‘I’ll deal with that,’ she said with sublime confidence. ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Mike. You just come with me, and if we see him someplace, then you disappear and I’ll do the rest on my own. Then he won’t even know you helped me. How’s that? It’s just that I want him to come back and help find this serial killer before he does it again.’
‘We dinna ken for sure it’s a serial –’
‘I know that!’ she said, almost irritably. ‘But Gus doesn’t! And you must surely want to work with Gus rather than that goddamned Roop!’ As Mike didn’t answer she felt he was wavering. She pushed her advantage home. ‘You come to the hospital at – what, six or so? I’ll be ready, and we’ll go see what we can find. Is it a deal?’
‘I don’t –’ he began but she gave him no chance.
‘Och, you’re a really great man, Michael Urquhart,’ she said in a thick Scottish accent. ‘And Gus’ll be as pleased with you as I am once he knows. See you at six then.’ She hung up, crossed her fingers on both hands and made a thumping action in the air. Please, she prayed in a vague way inside her head, please make him come. And then please let me find Gus. I really must find Gus.
To her great relief, Mike came. He was wearing black jeans and a silk bomber jacket in dark green over an open-necked shirt and looked extremely attractive. She beamed at him and said so, and he went a little pink.
‘Och, nothing of the sort,’ he muttered. ‘I just didna want to look like a policeman. Not when I’m wandering around pushing my nose where I’ve no’ been invited. Not in Poplar.’
‘Is it such a bad area?’ She was busy locking up and leading the way out to where her car was parked behind the main Admin. Block, hurrying him through the courtyard.
‘It can be,’ he said. ‘And most of the fellas who work from the nicks there know their locals well. They see someone from another nick prowling and they’ll want to know the reason why. I dinna fancy that. I wanted to look like – Well, ordinary.’
She glanced at the dark green jacket and chuckled. ‘You’re a bit snazzy to disappear into the wallpaper.’
‘You’re no slouch yourself,’ he said. ‘Now I’ve seen you I feel a bit better. There’ll be no one looking at me with you got up like that.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’ she demanded, looking down at her outfit; a big dark blue shirt over white cotton leggings and trainers. ‘I thought it ordinary enough for a hot evening.’
He grinned. ‘It makes it very obvious you’ve got legs that go on a long time after most women’s stop,’ he said.
It was her turn to redden and she was glad to be able to keep her head down as she unlocked the car and got in.
‘Aw, shucks!’ she said as lightly as she could and pulled the car out towards the main road. ‘Which way, mister?’
He directed her and the little car moved easily through the clotted early evening traffic going eastwards. She was glad to have the sun at her back; it was still very bright as it moved down towards the horizon and there were times when it was reflected back painfully into her eyes from the tall glass-fronted buildings that now dotted Docklands.
‘We’ll stay in Poplar High Street,’ Michael said. ‘It’s as good a place as any. I hope you’ve a good bladder.’
‘Hey, what?’ she peered at him sideways. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘We’ll be getting through a lot of fluid, I’m thinking,’ he said. ‘I’ll certainly need some comfort stops mysel’ if you don’t.’
‘I’ll worry about that when I have to.’
‘Never pass up a free lunch or a chance to pee,’ he murmured sententiously, and leaned forwards. ‘It’s a good motto. This is the way to Poplar High Street. There’s a pizza place very near. The Guv likes pizza.’
‘I remember,’ she said, ‘If I pull up can you go and ask for change for the phone or something? See if he’s in there?’
‘Something tells me I’m going to collect an awful lot of change,’ he complained, but he got out of the car as soon as she slid to the kerb and went into the pizza parlour, leaving her to stare at the street around her.
It was busy, shop lined, full of people wandering and gossiping, or hurrying, head down and purposeful, towards the bus stops. She tried to peer among them to see if Gus was there, simply walking, and realized how difficult it was to focus on individuals in a crowd. Her heart sank. Was this the stupidest expedition she had ever embarked upon? She began to suspect so.
Her suspicions were confirmed as the evening wore on. Mike emerged from the first pizza parlour with a pocket full of change for the phone and an accusation of being a bleedin’ nuisance from the man behind the counter. He got a similar response at the next three places they went to, and after that they took it in turns. Hamburger places, Chinese restaurants (their ploy there was to collect a takeaway menu and promise to call back when they were ready to order) and in each of them they scanned the customers as fast as they could to see if their quarry was there.
By eight o’clock Mike had become very quiet. By nine he was irritable and by nine-thirty they were both snapping at each other. They had covered all the possible places south of Poplar High Street to start with, and there were very few there, for the area was mostly India and Millwall Docks, and then had turned their attention to the long slice of buildings that lay between Poplar High Street to the south, the East India Dock Road on the north, and the West India Dock Road and Cotton Street on each side.
George had insisted they went up and down every little street, even those that were clearly empty houses, in case in one of them there was an eating place tucked away in which Gus might be, and secretly because she had a hope of seeing his car parked somewhere.
But when they’d drawn a blank and were back at the end of Bazely Street, the last one before they would be back in Cotton Street, Mike went on strike.
‘This isn’t working, Dr B.,’ he said plaintively. ‘I’m goin’ no further, and that’s the truth of it.’
‘Oh, Mike, we’ve done so much, we can’t give up now. He has to be here somewhere. You said yourself he was in Poplar.’ She almost wailed it.
‘Indeed I did not.’ He was indignant. ‘I agreed it was one of the places he might be, but there’s a lot more possibles further east, and south. Blackwall and Millwall or even as far as Canning Town. You can’t search the whole East End for him.’
‘I know that, but I have a hunch. Let me at least try a bit more. Just another – oh, half an hour. Please?’ She knew she was being childish but she couldn’t bear the thought of just driving home and admitting failure. She couldn’t. ‘Just another half-hour.’
‘Oh, Dr B. what’s the point?’
They argued for a few moments more and in the end he gave in, of course. He was a nice young man and not used to overcoming powerful women, as he finally said with some resignation. ‘My mother’s just such another as you. When will I learn to do as I’m bid and not waste my efforts in arguing?’
She laughed and, reaching over, squeezed his knee. Then she let in the clutch. ‘Where next, then?’
‘Other side of the High Street, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Go right over at the end of this street. That’ll lead you into – let me think – Ida Street, I think. There’s a nice pub up there, on the far side – corner of Follett Street, is it, and Susanna? Anyway, we can try there.’
It was, she later decided, as though her guardian angel had relented. She had come so close to giving in to Mike’s obvious unwillingness to continue and if she had – well, she preferred not to think about it. As it was, her persistence paid a dividend. It was of mixed value, but an undoubted dividend.
The pub was pleasantly old-fashioned; engraved glass windows, a lot of dark polished wood, a loud band of limited talent and a big crowd of customers of even more limited taste and judgement. At first sight she quailed; to push through a crowd like this would be intimidating indeed, she thought. Then she took a deep breath. Not to push, feeling as she did, would be to be a co
mplete nerd.
‘This time I want a drink,’ Mike said plaintively in her ear. ‘We’ve been wandering around all this time and all I’ve got out of it is a pocket full of more change than I’ll ever be able to use, an empty belly and a dry throat. So much for worrying about bladders.’
‘My round,’ George said at once.
‘You’re on.’ He grinned and led her to the bar.
It took a lot of shoving to get the attention of the barman and order their modest half of lager for Mike and bitter lemon for George. (‘I’m driving,’ she said with a mock self-congratulatory primming of her lips, and he laughed.) Then they turned to lean their backs against the small section of the bar they’d managed to get to themselves, and looked around.
It was, she decided, the usual East End sort of crowd. Girls in very tight low-cut sweaters covered in glittery sequins, downy jumpers equally plunging but appliquéd with satin rabbits and bows, and skirts so short and tight that they looked like oversized garters, with their hair frizzed wildly and their make-up impeccable and highly unlikely. There was a sprinkling of old-fashioned punks and a great many shaved male scalps, one of which, she saw with an academic interest, had a tattoo that looked like a barcode, and copious amounts of male earrings, neck medallions and heavy aftershave.
‘Look at ’em,’ Mike said in her ear. ‘As likely a bunch of villains as you’ll ever see under one roof. If I could lock ’em all up and really get to work on them we’d clear up half the crime on Poplar’s books, I swear. In one night.’
‘Why don’t they, then? The local guys, I mean?’
‘PACE,’ Mike said sourly. ‘The Police and Criminal Evidence Act has tied our hands as tight as it’s possible to without actually using handcuffs, as well you know. Mind you’ – he took a deep draught out of his glass and then looked at its almost empty state consideringly – ‘there’s a few bent coppers here and there who’d do well if we didn’t have PACE, so maybe it’s as well.’ He emptied his glass completely. ‘My turn, I think.’
‘Go ahead,’ she said. ‘I’m happy with this.’ And she sipped her almost untouched bitter lemon and went on looking around.
When it happened, it was so sudden that she found her heart literally missed a beat. Her medical mind registered the fact and then monitored her pulse rate afterwards. It thumped along rapidly for some time and she felt the sick lurch in her belly that goes with that sort of adrenaline surge, so made herself breathe more deeply to recover.
Gus had appeared at her left side just as Mike was murmuring something insulting about the woman standing close in front of them, a very short, painfully thin woman, with legs like sticks and a ribcage that looked like a prison cell in a Western movie, yet who wore the same swooping décolletage and pelmet skirt of the much younger girls. George giggled at Mike’s whispering and was turning her head to say something back to him when Gus’s voice came loud in her other ear.
‘And what are you two doing here?’ he said. His voice was icy. Even in the hubbub all around them she could hear that.
‘Gus,’ she said and turned on him with a grin as wide and radiant as she could make it. ‘Gus, I’ve been looking for you everywhere! It’s taken absolutely ages and –’
‘Has it now? But not too boring, I trust.’ He was looking at Mike with a very straight face, and there was a glint in his eye she’d never seen before. He looked as angry as it was possible for a man to look. She pulled on his elbow, hard.
‘Gus? Of course it’s been boring, you daft ’aporth!’ She used his own idiom deliberately. ‘But it was worth it. We’ve found you. Listen, Gus, there’s something I really must talk to you about –’
‘I might as well be on my way,’ Mike said, looking at her and at Gus and then at his half-empty glass. He turned, set it down on the counter very deliberately and began to push his way out of the crowd.
‘Yes. I think you might as well be on your way, indeed I do,’ Gus said. ‘I’ll deal with you some other time.’ Mike went without looking back, leaving George staring at Gus with her brows railway-lined and a certain amount of anger lifting inside her as well.
‘Gus, what on earth’s the matter with you? He spent all this time helping me find you and then you go and treat him like that! Are you mad?’
‘What?’ He turned and stared at her and again his eyes were flinty. ‘Mad? No. Not mad. Unless you mean in the sense of being bloody angry. Because I’m certainly that.’
‘But why?’ She was bewildered. ‘Because I came looking for you?’
‘Looking for me? Go and pull someone else’s. Maybe theirs will have bells on. Neither of mine have,’ he said, and then, quite suddenly, seemed no longer able to prevent his anger exploding. ‘Goddamn it, George, I no sooner turn my back than you’re out with some other geezer – and one of my own bloody DCs at that. You might at least have made sure you went somewhere where I wouldn’t be – and had a better tale than that you were looking for me! How bloody stupid do you think I am, for Chrissakes?’
She stared at him still, but her own anger was slithering away, melting and undergoing a sea change. A sense of warmth took over, and became sheer delight that could only have one sort of expression. And she expressed it.
She lifted her chin to point it at the grim smoke-filled ceiling above her head and burst into a peal of delighted laughter.
14
‘Oh, Gus,’ she managed to say when at last her laughter had spluttered to an end. ‘Oh, Gus, you are sweet!’
‘Sweet?’ He bawled it so loudly that even in a pub famous for keeping its decibel level so high it was painful people heard him and turned to stare. ‘Sweet, do you call it? I never heard such bloody –’
‘Jealous,’ she crooned. ‘You’re jealous.’ And beamed at him, a deeply happy woman. ‘I do like it. It makes me feel all warm inside.’
‘I don’t know why I even bother to talk to you,’ he roared. ‘You’ve got the understanding of a bloody flea.’
‘And you’ve got the manners of a louse,’ she said, glaring at him. Funny was one thing, but it was possible to take a joke too far. ‘Leave it alone, Gus. I came looking for you, with Mike’s help. You got jealous for no reason. End of argument, OK?’
‘Just like that? Why should I say yes, just like that?’
‘Because I’ve told you,’ she said. ‘I’ve explained the situation and you believe me, because I don’t lie to you. Do I?’
‘Oh, yes you do,’ he snapped. ‘You lied to me over that business of your so-called birthday party in the Oxford case, and –’
‘That was not a lie,’ she said disgustedly. ‘That was a necessary piece of – of subterfuge designed to solve a tricky case. And it did, didn’t it? So what are you beefing about?’
‘You. You come on like Miss Purely White, utterly honest in word and deed, when you can be the most manipulative, devious –’
‘Me!’ She was furious now. ‘Me, devious? The straightest and most –’
‘So what happened to that bottle you promised me, Gus?’ The voice was a thick oily one, sounding as though it reached the open air through a thick lather of peanut butter, the crunchy sort, so that now and again it cracked as well as oozed. George turned her head to stare and saw a large man standing behind her and grinning at Gus.
He was more than large. He was almost square, and since he was about – she estimated it fast, using her own five foot ten as the measure – about six feet three inches tall, that meant he carried a lot of bulk. It was almost more than she could take in at first, the amazingly broad shoulders, clad in perfect smooth dark brown silk and mohair, the glittering white shirt, the jauntily tied bow tie in yellow and brown paisley, and above it a face that was very broad, very pale, very smooth and supported by three chins. The eyes were large and a lustrous green made rather odd by the thick colourless lashes and brows above them. He had a good head of hair, but it was so fine and pale it was almost invisible, so that at first instance he seemed bald. He was one of the oddest men George had
ever seen.
‘So, where is it, Gus? Won’t the buggers serve you? Jim! A bottle of Bolly and quick about it!’
He had not raised his voice to give the order, nor turned his head, but at once there was a flurry behind the bar as one of the barmen rushed to do as he was told. By the time the large man turned his head to look, it was there, a cold bottle wrapped in a white cloth, set on a tray with a large dish of nuts and glasses alongside it.
‘Here we are, Mr Ledbetter,’ the barman said and Gus lifted his head sharply.
‘This is my shout,’ he said and put his hand in his pocket, but the man called Ledbetter laughed and shook his head.
‘Shove it on my slate, Jim,’ he said. ‘Bring it along, Gus. And your little friend.’ He smiled at Gus widely but still didn’t look at George. Then he turned and went and the crowd seemed to open ahead of him without being told or pushed.
‘Come on,’ Gus muttered. ‘And don’t say a bleedin’ word without checkin’ with me. Listen and learn. I’ll explain later. Maybe.’ He picked up the tray and followed the big man, and perforce George followed him.
By the time they reached him, he was sitting at the table in the corner, leaning back in the space made by the wall and the curve of the engraved glass window. Someone was leaning over the table to talk to him as Gus approached. Ledbetter said something in a low voice and the man looked over his shoulder, then melted away into the crowd. Gus put the tray on the table, pulled out a stool for George and took another for himself. It was, George decided, like being a child, sitting at the feet of a storyteller. Even sitting down he seemed to tower over them.
‘So, an introduction, Gus?’ the man said.
‘This is an old friend of mine, George Barnabas,’ Gus said. ‘Dr Barnabas, this is Mr Monty Ledbetter, an old friend of mine.’
‘George?’ Monty said. ‘Is that all of it or is it a shortening for something prettier?’ He was looking at her now, a very straight shrewd gaze, and George felt herself tightening under his regard.
Third Degree Page 14
