What Stilton needed was divine intervention – deus ex machina. What he got was a tip-off. A telephone call just as he was contemplating a mountain of paperwork on his desk at the Yard and preparing to give up on it and go home.
‘It’s me. Joe Downes.’
Stilton said ‘Yes’ while he racked his brains.
‘You came round my gaff last week and told me I was a lousy father for sending me daughter down a coal hole at midnight.’
‘Oh aye – I remember you now.’
A surly git who’d not had the courage to look him in the eyes when he’d taken the black imp back to him.
‘You was asking about Fish Wally.’
‘You’ve seen him?’
‘I haven’t. It was the missis. Says she bumped into him down Covent Garden this morning. Says he’s taken to spending his nights at St Martin’s.’
‘What?’
‘I said –’
‘I heard what you said. I meant which St Martin’s?’
‘St Martin-in-the-Fields. What other one is there?’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Stilton said, more to himself than Downes.
‘That’s what I told the missis. Still, we’re even now, you and me, aren’t we?’
‘Aye lad, we are. Just mind how you go with the nutty slack.’