Gone Tomorrow (8 page)

Behind him there was a sound, and he turned quickly to find an eye peering at him through the merest thread of a crack. At the sight of his face, the crack widened enough to reveal most of a face and a hand clutching a pink dressing-gown at the neck.

‘Hullo, Nichola,’ he said. ‘It’s all right, it’s not trouble. I’m alone.’

Nichola Finch opened the door fully. Her face looked puffy and creased as if she had been asleep, but otherwise she was
a pretty girl, wafer-slim, with full lips, big brown eyes and thick, curly dark hair. With her smallness and slimness she looked at first glance almost like a child, but on closer inspection – at least in daylight and without make-up – the ravages of time were apparent. As far as Slider knew, she was in her late twenties or perhaps early thirties. She admitted to nineteen;
but that was not surprising in a person who spelled her name Nikki on her calling-cards. He thought she had probably admitted to nineteen since she was fourteen.

‘You woke me up,’ she complained.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Slider humbly.

She was instantly mollified. ‘S’all right. I had to get up anyway. What j’want?’

‘Just a talk.’

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘What about?’

Slider made a small outwards gesture of his hands. ‘Do we have to do it here on the balcony? Can I come in?’

‘Have to do what on the balcony? ’Ere, have you come for a freebie?’

‘I’m a happily married man. I just want to talk.’

‘Most of my customers are happily married men,’ she said with unusual acuity. She yawned right back to her fillings, closed down with a smack of the lips, and said, ‘I need a coffee.’ She turned and went in, leaving the door open – all the invitation he was going to get.

In the tiny, chaotic kitchen she fumbled about for the kettle, shook it to gauge its fullness, and switched it on. She sorted through the dirty crockery for a mug, waved it at him in enquiry, and when he shook his head, shrugged in reply. A woman of few words, was Nichola. She rinsed the mug meagrely under the cold tap, put it down by the kettle, spooned in powdered instant out of an industrial-sized tin, added sugar, and settled down to wait, folding her arms across her chest as women do when comfort is their priority rather than allure.

‘So, what’s it all about?’ she asked, though without much invitation.

‘I want to pick your brains,’ he said.

‘Not a bloody gain,’ she said with huge exasperation, rolling her eyes theatrically.

‘Come on now, Nichola, I haven’t seen you for months.’

She tacked off, easily distracted. ‘Why ju always call me that?’

‘It’s a pretty name.’

She stared at him, trying to fathom whether he was being ironic, or kind, or had some other devious ploy too subtle for her to grasp. In the end she gave it up and said, ‘You’re a funny bastard, you are.’

He smiled. ‘But I’m okay,’ he suggested, as if that would have been her next sentence. She only shrugged. ‘I looked after you all right when you had that bit of trouble—’

‘And you never let me bloody forget it!’ She responded again with the disproportionate, withering sarcasm that seemed to be the only mode of communication with girls like her. He supposed it must come from the soap operas, and perhaps the tabloid headlines – a continual artificial outrage whipped up about the most trivial of ‘offences’. Slider had always got on well with prostitutes, having cut his teeth on Central Division, which covered Soho, but the younger ones were hard to talk to. Apart from the automatic stroppiness, they seemed to have huge and baffling areas of ignorance about quite basic things, so that at any moment a perfectly ordinary conversation suddenly became the equivalent of discussing the fine detail of a Test cricket match with a middle-aged farmer from Iowa who’d never left his home town.

‘So you’re all right now?’ he pursued. ‘You haven’t had any more trouble?’

‘No, he’s buggered off. Much you’d care!’ she added, as if afraid she’d been too gracious. ‘So what j’want, anyway?’

‘Some information.’

‘I ain’t the bleedin’ Yellow Pages.’

‘You know the estate and you know lots of people. And you’re a clever, noticing sort of person.’ He was afraid he might have gone too far with this, but she didn’t react. ‘You’ve got what you might call specialist knowledge.’

She tilted her head a little sideways, and smiled. ‘You don’alf talk funny,’ she said. ‘But you got a nice voice. I always said that, din’ I? I always said you got a sexy voice.’

She never had said anything of the sort, but he saw she was building a scenario for herself in which she would help him, so he went along with it.

‘We were always good friends,’ he said. And that’s what friends do, help each other.’

‘Yeah,’ she said. The sentiment sounded right to her, and she had no concept of logic. The kettle boiled and clicked off, and she turned away to make the coffee, and then, taking up the mug, said much more pleasantly, ‘J’wanna come and sit down?
It’s a bit of a tip in there, but—’

Given the kitchen, he could imagine. He said, ‘Whatever you like. I’m all right here, but—’

‘Okay,’ she said, settling again to lean against the work surface, folding one arm and propping the other elbow on it so that the mug was within easy reach of her mouth. ‘What’s it about?’

‘There was a man murdered in the park on Monday night,’ he began.

‘Oh, yeah, someone said,’ she agreed. He remembered she didn’t read newspapers. Come to think of it, he had no evidence that she
could
read. She had had eleven years of progressive education at a State school, after all. ‘I don’t know nothing about that,’
she said.

‘No, of course not. But not long before that, Monday night about eleven, this man had a fight outside the Phoenix with—’

‘Eddie Cranston, yeah,’ she finished for him.

Slider managed not to jump as the missing surname was provided so easily and casually. ‘Oh, you know about the fight?’ he said.

‘People are talking about it. I never knew it was this bloke what got murdered, though. He give Eddie a black eye.’ She grew enthusiastic. ‘Eddie’s ballistic about it. He fancies himself rotten, and he thinks it spoils his fabulous good looks, know’t I mean? That’s why he’s not been out of the ’ouse since. Lying low until his eye goes down. Plus, he don’t like being made a fool of, and this bloke’s got the better of him, en’t he? I mean, Eddie’s picked a fight with this bloke to show ’im who’s boss, and he’s come off wiv a black eye, and this other bloke’s walked away wivout a scratch, right?’

‘Well, not exactly,’ Slider said. ‘The other bloke’s dead.’

‘Oh, yeah.’ Her eyes widened and the mug was arrested on its way to her lips. ‘Yeah,’ she breathed, ‘you’re right. You reckon Eddie done him in, then?’

‘It’s a possibility,’ Slider said. ‘So tell me about this Eddie Cranston.’

‘He’s a git,’ she said simply. ‘He thinks he’s God’s gift, know’t I mean?’

‘And is he?’

‘What, God’s gift? Well, he’s good-looking, I give him that,’ she said grudgingly. Slider made an enquiring noise and she responded, ‘Tall, black hair, suntan. Sharp dresser. He’s all right-looking, but he’s a total bastard.’

‘In what way?’

‘Treats you like dirt,’ she replied shortly. She sipped her coffee, her eyes over Slider’s shoulder, as if the interview was finished.

‘So where does he live, this Eddie?’ he tried next.

She snorted so hard she did a nose job with the coffee and had to wipe her face on her dressing-gown sleeve. ‘Where
doesn’t
he live?’ she said eventually.

‘What does that mean?’ Slider asked patiently.

She put the mug down, the better to tackle his ignorance. ‘Listen, he’s got this scam. He’s got women all over the estate, all round Shepherd’s Bush.’

‘You mean they’re working girls, like you?’

‘Nah!’ Huge withering scorn. That’d be too much like hard work for Mr Eddie Bloody Cranston! No, they’re all on benefit –
most of ’em have got kids – and he just comes round and takes his cut.’

‘Why do they give it to him?’

‘Why j’think? Cause he’s a smooth-talking bastard. They all think he’s
their
bloke. It’s love, innit? Plus, he’d knock their teeth in if they didn’t.’

That covered the bases, Slider thought. ‘How do you know about this?’

‘I know one of ’em, Karen. She used to be a mate at school. I’ve told her, I’ve said you’re dead stupid, you are! But she says he’s the farver of me kids – well, one of ’em. She says she loves him. I’ve told her, I’ve said to her you ain’t the only one, you know. I’ve told her he’s got women all over. But it don’t make no difference. She thinks it’s her he really loves, and he’ll give the others up one day and settle down. Gaw!’ She rolled her eyes skywards at the stupidity. ‘I said to her, I said at least I get paid for it. And I don’t have to have’m hanging round afterwards. Quick in an’ out and cash in me ’and, and the rest of me time’s me own. But
she
pays
him,
the dozy cow. Cuh!’

She drank some more coffee while Slider let this sink in.

‘You say he’s a sharp dresser,’ he said at last. ‘But where does the money come from? Taking women’s social security doesn’t add up to much, even if he has got a lot of them. I suppose he’d have to leave them enough to live on. He couldn’t take it all.’

She didn’t seem much interested in this. ‘Oh, he’s got other scams,’ she said. ‘Bound to.’ Evidently she didn’t know what they might be. Slider changed tack.

‘This bloke he had the fight with, Lenny. Unlucky Lenny, they call him. Do you know him?’ She shook her head, her eyes blank and far away. ‘Some said he lived with a working girl.’

‘I don’t know him.’

‘Do you know what the fight was about?’

‘Nah. I never heard.’

She had plainly grown bored with the whole process and any minute now would yawn and send him away. He said, ‘You’ve been really helpful to me, Nichola. I shan’t forget this. Your friend Karen – Karen what, by the way?’

‘Karen Peacock. Why?’

‘Do you think she’d talk to me? Where does she live? Have you got her address?’

Nikki’s face sharpened. ‘You barmy? Talk to the cops about Eddie? He’d break every bone in her body if he found out.’

‘I’d make sure he didn’t find out.’

‘She’d never do it,’ Nikki said certainly. ‘Anyway,’ with a look of cunning, ‘I don’t know where she lives, so I can’t tell you.’

‘Fair enough,’ Slider said peaceably. Nikki’s black hole of ignorance was working in his favour now. It simply didn’t occur to her that if Karen Peacock was drawing benefit there would be an official record of her whereabouts which Slider could consult. It would save time if Nikki would tell him, but saving time was as nothing weighed against not alienating a useful informant and not having her warn her friend that he was coming.

And when it came to Karen Peacock’s safety, he thought Eddie Cranston was less likely to find out he had been asking questions from him than from Nikki herself. When Nikki had been expounding her philosophy of life she had said, ‘and I don’t have to have’m hanging round afterwards.’ Slider was pretty sure the ‘’m’ had been ‘him’ rather than ‘them’. That,
plus a certain something in the quality of her scorn for her friend, persuaded him that Nikki knew Eddie Cranston rather more Biblically than she was letting on.

He took his leave and stepped out into the fading evening. He was tired and hungry, but he had got a handle on the case at last, a first step towards identifying Unlucky Lenny. He couldn’t get through to social security until the morning, so he was free now to go and get something to eat, and relax for what was left of the evening. He walked back to the station more cheerfully than he had left it. By the time he drove out onto Uxbridge Road he had decided on Alfredo’s for his supper, a big bowl of pasta with lots of tomato and garlic in the sauce, and a couple of glasses of Apulian wine. And then home, bath, bed. And the possibility that Joanna would phone from the hotel, after the concert and before sleep. Talking to her in bed was one of the great joys of life – even if she was in a different bed at the time.

Hollis appeared in Slider’s doorway. ‘Edward Cranston,’ he read from the printed sheet. ‘Age thirty-eight, height five foot eleven, eyes brown, hair brown, mole on right cheekbone. Last known address in Ladbroke Grove four years ago.’ He looked up. ‘Any money on him still being there?’

‘It’s not far across the fields from White City,’ Slider said. A mile, if that.’

Hollis snorted derision. ‘As to his record, well, he’s not Robbie Williams. Not even top fifty material. All small-time stuff. He’s got possession of a controlled substance, possession of stolen goods, dah-di-dah-di-dah. Living off immoral earnings. Drunk and disorderly, affray – five Public Order offences altogether. And one assault and actual. That was his finest hour. Broke the cheekbone of the girl he was living off. Our brothers in conflict at Notting Hill caught her at the hospital when her guard was down and got her to prefer charges. Wanted to run him off their ground. Reckoned he was up to a lot of stuff they couldn’t nail him for. But his brief coached him, he pleaded guilty, sobbed contrition, and the judge gave him a suspended, on condition he went through anger management counselling.’ Hollis blew out through his scraggy moustache in disgust. ‘Where do they dig ’em up from?’

‘Did he go?’

‘What, guv? Oh, to the classes. No, he ducked out after the first, but Notting Hill reckoned they’d scraped him off their shoe so they weren’t too bothered. He’s got nothing since the assault, so he’s been keeping out o’ trouble, or at least out of their hands. Dave Tipper at Notting Hill said if we can find him, we can have him. Joke, unfunny, officers for the use of.’

‘Well, if we can find him, we can slap him for breaking the terms of his suspended,’ Slider said. ‘That’ll make things easier.’

‘If we can find him.’

‘Check with the old address, just in case. Someone there might know. Then look in all the usual places. Most likely he’s claiming benefit – you might try there first.’

‘If he’s offed Unlucky Lenny he’s probably done a bunk.’