I smiled. ‘That’s my weekend look.’
She went to smile and then it disappeared again, as if she’d reined it back in. She looked me up and down a second time, but didn’t say anything.
‘So, how long you on for today?’ I asked her.
‘Till seven.’
‘Looking forward to it.’
‘Like a hole in the head.’
I fiddled with my notepad. It was a new page. Blank. She walked behind the bar, and leaned across it, staring down at the pad.
‘Looks like an interesting story.’
‘Could be, yeah.’
‘So, what’s a journalist want in this shithole?’
I turned on the stool. ‘At least this shithole’s got new wallpaper since the last time I came in.’
‘That a fact?’
‘How long you been here?’
‘I don’t know — six months maybe.’
I noticed a couple of photos on the wall behind me. I got down off the stool and wandered over. One was a picture of a woman I recognized. She was surrounded by a bunch of regulars on New Year’s Eve, three years ago. Her name was Evelyn. She worked behind the bar back when I used to come in with Jacob. I’d got to know her pretty well — well enough to tell her a little of my life, and for her to really mean she was sorry when I told her Derryn had cancer.
‘Evelyn still around?’
‘No.’
I turned back to her. ‘When did she leave?’
A flicker of something. ‘Dunno.’
I studied her. ‘You don’t know when she left?’
‘It was before my time.’
I walked back to the bar and sat down on the stool again. She didn’t look or sound convinced by what she was saying, but I couldn’t see a reason for her to lie.
I moved on.
‘I’m trying to find someone who might have had a connection with this place. If I show you a picture of him, maybe you could tell me if you’ve seen him in here or not.’
She nodded. I took out a picture Mary had given me of Alex and handed it to her. She squinted at it, as if she was a little short-sighted.
‘What’s his name?’ she asked.
‘Alex Towne.’
Her eyes flicked to me across the top of the photo.
‘You know him?’
She took a moment more, then handed the photo back to me. ‘No.’
‘You sure?’
‘Course I’m sure.’
In my top pocket I had a list of names, taken from the pad in the apartment at Eagle Heights. I unfolded it.
‘You got any regulars with names like these?’
I’d rewritten the names on a separate piece of paper, one under the other. She read down the list and shrugged. ‘Probably.’
‘You do or you don’t?’
‘How the fuck am I supposed to know?’ she said. ‘This ain’t exactly the Ritz, I know, but this place gets busy. Lotta people comin’ and goin’.’
I took the list back. ‘I’ll take that as a no.’
‘For someone who’s not a copper, you ask a lot of questions, Magnum.’
‘Just interested,’ I said, and looked around the pub again.
Something didn’t feel right about what Jade had said. Either she knew when Evelyn left or she didn’t. And there was something else too. Her eyes had moved when I’d first handed her the picture of Alex, and her skin had flushed. I’d read books back when I first started getting big interviews on the paper, about kinesics and how to interpret body language. Pupil dilation, skin flushing and changes in muscle tone were all unconscious responses to lying.
I turned back to her. She looked suspicious now, unsure about what I was doing. Maybe it was a natural suspicion, built up from her hours working in here. Or maybe she really was lying to me, and was starting to think I’d seen through it.
Suddenly, the door to the pub opened. We both looked round as a couple of old men came in talking. One of them laughed and glanced towards the bar.
‘Morning, Jade. Are we too early?’
She looked at me, then back to them.
‘No, Harry.’
They shuffled up to the bar. One of them slid in at a stool and started fiddling in his pockets for change; the other stood next to him and eyed up the beers on tap. When they were finished, they both glanced at the photograph of Alex, and then at me.
‘Morning,’ Harry said.
I nodded at both of them, then turned to Jade. ‘Is Alex Towne alive?’
For a second I thought I saw something in her face, before she moved to the back of the bar and picked up two empty pint glasses.
‘Jade?’
The two men looked between us.
She started filling one of the glasses, pulling on the pump and looking straight at me — as if proving she had nothing to hide. When she was done with the first beer, she duplicated the movement for the second.
‘You okay, Jade?’ Harry said.
She nodded.
The old men looked between us again, trying to figure out if I was bothering her. They probably already knew what I’d found out in the ten minutes I’d been talking to her: Jade couldn’t be pushed around, and wouldn’t be intimidated — at least not while she was inside the safety of the pub.
I scooped up the notepad and the photo and left. But that wasn’t the end of it. I’d be back at seven when she came off her shift — and this time she wouldn’t see me coming.
17
St John the Baptist church was in Redbridge, a depressing pocket of London close to the North Circular. Ugly, fading tower blocks cast shadows across the streets; melting snow ran from holes in the flyover; black exhaust fumes disappeared into the sky. As I parked the car, half-hidden behind an Indian takeaway, the church’s triangular roof rose out of the grey.
Despite the setting, it was an attractive, modern building: all cream walls and exposed beams. A huge crucifix hung above the door, beautifully carved from wood. Christ looked down from the centre of the cross, a glimmer of hope in his face.
The main doors were locked, so I walked around to the back. A door marked office was partly open. Through the gap, I could see an empty room, with a series of desks and a bookcase at the back. I glanced along the side of the church. Further down was a small annexe. The door to that was open too.
I headed for it.
The structure was about fifteen feet by twenty feet; really just a glorified shed. There were no windows, and its exterior hadn’t been treated properly, so the wood was still a raw orange colour. Inside it was sparse: a couple of posters, a desk, a power lead for a laptop that wasn’t there, a pad, some pens. There was a bookshelf, high up behind the desk, stacked with Bibles, biographies and reference material.
‘Morning.’
A voice from behind me.
It was a young guy, a silver laptop under his arm, dressed in a casual shirt and a pair of jeans. Early thirties, blond shoulder-length hair, parted in the centre, and the eyes to match: big, bright, alive. He smiled as he stepped forward.
‘Morning,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for the minister here.’
‘Well, it must be your lucky day,’ he replied. He took another step towards me and held out his hand. We shook. ‘Reverend Michael Tilton.’
‘David Raker.’
‘Nice to meet you. You’re not a Bible salesman, are you?’
I smiled. ‘No. Don’t worry — you’re safe.’
‘Ah good!’ he said, and stepped past me into the annexe. ‘Sorry about the mess in here. I’ve got a youth pastor starting in a few weeks and I’m trying to get things in shape before he arrives. Except, at the moment, it’s just a dumping ground for all my stuff.’
He set the laptop down then slid a small heater out from under his desk and turned the dial all the way up to ten. He closed the door.
‘Pretty humble surroundings, huh?’