‘I expect you want to be a naughty boy, don’t you, dear?’
‘Not really,’ said Barnaby, disengaging himself and producing his warrant card.
‘Jeezuseffchrist. What the hell do you want? We’re all legal here, you know.’
‘I’m sure.’ He produced the passport snap. ‘Do you know this man?’
A quick glance. ‘Course I do. That’s Mr Lovejoy.’
‘Was he here last Friday afternoon? The seventeenth?’
‘He bloody lives here, mate.’
‘I need to know precisely.’
‘You’d better talk to Krystal then.’
‘Would you ask her to come here, please.’
‘She’ll come anywhere will that one - for a price.’ She gave him a nudge. ‘You look a well-set-up bloke. Why don’t you pop back when you’re off duty? Loosen up a bit. Treat yourself.’ She gave his blank stare a minute to change its mind and then said, ‘Oh well - be miserable then. Krystal’s doing the art class. She’ll be ten minutes yet. Second door on the right.’
Barnaby lifted a velvet curtain and found himself in a cold stone corridor. There were doors on both sides. He opened the second on the right and found himself facing another very musty curtain. He pushed this aside and passed through with unnecessary caution. Not a head turned. They were all watching the stage.
On a brightly lit dais a well-developed girl stood registering alarm in the commedia dell’arte manner: eyes wide, hands splayed out to ward off danger, half turning to flee. She wore a schoolgirl’s pleated skirt, white shirt and blazer. A felt hat with a striped band perched insecurely on her head. She had waist-length blond hair. A young man in tight trousers, velvet jacket and matching beret was painting the air in front of an easel. A harsh male voice, underpinned by a lot of martial bump and grind music, blasted out of two wall speakers.
‘And so the lovely Bridgeat, desperate to purchase medicines for her dying father, was tricked by the notorious artist Fouquet into leaving the convent and posing in his attic studio. Despite his fervid assurances to the contrary the lecherous Fouquet revealed, once she was securely in his lair, that the money would be paid only for a nude study!’
Here the young man mimed rather graphically what he wanted the lovely Brigitte to do. She wept and wailed and wrung her hands, then, tremblingly, affectingly, started to undress. First the blazer, then the little white schoolgirl blouse that she was bursting out of, then the tiny pleated skirt. She cowered realistically, folding slender arms across an extravagantly ample bosom. The voice crackled on.
‘“If you wish to save your beloved father’s life you know what you must do,” cried the evil Fouquet.’
Weeping, the girl removed her lace-up shoes, knee socks and bra. The evil Fouquet, not to be outdone, slipped out of his velvet smock, revealing a hairless dark brown chest. Brigitte was now left in the sort of briefs any self-respecting Mother Superior would have consigned to the flames with tongs.
‘But as the lascivious artiste attempted to position the lovely virgin he was swept away on a tide of desire.’
Surprise, surprise, thought Barnaby, yawning. He slipped back through the curtain and waited in the Colditz corridor. The dreary posturings in the art class gave him a sudden sharp perspective on his home life and the clean sweet embraces he shared with Joyce. So her Bakewell Surprise could double as a manhole cover. So his daughter looked like the wreck of the Hesperus and had a Swiftian line in put-downs. He compared her with Doctor Lessiter’s special friend and counted his blessings.
Released at last by a fake orgasmic cry, the punters shuffled out. Young, middle-aged, elderly. No one, it seemed, had come with a mate. They emerged solitarily, blinking in the hard light, like melancholy moles. He gave it a few moments then re-entered the room.
‘Brigitte’ was perched on the artist’s stool, smoking and wearing a wrapper. Her flesh shimmered through the gauzy stuff. The pearly flesh, long silver-white curls and butter-milky complexion gave her an appearance of wholesomeness totally at variance with her surroundings. She looked as if she would be more at home on a farm milking something. She spoke.
‘Give us a bleeding chance, lover. Next show’s half an hour. Pay outside.’ He produced his wallet. ‘Fuckin ’ell.’ She stubbed out her cigarette but not before he had recognized the smell. ‘I don’t take the hard stuff, you know. You’d be on something, believe you me, if you had this bloody job.’
‘I’m making one or two inquiries—’
‘I’m not talking to you without witnesses.’ She disappeared through a door behind the stage. It opened directly on to a tiny dressing room. Barnaby just managed to squeeze in. The room stank of cheap scent, hair lacquer, sweat and cigarette smoke. It was occupied by two girls, their rear ends shoe-horned on to a couple of plastic chairs. They wore bright bedraggled feathers and nipple stars. They sussed him straight away, giving him hard aggrieved stares.
‘What you done then, Kris?’
‘Bugger all. And he can’t say I have.’
Barnaby showed her the photograph of Trevor Lessiter. ‘Do you know this man?’
‘Yeah - that’s poor old Loveless. Or Lovejoy as he calls himself. Dunno what ’is real name is.’
‘Was he here last Friday afternoon?’
‘He’s here every Friday afternoon. And Monday and Wednesday. He’s no trouble. A bit of bondage. The daffodil routine. But mostly straight. His wife won’t let him ’ave any, you know.’
‘Yeah.’ This interjection from the red feathers had the force of a bunched fist. ‘’E gave her a mink coat for Christmas an’ all.’
‘I worked it out,’ said Krystal, ‘and I told him. I’d have to do it five hundred times to buy a mink. A decent one, I mean - not one that scarpered back to the zoo the minute the whistle went.’
‘You’d be too shagged out to wear it, Kris.’
‘You bloody reckon?’ She gave a mirthless shriek.
‘They stink an’ all if you’re out in the rain,’ said the red nipple stars. ‘Them that fall off the back of the bunny wagon.’ More mirthless shrieks. Barnaby cut in firmly.
‘Can you tell me what time Mr Lovejoy left last Friday?’
‘Half-past five. I remember ’cause that’s when I knock off for an hour. He asked me to go and have some tea with him. He was always asking me out. You have to pretend ... you know ... that you like them, and then, some of them - the simple ones - they really believe you. Try to get you to meet them outside. It’s pathetic, really.’
She raised both hands and lifted the heavy mass of silver curls. Underneath lay dirty red hair chopped savagely and clumsily short. She grinned at the chief inspector’s involuntary start of surprise.
‘He thought it was real - didn’t you, sunshine?’
‘I love the innocent ones, don’t you?’ said the girl with the strong vocal attack. ‘They really make you want to piss yourself.’
‘I was innocent once,’ said Krystal. ‘I thought a dildo was a prehistoric bird before I discovered this place.’
Caws of laughter; the tattered feathers shook. They gazed at him with hard bright eyes. They looked both predatory and harmless, like debeaked birds of prey. He made an excuse and left.
Chapter Ten