I got a quick flash of her pale body as she jumped down from the sofa Miller had her standing on. She grabbed a white towelling robe and clasped it tightly to her in an effort to avoid any more of her intimate bits being placed on show to a complete stranger.
‘Come on Kayleigh,’ he told her, like she was the worst kind of prude, ‘you’ve got to learn to be less body conscious than that.’ I was trying to take in the fact she was actually called Kayleigh. No prizes for guessing what band her dad was into back in the 80s. ‘This here is David Blake. He’s not just an old friend, he’s a professional photographer too. Aren’t you mate?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said.
‘So he’s seen it all before, hasn’t he?’ she hesitated, keeping the robe pressed tightly against her young body, but her eyebrows knitted together in a frown that told me she was unsure how she should be behaving. ‘Hasn’t he?’ he repeated. Mark tutted at her like she was being a silly girl then asked patiently, ‘what would Keeley Hazell do?’
She smiled then, blushed, giggled and finally dropped the robe, standing in front of me in all her Page-three-hopeful, naked glory. ‘That’s better,’ he told her and, all of a sudden, she seemed to be enjoying the exposure. She blew air out of the corner of her upturned bottom lip, disturbing a wisp of blonde hair over her forehead, put her hands on her hips and stood straight so there wasn’t an inch of her I couldn’t see, then she did a self-conscious little wiggle from side to side. ‘Good girl,’ he told her then turned to me, ‘I think Kayleigh here has got everything it takes to go all the way.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ I told them. She beamed at us both, the silly cow.
‘And he ought to know,’ said Miller and somehow we both managed to look serious. ‘Nearly done mate, why don’t you just take a seat for a minute.’
I waited till he shot another roll of film while young Kayleigh stood there and posed. She tried to look serious, then pouted like a naughty schoolgirl, then adopted what she presumably thought was a coquettish pose and all on Miller’s instructions. He asked her to raise an arm, cup a breast, roll her nipples between her fingers to make them hard then stick out her tongue at the camera and laugh like he was the funniest guy she had ever seen. He even got her to bend forwards over the arm of the sofa so her bum was up in the air and her face was practically buried in the cushions. That way she couldn’t see he was no longer looking at the camera, just pointing it at her bare arse. He shot pictures one-handed while winking at me, silently laughing and giving me the thumbs up.
‘Thanks love,’ he said when he was done, ‘you were brilliant. I tell you what, that Keeley Hazell will be shitting herself,’ she laughed as she pulled up her knickers and put on her jeans. When she’d gone, he said, ‘that last roll was just for you, you did realise.’
‘I guessed as much. Interesting hobby you’ve got there Mark.’
‘Hobby?’ he asked, ‘bit more than a hobby. It brings in the money, which is always much needed round here I can tell you. I can’t retire early on what Bobby pays me you know.’
‘Yeah? How much do you have to shell out to get a lass like that stark naked then? And what will you get for the photos?’
He laughed, ‘No mate, you’ve got it all wrong. I don’t pay them. They pay me.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘No, think about it. There are hundreds of young lasses all over Newcastle who’ve got big tits and they all think they’re going to be the next big glamour model but they don’t know how to go about it. Then they see my advert in their local paper; ‘professional modelling portfolios artistically created to your specification’, a snip at just £350.’
‘Three-fifty?’ I whistled.
‘I know,’ and he chuckled.
‘And has young Kayleigh got what it takes?’
‘In my considered professional opinion?’ I nodded. ‘Has she fuck. Got legs like a giraffe, she’s too top-heavy in the breast department, they’ll be sagging before she’s twenty and she has a smile like a frightened rabbit caught having a dump in the woods.’
‘Yet you told her she was gonna be a star. Shameless.’
‘Who am I to destroy a young girl’s dreams? That’ll come soon enough. At least this way she’ll have something to show her grandkids.’
‘A bunch of pictures with her arse in the air?’
‘Yeah,’ and he put on a dumb voice, ‘I used to be a mod-dull.’
‘Looking on the bright side, she gave you a cheap thrill at least.’
‘Oh yeah, definitely but she don’t mind,’ he laughed, ‘she did at first but I said I was gay.’
‘Unbelievable.’
‘I told her I’m immune to fanny. “Think of me like your family doctor,” I told her and she took her clothes off, easy as you like.’ He clicked his fingers to illustrate how quick she’d been to shed her knickers in pursuit of fame. ‘Ironic isn’t it. Some poor young bloke’ll blow a month’s wages tonight, buying her drinks so she’ll let him put his hand up her top. Look at me, I’m just an old git yet I saw the lot – and she’s paying me!’ and he laughed like it was the best joke ever, and maybe it was.
As soon as I told Miller why I was there, he stopped laughing, ‘I heard about it,’ he admitted as he handed me a mug of tea. We were sitting at a table in the studio. ‘Been worried. I know it sounds a bit lame but me and Geordie Cartwright go back a lot of years. He’s a good lad. We used to take our boys to play football on Sunday mornings. He’d be there in all weathers,’ he shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what the world had become. ‘So what have you heard?’
‘The same as you,’ I said, ‘Cartwright’s gone missing.’
‘With some of Bobby’s money,’ he added, so the word was already out. Shit.
‘Yeah,’ there was no point denying it.
‘Jesus,’ he said.
‘Won’t help him if he’s taken it,’ I assured him.
‘It’s got to be a misunderstanding,’ he said with conviction and I just looked at him. ‘I know but he isn’t like that is he, not Cartwright? He wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t have the nerve to cross Bobby.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ I assured him without pointing out that the alternative was probably worse for Cartwright, as it was more than likely he’d be dead already. At least if he had stolen Bobby’s money he had a chance of getting away with it; a very small chance but a chance nonetheless.
‘What have you heard about Geordie and this Russian?’
‘Come again?’
I shrugged, ‘I heard he’d done some business with a Russian, that’s all.’ I was stretching it a bit but I wanted to see how it would play, ‘wondered what you knew about it?’
‘Sorry mate,’ he said simply, ‘not heard that one,’
Miller was pretty helpful though and I didn’t leave empty-handed. He gave me a sizeable list of names to look up and places to check. Surely one of them would have a lead on Geordie. The drive out here had been worth it.
‘Good luck,’ he told me, ‘and I mean it. Geordie Cartwright’s a gent. I hope he’s alright.’
‘So do I Mark,’ I said, ‘so do I.’
I spent the rest of the day and most of the night getting round Miller’s names with Finney. It was the same wherever we went. Nobody had seen Cartwright. Nobody knew what he’d been planning. We were drawing a complete blank.
More in hope than expectation, we called in on Jerry Lemon. I thought he must have heard something. He went back as far as any of Bobby’s crew, had known the big man for years, Cartwright too. He was one of Bobby’s originals. Unfortunately he was also a complete tosser but I was hoping loyalty to Bobby might prompt him to help me. I was badly wrong.