There was a homeless couple sitting outside, sharing a bottle of fortified wine. I passed them and walked into an off-white, clinical reception area. The waiting room was an even split between young men and women. Some looked like sex workers and carried on loud, outrageous conversations as I passed them. Others looked nervously at their phones or their shoes. I went to the front desk and spoke to a woman through a battered Perspex screen.
‘Hi,’ I said, discreetly showing her my badge. ‘I’d like to speak to whoever’s in charge, please.’
She wasn’t impressed. ‘Name?’
‘Aidan Waits.’
‘Yes, he does. Someone’ll be with you in a minute, Mr Waits.’
I sat down. The three escorts who’d been discussing the wilder fantasies of their regulars looked at me. Then they looked at each other. They stood up as one and walked out of the building. I couldn’t tell if I looked like a cop or just especially contagious. After a few minutes a woman in a white coat came through and spoke to the receptionist, who pointed at me.
‘Mr Waits,’ she said, with a professional smile. ‘Shall we go through to my office?’
We stepped through and I closed the door behind me. ‘Sorry, I think I cleared out half your waiting room.’
‘They’ll be back,’ she said. ‘Their bodies are their livelihoods. Now, what seems to be the problem?’
‘I’d like to ask you about condoms.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s work-related. Would you happen to have any to hand?’
She looked at me for a moment then leaned off the counter and opened a drawer. She reached inside and held one out for me to take. The packaging was identical to the wrapper I’d found at the Palace.
‘Are these available anywhere else?’
‘There are two other Lifestyle clinics—’
‘But not in the city?’
‘Correct.’
‘And they’re not for commercial use?’ She shook her head. ‘So if someone’s using these in the city centre, they most likely came from here?’
‘Stands to reason.’
‘This is a very long shot but you don’t happen to keep records of—’
She was shaking her head before I could finish the sentence. ‘Nothing like that, I’m afraid. First of all, we supply contraception to anyone who needs it. Usually students or sex workers. Secondly, there are confidentiality issues involved. A clinic like this is built on trust. If people felt as though they couldn’t come here in confidence we’d be losing the battle.’
‘I understand that,’ I said. ‘Thanks for seeing me at such short notice, I know you must be busy.’ We both heard the disappointment in my voice.
‘Not since you scared off the waiting room. Where did you say you found it?’
‘A hotel.’
‘A condom in a hotel?’ She smiled. ‘A needle in a haystack, surely?’
‘It’s closed down at the moment but a man died there in suspicious circumstances on Saturday night. We’re trying to trace anyone who might have seen something.’
‘Closed down?’ She frowned. ‘You don’t mean the Palace?’
‘I can neither confirm nor deny that,’ I said, nodding.
‘So if someone had been working from there, they wouldn’t be in any trouble …’
‘They’d be making my day.’
She looked at me for a moment. ‘I’ve heard a couple of girls mention it. I think there’s a room they use sometimes.’
‘Even since it’s been closed?’
‘You’d be surprised at some of the uses these empty buildings get put to. Someone was hiring it out for a percentage. There are some real users in this city, and I do occasionally feel compelled to report things, but in this case it sounded like a good deal for the girls. A fairly safe environment. Fairly cheap. And they could just cross the road for supplies, or a check-up here if it came to that.’
‘Any girls in particular?’
‘I’m afraid that really is as far as I can go.’ I passed back the condom and she smiled. ‘It’s on the house, Detective.’
I shook my head. ‘I hate seeing things go to waste.’
3
I requested the address that uniform had been given for Marcus Collier, the day-shift guard, and then settled into some paperwork. Sutty and I had an unspoken agreement to spend half of each shift apart from each other, so I could ghostwrite his reports. Although this meant more work, and was in violation of several regulations, I took an odd pleasure in approximating his constipated, staccato writing style. Or at least, in spending a few hours apart from him.
When uniform still hadn’t supplied Collier’s address several hours later, I knew that they probably never would. Lately, my name was closing a lot of doors. I requested the CCTV from the site of the latest dustbin fire on Oxford Road, just in case Parrs decided to check up on me. There had been three of them, spread across five days. So far the perpetrator had chosen surveillance blackspots, by accident or by design, and I assumed this would be no different.
Finally, bored with waiting, I called Aneesa for Martin Collier’s address. She gave it to me immediately and, with some hours to kill before my shift actually started, I decided to head out there for a look. It was still bright out but creeping towards evening. The streets were filled with rough-looking young men about my age, their arms wrapped around women so beautiful it could break your heart. I tried to look at the skyline instead. Endless regeneration cranes, vanishing off into the smog.
Marcus Collier lived at a Salford address. I saw his area code, a gun-crime hotspot, and grimaced. Almost a quarter of all reported shootings in the city took place in a one-mile radius of his street. Dynastic crime families going back generations carried out beatings, robberies and even hits with near-impunity. No one blamed the bystanders, the civilians, when they didn’t make statements. A code of silence was what kept them safe. Due to this, most violence in the area went unreported, and we speculated the true gun-crime figures were much higher. When I visited it was usually to deliver Osman warnings. Threat-to-life alerts. Sutty and I had communicated dozens of such threats to men, women and even children, most of whom declined police protection.
Marcus had a room in a beat-up-looking boarding house at the dead end of a cul-de-sac. I heard the whistles as I pulled into the street, followed by a stillness that was very different from calm. The whistles were an early-warning system. Literally a boy on the corner who’d put his lips together and blow. It told his employers – the local dealers – to close the first-floor windows, where they’d usually sit dropping down zip-bags of dope for passing regulars. The whistles put everything on hold, pausing the sad melodrama of the street for a few minutes.
The original red bricks of Marcus’s boarding house had blackened beneath the city smog, and several windows were covered up with wooden planks. When I knocked on the door it nearly gave way beneath my hand. The lock was bust and I stepped inside, into a damp, messy hallway. There was a disconnected washing machine blocking my path, and I pressed myself into the wall to edge round it. You saw this a lot in some neighbourhoods. People bored of being robbed would push them up against their front doors at night, to stop junkies from breaking in.
I went up the stairs and knocked on room 3, apparently Marcus Collier’s.
There was no movement behind the door. From the room across the hall I could hear a game show, blaring out of a cheap TV. I listened for a moment and knocked there instead.
A woman’s voice, thick with drink or age or both, said: ‘You’re early …’
‘I’m a friend of Marcus’s, any idea where he is?’
‘A friend of Marcus?’ There was a pause, then a low, joyless laugh. ‘Now I’ve heard everything.’ I stepped back as she came to the door and opened it. She was middle-aged, wearing a leopardskin nightie at least one size too small. I could smell skunk on her breath. ‘Hello …’ she said, looking me up and down. ‘You after some company, sweetheart?’
‘Nothing like that.’
‘Marcus owe you money or something?’ I showed her my badge and she laughed. ‘With friends like you …’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Jeanie,’ she said, leaning into the doorway. ‘Rub me the right way and all your wishes could come true …’
‘Have you got a key for his room, Jeanie?’
She opened her mouth but didn’t say anything.