James Craig - Time of Death

After about twenty minutes, they finally turned off the hoses. That’s when he really felt the cold. His hands and feet were numb and he could see one poor woman beginning to turn blue. Everyone was hopping from foot to foot to try and stay warm. He imagined they looked like lunatics dancing on a trip to Hell.

Some time later, they were taken down below and herded into a space maybe forty feet long and twenty feet wide, lit by three bare light bulbs. There were no portholes. At each end was a sliding metal door, with an armed guard stationed immediately outside. Each person was told to take one thin blanket. There were enough hammocks for maybe half of them, with a canvas dividing off the quarters for the women. Beside the doors were four large buckets to serve as their toilet. The lodgings had clearly been used before. The floor was still sticky with fluids that Pettigrew did not want to inspect too closely. There had been some attempt to clean the place up for the new arrivals but, at best, it had been half-hearted. The smell of disinfectant only partially covered the smell of piss, shit and body odour. No one wanted to think about what had happened to the previous guests.

The city hummed around him. Reassuringly familiar, it soothed his agitation. Too impatient to wait for a break in the traffic, Carlyle jumped in front of a small, red delivery van, studiously ignoring the exaggerated hand gestures of the driver as he skipped down Long Acre. Reaching Seven Dials, a mini-roundabout, with a pillar at its centre bearing six sundials (the seventh being the pillar itself, casting its shadow on the ground), he headed towards the north end of Mercer Street, close to Shaftesbury Avenue.

On the west side of the street was a small block of council flats known as Phoenix House. Built in the 1950s with the cheapest concrete available, the building would probably have been more robust if it had been constructed out of cardboard. Still, it looked clean and, from the outside at least, didn’t smell too badly. Carlyle buzzed, waited for a few seconds, heard the door unlock, and went inside.

On the top floor of Phoenix House was Flat 8. For more than a year now, it had been used as a knocking shop by a young Birmingham girl called Sam Laidlaw. The place was tiny,no more than 500 square feet all told, but it had a small roof terrace which allowed Laidlaw’s clients an al fresco option in the summer.

Laidlaw’s maid, Amelia Jacobs, was a retired prostitute who had known Carlyle for more than twenty years. She was a reliable contact, who had built up a healthy balance in his favours book over the years. A few weeks earlier, when she had asked to make a rare withdrawal, Carlyle knew that he would have to go and pay her a visit. Having already put it off a couple of times, he now felt obliged to put in an appearance.

If not exactly the stereotypical hooker with a heart of gold, Jacobs was an impressive figure. She was a plain-looking black woman in her mid-to-late thirties, about 5 feet 4 inches with a no-nonsense short back and sides haircut and hard eyes that never focused on you. If you passed her on the street, you might imagine that Amelia was a teacher, or maybe even a lawyer. The reality was rather different, but Carlyle knew that Amelia was nonetheless worthy of considerable respect. Above all, she was a survivor. Local legend had it that she had once tried, with some success, to bite off the penis of an obnoxious punter. Carlyle knew a nurse working at UCLH on Gower Street who claimed to have been on duty when the unfortunate bloke arrived in A amp;E. He had asked Amelia about the incident once – she had just smiled and said matter-of-factly: ‘Another few seconds and he would never have seen his thing again.’

Happily for visiting punters, and middle-aged policemen, reaching the top floor only meant three flights of stairs. There was a lift, but it rarely worked. Even when it did, Carlyle would rather take the stairs than risk getting stuck inside.

Jogging up the stairs, he felt only slightly winded.

Amelia met him at the door. ‘Thanks for coming, Inspector,’ she smiled.

‘No problem,’ Carlyle replied, trying to control his wheezing. ‘Sorry it’s taken me so long to get here.’

She made a non-committal gesture. ‘Come inside.’

A couple of minutes later he was sitting on an orange sofa in a drab sitting room that surely would be depressing enough to dampen anyone’s lust. He was nursing a dangerous-looking mug of coffee with a slick of what looked like washing-up liquid glistening on the top. Sam Laidlaw sat in a chair opposite him, staring at the floor like the naughty schoolgirl that she basically was. She was twenty-two or twenty-three going on fifteen. Her platinum-blond hair matched her sickly skin. It had grown out at the roots and badly needed redoing. In a grubby white T-shirt, grey jogging pants and no make-up, she looked a total mess. It would be like fucking a corpse, Carlyle thought. On the other hand, trying to be generous, it was relatively early. For her, the working week had yet to start.

Amelia explained the situation to Carlyle. The problem was a familiar one. His name was Michael Hagger, a local mini-gangster-turned-entrepreneur, occasional pimp and father to Sam Laidlaw’s four-year-old son, Jake. Hagger, according to Jacobs, was threatening to take the boy away from his mother as part of a long-running dispute about money.

‘Where is the boy now?’ Carlyle asked, suddenly worried in case he had ignored this situation for too long.

‘He’s on a play date,’ Amelia replied. ‘And he’s in nursery now too. We got him into Coram’s Fields after Easter. Three days a week.’

‘That’s good,’ Carlyle said limply. At least the boy was being looked after properly some of the time. The Coram’s Fields Play Centre was fifteen minutes up the road, on the way to King’s Cross. It was run by Camden Council, and the staff there did a fantastic job with a broad range of kids from different backgrounds. His daughter Alice had gone there for a couple of years before starting school, and her mother still visited now and again to drop off spare books for the library. He would mention Jake to Helen and see if she could make some discreet enquiries.

Laidlaw remained mute. She had lifted her gaze far enough off the floor to stare intently at a blank 32-inch television screen in the corner. Carlyle followed her gaze and checked out the pile of DVDs on the floor by the TV. Postman Pat and Duck Dodgers cartoons peeked out from underneath a pile of generic porno titles. Carlyle had to resist the urge to gag. Apart from anything else, he was a big fan of Duck Dodgers, Daffy Duck’s Space Protectoret hero, having watched many episodes alongside Alice when she was younger. Now he wanted to scream. Calming himself down, he knew that he really would have to call Children’s Social Services.

‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked.

‘Talk to Hagger,’ Amelia replied. ‘Let him know that you’ve got your eye on him.’

As if that would make any difference.

‘Okay,’ Carlyle sighed. ‘Where will I find him?’

Again the girl said nothing.

‘The usual places,’ Amelia said.

That narrowed it down, thought Carlyle. ‘I’ll start at the Intrepid Fox,’ he said, to no one in particular, mentioning a pub two minutes down the road in Soho where Hagger was known to hang out.

The doorbell rang. Without saying a word, the girl got up and slouched out of the room.

‘That’ll be the twelve-thirty.’ Amelia signalled for him to get up. She glanced at her watch. ‘He’s early. The randy little sod obviously thinks he gets extra time that way.’

‘When you’re in the mood,’ Carlyle grinned, ‘you’re in the mood.’