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imagine myself curled up in her arms, my brown skin next to
     the hair she dyes yellow to attract other blokes like me to her door. Blokes that might have included my strange, dark, raving
     man. After all, hadn’t he called the ‘she’ who had supposedly stabbed him a whore? And if, as Aggie said, spiking was a recognised
     practice among the girls who didn’t have pimps, like Hannah . . . I suppose I should have been horrified by this thought,
     that someone I knew might have killed another human being. But at that moment, I was just jealous – of him and what he might
     have enjoyed of Hannah. Made me ashamed when I thought about it later.
    Fred Bryant arrived early the next morning. Aggie, who can’t stand the way he moons over Doris and hates the way he is with
     Alfie Rosen, as well as having no time for his gossip, came into the kitchen and said, ‘That copper of yours is downstairs,
     Frank. Got two women with him.’
    I went down to the shop where I saw Fred with a woman of about thirty and another one of probably sixty-something. The younger
     one, who was naturally blonde, was quite pretty in a tired sort of a way. She was wearing aworn-looking short jacket and skirt, and had the biggest dark eyes I’ve ever seen in a fair person. The woman with her wore
     on her toothless mug an expression of bitterness bordering on hate. As soon as I saw her, I knew she and I were destined to
     fall out.
    ‘This is Mrs Dooley,’ Fred said, as he tipped his head in the direction of the younger woman. ‘Come to have a look at the
     bloke I brought in yesterday.’ He lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘Thinks it could possibly be her husband.’
    ‘And my son,’ the older woman put in. With her arms crossed over her large bosom and her thin mouth turned down into a scowl,
     the older Mrs Dooley wasn’t going to be ignored by anyone.
    ‘Right.’
    I took Fred and the two women out the back and pulled away the sheet. With his eyes closed now and because I’d washed him
     the previous night he didn’t look or smell that bad. I glanced down like everyone else. It was quite by chance that I looked
     up suddenly and caught the younger Mrs Dooley’s eye. Blank, she was – or seemed to be – no emotion, nothing. If it hadn’t
     been for the slight trembling of the old woman’s chin, I would have thought my bloke was unknown to both of them. But the
     old girl was obviously holding back something, even if it wasn’t to be tears. Grief is a funny, unpredictable thing.
    Then the younger woman, her voice cracking with suppressed emotion, spoke: ‘Yes, it’s him. That’s Kevin.’
    ‘Your husband?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    The old woman, her mouth twitching with the effort of concealing her feelings, shot the younger Mrs Dooley a vicious glance.
    ‘Thank you for looking after him, Mr Hancock,’ the younger woman said, with a soft smile. ‘Me and the kids,’ she looked across
     at the old woman, still with that smile on her face, ‘and Vi, his mum, are very grateful to you.’
    ‘Don’t think that gives you the right to do his funeral!’ The old woman jabbed a finger in my face. ‘We’ll have Cox’s undertakers,
     like we always do!’
    ‘I told the ladies that Mr Dooley died of the blast,’ Fred said, as if he hadn’t heard Vi Dooley.
    ‘Yes.’ I could, I suppose, have said at the time I had doubts, but I didn’t. After all, I had no real evidence that Kevin
     had been stabbed. His words, even though they had affected me greatly, didn’t necessarily contain any truth. And besides,
     the police doctor, Dr Cockburn, must have seen that small red pimple on Kevin’s torso. He must have seen and dismissed it
     for a good reason. Why upset these women with an unsavoury story that might well be false? Why make trouble by disagreeing
     with a copper? Not that I was comfortable with this, even then. Doctors can be wrong, especially when they’re as busy as they
     are these days.
    ‘He was a good son, my Kevin,’