‘Clothes say a lot about a person, Talbot. I mean, look at the state of yours.’
‘You think those designer labels you insist on wearing mean anything?’
‘They mean something to me.’
‘Maybe, but shit’s still shit, even if it’s wrapped in silver paper.’
‘I don’t have to put up with this,’ she snapped.
‘Wrong,’ he said, downing what was left in his glass.
‘You’re a cunt,’ she hissed.
‘Careful, Gina, the mask’s slipping.’
‘You are.’
‘Who’s arguing? Now, are we going to eat or not?’
‘Not in a fucking Pizzaland,’ she told him and he watched as she opened her bag and pulled out her mobile phone, stabbing digits. She smiled when she heard a voice at the other end.
Talbot watched her.
‘Hello, it’s Gina Bishop, I was in the other night. I was wondering if you had my usual table, I know you must be busy but … Oh, you can, that’s wonderful. I’ll be there in five minutes. Thank you.’ She switched off the phone and slipped it back into her bag.
‘One of your customers own a restaurant?’ Talbot asked.
‘I eat there a lot. They know me.’ She got to her feet. ‘Come on, Talbot, let’s go. We’ll get a cab. Don’t worry, I’ll pay for it.’
He joined her, leaving a ten-pound note on the table to cover the cost of the drinks.
They walked through the reception together, Gina a step or two ahead of him.
The blue-clad doorman nodded at them as they walked out.
‘Can you get us a taxi, please?’ Gina asked, and the man hurried into the road to hail one.
As they climbed in, Gina sat behind the driver, aware that he was looking at her in his rear-view mirror.
‘If I’m going to listen to your shit all night,’ she said to Talbot, ‘I might as well do it in comfortable surroundings.’ Then to the driver: ‘Overtons please.’
Talbot looked across at her.
She was staring out of the window, away from him.
The taxi pulled out into traffic.
Fifty-nine
‘Did any of those names you showed your brother check out?’ asked Phillip Cross, spooning rice from the foil container closest to him.
Catherine Reed, kneeling beside the coffee table on the carpet next to Cross, nodded, her eyes flicking back and forth over the array of takeaway food. She picked up several forkfuls of meat and dropped them into the bowl with her rice.
‘Nine of the kids on that list attended the school where Frank teaches,’ she told Cross.
‘Did any of the parents talk?’
‘Two closed doors, two fuck-offs and five that either wouldn’t or couldn’t answer,’ Cath told him.
‘What do you think is going on, Cath?’
She sat back against the sofa, one eye on the TV screen, but her mind concentrated on the question Cross had just asked her.
‘There’s abuse of some description going on, I’d bet money on it’ she said, taking a mouthful of rice. ‘But no one will talk about it and I don’t really blame them. Although, if they’ve got nothing to hide …’
‘You think it’s the parents who are doing the abusing?’
‘Some of them must be involved either directly or indirectly. I’m not saying they’ve actually done damage to their own kids, but they must have known what was going on.’ She ran a hand through her hair. ‘I need to speak to someone from.
Hackney Social Services, see what kind of statements the kids made.’ She continued staring blankly at the TV screen, the sound turned down.
‘Something’s been bothering me too. I mean, there’s probably no connection but one of the families, the O’Brians, their boy was taken away by the Social Services, right? A couple of weeks before that, the grave of their dead baby daughter was desecrated. You remember all that shit that was happening at Croydon Cemetery?’
He nodded. ‘The smashed headstones, the graffiti and all that?’
‘Some of it was pretty heavy.’
‘You’re not trying to say that the O’Brians were involved in what went on there, are you? I mean, they’re hardly likely to dig up their own kid’s grave, are they?’ Cross snorted.
‘Maybe they’re not. It could be someone with a grudge against the family.’
‘So what about the other graves that were desecrated? And that cat that was nailed to the church door. Was that a grudge thing, too?’
‘Phil, I haven’t got a clue what it was. For all I know, Nicholls could be right, it could have been some kind of witchcraft thing.’
‘So you think this is satanic abuse?’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time it’d happened, would it? What about those cases in Cleveland, Nottingham and the Orkneys? They were supposed to be satanic abuse cases.’
‘And none of them was ever proved,’ Cross said, flatly.
Cath pushed a forkful of food into her mouth.
‘Don’t try looking for a story that isn’t there, Cath,’ Cross told her.
‘Don’t tell me how to do my job, Phil’ she said, irritably. ‘I don’t tell you how to take pictures.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ he responded. ‘I just don’t want you making a fool of yourself.’
She was about to say something else when the phone rang.
Cath got to her feet and crossed to it, lifting the receiver.
‘Hello,’ she said.
Silence.
‘Hello.’
Still nothing.
The line went dead. Cath replaced the receiver and returned to her dinner. ‘If I can get someone from one of the families who had kids taken away to talk, or even someone who knows them,’ she said, excitedly, ‘then I might have a chance of finding out what’s going on.’
‘And you think they’re going to talk to you?’ Cross said, shaking his head.
‘Someone will talk, they always do.’
The phone rang again. Cath muttered something under her breath and prepared to haul herself up off the floor again but Cross put his hand on her shoulder, swinging himself off the sofa.
He picked up the phone. ‘Hello.’
Again, only silence.
‘Listen, I think you’ve got a wrong number.’
There was a click as the line went dead once again.
He was about to sit down when it rang again.
‘Jesus,’ Cross muttered.
‘Leave it,’ Cath told him. ‘I’ll let the answering machine take care of it.’
She heard her own voice on the tape, then the beep, then nothing.
Barely ten seconds had passed when the phone rang again.
Cath jumped to her feet and snatched up the receiver. ‘Hello, again,’ she said, smiling.
‘Catherine Reed?’ said the voice.
‘Yes.’
‘Keep your fucking nose out, you slag. Keep it out of other people’s business, right? Are you fucking listening to me?’ The voice was low, guttural.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Cath demanded.
‘Back off, bitch, or you’re fucking dead.’
At the other end the phone was slammed down.
Cath held the receiver for a moment then gently replaced it.
‘Are you OK?’ asked Cross, seeing how pale she looked.
She nodded, still looking down at the phone.
Waiting.
It was another thirty minutes before it rang again.
Sixty
Talbot was too busy eating to notice Gina Bishop glance at her Cartier watch.
She sighed.
Ten-thirty.
]esus Christ, how much longer was he going to be?
She puffed agitatedly at her cigarette, gazing at the policeman through a thin film of smoke.
Around her, the low buzz of conversation from the other diners seemed to rise and fall in volume, the chink of cutlery on crockery the only other sound disturbing the relative peacefulness of the restaurant.