That's well out of order.” He looked at Butler. “You going to let her get away with that? Racial prejudice in the police force? That’s diabolical.”
Butler threw up his hands. “I’m saying nothing, Sir. And I wouldn’t go down that road with DC Stanford if I were you.”
Harrison nodded and said, “I see what you mean.” Whisky hit a glass and left splashes on the black-lacquered surface of the cellaret. There was an ivory inlay of Chinese figures. “Now look what you've made me do. You women are all the same, causing us all kinds of grief.” The traveller in his blood was irresistible. Little wonder they were market traders. His smile was disconcerting and as crafty as a spin doctor’s on a Brighton stage. His wife had disappeared but it didn't get in the way of humour. Priorities. All that. Some things couldn't be helped.
Sam Butler said sharply, “Right, let’s get on with it.” He accepted his drink, a tumbler full to the brim, and spread the forms on a polished glass coffee-table, easing himself into a cream leather armchair as he did so. The studded leather was cracked like an old woman's face. He tapped the leather and said, “Trouble with this colour, it shows up the dirt.”
“You should know,” the villain said. “You don't earn in a year what this fucking thing cost. Not that the cost means nothing. It's all relative, right? Who gives a fuck apart from the fuckers who haven't got it? I could feed half of India with the bread I paid for this, but who gives a fuck about half of India?”
He latched on to Anian again and stayed there for a moment, then added, “Or Pakistan.”
Butler smiled. “You're probably right, about the wages. But it still shows up the dirt, and there's a lot of it around here. Right?” Harrison nodded slowly, weighing up the DS, then he turned back to Anian. “You sure I can't tempt you, coke or tea? I do a great line in tea – Assam, Earl Grey, Lapsang Souchong, camomile, even Indian.” She flashed him an odd look that Butler couldn’t work out. It might have been perplexity, but he wasn’t sure.
Harrison shrugged and offered a little smile of resignation then sat on the sofa to face the DS over the coffee table. He leant forward, his massive hands cupping his glass.
“OK, person who logged the report,” Butler said with his pen poised. He was finding it difficult to accept that Harrison was top of Sheerham’s hit-list and one of the most dangerous villains in the capital. Yet he knew it was true. Harrison had been behind some of the nastiest headlines in the last twenty years and that the coppers hadn’t been able to nail him was down to fear. It would take a brave man or a man with a death wish to grass on Ticker Harrison.
“That's me.” He pulled a face at DC Stanford.
She tightened her lips, trying not to smile.
Butler dragged them back. “Harrison, fine. Ticker?”
“Edward. But don't spread it around. I don't want people mixing me up with that geezer who married Sophie.”
“I can see your point. Easy mistake to make.”
Anian was having trouble. Her eyes betrayed her.
Butler went on, “Relationship husband. Full name of missing person?”
“Helen Anne Harrison.”
“Is that with an E?”
“Two Es.”
“Anne?”
“Oh, yeah, with an E.”
The DC had to turn away but her silent laugh still shook her shoulders.
Butler ignored her and proceeded with the rest: DOB, age, place of birth, height, weight, physical peculiarities.
Harrison said, “What the fuck do you mean? She's perfect.” “Freckles, tattoos, scarring from an operation or an injury, maybe?” “Oh. No, no freckles. Maybe one or two on her shoulders, after the sun.”
“False teeth?”
“Are you taking the piss?”
“No, but I am enjoying it. Birthmarks?”
“One, not that you'll ever see it.”
“Well, you know? Just for the record.”
“A little thing on the side of her fanny, shaped like a pear.”
“Is that an American fanny or a British fanny?”
“What?”
“Front or back, boot or bonnet?”
Anian turned back to them. She seemed a little more composed but her eyes still sparkled and Butler knew it wouldn’t take much to start her off again. What annoyed him most was that she was laughing with Ticker Harrison and not at him. She smiled sweetly.
“Front for fuck's sake.”
“English then. Top of her leg?”
“No, no, next to the old BBC.”
“Shepherd's Bush, then. You wouldn't have a photograph of it, would you, Sir?”
Harrison's eyes turned to slits.
“No, right. What side would the birthmark be on? Right or left?” “As I'm looking at it, right.”
“That would be her left?”
“Right.”
“How big?”
Harrison made a hole with his finger. “The size of a pea, maybe, the colour of…” he nodded toward the DC.
“DC Stanford?”
“Right.”
“Nescafe, then, with cream.”
“You know Cole, don't you?”
“DI Cole?”
“He taught you how to take the Irish?”
“No, Sir. I'm self-taught.”
“Well, Sergeant…”
“Butler. Detective Sergeant Butler.”
“Well, Detective Sergeant Butler, do yourself a favour and teach yourself something else. Things have a way of coming round. One day you're going to need a favour and somebody's going to take the piss out of you…”
“Right,” Butler said. “Let's carry on.”
They went through the rest, friends or relatives, places she might have frequented, health or medical conditions and so on.
Butler said, “Does she have a driving licence?”
“Yeah, she's got a licence.”
“Does she have her own car?”
“You kidding? The way she drives there's no way she's driving mine.”
“She took it with her?”
“Well, of course she did. She'd drive to the fucking bathroom if that was possible.”
From the side of the room Anian said, “Is this Helen?” She stood gazing at a framed painting of a naked woman. An oil, subdued, heavy paint where the light shone through, lots of knife.
Ticker Harrison said, “That's Helen. Now tell me, if you can, that she ain't perfect?”
Butler's interest picked up. Maybe it was the woman's lack of inhibition; there wasn't much left to the imagination. He was surprised he hadn't noticed it before. It was a pose guaranteed to draw the eye. He asked, “When was this painted, Sir?”
“Finished about a month ago. No more than that. Paint's hardly dry. What do you think?”
Butler turned back to Harrison and said, “You’re right, you do have a very beautiful wife and your description of the birthmark was spot on. If you can give us a recent photograph and a car registration, we'll go and try to find her.”
