law as him. But I never, ever, got taken in by that lie about honour among thieves. Crane was more than likely to turn me over to Wilson’s tender care. That would earn him brownie points, a favour to be called in. I’m sure Jonny Crane needed all the favours he could get from the law. Homos had a tough time of it in the nick. On the other hand Crane and I might find common cause; my enemy’s enemy is my friend. But it would be like siding with a rattlesnake against a scorpion.
“My name’s McRae. Danny McRae.”
Crane’s brows furrowed behind his glasses. “Fuck’s sake! The one the law’s after? You the Ripper?” He peered at me as if it were unlikely. Then his thoughts gelled. “If you done in my girls, you effing toerag…!” His words had the boy moving forward with his knife aimed at my eyeballs.
“No, Jonny, no! I’m the one they’re after, but I’m not the Ripper. Would I be sitting here telling you this if I were?” They settled back in their chairs and I swallowed hard. He was all ears now.
“I have an idea who is, though,” I said.
“You know who killed my girls? Cos when I find out…” His face was dark, and I didn’t know if it was his pocket or his pride that had been hurt. I didn’t for a moment think it could be his humanity.
My hook was in his mouth. “I know someone planted the gun beside the last victim. So Wilson must have been in the loop – maybe even did the planting.
There’s even a wild possibility that Wilson is directly involved.”
Crane jerked forward over the table with both his hands pointing at me like pistols. The rings glittered and flashed. “Wilson done them in? You’re fucking joking, right? This ain’t a joking matter, Jock.”
“Jonny, would I be that stupid? I’m being fingered for something I didn’t do.
Why would I wind you up?” That got a grudging nod.
A high-pitched voice cut in. “He’s got something there, Jonny. You know what that fucker Wilson’s like with the birds. Roughs ’em up and never bleeding pays.”
“Price of doing business, Sammy,” said Crane. “Look, McRae, if you have a name for me, you’d better share it. Right now. Do you want money?”
“I’ll tell you in forty-eight hours. I’ve got a couple of things to check through first and if they pan out, I’ll phone you with the name. I don’t want money, Jonny, though I’ll take back my tenner, if that’s all right?”
He looked at me like I’d asked his mother to go to bed with me. Then he slowly pushed the pound notes across the table to me. “What do you want?”
“I need to know what the woman in the photo was doing with you.”
He took a deep breath. “If you’re pulling my wire, Jock, you’ll never see the bonnie banks again, right?” I nodded. “The lady got given my name. She wanted a flat and some clients. I arranged it.”
I sat and stared at him. “Sorry, Jonny, There’s some mistake, surely. Are you saying this woman worked for you? On the streets?”
He laughed. “Not on the streets, exactly. I found her a nice little pad and sent her some business. I took my twenty per cent.”
I couldn’t take this in. Kate Graveney working as a prostitute? The perfect lady, doing it for money? Impossible. “Can you tell me a bit more? What she was like? Her name? I need to be sure, Jonny.”
He was smiling. “You think an upper-class tart like her wouldn’t get her knickers down for money? Think again, chum. I don’t know if she needed the money – and she made good money, let me tell you – or if she did it for fun. I’ve seen it all, chum. They’re all the same.”
Mary’s words rolled round my head as Jonny’s world-weary air began to convince me. “When was this?”
“September last year, she comes to me. I remember. She kind of stands out, don’t she? That hair. It was a hot day. She kept her sun specs on.”
I pictured Kate down here in the gloom, anxious behind her glasses, but shining like a diamond in shit. And then coming out with her request. Did Caldwell know about this? “Was there a man around? Working for her? With her?”
He shook his head. “Nah. I got a list of top clients who like something special.” He tapped the place where his heart should have been. If he had an address book in there it would be worth the gorilla’s weight in gold. “Once madam was settled and she’d turned a few tricks I had my phone ringing off the hook. Nice little earner, Sheila was,” he said wistfully.
“Sheila?” I asked incredulously.
“Her stage name, shall we say. Never gave me her real moniker.”
A worse thought occurred to me. “These clients… was one of them our friend Wilson, by any chance?”
“Let’s put it this way: if he was, he didn’t pay for it.”
My mind was reeling but there was a question still unresolved. “The lady – Sheila – ended up in hospital in November, Jonny. Know anything about that?”
He smirked. “You thought it was a bit of family planning gone wrong, didn’t you?
Not that simple, chum. Not that simple. Seems our Sheila liked it a bit rough. I don’t know exactly what she was getting up to – I don’t interfere with the details of my girls you know – but I hear it got a bit out of hand.”
I couldn’t take any more in. I needed air, and time to rethink. “Jonny, thanks.
That’s all I wanted to know.” More than I wanted, in truth. “I need to digest this.” But this was as digestible as raw liver.
“’Spect you do, chum. But don’t take long. I still need that name. You owe me now. I don’t know how it’s connected to the lovely Sheila, but I want that name.
We’ll take it from there.”
I didn’t know how it connected either, chum, but I was sure it did. “I’ll call you in forty-eight hours, Jonny.”
“Be sure, you do. If you don’t, Sammy here will find you. You do know that, don’t you?” The boy smiled and licked the blade of his knife with a tongue like a lizard.
I emerged into the last of the daylight. It was a mellow London evening, the type you get sometimes even in mid-winter; a false spring. In Glasgow it would rain or freeze or snow from November to March before you felt any forgiveness.
Here in the south the weather was like a clever mistress: treated you well enough to keep you interested and optimistic, but never too much to make you blasй.
As I sidled through the streets I wrestled with the new thoughts and the images they conjured. I felt sick to my core. That first night she came to my office I fell a little in love with a dream. She was everything better than me, everything I couldn’t have. Or so I thought. It never occurred to me that I could have paid for it. If I could afford it.
I shook myself. I was lucky to get out of that cellar with my head on, and here I was with another bit of the puzzle in place. But the overall pattern had slipped out of focus. I had to find the remaining pieces. All I knew – thought I knew – was that I’d been set up by Caldwell to keep me away from some squalid secret surrounding his sister. Had it been enough to cause the death of five young women? And how was Wilson involved?
My head was running through the choices I’d just made. I could have given Caldwell’s name to Jonny Crane, and let nature take its course; Sammy was malice in make-up, and his gorilla was an unstoppable force of nature. But two things had stopped me: first, I suppose, my days wearing a blue uniform had left a vestigial preference to work through the law rather than via the likes of Crane.
Second, and more important, I wanted this for myself. I wasn’t sure quite how to arrange it, but there needed to be a face-to-face showdown between me, Caldwell and his lovely whore of a sister. Wilson too. They owed me that.
TWENTY THREE
I woke next morning in Mary’s cathouse wondering what to do first. I had to move fast. I was on a countdown with Jonny Crane. He might look like a nancy accountant – some gravy with these casseroled books, sir? – but I’d found from my Glasgow days that they could be the worst. All that inner turmoil.
I’d have liked to question Liza Caldwell some more, find out if she knew about Kate’s bad habits. Our last
