‘Right,’ said Slider.
Sweyback rose to his feet and extended a hand like a ham for Slider to shake. ‘If I spot him around, or if one of my snouts spots him, shall I tug him for you?’
‘That would be grand,’ Slider said. ‘Thanks a lot, Duggie.’
‘No trouble. Us old ’uns have got to stick together. There aren’t many of us left.’
The Woodley South was as depressing as he had known it would be – a wasteland of mean houses, boarded-up windows, broken fences and dying hedges, trampled front gardens full of junk, the rotting corpses of dead cars that the boy vultures were taking a long time devouring. Slider had brought Fathom and McLaren with him in case of trouble – Fathom because he was big and meaty, and McLaren because he was tough and whippy and quick in a fight. He collected them from the Woodley Green canteen where they had been wiling away the time he was with Sweyback. McLaren, at least, had understood that the purpose of the canteen stop was not to fill up the tea-tank – though he had managed to take on board a cheese roll and a massive chunk of coconut cake, and was now finishing a giant Mars Bar in the car while Slider drove.
But he said, ‘I got it from one of the woodentops in the canteen that Lilly Atwood’s shacked up with a black bloke at the moment.’
‘Don’t slobber chocolate down my neck.’
‘Sorry, guv. Anyway, this bloke’s half her age, name of Leonard McGrory, Lennie, local Reading lad, got a bit of form, TDAs, shoplifting, possession, and done time for malicious wounding – he knifed some dealer that was trying to stiff him. Got six months for that. God knows what he’s doing with Lilly the Pink, but maybe it’s got something to do with Mike Carmichael, if he is dealing.’
‘Well done,’ Slider said. ‘Always useful to know what we’re facing. What did you find out, Fathom?’
‘I didn’t know we were supposed to be finding stuff out,’ he said, a touch sulkily.
‘He spent the time smoking too much and watching me,’ McLaren said.
‘I didn’t know we were on duty,’ Fathom complained.
‘You’re always on duty,’ Slider said. ‘And if you don’t know that finding stuff out is your job, you shouldn’t be in the CID.’
‘Sorry, guv.’
‘Mind you, watching McLaren eat is always an education. But if he can eat and work, you can watch and work. You should have got chatting to someone.’
‘Lazy, that’s his problem,’ said McLaren, who had raised inertia to an art form.
If anyone was going to criticize Slider’s troops, he’d do it himself. To balance the books he said to McLaren, ‘If you applied to women the expert attention you apply to food, you’d have to become a Mormon.’ McLaren was famous in the firm for not having had a date for years. He slowed the car. ‘This is it. What a name for a road like this – Applelea.’
‘This used to be called the Orchard Estate when it was first built,’ McLaren said. ‘Bloke in the canteen told me it was all farmland, orchards and stuff, up to the sixties. So they gave all the roads farmy names. Gawd ’elp us.’
Slider had noticed. Apart from Applelea they had passed High Garth, Hay Wain, Cherry Orchard Lane, Plum Tree Lane, Tithe Road, Orchard View, and Blossom View. A rural paradise, care of central government post-war planning. As McLaren so aptly observed, Gawd ’elp us.
Number fourteen was just as tatty and desolate as its neighbours, but it was obviously inhabited: all its windows still had their glass and all were curtained. The curtains in the downstairs window were drawn shut, rough-looking red cloth hanging slightly askew, though the upstairs ones were open. There was a sheet of hardboard nailed over the glass portion of the front door, and the house number was missing, though a paler outline in the dirty paint showed where it had been. They walked cautiously up the path, and when they neared the house they saw that the front door, though pulled to, was not completely shut. The wood of the frame, however, was not splintered. It had not been jemmied or kicked in: it must either have been left open deliberately, or had been pushed carelessly by the last person in or out, who had not checked that it had latched.
Slider pushed it cautiously, and it swung back. A narrow, dark hall led straight back to a kitchen, whose open door revealed a scene of dirty crockery, fast-food boxes, and general rubbish in greater amount than you would have thought possible in a room that small. The stairs, narrow and steep, were to the left. To the right was the single downstairs room, whose door was slightly ajar, enough to see it was dark inside, the curtains closed and no light on. Pop music was sounding in there at medium volume from a radio station. The carpet underfoot and up the stairs was filthy with footmarks and spillings, and in the air was a smell of dirt, feet, fat, hashish and rancid garbage.
That living-room door had the look of a trap to Slider. Had they seen him coming, and were luring him in? But he thought of Lilly the Pink and her half-age shack-up. People like that rarely showed cunning. They just reacted belatedly when something came at them. A movement from the kitchen caught his eye and he could tell from the sharpness of the chill down his neck how tense he was. A rat was sitting on top of the heap of plates and cardboard boxes on the draining board, working on a Kentucky Fried Chicken bone. Slider forced his shoulders to relax. He wished the rat no ill. Anyway, it was the only one in this house who was doing any clearing up.
There had been no sound or movement anywhere, so indicating for Fathom to stay by the door, in case there was anyone upstairs, and for McLaren to keep close, he pushed the living-room door all the way open. Even in the dim red light filtering through the curtains he could see well enough to pick out a scattering of cheap furniture, a television – turned off – and a sofa bed in the pulled-out position taking up most of the room. The floor and other surfaces were a mess of clothes, fast-food boxes, bottles, glasses, empty beer cans, overflowing ashtrays, and general litter. The radio was sitting in the hearth of the boarded-up fireplace. The smell in this room was intensified by the addition of bodies, sweat and stale cigarette smoke.
And two people were asleep in the bed, tumbled together with a grubby sheet to cover their modesty. One of them was snoring throatily, interspersed with an occasional wet gulping snort, like a pig enjoying apples.
Slider positioned his men, stepped to the window and pulled the curtains. He half expected an explosion of movement from the bed, but all that happened was that the tangled heap stirred and grunted, and after a moment the male half of it sat up blearily, rubbing its head with one hand and scratching under the sheet with the other.
‘Wassappenin?’ It rubbed its eyes, and then registered Slider and McLaren. ‘Wassgoinon? Who the fuck are you?’ Belated alarm widened the eyes, and he began fumbling about under the pillow.
Slider suspected a weapon under there, and said sternly, ‘Stay still. We’re the police. We just want to ask you a few questions.’ He went on fumbling. ‘Don’t do it, son. You’re not in any trouble – yet. Let’s keep it that way.’
But it was cigarettes that came out. At the same time, the female half mumbled itself awake – or half awake, at any rate. She turned over on to her back, frowning against the light, smacked her lips and groaned. ‘Whafuck’s going on? Put the light out.’
‘Wake up, Lil,’ the man said urgently, jabbing her ungently. He was sitting up, covered from the waist down – always thankful for small mercies, Slider thought – and from the undeveloped nature of his bare chest he looked to be no more than twenty. He was of West Indian stock, with longish hair, tattoos on his upper arms – a spider in its web on the right and a ghost on the left – and rings through both eyebrows and the left nostril.