Vicious Circle

That image made me think about “Mel’s” bruises. They were just there for effect, I was suddenly sure: a stage prop to engage my sympathy and maybe to explain the relative awkwardness and lack of expression in her voice. This bastard didn’t miss a trick—and he didn’t care who he hurt.

“So what do the cops think happened?” I asked, pulling my thoughts off that particular track with a twinge of unease.

Nicky gave a one-handed shrug. “They don’t know a thing,” he said. “At least, nothing that’s on file as yet. They analyzed the bullets six ways from breakfast, so they’ll know the gun when they find it. Guns, sorry—two different weapons. But there’s nothing in their ballistics database to say either of them’s ever been used in any other crimes, so that’s a dead end for now. They dusted the place for prints, got nothing apart from the ones that should have been there anyway—not even virtuals. Retrieved a few footprints, which again will only help in nailing the perps once they find them.”

“Statements from the neighbors?”

“Nobody saw, nobody heard. Bits of street gossip creeping in here and there, though. Some people thought it was just a matter of time. The Torringtons were lowering the tone of the place, apparently. Lots of undesirables turning up at the house all hours of the day and night. One guy in particular seen going in and out a lot: tall, well built, in a long leather coat, with two goons dancing attendance like he was God. They figured he was either a gangster or a record company producer. Maybe both. There’s a complaint on file with social services. One of the neighbors was worried enough about all the coming and going to raise a query about whether the Torringtons might be pedophiles, farming Abbie out for abuse.”

I froze with my glass half-raised to my mouth. That would certainly explain the misery.

“And?” I prompted, both wanting and not wanting to hear the answer.

“One follow-up visit, records appended to the file. I couldn’t access everything, but I gather Abbie seemed to be a healthy, normal girl. A little solemn and preoccupied, but well fed, well looked after. Room was nice, clothes were neat and tidy, she checked out okay at interview, you know the drill. ‘Did not display precocious knowledge of or concern with sexual matters.’ No smoking pistol—not even any powder burn. Sorry to bother you, sign off, hit the road.”

“But there was something going on there,” I mused, grimly. “Lots of visitors. Some of them regulars. Turning up often enough for the neighbors to clock them and take notes. What were the Torringtons up to?”

“Selling drugs?” Nicky said. “Cosmetic surgery? I deal in data, Castor, not reading fucking fortunes. What I got, you’ve now had. As of now, that’s the entirety of what the Met have managed to nail down since Saturday night. Abbie is officially missing, her parents are indisputably dead. I know you see a lot of ghosts in the way of business. You ever been hired by them before?”

For once, Nicky didn’t even laugh at his own joke. He’d caught the edge of my somber mood, and of course he was still choked with me for souring his arrangement with Imelda.

I took another slug of whisky, didn’t even taste it.

“What about Peace?” I asked. “You dig up anything else there?”

Nicky turned coy—the way he always does when he’s got something really eye-popping to tell me. “Yeah,” he admitted, “a little. I don’t know how much of it is strictly relevant, though.”

“Meaning—?”

“Meaning it’s mostly old. Lifestyle stuff. Not the kind of intel you could use to find out where he is now.”

“Tell me anyway,” I suggested.

He flared up, coyness giving way to the irritation that was still slow-burning underneath. “Castor, I am not exactly in your fan club right now. It hacks me off when you talk to me like I’m some kind of skivvy you can just—”

“Please,” I amended. “Pretty please. Pretty please with sugar on the top.”

“Better. Well it’s a case of the more you dig, the more you find. That charge sheet I mentioned runs to more than one page—wherever Peace lays his hat, he starts some kind of trouble. After that army tour I told you about he found a way to turn his training to good account. He became a merc—signed up with some private security firm in the Middle East that had a very nasty name for itself, but then half the board got locked up for trying to trigger a coup in Libya and he was out on his ear again.”

There was something in his eye that told me he was saving the best till last. Under other circumstances, I might have been short enough on patience to yell him out about that: tonight I decided I’d better humor him.

“Anything else?” I asked, playing straight man.

“Yeah. Since you ask, there is.”

“Go on.”

“Peace filed suit back in 1999, under the jurisdiction of the State of New York. Against Anton Fanke—you remember, the satanist guy I told you about before?—and a woman whose name appears on the affidavit as Melanie Carla Jeffers, a.k.a. Melanie Carla Silver, a.k.a. Melanie Carla Torrington.”