But on Donny Maguire?

She was hiding something significant there. He knew it. He picked up the phone, dialled out. Waited. No. She wasn’t picking up. No one was.

He put the phone back on the hook and delved deeper into Lenny’s file. The fire at Maguire’s flat had happened in 1973. Not three months later, Lenny Axelford and Angel O’Brien had publicly become an item. Six months after the time of the fire, they were married. Her cousin Tom had worked for Lenny, but Tom hadn’t been implicated in any of Lenny’s scams, either. So they were both straight.

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

Because now Tom Sibley was in hospital after being knocked on the head in the club one dark night. And the flat where he and Angel lived had just been trashed.

Whoa!

Farmer sat back as a thought struck him.

Were they lovers?

Had they – both Tom Sibley and Angel – been connected to Lenny’s illegal trading? Was Lenny maybe still running them from prison – the Krays had done that for years – and had Lenny and Angel divorced to throw up a smokescreen to the authorities, throw them off the scent?

Farmer thought those two points over and came up with a negative.

No. His impression of Angel was that she was resolutely and unbendingly straight. And he wanted to believe that more than anything right now, but why?

He put Lenny Axelford’s file aside, slurped down the last of his now-cold coffee and on impulse picked up the phone again and dialled. Across town, it rang – but no one answered. He let it ring and ring and ring.

150

‘Don’t answer that,’ snapped the older man, pushing the back door closed behind him.

June was groaning, holding her face. Lil was on her knees beside her sister. The phone rang loudly in the sudden taut silence. Lil looked up and said furiously: ‘Just who the hell are you, coming in here like this?’

The big man stood back; it was the older one who answered.

‘I’m Frank Pargeter.’

‘Who?’ demanded June.

‘I ain’t repeating myself, you whore.’ His voice was hard, rasping. ‘I did a long stretch of time over that bitch Dora O’Brien. Too long. The best years of my life. And all because she stood up in the witness box and yapped to the judge about me. I always swore to myself, every single fucking day in that shit heap, that when I got out I was going to get even.’

June let out a high, weird little laugh. She was holding her cheek, wincing in pain but still she couldn’t resist being a gobby cow. ‘Well you’ve had a wasted fucking journey, haven’t you. Dora’s dead. She’s been dead for years.’

Frank stared at her as if she was shit on his shoe.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I know that. I already pissed on her grave. But didn’t you hear what I just said? You’re her family. Her kin. If I can’t have this out with her, then for damned sure I am going to take it all out on you.’