So Dora’s career as a barmaid began. It was a slow start – adding up huge drinks orders was a hell of a job, she found. She had no head for maths and the figures blurred in front of her eyes as she struggled with them, but eventually she got the hang of things. The work was hard on the legs when you were pregnant. But she listened to the punters’ sad stories, and smiled, and patted the hands of the dedicated alkies, the regular hard drinkers who were waiting right outside the door at opening time, and she pulled their pints and their whisky chasers, and it all seemed to go all right.

Better yet, the pub had gigs in the evenings, young men soulfully strumming guitars and dreaming of being the next Tab Hunter, and skiffle groups fancying themselves as the new Lonnie Donegan. Before long Dora was standing up there too, singing ‘Young Love’, ‘Que Sera Sera’ and ‘Dreamboat’. She felt adored again and relished the faint smattering of applause.

Better be careful though, she told herself. She couldn’t be too visible. A backstreet pub was OK, but her days of sparkling Café Royale glory were well and truly in the past. So she settled in, and worked and was paid, and the people at the pub were kind enough, but God she missed London.

She missed home.

And so she wrote her mum a letter.

53

‘So you fucking lost her,’ said DI Crompton, puffing away at a roll-up as he sat behind his desk glaring at DS Maguire.

‘She lost me,’ said Donny. He had a plaster over a badly swollen cut on his brow, and he was thinking that he had severely underestimated Dora O’Brien. She was a slippery bitch, no doubt about it.

When he’d finally convinced the railwaymen to phone through to Yorkshire CID and confirm that he was who he claimed to be, and he was at last able to get away from the silly fuckers and resume his search, of course it was all too bloody late. She was gone. He trekked all round Blackpool, then the towns and villages surrounding it, but she was nowhere to be found. Needle in a haystack didn’t even come close. She could be anywhere.

Dora had outwitted him. He’d phoned through to his DI, told him what happened, and Colin Crompton had barked down the phone: ‘Get back here, for fuck’s sake.’

Now here he was, back at the ranch in London, getting a bollocking over letting Dora get the better of him.

‘God almighty, you fucked that right up,’ said Colin, shooting twin jets of smoke down his nose in disgust.

Crompton chucked the day’s newspaper in the bin by his desk and eyed Donny with disfavour. Donny glimpsed the headlines: a diver had vanished in Portsmouth Harbour during a Russian visit and the Algerians had murdered nineteen French soldiers. Crompton angrily stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

‘Should have been a piece of piss, cornering a woman, a pregnant woman, and getting her back down here. She’s our main hope of stitching Frank up. I want the key thrown away on that bent bastard, and she’s the one to help us do it. The others are all out of it. Frank’s been busy. She’s the last remaining witness to what happened at that party now. Her and that weird-looking prat who works for Pargeter.’