‘Yes, she says – sorry, my phone went dead. I’ve only just got hold of a charger. I had to stay in London a night to follow up a couple of leads.
‘Anything good? he asks.
‘Might be, can’t tell yet, she says. Are you all right?
‘I’m fine, he says, and in his voice is gentleness and affection. I’m hoping this pathology report is going to come through in the next day or two and it’ll tell us what we need to hear.’
‘That’d be good, she says. She wants to lay her head on a pillow with him at her ear, but she casts a glance at Birdie and says, Right, well, I better go.’
‘Clever girl,’ says Birdie, reading the screen. ‘She’s saved the dossier on here. All the names – of the Chinese delegation, emails off Ross’s hard drive, photographs of the City pages she tore out. It’s all here, everything.’
Manon’s phone vibrates. A text from Ash.
Hey, you.
Just like the bad old days, here he is: the Chris-de-Burgh lothario of West Hendon.
‘????’ she texts back, irritably.
One of my contacts came good on your Paddy Driscoe. Got a number for you. Fancy a drink?
I’m a bit tied up. Can you text it over?
‘Is that Paddy Driscoe?’
‘Who wants to know?’
‘It’s Manon, Fly’s mum.’
‘How did you get this number?’
‘Look, don’t hang up. I just want to talk, about Fly. Not as a copper. I’m not interested in what you’ve got going on, arrest-wise. Honestly. Fly’s in really big trouble. If you care about him, just meet me. You can choose the place. I’ll come on my own, I swear – no back-up, no badge, nothing. I’m in Kilburn. I can come up to Momtaz.’
‘Yeah, I know your boy Fly,’ he says, sunglasses on his bald head even though it’s mid-winter. He’s a body-builder type, wide-necked, with a lopsided smile and gold tooth. When she arrived, he appraised her physically in a way that did not mark him out as a new man.
‘Why was he meeting you, when he was supposed to be in school?’
‘Ah, now, calm down lady, his schooling’s nothing to do with me, right?’
‘No, but it is to do with me, so answer the question.’
‘You’re not going to bust my balls cos you don’t like what you hear?’
Her heart starts knocking at the possibilities.
‘Your boy,’ Paddy says, ‘he’s not happy. Not happy at all. He wants to come home, back here to Cricklewood. I’ve known him since he was this high …’ He levels his hand to the tabletop they’re sitting at. ‘Since he lived with Maureen and Taylor. Maureen was a fuck-up, useless mother, always out of it. He done better with you. But Taylor brung him up and Fly is good, like Taylor was. He’s just a good person, y’know?’
Yes, I know, she thinks and all her judgements about Paddy fall away. They know Fly, both of them. Worse, Paddy is more confident in his knowledge of Fly’s goodness than she has been. She feels weak and grateful, because she hasn’t been sure of late.
‘He arksed me to trace his dad. I found him, chap called Adewale Sane. Nigerian fella; actually he lives round here. Fly’s hoping he can live with him, if he can persuade him. That was before he was locked up. I don’t like his chances with Adewale – not really a family man, y’know? Into this an’ that. Not into commitment.’
‘This and that?’
‘Ah, I’m not going to land him in it with a copper. I’m just not sure he’s father material. Anyway, I was setting up a meeting between them.’
‘Can you give me Adewale’s number?’ asks Manon.
‘I could, but why would I? I mean, what would be in it for me?’
There follows a dance of sorts, a game of finding out what charges Paddy is facing, which coppers are making his life difficult, what strings she might pull in exchange for Adewale’s mobile number. She hasn’t the means to promise half the things she ends up promising; she no longer has the contacts to pull the strings she claims she’ll pull. No matter. She’s got the number now.
She’s walking back down the Killy High Road when she stops, bends double – winded. Fly wants to leave her. She betrayed his trust, mishandled his feelings so catastrophically that he wants to leave her, has been planning all this time to leave her.
He doesn’t want to be her son any more.
‘That’s a strong look,’ she says, appraising Birdie’s mohair coat of lilac and pink broad checks.
‘British Heart Foundation,’ Birdie says. ‘It’s my best one.’
The coat’s not going to help matters, Manon thinks.
Why is she nervous about approaching staff at the Carlton Mayfair? It’s as if all her certainties are crumbling, her sense of who she is as a mother and a police officer. She is unsure how to play it, how brazen to be.
She finds herself on a border, straddling bluffs and evasions with a Coronation Street sidekick. Manon likes things clear, dislikes ducking and diving – not because she’s so pure, it’s more to do with clarity and confidence. Will they be stopped on the marble steps by a top-hatted doorman asking what, precisely, their business is? Their ability to blend has been greatly diminished by Birdie’s coat.
‘There’s a dress code,’ Manon says, reading off Birdie’s laptop. ‘We respectfully ask guests visiting the hotel to refrain from wearing baseball caps, beanie hats, ripped jeans, sportswear, trainers, flip-flops and shorts, in our restaurants and bars.’
‘Wonder if that applied to Justin Bieber,’ Birdie says.
‘Nothing applies if you’re rich enough.’
‘Right, well I’m not wearing flip-flops or a baseball cap so shall we go?’
On the step above Birdie, going down the escalator to the Jubilee Line, Manon notices the bald patches between her curls. They have become accustomed to one another inside Birdie’s flat, but now they are outside, they are strangers again. People have an atmosphere and Birdie’s is one of stoic determination. Here we are, her demeanour says, so let’s get on with it.
Rocking and knocking on the tube train, the black oblong window doubling back their reflections. Manon feels quite sylphlike next to Birdie, who spreads widthways beside her. The train whines, an upward siren song. Manon glances to the left: empty pram, and beside it, a toddler writhing in a woman’s lap. Straight ahead: a man with wrinkles about the eyes, Egyptian-looking with a grey beard, gazes at his phone.
The next station is Green Park.
They follow white-tiled underground corridors, Birdie panting.
On the walk through Mayfair, Georgian townhouses rise up on either side, frilled with ivy in window boxes. Black gloss front doors, marble steps and shiny brass plaques with company names ending ‘equity’, ‘capital’, ‘international’ or ‘private banking’.
Land Rover showroom, Jaguar showroom, Aston Martin car hire.
‘Different vibe to the Killy High Road,’ says Birdie.
Service vans are double-parked. One says ‘Wine Cellar’, another ‘The Window Box Company’, another ‘Bronze Restorations’.
‘Wait, look at that,’ says Manon, who has been reading brass plaque after brass plaque, surprised that this world exists in reality, much as she knew about it in theory.