Pain of Death by Adam Creed Page B

all over his head and a low hairline. Pulford takes out his warrant card and holds it to the glass. The big man talks into his lapel, squints at the warrant card as he speaks.
    He unlocks the door, and as he heaves it open, he breathes heavily, smells of garlic. ‘What you want?’
    ‘Mr Ramone.’
    ‘What you want?’
    ‘It’s about a woman called Kerry Degg.’
    The man turns his back which pushes out against his chalk-stripe jacket. He has haunches like a bull and a small waist. He talks into his lapel again, turns and says, ‘You lucky.’
    They follow the man in, through the lobby with the ticket office on the right and the cloakroom on the left. The place smells of too many humans and bleach. However, when they make their way past the three toilets and round along the raised dining area opposite the stage, the smell evolves into a blend of booze and greasepaint and cologne. The lights are dim, but you can almost hear the echo-garble of good times: a bodiced woman, or man, in a spotlight, crooning, seducing the willing.
    Phillip Ramone is in an office off the first floor, up a winding stairway and past a raised mezzanine with six small tables, tight up against a gold-speckled balustrade which overlooks the stage.
    The proprietor – and this is only one of six businesses he runs in this parish – is waif thin and has his legs crossed like a forties Hollywood dame, talks with a cigarette drooping from his lips, which appear to have a tattooed outline, so that they can be distinguished from the rest of his grey face. He has a pencil moustache which Josie thinks must be to draw his gender. His hair is silvery thin and back-combed into a candy fluff that almost covers his skull. The light is low and his voice disarmingly so. The big man sits down next to him.
    ‘You offered Kerry Degg a residency,’ says Josie. Ramone has a standard lamp on behind him and she has to squint. Plumes of smoke curl around him.
    ‘Kerry? You mean Lori. Lori Dos Passos.’
    ‘That’s her stage name,’ says Pulford.
    ‘And you have come to that stage. This is her world.’
    ‘Was.’
    ‘Yes, I heard. A tragedy.’
    ‘When did you last see her, Mr Ramone?’ asks Josie.
    Ramone shifts, square to Pulford. He might have taken a shine to the tall young policeman. ‘I thought I had done something to upset her. Either that or her idiot husband had her shipped away onto a cruise. Have the child at sea, perhaps. The shame of it.’ He laughs, unconvincingly, at his own joke.
    Josie says, ‘Would you say Kerry was upset at the pregnancy?’
    Ramone leans forward, presses a button on his telephone. ‘Not upset. Pissed off, more like. Her career – her blooming life – was about to take off. She was going to get rid, that’s for sure.’
    ‘And you encouraged her?’
    ‘Me? I love children.’ He laughs. ‘It was really of no consequence to me.’
    ‘But what about the residency?’
    ‘We have a very mixed clientele, but they’re decent people. Nobody would have objected to a pregnancy – except maybe the last month or so. That would have been her pigeon.’ He laughs again, louder, lights another cigarette.
    An elderly woman appears through the door, stands beside Ramone and reads from a diary, as if it were sacred text. ‘Miss Dos Passos was last here, officially, in December. The twenty-eighth . But if I recall, she did come to the Hoot-a-Fanny.’
    ‘Of course,’ says Ramone. ‘New Year’s Eve. Oh my, that is some time ago. Has she been gone so long?’
    ‘You replaced her residency?’ says Josie.
    ‘I have a public, miss.’
    ‘Have you seen her husband since then?’ says Pulford.
    ‘An irascible little scrote.’
    Pulford smiles at Ramone. ‘I wouldn’t have put her with him. Still, it was Sean’s offspring this time, apparently.’
    ‘You surprise me.’
    ‘He calls himself a curator.’
    ‘He’s nothing more than a pimp.’
    ‘A pimp with connections. Tell us about Sean’s connections,’ says