‘Back to basics. Your Dad always said. .’ Valentine bit his lip, because he’d always been careful never to use that line. ‘Just making sure we’ve got everything we need on Osbourne before we do the interview. If I strike lucky, I’ll shout.’ Valentine cut the line. The sudden complexity of the inquiry made him feel weary, and his shoes scuffed the dry pavements as he headed south again, towards the towering medieval bulk of the London Gate.
Traffic here, along the main road, was intermittent, whereas during the day the cars and lorries were always bumper-to-bumper, spewing blue exhaust into the street. He cut down a side street to the
He bent his head back, looking up, annoyed to discover he’d forgotten that the ceiling of the pub was decorated with a huge jigsaw depicting an Indian maze — the garden of a maharajah’s palace, paths interlocking, incredibly complex, the 3D world reduced to a 2D design. A puzzle. A riddle. One of the things he liked about the pub was its unselfconscious eccentricity. But why put jigsaws on ceilings? The second pint settled his mind. He left quickly, calling goodbye to the unseen landlord serving in the other bar.
Crossing back over the London Road he plunged into a network of small terraced streets which ran down to the river. The town’s red light district was a thriving community. Vice crackdowns in Peterborough and the East Midlands had encouraged increasing numbers of punters to drive down the A37 to satisfy their needs. For a year, eighteen months, St James’ had left well alone. But pressure was building for a clear out. Prostitution was encouraging the drugs trade, and social services were struggling to deal with the knock-on effects of addiction and violence. A coordinated operation between four constabularies was planned for late September. But for now, on a late summer’s night in Lynn, it was business as usual for the oldest profession.
He turned into Leopold Street, past the imposing facade of the old Central Methodist Church, and was relieved to see two girls halfway down the street outside The Abbey, a corner pub which held illegal dog fights in the yard at the back. Valentine’s blakeys clattered on the pavement as he walked, counting the upstairs bedroom lights that were lit: eighteen out of twenty, not bad for 9 p.m. on an August evening. The windows were open and he caught the authentic soundtrack of a world where you could buy affection: a match striking, a bed creaking, and a woman pretending to laugh.
The girls on the street didn’t move. The younger one asked for a cigarette and he gave her one of his Silk Cuts, prolonging the moment of his own anonymity, and unable to deny the slight thrill this gave him. She was a teenager, in a black plastic skirt and stockings, a blouse open to reveal a pale cleavage. Underage? Maybe. Valentine looked at her hands because he always found that crime seemed to leave its mark on the fingers. Hers were very clean, the nails painted neatly and unbitten. An innocent’s hands. An innocent in fishnet stockings.
Her friend was in her thirties, expertly perched on four inch heels, her handbag reinforced with heavy-duty clasps and a lock. She said she might as well have a smoke too, and took a Silk Cut. The two girls lit up from the same lighter, eyes shut, looks of bliss, and Valentine knew what they were thinking — that this would be the best moment of the evening, because there was a genuine emotion here, in this small communion.
He held his warrant card out, eye-level, in front of the woman on heels. ‘Fuck,’ she said, rocking back, so that he shoulders fell against the brick wall. ‘What?’ she asked, screwing a heel down on the Silk Cut, and looking over Valentine’s shoulder.
He’d memorized the note in records. A Thursday night. June 14, 1996, the corner of Tilden Street. A police caution issued to Joe Osbourne, of No. 5, The Circle, Creake.
‘Relax,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for someone. Name’s Goodchild, Naomi. She’d be in her late thirties by now, so maybe she doesn’t work anymore. She’s not in trouble. Just routine.’
They didn’t look impressed, but Valentine spotted a covert glance. ‘What’s it worth?’ asked the teenager, and Valentine spotted a Northern accent, suburban, middle-class. Manchester, perhaps.
‘It’s worth me not walking back to the nick and looking at missing persons. Worth me not taking you back with me to help look. Worth me not locking you up while I look. That do yer?’
She swore in his face, but there was just an edge of anxiety to the bravado, so that her voice caught, although she tried to cover it with a cough.
Behind him Valentine heard footsteps and he turned to see three men, all in their forties, all in shirts, no jackets, coming down the street. Classic long-distance punters, he thought. They’ve come in one car and parked it on the good side of town. They’d have left their IDs, wallets, rings and phones in the boot. Then they’d set out to find girls, with one of them holding the cash, probably in a body belt. He wondered who’d they’d left at home, and what story they’d concocted. A pub-crawl, perhaps. They wore one shared, mutual, overconfident smile.
‘Look,’ said the girl in heels. ‘We need a trick — OK? It’s a quiet night. They see that warrant card, it’s getting quieter.’
The men had stopped mid-street, waiting to see which of the girls walked off with Valentine.
‘Naomi Goodchild’s well past working,’ said the older woman. ‘But try the house next to the church, the one with the steel door.’ She nodded over Valentine’s shoulder, down the street, towards All Saints.
At the foot of the street Valentine paused and, looking back, saw the men and girls in a single ring, chatting, laughing. For the first time he recognized them as hunter and hunted. He thought about going back and taking the Manchester girl down to the station anyway, but he told himself he’d given his word, as if that mattered in her world, or his.
He was on the edge of an estate, built in the fifties, in egg-box brutal blocks. At the centre was an open space, the ancient graveyard of All Saints, and what was left of the medieval church itself, minus a tower which had tumbled in the seventeenth century. Beyond was another street of terraced red-bricks, two-up, two-downs. The first in the row didn’t only have a steel door; it had steel windows too. The whole house sealed off from vandals. But there were three neat council black bins in the front garden and a wheelie-bin set out on the pavement.
The door gave at the pressure of his knock and swung in, revealing a hallway with a new blue carpet and a hundred-watt shadeless bulb. Maybe it was the stark light that made the woman standing under it look so old. Perhaps
‘I can’t help.’
‘Haven’t asked for help yet,’ said Valentine, stepping in, but leaving the steel door open.
‘Just saving you time,’ she said.
‘Security’s good,’ he said.
‘House was derelict,’ she said. ‘Now it’s full.’
‘I wanted to know if you remembered anything about a man — a customer — called Joe Osbourne. Fourteen years ago you had an argument with him in the street about the price. Cautions all round.’
‘You’re in my way,’ she said.
Valentine stood aside. As she squeezed past she paused and looked him in the face.
‘I haven’t seen Joe since,’ she said. ‘You’re wasting your breath.’
But he wasn’t, because if she’d remembered Joe Osbourne after all that time he hadn’t been a fleeting client, a one-nighter. Which begged the question: what had he been?
‘Joe was a regular?’ he asked.
‘Maybe.’
‘Why remember Joe?’
‘He said he loved me. He said it because he wanted to be loved. Not because he meant it. It happens.’
Valentine was astonished to see tears on her face, two of them, one under each eye, catching the orange street lights like a pair of cheap beads.
‘Christ,’ she said.
‘But he still wanted sex?’
She glared at him, and for the first time he saw her eyes were blue, like the felt on a cheap pool table.
‘He didn’t want me to see other clients. And he couldn’t pay for that. I was saving to get out, off the streets. You stay, you never leave.’
‘But why the fight in the street?’ asked Valentine.
