Dead Dream Girl

by Richard Haley

‘That Geoff,’ Patsy said, shaking her head as the door closed on him. She gave Crane a conspiratorial smile. ‘Do you want my news now?’

  He watched in silence as she opened a handbag and took out a small black diary. It was stamped in gold with the initials DJ.

  ‘No!’

  ‘I made another search of her room. I felt all round the edge of the carpet, but there were no loose bits anywhere. So I looked at the drawers in the base of her bed again. I knew the police had had everything out, but something made me feel underneath. The diary was in an envelope and she’d fastened that to the underside of one of the drawers, right at the back, with Scotch tape. She’d have been worried any of us might lay hands on it.’

  ‘Well done, Patsy! I don’t think even the police would think she was going to keep a diary so well hidden. Bloody well done!’

  ‘You’ll soon see why she kept it so well hidden,’ she sad sadly. ‘And it might not help much.’

  Crane quickly saw why. His elation ebbed. It wasn’t a record of where she’d been and who with. She’d written down initials and figures only, the figures entered neatly beside the initials, in brackets. £75 seemed to be the going rate. It could be less and it could be a lot more, especially on Saturdays. Sometimes the letter B would show up with the letter F at the side, also in brackets. A figure would be entered each Sunday that checked out as the week’s takings, which was rarely fewer than three amounts. He turned to the little accounting section at the back. He found that this had been kept just as meticulously, weekly totals brought forward and added into monthlies. There was a regular figure included in the weekly amounts of £170, which he took to be Donna’s net pay from Leaf and Petal. Detailed expenses were also accounted for: motor, HP, clothes, hair, make-up, house and so on. There was always a healthy bottom line.

  They looked at each other. ‘Couldn’t do sums to save her life when she was at school,’ she said flatly. ‘Seemed to have learnt fast.’

  ‘Money’s a fast teacher. There seems to be a lot of money left over, according to this. Six grand at least. Know if she had a cheque account?’

  ‘She always swore she didn’t have enough to make it worthwhile. Told Mam and Dad she found it impossible to save. She only gave them a tiny bit towards her board.’

  ‘So what happened to the money, Patsy?’

  ‘Could have had it with her. Could have been killed for it.’

  ‘It’s a good idea, but can you see anyone as careful as she was carrying thousands of pounds around in a handbag?’

  ‘You’re right. She was so careful with everything.’

  ‘But if all this money’s gone it gives the case an extra angle.’

  ‘I could have another scout round in her bedroom.’

  ‘Might be worth it. The police weren’t looking for money, they’d assume she had none, like most teenagers.’

  She nodded ruefully at the little book. ‘It can only mean one thing, can’t it?’

  ‘It’s got to be sex for cash. Apart from B. I’d guess B stood for Bobby and he seemed to qualify for a freebie. It looked as if she made Bobby pay by winding him up rotten.’

  She gazed despondently out over the unkempt strip of lawn and the peeling garages. He guessed she found it very hard to equate the near call girl Donna looked to have become with the little sister she’d helped to bathe and dress, and played with in the wendy house.

  Crane looked back at the diary. The letter C appeared regularly. ‘Could C stand for Clive Fletcher, do you think?’

  ‘He was trying to get her into modelling,’ she said doubtfully. ‘They say he always expects it to come free from the girls he’s looking after.’

  ‘Well, he’s paid here and that could have been something that bugged him. And A crops up in the months before she died. Could that be Adrian? There’s also a J that figures a lot. Often at the weekend, with amounts of a hundred or more, but other times showing no figure at all. Interesting. Could mean she stayed the night somewhere. Was she away much at weekends?’

  ‘When wasn’t she? She’d go to the garden centre on Saturdays and take her going out clothes with her. She was always with her friend Pam if anyone wanted to know.’

  ‘Pam covered for her?’

  ‘The police talked to her, but she had no more idea where Donna got to than I did.’

  ‘Surely she’d not be as secretive as that with her best mate.’

  ‘Pam kept her neb out, just thought herself lucky Donna was her best mate. She was nothing like as pretty as Donna, no one was, but being around her meant she got to get Donna’s leavings.’ It was a symbiosis as old as time, the plain one and the pretty one, and she spoke with a resigned bitterness.

  Crane gave the diary a final glance. There were other initials scattered through the pages, but the ones that appeared regularly were B, C, A and J. ‘I’ll tell Ted Benson you’ve found this, they’ll need it when they make a fresh start.’ But he knew the police would be as disappointed as he was that it hadn’t been a regular diary, with full names and an account of her movements.

  ‘I’ll get you a drink,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t have brought that bag of booze.’ She looked at him gratefully. It was clear no one else had ever brought her a bag of booze, let alone flowers or scent.

  He shrugged. ‘You can’t afford to keep giving out free drinks. Why didn’t you dig out the diary when Geoff was here?’

  ‘I … wanted you to see it first,’ she said, reddening again. ‘So you could decide what to do before he starts trying to take over, like he always does.’

  She was a bright kid. She’d picked up on the tension both men tried to conceal behind a jokey manner. ‘It doesn’t seem fair,’ she said, ‘you’re finding out these new things and I have a feeling he wants to take the credit for them if you get anywhere. He’s a good looking bloke and you can’t help liking him, but good lookers can be very self-centred.’

  Crane thought that she’d know if anyone did, having had a sister like Donna. He took her lightly by the shoulders. ‘He’s pushy and he’s driven, Patsy, but all that really matters is finding your sister’s killer.’ He could have added that the worst vibes he got from Anderson were that he’d damage the case by his impetuosity, his lack of tact, and his gnawing ambition to get down to Fleet Street, or Wapping, or wherever the big papers hung out these days.

  ‘You keep an eye on him, Frank.’

  He took his hands away, sensing that she’d have liked him to keep them there. She smiled uncertainly and went off for the drinks. Crane was pushed for time but felt he had to spend another ten or fifteen minutes with her. It gave her such a boost to have them there, him and Anderson, that was obvious. They made her feel useful and needed in those flip chart sessions and it had been like transferring a wilting plant into the right kind of soil. Poor kid, plain maybe yet comely and intelligent. But simply neglected in a house where her glamorous little sister had hoovered up all the attention.

  When she came back with the drinks, they sat on the sofa. She was still in a state of animation and it was beginning to be hard to remember her as the drab and apathetic woman he’d first seen.

  ‘I … saw the personnel lady today,’ she said. ‘Asked her if they’d bear me in mind for supervising work. She seemed really pleased. She said they’d already considered me because I was a good worker, but they’d thought I didn’t want the responsibility.’

  ‘What did I tell you? You’ve got to push yourself, you see. No one else will.’ But he knew the altered hairstyle had swung it and the modest make-up and the growing confidence. ‘Good work, Patsy!’

  ‘She said as soon as there’s a vacancy they’ll talk to me about it.’

  ‘There you are then. And once you’ve got on the next rung keep going. You’ve got the intelligence and the ability, you’ve already shown that in the help you’ve given me.’

  When he’d gone she sat over her drink, thinking how much she was beginning to enjoy life. She couldn’t believe how dreary everything had seemed before Fr
ank Crane had come into it. He was so encouraging, so keen to see her make a new start. And he knew she was trying hard with her hair and her clothes, it was the sort of thing you could tell by the way he looked you over. She wanted to go on wondering about Frank but hardly dared. She was sure he lived alone as he seemed to work all the time. That smile of his, that he was so mean with. When he gave her that smile it made her insides flutter. And when he’d put his hands on her shoulders …!

  As Crane drove away he felt his sense of guilt beginning to lift. Poor kid, he’d only taken a drink with her that first time because he’d realized how useful she could be to him. But there’d been a plus side for her too that made him feel better about using her. He knew she fancied him, but there was nothing he could do about that. It would have to be sorted out at the right time.

  It had been an overcast day of intense humidity. Crane, forehead beaded in sweat, climbed the steps again to the upper reservoir. He seemed to be breathing air as dense as liquid. He expected to see Ollie’s straw hat the moment he reached the top, but he wasn’t at his bench yet. He sat down and waited. There seemed to be no one else about just now and the only sound was echoing birdsong.

  Five minutes slowly passed. It seemed odd when he was said to be ‘always around’. Maybe the heat was getting to him. He wondered if he’d have anything to pass on. It could be the breakthrough: a bisexual who knew the area backwards, whose name hadn’t been picked up by the police because the gays didn’t talk to police, combined with Donna’s own obsessive secrecy.

  He then heard a sound that was different from the rest. It was a noise like a thin cry of pain, as if one animal was attacking another. He heard the cry again. It could have been anything. He had no feel for woodland life. It could almost have been human. He stood up uneasily, the fine hairs stiffening along his bare arms. The sound had come from directly behind him. He began to move warily over dry ground, through patches of dense fern and the leaf mould of decades, into a deeply shaded hollow.

  Ollie lay in the middle of the hollow. His head oozed blood and his bloodstained Panama hat lay a yard away. There was so much blood it was difficult to see the actual wounds. A red bubble formed on his open mouth. A shattered arm lay motionless at one side of his plump body, his other arm twitched sluggishly. He gave another of the tiny moaning cries Crane had heard from the bench.

  He shook his head, his emotions torn between pity and guilt. Pity for a harmless gay who’d suddenly wanted to know too much, and guilt because had it not been for him he’d still be on his bench, looking forward to a nice gossip and the chance to get laid.

  He took out his mobile.

  SEVEN

  ‘How’s he doing?’

  Benson pursed his lips. ‘Damn near a flatline, but the poor sod’s still alive, just. Want my opinion, he was left for dead.’

  ‘When do you think he’ll be able to speak?’

  ‘Couple of weeks if he’s lucky. His jaw’s so badly broken it’ll have to be wired. And even when he can talk he’s not going to. Not to us. You know what they’re like. What’s the story?’

  ‘There’s a bisexual lurking about somewhere called Adrian. Could be connected to the Donna killing. I gave Ollie a twenty to see if he could come up with anything.’ He gave him the rest of the details.

  Benson watched him. Crane could sense his resentment that he’d contrived to get a contact in the gay reservoir community, not that it had done any good yet. Cruisers didn’t speak to the police was the accepted wisdom, but Crane knew that Benson knew that even if he had not lost his job in the force he’d still have found a way.

  ‘Think someone warned this Adrian?’

  ‘It could be looking that way.’

  ‘Well, the gays are going to have to do some talking now,’ Benson said grimly. ‘They either talk or we apply to close the place down after six. That should give them the message.’ He finished his half of bitter. ‘Well, I’ll be off. Christ, I’m not scratching around for something to do just now, what with Mr Blobby getting done over and Terry gearing up to make a fresh start on the Donna carry-on.’ He hesitated, then said with reluctance, ‘Thanks for the tip-off about Marvin Jackson, by the way. We had him in, told him he either coughed about the guns or we treated him as a leading suspect in Donna’s case. He coughed.’

  Crane watched him go. Shrugged. He knew Terry Jones would have leant on Benson to make sure he showed Crane due gratitude. They’d been in it together, he and Benson, the evidence-planting against a villain who took up more police time than a quarter of the other rubbish, and was simply the most evil, loathsome human being Crane had ever known. And Crane had taken the fall because of Benson’s kids and sick wife. And that wouldn’t have been so bad if Benson could have accepted the favour, if he’d not somehow, in his mind, begun to think he’d come out of it with clean hands and that Crane had been responsible for the lot. The mind was a funny thing. Crane also knew that if he’d acted alone in the evidence-planting, seen to every detail himself, it wouldn’t have come to light. But Benson had been his best friend and had wanted to help.

  It was flip chart time again. Ollie’s battering was already front page news in the Standard, but Crane gave them his horse’s mouth version, scribbling the details of Ollie’s sad fate on his own sheet. ‘It could have been you as well, Frank!’ Patsy said in shocked tones, grasping his arm. ‘He could still have been around, whoever it was.’

  ‘No way, Patsy,’ Anderson said sombrely. ‘They don’t hang about when they’ve given someone that kind of belting. They leg it fast.’

  It was only the second time Crane had seen the reporter’s mobile face so still. He was bitterly disappointed. ‘The poor sod must have been asking too many questions, too suddenly and in too many faces.’

  ‘And it got around fast. Well, he’s still breathing, just, but he’s never going to talk to anyone again. About anything.’

  ‘And the police’ll get nothing out of the others, whatever they do. Not now.’ Anderson sipped his drink despondently. ‘Christ, I never even made it to the SOC. My sidekick covered it. I was with the Asian girl at a safe house in Doncaster.’

  Crane sensed that what really bugged him was being caught between two good stories, rather than poor Ollie’s sickening injuries, while Crane struggled with the guilt of involving the poor guy. ‘Well,’ he said, sighing, that about brings us up to speed, apart from one final matter. Patsy made another toothcomb search of Donna’s room at home and found something the police missed. A diary.’

  ‘A diary?’ he cried. ‘A diary! One that …’ He let the sentence dangle in his excitement, suddenly so keyed up that his hand shook.

  ‘Chill out,’ Crane told him, with a wry smile. ‘It tells us just one thing, that she was on the game big time. Nothing else.’

  ‘Can I see it? You’ve not handed it over to Benson and Co?’

  ‘Not yet. We’ll have to, soon. Patsy’s still got it here.’

  She handed it to him and the reporter, hands still trembling, flicked rapidly through the weeks leading up to her death, studying the items intently, just as Crane had done. It soon became clear he’d reached the same conclusion.

  ‘What became of the loot?’

  ‘You tell us.’

  ‘She really was putting it about, wasn’t she?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it. I’d say she was pacing herself. She was charging top dollar too, top dollar in Bradford terms anyway, and she was accounting for the money very carefully. It was as if she had a long-term plan.’

  Anderson flicked ruefully through the pages one last time. Donna’s background and way of life had been his obsession. He’d known she mixed with unsavoury types. But Donna’s obsession had been secrecy and Crane didn’t think the reporter had even begun to guess at the highly organized call girl she’d made of herself. Crane guessed that he now saw that big concluding feature shredding before his eyes, of a Donna he’d just about been able to pass off as an ingenuous teenager corrupted by the men she’d come
up against, her fate sealed by the accident of being born on the Willows. If anyone ever was brought to trial for her murder, the defence wouldn’t hesitate to imply that she’d been partly to blame for her own death by the company she’d chosen to keep. Crane couldn’t forget Patsy’s words as she’d sat in his car the first night they’d met. ‘She asked for it, Frank.’

  ‘Well, where do we go from here?’ Anderson said heavily.

  ‘My feeling is we talk to Fletcher and Hellewell. She spent a lot of time with both of them. We could ask if she mentioned an Adrian. We could also test out their own alibis. Let’s start with Fletcher. You know him, you’ve talked to him. When would be a good time to catch him?’

  ‘Early evening, at home. Definitely at home.’ He began to find his old cocky grin. ‘That bugs him. He’s frightened about his wife finding out about the porno stuff. I reckon she’s an important part of his back-up: humping gear for the weddings, chatting people up and selling the service, all that. Comes from a respectable county family. Fletcher answers the door himself and rushes you upstairs. He has an office up there, plus a studio and darkroom. She’ll know about the routine modelling for the catalogues but I’m certain she’s in the dark about the basement he rents and what goes on down there.’

  ‘This basement—’

  ‘Spent hours checking it out. Warehouse building in the Old Quarter. I’ve seen young girls and blokes go down there. I’ve shadowed one or two of the kids, tried chatting them up in the Glass-house, no chance. The money’s good and he backs it up with threats, and they know he means what he says. The police know what he’s up to but they have no proof, and anyway it comes so far behind the city’s drugs problem as to be out of sight.’

  Crane gave a respectful nod. He’d certainly done his leg work. ‘Do you think he could have used Donna in a porn video?’

  ‘No. He’s nobody’s fool. He was certain he could agent her to the fashion industry. If she didn’t make it legit the blue movies would have been a fall-back.’