Inside the club, things were hotting up for the evening. All the girls were in, getting ready, and a hush fell over them as Annie stepped into the doorway of their dressing room while Max carried on into the office.
‘I’m looking for Caroline,’ she said. ‘She’s not at the Palermo. Do any of you know where she is right now?’
There was a long silence. Then one of them, a tall corn-gold blonde, her eyes alight with interest, said: ‘Is it right, what we’ve been hearing on the news? That Gary Tooley’s dead?’
‘Yeah, it’s right.’
‘Christ!’
‘He was such a bastard,’ said another – shorter, dark-haired, pouty-lipped. ‘I heard he got knifed or something.’
Max stepped into the doorway behind Annie and she felt a seismic shift in the girls’ postures and attitudes. Breasts pushed out, stomachs in. Smiles suddenly super-bright. Irritating. ‘So you don’t know where Caroline is?’
‘I got her old home address out of the book in the office,’ said Max to Annie.
‘We ain’t seen her,’ said a girl with Schiaparelli-pink streaks in her ash-blonde hair and dangling pearl earrings that brushed her equally pearly shoulders. ‘Not that we want to. She was after Gary from the get-go, she was bloody shameless. Thought she was better than the lot of us, she did. Started queening it about the place after he slipped her one.’
‘Girl, you were after him too,’ the blonde reminded her with a smirk. ‘You’re just mad because she got him and got bumped up the ladder to take over the Palermo after Dolly Farrell got done.’
The pink-and-ash girl blushed. The blonde had hit a nerve. ‘And look how that turned out,’ she shot back. ‘Dolly Farrell’s dead, Gary’s dead. You ask me, that place is cursed.’
‘You know what I think? I think it could have been Caroline up there in Dolly’s room who answered Pete,’ said Annie when they were back in the car. ‘Maybe she was there talking to Dolly, telling her to fuck off out of it and let her take over the club. Maybe Gary had hinted to Dolly that she ought to be put out to grass and let his fancy piece be in charge, and Dolly – being Dolly – would have told them both to go fuck themselves.’
‘You seriously think Gary or Caroline could have done the job on her?’ asked Max, flicking her a glance as he drove them over to Caroline’s old place.
‘Yeah. Maybe a combined effort. And by the way, where’s Tone? I thought I said I wanted my driver back.’
‘You did. But why bother Tone when I’m right here?’
‘Yeah, driving like a ruddy maniac. Tone’s steady, I like him driving me. This isn’t Formula fucking One.’
‘Shut it,’ said Max, but he was grinning.
They went back to Holland Park. When they got there, DCI Hunter and DS Duggan were on the doorstep, waiting for them.
‘Problems?’ asked Annie, coming up the steps with Max following, thinking that just last night Jackie had been propped right here against the door, dead. It made her shiver with horror all over again.
‘Thought you’d like to know,’ said Hunter. ‘Pete Jones the bar manager didn’t see Dolly that night. She shouted through the door.’
‘So . . .’ said Annie.
‘So possibly it wasn’t Dolly Farrell who answered. Quite possibly it was another woman in there with her.’
Maybe it was Sarah and now she’s just acting all shook up to throw us off the scent, thought Annie.
But she didn’t think so.
Maybe Caroline?
And then she thought of Nigel, with his high-pitched, almost womanly voice.