take serious issue . . .’
He doesn’t finish the statement but the steel in his voice seems to stiffen his resolve. Marching to the door, he turns and says, ‘I have a staff meeting to attend, Professor. If you have any more questions I suggest you put them in writing to the school governors.’
When I cross the river, I don’t turn on to Wells Road but continue along the south bank until I reach Lower Bristol Road. Keeping to the inside lane, I drive slowly and try to pick out the signs on the cross streets.
Danny Gardiner said he dropped Sienna on the corner of Riverside Road and Lower Bristol Road. I pull up a little past the intersection, parking in the forecourt of a used-car dealership. A balmy wind, smelling of the river, sends litter swirling in the gutters.
There are shops and businesses on both sides of the road - a video store, a fish and chip shop, a British Gas showroom, a hairdresser, a florist, sex shop, a minicab office and an off-licence. According to Danny Gardiner this was the first time he’d ever dropped Sienna here.
‘Spare some change, guv?’
A stick-thin black man in a woollen hat holds out his hand with a fingerless glove. Nearby is a shopping trolley of his possessions. I fumble in my pocket. Find a pound. He looks at the coin as though it’s an ancient artefact.
‘You lost?’ he asks.
‘No.’
‘You have a good day.’
‘You too.’
Stepping around his shopping trolley, I push open the door of the hair salon. A young woman in her mid- thirties is washing a customer’s hair in a sink.
‘Excuse me.’
‘What do want, petal? I don’t do men’s hair.’
Moving closer, I show her a passport-sized photograph of Sienna. I’ve folded the strip of images so that only one is showing.
‘Have you seen this girl?’
She dries her hands on a towel and studies it for a moment.
‘Who is she?’
‘A friend of my daughter’s.’
‘Is she missing?’
‘She’s in trouble. Do you work on Tuesdays? She was here a couple of weeks ago - about six o’clock, wearing a black dress.’
The hairdresser shakes her head. ‘Don’t remember her.’
‘Thanks anyway.’
I step outside. The flags are snapping above the car dealership. Next door at the florist shop, a dark-haired woman in jeans and a flannel shirt is moving buckets of flowers, arranging them to best effect. I show her Sienna’s photograph but she says that she closes early on Tuesdays.
‘Maybe you’ve seen her on other days?’
‘I don’t think so,’ she says, looking at me suspiciously.
I move from business to business, hoping somebody might remember Sienna. She looked quite striking in her flapper dress, still wearing her stage make-up. The sex shop is closed up, barricaded behind metal shutters. A sign says it opens late, seven days a week.
Next comes the minicab office on the corner, which is little more than a waiting room with half a dozen plastic chairs and a control booth behind a plywood partition and small glass window. A woman is waiting. Dressed in a long overcoat and high-heel shoes, she’s young. Pretty. She’s wearing too much make-up and has lipstick on her teeth.
The controller is on the phone. Morbidly obese, he has three chins and has to sit two feet from the desk to accommodate his stomach.
He meets my gaze. Keeps talking.
‘. . . yeah, the skinny faggot wanted three-to-one . . . yeah . . . fucking dreaming, I told him so . . . yeah . . .’
He screws a finger into his opposite ear and examines his fingertip.
‘. . . that’s my point, Gaz, you can’t trust the fuckers . . . you got to show them who’s boss, you know . . . otherwise someone’s gonna get seriously fucked up . . . later, Gaz.’
He hangs up. Talks on the two-way radio.
‘. . . yeah, Stevo, it was George Street . . . number eighteen . . . bottom buzzer.’
The controller looks past me at the young woman. ‘Five minutes, love.’ His gaze lingers on her short skirt and her rangy legs. I can almost smell his torpid lust.
Finally, he turns to me and we reciprocally decide to hate each other.
‘I’m looking for this girl. You might have seen her a couple of weeks ago. Tuesday, late afternoon.’
I slide the photograph through a gap in the glass security screen. The controller holds the photograph up to the light like he’s looking at a high-denomination banknote.
‘Who is she?’
‘A friend of mine. I’m trying to help her.’
‘A friend? How are you trying to help her?’
‘She’s in trouble. Have you seen her?’
I want to take the photograph back. I don’t want him touching it.
‘Can’t say I have,’ he wheezes. ‘But if you leave it with me I’ll ask some of the drivers.’ He pushes a scrap of paper towards me. ‘Jot down your name and number. I’ll call you if I come up with anything.
‘I can’t leave it with you. I don’t have any more photos of her.’
The obese controller has unfolded the strip of shots and now he’s studying the pictures of Charlie and Sienna together. He runs his thumb over Charlie’s face.
‘So who’s this other girlie?’
‘Nobody important.’
A smile extends across his face. ‘I’m sure that
‘Just give it back to me.’
Again that same predatory leer. Pinching the strip of photographs between his thumb and forefinger, he extends his arm towards me. I have to tug it once, twice, three times before he lets it go.
A car pulls up outside, the engine running.
‘That’s your car, love,’ says the controller.
The woman rises and straightens a skirt beneath her coat, checking out her reflection in the darkened front window. I hold the door open for her but she doesn’t acknowledge me. It’s as though she’s trying hard
The minicab driver gets out of the car and opens the door for her. He’s wearing jeans and a long-sleeved T- shirt with a slogan on the back: ‘Happy Hour - Half-Price Sex’.
When he turns I can see his pale, narrow face and the tattoos running down his cheeks like black tears dripping from his chemical green eyes. It’s the same man I saw standing outside the restaurant when I had lunch with Julianne.
The minicab controller interrupts my thoughts. ‘He’s got a photograph. He’s looking for a girl.’
The driver doesn’t answer, but takes a step towards me. Every instinct tells me not to show him Sienna’s photograph, but he takes it from me, cocking his head to one side and studying the image as though committing her face, her hair, her budding body to memory.
Then slowly he raises his face to mine. I can smell his aftershave and something else, lurking beneath.
‘What’s this girl to you?’
‘It’s not important.’
‘Really? Try me.’
‘No, that’s OK.’
I reach out for the photograph.
‘Maybe you should leave this with us,’ he says. ‘I’ll keep an eye out for her.’
