She cocked her head to one side. “First,” she said, “you tell me why you want to know.”
Sean stirred his tea, keeping his eyes locked on hers. “That old war wound, yeah?” he said. “The reason I walk funny. That was done to me by a fifteen-year-old boy with a zip gun that, thankfully, he was too stupid to aim straight. He was a dealer, just a corner boy, you know what one of them is?”
“Oh yes,” said Noj. “I could have been described myself that way, many years ago.”
“Right,” said Sean, “I thought I was trying to help the kid. I convinced myself that I’d got his trust, talked him into giving up someone higher up the chain. The bastard I was really after, who put all the naughty little boys in my neighbourhood out to work. He set up a meet for me,” he shook his head. “Set-up being the operative words.”
“He shot you?” said Noj.
Sean nodded. “There was a load of old guff written about it afterwards, embarrassing shit about me being some kind of hero. Huh. A mug is what I was; trying to help some disadvantaged kid get off the streets, when all along that was the
only place he really wanted to be. So then, when they finally patched me back together, I was no good to the Met any more, had to take work as a private eye. That’s what brings me here. There’s a QC up in London thinks she might have enough evidence to get Corrine a review hearing. So she’s hired me to see what else I can dig up.”
Noj’s eyes widened. “Really?” she said. “So there is a chance …?”
“She’s a clever lawyer,” said Sean. “Don’t mean she’ll get anywhere. You saw how well my attempts to gain the confidence of Corrine’s known associates just went.”
Noj shook her head, put her hands out flat on the table in front of her.
“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “You wouldn’t have got much off of them anyway. I mean, they were all around at the time, they all knew who she was – but they didn’t have anything to do with it. They just got persecuted afterwards, like everybody else who was a little bit different. They think you’re Old Bill and they wouldn’t help the police with their enquiries if their lives depended on it.”
“So I gather,” said Sean, raising his cup. “So now, you tell me – where do you fit in?”
“I was there,” said Noj. “I saw everything,” she smiled, raising her eyebrow again. “But unlike everyone else you’re chasing after, nobody saw me.”
The tea was good, just as strong as Sean liked it, something not many people got right.
“All right then,” he said, “so let’s start at the beginning.”
“Very well,” said Noj, clasping her hands together. “Me and Corrine did indeed go to the same school, but we didn’t exactly make friends in the classroom. We just kept bumping
into each other, nights and weekends, round the same public toilets on the seafront.”
She paused, watching that one sink in.
“You were on the game?” said Sean. “How old were you?”
She nodded. “Fourteen, fifteen. That’s how we bonded. I did most of my trade there, Corrine preferred to take hers under the pier and come back to the lavs to clean up after. Different strokes,” she raised her little finger to the corner of her mouth, brushed an imaginary speck away.
“Corrine hated it,” she went on. “Her mum turned her out when she was twelve, made her do a load of dirty bikers. Three of them, she told me, and though she was a bit prone to exaggeration at times, I believed her. Can you imagine,” she closed her eyes, squeezed her fingers closer together, “that for your first time?”
“No,” Sean shook his head. “Thank Christ, I can’t.”
“Oh, don’t thank him, please,” said Noj, her eyes snapping open. “Anyway,” she wiggled her fingers as if to dismiss the Almighty from any further discussion, “that woman was a monster. Corrine eventually made a compromise with her, that she wouldn’t have to do it at home if she brought back enough money each week. The summer was OK, she worked in a guesthouse. But as soon as the season ended, well …”
Sean took another sip of his tea. It was details like this that had made him believe his job was worth doing, before that night in Meanwhile Gardens …
“It was different for me,” said Noj. “I don’t know if you’ll be able to understand this …” A wry smile twisted her lips. “But I rather enjoyed myself with those fools I tricked. They were a means to an end.”
Her stare became more intense. “It wasn’t just the money I
wanted,” she said, “though of course that did come in handy. It was the power. In a place like this, for a person like me, you need some kind of insurance policy, and that’s where I got mine. It wasn’t just the sad old men who hung around the toilets who were interested in my pretty young arse, you see. There were a lot more who were very respectable, very prominent upstanding members of our little seaside community. I made sure that every time they thought they were fucking me, I was fucking them right back …”
Noj wasn’t looking at Sean now, she was looking through him, revisiting scenes from a past that Sean didn’t even want to start imagining. But she also seemed to be on the verge of wandering away from the point.
“So,” he said, trying to steer her back, “you felt sorry for her, then? For Corrine?”
Noj shot him a look of disapproval. “Yes,” she said. “She was so defenceless. I tried to show her how to look after herself.”
“By dyeing her hair black?” Sean suggested. “That come from you, did it?”
Noj blinked wearily. “No, it didn’t. There was a bunch of them at Ernemouth High, as well you know. I was not one of them. You wouldn’t have even noticed me in those days, which is just the way I wanted it.”
“Then what?” Sean dropped his gaze to the eye tattooed on Noj’s hand. “Black magic?”
Noj pursed her lips, hardened her stare. “You’re starting to annoy me now,” she said. “I’m starting to think I may be wrong about you. That you might be just the same as Rivett and all the rest of your kind.”
“Maybe I’m not,” said Sean, wondering if all of this wasn’t just the ego trip of some death junkie, trying to weave herself
– or himself – into the story. Despite the dramatic flourishes, Noj really hadn’t told him much he didn’t already know. “You know what they used to call us, up in London? The Beast.”
She laughed, a semi-shriek, then put her hand up to her mouth to stop herself.
“That’s good,” she said, “naming you after him. Although,” her expression changed, her smile falling away, “he does play his part in this sad story, I’m afraid.”
“What,” said Sean, “are you talking about?”
“The misunderstanding that arose,” she said. “The misconceived notion, spread by the press and a thousand gossips, that Corrine was involved in black magic, comes from the policeman that arrested her. Gray, his name was,” she fixed him with her green stare. “He’d caught her once before, you see, with some pervert under the pier. And at the time she had a book with her, which bore the name of Aleister Crowley, or, as he liked to refer to himself, The Great Beast. You know who I’m talking about?”
Sean nodded. There was a shop that sold T-shirts of him on Portobello Road, a grumpy-looking, old bald guy, with pentagrams drawn around his head.
“Good,” Noj carried on. “Well, Gray took that to mean something that it didn’t. The ironic thing was I don’t believe Gray was a bad man. But because he had colleagues who he’d told about this book, and because of how Corrine and her friends dressed themselves, two-and-two made six-six-six …”
“But I’ve seen the crime-scene photos,” Sean interrupted. “There was a pentagram drawn on the floor, in the victim’s blood. You’re not trying to tell me Rivett made that up?”
Noj drew herself up, like a cobra about to strike. “You have
no idea what that man is capable of,” she said. “How he can invert anything to suit his own purposes.”
It was Sean’s turn to laugh now. “Oh dear,” he said, putting his mug down, “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to come up with something better than that if you want me to believe a word you say. All you’ve offered me so far is tangential stuff that could have come straight out of the papers.”
Noj looked down at her hands, spread her fingers out like a fan across the tabletop.
“Don’t mock me, Sean Ward,” she said quietly. “You are very alone in this town, remember. You need all the friends you can get.”
“Well then,” said Sean, equally softly, “you tell me something I can use.”
Noj closed her eyes. “I will do my best to help you,” she said. “Your concern for wayward teenage boys has touched my heart, truly. But you have to remember; I live here. I don’t know if I can cash in all my insurance policies for you yet.”
Her eyes opened, rested on the watercolour on the far wall. They had lost their earlier spark and so had she. At last she seemed to look her age.
“You know that Rivett’s retired, don’t you?” said Sean.
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “Sharks never stop. If they did, it would kill them. I’ve set some bait for him though. You just see if he doesn’t bite.”
“What do you mean?” said Sean, rubbing his temples.
Noj shrugged. “Why don’t you drop by again tomorrow, after you’ve made a few more enquiries? You might believe me by then.” She waved her hand, a dismissive gesture. “And now, you can see yourself out.”
He left her, still staring at the picture on her wall. The
moment he stepped into the square, his mobile started up. It was Francesca. “Hello,” she said, “where are you?”
Sean smiled, thankful for someone relatively sane to talk to. “Not far from your office, if that’s where you are.”
“Hanging around Captain Swing’s, are you?” she guessed. “Dig anything up there?”
“I’m not sure,” said Sean.
“Well,” she said. “I’ve found something and I think it’s pretty good. Wanna come up and see me?” she affected a Mae West drawl.
“I’ll be right there.”
“Gentlemen,” said Rivett, “I got a special little job I’d like you to do for me.”
Alone out of the corkboard cubicles that divided the incident room up into work stations, Rivett had his own sealed office, with plexiglass windows on all sides so he could see out, soundproofed on the inside so no one else could lug in. Above his big mahogany desk, with its overflowing in-trays, was a picture of Mrs Rivett and their two young daughters, neither of which appeared to have taken after her. Big, chunky girls they were, with little eyes and flushed red cheeks, slightly older than Gray’s kids, but still only junior-school age. Their mother was a slight, mousy wisp by comparison.
“If I may have the fullness of your attention for a moment,” said Rivett, his eyes travelling around the assembly of night-shift officers, pausing for a moment to twinkle on his favoured detective sergeants, Jason Blackburn and Andrew Kidd. “As we are all aware,” he said, “keeping perverts off our streets is an onerous task. But one that I know that you,” he turned his gaze on Gray, “are particularly keen to respond to. Because
of the diligence of officers of your calibre, I know my own precious little Charlotte and Thomasina can sleep safely in their beds at night.”
Gray glanced down at his shoes. When he looked back up, Rivett was still studying him.
“What’s also come to my attention during the course of your duties,” he moved around to his desk, reached out a photograph, “is that you might have come across this woman.”
He held up the mugshot. Even caught in the flash of a police arrest shot, she radiated insolent beauty.
“Janine Bernice Woodrow,” said Rivett. “Or Gina, as she like to be known. Moved down here from Norwich about a year ago now, intent on making a name for herself. Quite a looker, in’t she?”
“Until she open her mouth,” said Gray, recalling their last encounter.
“Quite so, detective,” Rivett nodded. “Now, I been having a word with the Harbour Master about a certain vessel making regular trips here from Holland. You know what them sailors are like, prone to making all kinds of bad company when they stop off in a port for a while. We got one of them under obs,” he tossed Gina Woodrow’s mugshot down on the table, lifted up a file from the top of his in-tray and took out another. “A certain Nicholas Knobel.” A thin, angular face with high cheekbones and extremely pale eyes stared back at them. “Who is only gonna win the prize,” Rivett went on, “of being the dirtiest bastard aboard the good ship
Sealander
when you apprehend him tonight.”
“Oh?” Gray scratched his head. “What for?”
“Smack,” said Rivett. “This here is the source of our latest epidemic in recreational suicide. And our friend Gina is his
bag lady, the contact point for them bikers what have been doshing it all about. Fortunately for us, she couldn’t keep her foul mouth shut about that. A little bird tell me,” Rivett consulted his wristwatch, “she’s got a date with him tonight, when he go on shore leave, which is round about now. By the time he make his way up to our favourite Market Row tavern, you lot’ll be coming through the door to nick the pair of them, and bring ’em home to me. They will be carrying, I assure you.”
He reached in his pocket. “I’ve signed you out a van,” he said, tossing the keys across to Gray. “Pub backs on to a car park, so you won’t have to drag her far.”
* * *
Gray got into the driver’s seat, Blackburn and Kidd riding shotgun beside him, another couple of younger lads in the back.
“This is a laugh,” said Kidd, “five of us to take down a tart and a Dutchman. Len must think we’re a right bunch of poofs.”
“You in’t met Gina then?” said Gray, putting his keys in the ignition.
Kidd rubbed his crotch. “No, I in’t had that pleasure yet. Or should I say, she in’t.”
“Mmmm,” Blackburn rubbed his palm up and down his truncheon and they traded dirty sniggers. Gray steered out of the car park, trying his best to ignore their innuendo.
“That’ll be because of the bikers,” Gray said. “She’s in with them, she’ll have plenty of back-up, won’t she? You’ll most probably be needing that,” he glanced sideways at Blackburn, still fondling his cosh, and accelerated down the road.
“Wee-hee!” Blackburn affected a good ol’ boy accent.
“Looks like we gotta gunfight at the OK Corral on our hands, d’you hear that, boys?” He glanced at the youngsters behind them. Gray turned left and then left again onto George Street.