Fade to Black (25 page)

Michael sighed. “He was more than that, as I said a minute ago.” There was slight irritation in his voice. “Much more—Maewyn was the progeny of beings who were more like me than not.”

“Beings?” Allie asked. “You mean non-human? Not like those dog-bats, I hope!”

“No, non-human and yet not, is more like it. There are variations. You’ve heard all the nonsense about fallen angels fornicating with humans millions of years ago, etc.?”

“I have. I assumed it was all apocryphal.”

“It is. The stories going around are that in prehistoric times. Angels, also known as the Giants, succumbed to the temptations of human flesh and were cast out of heaven, blah, blah.”

“Not true then?” Allie asked, now completely intrigued and wondering still how she fit in to all this.

“Not true; humans were basically apes back then. Think about it—who’d be interested?”

She did think about it—red monkey’s bums and gums—and it didn’t make a lot of sense.

“So all of that is a lie, then?”

“Well,” He hesitated. “Mostly, yes.”

“Whoa,” Allie interrupted. “That’s a big proviso there—
mostly
…?”

Her mobile phone rang. “Not now!” she yelled in mock anger. She checked the screen; it was Phoebe. She gave Michael the one-minute sign and answered it. The phone went dead.

“Not now, Allie," Michael said with a wan smile. “Sorry.”

“Phoebes will think I just hung up on her. Thanks a lot.”

“You can ring her back soon. We have priorities.”

Allie sat on the leather couch. “Ok, Michael, fair enough. Please continue.”

“Much, much later, there was an opening for my kind to interact with humans. There were reasons at the time that I can’t go into now, but certain things had to evolve—medicine, technology, that type of thing. Humans were encouraged and led to pursue particular avenues of thought.

“Religion being one of them?”

“Definitely not. Religion was nothing to do with us and got up and running all by itself—human nature, you might say.

“To believe in something greater than ourselves, you mean?”

“Exactly. It’s why churches are tall, Cathedrals massive—it’s all about making humans feel small and humble in the presence of a church-based higher power. It’s marketing, basically.”

“Marketing. Well, that’s good to know,” Allie said wearily. “Very comforting to now find out that, for at least half of my life, I have believed in complete bullshit.”

Michael laughed. “Not quite. The spiritual side of things is a little different. It’s where we do intersect. Churches are mostly about power and money—nothing to do with me or my crew.”

“The obvious question, Michael, among many, I guess, is what about Jesus?”

Allie held her breath waiting for the answer. Deep within her, she wanted Jesus to be real. She was shaking.

“You’re worried I’m going to say he didn’t exist, aren’t you? That it’s all make-believe generated from an early form of Judean church?”

She nodded.

“Relax, he was real alright. He wasn’t called Jesus and he lived in a slightly different place than is chronicled—there are reasons for that—but he was real. Even your major religions acknowledge that.”

“Was he one of your kind?” Allie ventured.

“No. He was the son of God; everyone knows that.”

*****

Ray Riley stalked about the faux wood-lined room, muffled sounds from the Black Crow Pub below filtering up through the floorboards. He pushed past his driver standing guard at the door and kicked over a curved coat stand.

“She was killed right outside a restaurant I was dining in? Fuck! How long do you think it will be before the Blue Meanies come knocking on my door?”

He threw a pen across the table and sat back down. “And worse, I have to find out about it from that stinky photographer. Not one of you bothered to let me know.” He scanned the six other men at the table. “You’ve got shit for brains, the lot of you! Why do I pay for information if I don’t get it?”

Terry Burdon squirmed in his seat. He’d been with Ray Riley for twenty years and he was still scared of him. He’d seen him stick a fork in a waiter’s eye because he was told the restaurant had run out of Pate de foi Gras, plus he’d heard Capone had done that. He was like that, Ray, living the mobster dream. It was a nightmare for those around him, but he paid stupendous money. Burdon had been a delivery van driver before hooking up with Ray in the early days; now he was making two hundred thousand pounds a year, more if ‘wet’ jobs were scheduled.

“We didn’t know it was her, Ray,” he said carefully, keeping his voice even. “Don’t even know if the coppers know it yet, either.”

“They do,” said Shoulders Blanchard, Ray’s third-in-line. “I got the call as we arrived here. They’ve even been out at her flat. That new bird, the posh one, went out there.”

“Really?” asked Riley. “The new DCI at the Yard? What’s her name? Sutcliffe?”

“St. Clair,” said a voice from down the end of the table. “Allison St. Clair, the daughter of that professor who knows about Celtic history.”

“Well now, is that right?” Ray Riley looked at the man who had spoken and a puzzled look crossed his face. “Had a bit of work done lately, have you mate? Had the old eyes done, maybe a hairpiece? What’s going on, a mid-life crisis?”

“Nope, nothing like that. Clean living.” He smiled back at Riley.

“Well, I’m impressed. More of you should follow that example,” he said, looking around at the assembled team. “Might make you all a bit smarter as well, who knows?” He laughed loudly at his own joke. “Anyway, it’s getting late and I’m hungry. It’s time to get this month’s financial report out of the way. He gestured toward the clean-living man. You right to go, Arthur?

*****

Allie jumped at the fierce banging on her door. She must have drifted off on the couch for a moment. Michael was sitting on the opposite couch reading a magazine,
Gobber
magazine, in fact. Allie sprinted down the stairs to see what was going on. She threw open her door to the street.

“We can’t raise you on your phone,” Rachel said bluntly.

“Christ,” Allie said, inwardly cursing Michael. “I’m sorry. Ummm, come up...”

Rachel walked straight in and mounted the stairs two at a time. Allie followed as quickly as she could, given the constraints of her mangy dressing gown. She heard Rachel say, “Oooh… hello!”

“Ah, Rache,” she said as she rounded the corner to the living room. “This is—”

But Rachel was alone, flipping through
Gobber
magazine, a playful look on her face. “Changing teams, are we?” Allie relaxed. Michael was nowhere in sight, miraculously. She ignored Rachel’s suggestion.

“What do you notice about it?” she asked.

Rachel closed the thin publication, looked at the cover, opened to the centerfold, then back to the cover. “Hold on. That’s
her
, isn’t it? Georgie?”

“Yes. In fact, it says so if you look at the bottom right of the centerfold. ‘Georgie S.’ it calls her,
‘Top bush from the Bush’
. Apparently, it’s quite an honor.”

Rachel looked askance at her. “How on earth did you drop onto this?”

“Some scabby teenagers were reading it at the Tube station. I walked right into her.”

Rachel looked thoughtful. “Amazing.”

“What’s up anyway, Rachel? Why the visit?” Allie was amused to see her close the magazine with a quick flourish.

“Another body has turned up. It’s at the Dominion Theatre in Oxford Street this time. It’s pretty bad and looks like it might be linked to Georgie’s murder.”

Allie swept into her bedroom, throwing off her dressing gown. She collided with Michael, who was standing in her little work-in-progress ensuite. She yelped and scrambled for the gown again. Rachel called up from the living room, asking if she was ok. “Fine, no problem,” she yelled back, thinking that two days ago, Rachel could have cared less about her welfare.

She glared at Michael, who, holding his hands over his eyes and grinning, maneuvered himself out of the tiny room and sat on the bed facing away from her, towards the window. Nothing was said by either of them.

Allie threw on slacks and a jacket and brushed her hair.

“I’ll be back around ten o’clock, hopefully. Will you be here?” she asked Michael

“I’ll shadow you to the scene.”

“Why?”

“Allie, it must have occurred to you that, to find you, all the killer has to do is wait at the murder scene—you’ll come to him.”

“In truth, that occurred to me at Earl’s Court over coffee, Michael, but I have to do my job.”

He stood and looked directly at her. “Fortunately or unfortunately, I think he…
it
wants more than you, so I’m hoping you’ll be ok, but I’ll be around just in case.”

Time was up. “Gotta run; we’ll talk later. You know the Dominion theatre?”

He smiled and confirmed that he did. Allie found it an interesting smile and wondered for a brief moment what lay behind it.

*****

Sarah Blascombe did not want to take the plate of hot food up to the men meeting in the upstairs room. They were creeps. She knew that the man with the diamond ear stud was a bad, bad man. Her father had warned her to stay well clear of him. Still, they brought in good money to the Black Crow and she knew how precarious the finances were. She negotiated the steep, steel-framed external stairs and knocked on the door using her right foot. The freaky driver guy opened the door and after staring at her chest for too long, he let her through the door. The men around the table all stopped their conversation while she bent over the table to place the heavy, steaming tray in the middle, between the bottles of wine. She hated this maneuver; she knew where their eyes were.

She straightened up and noticed the man standing by the big whiteboard. There was what she took to be financial information, numbers and columns scribbled on the board and he had a black texta pen in his hand. She knew him, didn’t she? He half-smiled at her and looked away. She hurriedly left the room amid catcalls and whistles from the men around the table. She shouldered her way past the oaf at the door and slammed it behind her.

“Please continue, Arthur,”’ Ray Riley instructed. Arthur Wendell nodded and turned back to the whiteboard on which he had detailed the last three year’s trading figures of Riley’s ‘interests.’

“How much fucking longer do I have to listen to this shit?” blurted Jase Britt, whose patience and attention span had parted ways. He addressed his remarks to Ray Riley.

“Is this dickhead going to bore us all fucking night?” Britt flapped his hand at Arthur. Riley’s men stirred. Nobody spoke to Diamond Ray Riley like that. But Riley was unfazed. “Ok, ok, Jase, we’ll do it now. Arthur, give it a rest, buddy. We’ll come back to it later.”

Britt looked at Arthur as he resumed his seat and made a wanking motion with his hand. It was a big mistake. Arthur’s right hand shot across the table and clamped itself around Britt’s neck. He lifted him right out of his seat and, swiveling around, pinned Britt hard against the wood paneled wall.

“Fucking hell!” yelled Riley. “Somebody get Arthur off him!”

Terry Burdon and big Joe Turner jumped up, trying unsuccessfully to pry Arthur’s hands off Britt. The slim young man added more color to the scene by turning purple.

“Easy, Arthur, not the time to tip your hand now,”
Mr. Black said soothingly.
“Show some leadership now, ok?”

Britt crashed to the floor as Arthur let him go.

“Jesus, Arthur,” Riley said. “Where did
that
come from? Are you on the ‘roids or something?”

Arthur straightened his tie and smoothed down his jacket. “Something like that.”

Terry Burdon helped the coughing and gagging Jase Britt to his feet. Britt glared at Riley. “You can forget our—”

Riley cut him off and cocked his finger at him. “Don’t be stupid, Jase; that’s not an option, boy. Anyway,” Riley said, “now is as good a time as any to announce my new venture.” Riley looked at his board members.

“You all know that I’ve got interests in media, publishing and pharmaceuticals,” he said this with a wink. “As of last night, I—
we
are also in the entertainment business… not to be confused with our adult entertainment division, of course. I’ve formed a new company called Firestone Music and the first act we will now be handling is…" He did a drum roll on the table and affected a ringmaster’s tone. "…
the Christian answer to Justin Timberlake, Mr. Jaaaase Britt!”

Nobody spoke. Now they knew why the pesky kid was there. Terry Burdon looked around the room and sensed the danger. He jumped to his feet and applauded. “Fantastic!” He clapped harder. The other men got the hint. One by one, they stood and applauded, even though absolutely none of them had ever heard of Britt. That wasn’t the point. The master had spoken and acted. It was time to like the idea regardless of their private trepidations.

Riley beamed at them. Britt managed a lopsided smile himself. Wendell stood and applauded as well and Riley acknowledged his change of heart. Riley made a settling motion with his hands and they all sat again. Joe Turner put his hand up, like a schoolboy waiting to ask teacher a question.

“Joe?”

“You did say ‘Christian,’ didn’t you? I mean, my hearin’ ain’t the best, but…”

Riley laughed. “You heard right, Joe, despite those cauliflower ears.” This got a chuckle around the table. “Jase here is a genuine heartthrob and his market is the fifty-six million, I’ll repeat that,
fifty-six fucking million
people who buy Christian music each year. And he will be number one amongst them in a few months, especially after his competition win. He has signed exclusively with Firestone Music in return for a healthy fee and a supply of certain premium-grade essentials.” More smiles around the table.

Riley clapped his hands. “And I’ve got a treat for all of you.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a thick envelope. “Tickets to see Jase perform at the nation’s biggest music event, The Glastonbury Festival!” Lukewarm applause rippled around.