Crane shrugged. ‘I’m sure you’re right, but his information is valuable to me if he’s willing to share it.’
‘Oh, Donna Jackson …’
Crane seemed to hear an echo of Patsy’s voice when they’d sat in his car. Maybe Anderson had given so much time to the story that Carol had begun to feel very neglected. Assuming she was his girlfriend.
Then she gave him a little impish grin. ‘You’ll have to watch him, you know, our Geoff. He’s a great guy, but he tends to take over and run things. He’s also got a clever line in implying his information gathering was more than useful in bringing certain villains to a court room.’
He watched her. None of that worried him much. He’d be working alone on the Jackson case, whatever Anderson imagined, with this single exception of going with him to see Mahon. He’d already sensed his nuisance value, having had experience of handling reporters from his days in the force, when flawed reporting at the wrong moment could damage a sensitive investigation. All he wanted from Anderson was what he knew, and as far as he was concerned, if Donna’s killer was ever found, the reporter could then claim all the glory going. Crane was a man who’s anonymity was crucial to the work he did.
He knew Anderson was back by the way Carol’s grin suddenly ignited into a warm smile. ‘There you go, Frank,’ Anderson said, putting down a gin and tonic in front of him. ‘Any amusing deaths, you guys, as Bowra used to say?’ he said to the others. ‘Any juicy bits of scandal among the city fathers? I’m picking up a rumour from a London chum who reckons a heavily married Blair Babe is finding her way to the pied-à-terre of a heavily married junior minister on a career path. He thinks they sit in the dark when they’re not playing gee-gees in the dark. Now who does that remind you of?’
Fifteen minutes passed, with Anderson’s rapid delivery keeping them amused and intrigued by turns. Apart from being attractive to women he seemed also to be very much a man’s man. It was the engaging smile, the hand that briefly touched an arm. He was also a good listener, despite being so irrepressible himself. He had charm in spades. Crane distrusted charm, as it could have an ugly side when it didn’t work, but he had to admit that in Anderson’s game it was virtually essential.
‘Are you free tonight, Geoff?’ Carol said, at a brief pause in the animated chat. ‘There’s The Constant Gardener showing at the Odeon. Fancy a bite at Frère Antoine’s and catching the second house?’
‘Carol, beloved, I should have explained. I’m going on somewhere from here with Frank. Another night, yes?’
‘Right you are,’ she said, with a brightness that didn’t quite cover what Crane could tell was intense disappointment.
‘Let’s go then, Frank. Chummy should now be ensconced. My car’s in Vicar Lane so I’ll see you up there in about fifteen, OK?’
The Goose and Guinea had been built when the Willows was being developed in the late 1930s. It ran catty-cornered to the main road and at the end of the estate’s principal drive. Apart from being dated it also had no style. Built of shiny, yellowish brick, it had a flat roof, odd, rounded corners and long, narrow, metal-framed windows. It had a dubious reputation but was well run, mainly because the landlord was built like a medium-sized wardrobe.
They went in and Crane bought drinks. The pub was open-plan, with an annexe at the rear in which a few young T-shirted men played pool. Another man sat watching them gloomily.
‘Mahon’s the one sitting. Must have been played out. That’s handy. Let’s go sit with him.’
Crane followed him across the main room, quiet at present, to the banquette seating beyond the table.
‘Hello, Bobby. Thought I might find you here. Mind if we join you for a few minutes? How are you doing these days, old son?’
Crane had to hand it to him, his manner with a possible killer was exactly as warm as it had been with his colleagues at the Glass-house. Mahon peered slightly in the gloom that surrounded the sharp even glare of the pool table’s canopied lamps.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said flatly.
‘This is Frank Crane, Bobby. He’s a very skilled private investigator. Malc and Connie have engaged him to see if he can throw any light on Donna’s murder, seeing as the police have got nowhere.’
Mahon gave an indifferent nod. ‘So ’e can try and prove it was me?’ he muttered. ‘That’s why they’ve taken ’im on. Malc and Connie never thought it was no one else.’
‘I’ve got an open mind, Bobby,’ Crane said quietly. ‘I doubt there’ll be much the police missed. I’m just going to take a fresh look and talk to the people who knew her.’
‘No good talking to me, mister. I don’t know nothing about that murder. I only wish I did. The police never stopped trying to pin it on me, even though I were sat at ’ome with me mates.’
On an instinct, both Crane and Anderson let the silence roll, in the hope that it might encourage Mahon to say something, anything else that might give them a lead. But Mahon seemed sunk in apathy. He had pale blue eyes and thick fair hair scraped back from his forehead in the ponytail Donna had been so scathing about. It was knotted by a narrow blue ribbon, a grotesquely demure touch. He had a broad nose and thick lips that gave him a slightly feral appearance, though it didn’t detract from his roughish good looks. He was strongly built and wore a T-shirt of an unattractive shade of green, faded jeans and black moccasin boots. He had what the police tended to call a ‘building site’ tan.
Finally breaking the silence, he said in a low voice, ‘You don’t know what it’s like.’
‘What’s that, Bobby?’ Anderson asked in a kindly tone.
‘No fucker believing you. Not just the police, they never believe no one. It’s Connie and Malc and them.’
‘It can be very upsetting. I’ve talked to an awful lot of people who’ve had the same problem. They’ve got a perfectly honest alibi but because they knew the victim so well it gets the Chinese whispers going.’
‘I didn’t feel good that night, Geoff. I wasn’t up for it, getting a few down in ’ere and then doing the clubs. I’d come over all shivery. I told the lads I was ’aving a night in, so they said they’d ’ave one as well, we’d play some poker.’
Mahon’s words sounded rehearsed even now, a year on. Crane wondered how many times he’d recited them to the police. He found it impossible to believe that the sort of men Mahon knocked about with would sacrifice a Saturday night out because a mate had come over all shivery.
Crane spoke in as sympathetic a tone as Anderson’s. ‘These things happen, Bobby. I don’t suppose it helped much that your mum and dad had decided to stay in too that night.’
‘Me mam were worried about me! I’m never sick. I only wish they ’ad gone out. Folk wouldn’t keep saying we’d all ’ad our ’eads together.’
Crane had expected to find a Mahon who’d be intensely guarded, if not hostile, but he seemed to want to talk, if only to justify himself. His friends would have heard enough, months ago, about the Donna killing, and probably wouldn’t listen any more. And maybe Mahon still wanted to talk so compulsively he was even ready to make do with him and Anderson.
‘Look, Bobby,’ Crane said, ‘I’d be really grateful for any help you could give me. You know who Donna’s contacts were. You must have your own suspicions?’
His pale blue eyes moodily met Crane’s. ‘Never trusted that arsehole she worked for. Leaf and Petal bloke. Seemed fond to me, know what I mean? Kept ’er on that winter. I thought aye aye, ’cause she knew fuck all about plants and that. They ’ad a Christmas do and I picked ’er up. Didn’t like the way ’e was eyeballing ’er in that tight dress. Fond. I could ’ave flattened the bugger.’
‘You think he might have been trying to get off with her?’
‘Sure of it. Mind you,’ he said dolefully, ‘who wasn’t with Donna?’ His eyes had a haunted look in the smoky dimness.