Estela rested a compact minor against the sauce bottle and arranged her new wig. ‘This was a beautiful choice, Theresa. I always felt that I could be a blonde trapped in the body of a brunette.’
Theresa was impatient: ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘As the police stormed through the side doors, Junk filled the club with dry-ice. There was nothing to see, but everyone carried on shooting. I slipped away.’
‘Was that planned?’
‘I don’ know, darling,’ Estela admitted that she had lost track of the plan some time ago.
According to the tickets that Theresa had bought her, the train would leave in half an hour. It was cold in the station café but for the first time since she had arrived, the rain had stopped. Shafts of heavenly light pierced the clouds, selecting ornamental details on the facade of the Corn Exchange. Estela stopped tugging at the fringe of her new blonde wig and admired her last view.
Theresa said, ‘You never had any intention of killing Burgess, had you?’
The morning edition of the Evening News was spread out on the table between them. Beside the main story, an account of the siege at the Gravity between a drugs gang and the police, there was a boxed item on Burgess. The paper gave an account of his life story, speculated on his past drug links, and reported his arrest the previous night on drug and firearm charges. The photograph showed him in handcuffs as he was led away by DI Green. DI Green wore a flak jacket over a navy suit.
‘He raped you. Didn’t you want to kill him for that?’
‘He never tried to rape me. He said that he loved me. He paid Michael to break me out of prison. But what could I do? I was never attracted to him. He would beg me and beg me. On the night I escaped from the remand centre, Michael drove me to meet him. We found Burgess prowling around the offices of a broken-down club in Longsight, out of his mind on speed and vodka. He asked Michael to wait in the bar, saying that he needed to speak to me privately.
‘The second we were alone, he fell to his knees in front of me and held up his hands, as if he was praying. I remember he had tears in his eyes. He pleaded with me to let him suck me off. He told me that he would give me anything. I could have thousands, if he could have my cock in his mouth.’
‘Did you let him?’
‘No. I tried to push him to one side, but only gently. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He started shouting and shouting. Michael Cross came running back into the room. He saw Burgess on his knees, pulling at the buttons on the fly of my jeans. I was still wearing prison uniform, a brown denim jacket and matching trousers. Burgess was in a fury now and almost screaming. I looked over at Michael, the shock on his face. I kicked Burgess over, then just stepped over him and walked away. Burgess lay on the floor screaming that he would kill me.
‘I made Michael drive me around to Burgess’s house. I knew it was over and I needed money, so I cleared out his safe. I took the money he had promised me. Then I took off for Brazil. That was fifteen years ago, and everyone believed that he had tried to rape me and that I had robbed him.’
Theresa had one more question.
‘Yen saw those photographs of Burgess, in an envelope alongside the gun. You were arranging a hit on Burgess. That’s why you were here, isn’t it? Burgess was a money launderer and people wanted him dead.’
‘He was a money launderer, yes. All those bits of computer papers you gave me, I left them in Burgess’s office, along with a kilo of cocaine I stole off the Taz-Man. Once the police find all of that, then they will go through Burgess’s accounts and work out his links to the international cocaine game.
‘I was meant to have him killed, but there’s no need. He’ll go to prison, and I’ll leave him alone – no matter how attractive it sounds in fiction, I never liked men’s prisons.’
There was also a red wig. Theresa had brought a selection. It might have come down to a choice between the fiery red or the sulky blonde. Both could look dramatic – either a demon or an angel. But Estela knew where her heart lay. She wanted a wig to replace the one the police confiscated, the Debbie Harry wig she was wearing on the night she was arrested. A pouting angel in punky drag. Certainly, an angel…
‘I saved Burgess’s life,’ she said. It was one way of looking at it. ‘It’s true, I never wanted to kill Burgess. Why should I? Everyone hated Burgess because he’s a lunatic. But they are all so nostalgic for the old days, the time when Burgess was the Speed King and they worked for him. I never hated Burgess and I didn’ want to kill him. Alter all, he did say he loved me.’
‘Junk wasn’t nostalgic for the old days. The drugs almost destroyed him. Then, we end up saving Burgess while Junk dies.’
Theresa had not got any of it right. Junk was not destroyed by the drugs, they had made him. Like a chemical version of destiny, drugs can make you into the kind of person you need to be. Junk was more than nostalgic, he was absorbed by the past. More than absorbed, he was suspended in the past like crystals dissolved in water. And according to the Manchester Evening News, he was not yet quite dead. So, there was still hope for him.