‘Yeah, I think I recognize you,’ another policeman joined in. ‘I’ve got cable, you know,’ he added enthusiastically.
‘Makes up for his lack of a social life,’ Sarge derided.
He took the passport she offered.
‘Wait here while we check things out, if you don’t mind, Miss Dean. Then one of my men will take a statement.’
‘Of course, Sergeant. But …’ – she dabbed at the wound on her face – ‘do you think we could have a little fresh air. It’s not every day I dress as a tart and get mugged in a drug den.’
‘Sure. Collins will look after you.’
What Sarge meant, of course, was that Collins would keep a close eye on them until the matter of their presence amidst the dealers and pimps was sorted out. They perched on the bonnet of a squad car, ignoring the damp December wind, while Collins sat in the driver’s seat, door ajar.
‘Devereux’s going to hear about this, Daniel,’ she said quietly.
‘How so? He thinks you’ve flown.’
‘Think. What would you have done in his shoes, with his contacts? Made sure as sunrise that if ever I came back into the country, if my name appeared on anyone’s computer, if I used a credit card at Tesco’s, he or his tame inspector would learn about it. And fast.’ She bit her lip. ‘He’ll know we’re here. In London. And he’ll know why. He’ll get to Paulette before we do.’
‘We’ve got to get away from here,’ he agreed.
‘They take one look in my bag and it’s all over. They’re never going to let us go.’
‘What’s with your bag?’
‘Apart from a couple of thousand pounds in cash which I can’t account for? Only my soiled underwear wrapped around the private address and unlisted telephone number of the Secretary of State for Defence. Try explaining that lot away.’
‘I’d rather not.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Not half as sorry as you’re going to be in about a minute, as soon as they finish checking my name on their computers.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This isn’t quite how I planned to break it to you, Izzy, but you’ve got to know.’ Even in the darkness of a winter’s night and with the street lights draining all colour, she could see the bruising. ‘I’m an addict. Been clean for almost a year, but I’ve got a record with these guys which will send sparks through their computer. I told you, there are a million cracks in this old Humpty.’
She stood silent, stunned. Then a breath. ‘Damn it, I should have guessed. You knew altogether too much about this scene. About Paulette.’
‘Disappointed?’
‘Only in me, Daniel. I should have asked. Should have known more about you.’
‘I am clean, Izzy. Working my way back. I’m going to be OK.’
‘Problems?’
‘Of course. Especially since I met you.’ And she knew he meant it. ‘Getting stuck emotionally in a one-way street isn’t the greatest thing for a recovering addict. Everything starts hurting again. The Devil sitting on your shoulder. You learn to take it one day at a time.’
‘And you brought me to this place, knowing what we’d find?’
‘I had a pretty good idea about the coffee shop. Less sure how I’d do. Bit like a chain smoker taking a bath in petrol. I did all right, though, didn’t I?’ He looked a hundred years old. She hoped it was only the street light.
‘And you did all this for me?’
‘No, not just for you. For me, too. To test myself. To give me something to believe in again. You hide from drugs because they are stronger than you are. You loathe yourself, loathe your own weakness. Then there comes a time when you feel you might just be able to stand up to it, not to run away any more, when you have something to believe in which is stronger even than drugs.’ He ran a weary hand through his hair. ‘It’s been a long time since I felt anything other than disgust for myself. But tonight … I reckon I did fine.’
‘You made only one mistake, Daniel.’
‘What was that?’
‘About the one-way street.’
And she took him in her arms and kissed him in a way she thought she’d almost forgotten.
It was while they stood embracing that the boys loaded Mo into the van, and he didn’t want to go, really didn’t want to go with these guys who’d crushed his balls and his fingers, and he kicked out hard and savagely. One officer went down clutching his kneecap and Collins thought he’d go and help. Daniel saw.
‘We really ought to get out of here,’ he whispered.
‘Not playing hard to get, are you?’
‘Izzy, I think we should both be playing hard to get.’
And they had burrowed into the Christmas crowds of Kensington High Street even before Collins knew they were gone.
When they had finished running they walked, grateful for the fresh air and the anonymity of darkened streets, two miles, directly north, ignoring the drizzle that floated in the air and made the pavements shimmer and their feet damp.
They both felt exhausted, drained by their collision with the forces of law and lawlessness, yet they hurried on, drawn inexorably forward by what might lie ahead, pursued by what they had left behind. The pretence had vanished, their identities discovered and Devereux would soon hear, might already have heard. They knew they had little time left.
There were five drinking establishments along Endeavour Road, four pubs and a low-life wine bar. They found what they were looking for in the fourth, beyond the graffiti and the dog crap and the primary school; the Battle of Trafalgar, a gloomy Victorian edifice with dark panelled walls and wrought-iron supports around the bar, whose original ornate mouldings were all but hidden beneath oppressive generations of paint. Much of the miserable interior lighting came from the bank of slot machines and video games which obstructed the entrance to the toilets, and a television that flickered above the bar – the type of pub where the licensee chose not to see and the customers not to be seen.
‘Jesus, what a dump,’ she exclaimed. ‘Looks like they never got round to cleaning up after the Battle. You sure you guys won it?’
‘The English won the battle,’ he corrected, a trifle testily. ‘I can only conclude that the French died laughing when they saw that Lord Nelson had a blind eye and his rifle sleeve tucked into his waistcoat.’
‘Not much to laugh about in here. What do we do?’
‘You sit down and look around while I buy us both a drink, like any good pimp.’
She caught a glance of herself in a mirror and gasped – she looked appalling. The eyes drooped through lack of sleep, her hair had frizzled in the damp evening air, her face was pale and the make-up stood out in all its hideousness. The wound on her cheek had dried, leaving an angry red weal. She had forgotten she was supposed to be a tart; she looked every inch the part.
He returned with a Coke and glass of putrid white wine; his hand was trembling to the point that the drinks all but spilled.
‘You all right?’ she enquired anxiously.
‘Brilliant.’ He sat down heavily. ‘They tried to peddle me some dope while I was waiting at the bar. Just like old times. And I wanted to say yes, Izzy.’ As he tried to drink his Coke spilled down the side of the glass and dribbled onto the grimy table. ‘There’s a voice inside me telling me, screaming at me, that it’s all right. That just a little won’t hurt. That I can handle it, no problem. It was there in his hand, wrapped in a little twist of paper. And I wanted it so bad.’ He banged his glass down before it slipped from his shaking fingers.
‘I thought you said you were over it.’
‘You never get over it, Izzy. It’s not like the bloody measles. It’s there the whole time, offering you an easy way out of your problems, like climbing into a suit of armour to protect yourself against the rest of the rotten world. Except you discover you’ve climbed into a coffin. I can’t go back to that again, Izzy, it’ll kill me next time.’
‘Then let me help.’
He relaxed a little. ‘Yo
u already have. You’ve given me something stronger than drugs. Just make sure you don’t turn your back on me.’
‘Never.’
She reached to kiss him but he moved away. ‘Izzy, a pimp’s not supposed to go round drooling over his hooker. It’s bad form.’ He managed a smile. ‘I’ll take a rain check.’
‘Payment on demand. With interest.’
And he was better; the Devil moved from his shoulder.
They looked around the crowded pub, examining through the smoky atmosphere those who had begun to settle in for the long night ahead. There were old-timers and past-timers, occupying the stools and chairs they had sat on most nights for a lifetime, who could remember the Trafalgar in more glorious days when brassware had gleamed and pumps had been primed and the pub had appeared less of a war casualty.
Also there was another crowd, younger, that had a uniform all to itself. T-shirts that protested and gaudily coloured trousers that screamed, dreadlocks and bleached hair that appeared torn rather than cropped, all clothes casual and crumpled and much tattered, swaddled around bodies often painfully thin. Rings and chains seemed to be the fashion, rings that hung from ears, on fingers, through noses and several through lips, and chains which hung from these rings. Everything to excess. It was embellishment become defilement, a protest, like self-immolation. These kids didn’t like the world; even less did they seem to like themselves.
The door across the pub swung open, complaining on unoiled hinges, and a newcomer entered dressed in an ankle-length leather coat and broad-brimmed fedora. A cigarillo protruded from between carefully trimmed greying whiskers. The teeth were appallingly stained and twisted. He did not cross to the bar but stood by the door, gazing carefully around. Immediately, a young man rose from his stool and crossed to greet him, slapping hands in a perfunctory ritual before both disappeared past the video machines and into the toilet.
Daniel nodded. ‘Sixty seconds and one of them will be out again and off. The other will be shooting up inside.’
She found herself feeling nauseous. ‘Which one is the pusher?’
‘Who knows? They might both be, buying for themselves and selling to others so they can buy for themselves again. Often there’s little distinction. Whoever leaves first will be the one pushing tonight.’
And it was the leather coat, as Daniel had said, who was out and gone before most people were aware he had even arrived. Five minutes later the younger man emerged, slowly, relaxed, greeting a couple of the old-timers as he made his way back to his chair. He said very little for half an hour, not participating, before he became more animated and once more part of the group.
‘He’s our man,’ Daniel muttered.
‘What man?’
‘The man who can find Paulette for us.’
‘I thought we might ask the barman.’
‘We could try, but there’s a good chance he wouldn’t know, or if he did wouldn’t tell us, or if he told us would also warn Paulette before we got to her.’ He shook his head. ‘Too much of a risk.’
‘And that guy there in his army-surplus shirt and semi-coma is less of a risk?’ she asked sceptically.
‘He’s an addict and he needs money. And in order to get it he’ll trade his grandmother to cannibals without thinking twice. He’d sell Paulette without thinking at all.’
‘Or Bella,’ she whispered.
‘I sold everything I had when I needed to.’
She turned her eyes from the youth back towards Daniel; he was trying to tell her something.
‘Don’t be too harsh on Paulette, Izzy. There’s no point. But try to understand. When you are in that condition there are no limits, no shame or feelings of guilt which can stop you doing what you have to do. You have no conscience, and no control. You can’t help it.’
‘Can’t help selling babies?’ she protested.
‘I sold everything I had, Izzy. Everything I owned, everything I could steal. My father’s war medals. The few paltry heirlooms my mother had struggled so hard to hang on to. Burgled from my own brother’s flat. I even sold my own body.’
‘You what?’
‘Sold my own body. Just like you did last night.’
‘That was different!’
‘Of course it was different. And you sold your body only once. I sold mine time and time and time again.’
She trembled, backed away a little; he noticed.
‘You have to know. I’m not going to hide the truth from you.’
‘It did that to you?’ she whispered.
He nodded sadly. He could see the confusion eating away at her. It seemed a long time before she spoke again, and suddenly he was vulnerable and very afraid. He wanted to jump back into the suit of armour, to shut out the fear. Her lips were moving but she was having trouble mouthing the words.
‘It did that to you?’ she repeated. ‘Yet you would risk it all again. For me? And for Bella?’
‘For myself. You see, I’m hoping you’ll prove to be the best detox treatment any man could find.’
‘When I get you back home, Danny Blackheart, or wherever it is we end up, you’re going to need treatment.’ A smile broke across her face and she looked suggestively through her glass.
‘You working girls are all the same.’
She reached for his hand but the moment had already passed, his attention wandered. The youth had stood up from his seat and was meandering across to the bar, intent on ordering another drink.
‘Time to get to work,’ Daniel muttered grimly, preparing to follow.
‘No,’ she insisted. ‘My turn, Daniel. You’ve bathed in enough petrol for one day.’
He struggled to find the spirit to protest but already she was on her feet, moving across to the bar. She squeezed in beside the youth, her breast rubbing purposefully against his arm as she did so.
‘Hi, honey,’ she greeted.
He looked around in surprise, eyed the breast that had attacked him, then looked once more towards the barman. ‘Sorry, sister. That’s not my game,’ he responded in an accent smothered in the mud of the Thames Estuary.
‘I don’t think you understand. I’m not selling, I’m buying.’
His curiosity was immediately sparked. ‘What you after? Pills? Grass? E? Summink a little ’eavier, perhaps?’
‘Something much heavier. Information. And I’m willing to pay for it.’
Curiosity turned to suspicion. ‘You’re not—?’
‘Do I look like Filth, for Chrissake? Funny type of policewoman you must have in this country.’
‘What sort of information? And ’ow much?’
‘I’m looking for a girl called Paulette. Been around these parts recently, probably this pub.’
‘Why d’you need to know?’
‘None of your damned business.’
‘Never ’eard of her.’
‘Ever heard of fifty pounds?’ She had withdrawn a tightly folded note from under the strap of her wristwatch. She had his undivided attention.
‘How’s the memory job coming along?’
‘I’ve … ’eard the name. Comes in ’ere once, twice a week maybe. Not seen ’er for a few days though.’
Paulette. Here. His words hit Izzy like exploding mortar shells. She found she had stopped breathing; in her hand the note had begun to tremble.
‘You know where she lives?’
‘No.’
Despair!
‘Bu’ I can find out,’ he added hurriedly.
‘I need to find her, without her knowing I’m even looking. Quietly. Very quietly.’
‘You don’t wanna scare ’er off. No’ my problem. Can be done.’
With great care she proceeded to tear the fifty-pound note in two. One half she clenched in her fist, the other was placed under her hand on the sticky counter. His spot-encrusted upper lip wobbled furiously like a squirrel at a nut.
‘You get the other half if you can give me her address. Noon tomorrow. Here.’
He laid his hand upon hers. ?
??And a free fuck?’ he sneered.
‘The only thing you’ll get for free is the feeling you’ve just blown the easiest fifty you ever made.’
He snorted. ‘Cow.’
She removed her hand and he grabbed the torn half.
‘Noon tomorrow.’ She reached up and tweaked his unshaven cheek savagely. ‘And you know what? I like you. Something about your smell. Tell me where she is, where I can find her tomorrow, without her knowing, and there’ll be another fifty in it.’
‘I’ll be ’ere,’ he spat, eyes red with resentment. ‘Anyway, who’d want an old scrubber like you? Even for free?’
They did not return to their hotel, they didn’t dare take the risk on any hotel, not if Devereux and his Establishment were already searching for her. She had slipped away too often and wouldn’t be allowed another chance. In any event sleep was beyond them, carried by a surging tide that swept aside exhaustion and lifted them off their rock of doubt.
They sought refuge in an all-night café where, beneath strip lights and a vapour cloud of cooking fat, they drank coffee and soup and watched as the bleary-eyed owner abused with uninhibited Serbian partiality the patrons he decided were chemically, alcoholically or socially unfit to grace his meagre table. The night was punctuated by frequent rows and bouts of cursing as unwanted visitors were dispatched as promptly as they had arrived back onto the freezing streets, the splintered glass door bearing witness to the fact that more than abuse was occasionally hurled back by those he had offended. Strips of tape stretched across the damage, crudely disguised as a Christmas star. But at least it was warm, and she rather liked the chorba cabbage soup.
‘How did it happen?’ she asked.
They had been talking for several hours, exchanging verbal snapshots of their earlier lives, allowing the other to touch and share the moments and memories upon which a man or woman is built. And which sometimes cause them to crumble.
‘It was my first week at university. I’d bought myself a Norton, 500cc of chromed mechanical beast. To celebrate. And to pull the girls. Damn successful, too, even in the first week.’ He smiled mischievously. ‘Until I was so busy enchanting a rather wonderful classics student named Anna through the university park that I completely missed the bend. Ended up wrapping the bike around a maple, front and back ends of both me and my beast meeting around the other side of the tree. The Norton was a write-off but they were able to glue me back together, over time. Took them several attempts at getting my leg right and I spent the next two years on painkillers.’