Pam walked with Prior into a high, wide entrance hall with the original patterned tiling still on the floor. The staircase would have allowed four people to ascend it side by side without touching.
“You’re lucky, you’ve got the room at the back. There’s a really nice view.”
One of the two beds were already occupied, though not at that moment; the covers had been carelessly pulled back and there were clothes bunched on it in small piles, shirts and socks, a pair of jeans.
A transistor radio had been left playing and Pam walked over and switched it off. “See what I mean,” she said, pointing out over a ragged patchwork of allotment gardens and unclaimed land, down towards the center of the city.
But Prior had already blocked her out. He was sitting on the other bed, hunched forward, rolling himself a cigarette.
Darren had picked up the girl at Madisons. Outside, actually. She had been leaning up against the brick wall opposite the stage door of the Theatre Royal, forehead pressed down against one hand, while with the other she fumbled for a tissue inside her bag. She was wearing a blue dress with a high neck but a deep V slashed out of it that gave Darren a good view of her breasts.
I’ve seen her around somewhere, Darren thought, and as she realized he was watching her and stood away from the wall, ready to challenge him, he remembered where.
“How about,” Darren said with a grin, “a meat feast with extra cheese, garlic bread with mozzarella, and a large coke?”
“Do I know you?” the girl blinked. It wasn’t long since she’d stopped crying and her makeup had smeared.
“Delia, right?” Darren said, moving in closer. “Pizza Hut. Manageress.”
“Trainee,” Delia said, close to a smile.
“Not for long. I’ll bet.”
Aware that he was staring down the front of her dress, Delia pulled the gap together with her hand.
“How come you’re out here?” Darren said. “What’s up?”
“My boy friend’s in there dancing with somebody else, that’s what I’m doing out here.”
“Wants his head seeing to.”
“You think so.”
“I know so.”
Della blew her nose into a tissue and dabbed at her eyes. “Well, I might as well be going.”
“No,” Darren smiled, shifting his balance enough to set himself in her path. “’S’early yet. Why don’t we go over the Cafe Royal? Have a drink?”
“I’m not stopping long,” Delia said, turning on her low heels to look round the room. It reminded her of boarding houses she’d been to stay in with her parents when she was younger, Southport or Filey or places like that. It didn’t look like a room in which somebody actually lived.
“How many sugars?” Darren called from the shared kitchen.
“One,” Delia said.
Darren appeared in the doorway with a mug in either hand.
“I shall have to be going soon,” Delia said, taking one of the mugs and standing in the center of the room. Last mistake she was about to make, go over there and sit on the bed.
“’S’okay,” said Darren, “Lot to do myself tomorrow as it is. Tell you what, though …” sitting back on the bed himself“…’fore you go, you won’t believe what it is I’ve got to show you.”
Forty-Six
Millington wanted to get out of the car and give his legs a stretch; he wanted to take a pee and not into the plastic bottle which he’d swiped before his wife could put it away for recycling, fresh orange juice it said on the label, produce of more than one country. He wondered if he weren’t getting a bit long in the tooth for this kind of obs, all right for youngsters like Naylor, sitting alongside him, working his way through an old issue of The Puzzler.
“Hey up!” Naylor said, as a car nosed into the street from the far end.
Both men sat tense as the maroon Datsun drove towards them at a regulation thirty; when they were certain it was going to turn into the drive of Number 11, it continued blithely on past.
Naylor sighed and shook his head. Millington reached into the glove compartment for another Bounty bar, dark chocolate covering, not the milk. Kevin Naylor shook his head and popped a Polo into his mouth. It was coming up to three thirty in the afternoon and they had been in position since morning.
“Tell me something, Kevin,” Millington said, screwing up his Bounty wrapper and transferring it to his jacket pocket. “If you were pulling down one big score after another, all that cash split-what? five, six ways? — would you elect to live in Mansfield? In a semi three streets away from your mother?”
“Long as it wasn’t Debbie’s mother, I don’t know as I’d mind.”
“But Mansfield …”
“I don’t know. It’s not so bad. We nearly bought a place out here, actually. When we were getting married. Starter homes on one of them small estates, lot cheaper than in the city.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“It were Debbie. Didn’t feel right, moving so far away from her mum.”
“Her and Frank Churchill, then-lot in common.”
No matter how much he tried, Naylor could never stop himself breaking the mint with his teeth before it was as much as half gone. If they had set up home up here, he was thinking, things might have gone a sight more smoothly for them. Without Debbie being able to nip round to her mum’s every time any little thing went wrong, they’d have had to work things out for themselves more.
“How is it going now?” Millington asked. He’d heard the rumors, same as everyone else. “You and Debbie.”
“Not so bad,” Naylor said. “Pretty good, in fact. Thanks, sarge, yes. Looking up.” They had spent two evenings together now, met for lunch one day at Jallans and Naylor had been certain Debbie wanted to go back to bed after, but he was on duty and she was due to see someone about a part-time job.
This time the car was a Granada estate, six months old, and the driver signaled his intentions to turn into Number 11 some forty yards away. He had his head turned aside as the car swung onto the drive; the gap between the driveway and the door was no more than twenty feet and he didn’t stand around to watch the roses grow, but Millington and Naylor saw enough to be convinced this was their man.
Frank Chambers. Frank Church. Frank Churchill.
Probably back from visiting his dear old mum.
Lynn Kellogg had been out of the office when Keith had first called and he’d refused either to leave his name or speak to anyone else. When he tried an hour and a half later, ringing from the only unvandalized box in the Bridgeway Centre, Lynn was on her way back in with her arms full of files.
“Hello? DC Kellogg.”
His voice was so faint, she couldn’t make it out, but guessed anyway. “Keith, that you?”
They met in the Memorial Gardens, walking round and round between the beds, all that Keith could do to remain there at all, never mind sitting down.
“And you are positive?” Lynn asked. “About the gun?”
“He showed it to me.”
What Darren had actually done was slide the PPK beneath the table in the cafe and jab it against Keith’s balls, not so hard as to make him cry out, hard enough for him to reach down and find out what it was. It had been almost enough to make Keith wet himself then and there; something he hadn’t done since he’d been shut away in Glen Parva.
“How can you be positive it isn’t a replica?”
“We got into the lift in the Trinity Square car park and stopped it between floors. He showed me. Ammo, too. No way it’s anything but the real thing.”
When they’d got the lift going again, Darren had walked along the roof as far as the edge and leaned against the parapet, aiming the pistol at people walking along the street outside Jessops and the Stakis Hotel, taking careful aim and pretending to fire, making clicking sounds with his tongue and laughing. “There. See that? Right between the fucking eyes!”
“And when did you say he’d told you to steal the car?”
“Wasn’t definite. Just be ready, be ready. Don’t let me have to come looking for you and not find you, that’s all.”