The agent shook his head.
Kelly took a mouthful of water. ‘So,’ she said, as casually as she could manage, ‘what happened to Sandy?’
Sighing, Clifford Blitz reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a cheque. A fucking cheque! It had taken his PA three bloody hours to find the company cheque book. Clifford – proud owner of eight different credit cards – couldn’t even remember the last time he had written one. He vaguely recalled seeing something on television that said they were going to be phased out. He dropped it on the table. ‘Here.’
Kelly scooped it up quickly, her tongue running along her upper lip as she read and re-read what it said. Finally, she looked up at Blitz. ‘A hundred grand?’
Blitz nodded. He wasn’t sure of the wisdom of giving her a cheque but it was too much cash to carry around. ‘Take it,’ he said quietly.
Kelly folded the cheque, then unfolded it again.
Blitz leaned across the table. ‘Take it,’ he repeated. ‘Put it in the bank and fuck off back to the provinces. Get a husband who works for the council or something. Have some kids. Just fuck off.’
Kelly took another look at the cheque. ‘A measly hundred grand,’ she hissed, her pseudo-Sloane Square accent washed away in a wave of estuary English, ‘is fuck all. Get real.’
Blitz glanced round the largely empty bar to check that no one was paying them any attention. Leaning closer, he opened his jacket just enough for the girl to be able to get a glimpse of the handle of the Smith amp; Wesson .45 in his inside pocket. The gun was a replica he’d bought from a model shop in Holborn but it was realistic enough. ‘It’s either a hundred k,’ he said grimly, ‘or a bullet in the face.’
‘You wouldn’t . . .’ She tried to sound defiant, but her bottom lip had started to quiver and he could see the fear in her eyes. He slipped a hand under the table and ran it along her leg, squeezing her thigh tightly when she tried to smack it away. Tears appeared in her eyes.
‘Try me.’
After a moment’s reflection, Kelly refolded the cheque and dropped it in her bag. ‘You wouldn’t be doing this,’ she complained, ‘if Gavin wasn’t guilty.’ Finally removing his hand from her leg, she thrust her chest out defiantly. ‘How did you get that idiot Paul Groom to take the blame?’
Getting to his feet, Blitz reached across the table and grabbed the collar of her blouse. ‘One more word . . .’ He pulled her close, letting her feel his breath on her face. ‘One more word out of you and you know what will happen. Don’t try and get fucking clever with me.’ Biting her lip, Kelly tried to free herself but he hoisted her even closer. He could smell the mix of her body odour and perfume. ‘You will never say anything about this to anyone.’
She nodded, and this time he let her go.
‘What if someone asks about the cash?’ she queried shakily, straightening her blouse.
Blitz shook his head. ‘They won’t.’
‘But if they do?’ she persisted.
‘Just send them to me,’ Blitz sighed. ‘I’ll explain it was a pay-off for a story that never happened. If you stay out of London, no one will care,’ he added. ‘I don’t want to hear that you’re round and about here ever again.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Kelly said huffily. Getting to her feet, she took her jacket from the back of the chair. ‘I’m going. Who needs London anyway? They have footballers in Manchester, you know.’
As she bent over to pick up her bag, Blitz eyed her rear, displayed to good effect in a pair of Moschino jeans. He fingered the room-card key in his pocket.
‘Hey, Kelly.’
Hoisting the bag over her shoulder, she straightened up. ‘What?’ she scowled.
‘I suppose a quick blow job is out of the question?’
THIRTY
Alison Roche glanced at her watch. She was a third of the way through her session with Wolf, and the psychiatrist had yet to say a single word. That was fine by her but, after more than fifteen minutes of silence, she was beginning to worry that something might be wrong with the doctor. ‘Just your bloody luck,’ she mumbled to herself. ‘They send you to see a shrink and he starts losing his own bloody marbles!’
‘Huh?’ Wolf brought his gaze down from the ceiling as if he was recognizing her presence in his office for the first time. Today he was wearing a shapeless grey Nike sweatshirt. His hair had been cut short, making him look about ten years older, and his blue eyes seemed paler than Roche remembered. His wedding band lay on the desk, next to Roche’s file. ‘I’m sorry . . . Sergeant,’ he said softly. ‘I missed that.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Roche replied, ‘it was nothing.’ Shifting her position in the armchair, she looked around the room; as far as she could tell, it was still littered with the same family photos and books. The only change was that the framed poster for The Wild Bunch had been removed and replaced by one for Alien.
‘You’ve changed the poster.’ Roche pointed at the wall.
‘Yes,’ Wolf nodded.
Roche waited for him to say something else, anything else, but he lapsed back into silence. This is beginning to creep me out, she thought. ‘Shall we get started?’
Wolf frowned.
‘With the session.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Wolf opened the notebook on his desk and chose a pencil from the selection that was held in a mug that bore the legend Keep Calm and Carry On. After scribbling something on the pad he looked up and gave Roche a weak smile. ‘Now,’ he asked, his voice barely more than a whisper, ‘where shall we start?’
‘Fucking hell, Carlyle, you never could sing, could you?’ Sitting on a bench in Soho Square, Inspector Julie Crisp laughed indulgently. All he had to do was hum the first few bars of the chorus and she knew who it was. Julie had never really liked The Clash – she was more into Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure – and Carlyle had put her off them for life. His tuneless singing still made her smile, though.
She wondered why he had rung her out of the blue earlier and insisted they meet immediately. Thinking it through in her head, she realized that it must be more than ten years since they last worked together – on Operation Monkey, targeting heroin dealers operating out of Chinatown. Since then, she couldn’t recall them ever having spoken. That was Carlyle, though; you only ever heard from him when he wanted something.
Abruptly ending his rendition of the chorus of ‘Julie’s Been Working for the Drugs Squad’, Carlyle shrugged apologetically. ‘Can’t be good at everything, can I?’
‘Mm,’ Crisp said doubtfully, ‘and I don’t really work for the Drugs Squad these days, either.’
‘No?’ Carlyle’s heart sank. ‘Last I heard, you were working on that case in Stoke Newington.’
‘The Turkish gangs? That had to be at least five years ago.’
‘Christ! I suppose so.’
‘I just got burned out,’ Crisp explained. ‘You know what it’s like, especially with SOCA on your shoulder. Politics, bureaucracy . . . you wind up forgetting that you’re a copper.’
Carlyle nodded. The boys in the Serious Organized Crime Agency were indeed hard work. He made the most sympathetic-sounding noise he could manage. Crisp might not be the best person to receive Dom’s tip-off about the Docklands drugs, but she would have to do; there was no way he was going through formal channels on this one and there was no time to try and hand-pick anyone else.
‘And with three kids . . . well, frankly, it’s hard to know which way is up most of the time.’
‘Three kids?’ The Crisp he remembered had been a bit of a party girl, famous when they worked together in Bethnal Green in the late 1990s for always having a selection of condoms in her pocket. Looking at her now, the impression was more middle-aged cop than yummy mummy. Then again, the children would explain the dark rings under her eyes and the tired expression on her face.
‘Yeah.’ She gave an embarrassed smile. ‘Eight, six and eighteen months.’
Christ, Carlyle thought, I hope you didn’t marry a copper. ‘Anyway,’ he said, moving on before she could pull out any pictures, ‘what I wanted to talk to you about is . . .’