Blackstone’s real identity,’ I said. ‘If they had, they might have contacted her at her home under her real name, and there could be a record of that. A letter, an entry in an address book. I need to be certain that there isn’t a chink in the armour that could lead the police back to this group of women if they get suspicious about the burglar theory and start routine background inquiries.’ I spread my hands in front of me and tried for wide-eyed innocence.
Alexis looked doubtful. ‘But they’re not going to, are they? I’ve been keeping an eye on the local papers, and there’s no sign the police are even thinking it might have been anything more than a burglary that went wrong. What makes you think it was?’
I shrugged. ‘If anybody she worked with had found out what she was up to, they had a great motive for getting rid of her. A scandal like this associated with the IVF unit at St Hilda’s would have the place closed down overnight.’ This was thinner than Kate Moss, but given what I couldn’t tell Alexis, it was the best I could do.
‘Hey, I know it’s hard getting a decent job these days, but I can’t get my head round the idea of somebody knocking off a doctor just to avoid signing on,’ Alexis protested. Her anger had evaporated now I had anaesthetized her fears and her sense of humour had kicked in.
‘Heat of the moment? She’s arguing with somebody? They grab a knife?’
‘I suppose,’ Alexis conceded. ‘OK, I accept you did what you did with the best of motives. Only it stops here, all right? No more terrorizing poor innocent women, all right?’
That’s the trouble when friends become clients. You lose the power to ignore them.
Midnight, and we were arranged tastefully round the outer office of Mortensen and Brannigan. As soon as Richard had mentioned the f-word to Tony Tambo, the manager of Manassas had insisted that we meet somewhere nobody from clubland could possibly see him talking to a woman who’d already been publicly asking questions on the subject. Otherwise, flyposting was definitely off the agenda. He’d vetoed a rendezvous in a Chinese restaurant, a casino, an all-night caff in the industrial zone over in Trafford Park and the motorway services area. Richard’s house was off limits because it was next door to mine. But the office was OK. I couldn’t work out the logic in that until Richard explained.
‘Now they’ve converted the neighbouring building into a student hall of residence, if anybody sees Tony coming out of your building, they’ll assume he’s been having a leg-over with some teenage raver,’ he said.
‘And I bet he wouldn’t mind that,’ I said drily.
‘Show me a man over thirty who’d object to people making that assumption and I’ll show you a liar,’ Richard replied wistfully.
So we were sitting with the blinds drawn, the only light coming from the standard lamp in the corner and Shelley’s desk lamp. Tony Tambo was hunched into one corner of the sofa, somehow managing to make his six feet of muscles look half their usual size. Although it was cold enough in the office for me to have kept my jacket on, the slanting light revealed a sheen of sweat on skin the colour of a cooked chestnut that covered Tony’s shaved skull. He was wearing immaculate taupe chinos, black Wannabes, a black silk T-shirt that seemed moulded to his pectorals and a beige jacket whose soft folds revealed it was made of some mixture of natural materials like silk and cashmere.
It’s a mystery to me, silk. For centuries it was a rare, exotic fabric, worn only by the seriously rich. Then, almost overnight, somewhere around 1992, it was everywhere. From Marks and Spencer to market stalls, you couldn’t get away from the stuff. Kids on council estates living on benefits were suddenly wearing silk shirts. What I want to know is where it all came from. Were the Chinese giving silkworms fertility drugs? Had they been stockpiling it since the Boxer rebellion? Or is there some deeper, darker secret lurking behind the silk explosion? And why does nobody know the answer? One of these days, I’m going to drive over to Macclesfield, grip the curator of the Silk Museum by the throat and demand an answer.
I was sitting in an armchair at right angles to the opposite end of the sofa from Tony. Richard was in Shelley’s chair, his feet on the desk. The pool of light illuminated him to somewhere around mid-thigh, then he disappeared into darkness. The whole scenario looked like a straight lift from a bad French cop movie. I decided pretty quickly that there weren’t going to be any subtitles to help me out. The questions were down to me.
‘I really appreciate you talking to me, Tony,’ I said.
‘Yeah, well,’ he mumbled. ‘I ain’t said nothing yet. It’s edgy out there right now, you know? Stability’s gone, know what I mean? It’s not a good time to stick your head above the parapet, people are too twitchy.’
‘Anything you tell me, nobody’s going to know it came from you,’ I tried.
He snorted. ‘So you say. But if some bruiser’s got you up against the wall, how do I know you ain’t going to give him me?’
‘You don’t know for sure.’ I gestured round the office, which we’ve spent enough on to impress corporate clients. ‘But I didn’t get a gaff like this by dropping people in the shit. Anyway, in my experience, if some bruiser’s got you up against the wall, he’s going to do what he’s going to do. So there’s not a lot of point in giving him any more bodies. It doesn’t save you any grief.’
He gave me a long, slow, head-to-toe look. ‘What’s your interest?’ he eventually said.
‘I’m working for Dan Druff and the Scabby Heided Bairns.’ Sometimes you need to give a bit to get a lot.
‘They got well unlucky,’ Tony observed.
‘How do you mean? What have they done to deserve what they’re getting?’
‘Nothing. Like I said, they just got unlucky. Any war of attrition, somebody always has to be made an example of. To keep the rest in line. Dan and the Bairns just drew the short straw, that’s all. Nothing personal. Least, I don’t think it is. I haven’t heard anything that says it is.’
‘So who’s making the example of the boys?’
Tony took a packet of Camels out of his pocket and lit up without asking permission. I said nothing, but walked through into my office, took the saucer out from under a mother-in-law’s tongue that wasn’t ever going to dish out any more lip and pointedly slid it down the coffee table so it was in front of Tony. Richard took that as a sign and straightened up in the chair, using the desk top to roll a joint. Shelley was going to be well pleased in the morning to find tobacco shreds all over her paperwork. ‘So what’s happening in the music business?’ I asked, getting bored with all this mannered posturing we were playing at. ‘Who’s making a bid for a piece of the action?’
‘I don’t think it’s a piece of the action they want,’ Tony said in a sigh of smoke. ‘I think they want the lion’s share.’
‘Tell me about it,’ I said.
‘It started a couple of months ago. There was a wave of cowboy flyposting. Nobody seemed to know who was behind it. It wasn’t the usual small-time gangsters trying to muscle in. So one or two of the major players decided to have a go at the bands and the venues who were having their posters put up by the cowboys. The intention was to find out who was behind it, but also to put the frighteners on the bands and the venues, so they’d come back to heel and abandon this new team.’
Tony paused, staring into the middle distance. ‘So what happened?’ I asked.
‘They got a coating,’ he said simply.
‘What happened?’
‘They sent a team of enforcers along to one of the gigs. They found themselves staring down the barrels of half a dozen sawn-off shotguns. Not the kind of thing you argue with. So they went off to get tooled up themselves. By the time they came back, the Old Bill were waiting and the whole vanload got a nicking. And not a one of the door crew got lifted.’ Tony shook his head, as if he still couldn’t quite comprehend it.
I was taken aback. I couldn’t remember a time when Manchester villains had ever called the police in to sort out an internal matter. Whoever was trying for a takeover bid was so far outside the rules it must be impossible for the resident villains to know what the hell was coming round the next corner. ‘So what happened?’ I asked.
‘There were a lot of unhappy people around. I don’t have to draw pictures, do I? So they decided they’d go down one of the venues mob-handed. Out of working hours, so the door crew wouldn’t be around. They figured a good wrecking job would sort things out. They’d hardly got the door broken down when the Old Bill arrived even more mob-handed and nicked the fucking lot of them. They couldn’t believe it. I mean, you’re talking people who’ve got coppers on their teams. Where do you think they get the extra door muscle on Friday and Saturday
