‘Hard day?’
She nodded, smiled. ‘Robert’s looking after me. He’s the manager in charge of my section. He’s nice. Keeps us at it, but he works very hard too.’
‘Good. I hope you’re giving the impression you’ve got your eye on his job when he gets his next promotion.’
‘Oh, Frank …’
She wore a lemon cotton shirt over skinny black pants, and her smooth hair gleamed in declining sunlight. He thought again of the woman she’d been on that first evening: fright hair, wrinkled clothes, sunk in an apathy she’d not bothered to conceal. He knew she was now a woman who was going somewhere. She was beginning to get on and she liked it, liked it a lot. He could see her in ten years, a valued senior employee, her plain looks enhanced by maturity. He wondered again if he really had been responsible for any of that. He’d given her a word or two of encouragement, involved her in that tortuous search for her sister’s killer, but the rest had been all her own doing.
‘I’m not going to charge your folks for the work I’ve done, Patsy. They can’t afford it and apart from that I’ve had an unexpected windfall.’
‘You can forget that,’ she said briskly. ‘I know you’re trying to be kind, but there’s no way they’ll let you work for nothing.’
‘Right, I’ll send them a bill and when they pay I’ll give you the money. Add that to the money of Donna’s the police will be returning to you and give the lot to your mum and dad to help with the deposit for the bungalow. Say you’ve touched a win on the Lottery.’
‘No, Frank, you’re not a charity.’
‘I agree. I’m not normally in the habit of letting anyone off a penny, whatever their station. But your people are different. They’ve suffered too much and they deserve a break. And I can assure you it’ll not leave me out of pocket.’
‘Well, if you insist,’ she said reluctantly.
They sat over their drinks as a darker blue filtered across a clear sky. ‘Is Chinese all right with you?’ she said.
‘That’ll do fine.’
‘Will … Sancerre go with it? Is that how you pronounce it?’
‘Sancerre. That’s posh. I didn’t know you were into wine.’
She grinned. ‘You know bloody well I’m not. I went to the wine department and told Ivan I wanted a nice wine for someone I knew would appreciate it.’
‘That was very thoughtful.’
They sat for a while in silence. ‘Thank you for helping me,’ she said then quietly. ‘Believing in me.’
It was as if she’d read his mind. ‘Patsy, it was all there, the urge to make something of your life. All I did was encourage you.’
‘It’s so funny … what people can do to you. I feel like a different woman because I got to know you. You’re just the same but I’m so different.’
‘Well, I’m very glad if you think I’ve been able to help.’
‘I can’t begin to thank you.’
‘The Chinese is thanks enough. Not forgetting the Sancerre.’
‘It’ll be ready soon. Could … we have a proper night out though? At the weekend maybe?’
‘I’ll be away, I’m afraid. A friend who lives in Gargrave.’
‘A … a girlfriend?’
They were sitting on the little sofa. He took her hand. ‘I see her once or twice a month. The rest of the time we live our own lives. She lost the man she was going to marry in very tragic circumstances, and me … well, I lost the woman I loved because she met someone she liked better. But the relationship I have with Colette suits us both.’
He wished he’d not had to say any of that, but it had to be said sooner or later. He knew he’d make her very unhappy. The animation had already faded in her lavender eyes, the smile left lips which now trembled slightly. He’d known it was going to be difficult as he still felt the pain of his own old wounds, the night Vicky had told him how much she liked him, liked him more than most men she’d known, including the new one, and she was sorry but she didn’t love him. And that’s how it was with him and Patsy. It wasn’t her plain looks; he lived with plain looks himself. And he liked her, liked her an awful lot, but no more.
‘I suppose she’s very glamorous and pretty?’ she said, in a small sad voice.
Crane sighed. Poor kid, it always came back to her looks in her own mind. A single tear ran down the side of her nose. ‘Hey, hey,’ he said gently, ‘I’d be no good for you. I work twelve hour days, six, seven days a week. I’ve got so much baggage I’d need a truck. What you need is a nice bloke like Robert.’
She gave him a sidelong glance. ‘How do you know? How do you know he fancies me?’
‘The way you sounded when you told me about him. I bet he’d like to take you out, wouldn’t he?’
‘Is that what makes you such a good PI,’ she said, her voice still wavering. ‘Because you can tell things from how people speak?’
‘Look, Patsy, if he’s a decent type, think about it. You want kids, don’t you, one day, like most women? A nice home and lifestyle?’
‘His mother died recently,’ she almost whispered. ‘He looked after her. They say that’s why he didn’t go steady with anyone, so he could look after his mam. They say he’s the salt of the earth. They say a woman couldn’t go wrong who took up with Robert, the way he looked after his mam.’
Tears she couldn’t control began to brim along her lids. Crane continued holding her hand, wishing he could spare her some of the unhappiness. Yet he had a feeling that in all the excitement of getting her promotion, of feeling she had a future, of buying new clothes, she was possibly confusing gratitude with genuine attraction. He was certain she’d be over him one day, would begin to see a life more suited to her with a man like Robert, who’d be able to give her so many of the things it was beyond Crane to provide.
He wondered if he should have kept his distance, despite her crucial value to the case. Been non-committal, let her work out her own salvation, let her know from the start he was off limits. If he were honest with himself, he knew there’d always been a suspect pleasure in believing he was encouraging her to make herself over, helping her to tease out the comely and ambitious woman she was now on her way to becoming. But the end result just seemed to be Patsy weeping with a different kind of unhappiness.
He sighed. At least his involvement had been totally benign. All he’d done was point her towards things she’d always wanted for herself anyway. That had been Anderson’s biggest mistake. He’d wanted to remould Donna into something she’d simply not wanted to be. He’d had his own dream for her just like all the others, but unlike them he’d tried to impose it. He’d never grasped what damage dreams could do, especially the impossible ones. And in trying to impose that dream he’d overlooked Karl Popper’s law, that he himself had once quoted: the law of unintended consequences. In his case, the dream girl herself ending her short gaudy life at the bottom of Tanglewood reservoir.
By the Same Author
THE BECKFORD DON
THOROUGHFARE OF STONES
WHEN BEGGARS DIE
WRITTEN IN WATER
FEAR OF VIOLENCE
THE MURDERER’S SON
Copyright
© Richard Haley 2007
First published in Great Britain 2007
This edition 2012
ISBN 978 0 7198 0555 4(epub)
ISBN 978 0 7198 0556 1 (mobi)
ISBN 978 0 7198 0557 8 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7090 8310 8 (print)
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebooks.com
The right of Richard Haley to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988