had proved enormously frustrating. She'd discovered quickly that the company, a stationery wholesaler, had not only left the area in the early eighties, but had changed its name. She was pretty much starting from scratch. She had spoken to every company in the south of England able to provide so much as a plain brown envelope, and got precisely nowhere. Then, just at the point when Jack was starting to talk about divorce, she'd got lucky. The personnel manager of a firm in Northampton knew everybody in the stationery supply business, played golf with most of them, God help him! He was only too delighted to tell her exactly where to find the person she needed to talk to, and gave her the name of a company in King's Lynn…
'Hello, Bowyer-Shotton, may I help you?'
'Yes, please,' Carol said. 'I'd like to speak to Paul Baxter.'
'I'll put you through…'
Andy Stone sat, sweating through his white linen shirt, some small fraction of his mind on the report he was writing up… He thought about the woman he'd woken up next to. He remembered the look on her face the night before, and the look she'd given him as she'd slipped out of his bed that morning without a word… She'd been attending a tedious conference at the Greenwood Hotel a couple of weeks earlier, when Ian Welch had been killed. Stone had interviewed her, given her his number in case there was anything else she remembered. She'd remembered that she fancied him, rung and asked if he wanted to go for a drink.
He guessed that she was turned on by the fact that he was a copper. A lot of women seemed to find it exciting. The power, the handcuffs, the war stories. Whatever the reason, once the novelty wore off, most of them seemed to lose interest in him very quickly. Meantime, the sex was usually pretty good…
He wanted to control things in bed. He liked to be on top, the woman's arms flung above her head, his hands around her skinny wrists, pushing himself up and away from her while he was doing it. He'd done weights, built up his chest and arms so that he could hold the position for as long as he needed to.
Last night had started really well. She'd looked up at him, her eyes wide, and said all the right things, just the sort of words he imagined hearing whenever he thought about it. She told him he was too big, that he might hurt her. He threw back his head, gritted his teeth, pushed harder…
Then she'd spoiled things. She'd begun to moan, to grab at his sh0ulders to say that she liked it rough. Then, between ragged breaths, she'd told him that she wanted him to hurt her. In seconds he had shrunk and slipped out of her. He dropped down and rolled on to his side, listening to her sigh, aware of her inching across to her own side of the bed, so that no part of their bodies were touching…
Stone looked up at the greeting of a colleague passing his desk. He smiled and continued to type. He remembered the warm feeling of his hand, cupped between his legs, and the sound of the woman's body sliding across the sheet as it edged away from him. Carol had been put on hold…
She had probably been listening to Celine Dion for no more than a couple of minutes, but she could feel herself growing a hell of a lot older.
Moments like this, the empty minutes that made up so much of any case, made her glad she'd agreed to take the job on the clear understanding that she could work from home. She'd guessed that AMRU would not be given the swankiest office facilities, and working as they did (or were supposed to do) in teams of just two, she'd have been lucky to get a cupboard.
Jack had cleared a space for her in the spare room. They set up the old computer that his daughter had used, and shelled out twenty quid on an extra handset for the cordless phone. Her filing system consisted of yellow Post- It notes stuck around a picture frame, her husband doubled as a coffee machine, and when Carol glanced at the mirror above her desk, she saw dusty hat boxes, old lamps without plugs and a collection of china dogs that had seemed like a good idea a couple of years before.
It was cramped, but she liked her things around her.
The day she'd taken up residence in her new office, Jack had stood behind her and they'd both stared into the mirror. Carol sat at her desk and smiled at the rubbish they'd amassed together down the years, piled up on the single bed behind her. The reflection of her retired self.
'That'll stop you getting too carried away,' Jack said. The muzak came to an abrupt and merciful halt. 'Can I help you?' a man asked.
'Yes. Paul Baxter, please…'
'Wrong department, love. You've come through to accounts. Let me try and transfer you…'
Ten seconds of clicking and then a familiar voice. Carol's heart was already sinking as she spoke.
'Paul Baxter, please…'
'Is that you again? Sorry dear, you've come back to the switchboard. I'll put you through…'
The sun, blazing through even the grimiest of the big windows, had turned the Major Incident Room into a sauna by midday. Yvonne Kitson didn't really need to reapply her lipstick, but did it all the same. Any excuse to spend a few minutes in the cool of the toilets was welcome. She didn't usually wear a great deal of make-up. Just enough to feel good, but that was all. In this job more than most, people were quick to judge, to form instant opinions that would be passed around and set in stone before you'd so much as got your work-station organised. She knew very well what people thought about her. She knew what the likes of Tom Thorne thought she was, thought she did. She knew just how wide of the mark they were.
Make-up – the colours, how much, when you wore it – gave off a signal. It said you were this, or that. Concealing, lying, making it up… She stood for a few moments, looking at herself in the cracked mirror. She moved her head a few inches, until the crack ran right down the middle of her face. Until it looked about right.
She would give it one more minute…
She began to count down the time in her head. Fifty-five seconds more, then she would slam the phone down, make some tea and go and shout at her old man for a while. No, she would snatch the phone back up, call McKee and shout at him…
Carol began to swear repeatedly under her breath. Fuck, fuck, fuck. She'd turned her back on gardening, and old films in the afternoon, and the Reader's Digest, for this…
'Paul Baxter's phone…'
She almost cheered. 'Thank God. Is Mr. Baxter there?'
The woman sounded unsure. 'Well, he was here a minute ago. He might have grabbed an early lunch. Let me see if I can find him for you…
There was a clatter as the receiver was dropped, then-silence. Thirty seconds later Carol heard voices, then muffled laughter which grew suddenly louder before the receiver was picked up and abruptly replaced. Then she just heard a dial tone. Carol took a deep breath and dialed again, jabbing at the buttons as if each were the eyeball of a Bowyer-Shotton employee.
'Hello, Bowyer-Shotton, can you hold for a moment…?'
Carol shouted. 'No!'
It was too late…
Dave Holland was in a reasonable mood until the little gobshite started to get cocky.
'Listen, I don't think I have to go into the details…'
'Well, that depends, doesn't it?' Holland said. 'On just how much of a pain in the arse you want me to be.'
'I did some modeling up there. Fair enough?'
'Right. Catalogue stuff, was it? The Debenham's autumn collection…?'
'You want to know my connection with Charlie Dodd, so I'm telling you. I was booked to do some filming, all right?'
'Did you ever mention it to anybody else?' Holland asked. 'Pass Dodd's name on? Maybe you told somebody about the studio?'
There was a hollow-sounding bark of laughter down the line. 'Yeah. I was so proud of the work, wasn't I? I mean, London Cock Boys and Borstal Meat are fucking classics. Maybe you've seen them…'
Holland hung up, put a line through another name on the list. Charlie Dodd had known a lot of people. They'd worked their way through every number on his phone records and everyone appeared to have a valid, if occasionally sordid, reason for being a friend, or 'business associate'. Photographers, film developers and suppliers, video production companies, prostitutes. Each person was asked to give the name of anybody else they thought might have known Dodd and this, together with a few more contacts provided by Thorne's squeaky voiced snout, had generated another, much bigger list to be worked through.
