‘No.’
It all looked a bit baggy, truth be told, but it would do. Christ, she needed feeding up.
‘What size shoes do you take?’ he asked. Her feet were bare and raw-looking. He’d chucked her old boots out. They’d been filthy rotten.
‘Eights.’
‘I’ll pick you up some trainers.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’
For the first time, she smiled. It made her look even younger.
‘Only make sure they’re Nikes or Adidas, right? None of that cheap Reebok crap, OK?’
‘No problem,’ he said, smiling back.
She stood there awkwardly, rocking on her heels. ‘Seriously, though. You’ve been kind enough. I’ll get out of your hair just as soon as I’ve dried mine.’
He nodded at the window. It was still pissing it down outside.
‘Into that?’
‘I’m used to it.’
‘Yeah, well you don’t have to.’
‘And how’s that?’
If Slim was here, he’d tell him to shut the fuck up. But he wasn’t, so screw it. No one had done him any favours recently. He might as well do one for somebody else.
‘I need some help round here.’
She looked round the room, a twinkle in her eyes. ‘Well, it is a bit messy . . .’
‘Hah-hah. No, I mean down in the club.’
‘You’re offering me a job?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that. Not yet. But, yeah, there’s a few odd jobs that need doing . . .’
‘I’ll do anything,’ she said. ‘Cleaning. Washing up. I’m a hard worker. Or I was, anyhow. Last time I got a chance.’
‘I’ll pay you properly,’ he said. ‘And something else.’
‘What?’ She looked wary.
‘You can stay too.’ Shit. Slim was going to have his guts for garters for this.
‘Oh, come on. Really?’ Another smile. Crooked this time. Unsure. She thought she’d misunderstood. Or he was winding her up. ‘You’re saying I can just move in? With you? No strings attached?’
‘I don’t mean like that.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
She looked him over. ‘A good thing too. Because you’re not my type. Not even the right gender, if you know what I mean.’
‘You can still stay,’ he said.
‘What, even though I’m gay?’
‘Even then.’
She put her hands on her hips, her fingertips nearly meeting in the middle, and stared at him, frowning, still trying to puzzle him out.
‘And how would that work, then?’
‘There’s a storeroom downstairs.
‘Ah, so I’ve been demoted.’ She feigned looking sad.
‘It’s just a storeroom now, but it can be cleaned up. Made nice. You can fix it up how you want.’
‘You are serious, aren’t you?’ Her smile was gone. Something much hungrier was there instead.
‘There’s a shower room next door to it, with a toilet and wash basin. It’s full of junk right now, but—’
‘It can be cleaned up too?’
Frankie nodded. ‘Slim, the guy you met last night . . . he used to stay over here when he started working the bar . . . way back before this flat got done up and my old man started living here on site.’
‘Right . . .’
‘So anyway, yeah, downstairs . . . it’s yours if you want it. You know, just for a bit. See how it goes. We can get a new bed in there and what not, until you get back on your feet.’
‘In my nice new trainers?’
‘Exactly. Your Nikes.’
‘And why would you be doing this for me?’ She was looking dead serious again.
‘You just look like you need a break. And I guess I’m just in the right mood to give you one.’
Was he being an idiot? Shit. Only time would tell. What was the worst that could happen? She’d try and nick something. But what? The balls. The cues. Nothing else of much value down there at all. Not unless you happened to have a JCB with you to pick the tables up.
She stood there watching him.
‘One rule, mind,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘No taking the piss.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘I dunno.’ He didn’t want to spell it out. ‘Just don’t make me regret it, that’s all.’
She sniffed, looking round. Shit. He nearly laughed. What had he just done? And was he going to regret it? He breathed out. Well, it was too late to back out now. And besides, he didn’t want to. It felt right. It felt good. In fact, in a weird fucking way, it felt like all this might somehow have just changed his luck.
‘Right, well I guess we’d better get down there and take a look at that storage room,’ he said.
‘You’re on,’ she told him, barely able to conceal her smile. ‘After you, boss. Lead the way.’
23
‘Let me guess. This is a coincidence? You just happening to bump into me like this?’
‘You took the words right out of my mouth,’ said Frankie.
‘Yeah?’ said Sharon. ‘Well, I’m not buying it.’
They were walking fast along the pavement with the commuter crowd. It was the end of the day, people were heading for their cars, bus stops, the tube and home.
‘Please stop,’ he said. ‘Just for a minute.’
‘I already told you. We shouldn’t be talking.’
He hurried after her, across the road. A car horn blared, a white van just missing running him down. He was half-tempted to grab her by the elbow, to try and slow her down. Forget it. She’d probably just deck him like she had done at the flat. She was kind of unpredictable like that.
‘It’s nothing about the case, I swear,’ he said. A lie. Of course.
She stepped sideways.
‘Shit. Ouch.’
Bollocks. He twisted round. He’d just walked bang into a bloody lamp post. He rubbed furiously at his arm.
She was a couple of yards ahead again already, glancing back over her shoulder at him, trying not to laugh.
‘Oh, and I suppose you think that’s funny, do you?’
She strode on, her shoulders shaking. He finally caught up.
‘On what?’ she asked, still trying and failing to keep a straight face.
‘Eh?’
‘You swear on what?’
‘Oh . . . Er . . . I don’t know.’ On my mother’s life. He nearly said it. Didn’t. Hated it whenever Jack did. Felt it might somehow jinx her ever coming back. ‘You know, on everything . . . whatever . . .’
‘Everything? Whatever?’ Sharon mimicked. She kept walking. The tube station was only ten yards ahead. Must be where she was going. He could hardly follow her down there, could he? She’d probably arrest him for stalking.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Everything. Everything I care about.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like . . . I don’t know . . .’ Say something, you muppet. Anything. Just get her to bloody stand still. ‘Like . . . you.’ The word was out before he could stop it.
She stopped too. So did he. She stared right into his eyes, unblinking as the crowd rushed past.
‘Very funny.’
He swallowed. What the hell had he just said? That he cared about her? For fuck’s sake. What a knob.
‘Made you stop, though, didn’t it?’ he said, grinning, trying to make a joke of it.
‘Fine.’ She opened her handbag and pulled out a pack of smokes. ‘Whatever it is you’ve got to say, I’ll give you as long as it takes me to smoke one cigarette. But that’s it, OK?’
‘Sure.’
‘And not here.’
Where they might get seen by one of her colleagues. He got it. Fair enough. He could hardly blame her for being wary. He was lucky she was still risking talking to him at all.
He followed her through the crowd and down a quiet leafy road to the right of the tube station. Leaning against a wall
, she sparked up a cigarette and took a long, slow drag. She looked like she’d had a tough day and would rather be anywhere but here. With him. It was good seeing her, though. No point denying it. And not just because he did want to talk to her about Jack. Just because.
‘So . . . what is it you wanted to ask?’
Just get the conversation started. Get her to relax. Drop her guard. Maybe then they could talk about Jack. Xandra. He thought about Xandra. Yeah, ask her about Xandra. Because he really could do with some advice.
‘There’s a girl,’ he said. ‘Homeless. She’s nineteen. I’ve let her move into a room downstairs at the club . . . you know, until she gets herself back on her feet . . .’
‘Very admirable,’ said Sharon. But not sarcastically. Like she meant it. ‘Though I don’t see what that’s got to do with me.’
‘I don’t know any other cops, so I thought, you know, I’d ask . . .’ he said, ‘. . . see if you knew anyone she could talk to. About her future. Getting herself off the streets for good. That kind of thing.’
‘It’s a social worker you need. Not the police. I’ll get you a number. You should try and find out if she’s got family too, though. Someone might be looking for her.’
‘I will,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask. Yeah. Right. Cool. Thanks.’
She took another drag on her cigarette, almost done with it already. Shit. Tick-tock, tick-tock. He was running out of time.
‘Well?’ she said, seeing him staring.
‘Look . . .’
‘You didn’t really want to ask me about your homeless girl at all, did you?’
He felt himself blushing. She saw it too.
‘No.’
‘So what’s the real question you want to ask . . . the reason you rang up the station and pretended to be my boyfriend so you’d know what time I was knocking off work.’
‘Busted,’ he admitted. He’d stood there waiting outside the cop shop for her for over an hour. Had even gone into that phone box for a couple of minutes. Had just stood there. Like it might speak to him. Like a fucking mug.
‘How about first I buy you dinner?’
There. He’d said it. Something else he’d been thinking about. The whole walk over here from Soho. Not just Jack. Her.
Her turn to blush. ‘Dinner?’
‘Yeah, you know, knives and forks and plates and food.’
Screw it. Why not? He’d already made a complete dick of himself, blurting out that he cared about her. Why not go the whole hog? She was probably about to walk away and never speak to him again anyhow. What had he got to lose?
‘What?’ she said. ‘To soften me up so I’ll tell you everything you want to know, is that what you want?’
‘Well, of course that,’ he said, ‘but also because I’m starving and I know a killer little Italian just round the corner. That’s got a little table in an alcove at the back, so you won’t have to worry about any of your colleagues seeing us. And I thought, well, it might be nice to spend a bit of time together. You know, without you having to beat the shit out of me first.’
‘You do remember I’ve got a boyfriend, right?’ she said, waggling her ring at him.
‘Yes. I remember.’ Remember and don’t care.
‘And how do you think he’d feel about me going out for dinner with a strange man?’
‘I’m not that strange.’
‘A stranger, then.’
‘I’m not that either. I’m an old friend.’
‘Really? Is that what you are?’ She ground her cigarette out with her heel. ‘Because I don’t remember us ever being friends. Just school mates. Or not even mates. Just at the same school.’
‘Yeah, but maybe we should have been,’ he said. ‘Would have been.’ He thought back again to what he’d remembered. About how he’d nearly once asked her out back in school. ‘Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do now. Make up for lost time.’
She looked him slowly up and down, before finally nodding. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘but this Italian . . . it better be bloody good.’
No worries there. The restaurant he took her to had been his mum’s favourite. He’d been going there for as far back as he could remember. Old school. Red-and-white chequered tablecloths. Way too much parmesan over your food. Black pepper deluged from a grinder as tall as the Post Office Tower.
Him and Sharon made small talk to begin with. He asked about her family, even though he’d never known them. Turned out she was an only child whose father had been a soldier. He’d died in the Falklands, a member of 2 Para shot dead at Goose Green by Argentine conscripts who’d first raised a flag of surrender and had then opened fire. Her mum had never remarried and now taught part-time at a primary school down in Brighton. She’d been diagnosed with Parkinson’s a couple of years ago. It worried Sharon sick.
She told him a bit about her boyfriend too. Six years older. A broker. Now away in Hong Kong for six weeks, setting up a trading desk. Did she miss him? Yes. No hesitation. Had she been out to visit? No. Which made him wonder a bit. They’d been friends to being with. Had only really started going out just over a year ago, a relationship stat that surprised him, considering the size of that bloody ring.
The most expensive present Frankie had ever given a girl was a silver necklace Slim had been shifting a job lot of, which had turned out to be tin and had given the girl a rash. Did that make him rubbish? Or this bloke of Sharon’s, this Nathan, was he just so rich that a ring like hers didn’t mean anything at all?
It wasn’t till the end of the meal that they got talking about Jack. And not because he brought it up. He didn’t. He was happy talking about other stuff, about her. Truth was, he’d forgotten about Jack entirely for the first time since he’d thrown himself screaming at the club’s front door. It was Sharon who brought him up. Just after the waiter had topped up their glasses with the last of their bottle of red.
‘And so, this question of yours,’ she said. ‘I’m thinking you’d better ask it now before we drink any more.’
‘I actually have two. And they’re both about Jack.’
‘I guessed they would be.’
‘You don’t have to answer . . . not if it’s going to compromise you . . .’
‘I won’t.’ She sat back in her chair and lit a cigarette. ‘So go on then. Shoot. Let’s hear what you’ve got to say.’
24
‘What if I told you that the tip-off that Jack got the morning they arrested him – the anonymous call that made him run—’
‘Came from a public phone box right outside the police station?’
He just stared.
‘That is what you were about to say, isn’t it?’ she asked.
Had Kind Regards said something? During some conversation with the cops he hadn’t told Frankie about? Was that how she knew? Or was it what he’d dreaded? That she was somehow mixed up in this too? That she knew who’d made that call?
‘We’re not complete idiots, Frankie,’ she said. ‘We checked the records against Jack’s statement. And, yes, there was a call from a phone box. And, yes, it was just before the raid on Jack’s flat took place.’
‘Then you’ve got to admit—’
‘What, Frankie? That someone at the station made that call? Maybe even me?’
He swallowed hard, embarrassed at how transparent she obviously found him.
‘No, not you,’ he said. ‘It was a man who called. Jack said—’
‘DI Snaresby, then? Is that who you’d like it to be?’
‘It’s not about what I’d like,’ Frankie snapped. But was that true? Because he didn’t trust Snaresby, did he? Especially after what his old man had said, after that look he’d seen on his face. ‘And I’m not saying it even had to be a cop,’ he said, hating the look of scorn on Sharon’s face now and wanting to wipe it away. ‘Just someone who knew one. Someone who might have been in the station that morning. Someone who knew that the raid was about to happen. Perhaps someone who knows something about who set my brother up.’
‘It’s a public booth,’ said Sharon. ‘Anyone could have rung him from there. Even deliberately. To make it look like the police might be involved. To add some confusion to the mix.’
‘Like who?’ Frankie said.
‘I don’t know. Any more than I know what that call was about.’
‘I already told you. Someone called Jack because they wanted him to run.’
‘We’ve only got Jack’s word for that.’
‘Which is good enough for me.’
Her look said it all. But not good enough for her. Not good enough for the cops, or the court.
‘If Jack did kill Susan Tilley as part of a gang war, then might it not be possible that one of his accomplices called? That they didn’t do so anonymously at all, but because they got a tip-off that we were on to him? Because they were worried after the state he was in the night before that he might not have had the wherewithal to clean his flat up?’
‘If,’ Frankie said. ‘He didn’t. And as for whoever made that call . . . Did you even dust it for prints? The booth, I mean?’
‘Seriously?’
‘Do I look like I’m laughing?’
‘Have you any idea how many prints there must be in that phone box? Or how much time and resources it would take to attempt to discount them all? Even if the prints of whoever made that call hadn’t already been smudged or wiped away? And don’t you think that anyone devious enough to have tried to help set your brother up or who was working with him might also have been smart enough to wear gloves? Especially if they were police.’
As stupid as he felt, at least she’d said it too. Right there at the end. That a cop might have somehow been involved. Even if it was one smart enough not to get caught.
‘Who else are you looking at?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘For the murder.’
She said nothing.
‘No one, I bet,’ he said. ‘But the thing is, if it’s not Jack. Which it’s not. Then it has to be someone else.’
‘Again,’ she said, ‘if . . .’
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