Joe let a slow sweet grin slip through his reserve as though he’d heard it anyway. “Goodto know,” he said. “Until we get back to the hotel, though, you’re still on the clock. I’ll see you outside.”
He headed over to the nurse’s station, and Cal left him to sort out the details while he went to fetch the car. He supposed he could have told Joe what he had to do, but he preferred to keep it to himself until he knew whether or not Van had found out anything useful about the kid who’dattacked Joe in the graveyard… and if Cal trusted the information.
Van wasn’t the most reliable man at the best of times, and Cal had blackmailed him.
Cal dropped Joe at the hotel and then called Van on the Bluetooth as he turned the Bentley toward his flat. He needed to change. There was a point where the smell of last night’s sex became “the smell.” It rang an unfeasibly long time before itfinally cut to the answering machine.
“I’m busy,” Van’s recorded voice drawled. “Or you’re not important. Try again later.”
Cal didn’t bother to leave a message. Ten minutes later the phone rang. It used to be that the sight of Van’s name splashed over his phone would have given Cal butterflies. Even after Van fucked him over, Cal always half wanted the next call to be the one that made it better.Not that there had been many.
As he changed lanes and squeezed the Bentley past a double-decker bus—the tourists on top took pictures as he passed, in case there was someone worth a photo inside—he felt flat. No infatuation, no adrenaline kick in expectation of their next job, not even any anger.
It felt strange, but Cal supposed he knew why.
He answered the phone.
“You fall down a hole?”Van asked over a backdrop of cafe noise and the snotty gasps of someone in tears. “I called last night.”
“I was busy.”
“I saw that on the news,” Van said. The line went muffled, Van’s voice dim as he snapped at someone, “Would you give over? If I didn’t want to keep fucking you before, I certainly don’t now. You look like my mother after she’s been at the gin.”
A young voice spat a tear-snotty“Bastard,” as a chair scraped back from the table.
“Thank fuck for that,” Van muttered as he lifted the phone back to his ear. He didn’t bother to explain himself. He didn’t need to. It wasn’t the first scene like that Cal had seen, or been part of, although he’d stuck to the insults and skipped the tears. “That guy who got knocked down at the Renaissance, I saw you with his boss in the photos.Cozy. Looked like you got yourself in there nicely.”
That made Cal feel something, but he clenched his teeth on his temper. He didn’t like the wet insinuation in Van’s voice, but he still needed his information.
“It looked like it was none of your business,” he said. “What did you get for me?”
Van’s laugh was dirty. “Gotta tell you, after your little display the other night, a hard-on. It remindedme of what I’d missed. We used to have a lot of fun together. Remember?”
Cal botched an attempt to cut in front of a white van and had to tuck the Bentley back into its lane. It wasn’t the come-on, it was how fucking transparent it was that Van thought he could use Cal to get something out of Joe. It was pathetic, and Cal used to fall for it.
“I remember,” he said. “It used to be a right laughin the cells at night when I told people how you’d set me up. We all thought you were a right joker.”
Van clicked his tongue and dropped the act. “Still holding a grudge. All right. The guy you want is Logan Calle. He’s seventeen, lives in a flat over a hairdresser’s on Turnpike Lane. Him and his girlfriend had a sideline in rolling Johns for their wallets. That how you met him? We both knowyour new friend must like a bit of rough if he’s into you.”
“What hairdresser?”
“Loads of Locks,” Van said. There was a crunch as he bit down into some toast. The thought of breakfast, despite everything that was going on, made Cal’s stomach grumble. “Woman who runs the place is called Maggie Dee. She owes me one, but I’m not wasting that on you. So, if you want a favor, sort it out yourself.”
The line went dead.
MAGGIE DEEwas six foot two in heels and wore a headscarf pleated into intricate folds until it looked like a shell. She’d also a soft spot for scabby little oiks like the one she rented her flat to, and she wasn’t about to tell some stranger with scarred knuckles anything about him.
“I’ll tell him you called,” she said as she plucked his card from his fingers withsharp, white-tipped nails. She looked down her nose at him. “If I see him, that is.”
1970s pop played in the background, and the staff, at a loose end this early in the morning, eavesdropped as they made busywork at nearby stations. The only client, an old lady in to have her thin, white hair washed and set, didn’t even bother to pretend she wasn’t listening. She turned around in her chair anddrank her tea while she watched them with interest.
“I’d appreciate that,” Cal said. “Tell him that he ain’t in trouble. I want to have a word about… someone he knows.”
Maggie tucked the card into the waistband of her skin-tight trousers and gave him a thin, dry smile. “I’ll tell him you called. Now, unless you want your hair cut—” Her eyes flicked to his close-cropped scalp and she pursed herlips in disapproval. “—you can leave.”
His hairdidneed a trim. Cal suspected that Maggie would make a point to take it down to the wood. He shook his head and left her with one last assurance that it was important he talk to Logan. She didn’t look like she cared.
Cal went across the road and two doors down, to a narrow little kebab shop. It was tiled like a bathroom and smelled like old grease,but they were open for breakfast. Cal handed over a fiver for a pita stuffed with meat, mushrooms, and onions with a fried egg slapped on top to leak through. He doused it with ketchup—the Aussie behind the counter made a face at that—and went out to wait for Logan to either roll in or out.
