Murder... Now and Then by Jill McGown Page B

‘Anyone got a fag?’ she asked.
    â€˜No smoking,’ said the driver.
    â€˜Oh, come on!’
    â€˜No smoking.’ He twisted round in his seat. ‘It smells bad enough with the cheap perfume. No smoking.’
    Anna blew out her cheeks. ‘Fuck you then,’ she said.
    â€˜Some other time, love. I’m driving.’
    No laughter this time. Partly because you didn’t laugh at cop jokes, and partly because it possibly wasn’t a joke. Bloody hypocrites, the lot of them.
    They were joined by a couple of uniforms, pushed out at the station, searched for drugs, and charged. Great. That was all she needed. A bloody fine. She was trying to get a flat. She’d have to live there too, to start with, but living on the premises would be better than doing it in the back of the punter’s car, then getting picked up and herded into a van like cattle, only to go back to a squat she shared with two of the other girls, and God knew who or what else.
    Her dream was to have her own flat and working premises. Her own flat, where she could live the way she wanted to live, and never have to let anyone in that she didn’t want to let in. She’d been made offers by sleazy little pimps, but she wasn’t turning over half her earnings to anyone. She’d do it on her own, and she reckoned she could afford the rent on one flat. But she needed key money – everyone was out for what they could get and key money might be illegal, but it was a fact of life. She almost had enough; she had been hoping that the bloke might accept what she had if she threw in a few inducements. But now it would all be going to the bloody courts. It was far from being her first offence.
    She saw the cop whose head she had so nearly kicked in, and she still wanted to do it. But there was another way to get her own back. A way that might make them drop the charges. She turned to the sergeant who was booking her,
    â€˜I want to make a complaint,’ she said.
    â€˜And she ran off last night?’
    Victor Holyoak nodded. He was talking to a private detective, one of several that he had briefed. She had rung that morning; she was in London, she was safe, and she wasn’t coming back, she had said, and had hung up.
    He had had to tell Margaret, of course. If he had thought for one moment that he could have got Catherine back before Margaret came out of hospital, he wouldn’t have told her. But Catherine wasn’t half as guileless as she appeared; she wouldn’t be easy to find. He had thought that Margaret would insist on the police being brought in, but it had been surprisingly easy to talk her out of it. They would have wanted to know what had happened to his face; the whole thing would have become even more of a disaster than it already was.
    Margaret had accepted that; she had always accepted that his way of life was hazardous, and that the less the police knew of it the better. She had surprised him the day she had agreed to marry him; she could always surprise him, even now.
    â€˜What was she wearing, Mr Holyoak, do you know?’
    He had no idea. ‘ I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what she was wearing, but she will almost certainly be wearing something different by now.’
    â€˜Well – perhaps your wife could tell me—’
    â€˜My wife is in hospital,’ he said.
    â€˜Oh – I’m sorry. Nothing serious, I hope.’
    â€˜Not really,’ he said. ‘ But my wife is paralysed, you see. Minor illnesses can be dangerous – the doctor thought she should be under supervision.’
    The man nodded sympathetically. ‘Do you know why Catherine should have run off?’ he asked carefully.
    Oh, yes. He knew all right. But he wasn’t about to tell him or anyone else. Holyoak pointed to his stitched and dressed face, ‘She unfortunately witnessed this,’ he said.
    â€˜Ah, yes. I was going to ask …’
    â€˜A