It freaked them out, apparently. Sent them running.
In his letter, Sullivan admitted to it all, and apologised for having denied it at the time. Which they all had, obviously, after Jeannie had admitted to her mother what had happened, and she in turn had insisted on taking the matter to the police. The problem, of course, was that it had come down to one person’s word against four, and the boys’ parents somehow managed to get the community on their sons’ sides. They called into question Jeannie’s character – did everything but put up posters declaring outright that she was a lying slut. They made out Jeannie had been obsessed with their boys, with Jimmy Cooper in particular, and that when he had rejected her advances, she’d concocted the entire story as a form of retribution. And so it had been Jeannie herself who’d paid the price for what had happened, while Payne and his buddies walked away scot-free.
Sullivan, when he’d contacted Fleet over a decade later, had offered to testify, but ten years into his career as a copper by then, Fleet had known precisely how much good that would have done. How insultingly slim the chances would have been of a conviction. Besides which, any charges that could have been brought against the three men who’d still been breathing would have fallen well short of the crime they deserved to answer for. Because in Fleet’s mind, suicide wasn’t the cause of Jeannie’s death. The way he saw it, his sister had been murdered.
‘Wasn’t there something you wanted to say to the nice policeman, Steve?’ said Lion, with an expression somewhere between a smile and a snarl.
Payne sniffed and wiped his nostrils with the side of his hand. Fleet could practically taste the cocaine dribble at the back of the man’s throat.
‘Yeah,’ Payne said, stepping forwards – level with Lion but no further, Fleet noted. Perhaps another pint of Foster’s, another line of coke, would have carried him the extra few inches. ‘Leave my kid alone,’ Payne told him, pointing a finger. ‘He ain’t done nothing and you know it. Not his fault some stuck-up bitch decided to take a swim and forgot to bring her armbands.’
Fleet edged forwards himself, far enough that Payne felt the need to withdraw a fraction.
‘Are you offering to provide information that might be pertinent to an ongoing investigation, Mr Payne?’
It was evidently too many syllables in quick succession for Payne to handle. ‘Huh?’ he grunted.
‘What I’m asking you,’ you dumb, child-beating piece of shit, ‘is whether there’s something you’d like to tell me. Because it sounded just then like it might be worth my time hauling you down to the station. Asking what you know about Sadie Saunders’s disappearance.’
How dearly Fleet would have loved to do exactly that. To rattle Payne into believing he was a suspect. But Fleet already knew the man had an airtight alibi. The night of Sadie’s disappearance, and following a brawl outside the boozer, Stephen Payne had been shut in a police cell. That was part of the reason Mason’s alibi was so weak. He’d claimed he’d been asleep in his bedroom, but his old man being locked up meant there hadn’t been anyone else in the house.
Still, it was worth putting the wind up Payne, just to see him rattled.
‘Nuh-uh. Fuck you. You can’t do that. You ain’t pinning Sadie on me.’
‘Maybe I should just insist that you turn out your pockets,’ Fleet pressed. ‘You’re looking a bit twitchy there, Steve. I wonder whether it’s just cash you’ve got tucked away in your wallet. Or, if I searched you, whether I might find something a bit more … illegal.’
Payne melted away, his skittering eyes landing on Lion in a plea for help.
Dismissing the men with a head shake, Fleet made to walk on, but once again Lion stepped across his path. Through it all, he’d been the only one of the foursome to hold his ground.
‘All our mutual friend is trying to say,’ he said, his tone dangerously reasonable, ‘is that he thinks it would be a good idea for you to face the facts. You’ve been running around town shouting murder, accusing people left, right and centre, when it seems blindingly obvious to anyone with half a brain that Sadie took a nosedive in the river. Just like your poor little sister.’
Fleet’s teeth clamped tight. Furiously, he held the man’s eyes.
‘And what you don’t seem to appreciate,’ Lion went on, ‘is that when outsiders come along and start casting aspersions against the residents of this town, it affects the people who live here. Stand-up, honest people like our good selves.’ The irony was written in his smile. ‘Maybe it doesn’t bother you now that you’ve set up home somewhere else, but for a town that relies so much on tourists, reputation is important. We want decent folks coming to visit. People with money to spend. Not fetishists and freaks, who only stay long enough to snap a picture for their scrapbooks before heading on to the next brains-spattered crime scene on their lists.’
One of the hyenas tittered, as though his friend had described exactly the sort of pastime he might enjoy pursuing himself.
‘Now, I’m not an educated sort,’ said Lion. ‘But from what I’ve
