Her face flushes. “Piss off!”
“I'm looking for a particular girl. Her name is Theresa. She's about five foot six. Blond. Comes from Harrogate. And she has a tattoo on her shoulder of a butterfly.”
“What's this girl got that I ain't?”
“Boobs. Cut the crap. Have you seen her?”
“Nah.”
“OK, here's the deal. I got a fifty here. You walk down the street, knock on the doors and ask if any of the girls know this Theresa. You get me the right answer and you get the fifty.”
“Are you a copper?”
“No.” For once I'm telling the truth.
“Why you want her?”
“She won the bloody lottery. What does it matter to you?”
“I'll do it for a ton.”
“You get fifty. It's the easiest money you ever made.”
“You reckon! Some of these guys blow just looking at me.”
“Sure.”
I watch her leave. She doesn't even know how to walk like a woman yet. Maybe it's an occupational trait.
The streetlights are beginning to glow purple as they blink into life. I take a table at a delicatessen on the corner which is doing a roaring trade in takeout coffee and homemade soup served by Czech girls with heavy accents and tight tops. I'm old enough to be their grandfather but that doesn't make me feel as guilty as it should. One of them brings me coffee and a muffin that looks half-cooked inside.
The place is full of pimps and working girls, counting the wages of sin. A couple of them regard me suspiciously, sitting still and very straight like a pair of magistrates.
Pimps don't look the same in real life as they do in films. They're not snappy dressers in long leather coats and lots of gold jewelry. Mostly they're dealers and boyfriends who'd spread their own legs if anyone would pay for the privilege.
The pixie with the pageboy cut has come back. She eyes the large pot of soup steaming on a burner. I buy her a bowl. An older black girl is looking at us nervously through the window. She's dressed in a microskirt and lace-up boots. Her hair is twisted into bangs that run back from her forehead between paler strips of scalp.
“She says she knows Theresa.”
“What's her name?”
“Brittany.”
“Why won't she come inside?”
“Her pimp might be watching. He don't like her slacking. Where's my fifty?”
She reaches to snatch it out of my fingers. I pin her wrist to the table and turn it over, pulling her sleeve up her arm. Her skin is pale and unblemished.
“I'm not using,” she sniffles.
“Good. Go home.”
“Yeah, sure—you should see where I live.”
Brittany talks to me outside. She has ants in her pants about something and can't stand still. Her jaw works constantly on gum, punctuating sentences with a sucking noise.
“What's Theresa done?”
“Nothing, I just want to talk to her.”
Brittany glances down the street, trying to decide if she believes me. Eventually, she surrenders to apathy and a twenty quid note.
“She lives in a tower block in Finsbury Park. She's got a kid now.”
“Is she still on the game?”
“Only a few regulars.”
Fifteen minutes later I'm climbing to the fourteenth floor of a tower block because the lift is out of order. Various cooking smells mingle in the stairwell, along with the noise from dueling TVs and domestic disputes.
Theresa must be expecting someone else because she opens the door with a flourish, wearing only a black teddy and bunny ears.
“Shit! Who are you?”
“The Big Bad Wolf.”
She looks past me into the hallway and then back at me. The penny drops. “Oh, no!”
Turning away from the door she wraps a dressing gown around her shoulders and I follow her inside. There are baby toys scattered on the living-room floor and a monitor hums on top of the TV. The bedroom door is closed.
“You remember me?”
“Yeah.” She flicks her hair over her shoulder and lights a cigarette.
“I'm looking for Gerry.”
“You were looking for him three years ago.”
“I'm very patient.”
She glances at a pineapple-shaped clock on the wall. “Hey, I got someone coming. He's my best customer. If he finds you here he'll never come back.”
“Married is he?”
“The best customers are.”
I push aside a colorful baby rug and take a seat on the sofa bed. “About Gerry.”
“I ain't seen him.”
“Maybe he's hiding in the bedroom.”
“Please don't wake the baby.”
She's quite a pretty-looking thing, except for her crooked nose and the junkie hollows beneath her eyes.
“Gerry ran out on me three years ago. I thought he was probably dead until he turned up again during the summer with a suntan and lots of big-shot stories about owning a bar in Thailand.”
“A bar?”
“Yeah. He had a passport and a driver's license in the name of some other geezer. I figured he must have pinched it.”
“You remember the name?”
“Peter Brannigan.”
“Why did he come back?”
“Dunno. He said he had a big payday coming.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Three days ago—must have been Tuesday night.” She stubs out her cigarette and lights another. “He came busting in here, sweating and yelling. He was scared. I ain't never seen anybody that scared. He looked like the devil himself was chasing him.”
That must have been after he crippled Ali. I remember how terrified he looked when he took off. He thought Aleksei had sent someone to kill him.
Theresa dabs at the lipstick in the corners of her mouth. “He wanted money. Said he had to get out of the country. He was crazy, I tell you. I let him stay but as soon as he fell asleep I got a knife. I put it right under here.” She points to her septum, pushing up her nostrils. “I told him to get out. If he comes back I'll kill him.”
“And that was Tuesday night.”
“Early hours of Wednesday.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“Nope. And I don't care. He's a bloody nutcase.”
The packet of cigarettes is crushed in her hand. Glossy eyes slide over the sofa and the toys before resting on me. “I got something good going here. I don't need Grub, or Peter Brannigan or whoever else he calls himself, to mess it up.”
Three hours ago it was midnight. The desk lamp in Joe's office casts a circular glow, harsh in the center and soft at the edges. My eyes are so full of grit I can only look at the shadows.
I bought pizzas at nine and the coffee ran out at eleven. The rest of the volunteers have gone home except for Joe and Rachel, who are still hard at work. A large corkboard in the waiting room is plastered with phone messages and notes. Nearby there are box files stacked five abreast beneath the window forming a makeshift shelf for leftover pizza and bottles of water.
Rachel is still on the phone.
“Hello, is that St. Catherine's? I'm sorry to call so late. I'm looking for a friend of mine who has gone missing. Her name is Kirsten Fitzroy. She's thirty-three, with brown hair, green eyes and a birthmark on her neck.”
Rachel waits. “OK, she's not there now but she may have needed medical help in the past few weeks. You have a clinic. Is it possible you could check your files? Yes, I know it's late but it's very important.” She refuses to lose this battle. “She's actually my sister. My parents are worried sick about her. We think she might have hurt herself . . .”
Again she waits. “No record. OK. Thank you so much. I'm sorry to have troubled you.”
They have all worked so hard. Roger and Dicko took a magical mystery tour of London's underbelly, visiting pubs, illegal casinos and strip joints looking for Gerry. Meanwhile, Margaret proved to be a genius at getting passenger manifests out of airlines, ferry and train operators. So far we've established that Kirsten hasn't left the country on any regular transport service.