Blood Never Dies (7 page)

‘What do you know about tattoos?’ Slider asked, amused.

‘I haven’t got one meself,’ she said, ‘but me sister back home got this little bluebird on her shoulder. Only about the size of me thumbnail, but me Da went mental, said she might as well go out and rent herself a lamp post. But he’s a dinosaur, me Da. Everyone’s got ’em these days. It’s body art.’

‘It’s utter stupidity,’ Atherton countered.

‘Don’t sugar-coat it, Jim,’ Swilley murmured. ‘Say what you really mean.’

‘Anyway,’ Atherton went on, ‘you’re hopelessly out of date. All the big stars are getting them removed now. Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Charlie Sheen . . .’

‘Sure, how would you know?’ Connolly asked, trying not to be impressed.

‘I read the papers,’ he said. ‘Little trick you pick up as you go through life. Point is, if they were recent, it means he’d managed to get through the rest of his life so far without them, so why suddenly do it now, just when it’s going out of fashion?’

‘I’d bet it was a new girlfriend,’ said Connolly, ‘and she dared him to do it. Me friend back home dared her boyfriend get one on his lad. He got her name, Wendy.’

‘He had “Wendy” tattooed on his penis?’ Atherton asked with the greatest scepticism.

‘T’was fierce romantic,’ said Connolly. ‘’Course, it only said “Wendy” some of the time. When he got excited it said, “Welcome to Dublin, have a nice day.”’

T
he source of all wisdom about tattoos at Shepherd’s Bush nick was PC Kevin Organ, whose unfortunate name was so far beyond satire he was probably the least teased man in the Job. In a youthful attempt to out-cool his disadvantage, he had had his arms so extensively tattooed they looked like two rolls of
toile de jouy
wallpaper, and he could never take advantage of short-sleeve order when it came in in the summer.

He was rumoured to have other artistic gems too, in other, hidden places, but Slider preferred not to know about that. He was not as vocal on the subject as Atherton but in his mind tattoos were a social marker, like piercings, and they didn’t belong on policemen, who ought to fade into the background of their uniform to be really effective, not make fashion statements at any level.

Fortunately, Organ’s organic furbishment was not Slider’s problem. Also fortunately, Organ was on duty that day, and at Slider’s summons came climbing up from the trolls’ dungeon behind the front shop where the woodentops lived, to the airy cloud-borne fastnesses of the CID room, to be consulted.

There were, Organ told them, four tattoo parlours in the immediate area, plus a couple of mobiles, who advertised on the Internet and came and inked you in the comfort of your own home. The four with premises were Punktures, The Fill Inn, Inkerman’s, and Blues ’n’ Tattoos – it seemed that imaginative names were all part of the culture.

The mobiles were Krazy Kris and Needlepix. ‘But you can forget them,’ Organ said as he examined the photographs of Robin Williams’s decorations. ‘These are nice inks – classy stuff. Krazy Kris, and Mona from Needlepix, couldn’t do anything as elaborate as this. Apart from anything else, you need a steady hand, and Mona drinks, and Kris, well, he’s getting on now. Must be nearly seventy. Whatever you asked him for, you’d end up with a snowstorm.’ He admired the photographs again, taking his time, pleased to be the centre of good attention for once. ‘I’d say they almost certainly came from Blues ’n’ Tattoos, in Hammersmith Road,’ he pronounced gravely. ‘If not them, then Inkerman’s, but I’d try Blues first. Honest John’s the bloke’s name, he’s the owner, and he’s a real artist.’

‘Is it a pukka emporium?’ Atherton asked. ‘Or is his sobriquet ironic?

Organ didn’t get forty per cent of the words in that, but he followed the force of the enquiry. ‘Oh, he’s right as rain,’ he said. ‘Never been in any trouble. Pays his taxes and everything.’

‘Ah. His price is above rubies.’

‘Well, you got to pay for quality work,’ Organ said defensively, then frowned. ‘Who’s Ruby? She another mobile?’

‘Just for that,’ Slider said sternly to Atherton, ‘you can go and do the enquiry.’

‘Me? No! What do I know about tattoos?’

‘You’ll know more when you’ve done it. The acquisition of knowledge is the cornerstone of civilization.’

Organ stumped away back home to the nether regions, reflecting that it was true what he’d heard, they were all bonkers in CID. Totally tonto.

Blues ’n’ Tattoos was half way along Hammersmith Road, in a small parade of shops which were a reminder of how nice Shepherd’s Bush must have looked when it was first built. The two-storey Victorian buildings were identical to the yellow-brick, slate-roofed terraced cottages in the adjacent roads, except that the ground floor had a shop window instead of the residential bay; so they blended in perfectly, and gave a gentler, more humane face to commerce. The entire parade was still made up of small businesses, too – the square footage was too small to attract chains. There was a newsagent, a café, a dry-cleaner (
SPECIAL SUMMER OFFER ON DUVET’S, BLANKET’S, CURTAIN’S
! it announced possessively), a pet shop, a baker’s of the sort that specializes in white loaves and the sort of cakes that look home-made without being in any way tempting, and next door to that, Blues ’n’ Tattoos.

The man in the tattoo parlour looked just the way you’d expect someone called Honest John to look, if you lived in an ideal world that had never known the cold breath of irony. He was tallish, solid, middle-aged, with a pleasantly unremarkable face, kind eyes and thick, healthy hair beginning to go grey. The main room of his shop was plain but clean, with lino on the floor, chairs around the wall, and a rack of magazines. It could have been a dentist’s waiting room except that the posters featured not the horrors of tooth neglect but the several thousand designs you could choose to have permanently pounded into your pink and cringing flesh.

There was a desk at the end opposite the door, and a doorway behind and to its right, leading, Atherton supposed, to the torture chamber beyond. It was curtained with those multicoloured plastic strips. Wouldn’t a decent, solid, soundproofed door have been better, he wondered, to deaden the cries of the afflicted?

The man behind the desk stood up when Atherton came in and surveyed him with a friendly and professional eye. ‘Hello! What can I do for you?’

‘Are you Honest John?’ Atherton asked.

‘That’s what they call me. You’ve come at a good time – very quiet today. Don’t look so worried! I’ve been doing this twenty-five years and I haven’t lost a customer yet.’

‘Oh, I haven’t come for a tattoo,’ Atherton said, unable to disguise a shudder – largely because he wasn’t trying.

Honest John gave the sort of reassuring smile that could have brought dead puppies to life. ‘What’s up? Afraid of needles?’

‘You use
needles
? I thought they were kissed on by soft-eyed Tahitian maidens.’

‘You’re a card, you are,’ said Honest John. ‘What
can
I do for you, then?’

Atherton produced his brief and introduced himself. Honest John’s smile faded slightly, but he gave the impression of a man with no shadows on his conscience. ‘I hope nobody’s complained,’ he said. ‘I’m very careful about hygiene and I don’t do minors, faces, or anything obscene.’

‘It’s nothing like that,’ Atherton said. ‘Someone suggested you might be able to identify this tattoo – that it might be your work, or if not, that you might know whose it was.’

Honest John took the photograph of the tiger and looked at it for a long time without speaking, his face unreadable.

‘Do you recognize it?’ Atherton prompted.

‘It’s one of my designs, all right,’ he answered neutrally.

‘And this one?’ He passed over the dragon. ‘We have reason to believe they were done fairly recently.’

‘Both done on the same person?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, they’re definitely mine.’ He looked at Atherton with an anxious probing stare, trying to fillet out the nature of the trouble heading his way.

‘Do you remember doing them?’

‘Funny enough, I do, though it was a while ago. Coupla months, at least. Let me think. Was it – just after Easter, maybe? No, just before Easter, because we were quiet. Get a lot of kids in during the school holidays.’

Three months ago, then, Atherton thought. ‘Tell me about it,’ he said, pulling up one of the waiting-room chairs to the desk and sitting down expectantly. Honest John sat resignedly on the other side and placed his hands on the desk top, the gesture of a man prepared to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Atherton had seen the same gesture many times in the interview room back at the station, but on this occasion he suspected it was genuine.

‘It was quiet, like today,’ said Honest John, whose real name, he told Atherton, was John Johnson. ‘Beginning part of the week’s always quiet. I’ve thought about closing Monday and Tuesday, but I haven’t got anything else to do, really, so I sit in here and do my paperwork, and work out new designs, so if anyone does come in, I’m not turning away trade. Anyway, it was a Monday or a Tuesday morning this man comes in.’

‘Alone?’

‘Eh? Oh yes. He walked in off the street and I took one look at his clothes and thought, hello, he’s come to the wrong shop. Like you, y’see, he didn’t look the type. Cords and a jacket, he had on, and very nice shoes – most people round here are in jeans and trainers, and a lot of them through my door are covered in piercings. But he was a tall, good-looking bloke. Money coming out of every pore, that’s the way he looked to me. Kind you’d expect to see in Berkshire driving a Range Rover towing a horse trailer, you get my drift?’

‘Yes,’ said Atherton. ‘Very graphic.’

He seemed pleased. ‘I notice things,’ he said. ‘You have to in this trade. You get all sorts – junkies looking to rob you, kids on a dare their mums and dads don’t know about, girls egging each other on, dating couples. You have to give them advice as well as the work. Practically an agony aunt, me.’

‘Go on,’ Atherton prompted.

‘Anyway, he wasn’t the usual sort of person that comes in, that’s what I’m saying, which is why I remember him.’

‘How did he seem? What was his mood like?’

Johnson considered. ‘Kind of grim but determined, is how I’d put it. He didn’t smile at all, and he seemed kind of – preoccupied, if you like. Following his own thoughts. Not the sort of mood you get a tattoo in, and I half thought he’d back out when it came to it, but he knew his own mind all right. Quite confident. So I show him the books and he picked out the tiger right away. Then he asked for a snake round his ankle. I said everyone had snakes and wouldn’t he like something a bit different. I showed him the dragon and explained how it could wind round, and he liked that idea, and went for it.’

He ran a finger absently over the design – he had a workman’s hands, not an artist’s: strong, blunt, steady. Hands you’d trust.

‘Well, when we get in the back room, he takes off his jacket, and he’s got a short-sleeve shirt on, and I see he’s got no other tattoos – not visible ones, anyway – so I reckon he’s an ink virgin. That’s what we call ’em. Well, it’s a longish job, and you don’t sit there in silence, do you? So I try to get him chatting. He wasn’t big on answers, just yes and no, not volunteering anything. I ask if he’s had a tattoo before and he says no, and gives a sort of look, like as if he wishes he wasn’t doing it now. So I ask what he wants ’em for. And he says, “Oh, just an idea I had”, and then he changes the subject and starts asking me about the trade. He had a lot of very intelligent questions, not the usual daft stuff people generally ask, and I tell you, he got me talking like it was a chat show. It wasn’t until afterwards I thought, he was just stopping me asking him questions. But it was skilfully done.’

Atherton nodded thoughtfully. ‘Did he tell you his name?’

‘No, it never came up.’

‘Don’t you take names and addresses of your customers?’

‘Not generally. There’s no need.’

‘How did he pay?’

‘Cash. That’s the usual thing. I gave him my little talk about aftercare and gave him a leaflet, sold him a tub of tattoo goo, took the cash and away he went.’

Atherton got out the mugshot and handed it to him. ‘Is that the man?’

‘Yes, that’s him – but I think his hair was different. Maybe darker. And cut a different way.’ He looked up anxiously. ‘This photo – is he—?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid he was found dead. It looks like suicide.’

‘Oh dear me.’ Johnson seemed genuinely upset. ‘Oh deary me. That nice lad? What a dreadful thing. But why would he do it? He seemed all right. A bit dour, maybe, but not nervous or depressed. The opposite, really – like a man with stuff to do. Who would have thought . . . Did he leave a note saying why?’

‘He didn’t leave anything. We don’t even know for sure who he is. All we have to go on is the tattoos – hence my visit, hoping for a name.’

‘Oh dear. Well, I’m very sorry I can’t help. But in my line of business people just come in off the street and usually pay cash. You don’t take names and addresses any more than a sandwich bar does.’

‘I understand,’ said Atherton. ‘It’s a pity, though. Can you remember anything else about him that might help us?’

‘Like what?’ Johnson screwed up his face in thought. ‘I don’t know, I’ve told you what I remember, his nice clothes and—’ Something occurred to him. ‘Wait, yes, there was one thing. I don’t know if it means anything. He’d had his legs waxed.’

‘Waxed?’

‘To take the hair off,’ Johnson expanded. ‘Like women do.’

‘Yes, I know what it means.’

‘I noticed because of course it made my job easier.’

‘Maybe that’s why he did it.’

‘Maybe. It’s unusual though. They were smooth as glass. It looked really unnatural.’

Unnatural smoothness, Atherton thought. And when something was unnaturally smooth, you couldn’t get a grip on it. Like this case. ‘Well, if you think of anything else, here’s my card. Give me a ring. Anything, however trivial. You never know what may help.’

‘Oh, I will,’ said Honest John. He looked at the photograph again with a sort of reluctant fascination. ‘Can I keep this? I could ask around. I get all sorts of people coming in, and someone may’ve seen him somewhere.’