“Have you seen the lady?” I asked.
“Lady, is it? Sit down,” said Crane sucking on his cigarette then stubbing it out. He handed the holder to the boy, who refilled it, lit it and handed it back to him.
I sat. The boy rocked forward on to four legs and the gorilla scraped a chair up behind me. Now we were all cosy. Would they offer me tea?
I asked my question again.
“Depends,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows.
“On what you’re going to do with the information.”
“Do you care?” I asked.
His lengthened lashes blinked behind the glasses. “Let’s say, if I knew this bint, and if I’d done something for her, that would make her a customer of mine.
I look after my customers. If they look after me.” He sounded less like an accountant and more like a priest: one of the hard-boiled variety who taught the boys Latin and buggery.
“It’s not my business what my clients do with the information I provide,” I replied.
“I like that. I like compartments. Keeps things simple. In a complicated world, know what I mean?”
I shrugged. Spare me from amateur philosophers. “Mr Crane, this isn’t essential information to my enquiry. Just corroboration. I have enough to make my report, but this would… help. So I’m prepared to pay a fiver for answers to some simple questions.”
Crane turned to his companion and laughed. The boy broke into a high piping giggle. The gorilla spluttered behind me. Crane turned back to me.
“Campbell, I spend five quid on a round here. Is that all you’ve got?”
“It’s all it’s worth.” I could feel the sweat breaking out in the small of my back. I hoped it wasn’t showing on my forehead.
Crane sobered up. “I was forgetting; you’re Scotch.” His eyelids closed slowly for a moment as he thought; it was like a reptile blinking. He refocused. “Make it twenty and I’ll give you some answers.”
Twenty was a fortnight’s wages. “Ten is the limit.”
He shrugged. I reached in to my pocket, pulled out my little wad and counted out ten ones on Crane’s table. He reached to take them and I slapped my hand down on the money. The boy was on his feet in a second, a knife glinting in his hand.
Behind me the chair grated on the floor and I steeled myself for the blow.
“Easy, Sammy.” Crane’s command brought the boy to heel. He waved at the gorilla behind me and I felt the heavy breathing recede.
“You get three questions. Make ’em count,” said Crane.
I thought for a minute. “OK. Did you help the lady in that photo?” I pointed at the table.
“Yes. One.”
Shit. I already knew he did. Think harder. “What sort of help did you give her?”
The corners of his mouth lifted. “I gave her some contacts. Two.”
The bastard was playing with me. He was smiling. So was pretty boy. I wanted to hit him. I took a gamble.
“Did she come to you for an abortion?”
He looked at me for long second. “No. Three.” He reached out and took the money.
“We’re done. Now bugger off back to Glasgow, Campbell, or whatever your name is.”
Sod. If you could believe a grade one crook like Crane, my theory was out the window. I got up to go but couldn’t resist a shot in the dark, “Sorry about your girls, Jonny.”
The room went still. Even the barman stopped rubbing his glass. “What do you know about my girls, Jock?” he growled.
“Word on the street. Seems the Ripper was picking on you.”
“Is that so, Mister private dick? Is that so? S’none of your fuckin’ business, all right?”
“No offence, Jonny. I was just wondering if you’d been grilled by the lovely Inspector Wilson, that’s all.”
“Sit.”
I sat.
“You and him close, are you?” he asked.
“Let’s say my head and his fists got too close for my liking. An experience I won’t forget in a hurry.”
Crane’s hand stroked his red mouth. He had his cigarette holder replenished again. “Who are you, Campbell? Why you really here?”
I weighed up the odds. They weren’t good. If I told him the truth, it might put me on the same side of the 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?”