‘Not necessarily. They’d be knocking on your door by now if he had. I’d be more worried about him giving the story to the papers. Rocco’s fairly money-orientated.’
‘That’s worse,’ Dervla said. ‘Mind you, the bastards usually ask for a comment before they print whatever bullshit they’ve invented.’
‘Fingers crossed he’s kept his mouth shut, then.’
It would be odd if it were true. Rocco had reason to keep quiet while Harry was alive, not after she’d died. Perhaps he had another motivation to keep her fling with Dervla to himself.
‘Remind me how you got the gig with Frank?’ Dervla asked.
‘We knew each other a long time ago. He saw my name in the paper and gave me a call. That was before he knew Harry was dead.’
‘He’s a friend of yours?’
‘Not really. Until last week we hadn’t spoken to each other in years.’
Dervla stifled a second yawn. ‘D’you mind if we call it a day, Kenny?’ she said. ‘The coffee’s wearing off. If I don’t get some sleep, I’ll keel over.’
‘Of course not.’
Dervla switched the lights off and we headed towards the studio door. ‘Where are you going now?’ she asked.
‘To see a man about my drinking problem.’
FIFTEEN
The cabbie spent the time between Shoreditch and King’s Cross banging on about the iniquities of Uber and how he was struggling to make ends meet. All I had to do was chip in with the occasional ‘Diabolical’ or ‘Shouldn’t be allowed’ and I could devote most of the journey to processing my conversation with Dervla.
That Harry had threatened her physically didn’t add up to a lot in my book. Lots of people promise all manner of recriminations when they’re dumped. Usually all they end up doing is getting shitfaced and changing their Facebook status. Of much greater interest had been the new man Harry had claimed to be involved with.
I wasn’t convinced that it had simply been to make Dervla jealous. Had that been the aim then Harry would surely have invented a fictitious woman. And if there was a mystery man in her life, why hadn’t she told Frank about him? If Harry was as desperate to please him as Dervla and Rocco had indicated, a suitable replacement for her estranged husband would have gone down a treat.
Unless he wasn’t suitable, of course.
My initial impulse had been to put the mystery man and the book inscription together and make the mystery man equal Callum Parsons. Following up a gormo like Rocco with a bloke who had publicly called his ex-business partner a fraud, an idiot and a bully was hardly going to get Harry a big tick and a V. good from her old man. Dervla hadn’t liked my theory, largely as it was predicated solely on the inscription. Added to which, Rocco and Callum weren’t the only candidates Frank would have considered beyond the pale. Most men hold their daughters in high regard, and he was no exception.
Were it not for Farrelly’s promise of dire consequences should the police make an arrest, I might have given Standish a call. But even if I had been prepared to give the DI a head start, what could I tell him? At the very least I owed it to myself to check out Callum Parsons before the constabulary started knocking on his door.
The disgruntled cabbie dropped me outside a terraced Victorian house on the west side of the Euston Road. Plan B’s sign hung at an angle from the wall. A broken window on the ground floor had been patched with cardboard. The front door was on the latch. I pushed it open and entered. At the end of a gloomy hallway stood a large desk. Behind it a blonde in her thirties was growing out a Mohawk while watching an ancient photocopier chug through multiple copies of something.
I coughed. She looked up. ‘Yes?’
‘Callum Parsons, please.’
‘Have you seen Callum before?’
‘Nope, but . . .’
The copier stopped and the woman sighed. Probably not the first time it had jammed that day. She walked to the desk and opened up an A4 book.
‘Name?’
‘Kenny Gabriel.’
‘Like the angel?’
‘Like the angel.’
She wrote this down. ‘First time?’ I nodded. ‘Callum’s got quite a few waiting, so it’ll probably be Janice.’
‘Callum came recommended.’
‘We can’t guarantee who sees you.’
‘Perhaps you could mention Harry Parr sent me.’
Now I had the woman’s complete attention. ‘Fill this out,’ she said, pushing a form under my nose.
The waiting room smelled of cigarettes and misery. In several places the woodchip paper was peeling from the wall. The original fireplace had been boarded up. In front of it was a convection heater that raised the temperature to stifling. The only furniture was a cheap bentwood table and a dozen chairs.
Four men and a woman in her twenties stared at the floor as though the threadbare carpet contained a code they couldn’t crack. Everyone bar the woman was contravening the NO SMOKING sign. I fished my Marlboros out.
‘Got one for me?’ the woman asked. I offered her the pack. She took one with a lightly trembling hand. I lit her fag before mine. ‘I’m Kaz,’ she said after expelling a jet of smoke.
‘Kenny,’ I responded.
Kaz was wearing red trackie bottoms and a grey hoodie that was too large for her depleted frame. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and there was a bruise under her left eye. ‘You for Callum or Janice?’ she asked.
‘Callum.’
‘Me too. All right, isn’t he?’
‘I’ve never been before.’
She gave me an appraising look. ‘Booze?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Thought so. No offence, but you look a bit old for the other.’
Kids and drugs. Each generation thinks they invented them. No point in pissing Kaz off by pointing this out, though. ‘How about you?’ I asked instead.
‘You fuckin’ name it. I’ve got to come every week. Court order. I’m trying to clean up, though, so I would anyway.’
‘What’s Callum like?’
‘Sound. Doesn’t talk to you like you’re a twat. He’s been there.’
‘Has he?’
‘First thing he says. I know how hard it is, but if I can do it so can you. Not that he had to tell me – I knew just by lookin’ at him.’
‘How?’
She shrugged her emaciated shoulders and took another drag. ‘Dunno. It’s something in his eyes. Just ’cos you stop doing it, don’t mean it ain’t there no more. Know what I mean?’
I thought back to what Dervla had said about the nature of addiction, and was about to tell Kaz I did, when the receptionist opened the door.
‘Callum will see you now,’ she said, clearly irritated that I’d been fast-tracked. I nodded, took my cigarettes out of my pocket and handed them to Kaz.
‘Good luck,’ I said, getting to my feet.
‘Cheers, Kenny,’ she said delightedly. ‘You an’ all, mate.’
Callum Parsons was a wiry six-footer. He wore a blue Oxford shirt tucked into cream chinos and stared at me through frameless glasses that accentuated his prominent cheekbones. He didn’t look so much like an older version of the pudgy wunderkind of twenty years earlier as like a genetically reconstituted one.
‘You must be Kenny,’ he said when I entered his office.