We rolled away from the kerb. I sat studying the back of Harry’s brick-red neck where it bulged uncomfortably over his collar. Pearls of sweat trickled down it. His close-cropped greying dark hair studded the roll of flesh with damp battered bristles. It looked like a past-its-best nailbrush.
I supposed we were heading towards the Silver Circle, one of Mickey’s adult entertainment clubs. He had an office there. I’d originally met Allerton in the course of one of my previous investigations. I’d managed by pure chance to do something which had pleased him but that didn’t mean I was anxious to see him again. He, on the other hand, was apparently keen to see me. I ought to be feeling surprise instead of just dread. The surprise was missing because something had always told me that I would see him again, that it was a question of ‘when’ not ‘if’ Allerton would send for me. Once you’re drawn into the orbit of someone like Mickey, your name goes down in his little book.
But what could he want from me, of all people? I sat bolt upright, not because I was worried about the ‘real leather’ seat but because my stomach muscles were clenched so tightly I couldn’t lean back and relax. I might as well have been an aristocrat on the way to the guillotine, although as a tumbrel the car was comfortable enough. One or two pedestrians looked curiously at us as Harry drove smoothly around one-way systems: big Merc, chauffeur, me seated rigidly to attention in the back like a royal personage. I resisted the temptation to raise my hand in a listless wave as we glided past.
At my feet Bonnie whined. She had picked up my sense of unease and now didn’t like this any more than I did. She pushed her little black nose into my knee and I put down a hand to stroke her head reassuringly. Her ears drooped and her brown eyes were anxious. She’s a small animal of terrier type, mostly white with some black patches, curiously placed. If you look at her from one side, she’s white with a black patch over her eye and a larger one on her flank. If you look at her from the other side she has no patches at all except a tiny one on her back leg. The result is that, depending on which side you see her from, she is like two different dogs. It’s the sort of detail which might usefully confuse a witness if the occasion arose. It hasn’t yet. Give it time.
We had reached a narrow street beside the block which housed the club. Harry got out and, ever the gent, came round to the pavement side and opened the rear passenger door for me. I scrambled out, impeded by Bonnie who was so keen to get out of the car she squeezed between my feet and nearly brought me down flat on my face.
‘Steady does it,’ said Harry, putting out a meaty hand and gripping my shoulder.
We set off towards the corner. I walked in front and Harry followed. That was so I couldn’t double back and run away. When Harry wasn’t driving Mickey’s car he was guarding the club door. It wasn’t like Mickey to leave the entrance unattended and it wasn’t today. As Harry and I reached it, another male figure emerged from the gloom within and briefly intercepted us before he saw who was there.
I didn’t know the new man but he was of a sort once seen, never forgotten. He was tall with an exaggerated muscular build. I guessed it resulted from excessive weight-training. I can’t stand that kind of physique myself. Mostly those guys are all bulging biceps and triceps, with necks the same width as their heads. They have a funny way of standing with their arms hanging by their sides and their feet turned out. This one was blond-haired, thin-lipped and had the round bright blue eyes you see on dolls. As is generally the case with bodybuilders, he clearly thought himself the bee’s knees.
‘ ’Ello, Ivo,’ said Harry and something in his voice suggested to me that he shared my opinion of muscleman. ‘Boss there?’
‘You are late,’ said Ivo. He had a distinct accent I couldn’t quite place. ‘Mr Allerton is waiting.’ He emphasised the last word and accompanied it with a disdainful glance at me.
I met the glance with a steady look. I knew he meant Mr Allerton wasn’t to be kept waiting at any time and certainly not by nonentities like me. He didn’t like me staring back at him showing neither awe (which he expected) nor admiration (which he’d have preferred). He blinked and into the china-blue eyes came a very nasty look indeed. Harry gave me a little push in the small of the back. I sensed a message. Harry didn’t want me making an enemy of Ivo. He knew Ivo better than I did and the warning push was to be taken seriously.
Bonnie made a decision at this moment. She wasn’t going into the club. She trusted my judgement up to a point but that point had been passed. She didn’t like the look of the place and that was that. She flattened herself on the pavement and I couldn’t drag her forward. It was then Ivo made a mistake.
‘Mr Allerton is a busy man,’ he said. ‘Get rid of that animal.’ And he stooped to grab her collar.
The next moment he jumped back, swearing in an unknown language, nursing the bitten fingers of his right hand. The blue eyes blazed with rage.
‘Pick her up!’ snapped Harry to me. At the same time he moved to place his own considerable bulk between me and the doorman.
I scooped up Bonnie, tucked her under my arm wriggling protestingly, and hurried past Ivo inside. He said something to me in his own language as I entered. I didn’t know what it meant exactly but I could guess the general drift.
‘It wasn’t her fault; he was stupid to do that!’ I hissed to Harry.
‘Yeah,’ said Harry quietly. ‘But old Ivo there is a head case. You stay clear of ’im.’
As it was still early, the club wasn’t open for business but getting ready for action later. The foyer smelled of cigarettes, alcohol and sweat mixed with that of commercial disinfectant and lavender air freshener wafting from the toilets. It was decorated with large glossy pictures of the entertainment on offer, every kind of female body beautiful available thanks to plastic surgery and bottled hair colour. In stark contrast, an elderly woman pushed a vacuum cleaner back and forth across the carpet. She had a wrinkled darkly tanned skin and in her broad flat expressionless face all hope had long since died. She didn’t look up as we passed by her, but worked on bringing a note of mundane reality to that world of lip-gloss and hairspray.
The curtains over the arched entrance to the main part of the club had been looped back. Through them I could see the stage and, standing on it, a black-haired girl in a shocking pink leotard with her hands on her hips. She was glaring down at a small bald man who was yelling up at her.
‘Try and make it look sexy, can’t you? You look like you’re in a perishing aerobics class!’
Before I could hear the girl’s reply we’d turned into a side corridor. I lost sight of the stage but I heard a piano strike up, followed by the clumping of feet on the wooden boards and wails of despair from the bald
répétiteur
.
Mickey Allerton was waiting for me in his office at the end of the corridor. He was a well-built, well-groomed man in his fifties with the softest-looking skin I’d even seen on an adult, male or female, like a baby’s. His back was to me and he was watching one of the three CCTV screens behind his desk. It was the one showing the stage on which the girl was dancing. She had energy if not grace.
‘She’ll have to go,’ said Allerton as we came in.
‘Fine,’ I said in relief, turning back to the door.
I cannoned into Harry who gently but firmly turned me back again to face the desk.
Allerton swivelled in his chair to face me. His eyes were silvery grey, like fish scales. ‘Not you,’ he said. ‘Her.’ He jerked a thumb at the screen behind him. ‘No talent, that one.’ He nodded at a chair. ‘Sit down, Fran. Why are you holding that dog?’
‘She bit your doorman,’ I said. ‘Look, I haven’t got that kind of talent, either.’
I put Bonnie on the ground but imprisoned her between my legs. I wasn’t risking her snapping at Mickey if he came out from behind that desk. She was still in combative mode with the ruff of hair at the scruff of her neck standing up stiffly.
Allerton ignored the information about Bonnie biting the doorman. That was Ivo’s lookout. ‘Is it likely,’ he asked in a weary voice, ‘that I had Harry bring you here because I wanted to hire you as an artiste?’
‘No,’ I admitted. I’m on the short side and have the kind of figure my grandma described as ‘gamine’. Other people have been less tactful. The girl out there on the stage might not be ‘talented’ but at least she looked right.
‘Then don’t talk stupid. Harry, go and get us some coffee.’
I was sorry to see Harry go. He was Allerton’s heavy but I still felt safer with him there.
‘Well, Fran,’ said Allerton, leaning back in his chair and placing his well-manicured hands palms down on the desktop. He wore a large ring with some kind of gold coin set in it. ‘Long time, no see.’
It wasn’t that long a time but, as far as I was concerned, it couldn’t be long enough. I gave him a sickly smile.
He didn’t return it. Allerton didn’t waste smiles. But he extended opening courtesies with a vague gesture of his beringed right hand. ‘How are things? Got a job?’
‘Not at the moment,’ I confessed. ‘I was working as a waitress but the place was closed down.’
He nodded. ‘I heard about that. They were working some kind of wine scam, weren’t they?’ He tapped his fingers on the desk. ‘I’m very careful where I buy wine for my establishments. I’ve got a reputation.’
Yes, he had. I bet no one would dare to try and sell him plonk bottled up under an expensive label.
‘I’m glad you’re free at the moment,’ he went on. ‘I’ve got a little job for you. You’re still in the private detection business, aren’t you? Part-time, as I understand.’ Now he grinned briefly. ‘I heard about the play, too.’
There seemed to be nothing about my recent activities Mickey Allerton didn’t know. ‘I’m sort of still in the private investigation business,’ I said. ‘But I haven’t got the facilities to help you, Mr Allerton. I’m on my own.’
‘Facilities?’ He mimicked my voice and looked amused. ‘You don’t half come out with some winners, Fran. I don’t need any facilities, whatever they are. I just need you to do a little job for me.’
‘Susie Duke is still running her detective agency,’ I said desperately. ‘Perhaps she’d be better—’
‘You don’t know what I want, do you? So shut up and listen,’ he invited me. ‘Susie Duke isn’t suitable for this one. You are. Just the ticket, in fact.’
Harry brought in the coffee at that point. Allerton opened a drawer in his desk and took out a small dispenser of sugar substitute tablets. He tapped two into his cup.
‘Got to watch my weight,’ he said. ‘Doctor’s orders.’
‘Give up the sugar altogether,’ I suggested.
He shook his head. ‘I can’t drink coffee without a sweetener. Tea, just possibly. But coffee? No way.’ He contemplated the steam spiralling from his cup.
Harry handed me my cup and retreated to the back of the room. Bonnie, at my feet, had relaxed her guard and settled down. I waited for Mickey to tell me in what way I was just the ticket. He seemed to be taking pleasure in making me wait or perhaps I was just so wound up it seemed as though he was. He picked up a spoon, stirred his coffee, put the spoon gently back in the saucer. At long last he looked up. He opened his mouth. This was it. He was going to announce some awful shattering news. I held my breath.
‘I tried that Atkins Diet,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes?’ This was hardly what I’d expected and it threw me completely. Probably this was Mickey’s intention. I tried to sound normal but my voice was like something issuing from a computer. ‘How did you get on?’ I croaked tinnily.
He shook his head in sorrow. ‘I like roast potatoes with my Sunday lunch and chips with my steak. I found it difficult to give them up. Besides, my doctor said it wasn’t right for me.’
An Achilles heel! Was Mickey Allerton, whom I’d been inclined to view as omnipotent, in thrall to his medical adviser? I wondered if he might be a hypochondriac. The most unlikely people are. Still, any sign of weakness in him was to be stored up in memory. You never knew, it might be useful one day.
‘It’s not so much a job I’ve got for you,’ he said. ‘It’s more an errand. I want you to take a message to someone for me.’
I didn’t ask him what was wrong with the phone, e-mail or snail mail. But I was reminded of that poor Greek bloke who ran miles with the news of some victory and once he’d delivered it, dropped dead - and he’d brought good news. I had a funny feeling Allerton’s message would bring the recipient bad news. The ancient custom, as I’d heard it, was to kill the bearer of such tidings. Either way, being a messenger isn’t a job with good long-term prospects.
Allerton had resorted to the desk drawer again and now drew out a glossy photograph. He passed it to me across the desk. I took it gingerly.