Birdman

The Dog and Bell, flaking paint and grime, occupied a plot on the suffocating Trafalgar Road between a dilapidated travel agent and a KLEENEZIE launderette. Inside it smelled of stale tobacco and disinfectant. All conversation stopped and in the blue-smoke pall the punters, nursing their precious pints, turned expressionless faces to the seven detectives. DI Diamond moved to the far exit, DC Logan stood guarding the big, curved stairway with its polished Victorian banister. Maddox closed the door behind him with his foot. The barmaid, a woman in her sixties, as wiry as a leather strap, with high blue eye-shadow and dyed-black hair, stood smoking behind the bar, unsurprised, watching them with bright thyroidal eyes.

'OK, gents.' Maddox held up his warrant card. 'It's all completely routine. No need for panic.'

* * *

Caffery slipped away from the bar and within ten minutes had accounted for two of the names in Harrison's list. The barmaid was named Betty and the dancer that day, a tall, irritable blonde from somewhere in the North, with closely spaced blue eyes and feet and hands like a teenage boy's, was named Lacey.

She was wearing stockings under a baggy hip-length red jumper and was in the upstairs toilet brushing silver glitter on her cheekbones when Caffery knocked on the door, carrying a double vodka and orange. The fundamental rules of trade.

'Shut the door,' she muttered, taking the drink. 'It's that fucking freezing in here. Supposed to be summer.'

He closed the door and sat on a small stool in the corner. Lacey pecked at a cigarette, drawing smoke into her nostrils, leaning against the sink and watching him as he broke the news.

She was philosophical.

'That's the way with those types,' she shrugged, turning to the mirror. 'You won't catch me worrying about it. I'm too careful.'

'We know you knew Shellene.'

'Knew them all. Doesn't mean to say I trusted them. Or even liked them.' She placed the cigarette on the edge of the sink where it smouldered, adding its mark to the countless orange nicotine trails. 'Couldn't leave your clobber in the dressing room with her around. That's the problem with scag. If you ask me, they've got that busting for a hit they've gone and done a trick for some fucking lunatic.'

'And Petra?'

'She wasn't a user, so she'd never do it for drugs. But it don't mean she never turned a trick. Does it?'

'Do you know the punters here?'

'I'm not here that often.' She took another drag of the cigarette and threw the butt under the tap. 'Ask Pussy Willow — she does nearly every show. It's empty today but when she's here the place gets rammed. All in love with her and her blow-up tits.'

'Any of the punters hospital workers?'

'Solicitors, civil servants, students. This place isn't exclusively for the scum of the earth, you know.' She sipped the vodka. 'And there's a couple of types come in suited and booted, I think they're doctors or something like it.'

Caffery took tobacco from his pocket and crumbled it into a Rizla. 'Where do they come from? The doctors?'

'From over St Dunstan's.'

'Do you recall any names?'

'No.'

'Any of them downstairs now?'

She thought for a moment. 'No. Not when I last looked.'

He bent his head to light the roll-up. 'Thanks for the help, Lacey, thank you very much.'

* * *

At the foot of the carved Victorian stairway Caffery stopped, his arm resting lightly on the worn banister.

Maddox was a foot or so in front of him, watching the room, arms folded. The officers were dotted around, their raincoats crumpled on stools next to them. On each table the four photos of the girls battled for a place amongst the glasses and ashtrays, circular beer stains seeping through the paper. Diamond sat with his jacket unbuttoned, his trousers riding up to reveal a small expanse of novelty Warner Brothers sock, the Tasmanian Devil. Opposite him a pair of labourers frowned into their beers.

The door opened and a young black man in his twenties ducked in out of the rain. He wore a grey Tommy Hilfiger baseball cap, high-top Nikes and was slight but muscled. His left canine was capped in gold. He was almost at the bar before he realized everyone was staring at him.

DI Diamond was on him in seconds, haunches twitching with the thrill of the hunt. He placed a hand lightly but pointedly on his shoulder and steered him towards a table.

'You can't let him interview him,' Caffery muttered in Maddox's ear. 'Not as a witness. He'll turn it to a suspect interview.'

'Don't interfere,' Maddox said.

'He's already made up his mind who he's looking for.'

'That', Maddox said, 'was an order.'

* * *

Jerry Henry, known on the streets around Deptford as Gemini, had never been busted. He put it down to the fact that he was small time. That was his strength. For the Bill he simply wasn't worth the effort. He saw himself like a basking shark, just trailing around the hems of Deptford, picking off whatever drifted out from the two big outfits that had the area sewn up. He didn't do any harm.

But the flip side of this coin was that small meant defenceless. The Bill weren't stupid; they knew that the goods had to come from somewhere. Sometimes they'd go for someone like him, just to push it back further and further until it splashed up against one of the ranks. The Bill wouldn't think twice about sacrificing him if it meant opening up one of the big south London outfits.

Whatever it is they want, he told himself as he followed the cop over to a table, keep cool, deny it, let them prove it. He ran through what he had in his inventory today. It could just about pass as personal use, but Dog from New Cross had sneaked some wash-rock out of one of the Peckham labs for him, just a little, cookies Gemini had broken down. 'Keep it in your mouth, man. Swallow it if you get any shit.' But Gemini hadn't wanted to, it was tucked in his high-tops, and now he was going to pay the price.

'Deny it. Style it out.'

'What's that you said?' the cop asked.

'Not'ing,' Gemini mumbled. He sank into the seat.

'All right, now it's just a routine inquiry.' The cop pulled the sides of his jacket back, straddled the stool and sat facing him, his small, round belly settling on his thighs, his elbows on the circular table. Gemini slouched back, one hand shoved into the waist of his Calvins, his head tilted, mouth deep and sullen.

'Keep cool. Deny it. Let them prove it. Style it out,' he muttered.

That infuriated the cop. He shot his face forward until it was inches from Gemini's. 'What? Are you trying to co-mmunicate with me?'

'Don't get vex.' Gemini didn't flinch at the bitter breath. Casually he opened his hand where it rested on the seat. 'An' who you, man?'

The cop swallowed hard and pulled back. He tapped his biro on the table. 'Detective Inspector Diamond.' He enunciated the detective inspector with care. 'Are you a regular here?'

'What it to you, man?'

'Do you know any of the girls who work down here?'

'No.' Gemini clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth dismissively. 'I don't know dem girls.'

'You've never met any of them? I find that surprising.' The cop held his gaze with his arrogant, washed-out eyes and pushed a photograph across the table. 'Does this help?'

Gemini recognized them immediately. Especially the blonde. Shellene. He'd been retailing to her for months, and cabbying for her. A couple of weeks back she'd given him a little blow job in the back seat of his GTI, in return for some rock. He wondered what the girls had been telling the Bill about his operation.

'I ain't seen dem. Maybe this one, a dancer here, ain't it? But it's all.'

'You know she's a dancer here.'