the words gam me spelled out beneath it. A closer look, however, revealed that the flower's stamen was actually a priapus. Charming, Barbara thought when she saw this. She liked the subtle touch.
"Mr. Cliff Hegarty," Emily said as she closed the door. "Good of you to come in for some questions."
"Didn't have much choice, far as I c'n see,"
Hegarty said. When he spoke, he displayed the whitest and most perfect teeth Barbara had ever seen. "Two blokes showed up and asked me if I minded coming down to the station. I always like the way cops make it sound like you got some alternative when it comes to assisting with their inquiries."
Emily wasted no time getting down to business.
Hegarty's fingerprints, she told him, had been found on the car of a murdered man called Haytham Querashi. The car itself had been found at the crime scene. Would Mr. Hegarty explain how they got there?
Hegarty crossed his arms. It was a movement that displayed his tattoo to greater effect.
He said,
"I can phone a solicitor if I want." His lip ring caught the overhead lighting as he spoke.
"You may," Emily replied. "But as I haven't even read you the caution, your need for a solicitor intrigues me."
"I didn't say I need one. I didn't say I want one. I just said I could phone one if I want."
"And your point is?"
His tongue slid from his mouth and darted, lizard-like in its speed, round his lips. "I can tell you what you want to know, and I'm willing to do it. But you got to guarantee that my name gets kept away from the press."
"I'm not in the habit of making anyone guarantees of anything." Emily sat across the table from him. "And considering the fact that your prints were found at the scene of a murder, you're in no position to be making deals."
"Then I don't talk."
"Mr. Hegarty," Barbara interposed, "we had the i.d. on your dabs off SO4 in London. My guess is that you know the score: A London i.d. means you're sitting on a record of arrest.
D'you need it pointed out that it looks a little dicey for a bloke if a felon's prints are associated with a murder and the bloke and the felon are one and the same?"
"I never hurt anyone," Hegarty said defensively.
"In London or in anyplace else. And I'm . not a felon. What I did was between two adults, and just because one of the adults was paying, it wasn't like I ever had to force anyone into it.
Besides, I was just a kid then. If you coppers paid more attention to stopping real crime and less attention to rousting blokes trying to make a few honest quid by using their bodies just like a coal miner or a ditch digger uses his, then this country would be a better place to live."
Emily didn't argue with the creative comparison between manual labourers and male prostitutes.
"Look. A solicitor can't keep your name out of the paper, if that's why you want one. And I can't guarantee that someone from the Standard won't be camped on your doorstep when you go home. But the quicker we get you in and out of here, the less likely that possibility is."
He considered this, lizard-tonguing his lips once again. His biceps tightened and the phallus posing as the lily's stamen flexed suggestively. He finally said, "It's like this, okay? There's another bloke. Him and I, we been together awhile. Four years, to be specific. I don't want him to know about . . . well, about what I'm going to tell you.
He already suspects but he doesn't know. And I want to keep it that way,"
Emily consulted a clipboard that she'd picked up from reception on her way downstairs.
She said, "You have a business, I see."
"Shit. I can't tell Gerry you been after me about the Distractions. He already doesn't like me making them. He's always after me to be doing something legit - legit according to his definition of legit - and if he finds out that I've had some aggro from the cops - "
"And I see this business is in the Balford Industrial Estate," Emily continued unperturbed.
"Which is where Malik's Mustards is. Which is where Mr. Querashi was employed. We will, of course, be speaking to every businessman in the industrial estate in the course of our investigation.
Does this meet your needs, Mr. Hegarty?"
Hegarty blew out the breath he'd taken in order to voice further protest.