“Yeah, but ’e ’asn’t rung me.”
“You gave him your phone number?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you write it down for him?”
“No, well, yeah. We didn’t ’ave a pen, so I writ it on the front window of ’is car, in the steam. Mebbe it got rubbed off.”
“Perhaps it did. When you were talking to Jason did you mention your father at all?”
“No,” she replied. “Why should I?”
“I thought you might have mentioned, for some reason, that your father was a policeman. Did you?”
Her podgy face turned the colour of my white socks after I washed them with my goalie sweater, and one hand went to her mouth to have its nails nibbled.
“It’s not a crime, Dionne,” I assured her. “You’re not in trouble for it, but I’d like to know what you told him.”
“’E’s a bit dense, isn’t ’e,” she stated. “Jason? Yes,” I agreed, “he does have a few problems in the brain department, like not being able to find one. Go on, please.”
“Well, it were like this. We were just passing ’Eckley nick — the cop station — an I said: ‘Me dad’s in there.’ Someone, a cop, ’ad rung me mam, earlier that night to say that ’e’d been done again for drunk and disorderly an’ they were keeping ’im in t’cells until ’e sobered up. ’E was jumping up an’ down in t’fountain, or summat, but I didn’t tell ’im that.”
“And what did Jason have to say?”
“’E got right excited, daft sod. ‘What, your dad’s a cop?’ ’e said. ‘Yeah,’ I told ’im. ‘’E’s a detective.’ ‘Blimey!’ ’e said. That’s all. I think it…you know.”
“Know what?”
“Nowt.”
She clammed up, and I knew she’d reached some indeterminate limit that I wouldn’t push her past no matter how hard I tried. Everybody has one. I could only guess what she’d been about to say. That Jason became excited at the thought of shagging a detective’s daughter? Probably.
“That’s very useful, Dionne,” I told her. “And then you went to the brickyard, I believe.”
“Yeah.”
“Right. Now this is where it gets a bit personal, I’m afraid. Not to put too fine a point on it, Dionne, and not wanting to pry into your private life, I have to ask you this: did the two of you make love that night, at the brickyard?”
“Yeah,” she replied, as readily as she might admit to sneaking an extra chocolate biscuit. “We did it in the front of ’is car.”
“Right,” I said, nodding my approval at her answer, if not her morals. “Good. And can I ask you if he wore a condom?”
“Yeah, I made sure of that.”
“Good. I don’t suppose you remember if you did it more than once, do you?”
“Yeah, we did it twice. ’E was dead eager.” I swear she blushed again at the memory, or maybe the gas fire was reaching her.
“And he had two condoms with him, had he?”
“No just one, but I ’ad one. We used mine the second time.”
“Very wise of you to carry one,” I told her. “You can’t be too careful, these days.”
“You’re telling me,” she said, swinging her legs off the settee and facing me. “You won’t catch me risking it. Did you know,” she asked, “that when you ’ave sex with someone it’s like ’aving contact with everyone that they’d ever ’ad sex with? Miss Coward told us that in social health education. Put the wind up me, it did. So if you ’ave sex with, say, ten people, its like you’ve really ’ad it with a ’undred.”
“Gosh!” I exclaimed.
“An worse than that, if you did it with twenty, that’s like doing it with four ’undred. Four ’undred! In one go! Can you believe that?”
“No,” I admitted. “It’s frightening. But I’ll say this, Dionne: you’re good at maths.”
“Yeah, ’S’my best subject. Nobody cheats me.”
“Good for you. So, when you’d finished, you know, doing it, what did Jason do with the condoms?”
“What did ’e do with them?”
“Mmm.”
“Well, what d’you think?”
“You tell me.”
“’E just dropped ’em out of the window, that’s all.”
And when you’d gone, I thought, somebody waiting in the shadows picked them off the dew-laden grass, and the following day he smeared their contents on the rapidly cooling thighs of Marie-Claire Hollingbrook.
“Thanks, Dionne,” I said, rising to leave. “You’ve been a big help.” I couldn’t dislike her, or feel anything bad about her. Just sorrow for the world she’d grown up in. At the door I said: “These condoms you carry. Are you embarrassed when you buy them, like I am?”
“No,” she replied. “I pinch them out of me mam’s ’ and-bag.”
I smiled and flapped a wave at her, and walked back to the car, wondering how on earth I could have confused her with Sophie, my beloved Sophie. Cursing myself, hating myself, ashamed of myself. Les Isles wasn’t surprised when I phoned him to say that he probably had the wrong man. He’d wondered about something like this, but Jason was still number one in the frame. “Let’s just say that our enquiries are continuing,” he admitted.
I could help you there, I thought, but I held my tongue. Instead, I drove all the way back to Halifax, to the street where Angus Hollingbrook expected to live happily- ever-after in a dream home, until his wife was murdered. He’d removed their name from the little space at the side of the bell, but there were only two of them and I assumed that the top one was for the upstairs flat. Sometimes you have to make these judgements.
I pressed the button several times, retreating to the gate after each burst and looking up at the windows. Eventually I saw a face and he gave me a wave of recognition. “Sorry to trouble you, Angus,” I told him when he opened the door, “but a thought occurred to me. Can we have a word?” His eyes were rimmed with red and he was wearing a dressing gown over a T-shirt and jeans.
“I was having a snooze,” he said. “Come in.” Halfway up the stairs he turned to say: “It’s a bit of a mess. They allowed me back in a week last Monday, but I haven’t done anything. I’m still finding grey powder all over the place.”
He opened a door and we moved into a big white-walled room that could have been the annex to a gallery. Half of the wall opposite the window was covered with a hanging that had me spellbound. It was a kaleidoscope of textures in all the colours of the moors, changing and drifting as cloud shadows passed over the earth’s surface and the wind stirred the heather. “That’s gorgeous,” I whispered as I stood before it, smelling the wet peat, hearing the call of a curlew.
“That’s all I have of her now,” he said. “That and some photographs.”
“Your wife was a very talented lady,” I told him, relieved that we’d brought her into the conversation but hating myself for it.
“Would you like a coffee, Inspector?” he asked.
“No thanks, Angus. I’ll just ask you a couple of questions, then get out of your way.” He gestured for me to sit down and I sank into a chromium and leather chair that was surprisingly comfortable. How it would feel after an hour was another matter, because there was nowhere to hook your leg, loll your head or balance a glass. The room didn’t have enough stuff in it to look untidy. Everything was cleancut almost to the point of being clinical, but they’d started from scratch and stayed with a style. Only the wall hanging brought a touch of softness to the room, and I suspected the contrast was deliberate, to increase its impact.
“The grey stuff you keep finding is aluminium powder,” I explained, glad to be on familiar territory. “The fingerprint people use it. The particles are flat, like tiny platelets, so they don’t distort when it’s lifted with sticky tape.”
“I thought it must be theirs,” he said, lowering himself onto a matching chair. “So, er, what is it you wanted to ask me?”
