Rick Cole woke suddenly with the image of Donna Fitzgerald superimposed over the darkness of his room. The dream faded slowly as he groped on his bedside table for the glass of Teacher’s he’d taken to bed. He leant back against the headboard and waited for the alcohol to kick in. He lit a JPS and brushed the odd spark from his chest. His mobile went and he heard Sam Butler.
“Rick, thank Christ! I’m in trouble. I’m parked up at the back of the Gallery. Help me out.”
“Talk to me, Sam. Sam?”
But Sam Butler had gone even though the line remained open. Cole finished his drink in one and stubbed out his JPS. Anger hardened his features. He knew without being told that the job had been compromised. Now it was limitation time. And without any doubt at all it was going to take every trick he knew to keep them all in the clear.
He poured another drink and headed for the bathroom. A dozen things went through his head and they were all to do with Chief Superintendent Marsh. He’d had Cole in his sights for years and Sam Butler might have given him the ammunition.
He turned the shower to hot until it hurt and washed away his thoughts of Butler and Marsh. He emptied his glass and brought back instead those last illusive impressions of Donna Fitzgerald. On the High Road traffic was thin. The Carrington slid by. He slowed by the shop, the Gallery, but it seemed as spent as the rest of the road with no movement in the windows and just the dummies looking out, Father Christmas and his assistant. But the assistant was naked. The Christmas lights blinked on the mannequin and Cole looked twice. He’d never known a shop-window mannequin to have hair before. Christ, how thing changed. Forget the nipples that poked you in the eye, they were really going for reality nowadays. He wondered, fleetingly, whether it constituted an indecency charge.
He made a right and then another and passed the only shop in the run-down street. The window was lit, but dimly, and the dolls in it were the colour of snow. Dark round eyes stared out of anaemic faces. A cat’s quivering tail caught his eye as it curled around one of the heads.
Now there were offices on his left, abandoned, their windows boarded, doors chained and padlocked. And then he saw the shadow of Butler’s car and pulled up before it. His headlights blazed on the windscreen.
“Jesus, Sam!”
DS Butler raised his hand and motioned toward the shop’s blistered gate.
“What the hell happened?”
“Hit, through the window. Didn’t see it coming.”
“You need an ambulance.”
“What I need is for you to get in there. It’s been hours!”
“She’s in there?”
Again Butler attempted to point toward the gate but his hand fell away. He was leaning forward, slumped against the wheel, his arm hanging loose and useless. The hole in his head was dark. A swelling had increased its depth. Blood seeped out, congealed in yellow fat. His mobile lay in the passenger seat. He was holding on, hoping for a reprieve. This business could end his career. He’d gone out on a limb, compromised the entire operation and placed his colleague in danger. Butler had his wife and baby on what was left of his mind, and somewhere at the back of it, maybe, in an area more damaged than the rest, was Anian Stanford.
“I’ll make the call,” the DS managed. “I just need a minute.” Cole nodded. Despair and panic clawed at his gut and as he pushed open the back gate he felt a cold sweat collect on his forehead. The gate scraped loudly on the concrete path. He crossed the small garden of bare dirt and reached the door, surprised to find it unlocked. He’d been ready to kick his way in.
Behind him, in the car in the street, DS Sam Butler passed out again.
The door opened on to a studio. The main lights were out but illumination squeezed through a small kitchenette at the far end. There were boxes of books and paintings on every available surface. There was a sofa and an easel holding a large canvas and a box of paints beside it. And in the tray was an oval palette with globules of paint arranged around the edge and in the centre a mix of flesh tones. Cole looked at Anian and she looked back, life-like, with that familiar petulance in her eyes. But in her pose with one leg raised against the other and her dress riding her thighs she looked special. Whatever else Lawrence was, he was an artist.
At the side of the room was modern art. Suspended over a hole left by a missing floorboard, secured by tackle and chain, was a wall of bricks, the size of a door. It took Cole’s breath away and kicked him in the midriff.
For a moment he was bent double.
Then he saw the open door only partially concealed by the curtain and then he was falling down dangerously narrow steps, scuffing against the rough walls until he was standing on dirt.
It was only then he noticed the foul air, as if he’d walked into a cloud of stinking gas, and automatically he clamped a hand over his nose and mouth, forcing back the bile that all but blocked his throat. He careered through the room into the passage, knocking the single bulb as he went, sending shadows slithering from floor to festering ceiling. He’d come across the stink of putrescine before, many times, so even before he reached the end room he was already bracing himself. Even so, he was unprepared.
Helen Harrison was circled in the full intense beam of the spotlight. For a ludicrous moment he wondered if she had been chosen for his benefit.
Rick Cole said, “Holy shit!”
And given the time of year he was probably right.
“This is well out of order!”
At his side, away from the beam and just another shadow among many, something stirred. And behind him, wrapped in a white sheet, negotiating the passage and still slowed by her drugged sleep, Laura approached. The room opened before her just moments after Cole had entered. She saw what Cole had seen and screamed.
It wasn’t just an ordinary scream for, as with everything else about Luscious Laura, it was outstanding, and woke up a number of residents on the Richmond Park Estate.
Rick Cole turned and took her in and noticed that even in her crumpled style she had definite possibilities. He said, “I’m at a loose end, sweetheart. Play your cards right you could be the next Mrs Cole!”