‘It was a woman, but they wouldn’t let anyone look. Nobody can get close,’ he told them.
Two police officers were standing ankle-deep in the muddy ditch, pulling the body of a woman out of the filthy water. An ambulance crew was waiting with a stretcher at the edge of the ditch, and the police officers carefully passed the body over. It looked like a muddy, discarded rag doll.
Dolly and Bella stood with the group of watchers, frozen to the spot.
Dolly made a move toward the body on the stretcher, but Bella held her back. ‘Don’t, Dolly.’
Hanging on to each other, they watched as the ambulance crew covered the body with a red blanket.
‘She’s dead.’ Dolly’s voice was empty, expressionless.
More uniformed and plain-clothed officers clustered round the shape under the red blanket. It seemed so small and still in comparison with the milling bodies.
Bella couldn’t believe it. She kept staring at that little figure under the blanket, willing it to get up, sit up and say something — something silly, something funny, that this wasn’t true, this was just a nightmare, and she was going to wake up any minute.
Dolly had left the scene and was walking briskly up the street. Bella ran after her.
‘Dolly, Dolly, you can’t just walk away.’
Dolly kept going, her face white. Bella tried to stop her, pulling her back, but Dolly shook her off, walking stiffly as if under remote control, just saying, ‘Go back and tell Shirley.’
Bella stopped and saw them lifting the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. She started to cry. She looked to Dolly for help, but Dolly kept on walking.
Bella leaned against a tree and wept.
Over and over in Dolly’s mind, a voice was saying: ‘Be like ’aving a mum... Don’t leave me, Dolly... I want to stay with you, Dolly... Be like ’avin’ a mum... a mum...’
Her rage was like a train in a long, black tunnel. Then suddenly it burst out into the light and Dolly screamed, ‘You bastard, Harry! You bastard!’
Some of the little group of bystanders turned when they heard it, but they couldn’t make out what the woman was saying, and instead their attention was caught by Bella, who still stood weeping against the tree.
Then somebody said that they were bringing something out of the red Ford Capri. They all turned as the policeman held up Linda’s dummy, its feet dangling, its head nodding, still with its cap on.
It was 6:30 in the morning when Vic Morgan pulled up outside 44 Elgin Mansions to begin his round-the-clock watch on Harry Rawlins’ place. He poured himself a cup of coffee from a Thermos, and was settling in for a long, uneventful wait, when he saw someone walking up the road toward him, and almost dropped the coffee in his lap.
Dolly Rawlins. She seemed different, an odd, haunted look on her face, and she seemed to be walking in a daze. She stopped outside the entrance and just stood, staring up for a long time. Then, as if snapping out of a dream, she pushed through the swing doors and into the block. Morgan got out of the car and followed.
Dolly’s feet were like lead as she trudged up the staircase. She felt the gun in her pocket. The metal was icy cold.
Morgan moved soundlessly up the stairs behind her until she reached the door of number 44. He watched through the banister rails and heard the bell ringing through the empty flat. Dolly’s left hand was held to her side and that was when Morgan saw the gun.
She rang the bell again, and as it dawned on her that nobody was there, she seemed to deflate, leaning her head wearily against the door.
He moved quietly behind her. Very gently, he said, ‘Mrs. Rawlins, you all right, love?’
She didn’t seem surprised, just turned her face away, muttering, ‘No... no...’ under her breath.
She let him take the gun, let him hold her for a moment, then guide her down the stairs, and all the time he was talking to her, as if he was talking to a child. ‘That’s it, that’s a good girl, you lean on me, that’s a good girl. Now mind the stairs, easy does it, good girl. You all right now?’
Dolly rested her head against his shoulder, the fear and the anger all drained out of her, and for the first time since she could remember, she felt safe. Safe and at peace.
The chalk squeaked down the blackboard as the morgue attendant wrote the name ‘Linda Pirelli,’ checking the spelling against the file in his hand. He then walked past the rows of drawers until he found the one that had been pulled open and there she was — naked, her head and shoulders covered with terrible bruising.
He checked that the name tag was still attached to her right toe, and could feel that she was not yet cold. He slowly pushed the drawer back in.
He flipped a page, noting that this one was due for autopsy the following day. There were already brief notes from the doctor, who’d done the first examination, stating that the girl had not died from the injuries inflicted by some kind of vehicle but from drowning. She had been found face down in four inches of muddy water.
The attendant put the report on the desk. Another day, another body. He picked up the morning newspaper, turned to the back page with the sports headlines, and began to read.
Chapter Four
Bella had kept vigil all night, and was still sitting by the window in Shirley’s lounge when dawn broke. She was no longer looking out, no longer waiting for Dolly, she was just sitting, and thinking. Several times she got up to make herself a cup of tea, then left it undrunk.
Shirley had been in bed when Bella had come back and told her that they had found Linda, that she didn’t think Linda would be coming back. Shirley couldn’t take it in to begin with. She made Bella repeat everything she had seen. Bella broke down and cried when she described the figure on the stretcher, with the red blanket over her face...
All the memories now flooded back into Bella’s mind, making her cry again. In Rio, during the robbery, when they’d first met. In the back of her mind was a tiny, fragile hope that they’d been wrong, that perhaps she was still alive. But deep down in her heart she knew that Linda was dead, and she would never see her again.
Shirley had been shocked at first, then she’d cried, then she’d got calm again. She asked Bella if she was sure, and then she started to cry again, and Bella had left her crying herself to sleep, while she went to sit by the window, waiting for Dolly.
She kept asking herself questions, but she couldn’t find any answers, so she just sat and waited, and during the waiting time the memories flooded back in waves, drifting in and out, behind them all a terrible feeling of guilt.
She couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d turned away from that last kiss. And how Linda had then put her hand out to her, asked if they were still friends, and Bella hadn’t shaken.
She could hear Shirley moving round and looked at the clock on the mantelshelf. It was after nine. She heard the toilet flush, and then Shirley came into the lounge.
Bella couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. Shirley was dressed, made up; she looked very smart.
‘Are you going out?’
Shirley sounded uneasy. ‘Yes, I... I’ve got an appointment.’ She joined Bella at the window. ‘Still no sign of Dolly? Where do you think she’s gone?’
Bella shrugged. Shirley picked up a tray with the cups of tea Bella had made in the night.
‘Just leave them,’ Bella told her.
Shirley put the tray down again. ‘We don’t know, not for certain,’ she said suddenly.
Bella shook her head. ‘I saw her. I saw them put the blanket over her face. She’s dead, Shirley.’