11.07pm. Wednesday, 8th November
Her thumb and forefinger in her mouth, the redhead whistled – low and piercing.
North was across the road, but even 50 yards distant, he could make out a body that promised the world. Grinning, the freckled girl stood up from the low brick wall opposite the station and with the sudden movement, her hair tumbled from its bird’s nest, bang-on ginger curls escaping like they were keen to be up and partying. She raised three fingers before slapping them against her bicep, then with her two index fingers drew a circle in front of her. Three words. The whole thing. A beautiful stranger wanted to play charades. She raised her eyebrows.
He nodded. He’d play. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do.
The girl rubbed the end of her freckled nose with her fingers as if she had a cold. He stared at her. Blank.
She made a face that said What-are-you? Stupid? And rubbed the end of her nose harder, widening her eyes this time and shaking her head as if the hit had just kicked in. As if she was rubbing off white powder.
Jimmy the Sniff – the drug-dealer Hardman mentioned. She knew Jimmy.
Game over, she winked and started walking away, her long legs scissoring in baby blue paint-on jeans. Why were women always walking away from him these days? The Detective Chief Inspector’s words came back to him: “Be on the next train out”. It was excellent advice, and he watched her go.
Except that North wasn’t ready to leave town yet.
He stepped out into the road, back on to the pavement, her side of the street now.
Following. Admiring the view. He’d felt dead inside for the longest time – since he got shot? Since his mother died? Since he was born? He’d had no sleep for days, he was starving and Honor had abandoned him, but one thing he didn’t feel was dead inside.
The Board wanted Honor dead because she was making a fuss about her friend’s disappearance. If she was dead already, there was nothing he could do. If she wasn’t, her best chance of survival – and for that matter his best chance of survival – was knowledge, because it was the only leverage they had. And Jimmy the Sniff seemed as good a place to start as any.
The kitten heels of the ankle boots tip-tapped along the pavement ahead of him. The redhead walking like she was in a hurry, like she had some place she wanted to be, swaying and unsteady as if it had been a long day and she wanted done with it. She turned left, then right towards the river, glancing at him once, the suspicion of a dimpled smile before she ducked into a doorway and disappeared. North hesitated.
He still had time to catch the train Hardman told him to be on. Clear town before the Board sent a clean-up man in. Time to forget he ever met Honor. He peered down the narrow stairway, lined with black and white headshots of old Hollywood movie stars, and which led down into a basement. He thought about what Jimmy might know, the denim sway of the girl ahead as she rounded the corner. Honor’s sea-green eyes. He wondered if the redhead would let him use her phone to call Honor’s parliamentary office. Maybe Honor was okay? Maybe she would ring in? Maybe she’d even go back to the Commons? He could explain why he kept Peggy’s book. There were all sorts of reasons to follow.
There must have been a sign at the door though he hadn’t noticed it. But perhaps not – some of these clubs liked to pretend they were decent, the sort of bar a businessman might find himself in to “unwind”. Nothing sleazy – nice girls, respectable.
It took a while for his eye to adjust to the gloom. Flickering candles on each table, tiny pin-prick stars across the ceiling. On an empty stage there was a pole and a girl who seemed to like it, while the banquettes around the walls were a crushed and midnight blue velvet – the nap worn at the edge from sweaty hands of sweaty men getting sweatier as the girls did their dances. At first glance he’d thought the club empty aside from the dancer – his redhead vanished into dry-ice and the bass beat of Eminem. Then the other women came into focus. A muscled blonde behind the bar, the sides of her head shaven and dyed like pink and purple leopard skin, and two scantily clad lovelies perched on stools admiring the contortions of the pole dancer. No one looked surprised to see him.
The pole dancer watched as she dangled upside down, her arms holding the bar – biceps bulging, her hair lost in the billowing smoke, her right leg wrapped around like a python, the left pointing to the stars, her best assets fighting gravity, glittering green and gold in their all-in-one bodysuit. He thought of the Lambton Worm, some story dragged out of his childhood, of a woman turned into a dragon who wrapped itself around a well three times – devouring sheep and cattle and babies. The pole dancer shifted her grip and her leg unwound itself out from the bar, the left moving down and away till they formed a wide-open V like the maw of a snake ready to swallow its next meal. In the mirrors around the club, smaller python women did the same thing over and over again.
He wondered if he’d miscalled it. If the redhead hadn’t done the come-hither. If his instincts were off and what she had been doing was walking away as quickly as she could when she saw him come out of the police station. But there’d been the charade, the dimpled smile, the sashay – his admiration. The way she’d seemed to sway all the harder the closer she got to her destination.
“I’m looking for a friend,” he said. “A guy called Jimmy the Sniff?” Close-up the barmaid’s face came in two halves, the right side dragging down, her mouth twisted out of kilter, the left plain ugly. A stroke? Bell’s Palsy?
She took her time pouring a hefty vodka shot into the glass of coke sat in front of each girl, the bottle held low then high then low again, the sleeves of her plaid shirt rolled tight to her shoulders, her biceps heavily muscled and forearms tattoed and meaty, the hands large and workmanlike, red and purple, as if she had problems with her circulation, though the nails themselves were long and oval, covered with tiny green crystals – like the nails of another woman.
“You don’t look the friendly type,” she said when she’d done, her lower jaw that of a bad-tempered bulldog.
“Don’t mind Stella. I’ll be your friend, pet,” a skinny arm draped itself over his shoulder as one of the two watchers took hold of the brass bar clamped to the oak counter and swung her stool closer, bringing with her the smell of coconuts and warm oiled flesh. The other girl’s breasts pushed against him as she too closed in. “You can never have too many friends, hinny,” her breath caramel-sweet and fizzy. They worked as a team. If they were planning to pick his pockets, they’d be sadly disappointed.
The leopard-skin blonde frowned at the girls, the lop-sided mouth a jagged scar, transforming the already strange face into a ruin. Stella didn’t like him, yet in the smoky mirror behind the optics as she stowed away the vodka, she’d authorized the come-on. North saw it – the slightest of nods as they looked to her for their cue.
Picking up a bottle of champagne from a metal bucket of melting ice, water trailing from it across the polished bar, she emptied it carelessly into a grubby coupe as one of his new gal-pals slid her bony hand into his lap and started burrowing.
He removed the hand.
“Like your boss said – I’m not the friendly type, much as I appreciate the thought.”
Bubbles scurried and popped in the glass in front of him. It was inviting but he had no money. He pushed it away.
“You’re our best-looking customer today, babe.” The barfly to his left giggled. “Anyway, the first drink’s free to members. And everyone’s a member.”
Cheap champagne wasn’t his go-to, but it had been a long hard bitch-of-a-day. He drank it – tipping the shallow glass back in one swallow, the taste sharp and bitter and gritty.
See how you like that, he caught, and the barmaid pulled out another bottle, gripping it by its long neck as if she might pour it or swing it against his head – she didn’t much care which.
Did we do good, Stella? Did we? The girl’s voices were cawing rooks strung out along a telegraph line in the fog. Tired – he hadn’t understood how tired he was till this minute. He flinched at the pop of the cork, his hand going for a gun that wasn’t there, and from a long way off he heard the two women laugh, pushing up against him, their small hands patting and pressing up and down his body as if they were searching him, rather than caressing him, caressing him rather than searching him. The champagne ran from the new bottle, deep gold in the lights that bounced from the overhead spots. He reached out – his hand huge suddenly. Unwieldy. The glass tipped as he picked it up, champagne spilling across the polished oak. The barmaid’s hand over his, another at the elbow, as he raised the dregs to his lips and tipped it, powder on his teeth, and he swayed, crumpled, and fell.