He shook his head. “Nah. I got a list of top clients who like something special.” He tapped the place where his heart should have been. If he had an address book in there it would be worth the gorilla’s weight in gold. “Once madam was settled and she’d turned a few tricks I had my phone ringing off the hook. Nice little earner, Sheila was,” he said wistfully.
“Sheila?” I asked incredulously.
“Her stage name, shall we say. Never gave me her real moniker.”
A worse thought occurred to me. “These clients… was one of them our friend Wilson, by any chance?”
“Let’s put it this way: if he was, he didn’t pay for it.”
My mind was reeling but there was a question still unresolved. “The lady – Sheila – ended up in hospital in November, Jonny. Know anything about that?”
He smirked. “You thought it was a bit of family planning gone wrong, didn’t you?
Not that simple, chum. Not that simple. Seems our Sheila liked it a bit rough. I don’t know exactly what she was getting up to – I don’t interfere with the details of my girls you know – but I hear it got a bit out of hand.”
I couldn’t take any more in. I needed air, and time to rethink. “Jonny, thanks.
That’s all I wanted to know.” More than I wanted, in truth. “I need to digest this.” But this was as digestible as raw liver.
“’Spect you do, chum. But don’t take long. I still need that name. You owe me now. I don’t know how it’s connected to the lovely Sheila, but I want that name.
We’ll take it from there.”
I didn’t know how it connected either, chum, but I was sure it did. “I’ll call you in forty-eight hours, Jonny.”
“Be sure, you do. If you don’t, Sammy here will find you. You do know that, don’t you?” The boy smiled and licked the blade of his knife with a tongue like a lizard.
I emerged into the last of the daylight. It was a mellow London evening, the type you get sometimes even in mid-winter; a false spring. In Glasgow it would rain or freeze or snow from November to March before you felt any forgiveness.
Here in the south the weather was like a clever mistress: treated you well enough to keep you interested and optimistic, but never too much to make you blasй.
As I sidled through the streets I wrestled with the new thoughts and the images they conjured. I felt sick to my core. That first night she came to my office I fell a little in love with a dream. She was everything better than me, everything I couldn’t have. Or so I thought. It never occurred to me that I could have paid for it. If I could afford it.
I shook myself. I was lucky to get out of that cellar with my head on, and here I was with another bit of the puzzle in place. But the overall pattern had slipped out of focus. I had to find the remaining pieces. All I knew – thought I knew – was that I’d been set up by Caldwell to keep me away from some squalid secret surrounding his sister. Had it been enough to cause the death of five young women? And how was Wilson involved?
My head was running through the choices I’d just made. I could have given Caldwell’s name to Jonny Crane, and let nature take its course; Sammy was malice in make-up, and his gorilla was an unstoppable force of nature. But two things had stopped me: first, I suppose, my days wearing a blue uniform had left a vestigial preference to work through the law rather than via the likes of Crane.
Second, and more important, I wanted this for myself. I wasn’t sure quite how to arrange it, but there needed to be a face-to-face showdown between me, Caldwell and his lovely whore of a sister. Wilson too. They owed me that.
TWENTY THREE
I woke next morning in Mary’s cathouse wondering what to do first. I had to move fast. I was on a countdown with Jonny Crane. He might look like a nancy accountant – some gravy with these casseroled books, sir? – but I’d found from my Glasgow days that they could be the worst. All that inner turmoil.
I’d have liked to question Liza Caldwell some more, find out if she knew about Kate’s bad habits. Our last little chat had been interrupted. I lay thinking how I could get to her. I’d chanced my arm too often stalking her in Hampstead.
Could I lure her away somewhere?
But Kate was the real target. I couldn’t make a return visit to Onslow Square;
I’d be shot on sight. Could I tail her? Get her in her car and spirit her off somewhere? More than ever now I couldn’t rely on the rozzers to help me. It was all down to me.
It was seven am but it still seemed very dark despite my curtains being a fraction ajar. I got up and peered out at a real London pea-souper. Spring had come too early. The weather matched my thoughts. I couldn’t think clearly. Maybe I should abandon the trail and make a run for it; get across the Channel. Europe was still in such a mess that one more piece of flotsam would go unnoticed.
There was a knock on my door and it was opened before I could say yea or nay.
Mary sailed in. I suppose she was within her rights; it was her house. And she was carrying the right passport: two cups of tea. She put one down by my bedside table and sat on my bed, delicately holding the other. Mary had no social conversation; she came straight out with whatever was on her whirring little mind. I liked that. Usually.
“Time you go, Danny. Too many police after you. Too much trouble for me.”
I slurped my tea alongside her. “I know, Mary. You’ve been great, so you have.
And I’ve overstayed my welcome.”
“You need money? I lend you money. Good interest.”
I bet. “Thanks Mary, but I’m OK for a while. I’ve got enough to get me out of here, out of London, maybe out of England.”
She banged her cup into her saucer, and put it on the table. “You give up? After all you do? Why you give up?” She crossed her little arms with an operatic gesture of anger.
“Because the folk I’m up against don’t play by any rules I know. Because they have money and power; I have bugger all. Because even the law is bent.
Correction: it’s broken. I don’t stand a chance.”
“Huh. You face Jonny Crane. That brave. You can do next step.”
“Mary, I need to question Kate Graveney or Liza Caldwell – both, preferably – and see where that takes me. But they’ll have protection round them that’s as tight as the King’s corset.”
“Huh.” She slurped some tea and studied me, as if the answer was on my forehead but needed interpretation. “So – Kate come here.”
“Why in god’s name would she come here, Mary?”
“Cos your pal Jonny ask her.” She smiled at me to show how clever she was.
“I think I might be pushing my luck with Jonny Crane, you know. And anyway, he doesn’t know her real name far less her address.”
Mary shook her head in pity. “Thought you smart. Not so sure.”
She wasn’t going to help me any further, so I sipped at my tea for inspiration.
I got it, finally.
“OK. So someone phones her from here, saying they’re calling on Jonny Crane’s behalf. We tell her Jonny needs to speak to her. But why? What would make Kate come over? What hold would he have?”
“You think of something.”
Nothing came. I drank some more tea and continued, “And anyway, what are we going to do when She’s here? Kidnap her? Mary, I thought I’d been enough trouble already?”
“I know other place. You fix.”
She described the empty flat she had access to; I didn’t ask how. Mary waited. I sat reading my tealeaves. In their depths a plan began to form: a daft plan, wild, high risk and bloody dangerous. Maybe I should stick to coffee.
I could think of a way of getting Kate to come over to Soho, but once here I needed some way of getting her to admit to some pretty unpleasant truths. I needed a lever. I knew a lever, a big one…
Mary left me to get washed and dressed. I came down to her room and walked her through the idea. When I was finished she looked hard at me.