He put the car into gear and slid along next to Lamb before she could turn into a side-street. He opened the passenger window. Tracey."
She ignored him, kept on walking, and he had to edge the Jaguar forward, one hand on the steering-wheel, leaning across the passenger seat: "Tracey -listen this wasn't mine I swear I didn't have anything to do with it." He held his hand over the envelope in his breast pocket to stop it falling out on the seat. "The money's here. It's right here."
"Bit fucking late now, isn't it?"
"No we can still talk." He looked up at her. "We can still talk."
She stopped. She tucked her bottom lip under her long teeth and bent a little, trying to see what was inside his pocket. So intent, so fascinated, she had the wet mouth of a dog running a scent line. He'd got her by the nose.
She took a step closer and slowly he opened his hand away from the pocket to show her. That's it, that's the way just a little nearer… Reflected in the car's wing mirror someone walked across the lawn from the courthouse and Caffery registered it momentarily, a passing flash of anxiety that he might be seen with Lamb, and that momentary lapse cost him the day. When he looked back the line had broken. She'd seen the simple flicker of his attention and followed his eye, seen what he was looking at, and lost her faith. She took a step back, glancing up at the courthouse, her eyes darting back and forward.
"Tracey '
"What?"
"Come on talk to me."
"No. There's nothing to tell. I was lying." She was backing away now.
"Shit." He slammed his fist on the steering-wheel and put the car in gear. "Tracey."
"There's nothing to tell." She set her face and walked away. He had to shoot the car forward to keep up with her.
Tracey!"
"I mean it -I was lying. You're not stupid, you knew I was lying." She took a last puff on the cigarette. She didn't want to stop to tread on the butt so she threw it through the opened window of the Jaguar, crossed her arms resolutely across her breasts and turned into the abbey grounds where the car couldn't follow.
Twenty-seven.
He didn't let it touch him he didn't let it get to him. He did what he'd said he was going to do and put a line under it. He had already wasted enough of the morning. Cigarette between his teeth he put his tie back on, checking in the mirror, put on his sunglasses, and grappled his mobile out of his jacket. What was Souness doing right now? Sitting in the SIO's office, counting off the minutes, waiting for him to come through the door, waiting to ask him the questions about Tracey Lamb and Norfolk. It was time to get it all out into the open.
"Well?"
"Well what, Jack?"
"Have you got something to tell me?"
"About what} Your lads aren't back they were going to call you direct, weren't they?"
"Anything else?"
"Jack, listen, son. I hate to be a pain in the arse, but I've got the DACe-mailing me, the borough fucking commander on the line and, oh, just one or two reports to get ready for the case review, so with all due respect…"
He sat back in his seat, staring at the alley of beech trees that marched off towards the abbey. She didn't know. Souness didn't know. What the fuck was
"Jack? I don't want to hang up on ye, son, but '
"OK, Danni. I'm sorry. Put me through to Marilyn, will you?"
Kryotos agreed to contact Champ and reschedule the meeting. Champ was in the West End he wanted lunch and if Caffery could make it for two thirty they could meet in Soho. So he pointed the car down the M11: Canary Wharf on his horizon for nearly an hour as he closed on London. He got to Soho for two fifteen, parked in one of the expensive local car parks, went into a branch of his bank and paid the three thousand straight back into his account, then walked calmly down to Shaftesbury Avenue.
Champ was only twenty-four but he already owned an electrical retail shop in the streets behind Chinatown. "I do know which way is up, you see. I make it here with my Laotian name because nearly all my blood is Chinese." He'd had acne at some point in the past, but his hair was neat and gelled, and he was well turned-out in a slate grey Armani suit and immaculate leather shoes. "I get left alone as long as I'm quiet. I understand the guan chi see." The boys sunbathing in Soho Square lifted their heads to watch him and Caffery walk by.
They went to a good, honest Italian in Dean Street: hand-painted Amalfi plates on the walls, bottles of Strega and Amaretto in a rack above the heads of the kitchen staff. Caffery had fish and sat with his back to the window watching Champ twisting up the spaghetti alle vongole. He leaned forward as he ate to avoid getting tomato sauce on his suit.
"When it happened they all came up out of nowhere, all the do-gooders trying to help me. I just kept quiet. I was working, you see."
"Working?"
"When it happened. He was a punter."
"A punter}' Caffery wondered if the PNC had made a mistake. "But you were only '
"Almost twelve, and it wasn't my first." He pushed some spaghetti into his mouth and pointed the fork at Caffery. "You probably want me to say I was harmed by it, don't you? By the men? But some of them had more time for me than my own mother. I was in care for a year when I was two." He chewed and swallowed. "They found me in my cot with half a pound of shit in my nappy, me just lying there not moving or crying, even." He twirled more pasta on his fork and pushed it into his mouth. "She was, and still is, a slag, my mother." Chewing, not taking his eyes off Caffery he reached inside his suit pocket and drew out a scrap of paper. "Fished this out for you." It was a crumpled, faded small ad. "That's how he found me."
I am an 18-year-old who had an accident which has left me looking only 10. Call…
Caffery pushed the paper back across the table. "You were eleven and you were advertising?"
"I was a clever little Asian monkey even then. Our minds are quick, you know, skip through the gaps that GI Joe can't get through. Look where I am today -you know why? Because I never got a junk habit like everyone else. It was Mr. and Mrs. Bombita in those woods, believe me, businessman's specials meth, the lot. But me, I saved my money." He waggled the fork at Caffery. "Told you I'm mostly Chinese meat."
"He asked you about your daddy."
Champ snorted. "Yeah. I'd forgotten that. That's the first thing he said, when he phoned, he asked me did
I like my daddy. I didn't get it at the time now I know it's just, y'know, normal gay talk."
"And he took photographs of you?"
"I didn't show the camera my face, but what weirded me out was that I'm sure he took photos of me after I was down after I fainted. I remember the flash going off." He mopped his plate with some bread and shrugged as if he hadn't given the incident much thought. "Believe me, before that night I thought I knew what weird was some of them liked you to do such shit you wouldn't believe. There were the ones who liked yellow you know what that is, don't you?"
"Uh yeah."
"And brown and fawn and red y'know, fisting. Hey, you're the police, nothing I can say is going to shock you, right?"
Caffery looked down at the fish on his plate. "That's right."
"But this was one sicko, weird from here to next week. First he's telling me he's going to watch over me. He said he would come and look down at me, that he'd like to watch me in my bed."
"What do you think he was talking about?"
"No idea. Probably just his mad-speak and, anyway, he's fiddling around with me down there as he's saying it and I'm like, "Hey hang on, you better put something on this is not bare backing times no more. You put something on." But when I turned to check he hardly had nothing to put a rubber on anyway. Tiny, tiny little pecker like…" he held his thumb and finger apart'… like that. Never seen nothing like it -Midget Dick, the Angry Inch and he hadn't even got a hard-on. Couldn't get himself up. Course, turns out he had better ideas than that." Champ forced the bread into the corner of his mouth. "When he rammed that thing up my arse I fainted."