‘That spliff you sent us. Interesting smoking mixture, must try it some time-tobacco and marijuana, half and half, with a garnish of cocaine. Prime sensimillia ganja, too, nothing cheap. Mr Murray has the right connections.’
‘Murray?’
‘The smoker. We’ve got his DNA on file. George Murray. Done for possession in a raid on a South London nightclub eight months ago.Charges dropped due to processing irregularities.We should have wiped the record. Oops.’
‘Do you have an address?’
‘Eighteen Cockpit Lane, SW9. Know it?’
Kathy did. She could picture the sign over the window, WELLINGTON’S UTENSILS EST. 1930.
She thanked him and then, more cautious this time, pressed the numbers for the second call, a mobile.
‘Martin Connell, hello?’
The voice still had that sonorous tone, which could be so skilfully adjusted to each occasion: a TV news soundbite, a judge, a former lover.Kathy waited a beat before revealing which one it was.
‘Hello, Martin.’
‘Kathy! It’s so good to hear your voice again. Seeing Bren Gurney the other day made me think of you. How are you?’
‘Fine.You?’
‘Yes, great.You know what I was thinking, while Gurney was going through all that nonsense?’ He said it as if he knew perfectly well that she’d been watching.‘I was thinking how really good it would be to see you again, have lunch, catch up.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I know, you’re frantically busy and we’re just old history. But we were important to each other once,and I think it’s wrong to lose contact completely with people who have been important in your life, don’t you? Christ, there aren’t that many of them when it comes right down to it. I don’t suppose you heard about Daniel?’
It took a second for Kathy to remember.‘Your brother?’
‘That’s right.We buried him last month. His heart packed in, just like that. It was a hell of a shock-makes you stop and think, Kathy.’
‘I’m very sorry.’ She’d never met Daniel, but she remembered the tone Martin’s voice took on whenever he spoke of his elder brother, a mixture of admiration, envy and intense frustration.
‘Well, anyway, maybe you’re a little curious, eh? To catch up?’
She laughed. He’d perfected that inveigling pitch at an early age, she’d once decided, to get whatever he fancied-his brother’s cricket bat or his mother’s undivided attention-and it still worked a treat with juries and impressionable younger women.
‘What do you really want, Martin?’
‘Just to buy you lunch, and talk to an old friend, and maybe pass on a little gossip for our mutual entertainment. How about tomorrow?’
She agreed. The key words were ‘pass on’. Martin was a messenger. And he was right, she was curious.
Within an hour the weather had turned bitterly cold again, dark clouds looming overhead. Kathy parked her car in a side street, pulled a woollen beanie down over her ears,turned up her coat collar and paced briskly towards Cockpit Lane. The market was deserted, the stalls stripped back to metal frames, cardboard boxes stacked ready for collection. There was a light showing in Winnie’s shop window and Kathy pushed open the door. The old woman heard the buzzer and emerged from the back,wiping her hands on a towel.
‘Hello, dear,’ cautiously.‘What can I do for you?’
‘Hello, Winnie. I wondered if George was around. There’s something I need to ask him.’
Winnie’s face fell.‘He’s not here. Maybe I can help you?’
‘I’d really like to speak to him. Any idea where I can find him?’
The woman’s brow creased like an old glove as she shook her head.‘He’s gone, he don’t work for me no more and I haven’t seen him in over a week.’
‘Oh?’
‘We had a row, a week ago last Saturday it was. I wanted him up early to get things ready for the market, but he was out till four or five o’clock the night before, doing goodness knows what. He said some wicked things and walked out. I haven’t seen him since. What is it you want to ask him? Is he in trouble?’
‘I don’t know.We got some reports that someone was watching us when we were digging up the railway bank, from across the other side, in one of the gardens. Whoever it was was smoking drugs, and now we’ve learned that it was George.’
Winnie nodded resignedly.‘Dat don’t surprise me.The drugs, I mean. He wasn’t even tryin’ to hide it from me no more. And it’s true, for over a month now he’s been disappearing for hours at
a time, just when I need him.’
‘Why would he spy on us? There wasn’t much to see.’
‘Once, when I asked him where he’d been, he said I wasn’t the only one prepared to pay for his services.’
‘Any idea who he’d be working for?’
The old lady shrugged as if to suggest the worst.‘All I can tell you is that one of my friends in the market said the other day that she’d seen him with some girl. Maybe he’s staying there. I don’t know. She lives over the laundrette in Cove Street, back of the tyre place, you know?’
Kathy knew very well from their abortive raids on Mr Teddy Vexx. She hurried back to her car and drove to Cove Street, then turned into the laneway that led past the tyre yard. From there she could see the back of the block of shops and laundrette. Stairs led to an open access gallery to the flats above. There were lights on in one and Kathy was about to get out when its front door opened and a young woman,heavily wrapped against the cold,manoeuvred a child’s pushchair out onto the deck.She reached back into the flat to turn the light off, then carefully locked the front door with three separate keys before pushing the chair towards the stairs. Kathy guessed that there was no one left in the flat, and stayed where she was as the girl struggled down the stairs. Kathy realised why it was such an effort when she emerged into the lane and Kathy saw that the pushchair was a double one,with a pair of little pink hats visible under the hood. Kathy locked her car and followed.
After a couple of blocks the woman slowed at a shopfront beside a bus stop. There was another struggle as someone on the inside opened both doors and helped lift the pushchair’s front wheels over the threshold. The sign stencilled on the front window read CAMBERWELL GUM CLINIC. Kathy continued walking towards it as the woman disappeared inside, and as she reached the front door it opened again and she saw into a room crowded with women. A smaller sign on the other window said GENITOURINARY MEDICINE.
Kathy guessed the woman was going to be there for a while,and picked up a paper at the corner shop before crossing to a cafe over the road, where she bought a mug of tea and a toasted sandwich.
An hour and a half later the girl re-emerged. As soon as she was out on the footpath she lit a cigarette and blew a great puff of relief into the frosty air, then headed off again along the street, turning eventually into a grim little park where she released the tiny twins to totter around on the soggy ground while she sat on a bench and lit another cigarette. Kathy checked the name of the place, Tallow Square, then followed the narrow road around the edge, convinced now that she was wasting her time. The sky was growing darker and more threatening by the minute, and she was on the point of turning back when she noticed parked ahead of her a car that she recognised, an electric-blue Peugeot convertible. It looked remarkably pristine and sleek among the battered dustbins and graffiti-covered walls on this more derelict side of the park, as did the glossy red BMW sports car behind it. At that moment a man stepped from the mouth of a lane midway between Kathy and the cars.
Kathy stopped dead, recognising George. The tree trunks behind her were as black as her coat, otherwise he would surely have noticed her. Instead, his attention was caught by the figures in the park. He gave a shout and trotted towards them, and at that moment the sky overhead flickered with light, followed almost immediately by a massive bang of thunder. Kathy came abreast of the lane from which George had appeared and caught an image of battered fences topped by barbed wire and a faded sign, REILLY’S USED CARS. She heard the savage howl of a dog, then the first heavy raindrops hit the ground.
She hadn’t noticed cameras, but she kept her head down, shoulders hunched,and continued past the
