A Walk With the Dead (24 page)

‘No, you don't,' Meadows said seriously. ‘Believe me, you really wouldn't want a mother like me.'

‘You couldn't be any worse than the one I've got,' Lil replied, with a tinge of sadness in her voice.

Crane waited until the girls had closed the door behind them, then said, ‘You could get in trouble for giving ciggies to kids.'

‘I could get into trouble for most of things I do,' Meadows said. ‘You should have realized that by now. But I thought that if I got them relaxed, they might tell me what they knew.'

‘And do you think they did?'

‘They told me as much as they knew – which was practically nothing – but at least we've confirmed that they don't think there was anything personal behind the murder.'

‘They'd know, would they?' Crane asked sceptically.

‘Of course they'd know,' Meadows said. ‘They're feral. They've trained themselves to spot danger. That's why they lied about where they were yesterday afternoon.'

‘So you don't think they were down by the river after all?'

‘Of course they weren't by the river. And I wasn't really asking them if they had been.'

‘Then what were you asking them?'

‘I was trying to find out if they were with Maggie when she drank the cheap cider that your old-new girlfriend found traces of her stomach. And it seems as if they were.'

‘So where
did
they spend yesterday afternoon?'

‘In the Preston Road Shopping Precinct, of course.'

‘They said they didn't like the shopping precinct.'

‘Yes, they did – and that was what tipped me off to the fact that they must have been there.'

‘How can you be so sure of that?'

‘Because of all the lies that they could have told, that was the real mother-lode.'

‘I'm not following you,' Crane admitted.

‘There's not a teenage girl in the world – whatever her background – who doesn't like a shopping centre.'

‘Then why didn't they say that's where they were?'

‘Probably because
while
they were there, they did something wrong, and they don't want me to find out about it.'

‘So even though they knew that by lying about it they'd be sending us off on a false trail, they decided to do it anyway,' Crane said.

‘Decided!' Meadows repeated, with sudden passion. ‘Girls like them don't
decide
anything. They react! They think the world's a hostile place – and for them, as they are, it is – and that their survival depends not on long-term strategies but on short-term tactics.'

‘You seem to know a lot about them,' Crane said, knocked off kilter by the unexpected outburst.

‘I
was
them!' Meadows told him.

‘How could you have been? You're from a different class entirely.'

‘Misery can be very democratic,' Meadows said. She took a deep breath. ‘Our work here is done,' she continued, sounding much more like the Meadows who Crane thought that he knew. ‘Now let's see just what we can unearth at the shopping precinct.'

‘You're not going to see the deputy head?'

‘No.'

‘He'll be very disappointed.'

‘In case you didn't pick up on the fact earlier, his life has been full of disappointments, so one more won't make much difference. Besides, my priority at the moment is saving the boss.'

It was as Jo Baxter was pouring the tonic into her glass that she noticed how much her hand was shaking.

And that was bad, she told herself.

No, it was worse than bad – it was bloody tragic!

She looked up at the clock.

It was only half-past twelve, for God's sake!

What was she doing, already on her third drink of the day, at only half-past twelve?

And how long had it been going on?

She placed the tonic bottle carefully on the table, and walked over to the armchair.

‘Pull yourself together, Jo – drinking's not the answer,' she said aloud, and noticed how slurred the words sounded.

No, drinking wasn't the answer, she thought, as she sank heavily into the chair. But then what was?

She loved George. He was her life.

And perhaps that was the problem.

Perhaps if she'd been more independent – like Monika Paniatowski – she might have been able to handle everything so much better.

You couldn't build your life around just one person. She saw that clearly now. You had to have something you could call your own – something that defined you as unique.

She would develop new interests, she promised herself. She would do something to add extra dimensions to her personality. Perhaps if she did that, George would come to see that he'd been lucky to find her, rather than unlucky to lose Monika. And even if he didn't see it, it wouldn't be quite as devastating as it might otherwise have been, because she would have something to fall back on – something to cushion her against the disappointment.

She would start her new life immediately, she thought. No, not immediately, because you can't start a new life when you're drunk.

Very well, then, she would start her new life first thing the next day.

But in the meantime, it would be a pity to waste the gin and tonic she'd just poured for herself.

The Preston Road Shopping Precinct was a three-storey construction of shimmering glass and vividly painted concrete, and was located on the outskirts of Whitebridge, next to the road that led – unsurprisingly – to Preston. It proclaimed the town's attempt to cast off its old industrial image, and embrace a bright new future, though to Meadows – standing in the middle of the central piazza – it seemed more like a monument to glitzy bad taste.

‘Shouldn't we go back to headquarters, and see if any sightings have been reported?' asked Crane, who was standing by her side.

‘We could do that,' Meadows agreed, ‘but I don't really think it's necessary.' She looked around her. ‘Put yourself in the shoes of Maggie and her gang, Jack. Where's the first place you'd go?'

‘I don't know,' Crane admitted.

Meadows surveyed the shops around the piazza.

‘There!' Meadows said, pointing to a boutique in the far corner.

‘You think so?' Crane asked dubiously. ‘It's looks a bit cheap and flashy to me.'

‘It's certainly not somewhere you'd think of buying a dress for your new girlfriend—' Meadows began.

‘I'm sorry I ever mentioned it now,' Crane interrupted her. ‘What have you got against Liz?'

‘Nothing,' Meadows replied. ‘She seems a perfectly nice woman, and she'll probably turn out to be a very good police surgeon.'

‘But . . .' Crane said.

‘But I don't think she's good for you.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because I think she's about to rob you of your independence.'

‘And what if I don't want my independence?'

‘Then you're a bigger fool than I took you for.'

‘You almost sound as if you're jealous,' Crane said.

‘Don't be absurd,' Meadows said dismissively. ‘You and I are too different to ever become an item – and anyway, you're no more than a boy.' She paused. ‘Sorry, Jack, this is getting far too personal.'

‘Yes, it is,' Crane agreed.

‘Then let's start again,' Meadows suggested. ‘That boutique over there is certainly not somewhere that Dr Duffy would consider shopping, but girls like Maggie consider it a wonderland. It's the very crudity – the obviousness of it – that draws them in.'

‘If you say so,' Crane said flatly.

‘I
do
say so,' Meadows asserted, ‘and I'll prove it to you.'

She strode across to the boutique, with Crane following in her wake.

There was only one assistant on duty – a woman in her late twenties – and her eyes lit up with a commission-earning smile when she saw Meadows.

‘Now yours is a figure we can really work with,' she gushed. ‘It's the figure these clothes were made for!' Crane grinned at Meadows' obvious discomfort, but the grin quickly faded when the assistant added, ‘And I'm sure your young man will be enchanted.'

When Meadows produced her warrant card, the assistant's enthusiasm notably dimmed.

‘This is about the girl, is it?' she asked.

Meadows nodded, and smiled complacently in Crane's direction.

‘I rang the police station first thing this morning, to say I'd seen her yesterday,' the assistant continued. ‘And a uniformed bobby's already been round to take my statement.'

‘Would you mind going over it again?' Meadows asked.

The assistant shrugged. ‘Suppose not.'

‘When did the girl come into the shop?'

‘Into the boutique!'

‘Into the boutique,' Meadows corrected herself.

‘Must have been about half-past three.'

‘And was she alone?'

‘No, she had two other kids with her – they all looked a bit rough, and I think they'd been drinking.'

‘I'm surprised you let them in,' Meadows said.

‘I probably shouldn't have,' the assistant agreed, ‘but the manageress was out on one of her many breaks, and I didn't want a scene.'

‘Did they buy anything?'

The assistant laughed. ‘You've got to be joking.'

‘So what did they do?'

‘They went over to the bargain bin,' the assistant said, pointing to a large cardboard bin in the corner. ‘They all stood in front of it, so I couldn't see what they were doing, and that's when I decided that however unpleasant it might turn out to be, I'd have to throw them out.'

Meadows walked over to the bargain bin, and looked down at the mishmash of things it contained

‘Did they steal anything?' she asked.

‘Hard to say,' the assistant admitted. ‘They certainly looked as if that was what they were intending to do, but to be honest with you, anything chucked in there has already been taken out of invoice. If it was left to me, I wouldn't bother with having the bin at all, but Mrs Bowles, the manageress, says that even if we only get fifty pee for something, it's better than just chucking it away.'

Meadows took hold of the bin and lifted it off the ground.

‘Here, what are you doing?' the assistant demanded.

Meadows upended the bin, and the ‘bargains' it had contained – shoes and tops, spangled tights and cheap handbags – all cascaded onto the floor.

‘Do you notice anything missing?' she asked.

‘No, like I said, it's only old junk and . . .'

‘Look closely,' Meadows said, in a not-to-be-denied voice.

‘There were two of them wigs there yesterday, and now there's only one,' the assistant said.

Meadows picked the wig up off the floor. It was made of nylon, and was bright purple.

‘They call them “fun” wigs,' the assistant explained. ‘They were all the rage last year – for about three weeks.'

Meadows shook the wig, and put it on her head.

‘You look quite different with that on,' Crane said.

‘I think that's rather the idea,' Meadows told him. She turned back to the assistant. ‘You're certain there were two of them here yesterday – before the girls came in?'

The assistant thought about it.

‘Yes, I am,' she said finally. ‘I noticed them while I was stuffing the spangly tights in the bin, and I remember thinking that while we might sell some of the other rubbish, we wouldn't even be able to
give
them away.'

‘Stick one of these wigs under your jumper, and nobody would notice it was even there,' Meadows said to Jack Crane. ‘I'd like to buy this wig,' she told the assistant.

‘It wouldn't suit you, you know,' the assistant cautioned.

‘I'd like it anyway,' Meadows replied. ‘How much do you want for it? Shall we say – a pound?'

‘You can have it for nothing.'

‘Better to pay,' Meadows said firmly, handing a pound note over, ‘and if you want to regard it as a fair reward for information received, that's perfectly all right with me.'

‘You what?'

‘If you want to put it in your handbag, instead of the till, nobody will be any the wiser,' Meadows said over her shoulder, as she headed for the door.

‘So where do we go now?' Crane asked, once they were outside the boutique.

‘We go to the nearest stationer's shop,' Meadows told him.

‘I can't see Maggie Hudson going to a stationer's,' Crane said.

‘She won't have done,' Meadows agreed. ‘But I need to – because I want to buy some coloured pencils.'

P
aniatowski studied the mother and daughter who were sitting across the desk from her.

The mother – Mrs Turner – was in her late thirties, and had the look about her of a woman who was both firmly convinced of her own rightness on all matters, and energetic enough to grind down everyone else until they agreed with her. She was wearing a sensible coat and – possibly because she was in a police station – a hat with a feather in it.

The daughter – Dolly – was thirteen or fourteen, and bore the long-suffering expression of an only child who was desperate to break away from the cage in which her domineering mother had imprisoned her for so long. She was wearing a sensible coat, too, and despite the fact that it was quite warm in Paniatowski's office, had a scarf tightly wrapped around her neck.

‘The desk sergeant said you might have some information which could be pertinent to my investigation,' Paniatowski said.

‘For the last two days, this one's been looking as miserable as I-don't-know-what,' Mrs Turner began. ‘Well, I didn't say anything – because I'm not the kind of mother who likes to interfere – but when I caught her sobbing her heart out, I insisted on knowing the reason. And it turns out that's what's been upsetting her was something that happened to a friend of hers. It appears that this girl was walking through the park and—'