Even if he hadn't been murdered, Nell and Lomax had behaved unforgivably, always supposing there was anyone still around to forgive them. Nell's actions in particular sickened me. I know I couldn't behave like that if someone I'd been lovers with was hanging dead in the hall. There must have been a lot at stake for Nell and Lomax to have had the nerve to carry off their cover-up and, although the voice of reason said it was none of my business, I wanted to get to the bottom of it.
Since I was awake anyway, I decided to do something useful. I slipped out of Richard's bed and cut through the conservatory to my house. A steaming shower banished the morning stiffness that still lingered in my muscles, and a strong cup of coffee kick-started my brain. I chose a pair of bottle green trousers and a matching sweater to go under the russet padded silk blouson that I'd picked up for a song on Strangeways market.
It was a quarter to seven when I parked outside Alexis's house. As I'd expected, her car was still in the drive. I knew her routine of old. Up at six, in the bath with a pot of coffee, the phone and her notebook at five past. Morning calls to the cops, then out of the bath at half past. Then toast and the tabloids. I estimated she'd be finishing her second slice of toast about now. Unfortunately, she wouldn't be in the office at seven this morning.
I looked through the kitchen window as I knocked on the door. Alexis dropped her toast at the sound of the knock. I waved and grinned at her. With a look of resignation, she opened the door.
'I have a question for you,' I announced.
'Come in, why don't you?' Alexis said as I walked across the kitchen and switched the kettle on.
'When you left Tamarind Grove yesterday afternoon, did you already know that Martin Cheetham was dead?' I asked conversationally, spooning coffee into a mug.
Alexis's face froze momentarily. Always pale, she seemed to go sheet white. 'How the hell did you know about that?' she asked intensely. If she used that tone of voice professionally, she'd get all sorts of confessions she wasn't looking for.
'I don't suppose you remember a red Little Rascal van that you nearly drove into, but that was me. I remember it particularly because for a brief moment, I wondered what Bill would say if I wrote off a second company vehicle inside a week,' I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere a bit.
'I might have known,' Alexis sighed. 'If you're brewing up, I'll have another cup.'
I made the coffees and said, 'I'm listening.'
Alexis lit a cigarette and took a couple of deep drags before she spoke. I sometimes think it must be lovely to have an instant trank permanently to hand. Then I think about my lungs.
'I'd had a couple of drinks at lunchtime. I wasn't pissed, just a bit belligerent. So I bought a can of spray paint. I was going to spray some rude graffiti on Cheetham's house,' she said, looking as embarrassed as she must have felt. 'Anyway, I got there and there was his car in the drive. I thought about spraying "You dirty rat" on the bonnet, then I realized if he was home I might as well give him a piece of my mind. So I rang the doorbell. There was no reply, so I looked through the letter box. And I saw these feet, legs, just dangling there.'
'Tell me about it,' I said with feeling, remembering my own experience.
'So I took off like a bat out of hell,” Alexis said, dropping her head so that her haystack of unruly black hair hid her face.
“You didn't phone the cops?' I asked.
'How could I? I didn't have any legit reason for being there. I didn't even know who the body was. And I couldn't have done it anonymously, could I? Half the cops in Manchester know who it is on the phone the minute I open my gob.' She was right. Anyone who'd ever spoken to Alexis would remember that smoky Liverpudlian voice.
'I'm sorry,” I said. 'I should have rung you about it last night. I was just too wiped out. So, when did you realize it was Cheetham?'
'When I did my calls this morning. They told me about it as a routine non-suspicious death. If he hadn't been a solicitor, I doubt they'd even have mentioned it. It made my stomach turn over, I can tell you.'
'Any details?' I asked.
'Not a lot. Unattributed, I got that he was wearing women's clothing and playing bondage games. According to the DI at the scene, he had a proper little torture chamber in his wardrobe. They reckon he died sometime yesterday afternoon. He didn't have any form for sexual offences. Not so much as a caution. He's not even on their list of people they know get up to naughties in their spare time. They don't think there was anyone else involved, and they're not treating it as a suspicious death. They don't even think it was suicide, just an accident. All I can say is thank God he didn't have nosy neighbours, or else the lads might be asking me what exactly I was doing kicking his door in yesterday afternoon.' Alexis managed a faint smile. 'Especially if they knew I had a private eye working on how to recover the five grand he helped to con me out of.'
'You weren't the only person who was there yesterday,” I said, and went on to fill her in on the events of the afternoon. 'I was convinced they'd killed him,” I added. 'But Richard persuaded me that I was just seeing dragons in the flames.'
'So what happens now?' Alexis asked.
'Well, theoretically, we could just ignore the whole thing, and I could still follow Lomax like you asked me to and try to get some money back from him. The problem is that now Cheetham's dead, I'm afraid Lomax might try to deny any criminal involvement in the whole thing and blame it all on Cheetham.'
'You don't really think he'd get away with that, do you?' Alexis demanded, lighting up another cigarette.
'I don't honestly know,' I admitted. 'Personally, I think there's been a lot more going down between Lomax and Cheetham than we know about. And if there's any proof of a connection other than the fact that I know I've seen them together, it could be buried in the other stuff. So I want to keep digging.'
Alexis nodded. 'So how can I help?'
There are parts of Greater Manchester where it wouldn't be too big a shock to encounter a shop catering for the needs of transsexuals and transvestites. A back street in Oldham isn't one of them. I find it hard to imagine anyone in Oldham doing anything more sexually radical than the missionary position, which only goes to show what a limited imagination I have. The locals clearly didn't have a problem with Trances, since there was nothing discreet about the shopfront, sandwiched rather unfortunately as it was between a butcher's and a junk shop.
On the way over, Alexis had told me about the shop and its owner. Cassandra Cliff had endured a brief spell of notoriety in the gutter press a few years previously when some muckraking journo had discovered that the actress who was one of the regulars in the country's favourite soap opera was in fact a male-to-female transsexual. In the flurry of 'Sex Swap Soap Star' stories that followed, it emerged that Cassandra, previously Kevin, had been living as a woman for a dozen years, and that no one among cast or production team had a clue that she wasn't biologically of the same gender as the gossipy chip-shop owner she played. Of course, the production company of Northerners denied that the uncovering of Cassandra's secret would make any difference whatsoever to their attitude to her.
Two months later, Cassandra's character perished in a tragic accident when the extension her husband was building to their terraced house collapsed on her. The production company blandly denied they had dumped her because of her sex change, but that didn't much help Cassandra, on the scrap heap at thirty-seven. 'She didn't let them get away with it,' Alexis said. 'She sold her own inside story to one of the Sunday tabloids, dishing the dirt on all the nation's idols. Then with the money she set up Trances, and a monthly magazine for transvestites and transsexuals. She's got so much bottle, Kate. You can't help respecting Cassie.'