The tosser in the Wild Flag T-shirt had jostled him so many times he yearned to give him a good kicking. Instead he elbowed his way out of the bar to look at the dance floor again.
The shifting lights panned across a swaying carpet of arms and sweaty faces. A glint of gold—a scarred and sneering mouth—
He cleaved his way through onlookers, not caring how many little tarts he knocked aside.
That scarred guy had been on the Tube. He looked back. The man appeared to have lost someone; he was standing on tiptoe looking all around.
There was something wrong. He could feel it. Something fishy. Bending his knees slightly, the better to mingle with the crowd, he forced his way towards a fire exit.
“Sorry, mate, I need you to use the—”
“Fuck off.”
He was out of it before anyone could stop him, forcing the bar across the fire door, plunging out into the night. He jogged along the exterior wall and around a corner where, alone, he breathed deeply, considering his options.
You’re safe, he told himself. You’re safe. No one’s got anything on you.
But was it true?
Of all the clubs she could have mentioned, she had chosen the one two minutes from his house. What if that had not been a gift from the gods but something entirely different? What if someone was trying to set him up?
No. It couldn’t be. Strike had sent the pigs to him and they hadn’t been interested. He was safe for sure. There was nothing to connect him to any of them…
Except that that guy with the scarred face had been on the Tube from Finchley. The implications of that temporarily jammed his thought processes. If somebody was following not Donald Laing but a completely different man, he was totally fucked…
He began to walk, every now and then breaking into a short run. The crutches that were so useful a prop were no longer necessary except for gaining the sympathy of gullible women, fooling the disability office and, of course, maintaining his cover as a man too sick and ill to go looking for little Kelsey Platt. His arthritis had burned itself out years back, though it had proved a pleasant little earner and kept the flat in Wollaston Close ticking over…
Hurrying across the car park, he looked up at his flat. The curtains were closed. He could have sworn he had left them open.
61
And now the time has come at last
To crush the motif of the rose.
Blue ?yster Cult, “Before the Kiss”
The bulb was out in the only bedroom. Strike turned on the small torch he had brought with him and advanced slowly towards the only piece of furniture, a cheap pine wardrobe. The door creaked as he opened it.
The interior was plastered with articles from the newspapers about the Shacklewell Ripper. Taped above all of them was a picture that had been printed on a piece of A4 paper, possibly from the internet. Strike’s young mother, naked, arms over her head, her long cloud of dark hair not quite covering her breasts proudly displayed, an arch of curly script clearly visible over the dark triangle of pubic hair: Mistress of the Salmon Salt.
He looked down at the floor of the wardrobe where a pile of hard-core pornography sat beside a black bin bag. Putting the torch under his arm, Strike opened the latter with his latex-gloved hands. Inside was a small selection of women’s underclothing, some of it stiff with old brown blood. At the very bottom of the bag his fingers closed on a fine chain and a hoop earring. A heart-shaped harp charm glinted in the light of his torch. There was a trace of dry blood on the hoop.
Strike replaced everything in the black bin bag, closed the wardrobe door and continued to the kitchenette, which was clearly the source of the rotting smell that pervaded the entire place.
Somebody had turned up the TV next door. An echoing tirade of gunshots sounded through the thin wall. Strike heard faint, stoned laughter.
Beside the kettle sat a jar of instant coffee, a bottle of Bell’s, a magnifying mirror and a razor. The oven was thick with grease and dust, and looked as though it had not been used for a long time. The fridge door had been wiped down with a dirty cloth that had left behind it sweeping arcs of a pinkish residue. Strike had just reached for the handle when his mobile vibrated in his pocket.
Shanker was calling him. They had agreed not to phone each other, but only to text.
“Fucking hell, Shanker,” said Strike, raising the mobile to his ear. “I thought I said—”