“Taxi,” she shouted, waving at a passing cab, which pulled up to the pavement.
I clambered into the back as she leant down and gave the driver our destination before joining me in the rear.
I frowned. “Why are we going to Bond Street?” I asked.
“Because that’s where my bitch of a sister-in-law is,” Caz said through gritted teeth.
At that point, my mobile phone rang. I reached into the pocket of my coat and pulled it out, frowning at the caller ID on the screen.
“Nick,” I tried to make my voice light and breezy, though I suspect it came out more slightly manic. “What’s up?”
“Why did you visit Chopper Falzone the day after a dead body was discovered in the basement of your pub?” he asked, with no preamble whatsoever.
“Oh, good afternoon to you, too,” I said sourly. “I’m fine. How are you?”
“Danny,” he said sternly, “this isn’t a joke. I have a murder investigation on my hands and pictures of you going to see Falzone. What’s going on?”
“So it was definitely murder, then?”
“Well, unless he managed to shoot himself twice in the back of the head by accident. Stop changing the subject.”
“Chopper called me in,” I answered, seeing no point in hiding the facts. “Said he wanted to speak to me. But wait,” I added, suddenly realising what Nick had said, “how have you got photos? Have you been having me followed?”
“No, Danny; we’ve been watching Falzone.”
“Watching him? What the hell is this? The Untouchables?”
“Danny, we’ve been here before. He’s a crook. A gangster. A mobster. We watch him, and we especially watch him when something like this happens on what he likes to think of as his patch. So why were you called in?”
I debated telling Nick to mind his own business then realised that it probably was his business. “He wanted to know if I had anything to do with the body,” I answered, as, beside me, Caz pulled her phone from her handbag and began furiously jabbing at the screen again.
“So, you’re telling me that he’s claiming he had no hand in this?” Nick said, the disbelief ringing loud and clear down the phone.
“That’s the sense I got,” I said. “He was furious – not cos there’d been a dead body in the basement of his pub but because he hadn’t put it there.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Nick said. “I mean, if he didn’t put it there, then who did?”
“Who exactly. But, to be honest, it sort of does make sense,” I said. “I mean, you’ve been telling me for ages what a big-time serious gangster Chopper is.”
“He is a big-time serious gangster, Danny. That’s not just my opinion, you know; it’s a known fact.”
“Whatever,” I waved his protestations aside. “But if he’s so good at gangsterism, why would he leave the body somewhere that would link right back to him. Do we have any idea who it was, by the way?”
“I’m not at liberty to divulge that information,” Nick deadpanned.
“Which means you still don’t know,” I clarified, just in case he thought I was impressed by his cloak and dagger impersonation.
“Like I said, it’s hard to get fingerprints off a mummy,” he muttered. “We’re on dental records now, so fingers crossed. But meantime Danny – and I mean this – please don’t get involved. This is a genuinely nasty case, baby. Anyone who could do this would be dangerous to tangle with.”
The taxi turned on to Bond Street. “Got to go, Nick. Busy, busy. I’ll call again,” and – as he continued to plead slash berate me about the risks and dangers of poking my nose into criminal cases – I ended the call and dropped my phone into my pocket, turning to Caz as a single, triumphant, “Ha!” escaped her lips.
“Got you!” she shouted, dropping her own phone into her handbag, and directing her attention to the driver. “Anywhere here will do, thank you,” she called, as the taxi pulled up alongside the front door to Frankleby’s Auction House.
Caz turned to me. “Darling, I’m short of cash, would you mind paying the man?”
I settled up and followed Caz – calmer now, and stalking like a runway model down the red carpet that the auction house had actually rolled out on the street, as though their clientele could hardly be expected to ever actually set shoe leather on pavement – into the lobby of Frankleby’s, past a bemused security guard, a couple of seemingly unphased receptionists and a professional greeter with a clipboard who was waved aside as Caz announced herself and, glancing at me, added, “Plus one.”
“I have a name, you know,” I reminded her somewhat testily.
“Of course you do, sweetness,” she responded, stepping into a lift and pressing a button, “but it’s not one that’s likely to get you into this place unimpeded. Right,” she pulled out a small silver compact, checked her make-up, adjusted her boobs so her cleavage was fully front and centre, added a touch of lippy to her bottom lip, clipped the compact shut, recapped the lipstick, dropped both back into the handbag and turned to me.
“I thought we were visiting Prissy,” I said, willing myself not to stare at the cleavage.
“We are,” she answered, “and I want to look my best when I look that lying bitch in the eyes and tell her I’m on to her game.”
The lift pinged, the doors opened, and we stepped into what felt like an art gallery; with recessed spots diffusing gentle light onto a space hung with paintings, some bare canvasses, some wooden panels thick with old oils and lacquer, some huge gilt frames with dimly-lit crucifixion scenes buried within armies of wooden cherubim and cornucopias.
Caz stalked her way through the armies of doe-eyed virgins and pale, twisted messiahs, seeking, single-mindedly, Prissy; who was discovered, at length, standing in front of a vast nativity scene, the night sky – thick with stars – dwarfing the tiny stable and the figures within it.
“I wouldn’t bother viewing those,” Caz snarled, grabbing Prissy’s arm so tightly the other woman – her permanent bouffant in almost exactly the same position it had been in the day before – winced and attempted to pull herself away.
“Caroline,” she cried, her tone a mixture of outrage and upset, “you’re hurting me!”
“You can’t afford it,” Caz said by way of response. “Rather, you won’t be able to afford it if you’re to pay Lowe what he’s owed.”
Prissy stopped struggling and turned to Caz. “Pay him?” she asked, her brow – or the bit of it that wasn’t pumped full of Botox – furrowing in confusion. “You mean you couldn’t fix it?”
“Oh I could fix it,” Caz snapped back, her eyes glittering with what, to me, looked like a mixture of fury and enjoyment. “I know exactly what I’d need to do to resolve this without Bobbers having to pay a penny. But I’m not going to.”
“You’re...?” Prissy’s face fell. “You’d abandon your brother to the wolves?” she asked, the more-in-sorrow-than-anger tone dialled firmly to eleven.
Caz laughed, yanking Prissy down onto a bench in front of an ascension scene filled with more heavenly hosts than the average telethon, and turned to face her.
“Prissy, Bobbers fed himself to the wolves the day he met you. What I want to know from you is just how you managed to set him up.”
“Me?” Prissy bristled. “Set him up? Caroline, you may find this hard to believe, based on the gadabout way you’ve leapt from relationship to relationship your whole life,” (this last said while she watched me to be sure I was hearing it), “but some of us are dedicated to our spouses. I love Bobbers, and for you to suggest that I would…”
The words died on her lips as Caz held her phone up in front of Prissy’s face. I angled to get a good look at it. It showed a nightclub scene, mirrored walls, a red-velvet-lined booth, a bunch of men in black tie sitting around a table covered in empty champagne bottles and glasses.
“You don’t have any social media accounts, do you Prissy?” Caz asked, tapping the picture so as to enlarge one part of the frame. “Bit t
oo nouveau for you, I suppose. But not all of your friends are as careful as you are.”
Caz glanced over her shoulder. “This,” she said, addressing herself to me, “is the feed of one Henrietta ‘Hank’ Mallowan. Hank is not one of the brightest sparks in the box. Is she, Prissy? But what Hank is, is extremely well connected.
“She loves a party, and she hosted this one in the summer. It was a benefit for The Children’s Defence Fund. A charity cocktail party and disco night at Bijouxs.
“Lowe was there, of course, but look who else was present.”
Caz tapped a nail twice against the picture and the shot zoomed in to show the mirrored wall behind the men.
“Now, who could that be?” Caz asked innocently as her finger pointed at a fuzzy figure, the features a little vague but the towering hairdo clearly visible.
“That’s Prissy,” I said, receiving for my comment a furious glare from the pinched little face beneath the hair helmet.
“That’s Lady Priscilla to you,” she snarled.
“So you had met Lowe as early as the summer,” Caz said to her accusatorily.
“This had nothing to do with me,” Prissy answered, ignoring the topic completely and attempting to refocus on her own innocence.
“So why lie?” Caz demanded.
“Lie?” Prissy struggled. “When did I lie?”
Caz shook her head despairingly. “A lie of omission. You never mentioned that you were already familiar with Balthazar Lowe and his larcenous charity scheme.”
Prissy slumped. “Because I knew that – if I told the truth – you’d be less likely to help us,” she admitted.
“And not because you’re in league with Lowe?”
“League?”
“You get the mark, set him up, hand him over to Lowe and split the proceeds?’
“Caroline, this isn’t Paper Moon, you know.” Prissy sighed heavily. “Okay, I’ll admit, I was rather smitten with Balthazar – Mr Lowe. I was struck by his dedication to his charity. But I had no idea he was a crook. None at all.”
Caz considered this. “So what happened?” she finally asked as the cherubim and Nephilim gazed down on the scene. “I suppose that, somewhere that night, you had a few drinks too many and couldn’t help yourself blurting out about the oil wells in Kyrgyzstan. Probably complained about how the sanctions were making it so hard to get at the money they’d generate. And Mr Lowe saw his blackmail opportunity.
“No wonder you didn’t want Bobbers bothered with this. Does he even know that he’s being blackmailed?”
Prissy, shamefacedly, shook her head.
Caz pointedly raised an eyebrow and stared pointedly at Prissy, “I’m still not entirely convinced that the whole thing wasn’t cooked up by you and him.”
“I swear—” Prissy began her protestations again but Caz, having dropped her phone back into her handbag, held up a hand to shut her up and off.
“Can it, Prissy,” she said bluntly. “You need to know this – I don’t like you. You’re a snob, a bully, and you have terrible taste in clothes. And as for that disaster atop your head, well I’ve been on to the Red Cross and they’re considering sending aid. But – despite the fact he’s also an idiot – I love my baby brother.
“So, if you ever do another thing to put him in jeopardy; if you ever lie to him – or to me – about your actions, I will provide Bobbers – and The Earl – with a full and detailed account of this debacle.”
“I’m sorry, Caroline,” Prissy said, her lower lip trembling.
“No,” Caz shook her head, “you’re not. You don’t think enough of me to be sorry, Prissy. You’re sorry you got caught, that’s all. And that's fine. Danny and I will sort this, and in return you will do one thing for me.”
“Name it,” Prissy whispered.
“You will ensure I am never invited to your home for Christmas ever again. Your cook’s efforts are almost as awful as your hairdresser’s and, quite frankly, your cellar is more fearful than poor old Danny’s here.
“Also,” she said, “we’re going to need some expenses.” Caz glanced around the gallery, taking in more suffering, pain, ecstasy-through-pain and transfiguration than most dancefloors at midnight. “You can send twenty thousand to my account. Bobbers has the details.”
“But how are you going to sort this?” Prissy whispered as Caz stood, towering over her.
“We have our ways,” Caz said. “Now go home. And for Christ’s sake, Prissy, buy something a bit more cheerful for the chapel. There’s been enough misery in that house.”
So saying, Caz turned and, if she’d had a cape, would, I’m positive, have swished it, before smiling at me and stalking from the gallery.
“That was amazing,” I whispered as she pressed the button for the lift.
“I know,” she smiled gently back at me as the lift doors opened.
We stepped into the box and the doors closed soundlessly. “So,” I turned to her as the lift began to move, “how are we going to sort this Lowe situation?”
Which was when she stopped smiling. “I have absolutely no idea,” she said, “but sort it we will, because I’m telling you this Danny, I will not spend another Christmas with that bloody woman.”
FIFTEEN
“So what do you think?” Caz looked hopefully across the table at the twins, who looked back at her with a mixture of incredulity and concern.
“I’m outraged,” Ray said.
“Outraged,” Dash echoed, before glancing at his brother and repeating the phrase as a question.
“That she’d think,” Ray started explaining to Dash, before turning to Caz and addressing his remarks to her, “that you’d think that we might even know anyone who could do that. I mean, we’re not a couple of crooks, you know.”
“We’re not?” Dash asked, before picking up on his brother’s tone. “We’re not!” he restated emphatically.
“I never said you were crooks,” Caz protested.
“You just said we were bound to know a few,” Ray answered.
“I didn’t say you were bound to know a few,” Caz protested. “I merely inferred you might. And that I might be willing to pay them a sum to perform a certain act.”
“What? Like juggling?” Dash suddenly ejaculated, causing everyone to pause and stare at him in confusion.
“Sorry,” he muttered sheepishly. “Comedians are good too.”
“Dash,” his brother shook his head, “leave this to me. We might know a few geezers,” he said, turning to Caz as his tone moved from umbrage to sales pitch, “but they don’t come cheap.”
“Geezers?” Caz said, looking at me in a way that suggested she was concerned she might have just had a stroke; could hear words but no longer had any idea what they meant.
“Geezers,” I repeated, wincing as the freezer in the corner of the kitchen began a high-pitched series of squeaks, wails and shrieks that made it sound as though I’d entombed Mariah Carey in the Zanussi.
In return, I got a blank stare and a tilted head.
“Faces,” Dash called out, ignoring Ray’s instruction to leave this to him. “Villains, doers, factors.”
“Crooks,” Ray clarified, adding to Caz’s experience of the criminal thesaurus. “You want us to get a bunch of crooks to burgle this geezer’s office, pinch the offending and torch it.”
Caz looked at me in the way I imagine Jane, surrounded by silverbacks all grunting their outrage, might glance at Tarzan. “Yes,” she said uncertainly, then, gaining confidence from my glance, she straightened up. “That’s basically it.”
“Well I’m still outraged,” said Ray.
“Yes,” I muttered dryly. “I think we’ve gathered that.”
“And what,” Caz asked, dipping into her handbag and coming out with, firstly, her purse; and secondly, a bottle of Jägermeister, “would it take to assuage your outrage?”
She dipped back into the capacious Gladstone and extracted four shot glasses. I stared at her in open-mouthed wonderment.
At this, Caz and I – old enough to spot the reference, but reluctant to admit being old enough to do so – started, stared at each other and, as Mariah was suddenly throttled by the return of the scratching thumping sound, turned back to the ASBO twins.
“And just who,” Caz enquired in an approximation of Priscilla, “is Fat Larry?”
“And his band?” I asked.
“They do weddings,” Ray stated baldly.
“And burglaries,” Dash blurted. “Usually before they pop round to do the first dance.”
“And often on properties owned by the happy couple,” Ray, shooting daggers at his brother, admitted, before sighing. “Okay, look – if you need someone to do a bit of second- or third-level entry, alarm work and a clean exit, then Lazarus is the one you need.”
“Rises like the dead,” Dash intoned as though reciting a brand slogan.
“Wait,” Caz said, filling all four shot glasses, handing them round, downing hers before the rest of us had even reached for ours, refilling and slamming it, “who’s this Lazarus? I thought we were discussing Rotund Laurence.”
“Caz,” Ray fixed her with his most sympathetic look; the one he usually used for his brother, “if you were christened Lazarus Fahey, would you start a wedding band as Big-Boned Lazarus or Fat Larry?”
Caz refilled the glasses. “Understood,” she nodded, slamming another measure of the aniseed liquor, “but why does he rise like the dead?”
“Cos,” Ray explained, “the PoPo never find a ladder, a scaffolding, or so much as a rope. He just sort of levitates.”
Caz looked at me.
I looked back.
“So can you get him?” she asked.
“Well,” Ray slammed his shot, paused, inhaled deeply through his nose as though to steady himself, “I’m still frankly outraged that you’d even ask us to arrange a burglary.”
“Yeah,” Dash – already smashed – nodded in agreement, “we ain’t never arranged buggery.”
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