Read Online Crow Bait by Douglas Skelton - Free Book Online Page B

say he resisted arrest. I’ll even let him take a poke at me, just to make it look good. Or if he’s no man enough you can do it, Frankie boy. You’d like that, eh?’
    Donovan couldn’t deny he would like the chance to lay one on Knight, but this wasn’t the time or the place. ‘Jimmy, just cuff him and we’ll take him in.’
    ‘Oh, I’ll cuff him alright. Cuff him about the ears.’ Knight was staring into Mo’s face once more. The young man was weeping openly now, saying he was sorry over and over again and even Donovan began to pity him, but Knight remained expressionless. He looked at Mo as if he was some sort of curious specimen, his head tilted to one side, his dark eyes probing every feature of the boy’s face. Then Knight sneered and with a flick of his arm propelled the little man towards Donovan.
    ‘Take him, Frankie boy. He’s no worth the paperwork.’
    Donovan trapped Morris before he could do another runner, pinned his hands behind his back then snapped the handcuffs on. Two uniforms came steaming along the road towards them, hats in their hand as they ran. Better late than never . Knight climbed back into his car and slipped on his seatbelt. He lit up a cigarillo and blew smoke through the open window as Donovan handed the young man over to the boys in blue.
    ‘Glad I bumped into you. Got some news, Frankie boy,’ Knight said as the uniforms led the still weeping Morris away. Donovan waited as Knight took a long draw on the small cigar and exhaled another cloud of smoke. Knight was a Detective Sergeant, just like him, but he had a knack for making Donovan feel like an inferior. And now that he was with the Serious Crime Squad he was even worse. ‘Got some info on your dead tart.’
    Jimmy Knight, sensitive as ever. ‘Okay.’
    ‘Seems she was pretty active, but she only had one regular. Bloke named John…’
    ‘John Keen was the guy who rented the flat she was found in.’ That was all Donovan knew about the guy, his name. No-one had seen him in the close, the arrangements had been made with the letting agent by phone and post, with the cash for the deposit and the first month’s rent delivered by a young girl who didn’t leave a name. Christ, could’ve been Virginia, for all Donovan knew. And no-one had heard anything on the night of the murder – the flat next door was empty, the one upstairs inhabited by an old spinster who was hard of hearing, while the couple downstairs had been out cold all night after a two-day bender. Donovan couldn’t shake off the feeling that this guy Keen had chosen the site carefully. And that meant he’d been planning the murder.
    Knight blew smoke into the air. ‘That’ll be him, then. None of the other lassies saw him too clearly – he used to pick her up in a car – but one did meet him, briefly.’
    ‘Can she describe him?’
    ‘No much to go on. Glasgow accent, dark hair, flecked with grey, average height, good-looking, which begs the question why he needed to go with tarts.’
    Donovan thought, you should know , but he kept it to himself. ‘Maybe he had special demands.’
    ‘Aye, maybe. He also had blue eyes. That’s what she remembers most, his blue eyes.’
    Donovan thought about this. There was something about the murder scene that had sparked a memory, but no matter how much he stretched for it, it remained just out of reach. ‘It’s not much, is it?’
    ‘More than you had five minutes ago.’
    That was true. ‘Where’d you get all this?’
    ‘Plooky Mary, so it’s dependable.’
    ‘You still running her as a tout?’
    ‘Aye, don’t know how long for, right enough. She’s got the virus.’
    ‘AIDS?’
    ‘Aye.’ Knight didn’t sound terribly upset, even though he’d been using the girl as an informant for years. ‘Stupid cow started using heroin a while back, shared needles with her junkie pals. She didn’t listen to John Hurt on those telly ads when he told her not to die of ignorance.’
    ‘You’re all heart,