‘A house in Withdean Road.’
‘Never been there.’
‘There’s a lady in a house there who has one of your leaflets on her hall table.’
‘Not that I recall.’
‘Let me jog your memory,’ said the man in the business suit in a snide, assured voice. Then he sniffed. He looked taller than when Moore had seen him outside, and more immaculate, with black hair gelled back. He reminded Moore of photographs he had seen of those gangsters, the Kray twins.
Moore glanced around, wondering if he could make a break for it the moment the gorilla let go of his arm.
‘This your iPhone?’ the Kray lookalike asked, holding it up in front of him.
Moore nodded, and gasped in pain as the gorilla squeezed his arm even harder.
‘Sorry!’ the Apologist said.
‘I’m Lucas Daly, by the way,’ the Kray lookalike said. ‘It was my auntie who got robbed and murdered, thanks to you. My dad’s sister. Neither of us are very happy about it.’
‘I didn’t have nothing to do with it!’ Ricky Moore said.
Lucas Daly frowned, looking down at the phone. He tapped it several times, then held the phone up in front of Moore’s eyes.
‘Recognize that, do you?’
Ricky Moore stared, reluctantly, at the close-up photograph of the gilded case of the Whitehurst clock that had been hanging in the drawing room of Aileen McWhirter’s house. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘You must have a fucking short memory.’ He sniffed again.
Moore said nothing, his brain racing, trying desperately to come up with something convincing – and failing.
‘What about this?’
Moore stared at another photograph. This time of a swan-necked Georgian tallboy. Again he shook his head.
The man tapped the iPhone again. ‘This?’
Moore stared at a Chippendale gateleg table.
‘Never seen it before, honest! Not my photos. I didn’t take them. I didn’t!’
Then the man dug his hand inside his jacket, and pulled out the implement that had been bulking it out. It was a pair of electric curling tongs, with a flex trailing. ‘How about these, Mr Moore?’
‘I’ve never seen them before, honestly!’
‘These are like the ones used on my auntie,’ Lucas Daly said. ‘They were used to make her give up her safe code and her bank pin codes. Do you think they might make you talk, too? We’d like some names from you. Starting with the men who did Auntie Aileen’s house in Withdean Road.’
‘Lucas!’ the old man cautioned. ‘No violence. That’s not what I want. We’ve had enough of that. I don’t operate that way.’
‘I don’t know no names, honestly, sir,’ Ricky Moore addressed the old man, sensing hope.
‘Go to bed, Dad, it’s late,’ Lucas Daly said.
‘I don’t want violence, you understand?’ Gavin Daly said to his son.
‘Go to bed, Dad. Let me deal with this.’
‘I just want the names of the people who did this to my sister, Mr Moore,’ the old man said. Then he turned and walked away down the hall.
Moore stood, staring at Lucas Daly, then up at the large, blank face of the Apologist.
‘My dad’s a gentle person, Mr Moore. So we’re going to take you away from here; he wouldn’t like to see what we’re going to do to you – to help jog your memory, you see?’
Ricky Moore gurgled with terror as he felt himself being propelled towards the front door. Moments later he felt a damp patch down the front of his trousers.
He had pissed himself.
23
Once, way back when she had a life, Sarah Courteney used to love Friday nights. The start of the weekend, a time to kick back, watch rubbish TV, Big Brother or whatever, followed by an even trashier, smutty 10 p.m. show on Channel Four. But not any more. Friday nights now meant her husband, Lucas, arriving home even drunker than all the other nights of the week. If he arrived home at all.
She woke up with a start. The television was on, muted, an old film playing. Peter Sellers, as Inspector Clouseau, standing in Herbert Lom’s office. It was 2.30 a.m. Upstairs she could hear awful heavy metal pounding from her bolshie teenage son’s room. And the sound of bed springs creaking. Accompanied by the faint smell of marijuana. That was all Damian seemed to do these days. Listen to God-awful music, get stoned, and wank.
Ever the dutiful wife, she had cooked Lucas a meal, made it ready for eight o’clock, when he’d said he would be home, and kept it in the warming oven ever since. She heard the sound of the front door opening, then banging back against the wall – the stop had long ago been ripped out of the floor and never replaced – then her husband’s clumsy footsteps.
They stopped as he entered the large, open-plan living area of their house on Hove’s smart Shirley Drive. A house they were only still living in because of her earnings paying the mortgage.
‘What the fuck have you done to your face?’ he slurred, then sniffed.
‘We talked about it last night. Your dinner’s in the bottom oven,’ she replied.
‘I said, What the fuck have you done to your face?’
‘Are you deaf? I said we talked about it last night. You wanted dinner at 8 p.m.’
‘Stop ignoring me, bitch. I’ve had business to deal with. Yeah? My auntie who got murdered, yeah? Where’s your sympathy?’ He tapped his chest. ‘You have any idea how I feel? Had to deal with the bastard that done it. Wasn’t nice. Had to have a couple of beers to get over it. Know what I’m saying?’
He staggered over and stood above her. I loved you once, she thought. God almighty, I really, really loved you. You pathetic beer-sodden wreck. I loved the way you used to make me feel, the way you used to look at me. I loved your knowledge of antiques. I loved the way you could walk into a room and tell me everything about every piece of furniture in it.
‘You’ve had that Botox again, haven’t you? Lovely Dr Revson. Paying him money we don’t have. Are you fucking him or something?’
She held her composure. ‘More losses at the casino today?’
‘I’ve had a shit day.’
‘Just for a change? I’ve had my face done,’ she said calmly, ‘to try to preserve my career. So I can afford to put food on our table – and beer in your fat, stupid belly. I had it done so you don’t have to go running to your dad for more money every few months—’
She never got the rest of her words out. His right fist smashed into her chest, knocking her to the floor. The bastard was clever. He always hit her where it wouldn’t show.
Tomorrow, she vowed, she would leave him. And yet she knew tomorrow he would weep, and apologize, and tell her how much he loved her and that he could not live without her. Tomorrow he would promise, as he always did, that they would make a fresh start.
24
Peregrine Stuart-Simmonds was a tall, cheery man in his mid-sixties, with a portly figure elegantly parcelled inside a double-breasted chalk-striped suit. He sported a full head of wavy silver hair, and his narrow, horn-rimmed spectacles, worn right on the end of his nose, gave him a rather distinguished, academic air.
He sat at the round meeting table in Roy Grace’s small office, exuding the smell of a masculine soap, and stifling a yawn. ‘Apologies!’ he said, cheerily, in a booming, salesroom voice. ‘Been up most of the night working on the inventory for you.’
It was 7.20 on Saturday morning, another weekend shot to hell. Grace yawned, too. He’d also been up most of the night. He’d stayed at work with several members of his team until after midnight, then Noah had barely let him or Cleo sleep a wink. ‘Can I get you some coffee?’ he offered.
‘With a hypodermic syringe, I’ll take it intravenously! Black, no sugar, and as strong as you can make it, please.’