Dolly spun round furiously. ‘Don’t you bloody dare go there on your own! It’s too bloody dangerous. I thought you were supposed to be scared of the rats.’
‘Come on, your fancy man’s waiting,’ Bella said by way of an answer, pushing Dolly out of the door.
DI Fuller walked into his office with a bunch of M&S shirts tucked under his arm. He shoved the shirts into a desk drawer, then yanked his coat off.
He fingered his collar and realized he had left the cardboard in. He was pulling it out when Saunders appeared at his desk.
‘Gordon Murphy must have someone heavy behind him,’ Saunders told him with a frown. ‘He’s got the best brief money can buy, swearing blue murder and telling us to charge him with something or release him.’ He paused. ‘Which room’s Chizzel in?’
‘Can’t say, guv.’
Saunders placed a clock on the desk, similar to the one taken from Chizzel’s shop. ‘I just want him to take a look at this. An aunt left it to me. Never thought much about it, but that ormolu one was worth — what?’
Reynolds joined them, sporting a fresh plaster across his nose. ‘Two grand, guv.’
Saunders held up his own clock and whistled. It looked almost identical. Fuller gave Reynolds a look.
Saunders caught it. ‘Right, Fuller. You’ve got work to do. Looks like you had Rawlins right under your nose an’ you let him walk away. You were made a right idiot of. ’Bout time you got it together on this one, Alex. It looks like you’ve taken your eye off the ball.’
Fuller was too tired to come up with a response. Which was probably just as well, he thought. He’d been on duty almost round the clock, and the last thing he needed was his Chief yelling at him.
Saunders strode off, clutching his aunt’s clock.
‘Jesus,’ Fuller muttered. ‘What does he think this place is, the Antiques bloody Roadshow?’
Shirley had expected Amanda’s nightclub to be a lot more glamorous. After reading about it in Vogue and Harper’s she’d been dying to actually see it. But now that she was here, an hour early for her rehearsal, it just smelt of stale cigarettes and booze, like all the other clubs. In the harsh daylight, the dainty tables and chairs seemed rather scruffy, the plush carpet covered in cigarette burns.
Shirley asked where the models were supposed to go, but nobody seemed to know anything about it. So she sat watching the ramp being built up in the center of the main club room, while lights, drapes and masses of floral displays were being carried in. The sound of hammering and banging almost deafened her.
Shirley watched a girl wearing a beautiful fox fur jacket and dark glasses walk into the club and knew immediately that she was a model. She chucked the coat over a chair. Underneath she was wearing a dirty old tracksuit and plimsolls. In her smart high heels and posh dress Shirley felt overdressed. The girl yelled out a few abusive remarks to the workmen, opened up a newspaper and began reading.
Two more models wandered in, shouting, ‘Hi, Myra.’ They were also casually dressed, wearing work clothes and no make-up, and they all seemed to know each other. But Myra was clearly the queen bee.
Two more models waltzed in, there was a lot of shrieking, and someone shouted for coffee. Shirley sat to one side, feeling very much an outsider. The girls nattered on about this job and that model, discussing agents. Shirley heard Marion Gordon’s name being mentioned. Then an assistant brought in take-out coffee and handed it round. Shirley still made no move to join them, just sat there with her holdall, feeling embarrassed, her stomach churning. They all looked so confident, lounging round together. She just hoped she wasn’t going to make a fool of herself.
A dapper little Japanese boy arrived wearing a bomber jacket and tight black leather trousers. He screamed excitedly at the girls, and they kissed and petted him. When the excitement had died down, he took a clipboard out and looked over.
‘You Shirley?’ he asked in a rasping Cockney accent.
She nodded and he waved her to come over. She was acutely aware of the girls watching her as she tried to walk with her head up, like a real model.
Jukko, the choreographer, pulled out a chair. He started introducing Shirley to everyone but halfway through someone started talking about a job they had been on and Shirley was forgotten. Jukko got up and kissed Myra on the forehead, making her promise to behave herself and not cause him any aggro. She gave him a kick with one long leg.
‘Me? Aggro? Do me a favor.’
Jukko asked the sound man to play the music, and heavy metal started booming out.
The girls hooted at the lyrics, smoked and drank their coffee. Jukko went over to find out how long it would be before the ramp was finished so he could rehearse the girls. Meanwhile, the hammering and banging continued, the rock music belted out, and the floral sprays and the stacks of chairs were carried backward and forward. Shirley couldn’t help a small, satisfied grin; she was loving it, doing something she had dreamt about. She couldn’t believe she was here; it was really happening.
‘You got a fag?’
Shirley couldn’t open her cigarettes quick enough. Myra’s catlike eyes looked her up and down.
‘I’ve not seen you on the catwalk before. Where did you spring from?’
Dolly looked at the signpost as they went round the roundabout leading to Teddington Lock. She’d been getting more and more frustrated as they drove.
‘Where the hell are you taking me, Vic?’
Morgan just grinned.
‘For God’s sake, just pull over and let me out! I’ll get a taxi back.’
‘We’re almost there, Dolly. Just a few more minutes.’
‘Almost where?’
His grin widened. ‘My boat.’
Before Dolly could decide whether he really had gone nuts, Morgan pulled up alongside Teddington Lock.
At first she refused to get out.
‘Come on, Dolly,’ he coaxed. ‘I was up first thing this morning refueling her and making us a nice lunch. Champagne and smoked salmon sandwiches.’
Dolly followed him reluctantly along the wharf, feeling conspicuous in her high heels and tight skirt, until he stopped at a little ramp leading on to a tatty-looking cabin cruiser.
Dolly gripped her handbag tightly. ‘Well, now I’ve seen it, wonderful. But I’ve got to go back — my dentist’s appointment, you know.’
Morgan took no notice. He stood on the ramp and held out his hand. She hesitated, and he took her hand and guided her up the narrow plank. She teetered at one point, and he put his arm round her waist. She couldn’t push him away or she would have fallen into the water.
‘Come along into the cabin. Lunch is served.’
Dolly maneuvered herself into the cramped cabin. The champagne looked cut-price and the sandwiches were already curling at the edges. She was thinking about turning round and getting off the boat when she felt the engines turning over and suddenly the boat was moving. The swell almost knocked Dolly over as she scrambled to the front of the boat, where Morgan was steering them out into the river.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she shrieked. ‘Take me back, do you hear?’
Morgan just grinned and put a hand to his ear, pretending to be deaf.
This was turning into a complete nightmare. Dolly closed her eyes. If she really had gone to the dentist, it couldn’t have been nearly as painful as this.
Jukko was shouting instructions: ‘Three, two... now four, four...’
The girls grouped and regrouped as they moved down the ramp to the thudding rock music. They had been at it for nearly an hour and were showing signs of tiredness, but Jukko kept pushing them up and down the ramp, up and down. And they didn’t glide along the way Shirley had been taught by Mrs. Hyde White: they stormed it — rolling their shoulders, grinding their hips, pouting sexily like an army of Amazons. But Shirley quickly picked up how to do it, and soon she was swaggering aggressively to the beat like the best of them. Yukko never stopped yelling at them, but Shirley found it exciting, her adrenaline flowing so strongly she felt she could go on forever.