‘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 Frank 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.’