DI Shrapnel sidled up to McKinnes. He was holding up a fax sheet.
“The shooter’s the one used in the security raid, Guv. They’re bringing in George Minton. We got nothing on the portable in the Transit, it was part of a shipment that was nicked eighteen months ago. So was the van. Been sprayed recently but it was lifted from the Bake-O Bread Company.”
McKinnes snatched the fax and turned to Larry again.
“Myers played around with heavy bastards, Sergeant, and he’s putting even more in the frame.” This time the finger made contact, prodding Larry squarely in the chest. “You got the break of your career when you clocked Myers. You got the second one when you were put with us. But you just blew it, son. Go home. Just get out, and stay out of my sight.”
Larry left the building in a daze, something less than shock. Today he felt insulated. Outside he walked along the street slowly, not thinking, simply letting his reactions settle into place. After a while he decided that a cup of coffee would be a good idea. He looked across the road and spotted a cafe. As he waited for the traffic to thin he tried to get a clear overview on what had happened to him. He supposed he should have been seething with resentment by now. He should have been feeling badly hurt. Gutted. Depression should have been looming just over his shoulder, ready to envelop him as the sense of failure seeped in. But he still felt untouched by what had happened in the incident room. His life, since some time early that morning, felt larger than the pygmy-sized considerations of the job. He was beyond the need for the tussle and muscle-flexing, the competing and jockeying, the arse-182 licking and all the other maneuvers necessary just to stay level.
In body and spirit he felt immunized from life’s vexations. Lola had given him a nerve-rending shunt along the path of change, and now he felt like he was on dope. Crossing the road, he discovered he was humming something from the charts.
Sitting at a corner table with a bacon sandwich and a mug of tea, Larry felt the lurch in his groin. The oysters, the champagne, his whole body felt on fire. He pushed the bacon sandwich aside. lie even found the hot tea difficult to swallow. It was as if the entire episode with Lola had been a dream, but it wasn’t. It was a reality, one he wanted to taste again, and it freaked him. He stared out the window. If Mac had known what he’d been up to, he would have got more than a bollocking, a lot more. He began to feel ashamed, foolish. He had never been unfaithful to Susan, maybe thought about it once or twice, but he’d never done more than just the odd bit of flirting. All the different emotions came rapidly on each other’s heels, until at last he felt angry, angry at his own stupidity. Then even that veered toward bitterness.
He had trusted Von Joel. Christ, he had taken in all that gear to him, been almost in tears when he’d been told the story of his brother, and all the time the bastard was lying. What was he doing? Making him out to be a total arsehole?
The swing of anger went back to the flush of Lola, Lola’s sensual lips, everywhere, kissing, biting. Larry suddenly shot up his hand to his throat. Shit, was he marked? Had she left love bites on his neck? He tried to see his reflection in the steamy cafe window, but gave up, pulling his collar tighter, feeling the knot of his tie. He gave a tight, vicious smile. Von Joel might have pulled one over on him about his brother, but he reckoned he’d never believe he’d pulled his girlfriend.
Larry didn’t finish his tea, but decided to head back home, think about what Mac had said. He was sure Mac’d come around, sure he didn’t mean he was really off the case, but he wasn’t that sure, he knew he’d have a lot of crawling to do. He somehow made it a feasible reason why he should, instead of returning home, go back to the Hyde Park Hotel to requestion Lola. In truth, he hadn’t really asked half the questions he had intended, but then he had been otherwise occupied.
“I was just passing,” Colin Frisby said, pointing to the new cupboard door he was carrying. He smiled at Susan, who was standing by the back kitchen door. “Larry not here?”
“No,” she said, “he was on very late — well, all night, actually. I’ve not seen him.”
She stepped back and Frisby brought the cupboard door inside. He knelt on the floor and began unwrapping it, his mind working as fast as his fingers: Von Joel was in hospital, so Larry was not on the job, whatever else he might be doing.
“Tell you what,” Frisby said, “you make me a bacon sandwich, I’ll fix the door. That a deal?”
Susan nodded and threw in a knowing little smile. As she moved past Frisby she ruffled his hair.
“I thought Larry would be here,” he said lightly. He watched Susan get the frying pan from a cupboard. “You say he was on duty?”
“Yes.” She closed the cupboard and put the pan on the cooker. “It’s all he ever really thinks about. I don’t mean Myers, I mean his work.”
“Then he’s a stupid sod,” Frisby said, modulating the remark carefully, making it sound just serious enough, with no more presumption than he thought he’d get away with.
Susan took the bacon from the fridge. As she closed the door she turned and saw him still looking at her. Her knowing little smile expanded.
Just as Larry was about to have an argument with the doorman at the hotel about parking, Lola walked out. It was fate.
Looking at her, he was tempted to use the old line about scarcely recognizing her with her clothes on. It was true. In Spain he had seen her only in flimsy, abbreviated garments; last night she had worn very little to begin with, and finally nothing at all. Now she was in smart street clothes, entirely appropriate for the West End of London, and she looked like a different woman.
She asked Larry to come with her to a bank he had never heard of. It was in the City, an opulent place furnished more like the reception area of a hotel than a banking hall. Larry stood by and watched as Lola spoke to the cashier. He almost forgot to breathe as he listened to the figures she was airily throwing about.
“Can I have five in fifties, three in twenties, then tens and fives? Always have to have big tips,” she told Larry. “Nowadays they look as if you have spit in their hand if you give small tips.”
He nodded, as if it were a problem he shared. “What kind of bank is this?” he said, looking around.
“Mmm...” Lola didn’t seem sure. She opened her Gucci bag and began pulling out wads of Spanish currency, passing it to the cashier to be changed into sterling. “Papa has an account here for when he is in London. He travels. Paris, New York — I don’t know where he is now. My mama and him, they hate each other, she wouldn’t divorce him, she didn’t want him, she don’t like to travel any place. Always fighting. She has a big villa in Fuengirola, many rooms and a private beach, but” — Lola shrugged, still passing money to the cashier as she chattered — “she don’t like to sit in the sun, she don’t like lots of things...”
Larry watched as the cashier deftly checked the amounts and passed back wad after wad of currency, which Lola stuffed into the soft leather bag as if she were handling groceries. She paused and looked at Larry.
“I’m not holding you up, am I?”
“No.” He frowned at the bag. “You should be careful carrying that amount of money around.”
Lola gave him a brief deadeye look. He wished he hadn’t spoken. She probably knew more about the safe handling of cash than he ever would. But I’m a copper, he thought, I say these things...