‘Yeah, that’s me.’ Gary sounded surprised. ‘I’ve got some information for you.’
‘What information?’
‘You won’t believe it,’ said Gary.
‘Tell me.’
‘Nah. Not over the phone. We need to meet up.’
‘That’s not convenient.’ Sally gasped and Redmond raised a finger: shush.
‘It will be when you hear what it is.’
‘All right.’ Redmond was mildly intrigued. ‘When and where?’
Gary named a place, a time. Redmond said: ‘This had better be worth my while.’
‘It is,’ said Gary, and put the phone down.
‘This is so good,’ groaned Sally, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing… and then all at once it was too much, and Redmond grabbed her hips and came.
At the same moment, as he gasped and writhed and thrust at Sally with abandon, there was a knock and the bedroom door opened.
‘Sorry, Father, I forgot the shopping list and I thought I’d better ask-’
Redmond’s housekeeper, Mrs Janner, stopped dead in the doorway and stared at the naked couple on the bed, her face a mask of shock. Sally daintily put her hands up to cover her breasts. Redmond just lay there, thinking, Well, that’s that then.
That was the day Gary Tooley first got in touch with him, the same day that Mrs Janner phoned the bishop, the same day that Redmond Delaney was summarily dismissed from the priesthood.
Pity, really, because he had liked it.
While it lasted.
The Palermo Lounge nightclub, June 1994
The uniformed police got the call at 11.24 on a Friday morning, and by 11.42 they were there, talking to an hysterical young barman called Peter Jones.
‘She opens the front entrance door at eleven, every day. But today I got here and it was still locked. I thought she was ill in bed or something, so I used my own key. She don’t like me doing that, but what else could I do?’
‘Why doesn’t she like you doing that?’ asked one of the uniformed police, his weary sigh and set face saying he’d seen it all before, and then some.
They were standing in the big bar, backlit with blue fluorescent lights, and all was serene down here. As in the other Carter-owned clubs, the Blue Parrot and the Shalimar, there was lots of gold leaf on the walls, and angels and cherubs flying around the ceiling, dark tobacco-brown carpeting underfoot and about a hundred chairs decked out in faux tiger skins set out around circular tables. There were teensy little podiums with poles for the dancers. Gold chain curtains concealed exits over at the far right-hand side of the vast room; and there was a staircase, roped off and leading upwards, on their left. Neither of the two cops wanted to go up that staircase.
