Kiss Me When I'm Dead Read online

  ‘Dope is like a great aphrodisiac with great orgasms at the end and most girls get off on it. Viola was, I suppose, indifferent. Yeah. That’s the word. Indifferent. She was indifferent. Always made you feel like you weren’t turning her on. She fucked like she’d read how to do it from a book and the book had a few important pages missing. And no fuckin’ index. I used to think it was me, but I don’t think it was, I think it was her. I think it might have been the school she went to.’

  ‘The school?’

  ‘Yeah. Some private school or other. Girls from those sort of schools always fuck bad.’

  ‘Her father said she was probably a junkie.’

  ‘Well, she definitely got onto smack, but that wasn’t until later. She was on it when she was still coming round here, but I wouldn’t describe her as a junkie. You have to work pretty hard at it to become what I would call a junkie. She used to take a lot of downers and stuff. She didn’t want to be up.’

  ‘Did you get it for her? The smack?’

  ‘At first I did, yeah, but, er, the stuff I was getting wasn’t that good. It wasn’t really my speciality, know what I mean? Also, I could only get it from time to time. It was complicated for various reasons and a bit of a pain if I’m being honest. But it was a bit of a pain for her, too, as she was getting more into it and wanted a reliable supply and she wanted better stuff than I could get her. Did I say that already?’

  ‘Was she working as a prostitute when you knew her?’

  ‘Was she – what?! A prostitute? Are you kidding me? Jesus Christ. Fuck.’

  He looks genuinely upset.

  ‘That’s what she told her father two years ago. Something I haven’t told you yet is that she was reported missing a second time, three weeks ago. I don’t know who it was who reported her missing, but it may have been a pimp. Whoever it was, the last place she was known to be was in a hotel room. Someone was expecting her back and she didn’t make it. I think she was seeing a client there and so do the police.’

  ‘Fucking hell.’ He picks up a pair of novelty sunglasses shaped like pineapples and fiddles with them. ‘Yeah. Yeah. I can see it. Her dad used to give her money from time to time but I think it all went on her general expenses and partying. I’m just guessing that, though. I really haven’t got a fucking clue!’ He has a break and laughs to himself for about a minute.

  ‘She always had great clothes and she had a car. It was a VW Jetta Sport. It was red. Have you read that book with the guy with the terrapin called Jetta? The Clingfilm guy? She lived somewhere, but I don’t know where it was. Possibly like London Wall. Somewhere like that. Somewhere in the City. She got cabs a lot. So she’s like back from the dead and her dad wants you to find out…’

  ‘Yes. Something like that.’

  ‘Do you think she’s dead?’

  ‘No. Not at the moment. I may be proved wrong.’

  He sighs and rolls another joint. The last one disappeared with Samantha. He lights it and takes a big drag. Magically, Samantha reappears and sits on the floor next to him. She’s got changed and the tight t-shirt has gone, replaced by an unbuttoned breast-revealing white cotton shirt. Her stomach is flat and I can see tan lines where she’s been wearing a bikini. She still wears a skirt, but now it’s red needle cord. The last time I saw her she was wearing espadrilles, but now she’s bare-footed. She takes the spliff from Taylor, takes a drag and hands it to me. Taylor frowns and takes it off her.

  ‘He’s fuckin’ working, Sam.’

  Sam aims a pouty little frown my way. Taylor stares at the TV screen for a while.

  ‘She was always a bit fucked up after her mum, you know?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, this friend of hers – I can’t remember her name – was it Alicia? Alisha? Amelia? I can’t remember. Alesha Dixon. She’s a fucking good-looking woman, isn’t she?’

  ‘What happened with Viola’s mum?’

  ‘It was Antonia. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, Antonia was one of the wrong crowd, too, ha ha. She had really weird frizzy hair. And she had a stammer. She told me that Viola’s mum dying hit her really hard. Particularly the way it happened.’

  ‘Hold on. Viola’s mother is dead?’

  This can’t be right. He’s got this wrong. He’s mixing her up with someone else. I cast my mind back to my chat with Raleigh after he’d seen me admiring Rosabel Raleigh’s portrait. He was talking about her in the present tense, definitely. There was no indication whatsoever that she might have died. Before my mind starts going down time-wasting routes I turn my attention back to Taylor.

  ‘Particularly the way it happened? What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, she committed suicide.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When? Fuck. I think it was when Viola was fourteen. Something like that, anyway.’

  That makes it about ten years ago. Is that portrait of someone else? Did Raleigh remarry and, moreover, remarry someone who looked like Viola? No. That’s ridiculous. Would an event like this have been in the news? Unlikely, as Raleigh wasn’t a public figure and didn’t court publicity.

  ‘How did she do it?’

  ‘I think she shot herself.’

  God Almighty. ‘You think or you know?’

  ‘Well that’s what Alisha told me. She said that Viola’s mother didn’t leave a suicide note, but that she didn’t have to.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘Dunno, but there it is. Sorry – did I say Alisha? I meant Antonia.’

  OK. Perhaps I’m giving this too much significance. It could have been one of the things that still upset Raleigh and he didn’t like talking about it. Maybe it comforted him in some way to refer to her as if she was still alive. Everyone deals with this type of thing in a different way.

  ‘There was a point when she drifted out of your circle. What happened?’

  ‘To who?’

  This interrogation is going in the sort of elliptical way that I can’t stand, but I have to persevere. Taylor is in no state to be logical and I just have to work with that.

  ‘To Viola. I understand that this might be hard for you to talk about, but I’d like to know what happened when she slipped out of your orbit.’

  He purses his lips and looks momentarily angry.

  ‘It’s my fault. How long did you say she’d been on the game?’

  ‘She told her father about it a little over two years ago. That’s not to say that’s when she started, though. I think it came out during an argument. It may have been going on longer than that.’

  ‘Dates, you know? I can’t really be accurate, but I think it started before two years ago. It was to do with the smack, all to do with the smack. Like I said, I had problems supplying her with the hard stuff and suggested she contact this other guy. I knew about him and I knew it was a bad idea, but she was so fucking persistent and charming, y’know?’

  ‘Tell me about him.’

  ‘I bet her dad thinks it was me that got her into drugs and me who got her into prostitution. It wasn’t.’

  ‘I know it wasn’t, Taylor. Tell me about this guy.’

  ‘It’s this guy called Emile. He’s quite old, you know? Sixty, maybe late sixties or seventy. Could be older. I don’t know. I just knew through the grapevine that he was a big dealer in smack and coke. He didn’t bother with dope or anything else. Everyone knew about him, but not everyone had cause to deal with him. This is the thing, though. He dealt in girls, too.’

  ‘Go on.’

  He takes a final drag from his spliff and stubs it out on Dora Maar’s face.

  ‘Well I don’t know this for sure, so you mustn’t take this as being, like, what happened, but I’d heard about one girl who’d started selling her ass for him in return for smack. She – there was a guy I used to hang out with called Paul Booker. His mate Niall, he used to go out with this girl but he dumped her as she was too much trouble. It was her. He’s like a poncy kind of guy, this Emile, but quite hard, yeah? Quite a bastard, a
pparently. He’s got some really tough fuckers who do his dirty work for him. I heard that one of them beat a guy to death once for, like, nothing. I also heard – and this is worse – that one of them beat a girl to death once.’

  ‘So you think he may have started Viola off as a prostitute in return for giving her good quality smack?’

  ‘Well, it’s possible. As I said, she didn’t seem to care enough about sex for it to bother her and she didn’t know what fuckin’ day it was most of the time. I mean, I shagged her this one time and I saw her the next day and she didn’t seem to know who I was. She asked me if I was a friend of Keith. I don’t know anyone called Keith.’

  Was it someone connected with this Emile who called the police after Viola didn’t come back from the hotel? Some girl he got to ring the police and report her as missing? Worried about a source of income going AWOL? Taylor is talking about stuff that happened a long time ago, though. I’m getting annoyed with all of this and want to sort it out fast.

  ‘How can I get to this guy Emile? Have you got a phone number or an address?’

  ‘Fuck. I don’t want him to think that I’m sending people like you to him.’

  ‘I won’t mention you. He’ll never know.’

  ‘Hold on.’ He gets up and makes his way to a staircase, then turns back. ‘Do you want another coffee?’

  ‘I’ll make it.’

  ‘I’ve just got to look for something. Won’t be long. Can you work the coffee maker?’

  ‘I’ll manage. Don’t worry.’

  I clean the old coffee grains out, put some fresh coffee and water in and turn it on. I can feel someone behind me. Very quiet; must be bare feet, must be Samantha. I can hear her soft breathing.

  ‘Would you like a coffee too, Samantha?’

  ‘Yeah. One sugar, no milk. You’ve got pretty wide shoulders, haven’t you.’

  I turn to face her. She’s still wearing the open cotton shirt, but now there’s more breast visible and one nipple. She’s reapplied her makeup. This is the sort of situation you dream about being in when you’re fourteen. I can hear thumping from the room above. There’s a print on the wall where the kitchen goes into the conservatory. It’s a naked girl, by Bonnard, I think. Can’t remember what it’s called. Taylor has got some interesting stuff here.

  ‘Thank you, Samantha.’

  ‘My shoulders aren’t like that at all.’

  ‘No?’

  Samantha is making meaningful eye contact with me and not saying anything. She runs a hand through her hair. I’m reminded of Anjukka doing exactly the same thing. I feel like I’ve been in this situation for an hour and it’s exhausting. I’m keeping my eyes away from her breasts as I don’t want to encourage her. The coffee maker beeps. Molly comes back in from the garden, stares at me and then stares at Samantha. Taylor reappears with what looks like an A3 sketchpad. I make three coffees and take them into the living room. Samantha takes hers off the tray and disappears.

  ‘If it’s anywhere it’ll be in here somewhere.’

  Taylor rests the pad on his lap and flicks through it. From my point of view I can see lots of drawings, scribblings and articles cut out from newspapers. At one point, there’s even a pressed flower. He must use this pad for everything. I can see letters of the alphabet and names and number beneath them. He turns the pad upside down and squints at it.

  ‘Yes!’

  He sits next to me and points at the pad. There’s a drawing of a horse and underneath it the name ‘Novak’, an address and a telephone number.

  ‘That’s him. I knew it had it somewhere. Of course, none of that info might be current, yeah? That looks like a mobile number. Shall we try it?’

  ‘No. Not yet. I want to think.’ I tap the name and number into my mobile and memorise the address.

  ‘Christ Almighty. If she’s dead or something it’ll be down to me, won’t it.’

  He actually starts crying.

  ‘Look,’ I say. ‘If she hadn’t ended up with this guy through you, it would have been through someone else. Don’t worry about it. Forget it. She was fucked up, your paths crossed, that’s it.’

  ‘She was really beautiful, too. I mean – she looked like an actress.’

  ‘Stop beating yourself up.’ I take out my wallet and hand him two hundred pounds. ‘Take this. What you’ve given me has been really useful.’

  He sniffs and takes the money.

  ‘Thanks, mate. Look – I know you’re not working for me or anything, but when you’ve sorted all this shit can you tell me what happened? I feel like I’m part of it now. And be careful when you go and see Emile Novak. You might get in over your head, yeah? He’s into all sorts of bad shit. I’ve only heard rumours, but he seems to be able to get away with anything he feels like. I don’t know why. Maybe he’s got friends in high places.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘Listen. Sit down. Don’t go away.’

  He gets up again and runs upstairs. Now what? I want to get away and think this over. I don’t want to talk to people.

  Seconds later, he reappears holding a gun, which he places gently on the table in front of me. I almost spit my coffee out of my mouth. It’s a Glock 17 and it looks brand new. Taylor looks enthusiastic and very pleased with himself. He speaks in a semi-whisper.

  ‘I can get you anything like this. Anything you want. This one came from Sweden. I think the army use it, yeah?’

  ‘Why have you got a gun, Taylor?’

  ‘It’s just one of my side-lines. There’s a market for guns amongst people I know. I keep this one in case anyone comes here and tries to cause trouble.’

  I pick it up and weigh it in my hand. It feels like it’s fully loaded. I take the magazine out and eject seventeen bullets onto the table.

  ‘Put these bullets in a bag and hide the bag somewhere where your girlfriends won’t find it. This gun has three safety features and they were all turned off. This could have gone off when someone was fucking around with it when you were all high.’

  I show him the safety features and make him repeat them back to me and then demonstrate them until I’m satisfied.

  ‘I’m not telling you off, but Jesus, you know? You really don’t want to get involved with the sort of people who’ll buy or sell guns.’

  And here am I working for an arms dealer.

  ‘OK. Cool. But if you ever need anything, you’ll know where to come and I won’t rip you off. I can get other stuff, too.’

  I can hear Samantha padding around somewhere. I wipe my prints off the gun with a tea towel, ram the magazine back home and hide it under a cushion, simultaneously placing Taylor’s sketch pad over the bullets.

  ‘Sort that. Promise me. And while I’m here, the whole road reeks of dope when you open that front door. You don’t want the police in here and them finding that gun and whatever else you’ve got. Just get a little bit more paranoid. Paranoia is good.’

  ‘OK. OK. Got it. D’you want to buy a car?’

  7

  ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR

  I find a café in Ealing Broadway and order a large coffee and two apricot Danish pastries. I sit outside and wait for the waitress to bring everything out to me. That meeting – if that’s what it can be called – with Taylor Conway was so bereft of logic at times that I’m finding it hard to pick out what was relevant to this case, if anything.

  Viola obviously had an effect on him, though, and I felt quite sorry for the poor sap. Despite myself, I have an urge to be able to go back in time and stop her at that point; that point when it started to go wrong, whenever it was and whatever caused it. To be able to grab her, pull her out of that life and run away with her.

  According to Taylor, too, she didn’t seem to have much interest in sex, but there could have been any number of reasons for that and it wouldn’t necessarily stop her from drifting into prostitution. Most prostitutes don’t enjoy the sex, or so I was reading last night during one of my rare ten minutes of ‘research’.

  Th
e fact that Raleigh’s wife had shot herself was interesting, but I don’t think it really had any bearing on anything. It fits in with the wild child antics of Viola in a way. Heartless rich bastard with a trophy wife and a child he’s too busy to spend time with. The wife commits suicide and the daughter goes off the rails. Tough. Her portrait flashes into my mind again. What a terrible waste.

  But knowing about Emile Novak was fairly useful. If he’s still at the same address I’ll have to pay him a visit and I need to do it now. At the back of my mind, I’m thinking how wonderful it would be if I could finish all of this in twenty-four hours. I could pick up my twenty thousand bonus and be sunning myself in the Caribbean by the weekend.

  So what do I have on Novak? Deals in hard drugs, possibly forces girls into prostitution and is ‘hard’ according to Taylor. But also a poncy kind of guy, whatever that may mean. Would Viola have been with him for almost three years? Would she have survived being kept on smack all that time? Would she still be good-looking enough to send out? If it wasn’t Novak or one of his minions who reported Viola as missing, then perhaps he’ll know who it was.

  I start chewing my second Danish and am just about to see if I can get hold of Novak when my mobile goes off. Another mobile. Unknown number.

  ‘Hi. Daniel Beckett.’

  ‘I wonder if you can help me. I have a problem with a missing library book.’

  ‘Hi, Anjukka. How’re things?’

  ‘Fine, thank you. How’s your work going?’

  ‘Can’t complain.’

  ‘I was wondering if you’d like to go and get something to eat tonight. If you’re not too busy, that is.’

  ‘Well, I have to eat sometime. What sort of food do you like?’

  ‘I don’t mind. Anything.’

  ‘Anything is good for me.’

  ‘Can we start early-ish? I don’t want to go home and then have to come out again. I hate the tubes in rush hour.’