Stay Dead - страница 4

He wondered – briefly – how Tooley had got hold of this number. He didn’t like people tracking him down; as a rule, Redmond liked to do the stalking if there was stalking to be done. In fact, he enjoyed it.

‘Yeah, that’s me.’ Gary sounded surprised. ‘I’ve got some information for you.’

‘What information?’

‘You won’t believe it,’ said Gary.

‘Tell me.’

‘Nah. Not over the phone. We need to meet up.’

‘That’s not convenient.’ Sally gasped and Redmond raised a finger: shush.

‘It will be when you hear what it is.’

‘All right.’ Redmond was mildly intrigued. ‘When and where?’

Gary named a place, a time. Redmond said: ‘This had better be worth my while.’

‘It is,’ said Gary, and put the phone down.

‘This is so good,’ groaned Sally, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing… and then all at once it was too much, and Redmond grabbed her hips and came.

At the same moment, as he gasped and writhed and thrust at Sally with abandon, there was a knock and the bedroom door opened.

‘Sorry, Father, I forgot the shopping list and I thought I’d better ask-’

Redmond’s housekeeper, Mrs Janner, stopped dead in the doorway and stared at the naked couple on the bed, her face a mask of shock. Sally daintily put her hands up to cover her breasts. Redmond just lay there, thinking, Well, that’s that then.

That was the day Gary Tooley first got in touch with him, the same day that Mrs Janner phoned the bishop, the same day that Redmond Delaney was summarily dismissed from the priesthood.

Pity, really, because he had liked it.

While it lasted.

The Palermo Lounge nightclub, June 1994

The uniformed police got the call at 11.24 on a Friday morning, and by 11.42 they were there, talking to an hysterical young barman called Peter Jones.

‘She opens the front entrance door at eleven, every day. But today I got here and it was still locked. I thought she was ill in bed or something, so I used my own key. She don’t like me doing that, but what else could I do?’

‘Why doesn’t she like you doing that?’ asked one of the uniformed police, his weary sigh and set face saying he’d seen it all before, and then some.

They were standing in the big bar, backlit with blue fluorescent lights, and all was serene down here. As in the other Carter-owned clubs, the Blue Parrot and the Shalimar, there was lots of gold leaf on the walls, and angels and cherubs flying around the ceiling, dark tobacco-brown carpeting underfoot and about a hundred chairs decked out in faux tiger skins set out around circular tables. There were teensy little podiums with poles for the dancers. Gold chain curtains concealed exits over at the far right-hand side of the vast room; and there was a staircase, roped off and leading upwards, on their left. Neither of the two cops wanted to go up that staircase.

Pete was dragging his hands through his close-cropped blond hair, over and over, like he wanted to rip it straight out of his head, and his baby-blue eyes were reddened with tears.

‘She’s a very private person, she lives here,’ said Pete. ‘Up there. That’s her flat. I went up as soon as I came in, called out to her, asked if she was OK. She didn’t answer. So I knocked at her door, still nothing. I tried the handle and it was open. I went in. And I found her. Then I phoned you.’

Tears were slipping down Pete’s face. The female cop touched his arm, guided him to a chair. The male cop looked up at the staircase. Then, with a heavy sigh, he went over there, and began to climb the stairs.

An hour later, CID arrived in the unsexy buttoned-up form of DS Sandra Duggan, whose honey-coloured hair was scraped back to display knife-sharp cheekbones and eyes that viewed the whole world with hostility. With her was DCI Hunter: tall, dark-haired, grave-faced – literally grave-faced; everyone down the nick said he ought to be a fucking undertaker with a boat like that – with a down-turned trap of a mouth and inky-brown eyes that scanned everything around him like a computer.

CID spoke to Pete and then went upstairs with Pete trailing behind them.

‘Fuck,’ said Sandra as they opened the door to the flat and entered the little sitting room straight off it.