‘Well, we won’t be getting back for Newsnight,’ he said resignedly.
‘Found it, here we go,’ she said, the car, like most modern ones, firing up with a barely perceptible rumble from somewhere beneath the plush upholstery.
‘Used to be like starting a biplane,’ he said absently, hardly expecting her to listen.
‘Sorry?’
‘I was babbling — about how when I was young, starting a car you’d be jamming the key, the little motor whinnying, it might have taken three or four goes. Half the time you’d need a jump start, or someone’d have to get out and push.’
‘Oh, right,’ she said half-listening, polite even with her attention on the Sat Nav, its whispered voice directing her along unfamiliar roads.
He couldn’t do that, Grey considered as he watched her, his thought drifting off topic a moment, give someone his attention while focusing on something else. He felt tired now — going back into town like this was a mistake; working so late was a mistake. And yet he knew it was only the soothing rumble of the road and the comfort of the ultra-soft seats lulling him into this state — he would be fine as soon as they got wherever Nash was bidding them.
Cori turned a corner, as the small directional machine showed a pattern of interconnecting roads upon its flashing screen. A ladies voice — so soft and gentle as to be able to offer the most frustrating traffic updates without incurring the driver’s wrath — advised them they had reached their destination. Satellite navigation, Grey mused, looking up at the sky for the twinkling star that would guide them along the next stage of their investigation.
‘I think we’re at the junction he mentioned,’ said Cori.
Grey perked up. ‘Nash said to go slow when we near.’
‘Well, one more corner to turn and we’re on Paul Street.’
So close to sleep a moment ago, Grey felt as though he had just woken. He now peered around the corner as the car moved slowly round it, and onto a narrow straight road of terraces. Dignified, Victorian, he thought of the buildings, even while scanning the pavements for some sign of where to stop and not go too far.
And then suddenly — was that a figure? Something like a shadow ran up beside them, emerging from they knew not where, to tap upon the driver’s-side window as gently as if wearing velvet gloves. The window slid down electronically, and a young woman’s face became clear beneath a hood. Before Grey could say, Not interested, thank you, and bid Cori re-raise the window, the woman asked,
‘Inspector Rase?’
He hardly nodded before she continued,
‘Sergeant Pullman, Drugs Squad. Pull up quietly, and come with me.’ They exited, closing the doors softly, and joined her on the barely lit pavement. It was so dark they could hardly make out their guide against the brick wall.
‘Could we find a better place to park?’ asked Cori, less car-proud than mindful of needing a vehicle to get home in that evening.
‘Don’t worry, there’s not many kids along this street at night. They know to stay away,’ said Sergeant Pullman mysteriously. ‘And those suits aren’t the best.’ She joked, ‘People will think you’re tax inspectors, or maybe Vernon’s pools?’
‘You don’t look old enough to remember the pools,’ answered Grey perhaps a bit too loudly.
‘My dad used to play them every Saturday. Come on, stay close, there’s no street lamp here.’
‘Why not?’ asked Cori to no response, as they followed her through a narrow arch-roofed alleyway built through the terrace block.
Come.’ They emerged into an unkempt back garden, hardly more than a paved square with some bins and a short washing line. Through a gate almost off its hinges, they came into a service road that ran along behind the houses. They turned to walk along it, a barren strip of tarmac between rows of similar little yards on either side. At one back gate a woman lifted the lid off her bin with a clang, to empty into it the charred remnants of her frying pan. As they passed she glared at the strangers — perhaps the glare, Grey surmised, of someone used to strange characters and odd goings on after dark, but which she tolerated and had learnt not to ask questions of.
‘Don’t worry about the locals,’ said Sergeant Pullman as they turned to enter another yard, on the same side but much further along than the one they had emerged through, ‘they don’t like coppers in the neighbourhood, but they like having a dealer even less. I think we make them feel safe, although they’d never admit it,’ she added with a grin.
‘So,’ Grey looked down at her hooded top and combat trousers, ‘they know that you’re a..?’
‘They can smell it on us. And if they know I’m an officer,’ she gestured with her hands to her clothes, and then to his suit, ‘then imagine how obvious are you?’
She bid they all be silent, and let them through the yard and into the kitchen of one of the small houses in the terraced row. The room was old-fashioned but tidy and furnished, and had a pan of warm milk heating on the stove. ‘That’s Nash’s favourite,’ she said with a smile. ‘Go on up, they’re in the back bedroom.’
The house bore all the signs, Grey thought, of having been a family home until quite recently. Not a rich household, but a clean one, one that looked after its belongings, treated things with respect. As they rose from the narrow steep staircase, running in it’s own cavity through the middle of the house, and then from the small landing into what had evidently been a boy’s bedroom, Grey thought: this isn’t too different to the room I had when I was his age, this boy, whoever he was. Beside a poster of a current superstar footballer however, was a dog-eared low-scale map of streets and houses covered in pins and markers. And sat below this on the bed was Nash with an expensive white laptop on his knee.
‘Quite a find this, eh? The family relocated six months ago, and we moved in before the Council had even cleared the house. I can’t tell you what a joy it is to work from such a premises — you ought to see some of the dumps we’ve had in the past! I promise you, Inspector, when you’ve been lying on your belly on a damp disused warehouse floor, trying to hold a telephoto lens steady for eight hours… well, the thought of a cosy back bedroom becomes ever more appealing. And I’m not getting any younger — it’ll have to be a desk job soon, and leave all this to a younger man.’
‘You’d be bored within a week.’ This was Sergeant Pullman, arriving with two steaming mugs of cocoa, which she shoved into their visitors’ hands. ‘Keeps the chill out,’ she said, before disappearing to fetch two more for herself and Nash.
‘She’s right of course. I have the office I always dreamed of, custom furniture, a souvenir from every holiday I’ve ever been on… and yet I don’t spend half as long there as I could. Why would you want to be in the map-room pushing markers around when you could be in the trenches though, eh Inspector?’
‘I prefer the street-level myself.’ The drink burnt the tip of Grey’s tongue.
‘Of course, that’s because of who we are, and why we joined the force. We have enquiring minds. We didn’t join to hog a desk, we aren’t a branch of the Civil Service. We are not that kind of person, we are inquisitive, which is why you are already wondering why I brought you here, when I previously wished for you to be as little involved in this end of things as possible. Lead the way will you, Gill.’
The returning Sergeant Pullman led them silently from the lit bedroom, Nash closing the door behind them, and across the landing, which Grey noticed had no bulb in the light socket. On entering the front bedroom they discovered the room had not a door but a velvet curtain. It struck Cori as they moved through it as being like the curtain of a stage or, more accurately, of a fortune-teller’s booth at a funfair.
Parting the veil led them into the room, where not only was there no source of light but every surface seemed to be made matt black, rending the space a mysterious pool of shadows and looming unidentifiable shapes.