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‘un,’ said Stella, her eyes fixed on Gene. Her lipstick was smeared across one cheek, her Dusty Springfield mascara was all over her face, and yet, dishevelled as she was, there was still a fierce fire burning in her eyes and in her blood. ‘You brought me here to pump me with questions. Well then – get pumping.’
    Sam sighed and said calmly: ‘Stella, there’s no need for all this. All we want from you is information about-’
    ‘Not you, girly-bollocks,’ Stella interrupted, still staring at Gene. ‘
Him.
The
real
man. The guv’nor.’
    Gene lounged against the wall, the fag smouldering in his gob, and silently narrowed his eyes at her.
    ‘You want to pump me?’ Stella glared. ‘Then pump me. Like only you know how.’
    For several highly charged seconds, Gene fixed her with his stare. The air was thick with the mingled aromas of Gene’s
Brut
and Stella’s
Charlie.
Once again, Sam felt he was intruding on a private moment between these two – a ghastly, stomach-churning private moment he would rather not witness. It was like being in a seedy backstreet club. It was worse than the coroner with the whelks.
    Gene exhausted his cigarette and heeled it into the floor. Then, very much taking his time, he began to pace slowly up and down behind Stella’s back.
    ‘Denzil Obi,’ he said, his voice low, his manner controlled. ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me what you know about him.’
    ‘He were a nice enough lad,’ said Stella. ‘In his way.’
    ‘Meaning?’
    ‘He didn’t have a good start in life. Had to make his way as best he could.’
    ‘Bit of a Jack-the-lad, was he?’
    Stella shrugged. Gene paced.
    ‘He had ambitions to become a boxer,’ Gene said. ‘What can you tell me about that?’
    ‘He weren’t a bad welterweight. Nifty. Bit of a rough diamond, but with work he could have gone places.’
    ‘It’s not the places he could have gone that interest me but the places he came from. The Black Widow had a seedy past, didn’t he. Illegal fights. Bare-knuckle bouts. He must have rubbed shoulders with some right horrible bastards.’
    ‘Most like,’ said Stella.
    ‘And pissed a few of ‘em off in the process.’
    ‘Perhaps.’
    ‘Any ideas who?’
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘’Course you do.’
    ‘I’m legit, Mr DCI. I know nothing about the underworld.’
    ‘Pull the other one, luv, it lights up and plays Leo Sayer.’
    ‘I don’t associate with villains,’ protested Stella. ‘Not willingly, anyway. I’m straight.’
    ‘Straight?
Straight?!
’ Gene grasped her by the hair and twister he head round. ‘You’re as kinky as a bloody corkscrew, and in more ways than one. Names! I want bloody names! Denzil Obi got on the wrong side of someone – who was it? Give me a name!’
    ‘Make me.’
    ‘I said give me a name!
    ‘And I said
make me
!’
    ‘
Give me a name! Give me a name
!’ And now Gene began to punctuate his words with a series of slaps. ‘Give!’ –
Slap
! – ‘Me!’ –
Slap
! – ‘A’ –
Slap
! – ‘Blood!’
– Slap
! – ‘Ee name!’ –
Slap, slap
!
    Sam’s instinct was to intervene, but he restrained himself. Nobody would thank him for stepping in, least of all Stella. What was going on between these two was something too murky, too unsavoury for Sam to get involved with. He was better off out of it. He didn’t want to be soiled.
    Gene yanked Stella’s face closer to his own and hissed into it: ‘Big fellas getting handy – that’s what gets your juices bubbling, isn’t it. That’s why you run that seedy gym. Watching blokes beating eight buckets of shite out of each other turns you right on, don’t it!’
    ‘Oh yes!’ The words came out of her as a gasp.
    ‘And getting on the receiving end of it tweaks your dial even more!’
    ‘Oh
yes …
!’
    ‘You dirty randy kinky scrubber,’ Gene snarled, and he hauled her up from the chair. One of her white stilettos went skittering across the floor. He gripped her by the shoulders and