morning so far and, buoyed by this, he took a handful of coins from his pocket and fed them into a payphone in the lobby of the university building then dialled Helen at the newspaper. As he waited for her to pick up he wondered again if he should invest in a mobile phone. He could probably justify their convenience but not their cost and though they were smaller than the brick-like unit he’d had when he worked for a tabloid, it was still a pain trying to fit one in a pocket and there were large parts of the north-east where the signal strength made you feel as if you were on the moon.
‘Hello.’ Tom recognised Helen’s voice straight away.
‘I need a woman,’ he told her.
‘Are you always this direct?’
‘That depends on how urgent the requirement is and in this case I’m afraid I cannot manage without you.’
‘In that case I’m flattered, I think, but what do you want and when do you need it by?’
‘A burned girl, you say? Well that’s terrible.’ Jimmy McCree sounded to Bradshaw as if he couldn’t have cared less. ‘It wasn’t in Newcastle though, was it? I know everything that goes on in my city.’ Bradshaw found himself irked by the arrogance of this man. It wasn’t his city.
‘Her body was found in a scrapyard in County Durham but for some reason we’ve had trouble tracing the owner. Nobody seems to want to tell us who he is.’
‘Really? That sounds a bit dodgy to me. Has it crossed your mind that it could just be a front? You know, for criminal goings-on.’ Bradshaw ignored him. ‘I’m very sorry, officer. I’d love to help you with that one but I can’t. Tell you what, I’ll ask around though.’
‘What about Sandra Jarvis?’ asked Bradshaw.
‘Sandra Jarvis?’ Once again the big man contorted his face but this time it was to feign a loss of memory where that name was concerned. Eventually he said, ‘The councillor’s daughter?’ as if it had suddenly come back to him. ‘That’s a terrible business. Frank Jarvis must be grieving.’
‘She’s not dead,’ countered Bradshaw, ‘unless you are telling me she is?’
‘It’s just a figure of speech. I meant her unexplained disappearance must be causing him grief. Nothing messes with a man’s mind more than problems involving his immediate family.’
‘That’s true,’ said Bradshaw. ‘I hear she worked in one of your pubs.’ He watched the big man intently now.
McCree regarded Bradshaw innocently as if he had been entirely misinformed. ‘I don’t have any pubs, detective. Can’t imagine where you got that idea from.’
‘Of course not,’ said Bradshaw dryly and he tried another angle: ‘Some folk have profited from Sandra’s disappearance haven’t they, since Frank Jarvis had to step down as leader of the council?’
‘You can hardly blame Joe Lynch for taking over a vacant position. It’s not his fault Frank’s daughter has gone missing. Since when has ambition been a crime?’
‘Know him pretty well, do you? The councillor, I mean.’
‘I’ve met him because of my business but I wouldn’t say I know him. Do you?’
‘I know he likes to threaten journalists.’
‘I’ve heard nowt about that.’
Bradshaw knew then and there that he was never going to get the infamous Jimmy McCree to let down his guard. He could have stayed there all day and McCree would bat back all of his questions with the consummate skill of a man who has been questioned countless times by police and never once been convicted. Bradshaw hadn’t expected it would go any other way. He simply wanted to be face to face with McCree, to meet the famous adversary at the top of the hit list of every policeman in the north-east of England, and he also wanted a quiet word.
‘So Joe Lynch never asked you to terrorise Helen Norton?’
McCree didn’t even pretend he wasn’t aware of Helen. ‘A burned girl, a missing girl … and an annoying girl. You’ve got a thing about women, detective. I’m guessing you’re a regular Sir Galahad.’
‘I’m here to warn you off her.’
‘Oh, really?’ And he leaned forward in his chair then, exuding menace, a street fighter who’s been challenged. ‘Well I’ve no idea what you’re talking about but if I did I’d probably take offence at that.’
‘You need to stay away from her.’
‘I’ve never been near the lass, except one time when she took my photograph in a restaurant without asking me, which was an invasion of my privacy, by the way. There was a second time when she followed