There was a few moments' silence before someone came to the door. The chief counsellor of the charity, Tommy Baines, wasn't what Caffery had expected on paper. He was in his late twenties, with the faint blue of a laser-treated tattoo on his neck and his hair closely shaved in a way that Caffery read as shorthand for aggression, past and present. There was something wrong with one of his eyes too, something that could have come from a fight. As Caffery flashed his warrant card he thought he saw, or imagined, a beat of anger in Baines's eyes — almost as if Caffery was an old mate who'd promised not to bother him at work but had turned up anyway. It was as if he'd been interrupted, and for a moment Caffery wondered if he'd blundered into something personal. As Baines unlocked the door, showed Caffery inside and locked up, Caffery got the clear idea there was someone else in the building, someone hiding in one of the darkened rooms. A woman maybe? He thought he could smell something. A perfume that might have been familiar. He scanned the corridor they walked up, registering where each door was, where it claimed to lead.
'You can call me Tig,' Baines said, as he took him into the office. 'Name I got in prison. Don't ask why.' He picked up a stack of twelve-step sheets and threw them on to the photocopier, jamming his code in with his thumb, not looking at Caffery as if he wasn't much interested in him — as if he was used to the Bill turning up on his doorstep. 'We're hand to mouth at the moment. Small. No permanent beneficiaries so we're getting by on a donation here and there, and whatever fees we can pick up from the clients. The ones who can afford it, which is about none of them.' He spoke in a measured way, thinking every word through before he let it out of his mouth. 'It's me does everything. I'm the managing trustee, the only counsellor employed, and until we can afford it I'm housing-support officer too. This centre,' he raised a hand to indicate the building, 'is one of our donors. I get six free hours a week here.' He took the sheets from the feeder and put them into a transparent folder. He glanced at the vertical blinds, the industrial blue carpet, the impersonal chipboard desk and filing cabinets. 'Yeah, this is as near as I get to official premises. Apart from this and some relapse counselling for a residential programme over in Keynsham I basically run the charity out of my mum's flat. And she's a fruit, my mum.'
It was getting dark outside, and except for the office the old Victorian school was deserted. Caffery put his hand on a chair. 'Can I sit down?' he said. 'I need to have a few minutes' chat if that's OK. Not in a hurry, are you?'
At the copy machine Tig hesitated. Caffery thought his eyes flicked briefly to the door and he got the impression again that someone else was in the darkened building. Unfinished business. But it didn't go anywhere. Instead Tig gestured to the chair. 'Sure, sure. There's no one else using the place tonight. Sit, mate. I'll get the kettle on.'
Caffery sat and watched him busy around, making tea, wiping out coffee cups with a green paper towel, scouting cupboards for a biscuit tin. While he waited he got out his notebook and the photo of Mossy, putting it face down on the big desk. This kind of interview drove him crazy: he'd never met anyone in drugs counselling who wasn't as closed as an arsehole, who didn't act like the police were asking for arterial blood when they asked to know about clients, and what was their problem? Didn't they get the concept of client confidentiality? The voluntary sector could be a bit easier than the statutories, not as hidebound, but even they didn't pipe out information for free.
'You never get tired of it?' Caffery asked, as Tig handed him a mug of tea. 'Never want to tell them to go and get a life?'
Tig gave a short laugh. He rolled up the sleeves of his sweatshirt and sat down, legs crossed so his foot was resting on the other knee, balancing the tea mug on his ankle. 'Listen, mate, I know the police. You don't really give a shit how I feel about my clients. You're not here for that. So what are you here for? What do you want to know from me?'
Caffery didn't speak for a second or two. He looked at Tig's eyes. The bad one was sort of grey and cloudy. A bit like a shitty London day. Caffery had a second of disorientation. A second or two where he couldn't read the guy at all. He turned over the photo of Mossy and held it out.
'Recognize him?'
Tig didn't hurry. He put the cup calmly on the desk, the handle to the side. He lifted his foot off his knee and put both feet on the floor, his hands on his thighs as he stood up and took the photo. As he examined it, Caffery thought he saw a contraction in the muscles at the corners of his eyes, no more than a millimetre's change. It came to him that Tig had already known exactly whose picture he was going to see.
'No,' he said, holding it to the light, squinting. 'Nah, sorry, mate. Never seen him.'
He held the photo out for Caffery to take, but he didn't. He was still watching Tig's face. 'You sure you don't know him?'
'A hundred per cent. Never seen him in my life. Here — take it back.'
Caffery waited a moment more. He was trying to get in under this bloke's cloudy eye, trying to get a flicker out of it, just a dilation in the pupil, anything to tell him he was lying. But there was nothing. Just this sort of weird evenness he didn't know how to interpret.
In the end he took the photo, tucking it into his folder. He left his hand on it and thought about the next question he had to ask. And then, because he hated the question and because he knew where it would lead, he thought for a few moments about the girls on City Road and what he could be doing now instead of this. What he could be doing to forget. The thought made him want to sigh again. He took his hand off the folder.
'Your clients,' he said. 'Do you s'pose any of them would recognize him? Maybe I could have one of my lads come out and have a chat to them?'
Tig snorted. Gave him that look Caffery knew from years and years of doing the exact same thing in south-east London. 'I shouldn't have to tell you about client confidentiality. It's the backbone of the whole set-up. We'd be ruined if we ran around opening our arms to the police every five minutes.'
'Yes. I know. But…' Caffery spoke slowly, ponderously, studying the backs of his own hands as if he was more interested in them than in the words coming out of his mouth. 'But do you know what I'm picturing?'
'What?'
'I'm picturing your future, Tig. I'm picturing your future and all the steps you can take to change it. And then, on the tail of that, I'm picturing all the people out there now, all the people this same thing might happen to in the future. The victims that aren't victims yet…' He let that hang in the air — the victims that aren't victims yet — so that its implication sank down a little. This was the best lever he had, to move the responsibility away from the police and on to the interviewee. 'Maybe even someone you care about. I'm picturing them, and I'm picturing their lives going ahead, happily, maybe having a house, a family. And then I'm seeing the opposite. I'm seeing them murdered. Mutilated. Hands taken off. With a hacksaw. An ordinary hacksaw you can buy in a hardware shop. What sort of a future is that?'
He saw that Tig was caving. A little patch of white had started on his forehead, as if the blood had stopped flowing.
'Look,' Tig said, 'I've got a responsibility to these lads.'
'And to their futures. This guy on the photo — he's got to be a lot like some of your clients, same lifestyle. What that tells us is that if it happens again, it's likely to happen to someone a bit like him.'