Winston checked out the surrounding roads, but they were equally deserted. Where the hell is everyone? He was on the brink of giving up when he remembered an underground car park that some of the girls used, not far from Brick Lane. He recalled Tracey telling Sandra that in bad weather she occasionally took clients there for a quick knee-trembler or a blow job in the darkness.
Winston gunned the car along Jerome Street, swung right into Calvin Street and then left into Grey Eagle Street. Within moments he spotted the place that she had been talking about and turned in, driving down the ramp at a crawl. At the bottom, he paused to take in his surroundings.
The underground car park was seven feet tall, fifty feet wide and one hundred and fifty feet long. Almost all the overhead lighting was out; the lights that did work were set to dim, making the cavernous space seem dark and foreboding. A few cars were randomly parked near the up ramp on the other side, but most of the spaces were empty. At first glance, the place appeared deserted, but Winston decided to do a slow drive through and check behind the evenly spaced lines of concrete support pillars. He wound down his front windows and nudged the car forward slowly.
He spotted a sudden movement up ahead as two figures slid behind a pillar on the other side of the car park by the exit ramp. Adrenalin kicked in and Winston floored the gas pedal, making the car rocket forward. He flipped the main beam on and the car park was bathed in harsh white light. The two figures locked in an embrace disengaged violently. The larger of the two, hitching his trousers up as he went, took off up the exit ramp like an Olympic sprinter. The smaller of the two stepped into the light, shielding her eyes with one hand and pulling her skirt down with the other.
It wasn’t Tracey.
◆◆◆
The control car was secreted in a tiny cul-de-sac behind the multi-level car park in Whites Row. It had been parked there for several minutes now, its frustrated occupants animatedly discussing what they could do to recover the situation.
When Copeland had initially announced the loss over the radio, five-minutes ago, the bad news had hit Tyler like a kick in the proverbials. Trying not to let his disappointment get the better of him, he had immediately ordered everyone to do a quick sweep of the area on the off chance that Claude Winston was still nearby. If that failed – and it had – they were all to regroup in Whites Row.
Predictably, the last car to arrive was Copeland and White’s, and as the two men got out and approached the control car on foot, it was clear that they were both acutely embarrassed. Charlie White, who had been driving, displayed all the enthusiasm of a man walking to the gallows. “It’s no’ fair, boss,” he whined as soon as Tyler opened his door to get out. “We were watching like hawks, but we didnae stand a chance of seeing him move off after that accident happened right in front of us, especially as the two wee blockheads involved got out and started punching shite out of each other.”
“It’s alright,” Jack said, cutting White’s tale of woe off before the violins and hankies came out. “We lost him ourselves earlier, but luckily Kevin’s car picked him up.”
That made Copeland and White feel marginally less like abject failures, but it did nothing to ease their guilt, and every few seconds one or the other would mutter another apology to someone in the team until Dillon became bored with it and told them to shut up and stop trying to out-apologise each other.
“Sorry,” they said in unison.
“I’m gonna punch the next fucker who says sorry,” Dillon warned, waving a ham-sized fist at them.
With everyone gathered around him, Tyler spread a map out on the bonnet of the Omega and asked Bartholomew to indicate the local hot spot for sex workers. Using a pen, he quartered the area Nick highlighted and dispatched one car to each sector with orders to patrol it for the next hour. In response to their disgruntled groans, he promised that if they hadn’t reacquired Winston by then he would accept defeat. If nothing else, he told them, they had confirmed Winston was still using the flat, and while he would have preferred to make an arrest tonight, at least he now had grounds for getting a properly resourced surveillance operation up and running.
Despite his sterling pep talk, the troops looked demoralised as they returned to their respective cars, and Jack could hardly blame them; reacquiring Winston earlier had used up a shed load of luck, and they all knew it. Surely, they couldn’t hope to be that lucky again?
Could they?
◆◆◆
A few streets away, Winston pulled up outside Christ Church of Spitalfields. Built by Nicholas Hawksmore in 1714, the old church was steeped in local history. Its cramped cemetery was full of decaying tombstones bearing the faded names of the French Huguenots who populated the area at the time. During daylight hours the site was popular with aspiring scholars. At night, junkies and whores held the monopoly. Perhaps Tracey was in there right now, bent over a headstone while some city gent shafted her from behind. He decided to give it a few minutes and see if she came out.
While he waited, he studied the motley collection of undesirables gathered outside the crypt, brandishing their cans of extra strong as though they were the latest fashion accessories. With his customary cynicism, Winston surmised there must be a free soup kitchen inside; there was no way this lot had gathered to pray. He snorted in disgust; these wasters really knew how to milk the system. What incentive was there for them to work while they could scavenge all the
