Truth Dare Kill (25 page)

I sat.

“You and him close, are you?” he asked.

“Let’s say my head and his fists got too close for my liking. An experience I won’t forget in a hurry.”

Crane’s hand stroked his red mouth. He had his cigarette holder replenished again. “Who are you, Campbell? Why you really here?”

I weighed up the odds. They weren’t good. If I told him the truth, it might put me on the same side of the law as him. But I never, ever, got taken in by that lie about honour among thieves. Crane was more than likely to turn me over to Wilson’s tender care. That would earn him brownie points, a favour to be called in. I’m sure Jonny Crane needed all the favours he could get from the law. Homos had a tough time of it in the nick. On the other hand Crane and I might find common cause; my enemy’s enemy is my friend. But it would be like siding with a rattlesnake against a scorpion.

“My name’s McRae. Danny McRae.”

Crane’s brows furrowed behind his glasses. “Fuck’s sake! The one the law’s after? You the Ripper?” He peered at me as if it were unlikely. Then his thoughts gelled. “If you done in my girls, you effing toerag

!” His words had the boy moving forward with his knife aimed at my eyeballs.

“No, Jonny, no! I’m the one they’re after, but I’m not the Ripper. Would I be sitting here telling you this if I were?” They settled back in their chairs and I swallowed hard. He was all ears now.

“I have an idea who is, though,” I said.

“You know who killed my girls? Cos when I find out

” His face was dark, and I didn’t know if it was his pocket or his pride that had been hurt. I didn’t for a moment think it could be his humanity.

My hook was in his mouth. “I know someone planted the gun beside the last victim. So Wilson must have been in the loop – maybe even did the planting.

There’s even a wild possibility that Wilson is directly involved.”

Crane jerked forward over the table with both his hands pointing at me like pistols. The rings glittered and flashed. “Wilson done them in? You’re fucking joking, right? This ain’t a joking matter, Jock.”

“Jonny, would I be that stupid? I’m being fingered for something I didn’t do.

Why would I wind you up?” That got a grudging nod.

A high-pitched voice cut in. “He’s got something there, Jonny. You know what that fucker Wilson’s like with the birds. Roughs ’em up and never bleeding pays.”

“Price of doing business, Sammy,” said Crane. “Look, McRae, if you have a name for me, you’d better share it. Right now. Do you want money?”

“I’ll tell you in forty-eight hours. I’ve got a couple of things to check through first and if they pan out, I’ll phone you with the name. I don’t want money, Jonny, though I’ll take back my tenner, if that’s all right?”

He looked at me like I’d asked his mother to go to bed with me. Then he slowly pushed the pound notes across the table to me. “What do you want?”

“I need to know what the woman in the photo was doing with you.”

He took a deep breath. “If you’re pulling my wire, Jock, you’ll never see the bonnie banks again, right?” I nodded. “The lady got given my name. She wanted a flat and some clients. I arranged it.”

I sat and stared at him. “Sorry, Jonny, There’s some mistake, surely. Are you saying this woman worked for you? On the streets?”

He laughed. “Not on the streets, exactly. I found her a nice little pad and sent her some business. I took my twenty per cent.”

I couldn’t take this in. Kate Graveney working as a prostitute? The perfect lady, doing it for money? Impossible. “Can you tell me a bit more? What she was like? Her name? I need to be sure, Jonny.”

He was smiling. “You think an upper-class tart like her wouldn’t get her knickers down for money? Think again, chum. I don’t know if she needed the money – and she made good money, let me tell you – or if she did it for fun. I’ve seen it all, chum. They’re all the same.”

Mary’s words rolled round my head as Jonny’s world-weary air began to convince me. “When was this?”

“September last year, she comes to me. I remember. She kind of stands out, don’t she? That hair. It was a hot day. She kept her sun specs on.”

I pictured Kate down here in the gloom, anxious behind her glasses, but shining like a diamond in shit. And then coming out with her request. Did Caldwell know about this?

“Was there a man around? Working for her? With her?”

He shook his head. “Nah. I got a list of top clients who like something special.” He tapped the place where his heart should have been. If he had an address book in there it would be worth the gorilla’s weight in gold. “Once madam was settled and she’d turned a few tricks I had my phone ringing off the hook. Nice little earner, Sheila was,” he said wistfully.

“Sheila?” I asked incredulously.

“Her stage name, shall we say. Never gave me her real moniker.”

A worse thought occurred to me. “These clients

was one of them our friend Wilson, by any chance?”

“Let’s put it this way: if he was, he didn’t pay for it.”

My mind was reeling but there was a question still unresolved. “The lady –

Sheila – ended up in hospital in November, Jonny. Know anything about that?”

He smirked. “You thought it was a bit of family planning gone wrong, didn’t you?

Not that simple, chum. Not that simple. Seems our Sheila liked it a bit rough. I don’t know exactly what she was getting up to – I don’t interfere with the details of my girls you know – but I hear it got a bit out of hand.”

I couldn’t take any more in. I needed air, and time to rethink. “Jonny, thanks.

That’s all I wanted to know.” More than I wanted, in truth. “I need to digest this.” But this was as digestible as raw liver.

“’Spect you do, chum. But don’t take long. I still need that name. You owe me now. I don’t know how it’s connected to the lovely Sheila, but I want that name.

We’ll take it from there.”

I didn’t know how it connected either, chum, but I was sure it did. “I’ll call you in forty-eight hours, Jonny.”

“Be sure, you do. If you don’t, Sammy here will find you. You do know that, don’t you?” The boy smiled and licked the blade of his knife with a tongue like a lizard.

I emerged into the last of the daylight. It was a mellow London evening, the type you get sometimes even in mid-winter; a false spring. In Glasgow it would rain or freeze or snow from November to March before you felt any forgiveness.

Here in the south the weather was like a clever mistress: treated you well enough to keep you interested and optimistic, but never too much to make you blasé.

As I sidled through the streets I wrestled with the new thoughts and the images they conjured. I felt sick to my core. That first night she came to my office I fell a little in love with a dream. She was everything better than me, everything I couldn’t have. Or so I thought. It never occurred to me that I could have paid for it. If I could afford it.

I shook myself. I was lucky to get out of that cellar with my head on, and here I was with another bit of the puzzle in place. But the overall pattern had slipped out of focus. I had to find the remaining pieces. All I knew – thought I knew – was that I’d been set up by Caldwell to keep me away from some squalid secret surrounding his sister. Had it been enough to cause the death of five young women? And how was Wilson involved?

My head was running through the choices I’d just made. I could have given Caldwell’s name to Jonny Crane, and let nature take its course; Sammy was malice in make-up, and his gorilla was an unstoppable force of nature. But two things had stopped me: first, I suppose, my days wearing a blue uniform had left a vestigial preference to work through the law rather than via the likes of Crane.

Second, and more important, I wanted this for myself. I wasn’t sure quite how to arrange it, but there needed to be a face-to-face showdown between me, Caldwell and his lovely whore of a sister. Wilson too. They owed me that.

TWENTY THREE

I woke next morning in Mary’s cathouse wondering what to do first. I had to move fast. I was on a countdown with Jonny Crane. He might look like a nancy accountant – some gravy with these casseroled books, sir? – but I’d found from my Glasgow days that they could be the worst. All that inner turmoil.

I’d have liked to question Liza Caldwell some more, find out if she knew about Kate’s bad habits. Our last little chat had been interrupted. I lay thinking how I could get to her. I’d chanced my arm too often stalking her in Hampstead.

Could I lure her away somewhere?

But Kate was the real target. I couldn’t make a return visit to Onslow Square; I’d be shot on sight. Could I tail her? Get her in her car and spirit her off somewhere? More than ever now I couldn’t rely on the rozzers to help me. It was all down to me.

It was seven am but it still seemed very dark despite my curtains being a fraction ajar. I got up and peered out at a real London pea-souper. Spring had come too early. The weather matched my thoughts. I couldn’t think clearly. Maybe I should abandon the trail and make a run for it; get across the Channel. Europe was still in such a mess that one more piece of flotsam would go unnoticed.

There was a knock on my door and it was opened before I could say yea or nay.

Mary sailed in. I suppose she was within her rights; it was her house. And she was carrying the right passport: two cups of tea. She put one down by my bedside table and sat on my bed, delicately holding the other. Mary had no social conversation; she came straight out with whatever was on her whirring little mind. I liked that. Usually.

“Time you go, Danny. Too many police after you. Too much trouble for me.”

I slurped my tea alongside her. “I know, Mary. You’ve been great, so you have.

And I’ve overstayed my welcome.”

“You need money? I lend you money. Good interest.”

I bet. “Thanks Mary, but I’m OK for a while. I’ve got enough to get me out of here, out of London, maybe out of England.”

She banged her cup into her saucer, and put it on the table. “You give up? After all you do? Why you give up?” She crossed her little arms with an operatic gesture of anger.

“Because the folk I’m up against don’t play by any rules I know. Because they have money and power; I have bugger all. Because even the law is bent.

Correction: it’s broken. I don’t stand a chance.”

“Huh. You face Jonny Crane. That brave. You can do next step.”

“Mary, I need to question Kate Graveney or Liza Caldwell – both, preferably –

and see where that takes me. But they’ll have protection round them that’s as tight as the King’s corset.”

“Huh.” She slurped some tea and studied me, as if the answer was on my forehead but needed interpretation. “So – Kate come here.”

“Why in god’s name would she come here, Mary?”

“Cos your pal Jonny ask her.” She smiled at me to show how clever she was.

“I think I might be pushing my luck with Jonny Crane, you know. And anyway, he doesn’t know her real name far less her address.”

Mary shook her head in pity. “Thought you smart. Not so sure.”

She wasn’t going to help me any further, so I sipped at my tea for inspiration.

I got it, finally.

“OK. So someone phones her from here, saying they’re calling on Jonny Crane’s behalf. We tell her Jonny needs to speak to her. But why? What would make Kate come over? What hold would he have?”

“You think of something.”

Nothing came. I drank some more tea and continued, “And anyway, what are we going to do when She’s here? Kidnap her? Mary, I thought I’d been enough trouble already?”

“I know other place. You fix.”

She described the empty flat she had access to; I didn’t ask how. Mary waited. I sat reading my tealeaves. In their depths a plan began to form: a daft plan, wild, high risk and bloody dangerous. Maybe I should stick to coffee.

I could think of a way of getting Kate to come over to Soho, but once here I needed some way of getting her to admit to some pretty unpleasant truths. I needed a lever. I knew a lever, a big one

Mary left me to get washed and dressed. I came down to her room and walked her through the idea. When I was finished she looked hard at me.

“You madman, you know?”

“I know. But will you help? Just one last time?”

“You get lot of luck for helping madman. What you want? You want gun, I get you gun.”

It was tempting. An elephant gun preferably. “Not this time, Mary. Thanks. I just want you or one of the girls to make that call for me.”

We let Colette sleep till nine before waking her up. She came into Mary’s room blowsy and grumpy. It took two cigarettes and a pot of tea before she stopped grousing and began to take in what we were asking. Then her sunny nature began to show through and she entered the spirit of things. It was all part of the human drama that Colette lived for every day.

I gave her the little script I’d prepared and we crowded round the pay phone in Mary’s hall. We were praying Kate was at home. It wasn’t the sort of message you could leave with Millie. Colette put her twopence in and got the operator.

Colette gave her the Chelsea number and it began to ring. She pressed button A.

“Good morning, Graveney residence. Who is calling please?” It sounded like the butler that I’d brandished the gun at. He was back to his pompous self.

Colette’s rough accent jarred against the posh tones. “I wanna speak to Kate Graveney, please.”

I could picture him holding the phone well away from his cultured ear. “I’m sorry, Miss Graveney is not down yet. May I ask who is calling? Perhaps Miss Graveney can call you back?”

“Listen, you old fart, I want to speak to Kate, now! You hear? Tell her it’s about Sheila. She’ll know what I mean.”

“I need to know your name, please.” There was a bit of panic and anger creeping into his voice; no wonder, with Colette blasting his ear. He wasn’t used to having guns pointed at him or whores being rude to him first thing in the morning.

Colette upped the volume; I had to step back a pace.

“Look, mate, Kate is going to be really pissed off with you if you don’t fucking get her on the phone pronto. All right? Tell her it’s about Sheila. You think you can handle that?”