halfway between West Harrow and Harrow on the Hill, set in a concrete housing development built in the sixties, complete with a small, built-in shopping precinct. The pub was at the end of a row of shops including a laundromat, a convenience store, an off-licence and a chemist. Three floors of council flats rose above the shops and pub, and were echoed on the opposite side of the street by four floors of similarly grey, utilitarian boxes. The Labour government's vision of utopian, urban living on the architect's drawing board may well have looked like a sunny vision of an ideal future; but whereas his green ink had imagined trees and benches and contented people, the stark concrete reality was inked in far more abrasive colours. The graffiti, though distinctly urban, certainly wasn't art, and couldn't be considered political, unless 'Jane fucks Ted' counted. You could lay money on the fact that the romantic dauber wasn't referring to Edward Heath and Jane Fonda.
It was raining. The kind of constant, wind-blown, swirling, miserable rain that clogged up drains and sewers, and it went with the soulless, plastic signboards above chain-link shutters, the sick, yellow light that leaked from the street lamps, and the garbage that floated on the street like rats go with sewage, or pigeons go with shit.
Half past eight on a cold November's night and the reality of the place was as far removed from the architect's sunny vision as Sean 'The Coat' Norrell was from a working grasp of quantum physics.
Inside the Hunter's Moon, the smoke hung heavy in the air, like a pale cloud. The lino on the floor was colourless and faded, but had once been red, presumably to hide bloodstains. The lights behind the bar were bright, though, as were the coloured lights in the jukebox that was pumping 'Float On' through crackling speakers that, like the rumpled person standing at the bar, had long since seen better days. He was a long-haired, fifty-year-old man with a knee-length, black leather coat. He scowled as he ran filthy, dirt-stained fingers through his greasy locks of hair and winked at the barmaid as he sang along with the record. He cupped his crotch with the other hand and bucked his hips forward in a crude, suggestive motion.
The barmaid had been in the job for well over thirty years and hadn't been impressed by much in the last twenty-nine years of it. Her low-cut top revealed a chest as smooth as corrugated cardboard, and her rasping voice held as much affection as a wheel clamp. 'I wouldn't touch your fucking cock, Sean, if I was wearing asbestos gloves.'
Norrell leered at her and gave a final thrust. 'Your loss, darling.'
'Sit down, and shut the fuck up, Norrell,' came a voice beside him.
Sean Norrell turned to say something but, when he saw who was standing next to him, the words died on his lips. He nodded a deferential smile and sat back on his stool, fumbling a cigarette nervously from a stained packet. He took a sip of his lager and scowled. Harp, thirty-two pence a pint now and it still tasted like cat's piss.
The man stood next to him was dressed in denim jeans, with a denim jacket, short blond hair and piercing, blue eyes. Mickey Ryan, thirty years old with a heart as cold as a Norwegian whore working al fresco. He looked at Norrell now with the kind of approval usually reserved for faecal matter discovered on footwear.
'You got my money?'
'It's in hand.'
Ryan's voice was level, dispassionate as he leaned down and glared in his eyes. 'Your dick will be in my left hand and I'll cut your fucking balls off with a rusty knife you haven't got it by Friday.' The barmaid smiled, approvingly.
'You take my gear you pay me for it.'
'I'm good for it, Mickey. You know that,' Norrell muttered.
But Mickey had already turned back to the barmaid. 'Double vodka.'
She fluttered her spider-leg eyelashes at him and
