‘What about the family?’ she says. ‘What have they told you?’
‘There’s a younger brother, Fly Dent, about ten. He was sheltered from the worst of Taylor’s activities, it seems. Very much looked after by Taylor: he fed him, washed his clothes, got him to school on time, etcetera. Social workers are onto him now. Mother’s a total case. Cheap stuff, y’know: Magners, solvents, methadone. Boy’ll be taken into care, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘Didn’t anyone report Taylor missing? Was there a misper investigation going?’
‘Brother came in, yes, on the Monday – think it was the twelfth.’ Havers straightens and leafs through some paperwork on his desk. ‘It was logged, of course. But a boy like him – if we launched an investigation into every missing young man who was into all sorts, DS Bradshaw … He wasn’t a minor, don’t forget. For all we knew, he was loading up a van with fags in Spain.’
Havers shrugs as if they have an understanding. A boy like him. He couldn’t care less about the death of a boy like Dent. She can imagine exactly what type of reception his little brother got when he tried to raise the alarm.
A bus flies towards her at such speed she thinks she’ll be hit, but it thunders past, its warm air whipping up her hair. The smell of fried eggs and the sound of brakes squealing like trapped pigs; past The Crown and Paddy Power and striped zip bags for the dispossessed outside the pound shop. Every face she passes, every snippet of language in the air, is from another part of the world. The shops are a motley cheek-by-jowl roll-call of immigration, like strata in a rock: McGovern’s Free House; Halal kebab;, Bacovia magazin romanesc; Serhat Off Licence (Polski sklep); Bosnia & Herzegovina Community Biblioteka charity shop; Milad Persian food; D’Den Exotic African Cuisine; Taste of Lahore; Bestco mini mart, where half the shelves are empty. A rundown, slip-sliding melting pot, and the necessaries blooming like lichen: pawn shop, betting shop, funeral parlour, Western Union Money Transfer.
She keeps walking, and where the shops thin out and the traffic roars louder still is an Ethiopian restaurant, Abyssinia, with red and white cheesecloth curtains in the window, and beside it a grey metal door. 11A. Manon looks up and sees windows blacked by the pollution and grey nets, one pushed back by something – a sack or bag leaning against the glass. It’s going to smell in here, she thinks, as her body tenses against it, and she’s right, a combination of old frying (congealed fat, the type of smell you get from an unwashed grill pan) and damp. She’s been buzzed in and she tramps up the narrow stairwell with her polo-neck over her mouth and nose.
‘Yes, yes, come in, come in,’ says a woman in a strong Irish accent. She has a ginger fuzz of hair, which is dark grey at the roots, a pale, freckled complexion in among the thread veins, and frightened eyes. She is quick, like a creature burrowing to get away.
‘Mrs Dent,’ says Manon.
‘Dat’ll be me.’
‘My name is DS Bradshaw from Cambridgeshire Police. I’ve come to talk to you about Taylor Dent, your son.’
‘Taylor’s gone, de lord have mercy on his soul,’ she says, not looking Manon in the eye. Instead she leads the way in, leaving the door ajar. ‘Sorry about de mess …’
The smell recedes inside the flat, overtaken by stale cigarettes, which is not unpleasant, almost warming in a way. The light is dim, the carpets dark. The space opens out into a lounge, not much brighter, the nets blocking out the light from outside. The place seems embedded with human cells. A multitude, vibrating, of people long gone, arrested or dead.
Manon and Mrs Dent (‘Call me Maureen’) sit together on the sofa, brown floral chenille. There are open crisp packets on the floor. An overflowing ashtray. An enormous television takes up one half of the room.
‘I’ll clean dose up. I’ll get round to it. I’ve got to have a camera in me stomach. A camera down in me stomach, see. I don’t want it, so I don’t. I can show you de letter, you might understand it. I don’t understand it, see.’
She gets up again, beetling off in a stooped flurry. She hasn’t made eye contact and it’s as if she’s talking to the air, or to the flat, or to herself. Manon feels curiously invisible, not the first intruder from the state: Kilburn CID, social services, education welfare.
‘I don’t want it, no,’ Maureen says from somewhere in the hallway, and Manon follows her to a filthy galley kitchen with a full sink of dishes and every surface covered with bottles and cans (Magners, red wine, Fanta). Manon’s shoes stick to the linoleum. Maureen is pulling on recalcitrant drawers, stuffed with letters and lighters, which she then can’t shut. She is distracted by the discovery of a packet of John Player Blues, taking one out and lighting it, squinting at Manon for the first time.
‘Where were we?’ she says.