Fade to Black (32 page)

Allie said, “I’m sure of it.” She ran her hands through her hair, a sure sign of her frustration. “Michael, I don’t feel I’m doing enough for Jacinta. She might even be dead as we speak, God forbid. But I have nothing other than her last known location.” She looked up at him. “Are you sure there’s nothing you can do to help me locate her?”

He shook his head. “Y
ou
are the one making the running on this, not me. I can protect you until you find the human killers; only then is it up to me to see what I can do. That’s how it has always worked.” Allie looked back at the entrance to New Scotland Yard.

“I understand, disappointing as that is.” There was nothing more to be said on that subject it seemed. “Alright, let’s see what tonight brings, then,” she said. “See you later.” She negotiated the glass doors of the NSY building and glanced back at Michael, who was still standing where she had left him. She wondered what security might make of the huge, dark-haired man in a long black coat who was pointedly staring at the nation’s police headquarters. Best not to think about it, she decided, like so many recent events in her life.

Everett Blight stunk more than she remembered. The thought of drug-addled young girls being photographed naked and possibly fiddled with by this creep was repulsive. She now sat opposite him with Banks beside her, operating the digital recorder. This was an official interview and Allie wanted Blight to sweat, despite the odorous consequences for her and Peter. She let Banks handle the formalities and the initial questioning, until they got to the bit about
InCamera Photographics
.

“Tell me about this company of yours, Mr. Blight. What is its primary purpose?”

Blight folded his arms across his chest. “Art. It’s about the creative side of me. Police photography and weddings are my bread and butter, but I like to let my artsy side free, occasionally.”

Allie nodded thoughtfully. “Art. I see.” She reached down into her bag, straightened up and threw the issue of
Gobber
magazine across the table at Blight. Banks explained what had been tabled, for the record.

Blight stared at it. “What’s the matter, Mr. Blight? Don’t you want to touch an image of the dead girl, Georgie Konstanzo,
whom you knew?”

“I didn’t
know her
, not like that!”

“Not like
what
exactly?”

Blight shifted his weight on the seat, his eyes darting about the room. “You know, I never touched her or anything.”

“Not even while she was high as a kite on her drug of choice?”

Blight laughed unexpectedly. “Georgie? High? Never! She was much too…”

Allie raised her eyebrows. “Please feel free to explain, Mr. Blight. Much too…?”

“Sorted,” Blight managed at last. “Georgie was nobody’s fool, I can tell you that. High and mighty she was, too good for any of—”

“Who, Mr. Blight?”

“Never mind,” he said, twisting in his chair, his arms now firmly locked across his chest.

Well, well, too good for whom
? Allie wondered. A thought struck her. “Do you drink at the Black Crow in Chelsea, Mr. Blight?”

“Occasionally. It’s a good pub.”

Allie chanced her luck. “You’d know Ray and the boys, then?”

Blight didn’t answer. She repeated the question.

“Ray?” Blight shrugged.

Allie stood up and shouted at Blight,
“Yes,
Ray Riley,
Mr. Blight!
You drink with him and his boys, don’t you? That’s how you got the job with
Gobber
magazine, isn’t it?”

DC Banks squirmed in his seat. Blight jumped and twitched. “Ok, yes, I do drink with his crew. Everybody there does.”

“So you also knew Georgie as the barmaid. It was your idea to photograph her, wasn’t it? What happened—did she knock you back one night? Where was it that you decided she had to die? At the Black Crow, or in your own love nest while you were photographing her…
artistically,
of course?”

“I never touched her!” Blight shouted. Allie could see the air around him was bright blue. He was telling the truth. He was no murderer and besides, they had the CCTV footage to prove it. Still, a good scare might flush something out.

There was no stopping Blight. “Georgie would never look at someone like me. She could be very rude and what is it…
condescending,
if you were of no value to her. When I photographed her, she loved the camera, that’s for sure. It was her ticket to fame, but I could have been a block of stone for all she noticed. Me and Georgie? Not in a million fucking years!”

Allie sat back in her chair, letting a silence develop. “So,” she said at last, “Georgie and who then? Ray Riley, Terry Burdon? Suppose you tell me.”

Blight looked even more edgy. “I never saw her with any of Riley’s crew. Big Joe pinched her ass once and the next night, she threw a beer all over him. He thought he was well in at first, but she could be a right bitch. Even the customers complained about her, according to Rabbit.”

“Ah yes,” Allie said, “Mr. Blascombe. Was
he
interested in her?”

Blight laughed. “Not bloody likely. His virginal daughter with the big tits—sorry— keeps her eye well on him. Besides, he’s not really the type. Bit of family man is Rabbit.”

Banks looked at Allie questioningly.
He is right
, she thought,
this isn't going anywhere productive
. “Alright, Mr. Blight,” Allie said, looking at the curiously old-fashioned clock on the wall above him, “we’ll leave it there at seven twelve p.m.”

Banks turned the recorder off. Blight asked if he was free to go.

“Yes, of course. Thank you for coming in at such short notice,” Allie said. Blight smiled and bobbed his head. “Oh, one thing before you go, Mr. Blight—when did you realize it was Georgie you were photographing at Earl’s Court?

Blight’s eyes misted over. “Not until the following day, after you had visited the crime scene with your big friend. I checked the photos on my camera and saw the little dolphin tattoo on her ankle. I didn’t know before that—how could I? She was so—" He searched for the word. “—
butchered!”

Allie returned to her office. It was time, in theory, to duck around to her parents’ home for dinner, but Jacinta Wilkinson was her priority. She rang her mother and begged off. Her mother was predictably miffed, but it couldn’t be helped.

She decided to ring Strauss and find out why she had not called in after visiting the Bo Peep café in Camden. After four rings, Strauss picked up her phone. A cacophony of sound bombarded Allie. It was the sound of a pub in full swing—live music, swearing, the works. Strauss was yelling into the phone, but Allie decided not to say anything and wait until Rachel saw who was on the line and found a quiet spot. It took a long time, but finally, Strauss’ voice was audible and slurred—she was three sheets to the wind.

“Rachel? This is Allie St. Clair. Can you hear me?

“Yep!”

“Rachel, I assume your visit to the Bo Beep Café was not productive?”

For a moment there was no reply. Then, “Yes, sorry, Al… ma’am. We did find Jacinta’s handbag; it was in the toilet, still on the bench. Can you believe that?”

“Why the hell didn’t you let me know?”

Rachel was sobering up fast. “Connors took it and said he’d advise you and give the bag back to Jacinta.”

“Connors? What was he doing out there?”

“You sent him to help coordinate the search for Jacinta, even though you’d told me
I
was in charge.” The rebuke from Strauss was obvious..

Allie could not mask her anger and confusion. “Rachel, let’s be clear—I did
not
send Connors to help you. The search out there was
your
operation. It still is, for God’s sake!”

“But Jacinta was found safe and sound, ma’am,” Strauss said, panic rising in her voice. “Wasn’t she?”

*****

Jacinta heard rain splatter on the boot-lid of the car. The air inside her box was hot now, but enough air seemed to get in. She had heard nothing of the two men since the car stopped a long time ago, maybe an hour. She’d heard them both get out and slam their doors, but no footsteps. Tears moistened her eyes again, but she blinked them away, still terrified of her nose blocking up. Her throat definitely had a prickle in the back of it now.

What were they going to do with her? Where were Allie and her colleagues? Couldn’t they track her phone? Her phone! Of course, she didn’t have it; otherwise, it would have rung. What had they done with it? Had they kept it, but turned it off? She could feel blood still trickling into her mouth from behind her ear. It should have stopped bleeding by now.

She wondered what time it was. She had no idea how long she’d been out, but she had been able to see light before, of course. There was an odd smell in the car, like rotten vegetables, and it was getting stronger. A door slammed somewhere away from the car. She held her breath and listened. She heard a footstep, then another.

Both doors opened and the car bounced and dipped as two people got in. She heard the deeper voice ask how long the journey would take. The engine started, but she thought the muffled reply was ‘about three hours’ and then something about the rain. The car lurched and the gears crunched. She’d decided earlier he wasn’t a good driver. Even though it was a Mercedes Benz, it was old—maybe nineteen sixties. The car bounced and stopped. She heard traffic lights and then a loud voice, someone outside on the street, and then more raised voices—
Jamaicans
, lots of them. She heard someone say something about ‘hippies.' She guessed she was in Notting Hill, a Jamaican stronghold for years. The car moved off, the thrumming of the tires on the road drowning out the conversation from the front. Jacinta groaned. Three hours… to where?

*****

Allie quickly dialed Jacinta Wilkinson’s mobile phone number. If she was safe, why hadn’t she been in contact? The number went straight to the message bank. She left a message for her. She then rang Mathew Connors’ phone number. He answered immediately. She could hear a motor running and a hissing in the background.

“DC Connors, this is Chief Inspector St. Clair.” It was ridiculously formal, but the situation called for it and who knew where this was leading?

“ Oh… yes, Ins… you?” The phone connection was terrible.

“Mathew, where are you?”

Static replied, then, "driving—… able."

“Mathew, I need you to pull over! I have to talk to you about this afternoon—
urgently
.”

The phone fell silent. “Mathew?” The connection was dead. She punched in his phone number again, but it went straight to his message bank. “Damn,” she said, barely managing to stay on the line to record a message for him to call back, straightaway.

She threw her phone down on her desk and slumped forward in her chair, her elbows on the table. She rubbed her face hard. She was getting nowhere, fast. She couldn’t sit any longer. Jumping up and flicking off her office lights, she strode to the window and stared out across the commercial zone, toward Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. It was raining hard. She could see a sheen of water coating Victoria Street and further on, Big Ben’s clock face was smudged just enough by the horizontal rain to make it unreadable. Standing in the dark, Jacinta’s pain and desperation were palpable. Jacinta wasn’t safe; Allie knew it with certainty. Someone, presumably Connors, had fed misinformation to Strauss about that. She’d flirted with the idea of putting out an alert to pick up Connors; it would’ve been an overreaction. Something new was happening. “Speak to me, Jacinta,” she pleaded aloud. Lightning lit up the city like a film set and the rain hurled itself at her window, running down in thick sheets, melting the symmetry of the cityscape into crazy parody.

She stared defiantly at the rain, her face barely three inches from the cold glass. She thought so hard her brain hurt. Two horrible murders and Jacinta abducted, all in three days. And all she had were circumstantial links, at best, to Diamond Ray Riley. It was not enough.

The media was on it and she suspected Superintendent Carr was copping all sorts of grief from above. She was missing something. She punched at the window in frustration. The ‘third day’ played on her mind.
He rose again on the third day.
The number three was sprayed all over Paula, then Jacinta abducted on the third day. But so what? Apart from the obvious biblical overtones, and she understood why that was, it made no sense. But there must be something in it. She had been drawn into a game—Michael had made her aware of that. So in this game, what were the rules?

Sharp hunger intruded on her thoughts, as it always did about six hours after her last meal. The metabolism that kept her so lean was also an inconvenience. If she didn’t eat soon, her blood sugar would tumble and she’d be no use to Jacinta.

The menu at the Black Crow invaded her thoughts. She had to do something; standing in her office pontificating while Jacinta Wilkinson was in mortal danger was not an option. The Black Crow and its patrons were at the heart of this, she was sure. How it connected to Paula Armstrong, she could not yet see, but it was there. She pictured Michael in her mind’s eye.
See you at the Black Crow in thirty minutes?

Chapter Nineteen

The Crow was jumping. The four-piece band in the corner by the door rocked out a solid groove and Allie had to fight her way in through the door. A hand landed on her shoulder. She steeled herself for the inevitable slurred proposition. But it was Michael. He stood a good head above even the tallest in the crowd. He was hardly inconspicuous. She saw he still wore the long black coat, but had changed his shirt and jeans. She wondered where he had access to clothes.

“Stores in London sell them, you know,” he said with a smile.

“Can we eat?” she asked, pointing to where she knew the tables to be. He nodded and fell in behind her as she picked her way through the eclectic, gyrating crowd. Nobody bothered her on the journey to the lounge area and she reflected that it would be nice to have a permanent bodyguard who filled a doorway so adequately.