by J. L. Merrow
“Let you off with a caution, did they?” I said by way of hello.
Phil huffed down the phone, then was silent for a mo. “You’ve heard from Dave Southgate, then?”
“Just a bit. What the bloody hell were you thinking? You’re supposed to be digging up stuff on Carey, not handing him your arse on a bloody platter.”
“Christ, give me the benefit of the doubt, why don’t you?”
“Yeah, well, feel free to fill me in on all this doubt that’s going around.” I stomped over to the window and opened it a bit wider. The early-evening air rolled in damply, like a heavy blanket just out of the tumble dryer. “All I heard was you went round to Carey’s office and started acting like an East End heavy.”
“Bollocks.” He huffed again. “I’m on the train. I’ve had a fucking awful day, and all I want to do is have a shower and sleep. I’ll see you at the weekend. If that’s all right with you?”
You could cut the sarcasm with a knife, and now I felt like a bastard. “No,” I found myself saying. “Come round, yeah? I mean, I’m still not supposed to be on my own.” Which I wouldn’t be, obviously, Gary having brought his doggy paw print jim-jams to stay over, but Phil didn’t know that.
There was a long silence. “All right. I’ll see you in half an hour.”
We hung up, and I plodded to the stairs. “Gary?” I called. He was working in the spare bedroom again, claiming my bad mood was putting him off. “You’re off duty. Phil’s coming round.”
Gary’s heavy footsteps clomped down the stairs. “Are you sure about this? Given his wanton neglect of you all this time?”
“Yeah, well, he had an excuse.”
“I hope it was a good one.”
“Depends how you look at it. Nah, okay, it was a good excuse.” I didn’t reckon Phil would thank me for spreading it about, though.
Luckily, Gary didn’t push. “So you won’t be biting his head off? So to speak.”
I grinned. “Wouldn’t exactly be in my best interests, now would it?”
“Fine. I shall take my leave, then. He will turn up, won’t he?” Gary’s eyes narrowed. “If I find out later that he didn’t, there will be words spoken.”
“If he stands me up, I’ll have a few things to say to him and all. Don’t worry, mate. He’ll be here.”
“Promise to call if you need me?”
“Yeah. Cheers, Gary. You’re a mate. I owe you one.”
“Darling, I gave up keeping a tab years ago. Now, do you want me to linger until he arrives, or shall I begone?”
“I think I can survive the next twenty minutes till he gets here. I’ll see you, all right?”
Gary fetched his laptop, made me promise—again—to call him if I needed anything, and left. That gave me plenty of time to shove the VAT invoices back in their file—I’d been losing the battle anyhow—and make sure there was plenty of beer in the fridge. Then I cracked one open for myself. It’s thirsty work, tidying stuff.
Then I remembered I wasn’t supposed to be drinking yet. Sod it.
Phil let himself in a few minutes later. Any smart comments I might have been about to make died at the sight of him. He had that worn and grimy look you only get after spending the day in the enforced company of our boys in blue. “You look like shit,” I said, and handed him my beer.
“Cheers,” he said, and I couldn’t work out whether it was sarcastic or not. He took a long, long swallow and handed me the bottle back, empty. “You’re looking good. Feeling all right, now?”
“Better.” The headache was mostly gone, and the nausea. I wouldn’t be running any marathons anytime soon, but from the look of him, neither would Phil. “Hungry?” I asked.
“Nope. But I could go for another beer.”
I was halfway through fetching another bottle from the fridge when he grabbed me from behind. “Forget the beer. I need a shower. You up for joining me?”
“Want me to scrub your back?”
“I can think of better things you could be scrubbing.”
We moved upstairs slowly, shedding items of sweaty clothing as we went and stepping over the cats, who didn’t seem to see the point of moving just to accommodate two horny humans. Halfway there, I started making bets with myself on whether we’d make it to the shower.
I lost. Phil gently plastered me up against the wall on the upstairs landing and slid down to his knees.
“Oi,” I said weakly. My back was sticking to the wallpaper, and the edge of a doorframe was digging into my shoulder. “I know blokes are supposed to come out of the nick desperate for a shag, but you were only in there one day.”
He looked up at me, his eyes tired underneath sweat-dark hair. “Shut up,” he said, one hand on my bollocks and his nose nudging my pubes. My cock was so hard it’d take an eye out if he wasn’t careful.
I grinned down at him. “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
Phil’s always been good at taking a hint.
We had a long, leisurely shower after that, and then collapsed into bed. “Wanna talk about it?” I offered sleepily.
“Nope.”
“Fair enough.”
We were both snoring within seconds.
When I woke up next morning, my head felt clearer than it had in days. Well, since around midnight on Monday night, to be precise. The air coming in through the open window wasn’t exactly cool, but at least it was (a) coming in and (b) didn’t feel like it’d visited a sauna en route. Which was just as well, seeing as I had six foot two of solid muscle wrapped around me like a high-tog human duvet.
I thought about trying to wriggle out of his grasp without waking him, but seeing as a certain part of him was already bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and poking me in the arse, I decided the rest of him wouldn’t be too sorry to be dragged out of dreamland.
I wasn’t wrong.
“You planning on working today?” Phil asked a fair bit later, with a hint of you’d better not be if you know what’s good for you in his eyes.
Unless I was imagining it, obviously. “Nah. Thought I’d play safe and take it easy the next couple of days.” I stretched, enjoying the way my body was aching in all the right places instead of the wrong ones.
Phil played idly with a nipple. Mine, not his. “Want to pay Alan Mortimer a visit with me?”
“Sure I won’t get in the way of you two bonding over your Carey-induced jail experiences?”
“Not exactly an exclusive club, is it? People who’ve been done over by Grant Carey. I’m more interested in how Mortimer managed to get his conviction overturned.”
“Hoping he’ll end up doing your job for you?”
“Something like that. See if he wants any help. That bastard Carey needs neutering before he messes up anyone else’s lives.” Phil rolled out of bed, giving me a nice view of his perfectly sculpted arse. “I’ll take first shower. You can make breakfast.”
“Bloody hell, your concern for my health didn’t last long, did it?”
Phil turned and gave me a look that was deadly serious. “I’m always concerned about your health, all right? Always. Don’t you forget it.”
Thank God I wasn’t still going all weepy at stuff like that. It would’ve been well embarrassing. “Yeah, well, me too, right?”
I was halfway through cooking bacon and eggs before it occurred to me he might have had an ulterior motive for coming over all mushy.
Ah, well. I’d been gagging for a bit of home cooking too.
“So how come you called Dave to bail you out, anyway?” I asked when we were on the way to Mortimer’s and, more importantly, Phil couldn’t escape. “I thought you had your own mates in the Met?”
“A mate. Steve. Couldn’t get hold of him, could I?” He huffed. “And the rest of ’em don’t remember me quite so fondly.”
“No? What did you used to do—hog all the choccy biccies at tea break time?”
“You know what it’s like. Coppers take a dim view of anyone going private.”
“I’d have
thought they’d have a bit more loyalty, after all those years working together.”
Phil grunted and stared at the road ahead, and we were silent for a moment.
“Anyway,” I went on. “Are you going to tell me what happened to land you in the shit, or what?”
He muttered something that sounded a lot like what.
“Come on, spill.” I didn’t say anything about what a bloody idiot he’d been. I was a good boy, I was.
Phil was silent a moment longer, hands gripping the Golf’s steering wheel like he was worried it might do a runner. “You were in hospital. You could have fucking died. That bastard was practically creaming himself over it all.”
I gave him a sharp look. “He admitted it?”
“Course he bloody didn’t. But come off it—who else could it have been?”
Funnily enough, I’d been doing a fair bit of thinking about that very subject. “Well . . . I’m not saying it was this, but everyone seems to reckon I look a bit like him. Carey. And let’s face it, I was gawping up at Marianne’s window at the time. In the dark. Oi, watch out!”
We’d actually swerved a bit, which is not generally recommended while zipping round the M25 at not-quite-legal speeds.
“You think it was Harry?” Phil asked, waving a hand at a driver who’d honked at us. She gave him a hard stare and changed lanes to one a bit farther away from us.
“No. I dunno, but . . . it’s not her style, is it? If she was going to hit someone, she’d punch ’em in the face.”
“So who, then?”
“Maybe it was just someone who thought he was doing her a favour. I mean, she’s pretty popular, Harry is. Well, respected, anyway. And everyone likes Marianne—I mean, look at her. What’s not to like?”
“Do I need to be worried?” Phil sounded amused.
“Well, I do have a bit of a thing for blonds,” I said, giving the one in the driving seat an appreciative once-over. “Prefer ’em a bit more on the muscular side, though.”
“Is that right? Got it. No worrying until Harry bleaches her hair or Marianne takes up body-building.”
I laughed at the image that one presented. “She’d better not—Marianne, I mean. With arms that skinny, if she tried lifting weights, she’d snap.”
Phil didn’t answer, busy moving across lanes and towards the M40 exit. It wasn’t long before we were out of the green belt and into the built-up areas that mark the start of the London sprawl, although we were still zipping through them at a fair old rate on the dual carriageway. Even when we turned off into the local shopping areas, the roads were still wide, fast, and busy, like it was a given people would be in a hurry to get out of there. You couldn’t have paid me to live there.
I’d forgotten how tightly packed the houses are in London, even in the leafier part of Ealing, which was where Old Alan’s gaff was, slap in the middle of a row of terraced houses. The place was nice enough, I supposed, but it had that London feel about it you don’t get out in the sticks. I don’t mean it was tatty or anything—God knows I’m not one to complain about that, seeing as how Fleetville’s hardly the posh end of St. Albans. It wasn’t the ethnic mix—where I live, there’s more sari shops and halal butchers than there are pubs. And there are plenty of pubs. But it was, I dunno, less relaxed here or something. More businesslike, if by businesslike you mean not having time for anything but making a profit.
“It’s smaller than I expected,” I said, as we pulled up outside. There wasn’t a space free to park along the kerb, so Phil blocked off Mortimer’s driveway with the Golf.
Phil huffed. “Don’t tell him that—we don’t want to start by putting his back up. Had to downsize, didn’t they? After he got banged up. Used to have a big place down in Rotherhithe.”
“Must have been a bugger for the missus and the kiddies. All this going down in the world, I mean.” The Mortimers had two, kiddies, that was. Mrs. M. was currently out on the school run, picking them up from the local primary school, and if she kept to the plan, taking them for a nice long play on the swings in the nearest park. You couldn’t blame Mortimer for not wanting the nippers around while we chatted about his time inside, but I wasn’t sure why he wanted their mum to be out as well. I mean, she must have noticed he’d gone to prison. “Still, kids that age are resilient. They probably coped a lot better than if they’d been in their teens already.”
“Maybe,” Phil said shortly, which was probably just his polite way of telling me I was talking through my arse.
We got out of the car, rang the bell, and waited. After the artificial chill in Phil’s car, the air out here was thick and hot, smelling of exhaust fumes with a sickly overlay from the scrubby rose bushes in Mortimer’s tiny front garden. Unlike neighbouring houses, though, there was no rubbish lurking in the flowerbeds, so clearly either Mr. or Mrs. M. still had some pride.
Phil had to lean on the doorbell a couple more times before it finally opened a grudging three inches. “Yes?”
“Phil Morrison. And this is Tom Paretski.”
“Right.” There was a pause, and then the door opened fully. “Come in.”
It didn’t sound all that welcoming. Not that it was all that unfriendly either, mind. Just . . . sort of flat. Not that interested in whether we came in or didn’t. We trooped in, wiped our feet dutifully on the mat, and followed Mortimer into the small front room, where the grey light filtering through the net curtains gave me my first good look at him.
Mortimer was the thin, nervous sort, with greasy skin, damp palms, and a face like a pissed-off squirrel. I wondered who’d been messing with his nuts.
Then again, he had just been in prison. From what I hear, you have to expect that sort of thing in there.
He was wearing a suit and tie, which seemed a bit weird for a bloke in his own home with no job to go to. Still, he’d been expecting us. Maybe he thought we were worth dressing up for. I felt a bit bad about turning up in jeans, a T-shirt, and my work boots. Mind you, even Phil wasn’t in a suit and tie today, and he actually had the sleeves of his designer shirt rolled up in deference to the heat, which was even worse here in the city than it had been in Hertfordshire.
Mortimer must have been melting—he was certainly sweating—but it didn’t look like that jacket and tie were coming off while we were around.
“Tea?” he said abruptly.
“Not for me, ta,” I said, just as Phil went, “Please.”
I turned to give him a look as Mortimer scuttled off, presumably into the kitchen to bung the kettle on. “God, how can you drink hot tea in weather like this?”
“Not about the tea, is it?” Phil muttered. We sat down on the leather sofa, which was too big for the room. “It’s about the ritual. The social aspect. Putting the bloke at his ease. You getting any vibes?”
“No, just whiplash from the sudden veer in subject.” I listened for a moment. “Not sure. Might just be the usual background stuff. Bit quiet, actually.” Maybe all Mortimer’s secrets had got dragged out in the open, what with him going to prison.
Or maybe he’d kept the worst stuff in the office, and that had all gone down with the ship.
The bloke himself came back at that point, with three matching mugs from the posh china section in John Lewis—hey, I have to buy Christmas presents for people, all right? Not to mention find something to cross off Gary and Darren’s wedding list, which, contrary to popular expectation, hadn’t been lodged at the local fetish wear emporium. If there was such a thing, that was. Personally, I was quite happy not knowing.
“Milk, no sugar all right?” he asked, handing me one of them.
“That’s great,” I said with a cheery smile, despite the fact I’d asked for no milk, no sugar, and no tea either. “Ta.” There weren’t any coasters on the glass-topped coffee table, so I popped the mug down on a copy of last Sunday’s Observer Magazine.
Phil took a sip from his tea before plonking the mug next to mine and looking up expectantly at Mortimer, who was still hovering, the final m
ug in his bony hand. Mortimer took the hint and sat down right on the edge of an armchair, as if actually relaxing might be the last mistake he’d ever make.
“Thanks for having us over,” Phil started. “Can’t have been an easy time for you, what with—”
Mortimer interrupted him. “I spoke to my solicitor after you telephoned. He’s advised me not to say anything about the case to anyone.” His pointy little chin came up. “How do I know you’re not in league with—with someone?” he finished, and swallowed.
Phil leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and gave Mortimer the benefit of his best trust-me-I’m-a-private-investigator face. “All we want is for the truth to come out. You just spent over a year in prison for something you didn’t do. Don’t you want the man who put you in there to get what he deserves?”
“We know he planted the stuff on you,” I added, leaning forward as well. And carefully not mentioning Carey by name, since that seemed to be a thing we were doing. Not that I was sure why—was the bastard supposed to have spies everywhere?
From the sweat breaking out on Mortimer’s forehead and the tense line of his shoulders, you’d have thought maybe Carey did have spies everywhere. “I can’t speak to you. It’s over now.” He stood up abruptly. “For God’s sake, why can’t you let it be over?”
Phil stood up too. “Because Carey’s going to carry on ruining people’s lives until he’s stopped.” Huh. So we were mentioning his name, after all.
I felt a bit daft—not to mention, small—being the only one still on his bum, so I stood up as well. “Eye for an eye, innit? He put you in prison, so why not return the favour?”
Mortimer was clinging on to his mug of tea like it was the only thing stopping him from going completely to pieces. Maybe it was. I’d been wondering why he’d bothered offering us a cuppa if he was just going to chuck us straight out on our ears. “I can’t help you,” he said, his eyes fixed on a point over Phil’s left shoulder and his voice higher in pitch than it had been a moment ago.
