he'd not got the hands quite right. But he would've, he would've, God love the boy, only now...
Finally, Aunt Sal broke down. She began to sob when she tried to speak, and Barbara glanced Nkata's way to see if he was making the same assessment of this little family: It was clear that as odd as Kimmo Thorne had looked and might have been, he'd also been night and day to his aunt and his gran.
Gran took her daughter's hand and pressed the bunny-edged handkerchief into it. She took up the story.
He did Marlene Dietrich for them after supper: "Falling in Love Again." The tails, the mesh stockings, the heels, the hat...Even the platinum hair, with its little scoop of a wave. He had it all down perfect, had Kimmo. And then after the show, he went out.
"What time was this?" Barbara asked.
Gran looked at an electric clock that sat atop the television set. She said, "Half ten? Sally?"
Aunt Sal dabbed her eyes. "Somewhere round there."
"Where was he going?"
They didn't know. But he said he'd be messing about with Blinker.
"Blinker?" Barbara and Nkata said together.
Blinker, they confirmed. They didn't know the boy's last name-apparently Blinker was male and of the human species-but what they did know was that he was definitely the cause of any trouble their Kimmo ever got into.
The word trouble struck Barbara, but she let Nkata do the honours. "What sort of trouble?"
No real trouble, Aunt Sal assured them. And nothing he'd ever started on his own. It was just that that bloody Blinker-"Sorry, Mum," she said hastily-had passed along something of some kind to their Kimmo, which Kimmo had flogged somewhere, only to be caught out selling stolen property. "But it was that Blinker responsible," Aunt Sal said. "Our Kimmo'd never been in trouble before."
That certainly remained to be seen, Barbara thought. She asked if the Thornes could direct them to Blinker.
They had no phone number for him, but they knew where he lived. They said it shouldn't be hard to find him on any morning because the one thing they knew about him was that he was up all night hanging about Leicester Square and he slept till one in the afternoon. He kipped on his sister's sofa, and she lived with her husband on Kipling Estate, near Bermondsey Square. Aunt Sal didn't know the sister's name-nor did she have the first idea of Blinker's Christian name, but she expected if the police went round asking where a bloke called Blinker might be, someone would know for certain. Blinker was someone who always managed to get known.
Barbara asked if they might have a look through Kimmo's belongings, then. Aunt Sal took them to his room. This was crowded with bed, dressing table, wardrobe, chest of drawers, television, and music system. The dressing table held a display of makeup that would have done Boy George proud. The top of the chest of drawers served as a location for wig stands, of which there were five. And the walls held dozens of professional head shots of Kimmo's sources of apparent inspiration: from Edith Piaf to Madonna. The boy was nothing if not eclectic in his taste.
"Where'd he get the dosh for all this?" Barbara asked once Aunt Sal had left them to look through the dead boy's lumber. "She didn't mention anything about employment, did she?"
"Makes you think about what Blinker was really giving him to sell," Nkata replied.
"Drugs?"
He waggled his hand: maybe yes, maybe no. "A lot of something," he said.
"We need to find that bloke, Winnie."
"Shouldn't be tough. Someone'll know him on the estate, ask round enough. Someone always does."
Ultimately, they got little joy from their efforts in Kimmo's room. A small stack of cards-birthday, Christmas, and the odd Easter thrown in, all signed "Lovekins, darling, from Mummy and Dad"-were hidden away in a drawer along with a photo of a well-tanned thirtysomething couple on a sunny, foreign balcony. A yellowed newspaper article about a transgender professional model who'd been outed by the tabloids in the distant past surfaced beneath a knot of costume jewellery on the dressing table. A hair-styling magazine-at least in other circumstances-could have indicated a future career.
Otherwise, much of it was what one would expect in the bedroom of a fifteen-year-old boy. Malodorous shoes, underpants screwed up beneath the bed, stray socks. It would have been ordinary, except for the presence of all the items that made it into a hermaphroditic curiosity.
When they'd seen it all, Barbara stood back and said