However, DI Hill didn’t seem to be that sort of person, nor did DCI Cook. She had done some checking, found out that Larry Hill was a man who could mix it with the less desirable, and that Wendy Gladstone was the best there was, diligent, never giving up, able to find people who didn’t want to be found.
As for her, Gwen knew that the police force was where she wanted to be, not as a constable in uniform, but as a chief inspector, a superintendent in time. She intended to fast track the process, and if the occasional chauvinist got in her way, she’d deal with them through charm, professionalism, and sheer hard work, and if they still persisted she’d complain about discrimination and sexist behaviour. Behind the agreeable exterior beat a determined and indefatigable heart.
Notting Hill was a good starting point for their renewed search, even though Kensal Green was the focus. After all, Holland Park was near to Notting Hill, and that was the first place where Analyn had been seen.
Larry laid out the plan after he finished his breakfast. ‘Gwen, stay around the house where Naughton and Analyn were, ask questions on the street, show the photo. Wendy, ask in the pubs, the shops. As for me, I’ve got a few people to meet with, some not polite company.’
‘Criminals?’ Gwen asked.
‘Businessmen, they’d tell you if asked, but yes, the usual riff-raff.’
Gwen would prefer to meet with Larry’s people, real policing, rather than showing a photo.
Outside the café, even though it was early, the locals were heading to Notting Hill Gate Station, the tourists starting to flow in, looking in each and every window, others going to Westbourne Park Road to get a selfie outside the blue door made famous in the movie Notting Hill, some even having the temerity to knock on the door, hopeful of an invite in, not realising that behind it wasn’t a rundown house, but an upmarket residence.
Larry was the first to leave. His car was parked around the corner, not far from his first meeting. Gus Vincent, a local man of limited means and a schoolteacher’s pension, had been born and bred in the area. He was in his late sixties, with a grey goatee beard, a bald head, and wiry thin. Naturally slim he would say, but Larry knew about the man’s incessant drug-taking. Not heroin – not for me, not the hard stuff, he would say – but anything else he was game for: ganja, speed, ecstasy, cocaine if he could get it, and his hand-rolled cigarettes contained more than tobacco.
He was a walking advert for keeping away from drugs; a man who would be dead before his time, although Larry liked him. Charismatic, well-spoken, educated and articulate, Vincent lived in a depressing block of council flats, not far from Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, where seventy-two people had died in a fire caused by a malfunctioning fridge-freezer on the fourth floor. Vincent’s building was of the same era and similar construction.
There was no question that what had happened at Grenfell could happen elsewhere, and council regulations had been tightening up, not only on council-owned properties but on the owner-occupied and those with absentee landlords.
A teacher in his younger years, Gus Vincent had taught the young Isaac Cook and more than a fair share of the criminals in the area.
Larry knocked on the man’s door. Inside, Gus Vincent shook his hand warmly; Larry dashing to open a window as soon as his hand was released.
‘Sorry, Gus, I don’t want to leave here high as a kite.’
‘Look at me, not a day sick in ten years.’
‘Impossible for any germ or infection to survive,’ Larry said.
Vincent went into the kitchenette – too small to call it anything else. He pushed a cat that was sitting on a cushion on the kitchen top to one side, squeezed the kettle between the tap and the unwashed dishes in the sink. ‘You’ll have a cup of tea,’ he said.
‘If it’s only tea.’
‘English Breakfast, none better.’
Outside the window, the burnt-out tower loomed.
‘Some of them want to go back,’ Vincent said.
‘How about you? Willing to stay here?’
‘My needs are few. If not here, then I’ll sleep on the street.’ Which would not happen, Larry knew.
The most successful of the gang leaders, Spanish John, on account of his having been born in Spanish Town, the former capital of Jamaica, owed his success to Gus Vincent, the man who had recognised his intelligence and had given him extra tuition.
Not that it led Spanish John to get a job in an office, to become an accountant or a solicitor. However, it had helped him to use his intellect to wrest control of his gang and the lucrative ecstasy market.
Gus Vincent had a benefactor, disreputable, but still a man who would not let his teacher be without a roof over his head, some food in his belly, a ready supply of narcotics.
‘I’ve got a photo,’ Larry said, handing it over to Vincent. ‘If you could take a look, tell me what you reckon.’
Vincent held it in his hand, moved over to the window where there was more light. ‘Asian,’ he said.
‘I need to find her.’
‘What do you expect me to do?’
‘Eyes and ears. She’s important.’
‘Not so many Asians around here, although you’ll find Thai women in the massage parlours, a happy ending if you pay extra, and there are others in rooms with fairy lights and soft music. But this woman,’ Vincent said
