Dead Dream Girl

It had been a clear day and the setting sun was now a bright sliver through the dense trees of the low hills that surrounded the two sheets of water. Mallard, moorhens and Canada Geese clucked softly at the water’s edge, their night quarters beneath overhanging foliage. Crane climbed the curving flight of wide stone steps that led from the lower to the upper reservoir. He spotted the straw hat almost instantly, on the head of a plump man in rimless glasses, who sat on a bench at the side of the perimeter track, gazing out over still water.

Crane sat on the same bench, about a yard from him. His faded blue eyes darted to Crane’s through strong lenses. He had soft, pink, blobby features that gave an impression his face had no real bone structure. He wore a neatly ironed blue shirt and chinos. ‘Looking for company, dear?’ he said hopefully, in a high, slightly wheezing tone.

‘Are you Ollie?’

He gave a little smile. ‘Perhaps I should say, “Who’s asking?” like they do on the telly.’

‘Frank Crane.’

‘It’s a nice name and you’ve a nice friendly smile, but I don’t believe I’ve seen it before, so it makes me just a tad wary.’

‘Remember a young woman called Do

‘Dear boy, if you’re a bobby, despite that disarming cotton shirt and those form-fitting linen trousers, I shan’t even admit to being called Ollie. I’m Bill Brown to the police, Frank Crane, always was.’

‘I’m just a private investigator, working for Do

‘Don’t believe I like PI much either, dear, it’s like saying you’re not a crab but a lobster. They can both give you a very nasty nip.’

A twenty-pound note rustled between Crane’s fingers.

‘Oh!’ Ollie gave a little coquettish scream. ‘Specie. I’m quite overwhelmed. It’s usually the other way about, duckie, when you get to my age.’

‘Look, Ollie, I know you don’t talk to the police, you and your friends up here. I’m not wanting to intrude. I’m just an ordinary bloke working for two very distressed people whose daughter was strangled and dumped in the lower reservoir. Now it’s not easy to get to Tanglewood without wheels unless you live nearby. I daresay you all have a fix on one another’s motors, was there one you couldn’t place roundabout the time she went missing?’

‘You’re dead wrong there, dear. I can’t afford wheels on my bit of pension. Out through the door at fifty. “We’re having to downsize, Ollie, I’m afraid,” he says. “Oh,” I say, “is it just gays you’re downsizing, Mr Havercroft because you only look to be downsizing by one?” Didn’t know where to look, love, didn’t know where to put himself. Terrified I’d go to the Tribunal. But I still got bleeding downsized.’

‘But you know everyone, Ollie, don’t you? I bet you’re their first port of call for a good gossip.’

He liked that, almost simpered. ‘Well, yes, they do like chewing the fat with their Auntie Ollie. That’s what they call me. So very Gallic.’ He took the note from Crane’s fingers almost absently. ‘Well, you have a trustworthy face. Now this is absolutely on the qui vive. We did see rather a lot of a young chap called Adrian along here, and the whisper was that he’d been seen getting out of a motor with your Do

‘The night she—’

‘Oh, no.’ He broke Crane off. ‘It was a month or two before that.’

Crane was puzzled. ‘But … if he was one of your little group …?’

‘The word was he was a fiver each way, love.’

‘Bisexual?’

‘Never could get that carry-on together myself, but there you are.’

‘And he’s not been seen around any more? After that night?’

‘Oh, yes, he was around a good while after the upset. But he just drifted off in the end, like they very often do. Probably got work outside the area. Couldn’t say just when, I lose track of time at my age.’

‘But it was definitely him, getting out of the car with Do

‘We’re almost certain, love. But it was dusky and he was wearing a cap and wasn’t in his usual car. That’s why it’s just a whisper, think on.’

‘What did he look like? How old?’

‘Fair, tallish, kept himself in nice shape. About forty.’

‘And you’re sure he was a fiver each way?’

‘Well, sometimes he’d be around and sometimes not, and when he wasn’t the word was he fancied the other side of the bed. And then there’d be those distasteful jokes flying around about the girlfriend being so confused she’d not know which way to turn.’ He pursed his lips in disapproval.

‘It’s worth another twenty, Ollie, if you can find out where this Adrian went, and what his surname and occupation were, and what make of car he mostly used. Someone here must have the inside track.’

The idea seemed to excite him, maybe gave a little zest to what must have been an empty existence since Mr Havercroft had been forced to let him go. ‘I’d not want my name coming into anything.’

‘You have my word. I always protect my sources.’

He liked that too. He adjusted his Panama hat so the brim came a little lower over his eyes. ‘All right, young man, I’ll see what I can do. I must say you’ve got a very persuasive ma

‘Good. I’ll be back here, same time, same bench, the evening after next, yes?’

Ollie touched his arm. ‘Are you quite sure you’re straight, dear?’

Crane gri

The three of them stood in Patsy’s living room again. Crane had written OLLIE STRINGER on the chart and ADRIAN with a question mark, while telling them what Ollie had told him. Anderson listened with the crooked grin Crane was getting to know only too well. He’d studied a lot of body language in his time and he could tell that the reporter’s was begi

‘I could have gone along too, Frank. I could have made time last night.’

‘I had to work on him to get him to speak to me. If I’d gone round there with a crime reporter he’d have been a write-off.’ Crane spoke more tersely than he’d intended. He was begi

But Anderson began slowly nodding. ‘It’s a valid point.’ Then he put on one of his practised smiles in the old engaging way. ‘Well done, pal. I can see I’ve got a lot to learn from an expert like you.’

‘Just experience, that’s all. In this game you often find yourself going over well-trodden ground and so you have to learn to look closer.’

There was a great deal more to it than that, but Crane knew they were exerting themselves to meet each other halfway, as they each had so much the other needed: Anderson’s knowledge of the case and Crane’s ability in the field. Even so, Crane was anxious to reach an answer to Do

Anderson said, ‘This Adrian guy makes my nose twitch.’

‘And mine.’

‘But would Do

‘There wasn’t much she didn’t know about safe sex,’ she said. ‘And anyway she might not have twigged what he was.’

Crane felt it could quite easily become near impossible for Anderson to attempt to profile Do

‘Blackmail again?’ Anderson scribbled on the sheet now devoted to Adrian. ‘Maybe he’s married and his wife doesn’t know he’s AC/DC, and might have given him the welly if she’d found out.’

‘Bias at work if it came to light? It still happens.’

‘Perhaps another gay,’ Patsy said. ‘Jealous of Adrian going out with a woman.’

‘Nice one, Patsy,’ Crane said. Pleased, she began to redden.