rest of the world prepare to don its Easter finery; here the best you’ll get is shabby genteel.
It didn’t help that the Avenue was empty of human life. Or at least it appeared so, as if the ladies of the night had decreed that the sins of darkness should only be enjoyed in the hours of darkness.
But Shirley Novello knew that sex has no timetable, and the lunch hour finds some men hungry for more than a cheese sandwich.
She also knew how to make fish rise.
She’d parked around the corner, adjusted the rearview mirror so she could see her face and applied enough vibrant red lipstick to stop traffic. Next she slipped off her baggy combat trousers with the practised ease of one to whom the confines of a Uno presented no problem, changed her trainers for a pair of platform heels, and pulled on a red-and-green cagoule. Then she got out and studied her reflection in the car window. While aesthetically the outfit left much to be desired, it also, she told herself complacently, showed even more. The muscular brown legs on display beneath the cagoule might not come up to the dreamy description Jerker Jennison had given of the disappearing Dolores, but what they lacked in length they made up for in strength. Men, in her experience, didn’t want to be tied with a ribbon, they liked to be held in a vice.
She was here because she felt she was on a roll.
In other parts of the universe, when it came to dishing out information about their clients, bank managers and lawyers made priests seem like blabbermouths. But in Mid-Yorkshire, things were different. Except in a few tyro cases (where wisdom soon came snapping at the heels of sadness) the simple rubric- Mr Dalziel would be grateful -was usually enough to unlock all tongues.
At the Mid-Yorkshire Savings Bank, the manager, Willie Noolan, who’d been looking after local cash longer than the Fat Man had been looking after local crime, didn’t even put up a token resistance but presented Novello with a detailed statement of Maciver’s personal and business accounts almost before she asked.
The business account confirmed Dolly Upshott’s assertion that Archimagus was doing pretty well. The personal account had only one element which caught Novello’s eye, an in payment of two thousand pounds early each month and commencing three months ago. The payments were made by BACS and came from a deposit account at the local branch of the Nortrust Bank, a demutualized Building Society. Noolan saved Novello the trouble of bludgeoning another pillar of the financial community with Dalziel’s name by checking this out himself.
The account, he announced, was an old one, with a balance of twenty pounds and inactive for many years till it received an injection of two thousand pounds three months ago. This had only remained there for a few days before the transfer to the Mid-Yorkshire Savings. The process had been twice repeated. The account holder was a Mrs Kay Maciver of Moscow House, the Avenue.
Ignoring the inquisitive arch of Noolan’s eyebrows, Novello had thanked him nicely and moved on to Pal Maciver’s solicitor, a nervous young man named Herring who seemed almost to welcome her interest. It emerged that Sue-Lynn must have risen from her couch of grief at some point during the previous day and improved the shining hour by going through her late husband’s papers and, from the sound of it, her late husband’s cellar. Unable to lay hands on the most sought-after document, a copy of his will, she had rung Mr Herring at home during the course of the evening, demanding that he produce the original forthwith and bring it round to Casa Alba.
“I explained this wasn’t possible. I was at home, I had guests, upon which she became rather abusive, and threatened to come round to my house unless I confirmed the will’s contents over the phone. Which I did. She was entitled, and, to be honest, I was rather relieved to be giving it at a distance rather than face to face. You see, about six weeks ago Mr Maciver had come to see me to change his will. In it, after a few small bequests, he leaves the residue of his estate to be divided between his sister Cressida and his aunt, Miss Lavinia Maciver.”
“Nothing to the wife?”
“She was one of the bequests. Fifty pounds, with the rather cryptic comment that it should be more than enough to pay any outstanding bill to her medical advisor for services received.”
“How did the lady take this?” asked Novello.
“How do you think? With more abuse and threats. It really spoilt my evening. I kept expecting her to come banging on my door.”
“Will she contest the will?”
For the first time Mr Herring looked cheerful.
“Oh yes, I’m sure. Should make an interesting case. Could drag on for ever.”
Whether any of this new information was pertinent to the enquiry-whatever that was-she didn’t know, but she felt things were going well. Her mind turned to the mystery of Dolores. Even if, as she half expected, it proved to have nothing to do with the case, it would be pleasant to show Joker Jennison that CID could get places fat plods couldn’t hope to reach.
Swaying her hips like a howdah, she set off round the corner into the Avenue and took up a position leaning against a tree within thirty yards of the Moscow House entry.
Two minutes later she was being confronted by a pair of women. She recognized them both. The older of the two, a large square-built woman with day-glo hair, was known as Big Maggie. She’d appeared on local television as a self-appointed shop steward in a recent flare-up of the perennial war between the Avenue’s residents and the prozzies. The other was a young woman known as Crazy Jane, anorexically thin, with bad teeth and a nervous eye whose ungoverned rollings were the source of her sobriquet.
“What the fuck’s your game?” demanded Big Maggie.
“Thought I might put you two out of business,” said Novello.
The attack took her by surprise. She was ready for the traditional open-handed long-nailed stab at her eyes, but this woman broke the mould with a pro-boxer’s pile-driving punch to the solar plexus. Not even those muscle- strengthening hours in the gym could stop it hurting but they did prevent it from being disabling. She grunted, absorbed the pain, focused, and when her assailant reverted to type and made a grab at her hair, she moved lightly out of the way and used Big Maggie’s own momentum to send her crashing into the tree.
Crazy Jane looked on with an expression of incredulous terror, which by rendering both eyes equally nervous improved her appearance considerably. All she needed was a little dental work to be quite attractive. She showed no sign of wanting to join the attack.
Novello gave her a quick smile and said, “You saw that, did you, Jane? Unprovoked assault on a police officer.”
“Eh?”
Leaning with her right hand on Big Maggie’s back to keep her pressed against the tree, Novello pulled out her warrant card with her left and showed it to the thin girl. Then she pulled the other to face her and held it before her eyes.
“Right,” she said. “Let’s talk.”
Novello knew that in the politically correct police soaps she tried to avoid on the telly, female cops and prozzies often found they were sisters under the skin and established good feminist relationships based on mutual respect and a shared contempt for men.
She reckoned the scriptwriters ought to get out more. They certainly ought to visit Mid-Yorkshire and take a walk on the wild side. In her experience, most prostitutes regarded police of all sexes as their natural enemy and only ever co-operated with them out of urgent self-interest. Novello’s attitude had nothing moralistic in it. She didn’t judge, but she wasn’t a social worker either. It was pure pragmatism.
She regarded the men who used them as sad beyond redemption. In her own relationships, if she got the slightest hint that a current partner had ever been with a pro, she elbowed him with no appeal. “If I give him for free what the bastard in the past has paid for,” she explained to her confessor, Father Kerrigan, when he expressed disappointment that she’d dumped another parishioner whom he regarded as a good Catholic boy, “what kind of a loser does that make me?”
Father Kerrigan groaned and thought, as he often did after a close encounter of the ethical kind with Novello, that things had never been the same since the Vatican had turned its back (so to speak) on self- flagellation. Given the choice between a good old-fashioned scourging and dealing with a modern young woman, he had no doubt about his preferred option.
“Right,” said Novello. “Here’s the deal, Maggie. I can take you down the nick and charge you with assault on a police officer and you, Jane, with aiding and abetting, or you can tell me in great detail what you heard or saw last Thursday night when the guy topped himself in Moscow House, plus you can tell me where I’ll find a tall,
