Chief Inspector Ratchette was seething with anger. His eyes were darting around his office, taking in all the trappings of success. Would they be enough to get him out of the large and rather deep hole he seemed to have dug himself into? He didn’t hold out too much hope. Even his award for bravery seemed to be mocking him.
Ratchette sighed and sipped at his coffee. It was lukewarm and a skin had formed on the top. He felt it adhere to his lip and grimaced at the disgusting feel of it.
Kate came through the door as he was wiping his face. She smiled at him and he motioned for her to take a chair. As she seated herself he decided she really was a good-looking woman. Her hair looked different; it was glossy and thick, longer lately than she had worn it before, and her eyes, though worried, were clear and bright. The deep red lipstick she wore looked sexy on her. All in all, he thought she looked well. The perfect advertisement for a good sex-life. He had a strong suspicion that was what put the spring in her step and the wiggle in her arse.
Feminism never was Ratchette’s strong point.
He knew Patrick Kelly well and had been amazed when he had not heard any gossip concerning him and nubile young women since the start of the relationship with Kate. Patrick had been the slag extraordinaire of their mutual lodge, a byword among the other Masons in the getting of young crumpet and keeping of it. But since taking up with Kate he had turned over a new leaf and against his will Ratchette was impressed by the woman before him. She was keeping Kelly on the straight and narrow. Sexually anyway. If only the same could be said for his business dealings.
‘How’s it going, Kate?’
‘Frankly, sir, it’s a mess. We have a dead child who is apparently unknown. I have one of the team liaising with other nicks, to see if the body was brought here from another part of the country and dumped. We have another little boy still missing, though his brother was found. I have two perps, both of whom are the mothers and both of whom were placed at the scene yet each one denies any involvement whatsoever. One, I might add, tried to top herself. And on top of all that we’re no nearer a solution than we were when we started. Psychologists are trying to talk to the kids but it’s basically a waste of time. Both are too young and any good brief would argue that anything we got was put in the child’s mouth to further our own agenda.’
Ratchette nodded, but Kate was amazed to see he wasn’t really listening.
‘Look - I have to talk to you about something else - something personal,’ he announced awkwardly.
She raised one eyebrow and then frowned. ‘What is it?’
Ratchette twiddled with some pencils before saying carefully, ‘Can I get you a coffee, dear?’
Patrick was in Old Compton Street. He slipped straight through a sex shop and out into a back office, his face plainly registering disgust. A small woman in her sixties was sitting behind a wide mahogany desk there and she grinned at his obvious discomfiture.
Her thick guttural accent grated on his ears but he liked Maya, she was OK. A grafter, she always made sure that whatever job she undertook earned her and her partners money. She was trustworthy, honest by the laws of villainy, and hard. The three main attributes Patrick looked for in his business associates.
Today, though, he had the hump and Maya knew this. It was not hard to understand why either so she made allowances.
‘Sit down,’ she told him. ‘Relax and we’ll talk.’
He sat opposite her, and his dark countenance and steely eyes warned her that he was still a force to be reckoned with, and for only the second time in her life she felt real fear.
Maya Baker had come up the hard way. From turning tricks in her early teens she had gradually established a network of porn outlets and gentlemen’s clubs. These exclusive little enclaves catered mainly for S&M and spanking, a pastime she found many rich older men rather liked. She made a fortune, adhered to strict rules and was feared by colleagues and workers alike. Maya’s Achilles heel was her love of money. Real money. It was this that had led Patrick Kelly to come looking for her.
‘You’ve heard about Leroy, I take it?’ she began.
Patrick nodded.
‘I take the blame,’ Maya admitted. ‘I had to remove him, he was getting to be a pain in the arse. I didn’t know you wanted to talk to him or I would have left it a few days. Now, can I help in any way?’
Patrick was impressed despite himself. She had held her hand up, apologised and offered friendship, all in three sentences. Most men he knew would have spent ages beating round the bush before getting to the point. He also admired the way she didn’t try to apologise for what she had done, only for the timing. It had happened, was over, and now they must try to repair the damage.
‘Do you know anything about Duggan?’
‘Enough. Women - Eastern European mainly - plus a few local brasses.’ She grinned. ‘He was third-rate, Patrick, you knew that deep down.’
‘Have you any idea why he was topped and whether Leroy had anything to do with it?’
Maya clasped her heavily jewelled hands tightly together.
‘Of course I know. I know everything that happens in Soho. Leroy was planning to branch out. He was putting new girls out and about. Not the usual brasses, Pat, more the Awayday type. You know what I mean: come up from the suburbs for the evening, do a bit of collar then go home again. None of them wanted to embrace the life full-time. Leroy was doing quite well by all accounts but he trod on a few toes. Yours and Duggan’s for a start. A couple of the lap dancers were moonlighting for him. Duggan got annoyed, they fell out. That really is the crux of it. But the little black shit wouldn’t have had the guts to kill Duggan.’
‘So what made you remove Leroy then?’
Maya shrugged and lit a small cigar. ‘That’s private business, but I will tell you anyway. He was selling skag to a few of my girls. I warned him on more than one occasion and then he poached a couple. I had a word. He fucked me off so I had him wasted. Simple economics, Pat, nothing personal.’
He smiled and wiped his forehead in a comical gesture.
‘That’s all right then.’
She grinned. ‘He was shit on our shoes. Better we finish him now before he became too rich and protected.’
He nodded. ‘Who do you think wasted Micky, then?’
‘Please, Pat, where do you want me to start? He had more enemies than me and you put together. He courted trouble. It was bound to happen. Plus he was a cokehead and that always causes trouble in business. With his temperament coke was the last thing he needed, don’t you think?’
‘Heard anything on the pipeline, anything at all?’
‘Only speculation. I’ll keep my ear to the ground and if I hear anything interesting you’ll be the first to know, OK?’
Patrick rubbed his eyes. ‘I suppose that will have to do for the time being,’ he said tiredly.
Maya reached across the desk and took his hand.
‘Micky was an accident waiting to happen. Remember that in all your other business dealings. No matter how good the scam, first look at the perpetrators and decide whether you actually want to be with these people. It’s what I do and it’s stood me in good stead. Take a hard look at all your workforce on a regular basis, and decide whether they are working
for
you - or against you.’
Pat liked Maya but her constant preaching gave him the hump at times.
‘Good advice.’ He forced a smile on to his face.
She smiled back. ‘You know it makes sense.’
Caroline was in a small holding cell. Her make-up was gone, her skin was blotchy and her heart was rising and falling inside her chest so erratically she wondered if she was going to have a seizure.
She thought of Ivor, and tried to push the horrific images out of her mind. She saw him dead, disfigured, still smiling at her. And closed her eyes once more.
The cell door opened and she was given a thick white mug of tea and a sandwich, which she wolfed down hungrily. The cheap margarine made her grimace. She took a long noisy sip of scalding tea to compensate.
The sergeant watched her. So this was a concerned mother? He wondered what the world was coming to. When his youngest daughter had had mumps he’d not been able to sleep properly for a week through worry. This woman had mislaid a child, possibly killed it, and she was noshing away like it was a family picnic.
But that was what you were dealing with these days. Scum. None of them married. None of them with a man. He saw them every day of his working life and it depressed him. The whole fabric of society was broken and no one seemed to give a fuck.
He slammed and locked the cell door loudly, reminding Caroline of exactly where she was and how much shit she was in.
It certainly made him feel better.
Patrick walked into his house and ordered coffee, the newspaper and a sandwich from his housekeeper. As he settled himself in the conservatory and waited he looked out impatiently over his perfectly manicured lawns. This house got on his nerves at times; it was like a library, too quiet.
He picked up his messages and scanned them. Nothing he could be bothered with right now. Food and sustenance first then his thinking cap on. He was going to have to go into overdrive soon and start getting some answers.
He picked up a pad and started to make a list of people he was going to see. Something was niggling at him but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
Sitting in his leather wing chair, Pat thought about Kate. She was going to go ballistic, but he was sure he could talk her down eventually. He only hoped he had the guts to explain everything to her before someone else told her. Kate was so good, so honest, that at times it grieved him.
In the past, he had always felt that people like her were mugs, to be taken advantage of. Now, though, her goodness was the basis for his love and admiration. Kate would never bat away from home, he was as sure of that as he was of his own name.
She was decent.
She had swallowed what had happened with his daughter.
She had known that he had tried to arrange the murder of George Markham. But she had understood his anger, his feelings of fear and loathing because he had not been able to protect his only child. She had seen first-hand how the death of his beloved Mandy had affected him. He had needed to relieve his feelings of inadequacy and hurt, and he had done it in the only way he knew how. He had made sure that George Markham would pay.
However, by a cruel twist of fate, Markham had died at the hands of a prostitute. A fitting end for him.
But Patrick would have had him murdered, and would have slept better at nights knowing he’d done it. He had paid a serious amount of money to see that man dead; it was money he would never have regretted, and even though Markham died a vicious death, an agonising death, Patrick still felt deep inside that he had lost out.
He would do it all over again. Kate knew that; and he thought she could accept it.
But that was the other thing he loved about her: she could see two sides to everything, and unlike most people could admit when she was wrong. If only he shared those attributes, life would have been a lot easier over the years.
He took some deep breaths and concentrated his mind on what he was doing. The list was growing longer, but held out little hope. It occurred to him then that he was clutching at straws. What he needed was one good kick and he was on his way. If he could tell Kate what was going down before she heard the official version, he would be halfway home. But just the simple fact he owned the lap-dancing club was going to cause him aggravation of the highest calibre.
He wished now he had confided in her about it sooner. She wouldn’t have liked it but it was legal and above board, and she might have accepted it. Now it looked as if he’d been trying to get one over on her. That was what would cause the real hag.
The coffee had given him indigestion and he rubbed at his chest. This was all he needed on top of everything else. He glanced at the clock and saw it was getting late. Normally Kate had rung by now. A prickle of fear touched the back of his neck and he shivered. He shrugged off the feeling by reminding himself that she was working on a difficult case that was also very emotive, so he could not expect the usual banter and chatter two or three times a day. But that icy hand still seemed to be gripping his heart.
Hoping to lose himself in the news, he opened the paper. There was an article on the Internet and it depressed him. He had already been offered an in on over six different porn sites. Kate came into his mind again and he sighed. There was real money to be made on the net and he knew that if he got in now, he would coin in a fortune at some point. But for Kate, always Kate, sitting on his shoulder whispering reproaches in his ear.
He smiled. She was a good woman, none better, and since being with her he had not had a moment’s inclination to stray, which was strange in as much as Patrick Kelly could have anyone he wanted. Most women he dealt with were there for the taking by the highest bidder. And therein lay the crux of his problem: he didn’t want to buy sex, not even with presents and trips abroad as opposed to good hard cash. He wanted sex with someone he loved. Someone he cared about. Though he knew that most men of his acquaintance would have had him committed if he’d said that out loud.
But he would miss Kate so much if she weren’t there. He could talk to her about anything. A little voice inside was saying:
Yeah, except your lap-dancing club and the other businesses she knows nothing about
. He forced the voice from his mind and concentrated on the newspaper article.
When the phone rang at last, it wasn’t Kate. It was more trouble.
Taking a deep breath, Pat listened to a high-pitched female voice telling him that four of the hostesses had not turned in and that the others were all handing in their notice. Patrick slammed down the phone and quelled an urge to throw it through the glass window of the conservatory and into the pool. Instead he went up to his bedroom and had a long hot shower. It occurred to him then that he was waiting for something to happen. It was an oppressive feeling, bearing down on him all the time.