A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [168]
‘They don’t seem to be taking the connection with John Bolton very seriously,’ he said. It was surprisingly easy to talk to Miss Diamond; she was matter of fact about it all, and she didn’t ask stupid questions or interrupt with irrelevant personal anecdotes the way most people did. She just sat there opposite him at the table and gently encouraged him to talk. ‘I don’t think they even believe there is a connection, even if it’s as plain as day that there is,’ he went on. ‘They say they are investigating it, but they haven’t told me one concrete thing they’ve done. They ought to be turning over all John’s known associates, pulling people in, but as far as I can see they’ve done nothing.
‘This bloke Fifi saw with the red Jag for instance,’ he continued angrily. ‘She saw him and John going into the Muckles’ one Friday. Why can’t they find him? How many people around here have got new red Jags, for God’s sake! There can’t be that many in the whole of London. It’s obvious to me that Fifi was snatched because she’d been to the police about him, and you can’t tell me she’s the only person that could pick him out in a line-up! It can’t be that fucking difficult either to find out who John worked with. I don’t think they’ve even leaned on Vera.’
He blushed. ‘Sorry about the swearing, Miss Diamond,’ he said. The business about the car had really annoyed him. He’d asked Roper if they’d contacted all the Jaguar dealers in London and got a list of everyone who had bought a new red one in the past two years. Roper said there were men out there doing just that right now, but so far the only names they’d turned up were bonafide business and professional men.
‘Miss Diamond is a bit formal, Nora will do,’ she said, and half smiled as she ruffled Dan’s hair. ‘And what you’re going through is enough to make anyone swear. I’m sure the police are doing their job, and they were over at Vera’s on Sunday while you were out. But it isn’t easy to get people to talk after what happened to John, they are too afraid.’
‘Afraid of what?’ Dan exclaimed. ‘They don’t have to give themselves away or shout it from the rooftops, all they need to do is whisper a name if they know it. They are bloody cowards!’
Nora’s stomach churned at Dan’s condemnation of the neighbours. She’d spoken to Frank Ubley on Sunday and he’d said all this had come out because people were too cowardly to stand up to the Muckles, himself included. Yesterday she’d called into the corner shop and overheard a couple of people discussing Fifi and Yvette’s disappearance. Their view was that someone around here knew exactly who was responsible, and if the two women were found dead, they should be horsewhipped for not telling the police what they knew.
She had been stricken with guilt all last night, going over and over it in her mind. But she’d told herself that she couldn’t just go to the police and tell them she thought Jack Trueman was the man they wanted, not without telling them why. She’d come to the conclusion in the early hours of this morning that she should type an anonymous letter when she got into work. But faced now with Dan’s distress and the serious danger Fifi and Yvette were in, she couldn’t keep quiet any longer. As Dan had said himself, ‘They don’t have to give themselves away or shout it from the rooftops, all they need to do is whisper a name.’
She took a deep breath. ‘I can whisper a name,’ she blurted out. ‘The name of the man I think is behind it.’
Dan’s expression was almost laughable, the kind of look he might give old Mrs Jarvis if she told him she’d helped in the Great Train Robbery last month.
‘I know,’ she said, hanging her head. ‘You think I can’t possibly know anyone dubious, but in fact I was married to a scoundrel once, and that’s how I came to end up here.’
She had no intention of divulging her story to anyone, not even Dan whom she felt she could trust. ‘If I tell you what I know about this man, you must promise me that you won’t tell anyone