“Up?” She stopped dead, pausing only long enough to fling her Pucci patterned scarf over her shoulder. “Have you suffered a blow to the head?”
“You’re not skint,” I said, shivering as an arctic gust swept down from Kingsway and made me wish I’d been wise enough – as Caz had been – to swipe a bit of decent schmutter from the last fashion mag job we’d both had. “I know your grandma left you money.”
We stood on the pavement as, behind Caz, the Sunday matinee crowd from the new Duran Duran Jukebox Musical Planet Earth (a show with a plot so Byzantine that one reviewer had titled their demolition ‘Is there something I should know?’) oozed out of a theatre, and – with the look of a coliseum mob on whom the Christians had been set – milled about absently.
Caz tilted her head back, breathed through her nostrils, refocussed her somewhat bleary eyes on me and said, “Funds. She left me funds, Danny. Money is something one never needs to talk of or think about. Funds are what one acquires then watches slowly but inexorably drain away.”
I laughed dryly. “Okay, but you’re not exactly skint, so what’s the problem?”
She slumped her shoulders, set her face and stared upwards at the impressive frontages of the buildings around us. The whipping wind made her eyes tear up. “Really? After everything, we’re having this conversation?”
“No,” I looked around desperately. “We’re not having this conversation but,” I looked around absently, “are we looking for a taxi or what?”
“No,” she said definitively, “we are not looking for a taxi.”
“So—” I said, but, before I could say another word she interrupted me.
“We are going somewhere I can throw up a pint of gin – The Waldorf has nice restrooms – and then we are going somewhere quiet to talk. Because talk, Mr Bird, we must.”
*
“People have been trying to demolish this building forever,” Caz looked around her at the rather plain interior, the checkerboard flooring reflecting dully in the mixed moon- and street-light.
“But it’s still here.”
She regarded the empty, moonlit church, the blue-orange light from outside leaking into the space and shivered slightly, wrapping her arms around herself.
We’d made our way – after Caz had dealt with the immediate effects of a martini overdose – to a small church which seemed to sit in the middle of a traffic island in the middle of Aldwych, and, as I’d stood outside wondering why we were huddling in the doorway of an architectural anomaly, Caz had dug into her capacious handbag and extracted a set of keys.
“Perk of the trade,” she’d said, explaining nothing as she slid, firstly, a couple of slim modern keys into their matching padlocks, then a larger, more aged key into a hole in the door.
And thus, we’d found ourselves sitting in the apse of St Clement Dane, alone, listening to the whoosh of passing traffic and watching the slashing upper-deck lights of buses as they passed, unseeing beyond the high, dim leaded windows.
“But it’s still here,” she finished.
I waited, silently, wondering what, exactly was the issue between Caz and Prissy. After a while, she spoke again.
“My mother used to take me here. When I was younger. Before she left. Later, of course – after she’d packed her bags and left us – they said she’d been meeting her lover here. She was, as they said,” Caz inhaled deeply through her nose, her back straightening, “no better than she should have been. Except her father flew multiple air raids. On Dresden, on places that – even today – can’t be talked of. He was a soldier and a gentleman, and she was his daughter. And I’m hers.”
She sighed, then cracked and pushed a stray hair from her eyes as she coughed briskly.
“And – for her and for me – money is not the point.”
“So, what,” I essayed, “is the problem?”
“That woman,” she glanced over her shoulder, towards the doors we’d come through. “That attitude.”
I waited, glancing around in the gloom, as random faces from gilt-framed portraits were suddenly illuminated by passing buses, glared at me, then vanished.
“My family have done what needed to be done. Because it had to be done and because it was the right thing to be done. We’re very much aware of our privilege. And of our origins. And we are not traitors or sanctions breakers. We’re better than this.”
“The Russians,” I prompted.
She nodded. “Bobbers is not – despite all you may have heard – a moron. Mind you, he’s not exactly a genius either. I find it highly unlikely that he’s managed to find, hook, catch and reel in a sanctioned oligarch, do it all on his own and then get caught on tape discussing the deal.”
“So what do you think happened?”
“Prissy,” she spat the word. “Prissy loves money, she loves power – or, at least, she loves people thinking she has power. Over them. My bet – if I had any ready cash to place a wager with – would be that Prissy found the Russians, introduced Bobbers to them and then made the fatal mistake of assuming that the deal was done, thus she could take her eye off the ball. With disastrous results.”
It made sense.
“So what are we going to do?” I asked.
“We?” She turned to face me. “We are going to do nothing my dear. This isn’t your problem, though she tried to make it so.”
“I’m your friend,” I insisted, “and friends help each other out.”
Caz shook her head. “It infuriates me that that woman has managed to manoeuvre this so well. To get me to bring you along, knowing that you’d feel obliged. To drop Bobbers into the mess, so that she knew I’d feel obliged. To throw my daddy at me, and make it my job to fix the mess her greed undoubtedly got us in to. And she gets to go back to shopping for frocks while the mess is sorted. I hate her so much.”
I sat in silence as another bus – the light from its top deck illuminating the church, showing our breath coming from us in clouds – whooshed past on the street outside, then: “Hatred notwithstanding,” I said at length, “what are we going to do?”
Caz smiled sadly. “You’d really help?”
I put an arm around her, felt her bristle slightly, then relax and lean against me. “I have to help,” I said. “It’s what friends do. It’s what you have done for me so many times before.”
“But I’m never there,” she said. “Any time you need help I’m missing, on holiday with some man or off gallivanting somewhere.”
“You’re there when it counts. So I’m here.”
“When it counts,” she slurred, the gin – or the emotion – finally hitting her.
“So what are we going to do?” I pressed.
Caz sat up straight, rifled through her capacious handbag and pulled out her mobile phone. “We’re going to call a cab. Then, I’m going to head home and consume several litres of water, a sachet of Dioralyte, a fistful of paracetamol. Then, we’re going to sleep and tomorrow – after all that – we’ll figure out what’s to happen next.”
She smiled at me in the moonlight, her eyes twinkling with what was either tears or gin weep, stroked my cheek gently and then hit dial on her phone.
“Thank you,” she whispered as the phone at the other end began to ring.
TWELVE
“Is this gonna take long?” Ali asked, dropping her not inconsiderable bulk into a kitchen chair which groaned almost as loudly as the chest freezer on the opposite side of the room. “Only, I’ve got a pub full of punters out there, and that part-timer you got to help me wouldn’t know the difference between an IPA and an IUD.”
I looked around the table. Ray and Dash sat on one side, Caz at the head, Ali facing the boys and me at the other head of the table.
“Look,” I started, cleared my throat, then starting again, “I know that this latest, um…” I searched for the right word.
“Disaster?” Ali offered.
“Debacle,” Caz proposed, a gently mocking smile playing around her lips.
The
twins looked at each other, and – as one – suggested, “Horror story.”
“I was going to say situation,” I stared at them all, “though disaster is probably a fair stab,” I nodded a grudging acknowledgement at Ali, before turning to the boys. “Horror story, however, seems really over the top.”
“You’ve been ‘Serving sausage rolls and ploughman’s lunches in a room feet away from where a decomposing corpse lay rotting,’” Dash said, quoting from that morning’s Daily Mail.
“‘The Marquess of Queensbury puts the ‘Pub’ in ‘Bad Publicity’,’” Ray added, having flicked through The Sun.
“Right,” I said, “I’m banning those rags. Both of them. Immediately. Possession will be a sackable offence from here on in.”
“Oh sweetest,” Caz said, “even The Guardian suggested this might be the most murderous boozer in Britain. Though, of course, they misspelled murderous. Look, the thing is—” she said, but was interrupted by Ali.
“The thing is,” she said, “like I always say – every time – there is no such thing as bad publicity. We are rammed out there, so unless you want Flighty Fiona giving away free pints, I really need to get back to the bar sharpish.”
“Okay,” I looked around the assembled. “Does anyone,” and here I fixed my headiest stare on Ali, “have any idea who the stiff was?”
“Oh Gawd,” Dash moaned, “he’s off again.”
“Why you looking at me like that?” Ali bristled, a deep red blush suffusing her from the neck to the hairline of her crew-cut head.
“Because you’ve been around here the longest,” I said, turning to Dash, “and what does, ‘He’s off again,’ mean?”
“Danny, mate,” Ray said, “we love you. Really, we do, but this whole Jessica Fletcher thing has got to stop. Let the five-oh do their job. Get back to the ploughman’s.”
“So just cos I’ve been here longer than ten minutes, you think I’ve been burying stiffs in the cellar?” Ali’s umbrage dialled up a notch.
“No, Ali,” I protested, before turning back to Ray. “Jessica Fletcher? She’s a little old lady. Couldn’t I have been Sam Spade?”
Dash sniggered. “You can claim to be six foot three on the internet,” he said, “but that don’t make you Jack Reacher.”
I shook my head exasperatedly, “What does that even mean?” I asked.
At which point Caz slapped the table with her open palm. “Focus, people!” she called.
“Look, Ali,” I turned back to my bar manager, who was now silently fuming, in the manner of a double-denim-clad Krakatoa, and tried to diffuse the tension. “I was not for a second suggesting you had anything to do with the body; only that you might remember something – some event, some person – that might have put them down there.”
“Have you been on drugs for the past year?” Ali asked, the first tremors evident. “The pub is owned by Chopper Falzone. Chopper fucking Falzone. And you’re asking me if I have any idea who would have planted a stiff in the cellar?”
“Fair point,” I held my hands up in obeisance. “Except I don’t think Chopper did this. It doesn’t fit what we know of his MO for starters. And you two can stop sniggering,” I added, pointing at the twins.
“Sorry,” they removed the smirks from their mugs, before Dash added, “but MO is so not a Jessica Fletcher word. You just put that in to look hard, didn’t you?”
“Oh, grow up,” I groaned.
“So, Ali, do you have any idea who might have been planted downstairs? Or any idea who might have done it? I mean, twenty years ago, was Chopper the force he is today? Were there other, I don’t know, faces on the scene?”
“Faces?” Dash rolled his eyes and pulled his phone out of his jeans pocket, tapping at it.
“Bit Guy Ritchie,” Caz said, a single raised eyebrow suggesting I might be going a little deep-end on the gangster parlance.
“Boys,” I turned to the ASBO twins, “can you do some digging? Check out the history of this place. Any specific mentions of this pub in papers, court cases, any suggestion that there might have been another gangster who could have been – I don’t know – muscling in on Chopper’s territory.”
“Can’t you ask the pretty policeman?” Ray asked, and received my most venomous glare
“No.”
“Why not?” he persevered.
“Cos he’s got a wife, and Danny here is still coming to terms with people who appear to be one thing and turn out to be something else,” Caz announced.
“And Ali,” I pleaded, glad of the opportunity to move the discussion on from Nick and Arianne, “if you do think of anything, can you let me know.”
Her eyes blazed. “I won’t think of anything,” she said, “cos I don’t know nothing. Now,” she stood from her seat, “you need anything else? Or should I get back before Flighty Fiona starts handing out free shots to the neighbourhood drunks?”
She bustled out of the room, and I looked around the table. “Is it me or did she seem a bit too eager to get away?” I asked.
“She’s just worried about the bar,” Ray said.
“Plus,” Caz said quietly, “of all of us, she was probably the only one anywhere near the place twenty years ago.”
“Jesus,” I shook my head. “How long has Ali been working here?”
The trio looked at each other as though attempting to silently calculate the woman’s tenure. “Since God was a small boy,” Caz decided.
“But that doesn’t mean she had anything to do with…” Ray whistled and pointed downwards as the freezer recommenced it’s banging.
“I know,” I said and sent the boys back to the bar before Ali could complain about being deliberately short-handed.
“So what happens next?” Caz asked as they trudged back to work.
“I really don’t know. I guess I wait for Nick to call again, and see what I can get out of him.”
“Or you could call him first.”
“Or I could call him first,” I agreed. “But we have the other issue to deal with as well,” I said pulling my chair around so it was next to hers. “So how do you propose we handle that?”
“Easy,” she said, “we go and see this Balthazar Lowe, blackmailer to the stars.”
“You think that’s wise?” I asked. “This early in the game?”
“Oh we’ve already lost some time. I’ll bet that Prissy spent days trying to figure out how to make him go away or intimidate him or simply ignore him out of existence before she realised she had to do something.”
“And the something was calling us.”
“Exactly. And now that we have been called, I propose to take the skirmish – if not the battle – to Mr Lowe, rather than waste any more time trying to figure out a strategy.”
“So – what? We just go knock on his door?”
“Or we call the number he gave Prissy, tell him we’ve been authorised to negotiate and make an appointment to see him tomorrow at his office,” she said, reaching for her phone.
As Caz dialled the number, I headed out of the kitchen towards the bar and stopped just outside of the door.
The long hallway that lead to the bar was, as usual, filled with boxes of crisps, cases of booze and the usual detritus that really should have been in the cellar if anyone could be bothered to continually go up and down to that dark dank space (and if it hadn’t already been filled with slowly decomposing bodies, my overactive – and over dramatic – mind pointed out).
And at the end of the hallway, huddled down as though trying to hide and peering through the beaded curtain that lead to the bar proper, was Ali.
I cleared my throat and she jumped, staggering backwards and landing flat on her back a few feet from me.
I ran to help her up, enduring her most outraged glare and a furious – but whispered – entreaty that I keep my voice down.
As I helped her to her feet, I realised that Ali – the woman who had faced down drunks, gangsters and deranged drag queens – was shaking and visibly upset.
<
br /> “What’s up?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light.
She tore her eyes from the curtain at the end of the hall – the low autumn light making it impossible to see anything beyond it – and stared wildly into mine.
“That man outside, the one who’s just walked in. Can you get him out? Please.” she entreated me, her eyes filling up with tears.
“What’s going on, Ali?” I asked, and she shushed me.
“Get rid of him. Don’t let him know I’m here,” she begged.
I nodded. “Wait here,” I said.
I made my way down the hallway, entering the bar just in time to hear Dash say, “Yeah she was here a minute ago. Danny? You seen Ali?”
“Ali who?” I asked, shooting daggers at Dash.
“Ali—” he broke off, finally getting my point.
I turned to the man on the other side of the bar, who was regarding the two of us with a faintly-amused turn of the lips.
“She here?” he asked.
Despite the fact it was November, he had a tan (which did look like it had been applied with a brush) and a check flannel shirt which was open at least two buttons deeper than was strictly necessary, displaying a matt of silvery hair at odds with the vibrant ‘beach blond’ barnet atop his head. Basically, if he’d been going for ‘80s Sybaritic chic,’ he’d hit the jackpot. Only his face – leathery and ‘lived in’ like a derelict squat – rang a bum note.
I shook my head. “No. We used to have an Ali work here, but she quit.”
“She quit?” he asked, the smirk accompanied now by an upturned eyebrow. “Only, I’m fairly sure I saw her standing…” he waved his hand up and down in my direction. I noticed that the back of his hand had a tattoo – a crude devil, the shape still visible, all sneering grin and spiky horns with a tail that snaked up inside his leather jacket, “right where you’re stood now.”
I shook my head. “She’s not here,” I said, noticing – as the low autumnal sunlight caught it – a gold chain with an ankh charm nestling in his chest hair.
“Not any more,” he said, the smile dying as a cold look came into his eyes.
Death Of A Devil Page 7
