The Cold Calling

Also, thanks indirectly to Mr Parker, the recently opened drug-dependency unit has a whole bunch of extra clients.

Tony Parker. Mr Immunity.

Why?

Well, several people have a good idea. And somebody in CID has to be fully in the picture.

Maiden dried his face on a paper towel. Too many whiskies for this, really.

Still. See what happens, then. Suzanne.

By the time the minicab dumped them outside the blackened Victorian block at the bottom of Old Church Street, where it meets the bypass, her perfume was everywhere. At first it was sexy, then it became nauseating. Maiden always got sick in the back of cars.

Thigh to thigh, they hadn’t talked much. He hadn’t made a move on her — he still had some style. Plus, there was the problem that the quiet, grizzled cabbie just might have been the father of a kid nicked for dealing crack three months back. A kid who’d sworn the bastards had planted the stuff. Clutton. Dean Clutton.

‘This is nice, Bobby.’

‘It’s just a nice front door.’ Sorting drunkenly through his keys. ‘Not nice at all inside.’

Might not have been Clutton’s dad; too dark to tell, really. He unlocked the communal door with the lacquered brass knocker and five illuminated bell pushes.

Dean Clutton had hanged himself in his cell while on remand, this was the thing. Before Maiden got a chance to talk to him.

‘Sad, isn’t it?’ Suzanne said wistfully, long fingers playing with the collar of her black silk jacket.

‘What?’

‘You start your married life all fresh and clean, get yourself a nice, tidy little home together …’

‘It was a little Georgian-style semi. In Baslow Road. Yeah, it was nice. For a while. And tidy.’

Except for the night Liz had impaled four canvases, one after the other, on the pointed newel post at the top of the stairs. One after the other, with a stiff, crackly, ripping sound. That was when he’d taken the chance of a transfer to the Met. A new start, somewhere neither of them had connections, where they’d need to rely on each other.

As it turned out, Liz had hated it. Hated her job at the huge, crazy London hospital. Liz wanted to come back. There was a vacancy for a DI in Elham Division; he’d walked into it. Back with the old crowd. Who resented him. Naturally.

‘Baslow Road,’ Suzanne mused. ‘I wouldn’t know where that is. Being a stranger.’ She followed him inside and he felt for the light switches, flipped all three, but only one greasy yellow bulb came on.

‘You’re right.’ Suzanne’s nose wrinkling as she took in the state of the hallway. ‘It is a bit of a shithole. You OK, Bobby? You’re not going to throw up, are you?’

He said, ‘You’re not serious about this, are you?’

‘Course I’m serious. Why I came,’ Suzanne said. ‘Come on, let’s see them.’

‘All right.’ Despite the half-dozen whiskies, Bobby Maiden, on the last night of his life, was feeling almost shy as he propped the biggest canvas against the TV.

This was weird. He couldn’t figure this out at all. Started out like a direct approach, now it was just very strange.

Just as coppers in the Met above a certain rank could expect an invitation to join the Masons, in Elham there’d be a friendly, innocent overture from the Tony Parker organization. It was like a recognition of status. Almost above board.

Because Maiden stayed off the police social circuit, it had been a long time coming. But now it was here, and it was strange.

‘Little haven you’ve created here.’ Suzanne ran a finger along the art books. Grinned. ‘Bobby’s burrow.’

Maiden propped the other pictures against the table legs. Acrylics. And some watercolours, because there was less mess and they were easier to conceal if anybody turned up. Nobody at the nick had ever known about it.

‘Hey,’ Suzanne said. ‘Not what I was expecting. Where is it, Bobby? Morocco?’

The big canvas had a full moon like a lamp over sand dunes.

‘Formby.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘The Liverpool Riviera. Costa del Shite.’

‘You make it look dead exotic. You’re an imaginative guy, aren’t you?’

‘What the defence lawyers say to me. Look, you don’t really want to see this crap. I thought we-’

‘I like the way you’ve done the colours of the sandhills. Like you can see colours in places the rest of us can’t.’

Her coat was off and her hair had come all the way down. It was cold, as usual, in here and she had her arms entwined around her, pushing her breasts together. He shuddered with an unsuppressible spasm of longing. All wrong, of course. The very last thing you did was let them into your private life. If you could call this dump private, or what he had here a life.

‘… or is it Wainwright?’

‘What?’

‘Guy who painted those night pictures,’ Suzanne said. ‘Greenish. With, like, full moons. They were Liverpool and industrial kind of places too, only he made them look dead romantic. Atkinson Wainwright? Tony’s really into him. He’s got three or four now. A couple, anyway.’

‘Grimshaw,’ Maiden said knowledgeably. Tony Parker was into Atkinson Grimshaw? As well as prostitution, gambling and drugs?

Suzanne said, ‘Course, seeing this guy’s dead, his pictures are worth a stack, like your dad said, and a good investment. Still, Tony buys new things as well. If he likes them.’

‘And then he has the artist killed to make it worthwhile. You want some coffee? Wine?’

Suzanne smiled. ‘He might like these. Might well like them.’

He went still.

‘The moon and the sand,’ Suzanne said. ‘Tony’d go for that one, certainly.’

The moon in the painting wobbled in the deep, green sky. Maiden was gripping the edge of the table as a voice from somewhere said, Careful. Be cool. Flush her out.

‘Forget the pictures,’ he said. ‘Let’s go upstairs.’ Which made no sense; it was a ground floor flat.

‘No, I reckon …’ Suzanne stood back from the moon picture, pursing her lips. ‘I reckon, a picture like that, Tony would give … what? … seven grand? It’s the moon that does it. Tony’s ever so partial to a full moon.’

He saw, for the first time, the mocking intelligence in the smoky eyes.

‘Cash, of course,’ Suzanne said coolly.

He started to laugh.

‘So Tony wants me on his wall.’

He couldn’t decide whether it was ridiculously naive or totally brilliant. Five whiskies said brilliant.

‘And what do I have to do?’

Suzanne sat down. She chose the wooden garden chair by the gas fire, maybe making a point about the unnecessary frugality of his lifestyle.

‘You really his niece, Suzanne?’

‘You really an artist? See, I’m authorized to negotiate with artists. Policemen … that might be open to misinterpretation.’

‘What’s he looking for?’ His head felt as if it was floating away from his body. ‘Bit new to this game.’

‘Game, Bobby?’

‘Blind eye? Friend at court?’

Seven grand … not a bad base. Seven grand could get you out of here. Seven grand could get you into a rented cottage somewhere damp and lonely. Seven grand could-