Mrs. Meaden looked pleased. “It’s what any Christian would do,” she said. “Tea?”
Kate balanced the flowered cup and saucer on the arm of her chair and took a shop-bought mince pie out of the proffered cake tin.
“Funny he never mentioned he knew this Glen Taylor man, isn’t it?” Mrs. Meaden said, brushing crumbs off her lap.
“They worked together. At Qwik Delivery,” Kate prompted.
“He drove for years. Says that’s what did it for his back. He doesn’t really have friends. Not what I call friends—people who come and see him. He used to go to a computer place around here—said it was sort of a club. Used to go regularly before he retired. Funny thing for a man of his age to be doing, I always thought. Still, he’s on his own, so he must get bored.”
“I didn’t know there was a computer club around here. Do you know what it’s called?”
“It’s on Princess Street, I think. Shabby-looking place with blacked-out windows. Oh, there’s Mike now.”
They could hear the heavy sound of dragging feet and the stabbing of a stick onto the concrete walkway.
“Hello, Mike,” Mrs. Meaden called as she opened her door. “Got a lady from the press here for you.”
Doonan pulled a face as Kate emerged. “Sorry, love. My back is killing me. Can you come back another time?”
Kate moved closer to him and took his arm. “Let me at least help you in,” she said. And did.
The smell in Doonan’s flat was nothing like the cabbage and Dettol disinfectant permeating next door. It smelled of men. Sweat, old beer, stale cigarette smoke, feet.
“What do you want to talk to me for? I told the police all I knew,” Doonan said as Kate perched on a hard chair opposite him.
“Glen Taylor,” she said simply.
“Oh, him.”
“You used to work together.”
Doonan nodded.
“I’m writing a profile on him. Trying to get a better picture of who he really is.”
“Then you’ve come to the wrong person. He was no friend of mine. I’ve told the police. Stuck-up little prick, if you want to know.”
I do, she thought.
“Always thought he was better than us. Slumming it until something better came along.”
She had found his sore spot and scratched it. “Heard he was a bit arrogant.”
“Arrogant? That’s an understatement. Lorded it over us in the lunchroom with his stories of when he ran a bank. And then he got me into trouble over my back problem. Told the boss I was having them on about how bad it was. Said I was faking.”
“That must’ve caused you problems.”
Doonan smiled bitterly. “Joke of it is that I helped him get the job at Qwik Delivery.”
Kate pounced. “Really? So you knew him before. Where’d you come across him?”
“On the Net. On a forum or something.” Doonan sounded less sure of himself.
“And at the club in Princess Street?”
Doonan flashed a look at Kate. “What club?” he said. “Look, I need to take my pills. You’ll have to go.”
She put her business card down beside him and shook his hand. “Thanks for talking to me, Mike. I really appreciate it. I’ll let myself out.”
She headed straight for Princess Street.
The sign for Internet Inc. was small and amateurish, the shop window painted black on the inside, and there was a CCTV camera positioned over the door. Looks like a sex shop, she thought.
The door was locked, and there were no opening times posted. She walked to the greengrocer’s at the top of the street and waited until one of the assistants in a Santa hat came out to serve her from the stall on the pavement.
“Hi. I want to use the Internet, but the place down the street is closed. Do you know when it opens?” she said, and the young man laughed.
“You don’t want to go in there, love. It’s for blokes.”
“How do you mean?”
“Porn place, innit? They don’t let the public in. It’s a sort of club thing for dirty old men.”
“Oh, right. Who runs it, then?”
“Dunno really. Manager is an Asian bloke called Lenny, but it’s open at night mainly, so we don’t see him much.”
“Thanks. I’ll have four of those apples.”
She’d come back later.
Internet Inc. looked even less savory in the dark. Kate had spent two and a half hours in a grimy pub, sipping a succession of warm fruit juices and listening to Perry Como work his magic on “Frosty the Snowman.” She was not in the mood for a brush-off.
When she tried the door it was still locked, but knocking on the blackened glass produced a voice from within.
“Hello. Who is it?”
“I need to speak to Lenny,” Kate said, looking up at the camera with her most winning smile.
Silence.
The door opened and a tall, muscular man in a vest and jeans appeared. “Do I know you?” he asked.
“Hi. You must be Lenny. I’m Kate. I wondered if I could have a quick word.”
“What about?”
“About a story I’m writing.”
“You’re a reporter?” Lenny slid backward into the shop. “We’ve got a license. It’s all legit. There’s no story here.”
“No, it’s not about you. It’s about Bella Elliott.”
The name was like a magic talisman. It transfixed people. Drew them in. “Bella Elliott? Little Bella?” he said. “Look, come on through to my office.”
She entered a narrow, darkened room, lit only by the LED glow of a dozen computer screens. Each was in a booth with a chair. There was no other furniture, but in a nod to the season, a piece of tinsel hung limply from the central light.
“No customers yet. They usually come a bit later,” Lenny explained as he led her to his cupboard of an office, the walls lined with stacks of DVDs and magazines. “Ignore those,” he advised as he caught her looking at the titles.
“Right,” she said, and sat.
“You’ve come about Glen Taylor, haven’t you?”
Kate couldn’t speak for a moment. He’d cut to the chase before she’d had a chance to ask her first question.
“Yes.”
“I wondered when someone would finally knock on my door. Thought it’d be the police. But it’s you.”
“Did he come here? Was Glen Taylor a member of your club?”
Lenny considered the questions. “Look, I never talk about members—no one would come if I did. But I’ve got kids . . .”
Kate nodded. “I understand, but I’m not interested in anyone else. Just him. Will you help me? Please.”
The manager’s struggle between the omertà of his sex shop and doing the right thing played out in the seconds of silence. He gnawed at a fingernail. Kate let him stew.
Finally he looked up and said: “Yes, he came here occasionally. Started a couple of years ago. I looked up his card when I saw his face in the paper. We don’t use real names here—members prefer it that way. But I knew the face. It was 2006 he started coming. Another member brought him.”
“Mike Doonan?”
“You said you wouldn’t ask about anyone else. Anyway, as I said, no real names, but I think they worked together.”
Kate smiled at him. “That’s so helpful, thanks. Can you remember the last time he came—are there any records?”
“Hang on,” Lenny said, and unlocked an ancient filing cabinet.
“He registered as 007. Very smooth. No visits registered after September 6, 2006, until August this year.”
“This year? He’s come back?”
“Yeah, just a few sessions, now and then.”
“What was he doing here? Do you know, Lenny?”
“That’s enough questions. It’s all confidential. But you don’t need to be a genius to guess. We don’t monitor sites visited—best not to, we decided. But basically, our members come to view adult sites.”
“Sorry to be blunt, but you mean porn?”
He nodded.
“Weren’t you tempted to look to see after you realized it was him?”
“It was months after he stopped coming in that I realized it was him, and he’d used different computers. It would’ve been a big job, and we’re busy.”
“Why didn’t you call the police about Glen Taylor?”
Lenny looked away for a moment. “I thought about it, but would you invite the police in here? People come because it’s private. It would’ve closed the business. Anyway, they arrested him, so I didn’t need to.”