‘Ah!’ Tufty nodded. ‘Right. OK. Got you.’ A small pause as the lights turned green. ‘Who’s Tommy Shand?’
The woman in the grey-green overalls curled her top lip at Tufty’s warrant card. Folded her thick arms over her thicker torso. Hair swept back from her face. Little flecks of magnolia paint on her cheeks and overalls. ‘Sally Gray doesn’t live here any more. Do you have any idea how hard it is to evict someone these days?’
He took out his notebook. ‘Where’s she living now?’
‘She was using the place as a drug den and a brothel! I can’t even begin to describe what that does to property values.’
‘Mrs Webber, please, we just need to speak to her. Did she leave a forwarding address?’
‘Do I look like the Post Office? I served the eviction notice and she disappeared. Oh yes, but not before trashing the place.’ A full-on shudder made everything wobble. ‘You will not believe what she smeared all over the walls. Filthy cow.’
Tufty climbed back in behind the wheel. ‘Isn’t it lovely when members of the public help?’
Steel didn’t look up from her phone, kept poking away at a text with her thumbs. ‘She give you an address?’
‘Gave me an earful about how the law cares more about the scumbags who trash their landlords’ flats than the poor landlords who have to paint over the dirty protests they leave behind. No forwarding address.’
‘Pffff...’ A shrug. ‘Nothing for it, then: to the docks, dear Tufty. We’ve got some ladies of wobbly virtue to question. One of them’s bound to know where Sally Gray’s got to.’
The lunchtime rush for an illicit kneetrembler can’t have been that great on a sunny Wednesday, because only a couple of girls were out plying their trade. Well, not so much girls as middle-aged women with hollow eyes and sunken cheeks. Lank hair. Spots around their mouths. Short black skirts in cheap-looking fabric. Arms and legs that were just bones covered in bruise-speckled skin. One with dyed blonde hair, the other in an unconvincing auburn wig.
Steel puffed away on her e-cigarette, sending out pineapple-scented smoke signals. ‘Come on, Sheryl, have another look at the picture. You know Sally Gray.’
Tufty held the picture out again and the woman in the wig glanced at it, biting at the skin around her fingernails. They were a mass of raw flesh and scabs. ‘I don’t... Don’t... Haven’t. No.’
Steel’s shoulders dropped an inch. ‘When did you last eat, Sheryl?’
‘Just trying to get by. That’s... Get by. Yup.’ A nod. ‘Get by.’
‘How about you, Lynda? You know where Sally’s rinsing out her fishnets these days?’
Lynda’s long-sleeved lacy top wasn’t quite thick enough to hide the trackmarks tattooing her veins. ‘Maybe... Maybe if, you know, you could lend us a couple of quid I’d remember?’ Eyes glittering away in the darkness of her skull. ‘Just a twenty or something?’
‘Aye, cos there’s no way you’d just go spend that on smack, is there?’
‘A tenner then. Just a tenner. You can afford it, right?’
‘I’m no’ giving you money to spend on drugs, Lynda.’ Steel sighed. ‘God’s sake. Come on.’ She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. ‘Follow me.’
Tufty backed out of the chipper, a paper parcel in each hand trailing the enticing scent of hot batter, chips, and vinegar. He hurried around the corner and there were Steel, Lynda, and Sheryl, right where he’d left them: sitting on a low wall behind the chandler’s yard.
‘I stuck a couple of pickled onions in there too. Bon appétit.’ He handed one parcel each to Lynda and Sheryl.
They unwrapped them, picking away at the fish suppers, peeling off chunks of battered haddock.
Steel held out her hand to Tufty. ‘Hoy: make with my change, you thieving wee sod.’
‘Give us a chance.’ He dug out the one pound twenty she was owed and dropped it into her palm.
‘Is that it?’
‘Yes. And you’re welcome.’
‘Pfff...’ She stuck the cash in her pocket. ‘Right, you two. I need to speak to Sally Gray. Where is she?’
They shared a look. Then Lynda shrugged. Popped a chip in her mouth and chewed. ‘Don’t know where she’s living, but I know who she gets her gear from. He might?’
‘Last chance, Shawn.’ Steel leaned in close. ‘Either you tell us where Sally Gray lives, right now, or I’m going to make your miserable wee life a living nightmare.’
Shawn licked his lips and hunched his shoulders forward, like someone had hollowed him out. He didn’t look like a big-time drug dealer, he looked like a schoolkid trying to grow a beard. The result was a sparse smattering of wiry black hairs. More scrotumy than anything else. ‘I... It’s not... I mean, I don’t really know her or anything. You know. I’ve got a girlfriend and that.’
‘You sell her gear, Shawn, you know where she lives.’
‘Gear? No, no. Not me. I don’t sell gear. Nah, that’s illegal, man. Definitely not.’
She lowered her voice. ‘A living nightmare.’
‘Who says I sell gear? Cos I’ve never sold gear in my life...’
‘In five. Four. Three.’
Shawn stared at Tufty. ‘But—’
‘I’d be terrified, if I was you. Seriously bricking it.’
‘Two. One—’
‘OK! OK. Yeah. Sally. She’s got a place in Torry, belongs to an aunt or something.’
Steel patted him on the cheek. ‘Saved by the bell, Shawn. Now give us the address.’
The street was a canyon of depressing grey. Two identical rows of terraced flats faced each other across a strip of fading tarmac — the usual set-up of six flats to one door copy-and-pasted until they ran out of road. Rows of once-black wheelie-bins standing to attention between the pavement and the thin strip of unloved grass that passed for a front garden.
More like a gulag than somewhere for human beings to live.
Austere and soulless.
Roberta had a wee dig at her itchy bra as she clambered out of the pool car.
A mangy greyhound was tethered to a stake in the middle of the grass — it trotted round and round in the biggest circle the chain around its neck would allow. Whining and yowling.
Tufty led the way up the path to a door halfway down the street. He peered at the intercom. ‘Here we are: Sally Gray. Top floor left.’ A wee grimace. ‘Aren’t neighbours lovely? Someone’s written “Dirty Prozzie Bitch” on her name tag.’ He poked the button, making it buzz.
Buzz, buzz, buzz.
Roberta frowned at the greyhound. ‘What did Hissing Sid mean?’
‘Nope, no idea who that is either.’
More buzzing.
‘Hissing Sid, AKA: Sandy Slithery Moir-Farquharson, AKA: Greasy Lawyer-Faced... what’s the word of the day?’
‘“Felchbunny.”’
Buzz.
‘Oh, he’s definitely that.’ She slapped Tufty’s hand out of the way. ‘Don’t be so damp. This is how the grown-ups do it.’ She mashed all the buttons with her palm, holding it there. Making them all buzz. ‘Hissing Sid said Wallace’s friends “came to his aid” when he needed them. “Just like mine.” What’s that supposed to mean?’
The door hummed, then clicked open.
‘Told you.’ She let go of the buttons and gave the door a shove, stepping into a shabby hallway. Stairs marched up to the floors above, the scent of lemon furniture polish overlaying a bleachy note. Shabby, but clean.
A little old lady peered out of the ground-floor flat on the right. ‘Hoy, Quasimodo: stop ringing that bloody bell! This isn’t nineteenth-century Paris!’