“Dollars.”
“The bonus would jack it up to an even million. But I never paid a bonus in my life and I’m not gonna start with you two. I pay my help well, but if they don’t deliver, they’re out. The same goes for you. I’ll pay you two hundred and fifty thousand now, two hundred and fifty thousand two weeks from now and, if I get out stain-free, you get the other two hundred and fifty thousand. If I come out dirty, you’re cut off at five hundred thousand—plus that twenty-five-thousand-quid advance. That’s the end of the dickering. Yes or no?”
“I think yes,” Wu said. Durant only nodded.
Glimm looked at Jenny Arliss. “Cut ‘em a check for the two-fifty.”
“We’re leaving for California tomorrow, so we’d like it this afternoon,” Wu said.
Arliss glanced at her watch. “Then you and I had best share a cab to my office.” She pushed back her chair and rose.
Artie Wu, again beaming, also rose and walked swiftly around the table to help Arliss into her coat.
“That woman detective,” Durant said to Arliss. “How do I get in touch with her?”
She finished buttoning the coat before she replied. “Why would you want to do that?”
“She might know something useful about the Goodisons.”
“She won’t talk to you.”
“Why not?”
Jenny Arliss started to reply, changed her mind, picked up a yellow pencil from the table, wrote something on one of the pads, ripped off the sheet, handed it to Durant and said, “Find out for yourself.”
Nine
The address turned out to be a flat over a chemist’s shop in Shirland Road on the northern edge of Paddington and, weather permitting, within walking distance of where Durant himself lived. After paying off the taxi, he read the names that had been printed with different ballpoint pens on two cards thumbtacked above a pair of doorbells.
The name on the left was Joy Tomerlin. The name on the right was Mary Ticker. Durant rang the bell on the right.
Moments later it was answered by a woman’s voice, made tinny by the intercom. “Yes?”
“It’s about the Goodisons, Hughes and Pauline.”
“Not interested.”
“My name’s Durant. I’m a friend of Jenny Arliss. She gave me your name and address.”
“American, are you?”
“Right.”
“Sure you’re not some bloody reporter?”
“Positive.”
“Well, come up, then.”
The unlocking buzzer rang and Durant went through a thick glass door and up a flight of stairs to a small landing where a pair of doors gave entry to the front and rear flats. The front flat was Mary Ticker’s.
Durant knocked and the door was quickly opened by a lean, not quite gaunt woman in her late thirties who wore a thick wool pullover, gray pants and a melancholy expression. A cigarette burned in her left hand.
She had very dark blue and possibly bitter eyes that had developed what Durant guessed to be a nearsighted squint. Her hair was light brown and thick and cropped short to the point of indifference. She also had a red nose, pale wide lips and prominent cheekbones, which saved the face from plainness. She had to look up at Durant, but not as much as most women, and he guessed her height at five-foot-nine or -ten.
“Detective Ticker?” Durant said.
She examined him carefully, head to foot and back up again, then shook her head and said, “No.”
“But you were Detective Mary Ticker?”
She nodded.
“I’d like to talk to you about the Goodisons.”
“Why?”
“They’ve disappeared.”
Her instant smile was happy, even delighted, and displayed a lot of well-cared-for teeth. Then it vanished, as quickly as it came, but not before it had softened her face and erased some of the bitterness from her eyes. After the smile was gone and the bitterness back, she said,
“Perhaps you’d best come in and tell me the juicy bits.”
The sitting room was small and cramped and focused on a large television set with an attached VCR. Opposite the set was a kitchen alcove and just beyond it was a closed door that Durant guessed led to the bedroom and bath. Three easy chairs were drawn up to the TV set.
In front of the center chair was a low table just the right size and height to hold tea and supper trays, which Durant suspected it did.
