‘Like you said, people disappear…’
‘Yeah, I know. I know. People disappear all the time, especially teenage crackheads, but with this frequency? And we know one met a violent end, and one of the others was assaulted during an attempted abduction just a matter of days ago, something I was witness to. And now we’ve got this thing where the evidence against the suspect in the murder – the shirt – is linked to one of the missing girls.’
‘I wouldn’t read too much into that, Dennis. Giving the shirt away to someone who’s not around to deny it is just an easy excuse for Wells to use.’
‘Has anyone been trying to find her?’
‘Who? Molly Hagger? Not that I’m aware of. But if you’re concerned, you should be talking to Knox, not me. Why don’t you see what he has to say about it?’
‘Because I know what he’ll say, Asif. That we’ve got a man in custody, that there’s no evidence for extending the inquiry further…’
‘And he’d have a point, wouldn’t he? You’re right, it all seems a bit coincidental, but what can we do about it? On Hagger and the other girl, there’s no evidence that anything untoward’s happened, and, as you say, they’re not the sort of girls whose disappearance is going to cause anyone any surprises.’
‘I just wanted to run it by you. See what you thought.’
‘And I appreciate you thinking of me. What I’d say is this. It’s strange, but strange is all. Maybe you ought to keep your ear to the ground and see how things pan out, maybe have a few words with some of the street girls, but I wouldn’t worry about it too much yet. There’s plenty of other things to concern yourself with, and you shouldn’t be thinking about them anyway. You ought to be in bed resting and getting yourself well so you can come back here and help us out.’
But I’d never be going back to help them out. I’d miss Malik, even if he had started calling me Dennis and dispensing advice just a little bit too readily. He was a good copper, though, and the thought that perhaps I had played a small part in getting him that way felt good. I told him he’d be doing me a favour if he could keep his ears open for any relevant developments among the King’s Cross whores, and he told me he would. I thanked him, said that I’d see him shortly, promised him t I’d get to bed straight away and take it easy, then rang off.
But I didn’t go to bed. Instead, I spent the rest of the day mulling over my plans and making preparations; occasionally phoning Danny’s mobile, always without success; sometimes stopping to look out of the window at the iron-grey sky and pondering the fates of Molly Hagger and Anne Taylor; wondering what secrets Miriam Fox had taken to her grave.
And all the time something was bothering me, and I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Something I’d missed; something that flickered and danced round the recesses of my memory like the shadows of a flame, irritating me because it was important in some ill-defined way but I was unable to coax it out, however hard I tried.
And as darkness fell on my last night as a serving police officer, and the rain the forecasters had warned us about finally swept in from the west, I realized I was still just as ignorant of what had happened in the Miriam Fox murder case as I had been on the morning I’d first stared down at her bloodstained body.
29
I phoned a minicab to take me down to the Gallan Club, and it got me there at about a quarter to eight. It was raining steadily and, though not as cold as the previous night, there was still a bite in the air.
I’d never been to the Gallan before, even though it was only about half a mile from where I lived. I’d walked past it plenty of times though, most notably the previous day when they’d had a blackboard outside saying that tonight was contemporary poets night. It wasn’t really my cup of tea, but I suppose it made a change from sitting around in the pub. It was quiz night at the Chinaman as well, and it would be the first time I’d missed it for non-work reasons for as long as I could remember.
The interior of the Gallan was small and dimly lit. The stage, empty when I walked in, was at the end furthest from the door, while the rest of the floor space was taken up by evenly clustered round tables. A bar on the left-hand side ran the length of the room. All of the tables were occupied, and a small crowd milled about the bar. Most of those present were the type of people you’d expect at a poetry evening where the headline act was someone called Maiden Faith Ararngard: fresh-faced students in long coats, sipping delicately at their beers; a group of eco-warriors with an overabundance of piercings and pantomime clothes; and a few older intellectual types who looked as though they spent every waking hour in the hunt for hidden meanings to pointless questions.
I’d half expected this type of line-up and had dressed down as far as my wardrobe would allow so that I didn’t look too much out of place. It hadn’t worked. Faded jeans and a sweatshirt with a hole in the elbow were never going to blend me in with this crowd, although at least I was pretty much guaranteed there’d be no undercover coppers in here. Like me, they’d have stuck out a mile.
Carla hadn’t arrived, so I went to the
