“Well, we set a date for the session, but the Goodisons want to talk to Alice’s mum and dad first. So we all meet at a cafe where Pauline and Hughes explain what they hope to do, keeping it nice and simple. But mum and dad start fretting about how much it’ll cost and I keep telling them not to worry, that Paddington P.S. is paying the bill. After I finally drill that into them, they cheer up and are off to the nearest boozer. And that’s when I take the Goodisons over to meet Alice and Uncle Ned. That’s also where I leave ’em because I have to get back to the station.”
Mary Ticker held up her empty glass and asked, “Care for another?”
Durant said, “Yes, thanks, I would.”
After she came back from the kitchen alcove and handed him his drink, she swallowed some of her own, sat back down and said, “Where’d I leave off?”
“The Goodisons were with Uncle Ned.”
“And Alice,” she added. “It was two or three days later when they did the hypnotizing in mum and dad’s sitting room. Present are me and another PC, the medic, mum and dad, Uncle Ned and the Goodisons, of course. Pauline puts Alice into a trance in less than a minute and a minute later Alice is saying it’s her dad who buggered her.”
“You believed her?”
“Course I did,” she said. “Well, you never saw such a commotion. Dad goes for Alice and I have to knock him down. Mum’s screaming bloody murder or whatever silly women scream. Uncle Ned is mincing around, wringing his hands and saying, poor little thing, poor little thing over and over ’til I tell him to put a cork in it. The other PC and the medic are trying to shut mum up and Alice just keeps babbling about all the times dad did it to her. So I collar dad and he eventually goes to trial and gets five years. Mum just disappears and Alice goes to live with her Uncle Ned and by then the Goodisons are halfway to being famous from all the publicity.”
“How were you getting along with them by then?” Durant asked.
“Not at all. They dropped me.”
“You ever see Alice after she’d gone to live with Uncle Ned?”
“I’d stop by sometimes when I had a moment. And I had a moment one Sunday morning. It was her birthday, her ninth, and I went by with a present. I knocked because the bell’d never worked. When no one came I tried the door and it was off the latch and I went in. I thought I’d leave my present and go. Then I heard it. A kind of moaning. It wasn’t a big flat, about like this, but on the ground floor.”
She paused to swallow more whisky and light another cigarette. She then sighed the smoke out and said, “There they were, starkers and having at it, sweet Alice and nice Uncle Ned. I went quite mad.”
“How?”
“I grabbed Alice and locked her in the bath. Then I went for Uncle Ned and broke his fucking arm, the left one. Then I swore I’d break his right one if he didn’t tell me the truth. Well, he told me the truth and I broke his fucking right arm anyway.”
“It was Uncle Ned and Alice all along, not dad and Alice, right?” Durant said.
She gave him a weary nod. “They’d been going at it since she was five. Uncle Ned’d paid Hughes and Pauline three thousand quid to make it look real. Hughes and Pauline’d coached Alice how to act hypnotized, what to say about her dad and how to say it. Hughes got a friend to tip off the press. It was a right mess.”
She finished her second drink, which seemed to have had no effect. There was a cigarette burning in an ashtray that she must have forgotten because she lit a fresh one with the lighter. She blew out the smoke and said, “Nobody believed me. Uncle Ned claimed I’d broken in and assaulted him. Alice backed him up and said I’d tried to fondle her more than once. When the Goodisons were questioned they said I’d made advances to Pauline. I was allowed to resign without any fuss. It was all kept very, very quiet — especially since it was about then that poor old dad killed himself.”
She looked at Durant with her cold hard cop’s stare. “You know what happens to kiddy freaks in the nick?”
Durant nodded.
“Well, they did old dad over and over. When he couldn’t stand any more, he went to bed one night with a plastic sack over his head and never woke up.”
“You making it all right now?” Durant said.
“I work in the shop downstairs. He deals uppers and downers to a select clientele and likes having an ex-copper around in case a customer drops in and gets nasty when he can’t buy on credit. I’m paid off the books and, well, it’s enough.”
“What happened to Alice?”
“I never asked,” Mary Ticker said, frowned as if she’d just thought of something and said, “Any chance they’re dead?”
“The Goodisons?” She nodded. “It’s possible.”
“That’s nice,” she said with a small smile that almost made her look content, if far from happy.
Ten
Because of the international date line, Artie Wu’s 12:04 A.M. long-distance call on Tuesday from London was answered by Booth Stallings at 8:04 A.M. on Wednesday in his three-room suite at Manila’s Peninsula Hotel.
Wu and Stallings had not spoken to each other in five years and, consequently, there was a minute or so of what Stallings regarded as expensive pro forma greetings and salutations before Wu got to the business at hand.
“Let’s talk money, Booth, because if we can’t agree on that, there’s no point in talking about the rest.”
“Suits me.”
“The initial fee is five hundred thousand. If we do what we’ve been hired to do, there’ll be another two hundred and fifty thousand, making a total of seven hundred and fifty thousand. Out of the total, Quincy and I, as principals, will draw two hundred thousand each. You, Otherguy and Georgia, one hundred thousand each.”
“Sounds plump, if not fat,” Stallings said.
“The client retained our firm’s services for a nonrefundable twenty-five thousand pounds. But that money’s earmarked for back salaries, debts and overhead.”
“You must’ve passed through a dry spell, Artie.”
“Bone dry.”
“If my addition’s right,” Stallings said, “the figures you mentioned, not counting the retainer, add up to seven hundred thousand, not seven hundred and fifty thousand.”
“That remaining fifty thousand will be held in reserve for contingencies until the job’s done. If there aren’t any contingencies, it’ll be split into five equal shares as either a bonus or getaway money.”
“Or both,” Stallings said.
“Or both.”
“You’re beginning to make it sound kind of interesting. What do we have to do to earn it?”
“Find two missing hypnotists.”
“What else?”
“That’s the goal, but to reach it we’ll probably have to travel the usual twisty byways.”
“Where’re these byways located?”
“Los Angeles and environs.”
“Well, shit, I was kind of hoping for London and environs.”
“The weather’s better in L.A.”
“There’s that,” Stallings agreed.
After the briefest of pauses, Wu said, “Can you talk?”
“Georgia’s not up yet.”
“When did she get out?”
“Yesterday afternoon. I picked her up at the Women’s Correctional Institution in Mandaluyong in a Mercedes I rented from the Peninsula. Even brought along flowers and a bottle of champagne. She drank some champagne but left the flowers in the car when we got back to the hotel.”
“How is she?”
“Doesn’t look much different.”
“Mentally?”
“Quick as ever. Maybe even quicker. But I suppose there’re some emotional dents that need smoothing out.”
“What’ve you told her?”
“Just that you and Durant have something going and want her, Otherguy and me to help out.”