getting as much as they needed. “Let’s go and see her,” he said.
Spike moaned and shook his head.
Thorne stood and stepped across to him. He raised Spike’s hand, lifted it until it was over the table, and squeezed until the burned-out nub end dropped into an ashtray.
“Where exactly are you from?” Stone asked.
The barman turned from restocking an optic. “Wellington.”
“Have you got some identification on you?”
The barman sighed, started rooting around for his wallet. “I’ve got credit cards…”
Stone took another glance at the photo he was carrying with him, a composite of the original Ryan Eales photo and the digitally aged version. He looked back at the man behind the bar. “Forget it, mate. It’s okay…”
He walked back to where Mackillop was sitting. The woman next to him, who’d called to say that the man behind the bar of her local pub might well be the one they were after, looked up eagerly.
“He’s fifteen years too young and he’s from New Zealand,” Stone said. “He’s got a bloody accent.”
The woman, fifteen years older than she wanted to be, and from Hounslow, was less than delighted. “I never said I’d spoken to him, did I?” She sat there for a few seconds more, then snatched up her handbag. “I suppose I’m buying myself a drink, then…”
Mackillop and Stone watched her at the bar. “We could get something to eat ourselves while we’re in here,” Mackillop said. “It’s near enough lunchtime.”
Stone looked at his watch and stood up. “Actually, I’m meeting someone for lunch, so I think we’re better off splitting up for an hour or so.”
Mackillop looked thrown. “Right…”
“If we do Finchley next, you can drop me off in Willesden on the way and I’ll meet you there.”
“Fair enough.” He followed Stone toward the door. Lewisham, the other location on their list, would have been closer, but Mackillop wasn’t going to argue. Especially when it dawned on him exactly how Stone was planning to spend his lunch hour.
They grabbed cold drinks and a paper from a newsagent’s, then walked across the road to a small pay- and-display behind a branch of Budgens. “Fucking New Zealand,” Stone said.
He hung up his jacket in the back of the car, then turned on Capital Gold while Mackillop waited for his chance to nose the Volvo into traffic. “So, you spend an hour or so in a caff or something?”
“I might just grab a sandwich,” Mackillop said.
“Whatever. I’ll meet you outside the Finchley address, two o’clockish. Maybe just after.”
“How are you going to get there from Willesden?”
“I’ll call a cab,” Stone said.
“Straight up the North Circular, I would have thought. Piece of piss this time of day.”
They drove along the London road through Brentford and turned north along the edge of Gunnersbury Park.
Stone sang along to an Eric Clapton track, put finger and thumb together as if holding a plectrum during the guitar break. “If you get there before me, just park up and wait,” he said. “I’ll call to find out where you are.”
Mackillop tried his best to keep a straight face. “Wouldn’t it be simpler if I just tagged along to your lunch meeting?”
“You can fuck right off,” Stone said. “Mind you, she’d probably be up for it.”
THIRTY-ONE
Thorne sprang for a couple of tube tickets and he and Spike traveled the half a dozen stops to Camden Town. Spike was asleep, or as good as, most of the way, while Thorne was stared at by a young mother who hissed at her two kids and made sure they stayed close by her. When they stood to get off, the woman smiled at him, but Thorne saw her arms tighten around her children’s waists.
Spike dragged his feet and was easily distracted as they walked along Camden Road toward the overground station. He stopped to peer into the windows of shops or talk to strangers, few of whom seemed fazed at being drawn into conversations with a junkie and a tramp. As places in the capital went, Camden was pretty much a one-off.
Despite Thorne’s efforts to urge him forward, Spike sat down next to someone he actually knew, who was begging outside the huge Sainsbury’s. Thorne stepped away from them and stared at his reflection in the glass of the automatic doors. His hair and beard were surely growing at a much faster rate than they normally did. He wondered if it was anything to do with exposure to air, fresh or otherwise. Though the bruises had faded, so had the rest of his face. The marks were still visible against the skin, like ancient tea stains that stubbornly refused to shift from a pale, cotton tablecloth. He inched across until he was right in the middle of the doors; until he could enjoy himself being split down the middle whenever anyone walked in or out.
A security guard was eyeing him with intent, so Thorne decided to save him the trouble. He moved away and yanked Spike up by the collar of his jacket. Spike’s friend moved to get to his feet, caught Thorne’s eye, and lowered himself to the pavement again.
Thorne wrapped an arm around Spike’s skinny shoulders. “Time to go and see Caroline,” he said.
They walked farther away from the high street and the market, minutes from Thorne’s own flat in Kentish Town. Halfway between the million-pound houses of Camden Square and the more modest accommodations of Holloway Prison, they stopped. Spike shook his head, like he was about to have teeth removed, and pointed toward an ugly, three-story block set back from the main road.
“Up there,” he said.
They stared across at the green front doors for a minute or two; at the brown balconies and multicolored washing strung from their railings. “Do you want me to wait here?” Thorne asked.
“Wait here for what?”
Thorne was starting to run out of patience with Spike’s sulky attitude; with the drug and with the hunger for it. He wanted to grab him and tell him to get up to his dealer’s flat and do something. To pull Caroline out of there, or smash the place up, or get down on his knees and thank the poxy shitbag who was fucking his girlfriend so they could get a bit higher for that much longer. Anything…
“I don’t know,” he said.
Spike leaned against a parking meter. His breathing was noisy; cracked and wheezy. “You could maybe come up, stand at the end of the corridor or something.”
“Come on, then…”
They moved across the road like old men, with Spike talking to himself, then spitting at an Astra whose driver had leaned on his horn, furious at being forced to brake. At the base of the low-rise building, on a small square of dogshit-and-dandelion paving, a kid on a skateboard looked at Spike as if he’d seen him before and Spike looked back.
As they entered the pungent cool of the stairwell Thorne looked round, watched the boy pull out a mobile phone as he kicked his board away.
“It’s always handy to know when someone’s coming,” Spike said. “The little fucker gets enough cash to keep him in football stickers.” He smacked his palms slowly against the blistered handrail as he led Thorne up to the top floor. “Everyone’s got some sort of habit, like. ..”
Climbing, Thorne watched Spike trying, in cackhanded slow motion, to smarten himself up. He messed with his hair and stopped to tighten the laces in his trainers. He straightened his jacket and tucked in his T-shirt, and as they emerged onto a concrete walkway Thorne was still wondering who the effort was being made for.
A door opened, two or three from the end of the corridor, sixty feet away. A man stepped out: thirty or so, short, with dark hair and stubble. He was wearing sandals, and creased gray trousers below a polo shirt.
Spike stopped and waved. The man in the doorway raised up his chin.
“That’s Mickey,” Spike said. “He’s from Malta, so he’s got brown balls…”
Thorne watched the man take a step forward so that he could look down over the balcony.
Spike leaned in with a grin, spelled out the joke loud enough for the man by the door to hear. “He’s a
