I’d hit a lull; the early trade had eaten and gone and the nighthawks weren’t in yet. As I’d expected, there were a few familiar faces in the diner. The one I was most pleased to see was Dennis. He waved to me to join him and his two buddies, but what I wanted to talk about wasn’t for public consumption. I shook my head and sat at a table on my own. As my tea and sandwich arrived, so did Dennis. ‘What do you know, Kate?’ he greeted me, pulling out the chair opposite me.
‘Not a lot. Life’s a bitch and then you die,’ I said wearily.
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Life’s a bitch and then you marry one.’
‘That’s no way to talk about the love of your life.’
He grinned. ‘Me and the wife, we’re modern. Into all the latest fashions. That’s what keeps a marriage alive. These days we have an S&M relationship.’
I knew I was walking into it, but I walked anyway. ‘S&M?’
‘Sex and meals.’ Dennis roared with laughter. It wasn’t that funny, but it was great camouflage. Now everyone would think I was just another victim of Dennis’s funny stories.
‘Nice one. You know a bloke called Terence Fitzgerald? Lives on the Quays. Drives a black Toyota.’
‘Terry Fitz? We were in Durham together.’ He didn’t mean on holiday. Durham jail is one of the meanest, bleakest places a man can do time. They don’t send you there for nonpayment of fines.
‘What was he in for?’
‘A blag with a shooter. He was the wheels man.
Like Handbrake, only nasty. They never got him for it but he run over an old dear when they was having it away on their toes after a job in Skelmersdale, and he never stopped. Slag,’ Dennis added contemptuously.
‘He been out long?’
Dennis shrugged. ‘A year or so. I don’t know what he’s doing these days.’
‘I do,’ I said. ‘He’s working as a floor man for an outfit doing hall sales.’ I handed Dennis the crumpled flyer. ‘This outfit.’
Dennis nodded sagely. ‘This is his brother-in-law’s team. Tank Molloy. He married Fitz’s sister Leanne. Good operation he’s got there. Makes a lot of money. And he does it all dead legal. He shafts them, but he shafts them within the letter of the law. The BBC had a team following him round for weeks, trying to turn him over, but they couldn’t get nothing on him except for being immoral so they had to back off. Burly bloke, hair like a poodle, terrible taste in ties, that’s Tank. He’s usually the top man.’
I raised one eyebrow. ‘The top man?’
‘The one that does the patter.’
I nodded. ‘Sounds like him. Any drug connection?’
Dennis looked shocked. ‘What? Tank Molloy? No way. He’s an old-fashioned villain, Tank. He’s like me. Wouldn’t touch drugs with a bargepole. I mean, where’s the challenge in that?’
‘What about Terry Fitz?’
Dennis took his time lighting a cigarette. ‘Fitz has got no scruples. And he don’t give a shit who he works with. If he’s got in with the drug boys, you don’t want to tangle. He’s sharp, Fitz. The only thing he’s stupid about is shooters. He thinks they’re a tool of the trade. He wouldn’t think twice about blowing you away if there was just you standing between him and a good living.’
Chapter 14
It’s a piece of cake, being a lawyer or a doctor or a computer systems analyst or an accountant. Libraries are full of books telling you how to do it. The only textbooks for private eyes are on the fiction shelves, and I don’t remember ever reading one that told me how to interrogate an eight-year-old without feeling like I was auditioning for the Gestapo. It didn’t help that Alexis was standing in the doorway like a Scouse Boadicea, arms folded, a frown on her face, ready to step in as soon as I stepped out of line.
Davy sat in bed, looking a bit pale, but otherwise normal. I figured if he was well enough to wolf scrambled eggs and cheese cabanos, he was well enough to answer a few simple questions. Somehow, it didn’t work out that straightforwardly. I sat on the bed and eventually we established that he was feeling OK, that I wasn’t going to tell his mum and we’d negotiate about his dad at a later stage. Already, I felt exhausted.
‘Where did you get the transfers from?’
‘A boy,’ he said.
‘Did you know the boy?’ I asked.
Davy shook his head. He risked a quick glance at me from under his fringe. I could see he was going to grow up with the same lethal cuteness as his father. However, since I’ve yet to discover any maternal instincts and I’m not into little boys till they’re old enough to have their own credit card, the charm didn’t work on me. I stayed firm and relentless. ‘You don’t usually take presents from strangers, do you, Davy?’
Again, the shake of the head. This time, he mumbled, ‘He wasn’t a proper stranger.’
‘How do you mean?’ I pounced.
‘Daniel and Wayne knew him,’ he said defiantly. ‘I wasn’t going to, but they said it was all right.’
‘Were you playing with Daniel and Wayne?’
This time he nodded. His head came up and he looked me in the eye. He was on surer ground now. Daniel and Wayne were two of the kids from the council estate. He knew I knew who he was talking about. I stood up. ‘OK. In future, don’t take things from people unless you know them. Is that a deal?’
Looking stubborn rather than chastened, he nodded. ‘OK,’ he dragged out.
‘I’m really not cut out for this game,’ I muttered to Alexis as I left.
‘It shows,’ she growled. Walking down the hall, I heard her say, ‘You going to lie in your pit all day, soft lad? Only there’s a pair of skates at Ice World with your name on, and if you’re not ready in half an hour I’m going to have to go on my own.’
‘Can’t we go later, Alexis?’ I heard Davy plead.
‘You’re not going to lie there half the day, are you?’
‘No. But I want to go and watch my dad’s team playing football this morning. We always go and watch them when I’m here.’
Silence. I bet standing on a freezing touchline watching the local pub team kick a ball badly round a muddy pitch was as much Alexis’s idea of hell as it was mine. I smiled as I headed through the conservatory and back into my own territory. It was nice to know that even Alexis got stiffed now and again. I pulled on last night’s jeans. I opened the wardrobe and realized I wasn’t going to be able to take a rain check on my date with the iron for much longer. I’d hire someone to do it, but on past experience it only causes me more grief because they never, but never, get the creases in the right places.
Irritated, I grabbed a Black Watch tartan shirt, a leftover from my brief excursion into grunge fashion, hastily abandoned when Della told me I looked like a refugee from an Irish folk group. At least it gave me an excuse to wear the battered old cowboy boots that are more comfortable than every pair of trainers I possess. I put a white T-shirt on under the tartan and headed out the door in search of Daniel and Wayne’s mum.
I crossed the common to the rows of four-storey council flats where Cherie Roberts lived. After all this time, I’m still capable of being surprised by the contrast with the neat little enclave where I live. At the risk of sounding like Methuselah at twenty-eight, I can remember council estates where the Rottweilers didn’t go around in pairs for security. Oxford isn’t famous for its pleasant public housing, but I had school friends who lived out on Blackbird Leys when it was the biggest council housing estate in Western Europe, and it was OK. I don’t remember obscene graffiti everywhere, lifts awash with piss and shit, and enough rubbish blowing in the wind between the canyons of flats to mistake the place for the municipal dump. Thank you, Mrs Thatcher.