Framed (24 page)

"Okay," he whispered as she began to moan. "You can move."

She didn't need to be told twice. She began bouncing on him, drawing him to her, her neck taut as she cried out.

"Oh, yes! Now, baby! Now!"

Out in the corridor a night-security guard stopped near Von Joel's room, listening, convinced he had heard a woman scream. As he listened he heard it again, softer this time, more of a dying howl. He heard it one more time, muffled, and now it seemed more like the kind of sound cats make in the dark. He stood there for another minute, straining his ears. Everything had gone quiet.

Inside Von Joel's room Jackie was standing by the bed tucking strands of hair under her cap. Von Joel lay back under the covers, serene, a faint smile on his lips.

Jackie patted the cap to make sure it was centered. At the door she removed the chair from under the handle. She picked up the kidney dish she had brought, took it to the side of the bed, and whipped off the cloth with a magician's flourish, revealing a portable telephone.

"You know I could get into trouble for doing this," she whispered. "You can have it until I go off shift."

She put the telephone on the bedside cabinet. On her way to the door she stopped.

"While I remember, will you thank your mum for the brooch? It was very kind of her."

Von Joel nodded. "She's a very sweet lady," he said. "Sadly, she can't get around so much lately, but if you take another little note for me tonight, I think she'll appreciate it. Just leave it at the hotel reception.

As Jackie opened the door he held up the phone. "Thank your sister for me!"

f

Faint daylight glowed on the curtains as Lola opened her eyes. She turned her head on the pillow and saw Larry bending over a chair, peering down behind it.

He was fully dressed.

"Where are you going?" she said.

"Home. I can't find my tie."

He went through to the sitting room, closing the door behind him. Lola turned and saw that the light on her telephone was blinking. She picked it up. Waiting, she noticed Larry's wallet lying on the bedside table and flipped through the contents.

"Hello? Senorita del Moreno, you have a message for me?" She scrabbled for a pencil and wrote down a number. "Yes? What time did the call come? Thank you. Any other messages left for me at the desk? No? Oh,
gracias
. . . Thank you, no, no, I'll come down to the desk. Good-bye."

She sat up properly, wedging a pillow behind her, then dialed the number she had written down. After the second ring Von Joel answered.

"Oh, my love, my love," she whispered, snuggling down.
"Dios mio, te echo de tnenos ..."

She continued to croon to Von Joel in Spanish, telling him first how she missed him, then turning to practical matters and explaining that, almost at the same time as she and Charlotte sat planning how to locate Sergeant Jackson, he had shown up at hotel reception.

"He was here, yes, the little sergeant. . . . Honestly!"

Larry walked into the bedroom, holding up his tie.

"Found it," he said. "Oh, sorry." He froze in the doorway. "You on the phone?"

"Hang on," Lola said into the telephone, "my friend is just leaving." She looked up at Larry. "It's my papa—say hello."

Larry shook his head and backed away.

"Oh, come on," Lola coaxed, "he won't mind me having someone in bed with me. . . . Say
Buenos dtas ..."

Larry, feeling distinctly silly, leaned down over the bed and let Lola put the receiver to his mouth.

"Buenos dias,"
he said.

'That's good morning," Lola told him as he straightened again. Into the phone she said, "You would like him
muy bien,
Papa." She mouthed little kisses at Larry as he went to the door, knotting his tie. "Don't forget your wallet, Sergeant Jackson," she called.

He came back, took the wallet, and squeezed her shoulder. She pouted at him and pulled the duvet over her head. When he left she tossed the duvet aside and giggled into the telephone.

"He came all by himself, in the literal sense. No, he's gone." Her face became serious as she picked up her pencil and pad. "What's the next move?" She nodded. "No problem. He said he would contact me tomorrow.
Bank?"

She lay back, nodding again, making notes, cradling the telephone as if it were Von Joel himself.

17

AT nine-fifteen that same morning, his head still feeling charged and imprinted with Lola, Larry faced DCI McKinnes and found himself staring down both barrels of the chief's rage.

"Just what the hell do you think you're playing at?" McKinnes stood like a fighter on the attack, one shoulder forward, jabbing a finger at Larry. His voice rose above the hubbub in the incident room. "If I'd thought it was necessary for you to visit Myers's wife I would have organized it!"

"I just reckoned it would help with my interrogation if I had—"

"Anything you needed to know," McKinnes yelled, "You should have discussed with
me!
You should have put it through the right channels!"

"I'm sorry."

"You're sorry. Jesus. Listen. You, Sergeant"—McKinnes jabbed with his finger again—"have access to Eddie

Myers. You've also got a wife and two kids. Think, man! Eddie Myers's ex-wife is married to a bloke who's done time! If this new husband starts yapping—who knows
who
he frigging knows? I said I would deal with Italy at the right time! My time, not yours!"

DI Shrapnel sidled up to McKinnes. He was holding up a fax sheet.

"The shooter's the one used in the security raid, Guv. They're bringing in George Minton. We got nothing on the portable in the Transit, it was part of a shipment that was nicked eighteen months ago. So was the van. Been sprayed recently but it was lifted from the Bake-O Bread Company."

McKinnes snatched the fax and turned to Larry again.

"Myers played around with heavy bastards, Sergeant, and he's putting even more in the frame." This time the finger made contact, prodding Larry squarely in the chest. "You got the break of your career when you clocked Myers. You got the second one when you were put with us. But you just blew it, son. Go home. Just get out, and stay out of my sight."

Larry left the building in a daze, something less than shock. Today he felt insulated. Outside he walked along the street slowly, not thinking, simply letting his reactions settle into place. After a while he decided that a cup of coffee would be a good idea. He looked across the road and spotted a cafe. As he waited for the traffic to thin he tried to get a clear overview on what had happened to him. He supposed he should have been seething with resentment by now. He should have been feeling badly hurt. Gutted. Depression should have been looming just over his shoulder, ready to envelop him as the sense of failure seeped in. But he still felt untouched by what had happened in the incident room. His life, since some time early that morning, felt larger than the pygmy-sized considerations of the job. He was beyond the need for the tussle and muscle-flexing, the competing and jockeying, the arse-182 licking and all the other maneuvers necessary just to stay level.

In body and spirit he felt immunized from life's vexations. Lola had given him a nerve-rending shunt along the path of change, and now he felt like he was on dope. Crossing the road, he discovered he was humming something from the charts.

Sitting at a corner table with a bacon sandwich and a mug of tea, Larry felt the lurch in his groin. The oysters, the champagne, his whole body felt on fire. He pushed the bacon sandwich aside. lie even found the hot tea difficult to swallow. It was as if the entire episode with Lola had been a dream, but it wasn't. It was a reality, one he wanted to taste again, and it freaked him. He stared out the window. If Mac had known what he'd been up to, he would have got more than a bollocking, a lot more. He began to feel ashamed, foolish. He had never been unfaithful to Susan, maybe thought about it once or twice, but he'd never done more than just the odd bit of flirting. All the different emotions came rapidly on each other's heels, until at last he felt angry, angry at his own stupidity. Then even that veered toward bitterness.

He had trusted Von Joel. Christ, he had taken in all that gear to him, been almost in tears when he'd been told the story of his brother, and all the time the bastard was lying. What was he doing? Making him out to be a total arsehole?

The swing of anger went back to the flush of Lola, Lola's sensual lips, everywhere, kissing, biting. Larry suddenly shot up his hand to his throat. Shit, was he marked? Had she left love bites on his neck? He tried to see his reflection in the steamy cafe window, but gave up, pulling his collar tighter, feeling the knot of his tie. He gave a tight, vicious smile. Von Joel might have pulled one over on him about his brother, but he reckoned he'd never believe he'd pulled his girlfriend.

Larry didn't finish his tea, but decided to head back home, think about what Mac had said. He was sure Mac'd come around, sure he didn't mean he was really off the case, but he wasn't that sure, he knew he'd have a lot of crawling to do. He somehow made it a feasible reason why he should, instead of returning home, go back to the Hyde Park Hotel to requestion Lola. In truth, he hadn't really asked half the questions he had intended, but then he had been otherwise occupied.

"I was just passing," Colin Frisby said, pointing to the new cupboard door he was carrying. He smiled at Susan, who was standing by the back kitchen door. "Larry not here?"

"No," she said, "he was on very late—well, all night, actually. I've not seen him."

She stepped back and Frisby brought the cupboard door inside. He knelt on the floor and began unwrapping it, his mind working as fast as his fingers: Von Joel was in hospital, so Larry was
not
on the job, whatever else he might be doing.

"Tell you what," Frisby said, "you make me a bacon sandwich, I'll fix the door. That a deal?"

Susan nodded and threw in a knowing little smile. As she moved past Frisby she ruffled his hair.

"I thought Larry would be here," he said lightly. He watched Susan get the frying pan from a cupboard. "You say he was on duty?"

"Yes." She closed the cupboard and put the pan on the cooker. "It's all he ever really thinks about. I don't mean Myers, I mean his work."

"Then he's a stupid sod," Frisby said, modulating the remark carefully, making it sound just serious enough, with no more presumption than he thought he'd get away with.

Susan took the bacon from the fridge. As she closed the door she turned and saw him still looking at her. Her knowing little smile expanded.

Just as Larry was about to have an argument with the doorman at the hotel about parking, Lola walked out. It was fate.

Looking at her, he was tempted to use the old line about scarcely recognizing her with her clothes on. It was true. In Spain he had seen her only in flimsy, abbreviated garments; last night she had worn very little to begin with, and finally nothing at all. Now she was in smart street clothes, entirely appropriate for the West End of London, and she looked like a different woman.

She asked Larry to come with her to a bank he had never heard of. It was in the City, an opulent place furnished more like the reception area of a hotel than a banking hall. Larry stood by and watched as Lola spoke to the cashier. He almost forgot to breathe as he listened to the figures she was airily throwing about.

"Can I have five in fifties, three in twenties, then tens and fives? Always have to have big tips," she told Larry. "Nowadays they look as if you have spit in their hand if you give small tips."

He nodded, as if it were a problem he shared. "What kind of bank is this?" he said, looking around.

"Mmm . . ." Lola didn't seem sure. She opened her Gucci bag and began pulling out wads of Spanish currency, passing it to the cashier to be changed into sterling. "Papa has an account here for when he is in London. He travels. Paris, New York—I don't know where he is now. My mama and him, they hate each other, she wouldn't divorce him, she didn't want him, she don't like to travel any place. Always fighting. She has a big villa in Fuengirola, many rooms and a private beach, but"—Lola shrugged, still passing money to the cashier as she chattered—"she don't like to sit in the sun, she don't like lots of things. . . ."

Larry watched as the cashier deftly checked the amounts and passed back wad after wad of currency, which Lola stuffed into the soft leather bag as if she were handling groceries. She paused and looked at Larry.

"I'm not holding you up, am I?"

"No." He frowned at the bag. "You should be careful carrying that amount of money around."

Lola gave him a brief deadeye look. He wished he hadn't spoken. She probably knew more about the safe handling of cash than he ever would.
But I'm a copper,
he thought,
I say these things. . . .

As they turned from the cashier a teller approached Lola, obsequiously smiling. He said if she would like to see the safety-deposit facilities she should follow him. She nodded, hooking her arm through Larry's. As they followed the man toward a large oak door, Lola was chattering again.

"You know how much that suite at the Hyde Park is per night?" She rolled her eyes. "But Papa insists he knows I am safe there, he can always find me. He has a few pieces of jewelry from the family, so sometimes I sell something for him. . . .*

"If a suite at the Hyde Park Hotel costs anything like that dinner ..." Larry laughed, feeling extraordinarily at ease with Lola, and with himself. "You know, I almost had heart failure, honest I did. . . ."

A couple of hours later, in the incident room at St. John's Row, DI Shrapnel brought DCI McKinnes the news that the doctor supervising Von Joel's progress had said he could be moved. McKinnes nodded, adding the information to an influx he was juggling, trying by every means he could muster to make things happen. He tapped the shoulder of a WPC who was passing.

"Get another check on the driver of the truck," he told her. "See if there's any kind of tie-in with Minton." He turned and saw DC Colin Frisby walk in. "Oy! Frisby! Anything out of order at Jackson's?"

"Well . . ." Frisby came across, looking wary. "Jackson's wife said he didn't come home last night. Something up, is there?"

The telephone rang and Shrapnel answered it.

"We're moving Myers," McKinnes said distractedly, tono one in particular. He stared at Frisby suddenly, as if he had just heard him. "What did you say?"

"Guv"—Shrapnel covered the mouthpiece—"it's the Super. He wants you ASAP." McKinnes scowled and turned away, muttering that he was going to get a sandwich first. "He's on his way up," Shrapnel told the Superintendent, and dropped the receiver.

"Frank . . ." It was DC Frisby again. "Is Jackson off the Myers case? If he is, can you get me to replace him?"

Shrapnel raised his finger and flicked his own ear.

"Too much of this, Frisby," he said, "can land you in it."

In the Superintendent's office McKinnes was required to furnish a case update. It would have been easier if his men were still acting on fresh information, or if the existing evidence and circumstantial developments would come together in a way that equaled progress. Matters were not static, but they were moving too slowly. The Superintendent didn't want to hear that, so McKinnes did all he could to make it sound as if significant breakthroughs were imminent. He ate a sandwich as he delivered his report, gesturing with a still-sealed cup of coffee in the other hand. When he had talked himself dry-throated he tugged off the cap from the plastic cup and spilled coffee down his jacket.

"Shit!" he spluttered, spraying crumbs. "You got a tissue?"

The Superintendent handed one over. McKinnes dabbed at himself, managing to spill coffee on the desk as he put down the cup and the tatters of the sandwich.

"That shooter killed the security guard," he assured the Superintendent. 'That's enough to hold Minton. I think he was on the job and I think Eddie Myers has more. Now we've got him back, I'll put the pressure on him."

There was no more to report about the case. McKinnes moved to the door before the Superintendent could think of any questions that might detain him.

"Oh"—as he pulled the door open he pretended to remember something unimportant—"Jackson's off the case, he's too inexperienced."

The Superintendent frowned. "Have you got a problem with him?"

"Nothing I can't handle. Give these youngsters an inch and they're ruddy Perry Masons. . . ."

The Superintendent turned to the desk as McKinnes left. He looked down and sighed, gazing at the spilled coffee and the mutilated remains of the sandwich.

As the day wore on, Larry Jackson's awareness of his position began to harden. Away from Lola—she was busy, things to do, people to see—he no longer walked with his feet an inch above the ground, though terra firma wasn't so hard as it might have been. In spite of a new layer of resilience he found himself missing the case again, craving the involvement. There was, too, the aggravation of being cut off from contact with Von Joel, which was no small nuisance.

He got home deliberately late. He picked at a semi cold dinner alone in the kitchen, while Susan and the boys watched television in the living room.

At nine o'clock the phone rang. He wandered out to the hall and answered it. It was Lola. All at once he was on the defensive, watching the door to the living room. He was so nervous about being caught he could hardly hear what she was saying. The change in him hadn't gone so deep as he had thought. There was still a chicken, a small one, flapping about in his psyche.

"I can't," he snapped into the mouthpiece. "I'm sorry."

What was she suggesting, anyway? What exactly was a
scene?
"No, really, I can't, and don't call again. I said I can t.

He looked up and saw Susan come into the hall.

"I've got to go," he snapped. "Good-bye."

Susan watched as he practically threw down the receiver.

"I'm going to make some cocoa," she said. "You want some? I said the kids can stay up and watch the end of the film." She nodded at the telephone. "Who was that?"

"Just work," Larry said—too fast, he was sure. "No, thanks."

The telephone rang again. He snatched it up.

"Hello?"

Susan walked into the kitchen as Lola began begging him to come to the hotel.

"Cut it out!" he grated through his teeth.

She was babbling at him, her voice a fluctuating squeak in the earpiece. He swore silently toward the ceiling. This wasn't romantic adventure, it was bloody-minded mischief. It was troublemaking. He had heard about coppers driven half mad by girlfriends deciding to make problems for them at home. It nearly always started with the telephone.

"I said no! Don't call me here again!"

He slammed down the phone. Susan came out of the kitchen.

"Did you say you wanted one or not? Only we don't have much milk ..."

The phone rang. Larry grabbed it.

"I said no!" he snapped without listening. "I mean it! Stop messing around!"

He pressed the cradle buttons, released them, and left the receiver lying on the table. Susan came close, staring at him.

"Is someone threatening you? Us? Larry? Who was it?"

"Just leave it off the hook for a while!"

"You wouldn't lie to me about it, would you?" Susan's eyes had their prehysterical glint. 'They suspected someone would try and—"

"It's nothing!" Larry hissed.
"Nothing at all!"

"Don't snap at me! I don't know what's got into you, but whatever it is, don't take it out on me and the kids."

"I'll get them to bed," Larry muttered, heading for the living room.

"I'm just making their cocoa," Susan said. "Did you want one?"

"Jesus Christ!" Larry stiffened, staring at the living room door. "How many more times? No! No! I don't want any frigging cocoa!"

f

Susan was lying in bed, face turned to the wall, eyes tight shut and not asleep. Larry got in beside her, turned off the bedside lamp, and bashed his pillow.

"I said I'm sorry. There's no need to act like this!"

Susan gritted her teeth. "Like what? How am I acting, Larry?"

"You know."

"No, I don't know," she snapped.

"Yes, you do, and I said I'm sorry."

"You do nothing but yell at me, at the kids; I never know when you are in or out or what the hell you are doing. All I asked was
if
you wanted cocoa or not, and
you ."

"And
I have apologized,
okay?"

"Then there were those phone calls, who were you yel-lin' at on the other end of those?"

"Mac." "Who?"

Larry leaned up, and sighed. "Look, it's tough at the moment, with the accident. I mean, I dunno if I'm on the case or not."

Susan turned toward him. "But they wouldn't put someone else on it, would they? I mean, you were the one who found him, why would they do that?"

Larry lay back again. "I dunno . . . Mac's an odd bugger."

Susan cuddled up, hooking her leg over his, and he had that awful feeling that maybe there was a love bite, something of Lola on his body. "I'm knackered, good night." Susan curled up on her side of the bed again, night." He reached out and patted her back, and she muttered, "Sooner this case is over and done with the better. Good night."

"Good night." He lay awake until he heard Susan's breathing deepen as she fell asleep. The warmth of her body next to him made him think of Lola.

He couldn't stop thinking of her, wanting her, but he knew he had better not see her again, ever.