A few miles away, while Larry’s afternoon became a sensual tangle, DCI McKinnes was two thirds of the way into a bad day’s interrogation. He was in the grubby, damp-smelling living room of the substitute safe house with Von Joel. They sat at opposite sides of a prosaic square dining table, their fingers flat on its scarred surface, each confronting the other with his stubbornness. The day had gone terribly, and now it was simply disintegrating.
“Don’t mess me around,” McKinnes snarled, knowing it was a powerless warning, saying it because it was all he could think of. He leaned close across the table, bunching his fists, trying for an air of authority. “So you can’t help me with Minton. What about this Rodney Bingham?”
“I don’t know him,” Von Joel said, his voice flat. “I must have been mistaken.”
“I’ve warned you,” McKinnes growled.
“Listen!” Von Joel jerked forward suddenly, his teeth set hard. “I just got out of hospital and you bring me to this shit hole...” He turned his head aside sharply, addressing the microphone. “I’m a sick man! I gave you all I know!” He sat back a fraction, moistening his lips, glaring at McKinnes. “Anything else, I’ll give it to Jackson, not you. That was the deal.”
He got up from the table and walked out. McKinnes watched him go, feeling angry, getting angrier. It was one thing to be resisted by a dirty grass of a villain like Von Joel, to be slagged off by him and treated like any old clumsy piece of plod. It was quite another thing to be forced into a corner so tight that you seriously had to consider compromising. That didn’t sit well with McKinnes. Making concessions wasn’t his way and to think about it gave him a pain. But realities had to be faced. It wasn’t as if he was weighed down with choices.
Larry’s day had been transformed from a hot ball of rage to a hedonistic mix of sex, good drink, and laughter, all of it enjoyed against a backdrop of lofty music. More surprise entered the picture when he was sent home at six o’clock to put on his best suit. He complied without even thinking of arguing.
Champagne, he discovered, made him an imaginative and plausible liar; by the time he left the house again he could not remember what explanation he had given Susan, but he knew she had accepted it calmly. Lola and Charlotte, as promised, picked him up at the end of the road in a taxi.
“So where are we going, girls?”
They wouldn’t tell him, and three guesses would not have been enough. Less than an hour later he was sitting in a good seat at the Royal Opera House, between the girls, his mind not entirely in touch with his body as the music swelled and flowed over him, doing things of such emotional intensity that at one point, to his surprise, he found himself shedding tears. The visit to the Crush Bar was memorable. It seemed like hundreds of people were there, all talking at once, arms working overtime as bottles of wine, trays of glasses, and the occasional ice bucket were passed back above the heads of the crowd. A man standing near Larry told his companion, a big woman in shiny salmon-colored taffeta, that the trouble with opera in general was that it had strayed too far from the simple notion of a play set to music. “It has turned its back, I fear, on the liturgical drama of the Middle Ages, where its true origins lie.” Larry could hardly believe real people spoke like that, but there the man was, in three dimensions, the living proof. It would have been a hoot to eavesdrop when he got around to suggesting that he and his date get into bed together.
“Follow me,” Lola told Larry, shaking him out of his reverie.
He did his best. She was a fast mover. Being small and lithe she was able to weave in and out of spaces where Larry had to force his way through, smiling and apologizing, followed closely by Charlotte hanging on to the back of his jacket.
“Ah, hang on, Lola,” he called out, “you’re going the wrong way. Lola...” He bumped into a woman and apologized. “Lola! The bar...”
Hectic as all this was, Larry felt marvelous. The high life suited him, it meshed precisely with who he was. He was only sorry he hadn’t discovered it earlier. Lola stopped by a small corner table and turned, brandishing a bottle of Moet. Three glasses lay waiting for them. The bottle had been freshly opened and Lola poured.
“It’s not as cold as it should be...” She passed over the glasses. “For you, for me...”
The trio toasted each other. Larry couldn’t stop grinning, knowing what a social bonus it was to be seen with the girls, who looked marvelous. Feeling champagne bubbles burst softly against his lips, he felt blessed. Charlotte’s arm was through his, Lola was standing very close, sliding her hand down the back of his trousers. He supposed it was possible to be happier than this, but he couldn’t imagine how.
It wasn’t imagination he needed, but stamina, because Lola insisted he return to the hotel suite. She was hungry, demanded they all eat, and as Charlotte flicked through the room service menu suggesting more and more desserts and cocktails, Lola began ordering a confusion of ice creams, hamburgers, French fries, strawberries, melons...
They were like two kids let loose in a toy store. They giggled and snuggled each other, and then both made Larry choose what he wanted to eat. He was in a hot flush, wondering if he could get up to leave, never mind get anything else up, which seemed the girls’ obvious intention. They continued to flirt with him, giving lewd double meanings to the array of sickening desserts that sounded richly orgasmic... “banana diced with a thick caramel sauce and succulent fresh cream with brandy...”
The opera was blasting from the stereo again — Wagner. The room service trolley, laden with enough to feed ten, was set in the center of the room. There was wine and yet more champagne. Larry watched in awe as they picked at french fries between spoonfuls of ice cream and fresh fruit, then stuffed themselves with chocolate fudge, eating with their fingers, sometimes spooning food into each other’s mouths. They were like his two boys — well, not quite, but they, too, went crazy at McDonalds.
Thinking about the boys made Larry determined to leave. He did try, albeit halfheartedly, but then Lola wouldn’t give back his jacket, and as he tugged and said he really had to go, Charlotte seemed to disappear. Lola suddenly let the jacket go, and Larry teetered backward.
“We’re alone, she’s tired, we-are-aloooooooooone.”
“So am I, tired. I’ve got to go.” He had got one arm into a sleeve, when she began pulling his shirt out of his pants.
“If you are tired then you had better sleep.”
“I’ve got to go home.”
Lola shrugged, pointed to the door, undressing herself as she slowly walked across to the bedroom.
“I have to go home,” he repeated lamely.
Lola threw off her dress. She wore nothing beneath it, she stood in just her high black sling-back shoes.
“Go home. Good night.” She shrugged as she kicked one shoe off, then the next, and, stark naked, went back to the stereo. She nonchalantly began sorting tapes, humming and swaying and then bent over to place in a new tape.
Larry turned away, she was driving him crazy. “I won’t... I mean I can’t see you again.”
Swan Lake drifted out. Lola turned like a ballerina. “Oh! Are you still here, would you like to see me dance?”
She moved beautifully, her delicate arms and beautiful hands made the motion of the swan. She stood on tiptoe, every curve, every muscle taut in her perfect body, apart from the swaying fluttering hands.
“I am dying,” she whispered. “The swan without her prince, she dies.” She began to dance.