Dead Dream Girl (10 page)

They followed him up a wide staircase. It had dark oak balustrades that also ran along a lengthy landing. Two teenage girls hung over the landing rail and gazed
lingeringly
at Anderson before going back to their rooms. Anderson glanced at Crane with a small upward jerk of his head. It translated as two pretty young kids whose father made obscene movies of pretty young kids.

Fletcher led them over creaking floorboards and through a door at the end of the landing. This was his office. It had doors to left and right, which Crane guessed were studio and darkroom. It was comfortably furnished and had a large antique pedestal desk and a bow-back Windsor chair. Lavish examples of his highly-skilled work were displayed on the walls: wedding groups in dappled sunlight, winsome babies, family portraits, businessmen looking decisive.

‘Well, get on with it,’ he said tersely.

‘Things have changed, Mr Fletcher,’ Crane told him. ‘It was common knowledge that Bobby Mahon was the leading suspect in Donna’s murder. He’s now been cleared.’

Crane saw a flicker of unease in his eyes, but otherwise he gave little away. He was about five-ten and well-built, with strong features and a head of thick auburn hair. His eyes were dark blue and glinted when they caught the light, and seemed to hint at the faint, louche lassitude of a
man overdrawing on sizeable energy levels. Crane guessed he overdid everything: work, play, drink, sex. He’d certainly have access to plenty of sex.

‘You’d better sit,’ he said, with an edginess he could only just control. ‘Christ, I never thought it could be anyone else but that shithead.’

‘These things happen, sir,’ Anderson said comfortingly.

‘It means the police have to make a fresh start,’ Crane told him.

‘Does that mean I’ll have to waste time with them too?’

‘If we can get a firm lead on Donna’s killer we should be able to spare you any further dealings with DS Benson.’

‘I spent a lot of time with that kid,’ he said harshly. ‘She had the most photogenic face I’ve ever pointed a lens at. I could have made her a big name. Apart from that I liked her, liked her a lot.’

Enough to shell out seventy-odd pounds a throw to sleep with her? Crane wondered if he really was the C in her diary. But then Fletcher suddenly had a haunted look about him, as if his unfocused eyes saw again the woman he’d photographed so often. He looked forlorn, as if he genuinely grieved.

‘Oh, well,’ Anderson said gently, ‘at least you’ve got plenty of other attractive young women to console
yourself
with.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he snapped, back in the present, eyes glinting, face hard.

‘Your glamour photography. Your remarkable ability to make young women look their sexy best. You very kindly lent us a picture of Donna to put in the paper when the poor kid’s body was found, remember?’

The other watched him. He couldn’t quite decide if he
was being needled by this amiable young man, but Crane was quite certain he was. It was Mahon and pointing the bone all over again.

‘Just to get things straight in my own mind, sir,’ Crane said. ‘Would you mind telling me when you last saw Donna?’

‘Two days before she went missing,’ he said
mechanically
. ‘We’d had another long photo shoot. Pros, we need dozens of shots to get the right one.’

‘And they were all … routine modelling shots?’ Anderson asked, with subtly pointed emphasis.

‘Of course they bloody were!’ he said, stung. ‘That’s the only kind of glamour work I
do
.’

Crane and Anderson both knew the value of a dubious silence and they let it roll for a few seconds. Crane said, ‘Did Donna ever mention an Adrian, sir? It’s very
important
. No surname, I’m afraid.’

He seemed genuinely to be searching his memory. He finally shook his head. ‘Means nothing. She talked about Mahon now and then, and the guy who owns Leaf and Petal – Joe Hellewell – but that’s about it.’

Crane nodded. ‘I know the police have gone into all this, but would you mind telling me where you were the night Donna went missing?’

‘The Photographic Society dinner at the Norfolk Gardens.’

‘About what time did it end?’

‘Elevenish.’

‘And you came directly home?’

‘Yes. My wife can vouch …’ He’d said it all before.

‘In your own motor?’

He gave the slightest pause. ‘… Yes.’

‘Wasn’t that rather unusual?’

‘Why should it be? I’d only had a couple.’

‘Oh …’ Crane shrugged. ‘I suppose if I’d gone to a boozy do I’d have wanted to get a few down and join in the fun. I’d have taken a taxi.’

Crane heard Anderson’s soft intake of breath as a second flicker of anxiety showed in Fletcher’s glinting eyes. He wasn’t ready for this, it had caught him off his guard. It had to have been a question neither the police nor Anderson had thought to put.

‘Taxis, they’re … expensive from this distance,’ he said uneasily.

Crane glanced pointedly at his Rolex, his handmade cotton shirt and silk tie. Fletcher didn’t like it, that he’d looked to need to raid the petty cash tin.

‘Ten miles,’ Crane said musingly. ‘£25 return?’

‘I went in my own
car
, what’s the big deal?’

He was flushing with irritation, because though sharp he’d not seen this coming. Anderson had though. The big deal was that Crane couldn’t believe a wealthy man who liked a drink would spend four hours nursing two. Unless he needed to stay sober to drive on from the dinner to see a girlfriend. A girlfriend who’d possibly been eased into a reservoir.

‘Were your daughters at home that night, sir?’

‘His colour deepened slightly. ‘I … can’t remember. What’s that got to do with anything? Christ, it’s twelve months ago.’

In other words they’d been away. Crane wondered if he might be on to something, felt a familiar frisson. It meant his wife would be home alone. What if Fletcher had given her a doctored drink before he’d set off to his dinner,
which had meant she’d slept so soundly she’d had no real idea when he’d crept under the duvet?

The phone rang. Fletcher snatched it up, listened. ‘Oh, all right,’ he said slowly, glancing at the two men. ‘Look, I’ll take it in the drawing room, Steph.’ He put down the phone, said to Crane, ‘Give me five, but when I get back we’ll need to wrap this up PDQ. My family want their dinner.’ He went off.

‘What can it be he wants neither us or his missus to hear?’ Anderson said, chuckling. ‘Had the arsehole on the run there, didn’t you, Crane? Bugger, why didn’t
I
think to ask him how he’d got to the Norfolk?’

He wore his usual wry smile, but Crane now knew the intense irritation it was concealing in a man as
aggressively
competitive as Anderson. Crane couldn’t help feeling amused to have got ahead of him once again, but simply said, ‘If you were a PI and not a newspaperman you’d have picked up on it.’ It was true. He missed out on very little as it was.

The reporter winked, stood up. ‘Well, the cat’s away. He might not have locked
everything
up.’ He began to try drawers, without success, then turned to an outsize filing cabinet. ‘Ha ha, he’s overlooked this, but it just seems to be file copies of his prints. Let’s try J for Jackson, shall we?’

‘This might not be a good idea. If he catches you he’ll have us straight through the door.’

‘Oh, come on, Frank. We cut corners, blokes like us. Let’s see what kinds of shots he was really taking of her. Those creaking floorboards on the landing should warn us when he’s on his way back.’

It was this kind of impulsiveness in Anderson that Crane had always been so uneasy about, but he had to
admit to being curious. Anyway, he was already leafing through a wad of glossy prints. They all seemed to be totally respectable modelling shots. They showed Donna right profile, left profile, full face. Donna in even light, in shadow, in a key light that gave emphasis to those
luminous
round eyes with their riveting impression of an innocence that blended with depth, emotion with
spirituality
. Donna in black and white, in colour, in a sepia tint. Donna standing, sitting, lying down, even twirling, arms extended as gracefully as the wings of a planing bird, gleaming hair flying about her like a fully opened fan.

‘God, what a cracker she was,’ Anderson muttered.

It said it all, that such a pretty and vibrant woman should have had such an appalling fate. Crane felt he could sympathize then with the journalist’s urge to profile her as the guileless creature she’d certainly looked the sad symbolic victim of an upbringing in a sink estate. Even though he’d always known the description wasn’t going to fit.

And then Anderson turned up a print showing Donna naked.

She stood framed by a half-open door, and looking away from the lens, as if unaware of it, her impossibly perfect rounded breasts slightly suspended as she leant forward, apparently to pick up pants and bra, hair now cascading down the sides of her flawless features, her belly flat, her legs smooth and slender, her waist so narrow it looked as if it could easily be encircled by a pair of male hands.

The floorboards didn’t creak. Fletcher, paranoid, must have tipftoed. He was in the room before the folder could even be closed. He took it all in in a nano-second. ‘I’ll
speak to your editor in the morning, Anderson,’ he rasped. ‘You’ll be wise to start clearing your desk. And you, Crane, you should know better. Don’t think you’ll get away with it either.’

But Anderson gave him a relaxed smile. ‘You’ll not be doing any of that, Mr Fletcher. You’ll be too worried. You see, this is a print of a naked young woman you were supposed to be grooming for a modelling career. She subsequently ended up in a reservoir. Was that because she’d not agree to go in that cellar of yours with the soft lights on and her fanny in the air? Or maybe she’d got to know too much?’

Fletcher was flushed brick red. ‘Any more on those lines, mister, and you’ll be in a court room before you can spit.’

‘Mr Fletcher,’ Crane said quietly, ‘if the police could find the time and the evidence you’d be in a court room
yourself
. They certainly know about your cellar and your obscene videos and your use of underage people.’

‘She didn’t know I’d taken it, you dozy sods!’ he suddenly cried. ‘Well, look at them, they’re all standard poses except one.
That
one. She didn’t know I’d taken it. She was changing into normal gear. She’d left the door open. I couldn’t resist it. She didn’t even
know
, for Christ’s sake. She didn’t …’ He broke off in a voice that seemed almost choked by a sob.

Crane believed him. It was obvious he was speaking off the cuff. He’d taken a single shot, charming in its
artfulness
, of a naked beauty dressing herself. Shades of Renoir.

‘But we can’t be sure where it led to, Mr Fletcher, can we?’ Anderson said softly, smile still intact.

‘I’ll have to pass on what we’ve learnt here to the police,
sir,’ Crane told him, ‘because I think you went on
somewhere
after the Norfolk dinner, and I think they’ll want to go into that with you again. I’d try to be very, very
cooperative
, if I were you.’

‘And we’ll need to keep this print,’ Anderson said calmly, storing it in what seemed to be a specially enlarged inside pocket of his lightweight jacket.

‘Don’t you dare!’ Fletcher screamed, rushing at him. ‘Don’t you bloody dare! It’s my property and it only leaves here under warrant.’

‘And give you the chance to destroy it and the negative? Dear me, you must think I was brought up in Barnsley, Mr Fletcher … sir.’

Fletcher seized him by his jacket lapels. It wasn’t a wise move. Without a word, Anderson pushed him off and gave him a single blow to the chest. It was all it needed. Hunched over, gasping for breath, Fletcher almost crawled to his Windsor chair and flopped into it. He looked tough, and almost certainly was, he’d been simply outclassed. Crane guessed that most people would be around Anderson.

‘So sorry, Mr Fletcher,’ he said, affable as ever. ‘I always try my best to keep things civil. You really mustn’t trouble to show us out.’

C
rane drove back to Bradford along the bypass, through peaceful meadowland, with views of a range of hills purpling in setting sunlight.

Anderson said, ‘What do you think?’

‘I’m positive he went on somewhere from the Norfolk.’

‘All right, brains, don’t rub it in.’

The wry smile was there, but he was still brooding and tense about Crane picking up on the oddness of Fletcher driving himself to a booze up. The reporter had to be just about the most competitive man he’d ever known.

‘But I can’t see it being him,’ Crane went on. ‘He’s a shrewd businessman, he’d spent hours on her as an
investment
. If she took off in the glossies she could be worth a million a year, fifteen, twenty per cent to him, yes? I also think he was levelling about the nude print.’

Crane swung his Megane off the bypass and on to a roundabout that would put them on the Bradford Road. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the reporter nod.

‘I guess you’re right,’ Anderson said, with a sigh. ‘Still, we gave the slimy sod’s feathers a good ruffling, didn’t we?’

‘And if he’s right in the head he’ll close the cellar overnight, so that’s a plus.’

Crane dropped him off at his flat in Frizinghall. It was a good one in one of the many converted wool-baron mansions. He glimpsed curly black hair and an eager smile at a window, but Anderson reacted with an
indifference
you could only just detect. Crane had to concede that you had special problems if you looked like Anderson, with every woman in sight fluttering her eyes at you. He drove on to Conway House, where he was to pick up Patsy and to drive on to Connie and Malc’s semi.

‘I think we can probably rule out Fletcher,’ he told Patsy, when she was sitting in the car. ‘And he doesn’t know of an Adrian. We’re aiming to see Hellewell tomorrow.’

‘If only it wasn’t so long ago. Whoever did it could be hundreds of miles away by now.’

‘Killers often stick around, Patsy, for one reason or another. Their jobs or their families. Take your friendly, neighbourhood Yorkshire Ripper …’

It was dark now and the Willows looked slightly more attractive in the glow of lighted windows. The closely parked cars didn’t look quite as decrepit when you couldn’t see the scuffs and dints and balding tyres. But bands of cat-calling youths roamed the narrow roads or hung about on corners.

‘God,’ Patsy said, ‘I wish we could have been brought up in a nice house on a private estate. Maybe Donna wouldn’t …’

Crane put a hand briefly over hers. He didn’t believe it would have made a scrap of difference where Donna had been brought up. She was a one-off.

‘Only me, Mam,’ Patsy said, as she and Crane stood at the door of the tiny living room of number 27. ‘Frank’s with me.’

They both looked up in anxious expectancy. Crane’s presence usually involved some kind of drama. ‘Frank just wants to have a shufti at Donna’s room,’ Patsy told them. ‘Thinks there just might be something the police missed.’

‘There’s … no news then?’ Malc asked nervously.

‘Not so far, Malc. But we’re talking again to the people who spent time with Donna. Me and Geoff Anderson, that is. He’s being a great help, he knows so much of the
background
. And he’s very dedicated.’ Because of the story, he thought grimly, that rather cosy word the press employed even for the starkest of human tragedies.

‘He’s a good lad,’ Connie said, lamplight etching the hollows in her gaunt face? ‘He was very kind to us.’

‘We’ll just pop upstairs, then,’ Patsy said. ‘Shan’t be long.’

‘You’re looking very posh again, love,’ Malc said. ‘Going out later?’

She reddened, shook her head. They both looked puzzled. It seemed to be a Patsy they couldn’t fully adjust to, having been used to one who’d slopped around in old clothes, hair everywhere, looking depressed. She wore a crisply ironed, embroidered shell top and pale blue trousers, and the soft fall of her hair shone from the care she was taking of it. Crane’s guilt about using her had finally lifted, as it hadn’t been a one-way street. The problem now was that though he’d got to like her a lot as a friend, she was showing the unmistakeable signs of a woman who was clearly hoping it was going to be a lot more than that.

‘Well, you look very nice, love,’ Connie said. Crane wished they could have paid her more compliments in the
days when any she might have had was constantly bleached out by Donna’s incredible radiance.

Donna’s bedroom was papered in lemon, with floral
tieback
curtains. The overhead globe had a pleated uplighter and there was a silk-shaded lamp on the bedside cupboard, a radio and a slender vase that held a single artificial amaryllis. The carpet was gold coloured with a white fleecy rug at the bedside. The built-in wardrobe combined a tiny dressing table and there was a small armchair in a corner. The room was spotlessly clean and gave off a delicate apple scent.

Patsy gave a crooked grin. ‘Her room got most of the attention.’ She ran a hand over a crisp duvet cover. ‘She nattered for things, wheedled with those big eyes. They always gave in, gave her whatever she wanted. Mam was never done paying off the catalogue.’

‘When it looks as if she could have bought herself anything she wanted. She’s got to have done
something
with the money.’

‘I’ve searched and better searched.’

Crane looked in the wardrobe. It was crammed: tops, skirts, trousers, jackets, dresses, a raincoat, a winter coat, a parka. The police, and Patsy, would have checked all the pockets. ‘This parka looks almost new,’ he said in a musing tone.

‘She hated coats. Even in winter she’d rush out in a thin jacket. Mam bought the coats, she was so worried she’d catch her death, but would madam wear them? Never saw her in the parka once, even when it was sub-zero.’

He drew out the parka. It seemed slightly heavier than he might have expected. He felt the hem. It seemed thicker than normal but could have been the way the padding was
arranged. He pulled out the material of the inside pocket. The stitching was intact and seemed tamper free. ‘Was Donna good with a needle and thread?’

‘Very. Blouses, dresses, T-shirts, nothing was ever quite right for her. She’d spend hours unpicking and resewing. I think it was her only real hobby. Well,’ she said wryly, ‘that and screwing.’

‘Mind if I cut open the inside pocket?’

‘Mam’ll never know.’

He snipped it carefully open with his folding scissors, then slipped a hand down between coat and lining to touch thin, compact bundles of what felt like banknotes, resting along the hem. Patsy gasped as he eased one out. New fifties, secured with elastic bands. He counted the first bundle gingerly, trying to touch the surfaces as little as possible. There were twenty. The other bundles looked to be the same. ‘A bit up on the diary total,’ he told her. ‘Seven grand.’

‘
Seven grand
! And giving Mam a tenner a week for her keep!’

Crane took out a large plastic bag, put in the notes, sealed it. ‘The police will need to run them past their forensic people, there could be something that might help. Your folks should be told. The money will be theirs, and yours, when it’s returned.’

‘They’d not be able to handle it, Frank, not if it came from screwing. They’d never use it. I’d not be surprised if Dad didn’t set fire to it.’

He looked at her. ‘All right. I’ll hand it to Benson and get a receipt in your name. We’ll keep Connie and Malc out of it.’

He gave a final glance round the room. He wasn’t
looking for anything else, but he drew out the drawers of Donna’s dressing table. Good quality underwear, neatly ironed, a section for jewellery: earrings, chains, necklaces, not expensive, not tat, a stack of
Hello
! magazines in the bottom drawer, and two paperback novels by Jeffrey Archer.

‘She wasn’t much of a reader,’ Patsy said sadly. ‘It was either the telly or her sewing.’ She glanced round the sweet-smelling room. ‘We’d often sit in here together. We did get on, you know, a lot of the time. She was good company. And so funny, especially about the blokes. And with looking such an innocent, such a good girl … well, you know. And she’d do things for you, she’d see to my clothes as well as her own, that sort of thing. As long as it didn’t involve money. Always swore she’d not got a two pence coin to scratch her arse with.’

He riffled through the pages of the Archer books. It was some time later before he knew they meant more to the case than the money ever did.

‘I wish it would last and last,’ she said, ‘the case. Even though it’s about poor Donna.’

They were back at Conway House, where Crane was writing up the details of the money they’d found, for Anderson to get tense and frustrated about all over a again because he’d not been involved. Crane put down his felt tip, shrugged and said, ‘I’m anxious to get it over as soon as possible, to save your people the expense, but I know what you mean. We’ve had some good evenings, haven’t we, round the flip chart, pooling idea?’

‘I’ve never known anything like it. Seeing you guys in action, the way your minds work. I shan’t ever forget it.’

He could believe it. Nothing like this had ever happened to her, something so intriguing and involving, where she’d felt both useful and needed. It was as if she’d come fully to life. There was an impression of assurance in her plain features now, due to the care she was taking of her looks and her clothes. Genuine self-confidence would come later, when she began to progress at work, as he was certain she now would.

‘Are you married, Frank? Partner?’

He smiled, shook his head. ‘People like me and Anderson find it hard to live a normal life.’

She said, ‘Life won’t seem the same when you have to go off on some other case and you’re not popping in every day.’ There was an unmistakeable warmth in her lavender eyes.

‘I’ll be around, Patsy. I’ll always want to know how you’re doing.’

When he’d gone, she sat over her drink, hugging herself. There wasn’t another woman! He’d promised he’d be around! Could she have a chance with that lovely bloke? She’d not care how hard he worked. She was used to the hours he kept, as she’d worked with him.…

Benson put the bag of fifties in a document-case. ‘Silly bitch,’ he growled. ‘Seven grand against staying alive. Right, I’ll get them examined and I’ll make out the receipt to Patsy.’

He spoke grudgingly, and Crane knew he was
exasperated
because he’d found something else a police search had missed. He sighed inwardly, what with him and Anderson.…

‘And you reckon Fletcher’s a no-no? We thought so too.’

‘Can’t be ruled out, I suppose. Blokes lost their tempers around Donna.’

‘Could have threatened to dump him. Said he wasn’t getting her anywhere. The national agencies have branches in Leeds, after all.’

‘My thinking too. And I’m positive he went on somewhere that night.’

‘We’ll keep up the pressure on him. Two or three days and we should be ready to think of a new start. Who’s it going to be, nailing the killer then, assuming anyone does,’ Benson said, giving a pained smile. ‘You or us?’

‘Don’t forget that smooth-talking bastard, Anderson. He’s not as clever as he likes to think he is, but by God he’s focused, and he doesn’t regard coming second as an option.’

Crane knew Benson had nothing to lose. Whoever pinned down the killer the police would calmly chalk it up as their own result. That was life.

Leaf and Petal covered two or three acres. There were the usual greenhouses and lines of saplings, together with collections of seasonal flowers, bags of compost, garden furniture and stone ornaments. The walkways were busy with couples pushing their purchases in shallow trollies. The leaves of plants and shrubs were beaded with the drops of a recent watering and glittered in sunlight. They entered the main building, a single-storey complex of linking rooms, filled with lawnmowers, seed packets in stands, displays of weedkiller and fertilizer, and racks of gleaming tools. A fragrant coffee smell drifted from a central snack bar.

‘Best not to have him paged,’ Anderson said. ‘We’ll just find him and give him a lovely surprise, yes?’

They found Hellewell in a room of intense humidity. Sun poured through skylights on to a dense and pungent collection of house plants. There was a low murmur of voices and Hellewell was courteously displaying his knowledge of the vagaries of indoor plants to a pair of elderly women who looked as if they were being given rather more information than they really needed. He glanced towards the men with a pleasant smile, which faded when he saw Anderson.

‘Well, I hope that answers your question, ladies,’ he said, in hasty conclusion. They drifted off, looking vaguely stunned. ‘And what do
you
want?’ he said, sighing heavily.

‘This is Frank Crane, Mr Hellewell,’ Anderson said, amicably polite as ever. ‘He’s a private investigator, working for Donna Jackson’s parents. We’re acting together.’

‘But … Mahon’s the man. I know they can’t pin—’

‘He’s been cleared, sir. The case needs a fresh start.’

He looked very uneasy. It had been a shrewd move of Anderson’s to leave them unannounced. He watched them in what seemed like a frightened silence. He was near six foot, fortyish, and in good physical shape,
probably
because of the outdoor work he did. His fair hair had a slightly bleached look with sunlight exposure. He was tanned, had well-shaped features and white, even teeth. Women could never be too good looking, but some men could. Hellewell, it seemed to Crane, was one of them.

‘Why … why aren’t the police here then? Why you two?’

‘The police are aiming to make a completely new start shortly.’

He watched them in another edgy silence. He wore a
short-sleeved green shirt and jeans, and the sunlight flooding the room gleamed on the hairs of his muscular brown arms. Sweat looked to be gathering near his
hairline
.

‘I’ll wait till the police come then. I’ve nothing to add to what I said when the poor kid was found, and if you wouldn’t mind, this is my busiest time of the year.’