Lyall’s answer was a cool, rather ironic smile.
“How did you get on with Bill Otley?” Tennison asked.
“Good man, one of the old school, hard worker.” Lyall drained his glass and set it down. “He tell you that?”
“Yes.”
Lyall took out a cigarette. He offered the packet. “You smoke?”
Tennison shook her head, which turned before she knew it into a nod. She took one and accepted a light. Lyall’s faint ironic smile was still in place. “I reckon I’ve done my favor.” He tapped the file and got up, holding out his hand. “So, good luck to you.”
They shook hands, and Tennison walked him to the door.
“Where, just as a matter of interest, is the vacancy?”
Lyall chuckled throatily. “Want in on the fast track, do you? I’d get your skates on.” He prodded her gently on the shoulder. “Area AMIT, one of the eight. Everybody can’t go up, but I’m gonna give it my best shot. Good night, love.”
Eight Area Major Incident Teams in the London Metropolitan region, but which one? Lyall wasn’t saying.
Clutching his battered briefcase under his arm, trailing smoke, he went off. Tennison slipped the chain onto the door. She stood there thoughtfully for a moment, and then went to the phone by the bed and dialed room service.
“Room forty-five. Could I have a pot of coffee and… do you have cigarettes?”
She went over to the table and picked up the thick file, holding it in both hands. From experience she knew there was about four hours’ solid reading here. She hung her suit jacket over the back of a chair, switched on the free-standing domed lamp, settled herself, and dived in.
The doorman wore a red plush uniform with gold braid epaulettes. Behind him stood two heavyweight characters in white dinner jackets, arms folded in the regulation manner, guarding the elevator entrance to the Bowery Roof Top Club. Looking like a million counterfeit dollars, Red sashayed toward them across the marble-floored lobby, hips swiveling, the purple globes swinging from his ears like miniature golf balls. Haskons and Lillie followed, accompanied by Ray Hebdon, who appeared insignificant and nondescript in his dark suit alongside their plumage and finery.
As one of the Bowery’s artistes, Red got the royal treatment. The doorman thumbed the button, the bronze-colored doors slid open, and a moment later the four of them were on their way up to the top floor.
Red adjusted his wig in the smoked glass mirror wall of the elevator. “Well, that part was easy,” he breathed in a quivery sigh. He dabbed his shiny nose with a tissue. “Now it’s the third degree-I must be out of my mind, I’m sweating.”
Inside his tight corset, so was Haskons. He stared at himself in the mirror. All that he recognized were his eyes, gazing back at him in a kind of stricken glazed terror. Completing his midnight-blue ensemble, he wore long satin gloves up to the elbow, with large flashing rings on his gloved fingers. A dinky gold shoulder bag with thin gold straps dangled at his waist. His feet were killing him.
Lillie’s face was lost in fluttering ostrich feathers. The rest of him was a shimmering vision in puce lamé, a V-split up the back of the dress almost to his panty line. His short blond wig kept slipping over one eye, and it was the devil’s own job trying to tug it straight, the false red nails getting snagged and entangled. Also, he was dying for a piss. He suddenly wondered how, with these bloody pointed nails, he was going to manage that simple act. He might do himself a serious mischief.
“It doesn’t stop on any of the other floors,” Red said, pointing to the indicator panel.
“I know,” Hebdon said, giving him a surly look.
Haskons had already had second thoughts. He was on about his fourth or fifth. “Red-if we want to leave, is this the only way?”
But Red was more preoccupied with the appearance of his two protégés, inspecting them critically, a pat here, a tweak there.
“Well,” he observed crisply, an eyebrow raised, “I doubt if you’ll pull anything, but that said, I think it’s a good job.”
“How do we work it then?” Haskons asked, dry-mouthed.
“I won’t be on until about twelve-thirty. Then I have another show-at Lola’s, two o’clock.” He wagged a finger. “But I will need the wigs back, so I’ve left the main front door key under the old scraper thing…”
“Don’t you have a spare set?”
“No, I’m not a permanent fixture,” Red said tetchily. “But I’m working on it.” He groomed himself in the mirror with little fluttery movements, and moistened his lips. “I’m also really nervous. Why I said I’d do this…” He shook his head at himself. “Names-what are you calling yourselves? And voices, don’t put anything on… we don’t…”
“What you calling yourself?” Haskons asked Lillie.
Red pointed to Haskons. “You be Karen. You…” He frowned at Lillie. “Jackie’ll do. Remember, this is my life. This gets out, and it won’t be worth living. Don’t fiddle with the wigs.”
The doors opened. Red straightened up, head high, shoulders back.
“Here we go, eyes and teeth, luvvies.”
Queenlike, he sailed out into the foyer, Karen and Jackie traipsing behind like two dowager duchesses.
Tennison’s resolve had been busted wide open. She was halfway through her second pack already, the room a blue mist of smoke, the ashtray spilling over onto the table. Two silver coffeepots, one empty, one half full but nearly cold, were on the tray with two dirty cups.
Crouched over, a cigarette sticking out of her mouth, she was frowning with concentration as she listened to Connie’s voice on the headphones. These were the conversations Jessica Smithy had taped, which Tennison had heard a dozen times before. But in light of the information supplied by DCI Lyall she was hoping desperately to make new connections, ferret out some tiny fact that until now had seemed obscure or unimportant or both.
“… no, I mean top brass-there’s judges, barristers, Members of Parliament.” The innocent little voice that had the impervious quality of a six-inch steel nail driven through it. “I know them all, but I’m not stupid, Miss Smithy. I need some guarantee.”
Tennison flipped back over several pages of scrawled notes. She searched on the table among the scattered photocopies. Checking, cross-referencing, matching Connie’s assertions with the file that Lyall had hoarded and kept locked away as his own insurance. It was here somewhere, she was convinced, in these tapes and documents. The clean, clear, direct line that connected Connie and Vera Reynolds and Mark Lewis and Jimmy Jackson and Edward Parker-Jones and… and who else? Who else?
Tennison lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the old one. She leaned forward, eyes shut, listening to that young-innocent-old-cynical voice.
“I got the names of high brass, Miss Smithy, they’re all in it. Young boys, kids… they only want really young kids.”
12
“Brian! Have you missed me?”
Arms held wide, fingertips all aquiver, Red floated across the foyer to the handsome receptionist with the slicked-back ponytail and Vandyke beard, gelled to a glistening point.
Red posed before him, one hip thrust out. “Now, I’ve got one member, this youngster…” He indicated Hebdon with a graceful wave of the hand. “And two from Hampstead Garden Suburb.” He giggled and fluttered his eyelashes coquettishly. “No, we’re old friends… is it okay?”
Brian wasn’t too sure. He was giving Haskons and Lillie a close, gimlet-eyed examination.
To divert attention, Red was practically doing his stage act right there in the foyer. Twirling around, high-pitched to the point of hysteria, he squealed to Hebdon, “Show your member, darling.” He leaned forward over the desk, trying to cover his jangling nerves with a breathily confidential whisper.