Wednesday and found her body. I told him that I wasn’t on the case, but I was interested because the assault was similar to the one on Margaret Silkstone at Heckley, back in June. I explained that we had somebody else for that murder, but there was a possibility that Marie-Claire’s was a copycat killing. That was the official line, so I stayed with it. No point in stirring up the gravel with my own private paddle just yet. There’d be plenty of time for that: there’s no statute of limitations on murder.
“Lousy weather,” I said as the windscreen wipers slapped from side to side.
“Mmm,” he replied, not caring about it, his thoughts with the beautiful girl he’d loved, wondering if he’d ever forget her or find her like again.
“It’s next left, please,” he said.
I slowed for the turn, then stopped to allow a bus out. It said Heckley on its destination board. The driver waved his thanks to me and when he was out of the way I turned into Angus’s street.
“It’s the last house on the left,” he told me.
They were Victorian monoliths in freshly sand-blasted Yorkshire stone, with bay windows and stained-glass doors, built for the middle-management of the day but now converted into flats or lived-in by extended families. The street was lined both sides with parked cars, because, like the pocket calculator, nobody predicted the advent of the automobile.
“This is rather grand,” I said, parking in the middle of the road.
“It is, isn’t it. We just have the top floor. Marie loved it. Great big rooms and high ceilings. Lots of room for her hangings — she was in textile design — but a devil to heat. We…” He let it hang there, realising that there was no we anymore.
“Will you stay?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, no way. Our lease runs out at Christmas but I don’t think I could stay that long. We’d wondered about buying it, but it didn’t come off. Fortunately, now, I suppose.”
A car tried to turn into the street, but couldn’t because I had it blocked. Angus opened the door and thanked me for the lift. “No problem,” I replied, and drove round the corner, out of everybody’s way.
John Bunyan would have loved the avenue they named after him on the Sylvan Fields estate, although the satellite dishes would have had him guessing. He’d have called it the Valley of Despondency, or some such, and had Giant Despair knocking seven bells out of Christian and Hope all along the length of it. I trickled along in second gear, weaving between the broken bricks, sleeping dogs and abandoned babybuggies until I found number 53. At least the rain had stopped.
The front garden looked as if it had hosted a ploughing match lately, but the car that evidently parked there was not to be seen. I took the path to the side door and knocked. The woman who answered it almost instantly had an expectant look on her face and a Kookai carrier bag in her hand. She wore a tight leather jacket with leggings, and her halo of hair faded from platinum blonde through radioactive red to dish-water grey.
“Mrs Jackson?” I asked, holding my ID at arms length, more for the benefit of the neighbours and my reputation than the woman in front of me. I had a strong suspicion that male visitors were quite common at this house.
“Er, yes,” she replied, adding, as she recovered from her initial disappointment: “’Ave you come about the fine?”
“No,” I replied, “I haven’t come about a fine. I believe you have a daughter called Dionne.”
“Yes,” she said. “What’s she done?”
“Nothing,” I told her, “but we believe she may have recently witnessed something that will help us with certain enquiries. When will it be possible for me to speak to her?”
“You say she ’asn’t done nowt? She’s just a witness?”
“That’s right. She may be able to clear something up for us. When will she be in?”
Mrs Jackson turned, shouting: “Dionne! Somebody to see you,” into the gloom of the house, and stepped out on to the path. “She’ll be up in a minute,” she told me. “I ’ave to go to work.”
“Well,” I began, “I would like to talk to your daughter on her own, but because of her age she is entitled to have a parent with her.”
“But I don’t ’ave to be, do I?”
“No, not really.”
“Right, I’ll leave you to it, then. Bye.” She staggered off down the path, her litter-spike heels clicking and scraping on the concrete.
When daughter Dionne appeared she was wearing a tank top whose shoulder straps didn’t quite line up with those of her bra and the ubiquitous black leggings. She was whey-faced, her hair hastily pulled together and held by a rubber band so it sprouted from the side of her head like a bunch of carrot tops. Hardly the sex bomb I’d expected. Her expression changed from expectancy to nervousness as I introduced myself.
“May I come in?” I asked, and she moved aside to let me through. I took a gulp of the chip-fat laden atmosphere and explained that she was entitled to have a parent present but as my questions were of a personal nature she might prefer to be alone. The carpet clung to my feet as I walked into the front room and looked for a safe place to sit. The gas fire was churning out more heat than an F14 Tomcat on afterburner and in the corner a grizzly bear was laying about a moose with a chainsaw, courtesy of the 24-hour cartoon channel. Dionne curled up on the settee as I gritted my teeth and settled for an easy chair. There was a plate on the table, with a kipper bone and skin laid across it.
“Kipper for breakfast,” I said, brightly. “Smells good.”
“No,” she replied, her attention half on me, half on the moose who was now minus his antlers, “that was me mam’s tea, last night.”
I decided to axe the preliminaries. “Right. Your mother said she was off to work. Where’s that?” I asked.
“Friday she cleans for someone,” Dionne replied. The moose was fighting back, holding his severed antlers in his front feet.
“What else does she do?”
Dionne wrenched her attention from the screen and faced me. “I don’t know what they get up to, do I?” she protested.
“I meant on other days,” I explained. “Does she have a job for the rest of the week?”
“Yeah, ’course she ’as. She cleans for a few people. Well, that’s what she calls it. Posh people. A doctor an’ a s’licitor, an’ some others.”
I looked around the room, taking in the beer rings on every horizontal surface and the window that barely transmitted light, and tried to recall the proverb about the cobbler’s children being the worst-shod in the village. “And what about your dad, Dionne?” I asked. “Where’s he?”
“’E left us, ’bout two weeks ago.”
“Oh, I am sorry.”
“Don’t be. ’E’ll be back, soon as ’is new woman finds out what ’e’s like.” The moose had gained the initiative and the bear was in full flight.
“Can we have the telly off, please,” I said, and she found the remote control somewhere in the sticky recesses of the settee and killed the picture.
“Thank you. Four weeks ago,” I said, “On the Friday night of the holiday weekend, you were out with a boy. He says you can give him an alibi for that night. Can you?”
“Dunno,” she replied. “What was ’e called?”
“I was hoping you would tell me. You met him at the Aspidistra Lounge, and he brought you home.” She looked vacant, so I added: “You called at the brickyard on the way,” not sure if that would narrow the field.
“Friday? Of the ’oliday weekend?”
“That’s right.”
“Does ’e look a bit like Ronan in Boyzone?” she asked. “Y’know, dead dishy?”
“He’s a good looking lad,” I admitted.
“Yeah, I remember ’im. ’E’s called Jason. I can give ’im a nalibi for Friday night, if that’s what you mean.”
“Good, thank you. Did you arrange to see him again?”
