‘It might distract me from what you’re smoking in there …’
‘Yeah yeah,’ she said, pressing her lips together in affected disappointment and disappearing back inside the room. As an afterthought she kicked the door closed behind her and I waited a minute. She re-emerged with a key and pressed it into my hand. I felt the hot sweat from her palm and she took a step closer. ‘Mates rates, if you’re quick about it …’
‘I’m a married man.’
She looked at me for a second then pulled away. ‘I doubt it, shug. They’re my best customers. Put the key under the door on your way out.’
I crossed the hall to Marcus’s room and opened it.
It was a box, about four by eight, and smelt of damp. I could see a security uniform, crumpled on the floor, like he’d evaporated while wearing it. There wasn’t much more than a bed, a chair and a desk. I looked at the bed, moved the dirty sheets about until I was satisfied that nothing was hidden there. Then I went around the room. Empty take-away boxes were taking on a life of their own in the heat, and the littered napkins and discarded payslips on the floor looked interchangeable. I checked inside the pockets of his security uniform, crushed into the floor. There was a leaking biro and some change in one pocket and a plastic package in the other. I drew it out carefully.
Lifestyle.
The condom connected him to room 305, where I suspected there had been sexual activity. Alongside what I’d learned about girls tricking in the Palace, it shed some light on what Ali had referred to as Marcus’s entrepreneurial spirit.
It didn’t tell me where he was, though.
As I slid the key back under the door of No. 4, I called out, ‘If Marcus isn’t here, where will he be?’ There was no answer. ‘Hey,’ I said, kicking the door.
‘The Inn,’ said Jeanie.
‘Which Inn?’
‘The Fawcett Inn.’ She laughed. ‘Get it?’
4
Although the daylight was failing, the heat hung motionless in the air, and the warmth still hummed underfoot. It had been baked down into the ground and into the buildings, charging the kerbs with kinetic energy. I walked, following Jeanie’s directions through failed estates and problem blocks, where hooded kids shouted at me and bass-driven music poured out of the windows into the streets.
When I reached The Inn I thought I’d been had, that it must have been abandoned. Scuffed, industrial sheet metal covered the ground-floor windows, and the sign was falling off the wall one letter at a time. The dirty off-white fa?ade had come away from the building itself in places, exposing the no-nonsense cinder blocks beneath. It was a dilapidated roadhouse, rendered obsolete by newer motorways, and starved to death by one recession that looked like it was going back for seconds.
My fingers stuck to the door at first touch, so I pushed it open with my foot. The room smelt like a wet, drunken dog, and there were ten or so near-identical men sitting around it. White, and of a certain age, either gleaming bald or with short, close-cropped hair. Most kept their eyes on the football highlights, screaming out of a widescreen TV on the far wall. The colour was turned up so brightly that it hurt my eyes. A few of the men glanced at me as I walked in, their fists wrapped around pint glasses of piss-yellow lager. There was a crumpled, faded England flag hanging above the bar at an angle, and I saw that it had actually been nailed into the wall. Something to be proud of.
The barman pushed himself upright as I approached, baring his teeth in what might have been a smile. He had a face full of age, hate and booze, and I counted three golden teeth before he closed his mouth again. He didn’t say anything, just nodded at me and waited. The roar of the TV covered our conversation.
‘Evening,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know you were open …’
‘Some days neither do I. Got the football to thank, though.’
‘I’m looking for someone.’
He stared blankly ahead. ‘You think this is a place where people come to be found?’
‘Marcus Collier.’
‘Never heard of him, mate.’ He began to turn away.
‘He’s a regular here.’
‘A regular what?’
‘That’s funny,’ I said. ‘He’s pale, no hair …’ He laughed at that, flashing his eyes over my shoulder, at the ten or so men matching my description.
‘I’ll have a beer, then. You’ve heard of that?’
He seemed to come suddenly awake but I turned to go to the toilet. This time I caught a few hard looks from the men as I went through the room. The gents was just one filthy cubicle. It had been kicked in so many times that the top and bottom halves of the door moved independently of each other. I read some of the more legible graffiti and made my now-automatic five-point search of the space. In the light fixture I found a plastic baggy with what I took to be amphetamines inside. White power.
‘Three quid,’ said the barman when I returned. I put the coins down on the counter and he used his index finger to drag them towards him one at a time.
The bar mat was a dirty red, white and blue.
THERE AIN’T NO BLACK IN THE UNION JACK, it said.
Coming back through the room I’d noticed that we were one man down. I took a drink of my beer and turned to the barman.
‘Out of interest, was he here on Saturday night?’
‘Who?’
‘Marcus Collier.’
‘I’ve already told you—’
‘His name’s written all over the toilet wall. Biggest cock in the north, apparently.’ He didn’t move. ‘Although it’s a close-run thing.’
‘What d’ya want him for?’
‘That’s between me and him.’
‘Leave yer number.’
I looked at him for a second, fished inside my pocket for a pen and wrote ‘999’ on the bar mat.
He laughed, drew himself up. ‘You’re no cop …’
‘We let all sorts in these days, and we’ve got a pretty good sense of humour about who a skinhead shares his cell with.’ He showed me his teeth again. I drained my glass and set it down on the counter. I could feel the eyes of the other men in the room, burning holes into the back of my head. Slowly, deliberately, I used both hands to sweep up the sopping wet bar mat.
THERE AIN’T NO BLACK IN THE UNION JACK
I screwed it into a knot, wrung out the stale beer on to the bar-top, and forced it into my empty pint glass. When the barman didn’t stop me, I knocked it on its side and rolled it towards him. It connected with his belly. He still didn’t react so I crossed the room and turned.
‘Thanks for the tip-off,’ I said, loudly. That pushed him into action. He lifted up the bar counter and walked through, letting it crash down behind him. He had the handle of a cricket bat in one hand and the broadside resting on his shoulder. A couple of the other men stood up.
‘Tip-off about what?’ The football was forgotten now, and the entire room followed our argument with interest.
‘I came here to ask you a straight question. Was Marcus in? You said no so I went to the toilet. While I was there you shared our conversation. I notice we’re one man down now.’ I took out my card and dropped it on the floor. ‘Maybe you could give him a message for me?’ Nobody moved. ‘I’m the best chance he’s got of avoiding a long jump.’
‘He’s not here.’
‘Not if he’s got any sense, but the guy I’m looking for isn’t exactly a brainwave. Where else would he be?’ The barman started to answer but I cut him off. ‘Don’t answer that. I’ll be outside, and if I see him leave I’m doing you and everyone in this room for obstruction.’ He went beetroot red with rage. The only sound was the football commentator, screaming about an own-goal. The men started to sink into their seats, or otherwise curl away from me.
‘Marcus,’ shouted the barman, finally.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said a man, emerging from the stairwell. Even I would have struggled to pick him out of a police line-up of the others in the room. Sky-blue jeans, a white polo shirt and a bald head.
‘Evening, Marcus. According to this guy you’ve never been here before.’
He shrugged. ‘So?’
‘So I’m trying to eliminate you from a murder enquiry. You’d better find someone who can remember where you were on Saturday night.’