by Roberta Kray
‘But she could have. She was living in the Fury house, wasn’t she?’
‘Not mixing with the guests, though. Strictly below stairs if you know what I mean.’
‘Teddy was a womaniser. He could have found his way downstairs.’
‘She was a decent girl by all accounts.’
Heather rolled her eyes. ‘Even decent girls get seduced.’
Nick almost asked if she was speaking from experience but bit his tongue. It could have come across as flirtation and he didn’t want to give the impression he wasn’t taking her seriously. Or that he was even faintly interested in her. This was strictly business, an exchange of information and nothing more.
‘What about the other staff?’ she asked. ‘Didn’t the police think there could be an inside connection?’
‘Everyone was interviewed so far as I’m aware. A lot of the villagers were employed at the time and Esther sacked every single one of them. It didn’t go down too well as you can imagine. Some of them had worked in the house for years.’
‘Brutal,’ she said.
‘A knee-jerk reaction, I guess. What do you do when you can’t trust anyone?’
Heather leaned forward and rubbed her face with her hands.
‘Are you all right?’
She dropped her hands and nodded. ‘Don’t mind me. I’m just trying to get my head around it all.’
‘Yeah, it’s guaranteed to give you a headache. What’s your gut feeling as regards Hazel Finch?’
Heather glanced down at her stomach as if to garner its opinions. She looked up again and grinned. ‘Is that how you do your detecting?’
‘Partly,’ he said. ‘It all counts.’
‘Okay, well, I think she’s got something to hide, but I can’t be sure that something is Vicky. Although she certainly didn’t want to talk about her. As soon as I broached the subject she clammed up – not that she was especially forthcoming to begin with. I made sure Vicky wasn’t there when I knocked on the door which meant I never got the chance to see her up close. I took a few photos, though, from the car. Do you want to take a look? They’re not that great.’
‘Sure,’ he said.
Heather took a small oblong paper wallet from her bag and passed it across the table. Nick slid out three glossy prints. She was right: they weren’t that great. They’d been taken from a distance of about twenty feet and probably snapped too quickly for fear of being caught in the act. The girl had long, straight blonde hair and was dressed in flared jeans and a vivid orange T-shirt. In the first two prints her face was slightly blurry, but the third was clearer. He studied the features: the eyes, the nose, the mouth. Vicky’s face was round, plump-cheeked and although she was pretty enough he could see no resemblance to either of the Furys.
‘Not all girls look like their mothers,’ Heather said, as though she’d guessed what he was thinking.
‘You look more like Esther than she does.’
‘I’ll have to have a word with my parents, make sure there isn’t something they want to tell me.’
Nick smiled and went back to studying the picture. ‘You’re right, though, insofar as there isn’t anything to rule her out. Does she look anything like Hazel?’
‘Not really. I mean, I wouldn’t pick them out as being related in an identity parade.’
‘And what about Esther? What does she think?’
‘She said no, absolutely not, but she still held on to a set of the photos. Why do that if you’re absolutely sure?’
‘She can’t ever be that. And Mal? Has he seen them?’
‘I don’t know. Probably. I took the best one with me to the prison, but they wouldn’t let me show it on the visit. Rules and regulations, although God knows why a photo should be a problem. I had to leave it at reception so I’ve no idea if it was given to him or not.’
Nick slid the photographs back into the folder and returned them to her. ‘But he did a bunk not long after you saw him.’
Heather stared at him. ‘You think it’s my fault he’s absconded?’
‘No, you can’t blame yourself.’
‘I don’t,’ she said sharply. ‘He’s a grown man. He can make his own decisions, no matter how stupid they are.’
‘Absolutely,’ Nick said. There was a shift in the atmosphere, a sudden chill. She had gone from amenable to hostile in under five seconds. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it.’
Heather’s smile was slight and strained. ‘I have to go,’ she said, standing up. ‘Thanks for the file. Let me know about Lolly, won’t you?’
Nick nodded. ‘Good luck.’
She left the café with the carrier bag swinging at her side. There was something defiant in her gait, something almost angry.
14
Monday 19 September. Kellston
Business was conducted on the ground and first floors of the house on Albert Road, but the girls who lived in had their own private space on the second floor. Dana’s room was sparsely furnished with little in the way of personal belongings: some clothes hanging in the wardrobe, cosmetics and perfume on the dressing table, an old record player with half a dozen LPs. There wasn’t much to show for nineteen years of life.
While Lolly sorted out the clothes, Stella was going through the drawer in the bedside table looking for any clues as to who the mysterious Freddy might be. To date all she had found of importance was a brown cardboard folder containing the history of Dana’s time in care and a small collection of press cuttings relating to when she’d been abandoned as a baby. She had placed these on the bed beside her.
‘Did the law take anything away?’ Lolly asked.
Stella shook her head. ‘They had a quick look round but that was it.’
Lolly folded up dresses and shirts and put them in a bag. She tried not to think too much about the girl who had worn them and how she had died: beaten, raped, strangled. Staying practical was the only way to deal with things. She was more than aware that her present life could easily have mirrored Dana’s if it hadn’t been for Mal’s intervention. There but for the grace of God . . .
It didn’t take them long to clear the room – a new girl would be moving in soon – and when they’d finished they stood together by the door and were silent. No words seemed adequate and it was too late for prayers. Dana was never coming back. The Good Lord would make his own judgement and hopefully it would be merciful.
Lolly’s relationship with God was a tricky one. Like most people she tended to ask for his help when in trouble and forget about him when she wasn’t. At the moment, what she felt was a combination of sadness, frustration and anger. What was the point of creating a world and then throwing a heap of grief into it? It seemed to her a questionable way of going about things.
Down in the kitchen, they placed the bags by the sink and sat down at the table. Stella rolled a cigarette; her hands were shaking and it took her twice as long as usual. Lolly started rooting through the rubbish they’d retrieved from the wastepaper basket: tissues, bus tickets, chocolate-bar wrappers, old magazines, just in case Dana had scribbled Freddy’s phone number or address on them. Near the bottom of the pile she came across a National Front leaflet scrunched into a ball. She smoothed it out, stared at it for a while and then held it up.
‘Look at this.’
Stella shrugged. ‘What of it?’
‘The Cecils are involved with the National Front, Tony and FJ. I saw them at the market on Saturday handing out these.’
‘What of it?’
‘Well, FJ’s a Freddy, isn’t he? Freddy Junior.’
‘Except nobody calls him that.’
‘He might, if he didn’t want Dana to know his true identity. And he’s more than capable of trying to rip her off.’
Stella puffed on the cigarette, frowning. ‘There’s a big difference between that and murder, love.’
‘Tony’s got form for GBH, he did time for it, and FJ’s no better. The two of them beat up Jude on Saturday. They’re thugs.’
‘What?
I didn’t even know Jude was back.’
‘He isn’t,’ she said. ‘He was just . . . ’ Lolly waved a hand, not wanting to go into the details. Even speaking his name sent sparks of anger through her. ‘It doesn’t matter. All I’m saying is that I wouldn’t put it past them. Maybe Dana sussed what they doing, realised she was being conned and—’
‘And so they decided to shut her up by killing her? Even if Dana had gone to the law – which she wouldn’t have – she couldn’t have proved nothin’. The worst they’d have got is a slap on the wrist.’
Put like that, Lolly could see that her theory didn’t make much sense, but she wasn’t prepared to let go of the Cecil angle just yet. ‘What about Freddy Senior, then?’
Stella gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Are you kidding? Freddy Cecil? He wouldn’t have gone near Dana. If he’d so much as looked at a tom, Brenda would have ripped his balls off. Anyway, there are thousands of those leaflets doing the rounds. Dana could have picked it up anywhere.’
Lolly glanced at the leaflet one last time and then put it aside. Her suggestions had been coloured, she knew, by her loathing of the Cecils, what they’d done to Jude and her recent encounter at the market. She would still, however, keep Tony and FJ on her own private list of suspects. They were evil sods and capable of anything.
Stella started looking through the file, softly tutting while she perused Dana’s history in care. Lolly moved on to the press cuttings and laid them out in front of her. There were seven in all, photocopies, and the stories came from local papers. There were pictures of a nurse holding Dana – possibly the nurse who had provided her with a name – and others of the church where the abandoned baby had been found. Dana had been about six or seven months old and wrapped in a pink blanket. Requests were made for anyone with information to come forward.
Follow-up reports failed to reveal any new leads. If anyone had known anything they had kept quiet, and the mother had never been traced. It was unusual, Lolly thought, for a baby to be abandoned at that age. More often they were newborns, left out of fear and desperation. Tests must have been done to establish that Dana wasn’t the missing Fury infant. Had Mal and Esther been informed? If so, there would have been a few brief hours of hope before the crushing disappointment.
The mother could still be out there somewhere. If she was local, she would have heard about the murdered girl and possibly made the connection. Dana wasn’t a common name. A shiver ran through Lolly. Not wanting to dwell on what the woman might be feeling, she tried to keep her practical hat on.
‘I wonder where Dana met this Freddy.’
Stella looked up, a red flush of anger rising to her cheeks. ‘I wish I bloody knew. In the pub most likely or through one of those scummy mates of hers.’
‘I thought she didn’t have any mates.’
‘She didn’t, not real ones. But she wasn’t smart enough to know the difference. I told her time and time again: that lot only ever look after number one. So long as you’re buying their junk, they’ll be your best pal, but you won’t see them for dust when the money runs out.’
Lolly knew that what she meant by junk was heroin. Although Stella seemed to exist on a diet of fags, vodka, coffee and dope, she drew the line at the hard stuff. The drug had been growing in popularity recently and more pushers were moving into the area. They hung around the Mansfield estate, making what was already a bad situation ten times worse. Muggings and burglaries were on the rise as addicts struggled to feed their habit.
Worried that Stella might try and confront the dealers over Freddy – a move that could only ever end badly for her – Lolly put forward another suggestion. ‘For all we know, Freddy could have been a punter.’
‘Nah, she wouldn’t talk about nothin’ personal to a punter. They don’t pay to have conversations, love. That’s the last bleedin’ thing on their mind.’
Lolly veered off in another direction. ‘Where did she get these newspaper cuttings?’
‘The library, I think. Most of them. And one or two from the Gazette.’
‘Recently?’
‘A few months back.’
‘Perhaps that’s how she met Freddy. I mean, she’d have had to have asked for help, wouldn’t she? They don’t leave these old newspapers lying around. They’re in some kind of archive. Someone would have had to go and get them for her . . . well, unless they’re on one of those microfiche things, but even then she’d have needed a hand operating the machine. Perhaps he works at the library or was just there when Dana came in. He could have overheard her talking and spotted an opportunity.’
Stella puffed on her cigarette while she pondered the possibility.
‘Or the Kellston Gazette office,’ Lolly continued. ‘We could ask at both, see if anyone remembers her.’
‘I suppose,’ Stella said without much enthusiasm. She had, perhaps, already formed her own opinion as to how Freddy could be tracked down and it didn’t involve hanging around in dusty buildings. Standing up, she went over to the cupboard, took out a bottle of vodka and poured a couple of shots into a glass. ‘You want one, Lol?’
Lolly wasn’t a big drinker at the best of times, and two o’clock on a Monday afternoon wasn’t one of them. ‘No, ta.’
‘The thing is,’ Stella said, returning to the table, ‘that lowlife had Dana right where he wanted. Kept saying he was close to finding her mum, that she was a local woman – as if anyone couldn’t guess at that – but he needed a few more quid to grease some palms and get people talking. Where’s the bloody evidence? I asked. How do you know any of it is true? I told her she couldn’t trust no one round here, but she wouldn’t listen. The stupid kid only ever heard what she wanted to hear.’
Lolly could understand Dana’s selective hearing when it came to trying to find her family. Everyone wanted roots, a sense of belonging, and that need would have made her easy to exploit. ‘What if it wasn’t Freddy who killed her?’
‘It was him all right. And I’ll bet she had his phone number in her bag. He’d have made damn sure he got rid of that.’
‘But I don’t get all the secrecy. I mean, I do, from his point of view, but didn’t Dana think it was odd?’
‘She weren’t thinking, hon, that’s the trouble. And he had an answer for everything. Said they had to keep quiet, keep it under wraps, in case the papers got wind of it.’ Stella drained her glass, stood up and poured another. ‘He reckoned if they didn’t keep it hush-hush, her mum might get spooked and do a runner.’
‘But she still told you.’
‘Only ’cause she was so excited she couldn’t keep it to herself. She had this idea in her head, how she’d be welcomed with open arms and it would all be happy ever after.’
The front door opened and closed and Jackie came through to the kitchen. She scowled when she saw Lolly. ‘You still here? Ain’t you got a home to go to?’
‘Leave it out,’ Stella said. ‘She’s been helping me clear Dana’s room.’
Jackie glanced towards the bags near the sink. ‘Not helping herself, I hope.’
‘I’m not a thief,’ Lolly said.
Jackie’s eyebrows went up, as though Lolly was being unduly sensitive. ‘Didn’t say you were, did I?’
‘Near as damn it.’
The two of them glared at each other. Lolly, who had long since learned never to back down, held the stare until Jackie gave in and looked away. Having established that she couldn’t be intimidated, Lolly pushed back her chair and rose to her feet.
‘Okay, I’d better make a move. I’ll go and check out the library, unless you want to come with me?’
Stella shook her head. ‘Nah, I can’t bear those places. They’re too quiet, love. It ain’t natural.’
‘I’ll let you know if I find out anything.’
‘Thanks, hon. You take care of yourself.’
Lolly left the house and did her usual half-run, half-walk, making sure she didn’t make eye contact with any driver cruising along Albert Road. It was still much quieter th
an usual, but business was starting to pick up. Even murder didn’t keep the punters away for long. The police presence was minimal now with just the occasional patrol car doing the rounds.
She knew that Stella didn’t have much faith in her theory, and maybe it was a long shot, but she reckoned it was still worth pursuing. It was a worry that Stella might do something rash, especially when she’d had a few. Confronting dealers was never advisable. The best of them were dodgy, and the worst . . . well, the worst would stick a knife in your guts if you caused them any trouble.
As she walked she wondered how Dana had found the money to feed her drug habit and pay Freddy. She had no idea how much the girls earned but imagined there wasn’t a whole lot left over after Terry had taken his share and the rent had been paid. Dana, being young, had probably had more customers than the others – the older you were the tougher it was to make a living – but it must have been a stretch.
The library was a grand red brick building, halfway down the high street and next to the town hall. It was years since she’d last been inside. She would go there as a kid, especially in winter when her mum wasn’t around and there were no coins to feed the meter in the flat. It had been a good place to stay warm and so long as you kept quiet no one bothered you.
Lolly halted by the entrance, trying to decide how to play it. People got suspicious when you started asking questions and she wasn’t even sure what questions to ask. The staff might clam up if they realised she was retracing the steps of a murdered girl, and there was always the chance that Freddy either worked here or hung around a lot. Tipping off a murderer that you were hot on his tracks wouldn’t be the smartest move in the world.
In the end, Lolly decided to simply make a request to see the local papers from the month and year Dana had been found – without mentioning Dana’s name or why she was interested. From there she would play it by ear, have a good look round and see if anything happened. It wasn’t much of a plan but it was the best she’d got.
Lolly had got herself all geared up and was about to go inside when she glanced along the high street and noticed Nick’s battered Ford parked outside the Indian takeaway. There was no sign of him so he’d either gone for a walk or was waiting in Connolly’s. She hesitated, but only for a second. There was a chance he had some news about Mal and that was more important to her than trying to find Freddy.