Killing Time (2 page)

‘The boss doesn’t want to see those. How are you, guv? And how’s Jim? All we get is the official report.’

‘Progressing slowly. I saw him yesterday. He’s sleeping a lot of the time, though.’

‘Drugged, I suppose. It must still be pretty painful.’

Slider nodded. ‘Haven’t you seen him?’

‘Just once. They’re restricting visitors. I suppose you know that. Just one from the firm, they said, so I tossed Mackay for it.’

‘Doesn’t he wish,’ McLaren muttered.

‘Of all people,’ Norma said, ignoring him, ‘for Jim Atherton to get it in the stomach!’

Slider nodded. He’d thought of that. ‘It’s like a pianist getting his fingers broken.’

‘Him and food,’ Norma said, ‘it’s one of the great love affairs. Paris and Helen, Antony and Cleopatra—’

‘Marks and Spencer?’ Anderson suggested absently.

McLaren licked the last of the yolk and grease from his fingers. ‘They say he’s not coming back. Lost his bottle.’

‘You’ve got the most hyperactive
They
I’ve ever come across,’ Slider said. ‘All I know is he’s still very sick and he’ll be in hospital a while yet, and after that he’ll have to convalesce. We’re going to be without him a good few weeks. What he’ll decide after that no-one knows – least of all him, I should think.’

There was a buzz of conversation about what Atherton might or might not be feeling, and to break it up, Slider told them about Honeyman leaving. The news was met with a storm of equanimity.

‘I know he hasn’t been with us long,’ Slider concluded, ‘but I think we ought to organise a whip-round. At least buy him a book or something. And a card. Get everyone to sign it.’

‘I’ll do it,’ McLaren offered, preparing to engage a doughnut in mortal combat.

‘Fair enough,’ Slider said doubtfully. ‘But try not to get fingermarks on it.’

McLaren looked wounded. ‘I won’t let you down, guv.’

‘There’s no way you can,’ Slider assured him.

He had lunch in the canteen. Chicken curry, which they made halfway decently except that they would put sultanas in it which to his mind belonged in pudding not dinner, and raspberries with
crème aux fraises,
which was cateringspeak for pink blancmange. Slider didn’t mind because he actually liked blancmange. He was spooning it up when a shadow fell over him and he looked up to see Sergeant Nicholls bearing a tray. Nicholls’ handsome face lit in a flattering smile. ‘You’re back. That was quick.’

‘Honeyman begged me. I couldn’t stand seeing a strong man weep, so—’ He shrugged.

Nicholls obeyed his tacit invitation to sit down. ‘But are you able for it?’ he asked, unloading his tray.

‘Such tender concern. Yes, thanks. I still get the odd headache, but on the whole I’d sooner be working. Takes the mind off.’

‘Bad dreams?’ Nicholls asked perceptively. ‘Yes, I’m not surprised. It has to come out somewhere after a shock like that. But I’d feel the same in your shoes: get back on the horse as soon as possible.’ He reached over the table and laid a hand on Slider’s forearm. ‘Gilbert’s banged up tight as a trull,’ he said, ‘and there’s enough evidence to send him down for ever. He’s not getting out, Bill. Keep that in mind.’

‘Thanks, Nutty.’ They had a bit of a manly cough and shuffle. ‘I expect I’ll be kept busy, anyway, being two men down.’

‘Och, well, I’ve some better news for you on that front,’ Nicholls said. ‘They’re sending you a DC as a temporary
replacement for Atherton. Someone called Tony Hart, from Lambeth. D’ye know him?’

‘Never met him,’ Slider shook his head. ‘Ah well, that’s better than nothing. But I wonder Honeyman didn’t tell me. I was in there this morning.’

‘Honeyman’d mebbe not know yet. He hasn’t got my sources. Did you know he was leaving next week?’

‘Yes, he told me that.’

‘I shall miss him, in a way, you know,’ Nutty said, thoughtfully loading his fork with Pasta Bake. ‘He’s a real lady.’

Colin Hollis stuck his head round Slider’s door. ‘There’s some bloke downstairs asking for you, guv. Won’t take no.’

‘Won’t what?’

Hollis inserted his body after his head. ‘Well, I say bloke. Bit of a debatable point, now I’ve had a look at him. Ey, guv, if a bloke wears woman’s underwear, is that what you’d call a Freudian slip?’

‘Wipe the foam from your chin and start again,’ Slider suggested.

‘Bloke,’ Hollis said helpfully. ‘Come in asking for you, so I went down to see what he wanted, but he says he knows you, and you’re the only one he can talk to now that PC Cosgrove is gone.’ He eyed Slider with undisguised interest.

‘What does he want?’

‘He wouldn’t say. But he’s nervous as hell. Maybe he’s got some gen on the Cosgrove case.’

‘Name?’

‘Paloma. Jay Paloma.’ Hollis gave an indescribable grimace. ‘I bet that’s not his real name, though. Una Paloma Blanca – what’s that song? D’you know him, guv?’

Slider frowned a moment, and then placed him. ‘Not really. I know his flatmate, Busty Parnell.’ He sighed. ‘I suppose I’d better come.’

Hollis followed him through the CID room. ‘He’s got some gear on him. Making a bit, one way or the other. Probably the other. Funny old world, en’t it, guv, when the Game makes more than the Job?’

Slider paused at the door. ‘Every man makes his choice.’

‘Oh, I’ve no regrets,’ Hollis said, stroking his terrible
moustache. ‘I’d bend over backwards to help my fellow man.’

Slider trudged downstairs, feeling a little comforted. It was early days yet, but it looked as though Hollis was going to be an asset to the Department.

Slider had become acquainted with Busty Parnell in his Central days. She described herself as a show dancer, and indeed she wasn’t a bad hoofer, but a small but insidious snow habit had led her into trouble, and she had slipped down the social scale to stripper and part-time prostitute. Slider had busted her once or twice and helped her out on other occasions, when a customer turned nasty or a boss was bothering her. Sometimes she had given him a spot of good information, and in return he had turned a blind eye to a spot of victimless crime on her part. And sometimes, in the lonely dogwatches which are so hard on the unmarried copper, he had taken a cup of tea with her at her flat and discussed business in general and the world in particular. She had made it plain that she would be glad to offer him more substantial comforts, but Slider had never been one to mix business with pleasure. Besides, he knew enough about Busty’s body and far too much about her past life to find her tempting.

Her name was Valerie, but she had always been referred to as Busty in showbiz circles to distinguish her from the other Val Parnell, the impresario, for whom she had once auditioned. Slider had lost sight of her when he left Central, but she had turned up again a year or so ago on the White City Estate, sharing a flat with Jay Paloma. The last Slider had heard Busty had given up the stage and was working as a barmaid at a pub, The British Queen. Her flatmate was employed as an ‘artiste’ at the Pomona Club, a rather dubious night club whose advertised ‘cabaret’ consisted mainly of striptease and simulated sex acts, and which distributed more drugs than the all-night pharmacy in Shaftesbury Avenue.

Jay Paloma was waiting for Slider in one of the interview rooms. He was beautifully, not to say androgynously, dressed in a white silk shirt with cossack sleeves, and loose beige flannel slacks tucked into chocolate-coloured suede ankle boots, with a matching beige jacket hanging casually over his shoulders.
There was a heavy gold chain round his throat, a gold lapel pin in the shape of a treble clef on the jacket, and discreet gold studs in his ears. A handbag and nail polish would have tilted the ensemble irrevocably over the gender balance point; as it was, a casual glance suggested
artistic
rather than
transvestite.

Jay Paloma was tall and slenderly built, and sat with the disjointed grace of a dancer, his heels together and his knees fallen apart, his arms resting on his thighs and his hands dangling, loosely clasped, between them. The hands were well-kept, with short nails and no rings. His thick, streaked-blond hair was cut short, full and spiky like a model’s; his face was long and large-nosed, and given the dark eyeliner on the underlids and his way of tilting his face down and looking up under his eyebrows, he bore an uncanny resemblance to Princess Di, which Slider supposed was purely intentional.

He was a very nervous, tremulous Princess Di today, quivering of lip and brimming of eye. He started to his feet as Slider came in, thought about shaking hands, fidgeted, looked this way and that; and obeyed Slider’s injunction to sit down again with a boneless, graceful collapse. He put a thumb to his mouth and gnawed the side of it – not the nail or even the cuticle but the loose flesh of the first joint. Probably he had been a nail-biter and had cured himself that way. Nails would be important to him; appearance important generally. Given that he shared an unglamorous flat with Busty and worked at the Pomona, his expensive outfit suggested that he exploited his body in a more lucrative way out of club hours.

‘So what can I do for you?’ Slider asked, pulling out a chair and sitting facing him. ‘Jay, isn’t it? Do I call you Jay?’

‘It’s my professional name,’ he said. He had a soft, husky voice with the expected slightly camp intonation. It was funny, Slider reflected from his experience, how many performers adopted it, even if they weren’t TWI. It was a great class-leveller. It was hard to guess his origins – or, indeed, his age. Slider would have put him at thirty-five, but he looked superficially much younger and could have been quite a bit older. He had makeup on, Slider saw: foundation, mascara and probably blusher, but discreetly done. It was only the angle of the light throwing into relief the fine stubble coming through the foundation that gave it away.

‘It’s nice of you to see me,’ Jay said, with the obligatory
upward intonation at the end of the sentence; the phantom question mark which had haunted Estuary English ever since Australian soaps took over from the home-grown variety. It made it sound as though he wasn’t sure that it was nice, and gave Slider the spurious feeling of having a hidden agenda, of being persecutor to Jay’s victim.

‘Any friend of Busty’s is a friend of mine,’ he said. ‘How do you come to know her, by the way?’

‘Val and me go way back. We were in a show together – do you remember
Hanging Out in the Jungle?
That musical about the ENSA troupe?’

‘Yes, of course I do. It caused quite a stir at the time.’

Slider remembered it very well. It had hit the headlines not only because it was high camp – still daring in those days – and full of suggestive jokes; not only because of the implication, offensive to some, that ENSA had been riddled with homosexuality; but because before
Hanging Out,
the star, Jeremy Haviland – who had also directed and part-written the show – had been a respected, heavyweight actor of Shakespearian gravitas. Seeing him frolicking so incongruously in satin frocks and outrageous makeup had been one of the main draws which kept packing them in through its short but momentous run. But the gradually-emerging realisation that Haviland had merely type-cast himself had caused secondary shock-waves which had destroyed his career. This was some years before homosexuality had become popular and acceptable. Six months after
Hanging Out
closed, Haviland committed suicide.

‘Val was in the chorus, singing and dancing, but I had a proper part,’ Jay went on. ‘It was a terrific break for me.’

‘Which were you?’

‘I played Lance Corporal Fender – the shy young lad who had to play all the young girls’ parts, and got all those parcels of knitted things from his mother?’

‘Yes, I remember. You did that song with Jeremy Haviland, the Beverley Sisters number, what was it?’

‘“Sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters”,’ Jay Paloma sang obediently, in a sweet, husky voice. ‘It was Jeremy got me the part. I really could dance – I’d been to a stage-and-dance school and everything – but all I’d done before was a student review at UCL. I was sharing a flat at
the time with the president of Dramsoc, and he wangled me into it, because frankly, none of the rest of them could sing or dance worth spit. Anyway, Jeremy saw me in it, liked me, and took a chance. He was so kind to me! I owed him everything. I got fave reviews for
Hanging Out
and everyone reckoned I was headed for stardom. But then all the fuss broke out over poor Jeremy, and the show folded, and we were all sort of dragged down with him. Tarnished with the same brush, you might say. It was hard for any of us to get work after that, and, well, Jeremy and I had been – you know—’

‘Close,’ Slider suggested.

Jay seemed grateful for the tact. ‘He tried to help me, but everyone was avoiding him. And then he—’ He gulped and made a terminal gesture with both hands. ‘It was terrible. He was such a kind, kind man.’

‘I didn’t know Busty was in that show. It must have been before I met her.’

‘She and I shared lodgings. She was like a big sister to me.’

‘She was at the Windmill when I first knew her.’

‘Yes, that’s where she went when
Hanging Out
closed. It was always easier for women dancers to get work. Well, we sort of lost sight of each other for a long time. And then about eighteen months ago we bumped into each other again in Earl’s Court.’

By then both had drifted down out of the realms of legitimate theatre and into the shadowy fringe world where entertainment and sex were more or less synonymous. Busty was doing a bit of this and a bit of that – stripping, promotional work, topless waitressing. Jay was dancing when he could get it, filling in with drag routines, modelling, and working for a gay escort agency.

‘Val was doing the Motor Show – dressed in a flesh suit handing out leaflets about some new sports car. She was supposed to be Eve in the Garden of Eden, the leaflets were apple-shaped. The car was the New Temptation – d’you get it?’ He sniffed derisively. ‘She hated promo work – we all do. Being a Sunflower Girl or a Fiat Bunny or whatever. Humiliating. And the hours are shocking and the pay’s peanuts, unless you sleep with the agent, which you often have to to get the job at all. Well, you have to take what you can get. And we’re neither of us teenagers any more. There just isn’t the work for troupers like us. Everyone specialises, and the kids coming out of the dancing
schools now can do things – well, they’re more like acrobats to my mind. It’s not what I’d call dancing.’