‘Nick, good to see you,’ Isaac said, not letting on that he had no clue who the man was.
‘You’ve not changed, not one bit. A one for the ladies back then; still are, I suppose.’
‘I’ve got a good woman. No need for others.’
‘Shame. I could have found you employment. For me, four times down the aisle, four times in the divorce court. Fun, though.’
Isaac could not remember the man, and instinctively, he did not like Domett, but personal prejudices were not relevant. What the man knew was.
‘Colin Young,’ Isaac said. ‘You recognised him, according to Sergeant Gladstone.’
‘Five years back, and he was only on our books for seven months. Not that we ever met, you understand.’
‘Why?’
‘Not everyone on our books wants to come over to Brixton, not that I can blame them. Some prefer to maintain a distance, adds to the allure, hides the fact that the picture doesn’t match the person.’
‘That must happen all the time,’ Wendy said, remembering the pictures of the girls outside a strip club that had prospered in Paddington ten years previously. The pictures proudly displayed, Playboy models every one. Inside, Wendy knew, as she had been in a few times to deal with underage girls and women from Europe without visas. All of them, bar the newest and youngest, were haggard, old before their time, turning tricks in a room behind the stage.
‘Nick, this is serious,’ Isaac said. ‘You were a policeman, so you’ll understand. Colin Young’s been murdered. The man’s been playing the field, a younger woman, an older one, old enough to be one of your clients.’
‘She might be a regular.’
‘I’m talking hypothetically here. She’s not on your books, we know that. She seems to be able to find enough men without your assistance.’
‘Isaac, I left the police behind. I wasn’t cut out for it, more interested in pushing the law at the edges than upholding it. That’s an honest answer. I know I’m a reprobate, but it suits me. Each day with the police: the meetings, the reports, the standing to attention. Here, I do what I want, make money, sometimes get hired out.’
‘You must be joking,’ Wendy said.
‘You’d be surprised. Not every female wants a Colin Young or one of the other studs for hire.’
‘Smelly, unkempt and dirty, an attribute?’
‘It’s an acquired taste, the same as I am. Now, what can I tell you about Young?’
‘His clients, address, that sort of thing,’ Isaac said as he took a seat, wiping his handkerchief over it first.
‘I don’t run police checks on them.’
‘So, they could be lying.’
‘Colin Young, no address, other than a post office box.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Bayswater. Not sure that does much for you.’
‘It doesn’t. How did you pay him?’
‘A bank account. You’ve got the details on that sheet of paper I just gave you.’
‘We know the account,’ Wendy said. ‘It’s the same bank where his credit card came from. Nothing to be gained from this.’
‘I’ve checked your website. You set the meetings up online, deal with the payments,’ Isaac said.
‘It saves any of the men getting smart.’
‘Does it stop it?’
‘Not totally. Some reckon they’re smart and renegotiate another meeting with the client, cutting out the middleman.’
‘And if you find out?’
‘They’ll never work for me again or any other agency.’
‘What does that mean? Their pretty looks, their chiselled features gone forever?’
‘An unwritten rule amongst the agencies,’ Domett said, looking nervously at the clock on the wall.
‘Somewhere to go?’ Wendy asked. She was still standing, even though her ankles were aching. On the phone, hidden from sight from Bridget, Nick Domett had been charming and humorous. In person, he was a revolting, egotistical specimen of manhood.
‘I need to make sure all is in order for tonight. And besides, I’ve given you a list of who he met, where, and a phone number.’
‘The women would have paid with a card,’ Isaac said.
‘You’ve got the details. Not all of them are women. As I said, he wasn’t here long, and I don’t remember our working relationship to be any other than professional. But as I said, I never met the man.’
Chapter 18
Nobody liked being confronted by a police officer with a warrant card, least of all Terry Hislop, the former husband of Gwen, the one-time lover of Christine. Although Wendy, who had been given the task of travelling north up to Liverpool, wasn’t sure that the latter accolade was a badge of merit, given what Christine Mason, sensing in Wendy a confidante, had unburdened about her past and present life.
‘And the next-door neighbour, when Tony was drunk and out of it,’ Christine had said. ‘And the man in the library, and then another guest, not beautiful like Colin, but you know.’
Wendy had to confess that she didn’t know and that Christine Mason had an unhealthy obsession with sleeping around with stray men, yet her love for the man that Homicide knew as Barry Montgomery remained unabated. ‘My one true love, the man I had searched for all my life,’ the woman had said.
Terry Hislop may have been a born and bred Liverpudlian, with a scouse accent and his mop-top hair, but he was no Beatle. Unless he was the fat Beatle. There was a fifth Beatle, Wendy remembered, but he had been tossed out in favour of Ringo Starr because he had not wanted to change hairstyle, and he was hopeless on the drums. Yet the man popped up from time to time: documentaries on the Fab Four, the life and times of Britain’s most successful musical export. She had missed the mania in the sixties, and there hadn’t been much time on the farm, what with collecting the eggs, ensuring that the
