Читать книгу Scarlet Women - Jessie Keane - Страница 15

Next morning at eight there was a knock at the Palermo’s main door. Annie was up and dressed. She went down the stairs and opened up. The club was quiet for once, peaceful. Too early for the builders.

The bald, portly man standing there peered at her with watery blue eyes, squinting past a curl of cigarette smoke. He threw the stub on the pavement and ground it out with his heel.

‘Detective Sergeant Lane,’ said Annie, looking up and down the street. There was nobody about, but still…

‘We’ve charged him,’ said Lane.

Shit, thought Annie.

‘Can I have a few words?’ he asked.

‘Sure,’ said Annie, and ushered him in, up the stairs, into the flat. She closed the door, indicated that he should take a seat. He did. He looked an utter bloody mess, corpulent and red in the face, his stubby fingers stained with nicotine, his white nylon shirt yellowish and sweat-stained and straining over his belly. He didn’t smell exactly fresh. Annie sat as far away as she could get and thought about Chris, charged now. Poor bastard.

‘I thought the rule was that we were never seen together,’ she said irritably.

He shrugged. ‘You’re helping the police with their inquiries,’ he said.

‘Fair enough. What’s the new DI like?’

‘Like a bear with a sore arse. Just got divorced and transferred in and now I’m stuck with the picky bastard. I’m telling you, that sod’s suspicious by nature.’

‘But he’s got no reason to be suspicious of you, has he?’

‘None at all. I’m squeaky clean.’

Which was ironic, since DS Lane always smelled like he hadn’t bathed in a month. If we have to have bent coppers on the firm, can’t we at least have clean ones? she thought. But the boys had assured her that Lane was a very useful contact. She’d have to open a window the minute he’d gone. Either that or fumigate the fucking place.

‘What have you got?’ she asked.

‘She was at the Vista Hotel visiting a Mr Smith in room two-oh-six,’ said Lane.

‘I know that.’

‘But it fits the MO of the other two that got done.’

‘Not the same hotel?’

‘No, different hotels every time. This is the poshest one yet; our boy’s stepped up a notch on the social ladder. The other two got done outside three-star places in the East End. But same meat, different gravy. Prostitutes calling and getting killed for their trouble. Same pattern, same method. You really think Chris Brown didn’t do these?’

Annie swallowed a sharp stab of revulsion at his casual tone, his relaxed manner. He didn’t care that Aretha was dead. Or the other two. He didn’t care that Chris was innocent. He just had a curiosity about the case, an interest in the puzzle it represented. And he thought they’d already solved it.

‘Did you find any trace of him on the other women? Any reason to believe he did those two as well as Aretha?’ asked Annie coolly.

‘No. None.’

‘But he’s been charged for doing Aretha.’

‘Yeah. Look, I got to admire your loyalty, but let’s face it, the man’s going down.’

‘The wire could get lost,’ said Annie.

‘What?’

‘The cheese wire. Could go missing.’ Annie was staring at him.

‘And what difference would that make? There’re still the cuts on his hands, there’s still his blood on the vic. Hunter’s on it and trust me he won’t let it go. You could lose the fucking suspect on this one, and everyone would still be one hundred per cent convinced that Chris Brown did it.’

‘He couldn’t kill Aretha,’ said Annie.

‘No?’ Lane gave an unpleasant smile. ‘If my old lady was out tomming—hell, even I could do it. Think you’ll find men don’t like that sort of thing.’

‘He knew Aretha was on the game before he married her.’

‘Yeah? I find that hard to believe.’

‘It’s true.’

‘Then he’s a tolerant bloke and my hat is off to him, it really is. I’m just saying, most men would consider offing the old woman if she was out porkswording the whole neighbourhood. Ew, think of the stuff you could catch off it. And it was fucking with knobs on, let’s not forget. When I saw the stuff in that bag of hers, I damn near blushed.’

‘He didn’t do it,’ said Annie. ‘I want you working hard on this, finding out who did. I want to know about these other two girls. I need to see copies of the case files.’

He screwed up his face. ‘Tricky.’

‘I don’t care how fucking tricky it is, you do it.’ If there was any sort of link between the two other girls and Aretha, then maybe some sense could be made out of all this. Maybe they could find not only Aretha’s killer but their killer too. Find the bastard who’d killed them, nail him good. Or her. Best not forget that. A woman could have done this too. By doing all that, maybe she could get Chris out of the frame.

‘Look, I’ll give it my best.’ Lane stood up.

‘Do that,’ said Annie, standing up too. Christ, she was going to have to air this place with a vengeance. ‘You’ll be well rewarded.’

‘That’s always nice to hear,’ he smirked, showing yellow tombstone teeth.

‘So you don’t rate the new DI?’ she asked.

‘Hunter?’ He shrugged. ‘He’s a pain in the arse, the miserable bastard, but he’s a good cop. And there ain’t many of them about, as you know.’ He gave her a lopsided smile.

God, he was repulsive. On balance Annie preferred hard-eyed and tight-lipped DI Hunter to this rancid tub of lard. The immaculate and sourfaced Hunter might look at her as if she was lowlife, but at least he was straightforward in his intentions and she felt he simply couldn’t be bought. You had to admire that. If you cut DI Hunter open, the words HONEST COP would run right through him like BLACKPOOL runs through a stick of rock. Slice DS Lane open and all you’d find would be the stench of corruption.

‘Hey,’ she said sharply. ‘Don’t take this lightly. And don’t let me down.’

The smirk vanished. ‘I said I’ll do my utmost. But I can’t part the fucking Red Sea or nothing. My name ain’t Moses.’

Annie stared at him. Then she crossed the room and opened the door. Tony was standing silently outside it, at the top of the stairs, waiting to usher the copper out. Neither of them had heard him come up. Tony could move like a ghost, and he could move fast too, for a big man. Lane looked at Tony’s huge bulk and swallowed hard.

‘Do your best, okay?’ Annie reminded him. ‘Let me down and you’ll be sorry.’

Annie cleared up, ushered in the builders for another day of hammering and banging, and gladly took her leave of the club. Tony drove her in the Jag over to where Gareth Fuller, the Vista’s former employee, lived. It was a dump in a block of flats. Washing flapped on badly strung clothes-lines. Rubbish swirled in the summer breeze on each of the outside landings as Annie and Tony walked up five flights of stairs.

The graffiti-strewn lift was working, but judging from the stink emanating from it, someone had been using it to piss in. So it was the stairs, or being lowered down off the roof with a fucking rope, Tony complained—could you believe people had to live this way?

‘Pardon my French, Boss,’ he added politely as they hit the top landing. Then, ‘Oh fuck,’ he blurted as he looked ahead.

Annie looked ahead. DI Hunter was standing outside a battered-looking door halfway along the grimy landing, his arm raised to knock on it. His head turned in their direction. Distinctly, they saw him mutter something under his breath and then return his attention to the door.

‘Wait here, Tone,’ said Annie, and she left Tony by the top of the stairs and strolled off along the landing to where Hunter, the warm updraught riffling through his dark hair, was still tapping at the door. ‘Hello, Detective Inspector,’ she said when she got to the door. She looked at the peeling paint-work. ‘How’s tricks?’

He looked at her, his face pinched tight with disapproval. He looked away. Knocked again at the door.

He wouldn’t be half bad looking if only he didn’t scowl so much, she thought.

A dog was barking in there. A high-pitched yap yap yap. It could drive you mad, a dog like that—pity the neighbours.

‘No one in?’ she asked. ‘Apart from Fido?’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Same as you,’ said Annie. ‘Trying to find out what the hell’s been going on.’

He half turned towards her. Gave her the old beady brown eye again. ‘Don’t get smart with me, Mrs Carter. I know what you are, I know about you.’

‘Oh?’ Annie looked at him.

‘You know, I once worked for DCI Fielding, and do you know what his big ambition was? To nail Max Carter.’

‘Really,’ said Annie. ‘Well, he left that too late. Max is dead.’ She glanced at his left hand. He was wearing a gold wedding ring, but Lane had said he was divorced. ‘Hey, how’s your wife, DI Hunter?’ she asked him with deliberate cruelty.

His lips tightened. ‘In Manchester,’ he said. ‘The last I heard.’

‘Trouble on the domestic front?’

His eyes flared. ‘Just what the hell are you doing here?’

‘I told you, same as you. But in the meantime, we’re here outside this damned door. Which needs opening, by the way.’

‘Mrs Carter. This is police business, and best left to us.’ And he turned and knocked on the door again.

‘That lock don’t look up to much,’ said Annie. There was a pause. The dog barked on, yap, yap, yap. ‘A good kick could probably sort that door out,’ she suggested helpfully.

‘That’s breaking and entering, Mrs Carter,’ he said, giving her the look again.

‘Well,’ said Annie, ‘I understand your reservations, you being an officer of the law and all that stuff. But if you were to walk along to the end there, busy yourself in some way, my colleague there,’ she nodded to Tony, ‘could have it open in no time. And then we could move this along, because no one is going to answer this damned door. And that dog’s doing my head in.’

DI Hunter gave her an appraising stare. Looked at Tony, standing there all polite and besuited, big as a barn door with his bald head polished to the colour of oak from the summer sun, the gold crucifixes glittering in his ears. Looking as if he could demolish the building, never mind the door.

‘Don’t think I approve of this, because I don’t,’ said Hunter.

Annie nodded. Hunter walked off. Tony approached.

‘Open it, will you, Tone?’ she asked.

Tony pulled back and gave the door a kick just below the lock. It bounced open and the dog’s volume shot up by a few decibels. A Yorkshire terrier appeared in the doorway, yapping frantically but wagging his little stump of a tail. Tony observed the animal with disfavour.

‘God, I hate dogs.’

‘You a cat person, Tone?’ asked Annie. She could see DI Hunter coming back now, not hurrying.

‘Can’t stand them either. You know if you drop down dead, they’ll eat you? How’s that for loyalty? Shows their true nature.’

‘Thanks, Tone,’ said Annie, and Tony went back along the landing to stand at the top of the stairs again.

‘Hiya,’ she said to the dog, whose tail went into overdrive.

She nudged the door further open with her foot, and wrinkled her nose as a waft of something unpleasant hit her from inside the flat. DI Hunter was back. There was a brief tussle over who should go through the door first, so they pushed into the flat’s lounge together, the dog backing up on its haunches and still doing that irritating high-pitched yap-yap-yap business.

The smell of shit was suddenly overwhelmingly strong. Urine was slowly dripping on to a faded, threadbare carpet in the centre of the room. Above it, there was a young man hanging from the light fitting, flex twisted tight around his neck, dead eyes bulging, his tongue lolling swollen and black from his mouth.