Excerpt from A Bad, Bad Place by Frances Crawford, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The heat is going for my ankles and the strap on my sandals has burst again. It'd be just the thing if it came flying off in front of these police and me with big sausage feet. Need to stop in at the Red Shop for glue when we get back. I wonder if I've enough in my purse to get Janey an ice lolly.

"Give me your jacket off, hen, and I'll carry it. You must be sweating."

"I'm cold, Nana. Freezing."

* * *

Janey takes my hand outside the police station and I'm glad of it because it's no just the police making me sick with worry, it's this feeling.

A day or two after finding the body, she asked if I'd ever done anything bad.

"Jeez-oh, aye. Plenty. But see most bad things? Most of them are just mistakes, daft mistakes that people make. You're no meaning to be bad, no often anyway."

"Even big sins? Are they just mistakes?" she said, and I thought she was talking about the murderer.

But here's the thing, the thing I can't shake. She's been to confession three times since that day. What does a twelve-year-old have to confess?

Chapter 3

-13 days-

The police keep us waiting for ages on plastic seats that smell of pish. Nana's nearly finished a whole packet of Embassy Regal and the smoke curls round her head, the same wispy grey as her perm. There's a tramp walking up and down, muttering and swearing, and Nana gives him her last fag. She's like that with tramps and jakeys, talking to them about dead normal stuff like the weather and the terrible price of pies these days. He's got fingers missing and I don't want to look at the stumpy bits but I keep staring. Same with his trousers.

A policewoman comes to get us. My legs are sweat-sticky and there's a farty noise when I stand. Nana nudges me but I don't laugh.

The policewoman is the one who tells me to call her Val.

"How's things, Jane?" This is the third time we've met and she still can't get my name right. "You must be excited about going up to Big School after the summer," Val says.

Big School, what a diddy.

I walk close behind Nana who's doing a weird shuffle with one of her feet. Val takes us up a lot of stairs to a room with no windows. Two days after I found the body, they came to our flat to ask their questions, so maybe now they know. Maybe this is the bit where they say they know.

Baldy's sitting at a table, waiting. He doesn't wear a police uniform, just ordinary man clothes. Not really ordinary, more posh, with a tie and shirt. He shakes Nana's hand and says he appreciates us coming in.

"I don't know how yous can't give us peace," Nana goes, "the wean told you everything." She knows I'm no a wean but I see what she's doing.

"It's routine, Mrs. Devine. Just in case she's remembered something."

"Witnesses often recall details at a later date and our Jane is a very smart girl," Val says, and smiles like she's my friend or something.

That day, I call it Dummy Railway Day cos that's where it happened, Val had taken me into a cubicle at the police station to clean up cos I'd wet my pants. I heard her outside, talking to a man who wanted to know if the witness was any use. "Doubt it," Val said, "she's from Possilpark. Bloody lucky if she can remember her own address."

"My name's no Jane. It's Janey," I tell her, and she makes out she's writing that down with an invisible pencil. Diddy.

We sit across from Baldy and he tells us he's going to record the interview. I suddenly need the toilet and maybe that's why all the chairs in here stink.

"Recording started fourteen-thirty hours, Friday, April twenty-seventh, 1979. Case number ..." blah blah blah "... Janey Rizzo Devine, date of birth March ninth, 1967, residing at Flat 8B ..."

Rizzo was my da's name, Vincent Rizzo. It's my real name and I prefer it but I guess Devine isn't too bad. Miss Cox has the worst name a teacher could have.

Excerpted from A Bad, Bad Place by Frances Crawford. Copyright © 2026 by Frances Crawford. Excerpted by permission of Soho Crime. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.