There really was nothing to see at this sad little graveside. Then . . .
‘Excuse me!’ Jack called.
Next to this small, untended grave was another small stone wedge bearing the inscription: ‘Dorothy Rawlins. March 1941 – August 1995.’ This grave had had a recent visitor, because fresh flowers lay on the grass.
‘Do you know who visits Dolly Rawlins?’
‘A wee girl. Only seen her a couple of times. Young. Petite.’ The Glaswegian shrugged. ‘I stay out of the way when people come visiting. Sorry.’
‘No, you’ve been really helpful. Thank you.’ As the Glaswegian walked away for the last time, Jack added, ‘Look after yourself.’
The flowers on Dolly’s grave were no more than a couple of days old and had been taken out of their wrapping, so Jack wouldn’t be able to trace where they were bought. He’d have to dig into Dolly’s family history – but ‘young and petite’ definitely didn’t describe either Connie or Ester. Maybe the flowers weren’t relevant at all.
Jack made his way back round to the first grave of ‘Harry Rawlins’ – the one with the ornate headstone. This was the grave that held the most interest for him, because someone else was down there: someone who had been buried in Rawlins’ place; someone who had been blown to smithereens in the botched Strand underpass robbery and misidentified. Someone wearing Harry’s gold watch. And Jack was going to find out who that was.
CHAPTER 15
‘You want to what?’ Maggie asked.
They were standing in the middle of the spare bedroom, which now looked like a full-blown evidence room, with photos, notes, names and places all linked together with bits of different coloured string. She wore one towel round her body, one round her head and held two glasses of red wine.
‘You want a coroner’s permission to dig up a coffin on the off chance that the body inside is Jimmy Nunn’s?’
Jack took one of the glasses of wine from Maggie. He knew not to disturb her when she was in full flow.
‘How you going to manage that exactly . . .? “Oh, guv, you know that grave that half of London thought belonged to Harry Rawlins? Well, can we dig it up please ’cos I think my dad might have been the getaway driver in an unsolved raid on a security van?” ’
‘I didn’t say Jimmy was dead. In fact, if Tony’s right, Jimmy walked away clean with pockets full of cash. But someone’s in there, Mags, and it definitely isn’t Rawlins.’
‘Who cares? Genuinely, Jack. Who cares which deadbeat gangster got buried 35 years ago?’
Jack looked at her with his beautiful, wide eyebrows-up eyes. He cared. Maggie put down her wine and cradled his face in her warm, water-wrinkled hands.
‘You confuse me so much,’ she whispered. ‘I see the excitement in your eyes when you talk about this case and about your birth father and I love it, but, Jack, you have to think straight. For 35 years, the police haven’t given a toss who’s really in that grave. How are you going to make them care now?’
‘You’re right,’ Jack conceded. ‘I’ll need to think of a far more compelling reason than just some missing gangster. Thanks, Mags. What would I do without you, eh? Did you leave the water in?’
And he headed for the bathroom.
Maggie looked around the spare bedroom in despair. Jack had finally found his passion, his focus, his smile ‒ and it made her deeply worried. Instead of being the making of him, she worried it might actually be the breaking of him.
*
Jack had been parked outside Julia’s home for about an hour, watching the comings and goings. What he first thought was a small mid-terraced two-up, two-down was actually three small terraced houses knocked into one. He discovered this when a little black girl with braided hair and a bright pink hoody went in one ‘house’ and, moments later, came out of another.
This part of Chester was middle income, and Jack reckoned Julia owned a good £300 k of property between the three terraced houses. He knocked on the front door nearest to where he’d parked. From inside, Jack could hear a woman’s voice shouting instructions about not doing anything else before she got back, then the door was opened by a tall, slim woman, wiping her floury hands on a souvenir tea towel slung over her shoulder.
‘Julia Lawson?’ Jack asked. He couldn’t help the tone of the question: he could see she’d spotted him for a copper.
Julia blocked the doorway, as if protecting every living soul beyond it.
‘You