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  “The evidence was overwhelming,” Marcia answered, taking a sip of her own drink. “So I suppose the answer is yes, I do think he’s guilty.”

  Marcia seemed relieved to have got it out in the open and finished her drink in one quick gulp. She then apologised that she was really tired and suggested that as it was so late, Karla might like to stay the night.

  Feeling tired and emotionally drained, Karla had agreed.

  Now, stepping out of the shower, Karla dried herself and dressed. Pushing her dirty clothes into the backpack, she lugged it downstairs to find Marcia. Duncan was sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast.

  “Hi,” she greeted him.

  “Good morning,” he replied. “Marcia’s not up yet. Do you want a coffee or something?”

  Feeling uncomfortable, Karla declined. “Please thank her for her kindness, but I must go now. I have a train to catch.”

  And a hell of a lot of confronting to do, she thought.

  This time she wouldn’t let Frank’s charming smile and easy ways put her off so easily. The damned man had some serious questions to answer!

  Chapter 8

  Frank smiled to himself, pleased that he was far better at this techy stuff now. It had only taken him a short time in the Internet Café to, Google, Katie’s Café. It was situated opposite Haverstock Hill School, alongside Chalk Farm underground station.

  Pushing his way into the café through the heavy glass door, Frank spotted two schoolgirls at a table near the rear counter, drinking something from paper cups. They were chatting away intently and hadn’t seen him enter. He studied them from the corner of his eye as he walked to the counter and ordered himself a cup of tea.

  One girl had brown hair with a purple streak, the other black hair with a blond one. They both looked to be somewhere between thirteen and fifteen. They wore their school ties short, with large knots, over white blouses. Purple streak glanced at him as he turned from the counter.

  Frank smiled as he walked to their table. “Rachael?” he asked.

  The girl with the blond streak nodded.

  “Is it okay if I sit down?”

  She nodded again, then sipped from her drink, watching him over the brim of the cup.

  Frank sat at the table and tried to appear friendly and unthreatening. From the glances they gave each other, it didn’t seem to be working that well.

  “My name’s Frank Collins,” he said. “I’m Mandy’s dad. Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

  They just stared at him and he noticed the girl with the purple streak had a constant tight grip on her mobile phone, almost like a child with its comfort blanket.

  “Look, I know Mandy was probably pretty upset with me,” he tried as an opener.

  Rachael had a wide face and dark eyes, that were slightly too far apart to be attractive. Unlike her friend, she didn’t wear any make-up. “That’s one way of putting it,” she said with a snort of disapproval, before going back to her drink and sullen stare.

  Frank took a sip of his tea and wondered if this had been such a good idea after all. “Look, I’m just trying to find out why she killed herself, that’s all. I need to know if it had anything to do with me.” He waited while the girl turned that over in her mind.

  “It wasn’t because of you. She hardly ever mentioned you,” the other girl cut-in before Rachael could respond.

  “Hardly?” Frank said. So she had mentioned him occasionally then! “So why do you think she killed herself?” he asked. “Did she have a boyfriend? Was she being bullied at school or something like that?”

  Rachael shook her head.

  “And who the hell is this Gary guy?” Suddenly realising that he might be coming across too aggressively, Frank sat back from them. “Sorry, it’s just that Mandy’s death has been such a shock to me.”

  “How did you find out about Gary?” Purple Streak asked.

  “Mandy had been phoning him a lot, right up until the day she died.” Catching the look that flashed between the two girls, he leant forward again, forearms on the table, fingers laced . “Tell me,” he said.

  Rachael hesitated, giving her friend a sideways glance as though seeking her approval. “Look, don’t say where you got this okay? He’s not a nice guy and I don’t want any trouble. I told Mandy to stay away from him, but would she listen?”

  Frank rubbed the balls of his thumbs together. “Not nice how?” he asked.

  Rachael paused again and Purple Streak took over. She seemed the more confident of the two. “He sells drugs. Thinks that flashing his money about will get him into girls pants. That sort of not nice.”

  “Mandy was taking drugs?”

  “I don’t know,” Rachael shrugged.

  “But she did sleep with him,” Purple Streak added, frowning when Rachael kicked her under the table.

  Holding up his hand, Frank gave a reassuring nod. “No it’s okay. I need to know what happened, whatever it was. Do you know where this Gary lives?”

  They both shook their heads, then Rachael pulled out her mobile and tapped at the screen.

  “I’ve already got his number,” Frank said, reaching for his own phone.

  “No wait . . . here,” the girl said, holding out her mobile. “I’ve got a picture of him. He’s the one on the right.”

  Taking the proffered mobile, Frank studied it. The photograph showed the grassy bank of a canal, where a group of youngsters sat in a circle sharing a couple of bottles of what appeared to be vodka. Frank recognised Mandy. She sat beside a handsome boy with blond hair.

  “The blond boy?” he checked. Rachael nodded. Frank looked closer. The group were near to a bridge in what looked to be a large clump of bushes. “When was this taken?”

  “Mandy sent it a couple of months ago. She’d bunked off school for the day.”

  “Did she do that often?”

  “Yeah,” Purple Streak cut in, “She was always bunking off with Gary. Coming back flashing her latest presents around.”

  “Presents?”

  “Yeah. Bracelets, rings, stuff like that. He even bought her a

  pair of trainers for her birthday.”

  “So this Gary was Mandy’s boyfriend then?”

  Purple Streak laughed and shook her head as though she thought Frank was an idiot. “Haven’t you been listening? Gary doesn’t do ‘girlfriends’,” she air-mimicked a pair of quotation marks. “He just does girls.”

  “Maisie!” Rachael snapped, red faced.

  “Well it’s true. You know as well as I do what he does.”

  “And exactly what does he do, Maisie?” Frank asked.

  Rachael pulled Maisie to her feet. “I think we’ve told you too much already. We’ve got to go home now.”

  And before Frank could object, they had gone, Rachael dragging Maisie from the café by her arm.

  Ordering another cup of tea, Frank thought about what he’d been told. True, it wasn’t much but it was a start. He obviously needed to talk to this Gary character and find out what he knew, that much was certain.

  His mobile buzzed, Rachael sending him a copy of the picture taken at the canal.

  A slow smile spread across his face.

  A good place to start.

  Chapter 9

  The soft couches were comfortable, set back in an alcove. The old pub had been renovated to a high standard, with many of the original features still evident. Frank had downed two whiskeys before Marcia arrived, surprised that she had agreed to meet him. Now, as he made his way back to the table with their drinks, he worried why she had.

  Before Frank could sit down, Marcia had jumped to her feet, taken her drink from his hand and guided him towards the rear of the room, where she ushered him through a door, out onto a wooden staging cantilevered over the river. The afternoon clouds were low and hazy, blocking the sun.

  Leaning on the railing, Frank looked over, gazing at the dark, green waters of the Thames far below, breathing in its unique aroma. Frank had always loved this part of Lon
don - the old buildings standing so proud, juxtaposed with the newer architecture. Farther along the bank, The Eye, revolved its slow way around its axis like an old watermill.

  “Just like old times, hmm?”

  Marcia’s husky voice jerked Frank from his reveries and he grunted, a self-conscious smile twitching his lips. He sat opposite her at the wooden table. She was still beautiful - but in a more relaxed way than he remembered. As he took a sip of beer, Marcia tipped her glass at him and he saluted her back. It had always amused him how such a slim, sophisticated woman drank pints with the best of them.

  “Cheers,” he said, then asked her how she was doing.

  Marcia took out a cigarette and lit up before answering him, studying his face through the smoke. “Up and down Frank. But mainly down right now.”

  He nodded, twirling his glass on the table as he watched the bubbles rise through the amber liquid. “Yeah, me too.”

  “Look Frank, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  Not liking the sound of her words, Frank frowned, knowing from bitter experience that particular tone was always a prelude to bad news. He raised his eyebrows, prompting her to continue.

  “I told Karla that you’d been to prison.”

  The bald statement left him speechless, and before he could react, she continued: “I thought she already knew, Frank. I’m so sorry, but I assumed you would have told her, being out on licence and all.”

  Frank stared at her as the world took on a fuzzy edge. She turned away, biting at her trembling bottom lip.

  “What did she say?” he asked, voice low, almost a whisper.

  “She wanted to know what you were in for.” Holding up a hand to forestall his protest, she continued: “I didn’t tell her. I said she should ask you.”

  “Oh that makes it all perfectly okay then, doesn’t it?”

  He could see the tears filming Marcia’s eyes, but couldn’t stop the bitter words that rose from somewhere deep inside him.

  “Well thanks a bunch, you stupid bitch!”

  Frank half-rose, but Marcia restrained him, her cool hand on the back of his. “Frank. Stop. I’m sorry, I really am. Sit down a minute. Please.”

  He sat, snatching his hand away. “What?”

  Taking a half-breath, Marcia sighed, staring at the table. “Why did Mandy do such a thing, Frank? Was it our fault?”

  “Did she ever mention a boy called Gary?” he asked, trying to change the direction the conversation was going.

  Marcia glanced up at him with a half-smile. “Mandy had hardly spoken to us for the past six months. She was moody and argumentative. We didn’t know what’d gotten into her.”

  Marcia’s face was cloaked in cigarette smoke and she waved her hand to disperse it, dropping her half-finished cigarette into the river.

  “Duncan was at the end of his tether, and so was I. I even rang her school to see if they knew what was troubling her. Do you know what they said?”

  Frank shook his head.

  “They told me she’d been missing school for days on end and that they’d written to me about it more than once.”

  Marcia took a drink, taking her time, her eyes still filmed with tears. Frank realised how guilty she must feel. He’d been so tied up in his own feeling that it hadn’t occurred to him to wonder how she might be coping. He took her hand in his, rubbing his thumb over the back of it.

  Marcia looked away as a tear fell unchecked. “She intercepted the letters and threw them away. That was never like her, she was always such a good, kind girl. Never any trouble.”

  “I talked to a couple of her friends yesterday. They said she’d been going out with some boy called Gary.”

  Marcia shrugged. “She may well have been. I don’t know what she’d been getting up to behind our backs.” Taking another sip of beer, she withdrew her hand and began moving her glass back and forth in small circles on the table. “I was frightened that if we pushed her too hard she might run away or something.” Impatiently flicking away a tear, she looked up at him again. “We tried everything. We even grounded her, but she’d just climb out of her bedroom window when we weren’t looking, disappearing for hours on end.”

  “The girls said this Gary bought her stuff. Bracelets and things.”

  “If he did, she kept them to herself. She never said anything.”

  “So was this what Duncan was hiding from me?” he asked.

  Marcia’s eyes widened. “Hiding from you?”

  Frank nodded. “Yes. Telling me that her computer’d been stolen. Didn’t you want me looking at it for some reason?”

  Marcia sat back with a small gasp. “If you think the whole world revolves around you and your wants Frank, then your years inside didn’t teach you very much, did they.”

  Frank swallowed hard, hurt by her attack, but doing his best to keep his temper, because this had been the way their fights had always started - first one making hurtful gibes, then the other, until it finally exploded in a fully fledge battle.

  “Karla seems like a nice girl.”

  Marcia’s words caught Frank off-guard, but only for a moment. He nodded slightly as he recalled her trick. When things got too emotional, she would unexpectedly change direction. It was the one thing that had truly infuriated him about her.

  “Yeah, she’s okay I suppose,” he said.

  “She phoned last night. Thanked me for letting her come to the funeral. Told me that she was going back to Scotland.”

  “Did she tell you why?”

  “Just that she needed to get back to work. She runs a coffee shop, doesn’t she?”

  “Seems like you two had quite a cosy little chat then.” Disapproval thickened his voice.

  “Well it was late, so I invited her to stay the night.”

  Frank couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “She spent the night with you?”

  “She’s obviously worried about you, Frank. That’s the only reason I agreed to see you today. She thinks you’re making far too much out of all this, and I must say that I tend to agree with her.”

  Frank grabbed the edge of the table, fingers white with pressure. He leant forward, voice low - almost threatening. “Look Marcia, Mandy must have had a reason for what she did. I just want to know what it was. Is that such a bad thing? If you were any sort of mother, you’d want to know too.”

  He could see the effect his words had on Marcia by the determined clench of her jaw and slight widening of her nostrils.

  Frank prepared himself for the blast he knew was coming.

  “Can’t you just accept that she’s gone and stop fooling yourself it was anything other than what you did to her? You had no part in her life because your precious boss meant more to you than we did. And don’t you dare speak to me that way. For once in your pathetic excuse for a life, own up to the fact that you can’t always put the world to rights like some freaking super-hero. Because I can tell you right now, mister. That’s the last thing you ever were.”

  Frank sat back in his chair, stunned. Marcia’s words had cut deep, had pushed buttons that only she knew were there. She appeared to watch him with hooded eyes and he wondered if she thought she’d pushed him too far.

  “Thanks Marcia, that’s very helpful.”

  Frank knew exactly what Marcia’s comments had alluded to.

  “Why did you do it Frank? Why did you throw away everything we had?”

  Frank looked down at the river, wishing with ever atom of his being that he knew the answer to that particular question. He’d asked himself the self-same thing over and over for the past fourteen years.

  Marcia stood, handbag clutched to her stomach with both hands.

  She looked down at him. “Go home Frank,” she said. “Go home before you fuck-up your new relationship the same way you fucked-up ours.”

  After Marcia had stormed off, Frank got himself another drink and sat staring out over the Thames, his mind elsewhen.

  Chapter 10

  21st May 1989 - a day t
hat had started out like any other, but one that quickly turned into a nightmare that had changed Frank Collins’ life forever.

  *

  Frank stood up, staring down at the dead body, shoulders hunched as though sheltering from a cold wind. The room was overbearing, it’s dank smell filling his nostrils.

  “It was just a bloody accident, Frank,” Jeffrey Hunter said quietly. “That twat was ripping me off, dipping his sticky little fingers in places they didn’t belong. We argued. I pushed him and he hit his head on the wall. Just a bloody accident.”

  The bare room echoed Jeffrey Hunter’s words and Frank felt himself transported back to another time - to laughing boys, stamping feet, the shouted words, “Fight, fight, fight.”

  Frank’s thoughts raced like a film spooling its way across the screen of his mind. The images flashed so quickly, one upon the other, that they were over before he’d realised they had even begun: two boys running from a shop as the fat owner chased them through the crumbling estate; the knife wound gaping open on Jeffrey Hunter’s arm after a gang fight; the stumbling walk down dark streets as they passed a half empty whisky bottle between them. The images were many and varied, but they all shared one thing - a deep feeling of companionship, camaraderie and love.

  Frank turned, stumbling his way from the room. He knew what he had to do. Jeffrey was married with two small children, while he had only a live-in girlfriend.

  Just a bloody accident, Frank!

  What could they do to him? Three - at the worst four years inside for manslaughter. He could do that standing on his head. Hunter would look after Marcia while he was away, no problem.

  Just a bloody accident!

  *

  The trial had been a nightmare, over before Frank even realised it had begun. He’d sat in a daze as the evidence mounted against him: the man’s cracked ribs, the broken nose, the bruised testicles - all the injuries pointing to a sever beating. Worst of all though, was the single knife wound to the heart, the killing blow entering the man’s back just under his ribs and thrusting upwards.

  Just a bloody accident, Frank. Just a bloody accident!

  The sworn testament by one of the dancers that she had seen Frank arguing with the dead man earlier that evening in the club, added weight to the Prosecutor’s contention that Frank had beaten, then stabbed the man to death.