‘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.’