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Kerry wasn’t waiting for a slap this time. In the blink of an eye, she curled the fingers of her right hand and lashed out with her jagged, splintered nails, carving three savage gashes across the width of Erica’s cheek. “Get out of my face, bitch,” she snarled as she rose to her feet.

Erica fell back, the box slipping from her hand, Rice Krispies spraying out across the floor. “Jesus!” she gasped, kicking out at the rubber matting, propelling herself backward until she could reach to pull herself up on the metal bed frame. “What the fuck was that?”

“You’re a selfish, patronizing bully, and I’m sick of the fucking sight of you.” Kerry was circling now, her eyes burning into Erica’s like red-hot needles.

“Oh, that’s rich.” Erica pressed her hand to the side of her face; blood trickled between her fingers and dripped onto her bare toes. “You’re lucky you’re still breathing, girl.”

“Oh, yeah?” Hackles truly up now, eyes wide, cheeks flushed. Here we go. “I’ll fucking—” She was on Erica in an instant, knocking her off balance and coming down heavily on top of her. Erica, flailing, grabbed a handful of hair; she jerked Kerry’s face back and pulled it down violently against her own forehead. Claws and teeth flashed.

I was there inside a minute. “Enough!” I shouted, throwing open the cage door and pulling Erica by the scruff of her neck from atop the now-prone hooker. And then, without hesitation, I took her by the arm and hauled her from the cage.

Erica made no attempt to struggle as I led her in her underwear across the frost-slick gravel of the driveway. She stepped obediently inside the house, looked to me for directions, followed me silently up the stairs to the bathroom.

She sat still on the side of the bath while I soaked a wad of cotton wool in TCP. She made no sound, beside a sharp intake of breath as I pressed it to her cheek. She was patient while I mopped the blood and applied a gauze, secured it in place with a cotton swab and an Elastoplast. And after a fleeting, longing glance at the gleaming bathtub, she followed me willingly back to the basement. She even carried the etorphine.

Kerry caught Erica’s defiant stare as I reunited them in the cage. She stopped pacing.

“Of course, you know you’re a day early, right?” Erica handed me the miniature bottle and accompanying syringe and took to her perch on the edge of the bed.

Kerry edged away toward the far corner of the cell, her impending fate slowly dawning across her bloodied face. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” She laughed, strangely.

I didn’t have to say a word. Erica tossed her hair, crossed her knees and smiled at the doomed whore. “Looks like it’s your lucky day, Kerry,” she taunted. “I think you’re going to go and play a little game.” She fixed me with a look then, one so commanding that it stopped me in my tracks. “And you,” she said, “when you’re done with her you can go and buy me some clean fucking knickers. I’m filthy.”

CHAPTER
EIGHT

I wasn’t expecting a knock at the door so early in the morning. And if I had been, I certainly wouldn’t have expected a pair of thirtysomething strangers in polyester suits. I don’t get too many visitors.

She stood a step behind him; both had their hands folded behind their backs. Their suits were identical—navy, double-breasted, showing signs of bobbling—though his didn’t feature a pencil skirt. Hers reached just below the knee, affording a view of sporty calves clad in sheer black nylon running directly into sensible lace-up shoes that swallowed her ankles. Her face was dusky and exotic-looking, her hair jet-black and tidied into a businesslike knot. Turkish? Iranian, maybe.

Her colleague stood within inches of the doorstep, implausibly large feet firmly together, all five-o’clock shadow and a dutiful half smile.

I almost had them pegged as Jehovah’s Witnesses until I spotted the big Ford on the drive, poverty blue with a whip antenna and cable-tied wheel trims. And then I was confirming my name to a black leather wallet, flipped open right in front of my nose and snatched away too fast to allow me to focus. Not that I really needed to.

“I’m Detective Inspector Fairey, CID.”

Shit. No, really—shit. Shit shit shit. Don’t flinch. Whatever you do, don’t narrow your eyes. Keep your hands still. Look him in the eye. Smile. Not like that—smile nicely.

“This is Detective Sergeant Green.” He shot her a nondescript glance; her expression didn’t change. Her name didn’t sound very Turkish, either. I smiled at her, anyway. “We’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

As a matter of fact, I do mind.
“Of course.”
That’s enough, stop smiling now. It’s not reaching your eyes.
“What can I help you with?”

He took one of his ridiculous clown feet and placed it firmly inside the door. “Okay if we come in?”

You already fucking did.
“I guess so.” I stood stock-still in the doorway. “This isn’t going to take long, is it? I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

It was his turn with the false smile. “I’m sure it’ll only take a minute.” He nodded. And just stood there. Staring. Nodding. I wondered how long he’d stand there, head bobbing up and down like a plastic dog on a parcel shelf, smile turning to a grimace, waiting politely for me to step aside. A minute? Two? Five maybe? Place your bets now.

Actually, no, I haven’t got time for that. I told him okay and waved him into the hall; he held me in a defiant stare as he passed. The one called Green bowed her head and followed silently. I left the door open.

“Nice house,” Fairey remarked as he scanned the blank walls of the entrance hall. Obviously highly skilled in the art of small talk.

I led him through to the kitchen and pointed to a chair at the breakfast table. Green fared a little better; I pulled one out for her. “So, Mr. Fairey—sit down, make yourself comfortable. What is it exactly that you’d like to ask me?”

“I’ll stand,” he said bluntly. He considered me for a moment; a lingering leer I found vaguely suggestive. I hoped he was merely waiting for me to offer him a cup of tea, though whatever he wanted, he’d have a long wait. And then, finally, he spoke. “We’re here,” he said, “because we’re investigating the disappearance of Kerry Farrow.”

The ceiling fell down. Crockery jumped from the racks, shattering across the floor. The boards undulated beneath my feet, pitching me off balance. Blood pounded through my temples, spots of white light dancing around my eyes to the staccato beat in my head. I felt my palms moisten and my pupils dilate. Every hair on my body stood on end. The windows rattled. The door flew off its hinges. I reached out to steady myself but my fingers just grasped at thin air, the same air that was whistling out of me like I’d taken a kick to the stomach.

This is the other reason I stay away from hookers: there’s always some knitworn do-right from the Prostitutes’ Collective taking down numbers. Decades without a glitch, and then I’m undone by a needless whim in a moment of weakness. It’s an age-old story, and one of those things that always happens to someone else. Fuck me, I’m an idiot.

Gun. I can get to the gun, no problem. In the time it takes this Fairey to cross the kitchen, I’ll have torn open the cupboard and swiped aside the oven cleaner and the bin bags and he’ll be staring down a twelve-gauge barrel, eyes widening, trying to shake his head, trying to form the word
no
with his cotton-wool tongue and his cracked lips while his mind clouds with terror and despair and thoughts of his plump wife and gurgling babies and everything he didn’t tell them before he left for work today. And his accomplice will make it to her feet in time to take a faceful of blood and skull and brain, and she’ll raise her hands to shield her eyes and let out a shriek of fear and surprise, and she’ll trip on the chair as she runs for the door, and I’ll stand on her neck as she sprawls on the floor, and she’ll look up at me like a stunned rabbit, and her breathing will turn shallow and frantic and she’ll whimper, “Please, no,” and I’ll think about the floor and what it’ll cost to repair and I might let her get to her feet. I might haul her up and escort her out to the fields behind the house where the topsoil’s loose and the stains won’t show. I may even let her run for the car, see if her comfortable shoes offer any practical advantage. Or to hell with the floor, I can be in Belgrade by nightfall.

Okay, breathe. Slow down. Think it through. They’re only a pair, and drones to boot. Whatever they suspect, they only suspect. There’s no mob with machine guns abseiling from the roof. No one’s kicking down doors or crashing through the windows. They’ve got nothing to go on. It’s just a man with a cheap suit and fucking great feet asking a single, simple question. For Christ’s sake, he hasn’t even asked it yet. And if the question’s that hard to answer, well, there’s room for them both under the barn.

Keep calm. Keep smiling. Eye contact. No sudden movement. Maybe raise an eyebrow, as though listening intently. Which one? The right. No, the other one. All right, then, Ronald McFuckingdonald. I’m ready for you.

“And we think you’re potentially an important witness,” he said.

Oh?

* * *

“You own a white Ford Transit,” he informed me, a statement with which I could only reasonably agree. “Showed up on cctv on Queen Street at 3:11 a.m. That’s about two hundred yards and fifteen minutes from where Kerry was last seen,” which certainly made me Idiot of the Week, but was far from a smoking gun. Fairey flipped a seven-by-five print from his jacket pocket: a six-month-old mugshot, Kerry sullen and bedraggled and black-eyed, eight inches of dark roots chasing the tail of a home peroxide. “The blond’s gone,” Fairey continued, “but the expression hasn’t changed. Maybe you remember seeing her? Talking to someone, getting into a car?”

I took a moment to think, considering the farthest distance to which I could remove Kerry in the shortest possible time. Finally, I shook my head. “I wish I could help,” I said. “I just don’t recognize her at all,” which was actually not all that far from the truth. Even after a week of cold turkey and cage fighting, she looked nothing like the harridan in the photograph.

“You’re quite sure?” Green asked. Something in her eyes told me my acting was flawed. Before I could reassure her, however, Fairey shot her a look that told her he’d be asking the fucking questions, thank you very much, all but striking hers from the record.

“You Batman?” he said, returning the mugshot to his pocket and flipping out a notebook in its place.

“I’m sorry?” I replied.

“Insomniac?”

Green rolled her eyes. “Get to the point,” I said, forcing her to hide a smirk.

Fairey smiled graciously. “What were you doing driving around the red-light district at three in the morning?”

Finally, a question I could answer truthfully. “I was on my way back from the seaside,” I told him. “I spent the evening with...” With what? “A friend?” Accurate description or not, I’d said it aloud and it was in Fairey’s book.

“Name?”

“Annie.”

“Annie...?” He stopped scribbling, looked up at me expectantly.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Surname?”

“Almost certainly.”

“Address?” He laughed.

I recited it as well as I could remember.

“I take it you only recently met?”

“Yes, that night,” I confessed. “We...you know. Just talked.”

Green’s hand fell away from her mouth, and she stared at me in undisguised bemusement. Like her, I had no idea why I’d said that.

Whatever, Fairey seemed unconcerned. “I understand,” he said with a dismissive wave. “Listen, how about we take a quick look at that Transit, and then we’ll let you get on with your day?”

I liked the sound of the latter, at least.

The van was empty but for the load straps and a large, plain cardboard box. On the top of the box was a folded woolen blanket. “Box of blankets,” I said.

“May I?” Green preemptively ignored her superior’s silent admonition and stepped up onto the load bed.

“Be my guest.” I smiled, mentally locating the garden fork hung on the wall three feet behind me.

“Thank you,” she said, rubber soles squeaking against the steel floor as she strolled over to the box, squared her jaw and carefully lifted one corner of the blanket. Finding another beneath it, she lifted the second blanket to reveal a third. “Box of blankets.” She nodded.

“What’s under
those
blankets?” Fairey asked, indicating what was quite plainly a sheet-draped car occupying the opposite side of the garage.

I heard Green nudge the box with her foot as I turned. “My car,” I said, sounding rather unnecessarily uncooperative even to myself.

“Looks like an Interceptor,” he decided, unperturbed.

“Good guess,” I conceded.

“Mind if I look?”

I don’t know why he bothered asking; he was already across the garage and peeling back the covers before I could utter, “Knock yourself out.”

Green hopped down from the back of the van. “We’ll be here all bloody day now,” she remarked, nevertheless casting an appraising eye over the Jensen’s scruffy gray flank as she swept past. Quite rightly, she was unimpressed.

I followed her to the threshold, where she gazed out beyond the house to the barn midway across the field. “Nice place you’ve got,” she noted. “What’s in the barn?”

“Flatbed trailer, workbench, assorted lumps of wood, a fiberglass speedboat without an engine,” I informed her. “Tours are free if you want one.” Maybe not Belgrade. Maybe somewhere warm, like Las Palmas or Santo Domingo.

She stared a moment longer, then shook her head. “I’ll take your word for it,” she said, reaching into her jacket pocket and pulling out a pack of Juicy Fruit. “If he’s off the clock, so am I.”

Fairey had found the bonnet unlatched and was staring aghast at the jumble of disconnected wiring within. “Oh, bloody hell,” he said.

Green and I made a show of checking our watches. Clearly, we both wished I were alone.

“If you do happen to think of anything that might help us—”

“I’ll be sure you’re the first to know.” I shook Fairey’s hand as I walked him out of the garage; his grip was decidedly limp and more than a little clammy.

He nodded. “And get that engine fixed.”

I gave him a weary salute as he and Green walked back to their car. Waited until Fairey had one leg inside before calling after him. “Actually, there is one thing,” I said.

Green slumped into her seat and slammed the door behind her. Fairey, after a brief hesitation, withdrew his leg and strolled back into my personal space, leaning in close, offering his confidence. “Sure,” he replied. “What is it?”

“Save me a walk and shut the gate on your way out, would you?” I gave him my brightest smile. “Helps keep the undesirables out.”

Fairey laughed. “No worries, bud,” he said, and returned to his muddy Mondeo.

Under the fourth blanket, Kerry was none the wiser.