Verismo Bliss Chapter 6

6.

The Falsham mansion was set in a hundred green acres just outside Epping. It had been built back in the 12th century; the land no doubt stolen by some vicious son-of-a-bitch who’d killed the starving serfs who toiled the land as best they could. The house would have been passed down through nobles, lords and ladies, the nouveau riche, bastards all, until it had been purchased by Falsham’s father back in the 1970’s. It had been given a facelift; fitted out in the neo art deco style that was back in fashion. Give it ten years and the neo classical columns would be back.
A butler, with a strong Welsh accent and a golden coloured cravat that could have had wagon teams heading for Llangollen, had been about to slam the door in Harry’s face before he’d produced his card. Harry couldn’t blame him. His face looked as though it had been used to try and knock down the Empire State Building. The butler ushered him into a hallway the size of Wembley Stadium.
‘I’ll set up base camp here,’ Harry said, looking up the broad stairs in front of him.
The butler looked at him and faked a smile. He did a good job with his mouth, but his eyes showed utter disdain. ‘Mr Falsham is below stairs.’
‘Visiting with the staff, eh? How noblesse oblige of him.’
The Welshman did not reply but led Harry down a narrow passageway and a set of stairs. Harry limped behind the bustling butler. It had been a couple of days but his body still ached. The skin around his left eye was puffed up like a tyre and he was sure it was a shade of purple that had never been seen before. But at least the colour masked the cuts and grazes. Around his chest were wound bandages that made sitting down hard, but it kept his ribs in place, especially the two that had been broken. They entered a voluminous kitchen that was bigger than the dining hall of Harry’s old school. Game hung along one wall and a maid was just closing the door on a larder that looked like it held enough tinned goods to feed the population of China for a day. If it didn’t hurt Harry so much to eat, he would have been salivating. The maid told the butler that Mr Falsham was ‘with the guns’. Harry was led across a courtyard and into a modernised barn. Across the far wall were displayed, behind a locked, folding gate, a row of guns; mainly shotguns, but some rifles with scopes that could probably shoot the eyebrows of a robin redbreast at 10 miles, and the bollocks off some malingering work shy member of the hoi polloi from twice that distance.
A man with a flat cap and blue overalls was at the table cleaning the barrel of a shotgun. Another man stood next to him, examining his work carefully. When he saw Harry, he said, ‘Make sure you do a good job, Evans, and have it ready as soon as you can,’ and then held out his hand. ‘I’m Martin Falsham.’
‘Harry Reed,’ Harry said, shaking the proffered hand that was as big as a navvy’s but smooth as a schoolgirl’s cheek.
Falsham was about Harry’s age but with fewer grey hairs. He had a moustache of light brown to match the thin thatch on his head. Moustaches either made you look gay or distinguished; on Falsham it somehow worked both ways. He was dressed as though he had stepped straight out of La Belle Époque. He wore a Norfolk jacket and matching breeches, with knee length Argyle socks and black leather boots. If he stepped into the Nags Head in that attire he would have been dead in five minutes, either from a knife or the utter shame at being laughed at to exhaustion. But here, in his stately mansion, it looked perfectly acceptable.
‘I trust you didn’t get that face due to the job I have hired you for,’ he asked. His voice was steady, not too deep, with a hint of a Scottish burr. More Edinburgh than Glasgow.
‘Worried it might cost you more money?’
Falsham gazed about him. ‘Money is of little consequence to somebody like me.’
‘You mean somebody who has so much?’
‘Exactly. One can tire of everything. Even gold loses its lustre if you dig it out of the mine everyday.’
‘Ah, but the ones who dig it never get to actually spend it do they? But don’t worry, this face had nothing to do with your daughter. At least I don’t think so.’
‘Would you like anything - a drink perhaps?’
‘No, I’m fine…’
‘Barry, have the car brought around,’ Falsham said to the butler, speaking over Harry’s reply. Then he turned back to Harry. ‘I’m off to Devon for a spot of stag hunting.’
‘To help distract you from the worry.’
‘The worry?’
‘About your daughter.’
Falsham frowned. ‘It may be considered therapeutic among the television crowd to wear ones emotions upon ones sleeves, but just because one does not burst into tears does not mean one isn’t suffering. Now, money may be of little consequence to me, but I still like to get value for money. Report.’
Harry shrugged. ‘Missing person cases, as I told your employee Cannon, are notoriously difficult if the person missing doesn’t want to be found…’ Falsham, whilst Harry was talking, had returned to the table, and was inspecting the cleaned shotgun. ‘Are you interested in what I have to saw?’
Without looking up, Falsham said, ‘Are we forgetting who is the employer and who the employee, here? I can multi-task. Continue.’
For five seconds Harry thought about turning around and leaving, maybe with a witty, snide comment hanging in the air between them. But what good would it do? He’d feel proud for an hour or two, but his bank account would feel limp until the next money to burn jackass came along. Besides, he’d taken the case, and he always liked to see them through to the end.
‘I’m fairly confident that Gwendolyn is in Covent Garden, or at least was. For a start that’s where most runaways in London end up and the more compelling evidence is that on the day she ran away she used her ID to take the Tube to Covent Garden.’
‘And since then?’
‘Since then she has had her ID warped. Probably by a professional because it has vanished from circulation.’
‘You’ve done fairly well in only a few days.’
‘If that’s how you praise people then I wouldn’t like to be criticised.’
Falsham didn’t blink. ‘But what now, Mr Reed? Any more…what do you call them…leads?’
‘I did have one lead. Do you know an Barry Penny?’
Falsham looked up then. ‘Should I?’
‘He was a friend of your daughters.’
‘Gwen had many friends. I didn’t vet them.’
‘He was with her on the day she ran away. He has also visited Covent Garden four times since then that I know of.’
‘Then I presume you have spoken to this Penny, or intend to?’
‘I would but he’s lost his head.’
Falsham sighed and ran his finger down the barrel of the shotgun. ‘One of the reasons I enjoy stag hunting, or indeed any hunting, is that it is so clean cut. You miss, they live another day. You hit, and they die. I like straight lines. I like a yes or a no. I don’t like metaphors, allegories or prevarication.’
‘Barry Penny is dead. Three nights ago I saw his decapitated head. As far as I know they still haven’t found his body.’
‘Do the police know who did it?’
Harry shook his head.
‘Is it connected to Gwen?’
‘I have no evidence to link his death with Gwen’s disappearance.’
The butler appeared in the doorway. ‘The car is ready, sir.’
‘Pack the shotguns, Evans.’
‘Do you know why she ran away?’ Harry asked.
‘I have no idea. She was a teenage girl. They sometimes get funny ideas, don’t they?’
‘What about Bliss?’
‘Bliss?’
‘It’s a drug; enhances the female orgasm. I wondered if, as you are the senior director of Raf-Med, you could give me any information on it.’
‘Is it pertinent?’
‘Could be.’
‘Barry, provide Mr Reed with some of Raf-Med’s literature. Now, I really must be going. Barry will see you out.’
‘One more thing,’ Harry said, making Falsham pause in the courtyard. ‘Can I see Gwendolyn’s room? There might be something there – a clue to why she ran away.’
‘I don’t care why she ran away, and neither should you. I’m paying you to find her, not look for reasons.’
‘You’d be surprised how reasons often lead to conclusions.’
Falsham turned to the butler. ‘Show Mr Reed to Gwen’s bedroom and then show him out when he is finished. Please don’t remove anything without my knowledge. Send any updates to Adam, as agreed. If he hasn’t heard from you in a couple of days he will contact you.’
‘Good luck.’
‘Luck plays no part if you are a true huntsman.’
‘Actually, I was wishing good luck to the stags.’

Barry the butler led Harry the detective up the grand staircase to the north wing of the mansion. The corridors were like grim hospital wards; no paintings, photographs or objet d’art.
‘When are you having the decorators in?’ Harry asked Barry.
The butler opened a door. ‘This is Gwendolyn’s room. Please leave everything as it is. When you are finished return to the reception hall where I will have the literature that Mr Falsham requested I provide you with.’
Harry stepped into the room and closed the door. He looked around. ‘Leave everything as it is? That ain’t gonna be hard.’
The room’s walls were painted a tea rose colour, but that was the only inviting thing about it. The floors were varnished wooden boards, covered by a large Persian rug. There was a bed, with the covers folded up in a neat pile, as though the occupant had moved on, or died. There was a wardrobe. There was a chest of drawers. There was a closet. There was a bookcase, full of study books. There was a desk with a PC.
Harry was no expert on teenage girls, but he had an inkling that they liked posters of dreamy pop stars, hunky bad boys and horses. They liked photographs of their friends and family too. And didn’t they leave a mess everywhere?
Harry, without much hope, searched the room. The wardrobe was as neat as a soldier’s ready for inspection. The chest of drawers held her underwear, which Harry tried not to show too much interest in. The closet had a laundry basket in it, empty, and a vacuum cleaner. He booted up the PC and looked for hiding places whilst it loaded. Under the bed, hidden inside the books, in the pillows…the PC wanted a password. Bollocks. There was no way that he was going to guess the password of somebody he knew nothing about. He had about as much chance as Martin Falsham.
He stood in the doorway and looked around. If he was a teenage girl where would he hide something the maids wouldn’t find? Fuck, he couldn’t get into the mind of a teenage girl. He raised the Persian rug and tapped the floorboards. None were loose. He opened the chest of drawers again and felt around her panties, feeling like a heel. Then he felt something hard. A pair of pink Agent Provocateur frilly knickers had something hard in them. He turned them inside out. There was a little pouch sewn into the side. He flipped open the pocket and pulled out a small memory card. It was the sort that was used in cameras.

Back in the hall Barry was waiting for him with a selection of trade magazines. ‘I hope this is the sort of thing you require.’
Harry took them. ‘Well, if not, I can always use them on November the 5th.’
‘As you wish.’
‘You know,’ Harry said, as he was shown to the door. ‘I think you’re going to need a bigger house.’
‘A bigger house?’
‘This one sure isn’t big enough to hold Falsham’s ego.’
Barry the butler closed the door on Harry’s smiling face. Harry turned and pulled out his smart to find a local taxi firm to take him to Epping Tube.
‘What version is that?
Harry looked up. A young man had appeared from behind an ornate column.
‘Oh, just 1.1,’ Harry said, turning the smart to show him.
‘Virtually classic now.’
‘Technology is out of date so quickly now that it’s retro in six months and classic after a year.’
The young man smiled and nodded at the smart. ‘Is the old man picking up the tab for that taxi?’
‘Legitimate expenses.’
‘I’m Oliver Falsham,’ he said, holding out his hand.
Harry shook. ‘I presume you know who I am.’
Oliver was in his early twenties but could easily have passed for sixteen. His face had not lost of any its teenage youthfulness. He had tried to add maturity by growing a goatee beard that one of Dumas’s musketeers would have been proud of, but combined with the hair that hung low to his shoulders, only gave him a fey charm. He wore silver rings of skulls, hearts and demons. He wore tight black denim jeans with red Converse trainers and a billowy black shirt that a pirate would have been ashamed of.
‘Do you have any news on my sister?’
‘Nothing definite. Do you know an Barry Penny?’
‘Sure, I know Barry. He was always hanging around the house with eyes like moon calves. He thought he was in love with Gwen.’
‘And you don’t think he was?’
‘He was eighteen, an only child, pampered and spoilt; Gwen was the first thing in his life that he wanted that he couldn’t get. What he thought was love was just a temper tantrum.’
‘You didn’t like him?’
‘Not really.’
‘Well he’s dead now.’
Oliver twirled one of the rings on his fingers. ‘How?’
‘I don’t think it was suicide. His head was found on a railing in Covent Garden.’
‘Ouch, nasty; I hope it isn’t connected with Gwen.’
Harry shrugged. ‘You don’t seem surprised, or concerned.’
‘I didn’t like him, I told you that. I’m sorry he’s dead but shit happens. Did the old man tell you why she ran away?’
‘He said it wasn’t relevant to the finding of her.’
Martin smiled grimly, like one of the memento mori on his fingers. ‘If you want to know why she ran, you need look no further than this house. It’s sterile and functional, like it’s owner.’
‘So why do you stay?’
‘Oh, I don’t live here – not all the time anyway. I work at Raf-Med’s office in Leeds, so spend my time between there and here.’
‘You get on well with Gwendolyn?’
‘Well enough for brother and sister.’
‘Half-sister,’ corrected Harry.
Oliver cocked his head to one side, blonde hair falling across his face. ‘Is that some detective trick to see how I react? See any twitch, Mr Reed? Any unconscious touching of hair, or hand over mouth indicating a lie? Yes, we are half-siblings, but the same father gave us his cold love. I never knew my mother; I presume your research has told you that, so, for all intents and purposes Gwen’s mother is the only one I’ve known.’
‘Where is Mrs Falsham?’
‘She’s resting on the island of Naxos.’
Harry remembered the photograph of the blonde Mrs Falsham and figured she would need to rest a lot from all that cosmetic surgery.
‘Did Gwen get on well with her mother? Did you?’
‘Whilst my father is cold and clinical my mother would burst into tears over a broken nail. But at least she would hug us, as long as she hadn’t just put her make-up on.’
‘You paint a happy family picture.’
‘Is anybody’s family happy, really, under the hood? What about you? What were your parents like? And do you have kids and will you fuck them up, just like you were fucked up?’
‘“Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself.”’
‘This be the verse,’ Oliver said, and, gazing at the sky which had turned a leaden grey, ‘and this be the weather.’
It began to rain. Big, heavy drops that felt like pregnant insects exploding on the skin.

Travelling back to the city through the black tunnels of the underground Harry read the newspaper. The newsagent in his kiosk of flapping magazines didn’t have The Independent and his eye had been drawn to a copy of The Sun; not by the promise of its tawdry Page Three girls who had somehow survived both the Sexual Involution and the Second Sexual Revolution, but by the lurid luminous green headline: Garden of Death!
Chief crime reporter Matt Byte wrote that a new serial killer was stalking the streets of Covent Garden with such florid, lurid details that he would have been perfect writing for a penny dreadful reporting on Jack the Ripper’s murderous rampage. Byte linked the murders of Luz Noche, Rachel Holloway (the woman from Long Acre had now been named – she was a skin seller of no fixed abode) and Barry Penny, even though the police refused to confirm this hypothesis. Of course, this being The Sun, there were wider issues to consider and The Sun’s erstwhile editor, Earl Simpson, devoted his whole editorial to it.
For a long time now The Sun had sniffed the odour of moral decline and Covent Garden was the black hole into which all of England would fall if something wasn’t done soon. What that was, Simpson didn’t elucidate, but he was quick to point out where society was going wrong. Religious instruction was no longer taught in most schools, and where it was, it was a confusing mishmash of Christianity/Muslim/Hindu/Judaism/Paganism/Humanism. How was a child to know what to follow when they were given contradictory beliefs? And if no beliefs were taught then what were they to believe in? A cold, uncaring, desolate universe? In a world like that what else was there to do but turn to unbridled passions for comfort? And when passions became tired, turn to something kinkier, and more extreme. The murders were a scream for help from a sick society. And it all started when the borders around Europe collapsed. England was a ship adrift with a crew who spoke a thousand languages. At times like this one needed a firm anchor and a steady tiller. The country needed to remember its history and its traditions. The Sun welcomed everyone into the country if they were prepared to accept the traditions and morals of England. The editorial called for a day of action, a march to celebrate Englishness and to decry the moral decline of the country. And where better to march than in the black heart of the beast?
Covent Garden, oblivious to the nation’s outrage, was just starting to wake up under a lazy, glowering midday sun. It hadn’t rained here, and beads of sweat hung on desolate faces like pearls on the necks of the ruling elite. As Harry made his way to Mercer Street tins were rattled at him and hands reached out to him: ‘Spare some change, mate. Or a fag? You gotta fag?’ Dogs tugged back by strings worried empty fast food cartons. Harry bought the latest copy of The Big Issue from Spike and exchanged the usual conversation with him: ‘How’s it goin’, Spike?’ ‘Ah, Harry. I’ve had enough of this place. I’m going back home to Newcastle soon as I get enough for the fare. London isn’t fit for my dog.’ Spike, who oddly didn’t have a Geordie accent, said this every time Harry spoke to him. Everybody wanted to move away, but once you had your pitch it got harder by the day. Harry gave him a picture of Gwendolyn Falsham. Spike hadn’t seen her. He’d keep an eye out. Would there be a reward in it for him? Sure, Spike, sure.
‘Hey, Harry.’
It was Paolo Rossi, emerging from the sweatshop under Harry’s office. Paolo clasped Harry’s hand between his own. ‘Harry, it’s been a while. You promised Sylvia you would come for dinner with us– you don’t want to let Sylvia down; believe me I know. Whatever those guys did to that ugly face of yours is nothing compared to what my Sylvia do – and she will will smile as she does it.’
Paolo owned the sweatshop that produced cloned designer wear. It had been rumoured that some of the designer stores actually bought stuff from Paolo because it was such good quality and, of course, so cheap. Harry doubted if that gave any pleasure to the ashen faces of the Eastern Europeans who sat at cramped workstations, sewing away. These were the people The Sun claimed were at the root of England’s decline.
‘I’ve been busy, Paolo; haven’t you noticed the murders around here?’
‘There will always be murders but Sylvia’s fondue bourguignon is a never forgotten experience. Next Saturday night, 8 o’clock, you be there.’
‘Ok, I’ll do my best but I can’t promise.’
Harry liked Paolo Rossi, for all that he owned a sweatshop. As sweatshops went, this one wasn’t all bad. He paid up to a week sick a year and was known to give out money if one of his workers had a son or daughter who was marrying, or where there was a death in then family. True, they worked 12 hour shifts and earned in a day what the average wage paid in an hour, but that always depended on how you worked out the average wage.
Paolo had been raised in poverty in the Molise region of Southern Italy, where one worked or didn’t eat. At seventeen he had left to see what the world beyond Molise had to offer. He had found life, both good and bad, picked up a wife in Toulouse, and strayed into London where he had been for the past eight years. ‘London is where every culture meets and melds into one. This is a place for a citizen of the world,’ he had told Harry. He was fifty-two with a face that had been weathered by outdoor work and an accent that borrowed from Southern Italian, patois and cockney. And a moustache that Zapata would have worshipped.
Paolo nudged him in the ribs. ‘And maybe you have a lady friend to bring along, eh?’
Harry shrugged. ‘I’ll be alone.’
‘Ah, so that beautiful woman I sent up to your office half an hour ago is a client? Ah, if she wants you to follow her husband then follow him and kill him, take his place. She a bella madame; bit of a corker. Eh?’

Harry’s office door was slightly ajar, his name at the perpendicular. The first thing he noticed when he opened the door was the perfume which hung below the normal stale smell of his office; it would have sent pollinating bees into a frenzy, and, when Harry recalled the kiss that had gone with that perfume last time, he felt his knees tingle. But the smell in his office was incongruous. Like finding a skin mag mixed in with the Catholic Herald in the Pope’s waiting room.
The owner of the perfume was sitting in his chair, with the back pointing towards him and black stiletto feet up on the windowsill. Nice legs, Harry thought. ‘Knock, knock,’ he said.
The stilettos slowly removed themselves from the windowsill and the chair swivelled round. Ramona Noche smiled at him with a smile that jumped across the room, hit him on the lips and travelled all the way down to his Sloggi’s.
‘You really should get better security in this place,’ she said.
‘Oh, Paolo has strict orders to only let beautiful femme fatales in.’
She stood up and walked around to the front of the desk, where she perched her fine specimen buttocks. She was wearing a dark skirt that reached just below her knees with a golden belt that hung down at the front like the beads on a rosary. A cut-off v-necked light pink top was tight around her ample bosom; rings, necklaces and earrings finished off a pretty nice looking package.
‘Am I a femme fatale? I rather like the sound of that.’
Harry slumped into the couch, threw the Raf-Med mags next to him, and started unlacing his DM’s. ‘Let’s say that since your alibi for the night of your father’s death checks out you are just a femme.’ He looked up at her, to see her reaction, but was surprised to see concern crossing her features like a black cloud.
‘Oh, Harry,’ she said, moving to him. ‘What happened to your face? I didn’t notice straight away, you were in the shadows, but, oh my…’ She touched the yellowy-brown skin around his eye and he twitched back. ‘I’m sorry. It hurts bad?’
‘Only when I see it reflected in a pair of beautiful eyes; I wouldn’t want them horrified in me.’
Her slim fingers touched his cheek. ‘Maybe these eyes are showing care for you.’
Her fingers felt nice against his skin. The softest thing that usually came into contact with his face was an electric razor.
‘What happened?’
‘A couple of gorillas escaped from London Zoo and I didn’t have my tranquiliser gun.’
‘You been upsetting somebody?’
He shrugged. Having her close to him was befuddling his senses. He imagined drowning men gasping for air felt pretty much the same. She put her lips against his and kissed him, first slowly, carefully, and then her tongue entered his mouth. His lips were sore but kissing her was a pain that he could live with. He moved his tongue against hers and his hands reached for her waist. She sat back upon her haunches. His lips kissed air and his hands felt embarrassed and didn’t know what to do with themselves.
Ramona smiled. ‘Well, you can’t be feeling too bad.’ She picked up the Raf-Med magazines and moved back to her position on the desk. ‘Thinking of getting into the pharmaceutical business? Questions about Bliss and now Raf-Med.’
‘It’s to do with a case,’ he said, his voice thick with an excitement that he tried to clear. ‘A missing girl.’
She put the magazines on his desk. ‘That must be awful, don’t you think? At least with my father, I know he’s gone, but if somebody you love just disappears one day…’
Harry wanted to get up and move to her but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stand without showing his excitement.
‘Is there any news on my father? I saw the papers this morning, linking his death to two others.’
‘That’s not confirmed but it is looking likely.’
She ran her fingers through her hair. ‘I’m almost pleased about that. If it’s random then it’s not personal. I had thought about Gloria – maybe she’d done it. Revenge for being sacked. That would have hurt because, maybe, if I’d been more persistent in warning dad about her, it wouldn’t have happened. But I couldn’t do anything to protect him from a crazed killer, could I?’
Harry managed to stand. ‘I guess not. What can any of us do about the monsters?’
‘We could march with The Sun readers,’ she said, an ironic smile on her lips that wasn’t reflected in her eyes.
‘Walk with the devil in the daytime or the monsters at night?’
‘Tough choice.’
He moved close to her and put one hand on the desk. She let him kiss her once and then moved away.
‘I have to go.’
‘Going to the pictures with a friend?’
She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘I’ve got a meeting with dad’s solicitor.’
‘When can I see you again?’
‘Call me.’
And she was gone. Harry sat on the desk until the smell of her perfume had vanished with her and his unrequited lust had tucked itself away. It took half an hour. It was time to do some work.
When he sat down at his desk he noted that the PC was already switched on and the cursor was blinking like Betty Boop’s eyelashes in the password field. Had she been trying to log in? It didn’t mean she was up to anything nefarious; in fact if she was, wouldn’t she have closed it down as soon as she failed to guess his password? And her reaction to him saying her alibi checked out had been nothing. If she’d taken back the notelet during their clinch that night, wouldn’t she have been more surprised?
Harry didn’t like the way Ramona’s body clouded his judgement on her character. It irked him that, on the basest level, he was just the same as any other man: a prisoner to desire. But she did have that something; that something that attracted him to her. Now her perfume had gone, he found he missed her. Shit, he hadn’t missed anybody in a long time, not really since Mary had been scattered into the Thames.
He typed in his password – bollox10. He took out the memory card he had found at the Falsham pad and slid it into a spare slot on the PC. He double clicked and a password protection screen came up. Fuck. Harry started his password cracking programme – Outcrypt – and logged into the Met’s network whilst he waited to get into the card. In one way he was pleased it was protected – it meant there could be something important on it. And he really wanted to find Gwendolyn Falsham, and he really wanted her not to want to see daddy, just so he could tell Martin Falsham that he’d found his daughter safe and sound, but that she really didn’t want to see her prick of a father. But would she be found safe and sound? If she was in the Garden chances were she wasn’t being served breakfast in bed by the maid.
The first screen he saw on the Met’s database after logging in was the prompt asking him to upload any information he had regarding cases #AG12563, #AG12628 and #AG12642. He uploaded the details he knew about Barry Penny as relating to his trips with, and to visit, Gwendolyn Falsham. He knew there was a conflict of interests here, but if the police interviewed Martin Falsham about Barry Penny he could deny giving them the information.
He logged into #AG12628 and traced the solicitor who was dealing with the late Luz Noche’s affairs. The cops had requested a copy of the will. They had scanned in Noche’s address book. There were a lot of women’s names in there; most just had phone numbers, but a couple had addresses, all within the Covent Garden/Soho area. The police had already tracked a few down and taken alibis. The ones they had spoken to were all self-employed body sellers and all spoke with sadness that Noche had passed on. Harry hit transfer and the address book began to copy from the Met’s database to Harry’s computer.
It was only a third of the way through transferring when two things happened at once: the Met computer kicked him out and declared that he did not have access privilege and Outcrypt cracked the code on the memory stick. Unfortunately there was an added failsafe. It was the Pacman7 virus. It started by deleting all the files on the memory stick and, once they were gone, it would move onto Harry’s files. Harry fucking hated viruses. There were now more of them than legitimate programmes. He didn’t mind hackers targeting big corporations (like Raf-Med, maybe?) but it pissed him off when individuals like himself fell victim to them. The only way to stop this particular virus was to enter the ‘safe word’. All he could do was start up Outcrypt again and hope it solved the word before all the files on the stick were lost. Harry wasn’t too worried about his own files, he’d just pull the stick out when Pacman7 was down to eating the last file. All he could do was wait.
Pacman7 was down to the last three files before Outcrypt solved the safe word. There had been over a hundred files on it. The three remaining files were all jpegs with generic allocated file names. Harry opened the first one. It was a close up of a smiling Oliver Falsham. It was hard to tell where the picture had been taken for his head took up most of the shot, but it was clearly indoors. It was dated a year ago. The second picture was more interesting. It was Oliver again. But this time he was naked and a girl was kneeling in front of him. Even if Harry had led a sheltered life he would still have been able to guess what she was doing. And it wasn’t praying. Harry figured by the angle of the shot, the way it was slightly out of focus, and the way there was what appeared to be the edge of a book blocking out the bottom left of the photo, that it had been taken covertly. Or maybe one of the two people in the picture knew about it, certainly not both, else it would have been posed better; the problem was that the girl had her back to the camera and the annoying book was across her head. All you could tell was that it was a woman - no man had buttocks like that - and that her hair was light (straw coloured?). He hoped the last picture might be more conclusive, but it wasn’t a photograph, it was a flyer. It was advertising the Bump Banger’s Club. To the right of the flyer two heavily pregnant and very naked women were holding each other, their heads turned to face the viewer, bump to bump, cheek to cheek, legs entwined. It was actually a little coy as the breast and pudenda were hidden. But then, Harry thought, that’s not necessarily what members of the Bump Banger’s Club were after. Underneath the name of the club was their motto: Beautiful, Bounteous Bodies. There was no phone number, website address, or physical address. The flyer stated it was membership by sponsorship only: we’re not illegal, just exclusive. In this rotten class-ridden England, Harry sighed, it was always who you knew – even when it came to your personal fetish. Two pictures of Oliver, one intimate with an unknown female, and one advert for a private fetish club. What did that tell him?
Harry logged into Vurtlife and looked at Gwendolyn’s profile again. There had been a couple more messages of the ‘where the fuck are you’ variety. He clicked on her friend list. Out of curiosity he clicked on Barry Penny’s name but it was still protected. He did a search for Barry Penny and found the ‘Remembering Barry Penny’ group. Fuck, it really didn’t take long these days, did it? He went through the messages – Gwendolyn might have been tempted, but nothing from her, and she wasn’t a member – which went along the lines of let’s get the sick fuck who did this to our wonderful Barry who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Vurtlife was full of the most wonderful, beautiful people ever – when they were dead, anyway. Pity the physical world was so full of shits.
He returned to Gwen’s profile. There was something bugging him. He went down her friend list again. There was no Oliver Falsham. He did a search for Oliver and found his profile. It was protected. Sometimes you had to look for what wasn’t there. They weren’t friends in Vurtlife. She had a picture of him with a girl. That implied blackmail. But then why have a nice head shot of the man you hate? To throw virtual darts at? Bloody Pacman7. He really needed to have seen the other photos, but she had done a good job of protecting them.
Harry remembered that Luz Noche had a Bump Banger’s magazine. Harry pulled up the address book that had partially transferred over. He had all the B’s. There was an entry called BB with a phone number. He called it.
‘Hello?’
‘I was given your number by a friend.’
‘Does your friend have a name?’
‘Luz Noche.’
‘Will he be sponsoring you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well tell Mr Noche to contact us with your details and then we will be in touch.’
‘Can you…’
But the phone had gone dead. The voice had been male. That was really all he could say about it. He looked at Noche’s address book – he had up to the letter F. There were no Falsham’s listed, but that would have been too much of a coincidence. Harry tried to log back into the Met to get the rest of the address book but it was persistent in it’s insistence that he was not authorised to see the files. He called Carr.
‘Harry.’
There was the sound of clinking glasses and laughter in the background.
‘Working lunch, Karl?’
‘Oh just taking out a…friend...for lunch.’
Harry imagined the friend sitting opposite him – all smiles and tits. Probably some beat cop who he’d promised to give a leg up for a leg over. Maybe that Hayley who had been fawning over him at the Long Acre murder scene.
‘You always were a friendly guy.’
‘What can I do for you, Harry?’
‘I’ve been blocked out of the Met’s network.’
‘I was afraid that might happen. Just a sec. We’ll have the pinot noir – that ok with you? It does go nice with the chicken cacciatore. Sorry, Harry. Yeah, you won’t be able to log in until the foreseeable. I’m afraid there is a hold on sub-contracting work where it relates to the Covent Garden Ripper.’
‘Oh, bollocks, you have a name for him? You know how these sicko’s love having names, it just encourages them.’
‘Not me. The papers named him that. And that’s the reason you’re off the case – officially – word from the powers that be. It’s become a sensitive political issue because of all this bullshit the papers are shovelling about. Did you know they are even planning a march? Unofficially you can dig around and I’ll make sure you get your expenses at least. I guess you’ll have to go back to the old methods of detection for a while.’
‘You mean hitting people?’
Carr laughed and said he had to go, the starter had arrived. Carr wouldn’t be returning to work until he had taken his sweet to some cheap hotel and fucked it. A long working lunch.
Harry copied the name of Noche’s solicitor, a couple of the girls from the address book who had addresses ( they were all listed with first names only like Carol, Evie, Rachel, no surnames), into his smart. He checked if anybody was playing at the New Roxy that evening – it was The Prostates, on stage at 9 – and then headed out to do some old fashioned detective work.