane. Anderson’s way with people like Mahon weren’t his, though to be fair the reporter had unknowingly given him what could be a very small lead, and so the meeting with Mahon mgiht not have been a total write off.
As Anderson drove back to the city, he knew he had to find some way of keeping tabs on Crane. He needed to know what he was up to every foot of the way and it wouldn’t be easy, as Crane, being ex-CID, would be skilled in fending off crime reporters. And Crane had been one of their best. He studied the angles, thought things through, picked up clues others had missed. And if Crane could come up with anything new on the Donna Jackson story, anything at all, Anderson had to be the first to get his hands on it. There was the big feature he wanted to write, which he was certain would be crucial to his future career. His future career was never out of his mind for very long.