Stay Dead - [3]

‘Oh God… oh, Father!’ she gasped in shock and delight against his lips.

‘You’ve been driving me insane,’ he said, and kissed her again.

He said this to all of them, of course, all the little titbits he enjoyed, because it fed their female vanity, made them proud. They’d turned a priest, sworn to celibacy, their charms so overwhelming that even fear of God left him unable to resist.

She was Sally Westover, who was married to Bill Westover, who almost certainly hadn’t strayed because he was such a dull bugger, but Father Delaney wasn’t going to tell her that. Instead he took her upstairs to his single priest’s bed and gave her the hammering of her life.

Then…

‘Oh God, the phone…’ she moaned.

Damned thing was ringing, right by the bed.

‘Don’t stop,’ he ordered her, snatching it up. ‘Yes?’ he said.

‘Is that Redmond Delaney?’ asked a male voice.

‘Who wants him?’ asked Redmond, watching Sally’s large pendulous nude breasts bouncing around above him while she straddled him, impaling herself repeatedly on his manhood and wheezing like an asthmatic chimpanzee.

Oh, she’s a good one, he thought.

Later he was going to indoctrinate her properly into the ways of the flesh. She’d barely touched the surface, he could see that. She was a keen amateur, that was all. After this afternoon she would be full of remorse. She was a wife, a mother (he could tell that because she was quite loose), and she would be so guilty. He would tweak that guilt, hang his head in shame, say she had made him commit this sin, betray his vows.

Oh yes. Such fun and games he would have with Sally Westover. He would introduce her to the delights of pain and ice and fire, to bondage and choking, all those darker aspects of sexuality that were his preferred territory.

‘This is Gary Tooley,’ said the voice on the phone. ‘You don’t know me, but-’

‘The one who runs the Blue Parrot?’ asked Redmond, thinking that Sally was banging away so hard now that it was getting difficult to maintain his control. He remembered Tooley. Redmond had a good memory, a very fine brain in fact, and he knew that Gary Tooley worked for the Carters.

He wondered – briefly – how Tooley had got hold of this number. He didn’t like people tracking him down; as a rule, Redmond liked to do the stalking if there was stalking to be done. In fact, he enjoyed it.

‘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.

3

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.

Pete was dragging his hands through his close-cropped blond hair, over and over, like he wanted to rip it straight out of his head, and his baby-blue eyes were reddened with tears.