'Without a cuckoo paddle.'
I broke in before they could stretch the fantasy further.
'It’s good to see you looking so well…'
Shaz cut me off.
'Ah no, you don’t escape us so easily.'
She caught hold of my left arm again and her girlfriend took my right.
'Come and have a drink.'
'I was heading somewhere.'
Jacque nipped my wrist.
'A couple of exotic dancers not good enough for you anymore?'
'It’s not that …'
'What then?'
I wanted to say I couldn’t be trusted around women, but the explanation would be too long and too strange so instead I smiled and said, 'OK, where do you fancy?'
Jacque giggled.
'That’s why we came chasing after you. There’s something you’ve got to see.'
Shaz looked at her watch.
'And if we’re quick we’ll just be in time.'
After Montgomery’s arrest I had expected to find myself back in the cells en route for extradition to a German jail, but Sylvie’s name was never mentioned. Eventually, during one of the long debriefing and drinking sessions that took place between Blunt and me, where some of the liberties we’d taken were edited out of our recollections, I steeled myself and said, 'Montgomery threatened my mother.'
'The guy was desperate and ruthless, not a good combination.'
'It got him pretty far up the police ranks.'
Blunt gave me a look.
'It doesn’t matter what line you’re in, the bosses generally feature a couple of successful psychopaths.'
'Is that right?'
He nodded.
'Makes sense when you think about it, explains why all bosses are cunts.'
I nodded and took a sip of my beer.
'He also threatened a lassie I was friendly with in Berlin. I wondered if he mentioned her?'
'Nah, he’s not going to drop himself in it is he? Was it nasty?'
I thought back to our encounter in the pub beneath the railway arches.
'He said, 'I know all about your little German girlfriend.''
'Typical con talk. He knew you had a girlfriend so he threatens her as a matter of course. Maybe he knows where she lives or works, maybe not. But he brings her up and you go into a panic. It’s an old trick.'
'I thought …'
'What?'
'I guess I didn’t think. I just reacted.'
Blunt snorted.
'Aye well, some women have that effect. Make you imagine all sorts of daft things.'
I’d nodded and downed the rest of my pint.
The trial filled the papers for weeks. Montgomery had admitted to helping dispose of Gloria Noon’s body, but still maintained her death had been an accident. Gloria and he had been having an affair for six months before Bill Noon had got wise and made a point of coming home early. Montgomery stuck to his story, maintaining that Noon had caught them together and Gloria had fallen down the stairs in the ensuing argument, hitting a fatal blow to her head. He’d panicked and he and Bill had disposed of the body, pooling their gangster/police expertise to ensure Gloria would never be found. It was their shared experience of crimes and villains that decided them to take the photograph as insurance.
Montgomery described their controlled fear, how he and Bill senior had become uneasy allies and hatched a plan, waited till dark then driven through the night before slipping Gloria’s weighted body into the country park lake. Then they’d kept on driving, forced to stick together until the shops opened and they were able to lodge the film in a distant quick-developing chemist’s. He and Bill had sat together in silence, deep beneath the earth in an underground car park, until the prints were ready. Then they’d taken a copy each and burnt the negative together.
The bond between them had been formed that night. Maybe it was a union forged in blood and taboo, or maybe they were simply greedy men who each found an ally on the other side. Because after that evening neither man seemed able to leave the other quite alone, and the jury heard how many of Bill senior’s scams and undertakings had benefited from Montgomery’s influence.
