Strangers (25 page)

She didn’t know what she expected to see on this occasion – apart from a man climbing into a taxi – or how this might have any connection with the actual case. On the face of it, it felt like it wouldn’t. But at the end of the day she was still a cop, and Tammy’s weird warning kept echoing through her head. Knowing Tammy, there’d be nothing of great value here – SugaBabes was an illicit operation so, surprise surprise, illicit things were going on – but anything that might at some point give her leverage over the McIvars had to be worth investigating.

When she peered out through the hole in the wall, Mr Billworth was waiting patiently by the roadside while a vehicle swung through a smooth three-point turn in front of him. This vehicle resembled no taxi that Lucy had ever seen. It was more like a limousine – long, dark and sleek, with tinted windows. It certainly carried no roof light nor any sign of a Council licence plate, but none of that was hugely mysterious. Evidently this Billworth was a rich guy. Doubtless he could easily afford this kind of private, five-star service.

But then it took a turn for the strange.

The limousine driver climbed out wearing a grey chauffeur’s outfit, including a peaked hat pulled low and dark-lensed spectacles, which, as it was now late at night, could only have been worn to create some kind of disguise.

And then it took a turn for the even stranger.

The chauffeur opened the rear passenger door for Billworth, as one might expect. But before Billworth climbed in, he turned his back on the chauffeur and stood rigidly. The chauffeur, with a near-theatrical flourish, produced a white silk scarf, which he gently tied around his passenger’s head, in effect blindfolding him.

Lucy watched in fascination as the chauffeur then assisted Billworth into the back of the car, closed the door behind him, climbed in himself and gunned it swiftly out of the cul-de-sac.

She went back to the coat-check desk in a state of total bemusement.

The blindfold clearly meant that the client was not supposed to know where he was being taken to, so he definitely wasn’t being driven home. Was that the case with all of them, these guys who only visited SugaBabes for long enough to buy a single drink, and who were really here to use the SugaBabes Taxi Service – for that was surely what this amounted to?

She wondered where their ultimate destination lay, and why how-to-get-there was a secret kept even from them.

None of this boded well, and though Lucy fully intended to take Tammy’s advice and refrain from asking any questions on this front, it was plain that no information was going to be volunteered. Whenever a taxi arrival was announced, no member of staff in the club indicated even by their body language that it was anything out of the ordinary. Delilah, who could talk the hind legs off a donkey, made no reference to it – as if it wasn’t even on her radar.

And maybe it shouldn’t have been on Lucy’s either, even as a police investigator.

Fleetingly, she was furious with herself for showing such indiscipline.

She was here to hunt a killer called Jill the Ripper, not take issue with each and every side-racket the McIvars were perpetrating, ominous though they might appear. So instead of trying to puzzle the taxi business through, she decided that she would make a concerted effort for the rest of that evening to get on with her work, to watch, to keep her ears open, and to discuss inanities with Delilah whenever the opportunity arose. But she wondered how long this could go on for. It was nearly ten days in, and she still didn’t appear to be making discernible progress – until another uneventful two hours had passed, and then, rather unexpectedly, there was a development.

Frank McCracken reappeared in the club, again in company with Mick Shallicker, but now with one or two others as well. One of these, Lucy recognised as “Necktie Nicky” Merryweather, while the rest were apparently their personal guests, though all looked to have been cut from similar rough-spun cloth. As usual, once here the gangsters shifted into relaxation mode, cracking jokes and laughing as they handed their coats over the counter.

McCracken turned to Marissa and asked her to ‘send Charlie down ASAP’.

Frank McCracken was not one of those curious customers who only came to SugaBabes to make use of the Taxi Service. Whenever he turned up, he tended to spend the entire evening, each time thus far, with a different girl, some of whom he’d simply socialise with at the bar, others of whom – though not many, admittedly – he would eventually take upstairs. However, this was the first time Lucy had heard him ask for a particular girl by name. It was also the first time she’d heard of a girl working here called “Charlie”. When the new arrivals had ambled off to the Oriental Room, Delilah, ever the gossip, added a helpful explanation.

‘Charlie the most expensive girl in north of England,’ she confided. ‘She jewel in Jayne McIvar’s crown, but she only here two days a week. I think she have private clients too.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘She Mr McCracken’s favourite. He want her for girlfriend, I think … but she always play hard to get.’

When Charlie finally came downstairs, in her own time it seemed, it was easy to understand why she’d be anyone’s favourite. With film star looks, flowing white-blonde hair and a voluptuous figure, and wearing a brilliant green, off-the-shoulder evening gown and backless silver slippers with four-inch heels, she looked almost impossibly glamorous. She walked across the vestibule with an easy sensual sway, stopping only briefly to talk with Marissa, before continuing to the Oriental Room, all the way radiating female sexuality.

Along with something else.

Something that interested Lucy even more.

Physical power.

In her heels, Charlie was at least six feet tall, while the rippling green material of her gown revealed strong arms, broad hips, firm thighs. Lucy was reminded of top sportswomen; Charlie may have been dressed to kill, but she had a hugely athletic aura.

Lucy had been looking for an Amazon, and here she was. And then there was that name – Charlie. As a rule, it tended to be a derivation of Charlotte. As was Carlotta, of course.

And what was short for Carlotta, if not Lotta?

Lucy slid along the counter to get a better angle on the open door to the Oriental Room. From here, she could see Charlie seated on the bar-stool next to McCracken, her tanned, toned legs neatly exposed through a slit in her skirts, one silver-heeled slipper dangling as she sipped the regulation lime-and-soda. She might be playing hard to get, but she was certainly cosied up to him, reaching out as they spoke, running a teasing finger down the side of his jaw.

‘Who
is
Charlie?’ Lucy casually asked Delilah. ‘I mean, what’s her story?’

‘Ahhh …’ The Polish girl gestured vaguely. ‘No one know. Only come to Talent Team four year ago. Most people think she porn star in America, but something go wrong and she come home.’

‘She’s English?’

‘London, I think.’

‘Surely a girl in that league doesn’t need to do this for a living?’

‘She like it. She have cash.’ Delilah’s eyes bulged, as if she was massively impressed by the info she was imparting. ‘She come in wearing fur, dripping jewels … when she bother to come in.’

‘How do Jayne and Suzy tolerate that?’

‘They not control her … like you say, she not need this job. But when she here, I guess they see her as asset. Like I tell you, Mr McCracken’s favourite. Spend all night with him when she here.’

‘Suppose
that
empowers her,’ Lucy said. ‘Means she can do what she wants.’

‘No one say “no” to Charlie.’

‘Kind of a boring name, though … isn’t it? I mean … Charlie?’

Delilah shrugged. ‘We pick and choose names. When you look so good you not need fancy one, uh?’

It was tempting to ask if Charlie had ever gone by any other name. But that might seem like one question too many. Thanks to Delilah’s penchant for chatter, there’d be other opportunities to learn about Charlie without seeming overly nosy. But one thing was certain, in Lucy’s eyes at least: Charlie – the most expensive girl in the Twisted Sisters’ high-class establishment – now qualified as something else: one of those ever-elusive ‘major lines of enquiry’.

On the surface it might seem ridiculous. Here was this highly paid prostitute. That in itself was a rare enough thing. Would she really want to muddy those waters with a string of pointless murders just because men had been unkind to her in the past? But then again, such thinking didn’t allow for psychosis, for bloodlust, for an unstoppable compulsion to kill. Jill the Ripper was a serial killer. That meant killing wasn’t her hobby; it was her vocation.

Killing was what she did. Whether she liked it or not.

That night, Charlie left the club in McCracken’s company. It was one o’clock in the morning when the goddess of the house sashayed back upstairs to gather her personals, while the mob lieutenant and his towering, ox-like sidekick came to collect their coats.

‘Been working hard tonight, darling,’ McCracken told Lucy. ‘Take this for your trouble.’ He handed her two folded twenties. She thanked him profusely as she accepted it.

Again, his eyes lingered on her as though he knew her from somewhere.

‘Anything else I can do for you, sir?’ she asked.

‘Nah, it’s fine.’ He shrugged his coat on. Charlie came back downstairs, now wearing a mink and carrying her handbag.

‘Ready, love?’ he asked.

‘Always ready for you, Frankie,’ Charlie replied in a chirpy Cockney voice.

They linked arms and left the building together, Shallicker ambling at the rear, his shovel-like hands thrust deep into his pockets, his big jaw working his latest lump of gum.

‘Looks like she’s not playing hard to get
tonight
,’ Lucy said to Delilah.

Delilah waved that away. ‘She go home with him sometime. I think he have more work to do to make honest woman of her.’

Lucy was impressed even by that. It said a great deal about Charlie that she would keep a major player in the local underworld on tenterhooks. How often did guys like Frank McCracken get strung along by the women in their lives?

As she pondered this, she noticed Suzy McIvar crossing the vestibule, Gregor close behind her. The two of them halted half-way over, Suzy glaring at the door that had just closed behind McCracken and his party. It was written in the murderous frown on Suzy’s face that there was no love lost there.

Lucy watched carefully. It was easy enough to work out what was going on here.

Jayne McIvar, as the diplomat, was more tolerant; she recognised that the Crew were top dogs and that playing their game was the only solution to what otherwise could become a messy problem. Suzy, the more elemental of the two, was clearly less happy to accept this. Suddenly she noticed the coat-check girls watching her. Her frown became a snarl.

‘You two got nothing better to do than fucking gawk?’

Abashed, Delilah withdrew into the cloakroom. But before Lucy could follow, Suzy called her back, stalking across to the counter.

‘Hayley Gibbs!’

Lucy turned round.

Suzy’s odd-eyed gaze penetrated her like a spear. ‘What is it with you and Frank McCracken? He thought he knew you from somewhere, didn’t he?’

Lucy’s thoughts raced as she shook her head. ‘I don’t know, Miss McIvar … he seemed to think that before, but I’ve never met him in my life.’

Lucy felt scared again, not to mention helpless.

Suzy continued to glare at her. ‘You’re sure there’s nothing you’re not telling us?’

‘He was just tipping me, Miss McIvar.’

‘Do
not
lie to me, cutie! If it turns out you’re not who you say you are, I fucking swear …’

‘Now what?’ another voice interrupted.

It was Jayne, finally drawn from her office by the angry tones. She took things in immediately, and made swift eye-contact with her sister before glancing at the ceiling, indicating that Necktie Nicky and a couple of other Crew associates were still on the premises. ‘You talking trash again?’ she said with quiet intensity.

‘Just trying to establish a few facts,’ Suzy retorted.

‘Really? Didn’t we long ago establish the fact that your temper is one day going to get us into it deeper than whale shit unless you learn to rein things in?’

Suzy pointed at Lucy. ‘This one’s got something going on, I’m telling you.’

‘No one has got
anything
going on here!’ Jayne stressed. It was a strangely meaningful statement, Lucy thought – and its import was not lost on Suzy, who slowly and grudgingly lowered her finger of accusation.

‘Haven’t we agreed that we really don’t want any scenes
inside
the club?’ Jayne asked, though it wasn’t really a question. Again, her tone implied that Suzy’s outburst might have consequences. She threw another pertinent glance at the ceiling. ‘We don’t want anyone thinking we might – just
might
– end up being a source of embarrassment, do we? Not for
any
reason.’

Suzy said nothing. She glowered at Lucy one more time, but clamped her mouth shut.

‘Why don’t you cool off, eh?’ Jayne suggested. ‘Go and find a leather bar you can have a drink in.’

Suzy switched that icy, odd-coloured gaze to her sister, but only for the briefest time. And then she turned on her heel and strode to the main entrance, slamming the door behind her.

Chapter 19

‘I’m telling you, ma’am,’ Lucy said, ‘this Charlie’s a good fit for the profile.’

She’d found Nehwal and Slater in a corner of the cramped and noisy snug of the Aspinall Arms, the old-fashioned red-brick local at the rear of Robber’s Row.

With police shifts starting and ending at unusual times, the Aspinall tended to be busy at all hours, but today, with the addition of journalists as well, it was literally packed to its outer doors. Groups of lunchtime drinkers stood shoulder-to-shoulder around them, shouting and guffawing.

‘The trouble is,’ Nehwal said, ‘you’re supposed to be looking for someone called Lotta.’

Lucy shrugged. ‘Charlie … Charlotte … Carlotta … Lotta. They’re all horns on the same goat, and this is
some
goat, I’ll tell you!’