I have to work fast; there’s only so long I can hope to have a story like this to myself. With knife crime all the rage in the national press at the moment, it’s just a matter of time before the bigger papers come sniffing around, wanting the number of a hard-won contact in return for a pitifully small finder’s fee and absolutely no acknowledgement in their subsequent piece that the legwork wasn’t theirs.
Hesitating for a moment, I reach below my desk and pull out a hardback black book, filled with names not kept in my Rolodex. The pages inside are floppy and worn, brimming with scraps of paper: names of old school friends and neighbours who’ve turned their hand to one line of work or another and proved useful contacts in the process, people who certainly wouldn’t be willing to stand up in a court of law.
There are so few leads to go on, but there is one person I can rely on to talk. Standing, I pull my coat over my shoulders and head for the door.
I am on the 253 bus moving east down Camden Road when Oscar calls back. It is the same bus route I would take to sixth form college back in the days before my parents upped sticks to a shiny new house in the South of France the year after I left school, leaving me to move in with my long-term boyfriend.
‘I’ve just been up to the Heath to have a look,’ Oscar says, and I don’t mention that I had just been thinking about him, that I am currently on the same bus we’d taken together so many times that I could almost feel him next to me, sharing a pair of earphones. Except now when I think of him, all I hear is the memory of my own screams.
Feeling my body lurch forward as the driver suddenly brakes at the junction with Holloway Road, I hold tightly to the handrail.
‘Really?’
‘There’s nothing there, Is.’
I pause, trying to slow the conversation down. ‘So you’ve been to the Heath already? I’d have come with you …’
My eyes flick to my phone screen: 10.57a.m. ‘I mean, Jesus, it’s not even eleven o’clock yet, you can’t have been there long. Did you know exactly where to look? Maybe you missed something. I—’
‘Issy, seriously, it’s OK – there’s nothing to worry about.’ Oscar clears his throat, trying to sound upbeat. ‘It looks like whatever you saw, it was nothing. Probably a couple of crackheads fighting over the last toot. You know what they’re like …’
Of course I know. I want to shout down the phone, Of course I fucking know.
I keep my voice as level as I can. ‘But what about the brick through my door?’
‘Issy, what about the bloody brick? You can hardly say you’re surprised. Frankly, I’m shocked it hasn’t happened before. You’re a journalist, for God’s sake – and a pretty fucking relentless one at that – of course people want to shut you up. Christ, if I was a criminal I’d want you …’
His voice is running out of patience, hissing down the line. I imagine his colleagues have finally cleared the room and he can now speak freely.
‘I mean, what the hell were you even doing in a bush on the Heath at six a.m., Issy? Seriously. Actually, please don’t answer that.’
Stop calling me Issy, I want to shout at him.
I hear him cover the mouthpiece with his hand and mutter a greeting to someone before clearing his throat and resuming his lecture, his tone altered again.
‘Sounds like you’ve had a bit of a mental weekend. Why don’t you take a couple of hours, yeah? Go home and have a rest. I’m sure the paper will survive without you for one day …’
Holding the phone away from my ear, I find myself unable to speak, not that he notices.
‘It would be good to see you soon anyway. Give me a shout if you’re—’ Before he can finish his sentence, I have ended the call and shoved my phone back in my pocket, pressing the button to stop the bus.
The warehouse stands on a secluded backstreet just off Holloway Road, a makeshift mixture of concrete and corrugated iron. Determinedly ignoring the gazes of a throng of builders nearby, I buzz the intercom and when a man’s voice answers, I reply.
‘I’m here to see Tariq.’
‘Tariq ain’t here.’
‘Tell him it’s Isobel,’ I insist. ‘Tell him it’s important.’
I look up at the camera above my head. The voice goes briefly quiet and then a moment later the door clicks open, and I take a breath as the smell of skunk hits me inside the hallway.
By the time I reach the next internal door, the final bolt is pulled open by one of Tariq’s minions. He looks me up and down with disapproval as I step into the room, and I hold his gaze before taking in the familiar scene: a makeshift bar on one side of the room, a pool table with men scattered around it casually smoking spliffs and talking in muted voices.
It’s the same set-up every time, ever since I started coming along to these pop-up drugstores with Oscar when we were both still in sixth form college. Back then, it had taken more persuasion on his part to get me through the doors. Thankfully, Oscar had proved such a good customer in those days – the days before his dad found out what he was up to and forced him to sign up to the police station where he was top dog, and where he could push his son through the ranks – that he’d convinced them to let him bring in his girlfriend; it helped that I had been in the year above Tariq’s younger brother at school, meaning the kind of trust and connection that money couldn’t buy.
Since then I’ve become a regular customer, and over the years have been increasingly impressed by the efficiency with which the operation is run. As a trusted client, you know that every few months or so the venue will change, and if you aren’t there at the right time to get the new address, it’s tough luck. The next time you try to ring, the phone line will be dead and the shop shut up, any trace of its existence gone for ever.
But it was more than weed that I’d managed to pick up over the ten years or so since my first visit. It was to this place, and so many others like it, that I had come for information which had led to a series of scoops involving rival drug dealers whom Tariq and his men had been only too happy to see wiped out.
I bite my lip, pushing away the memory, concentrating instead on the story ahead of me.
For fear of reprisals, I had written those past articles under a pseudonym; I didn’t need to find out what happened to journalists who were found to be helping police uncover dealers, in return for exclusive tip-offs. Though anyone who watched the doors of the office at the newspaper would notice I was the only woman who walked in and out with any regularity, other than the receptionist, Elaine. It wouldn’t take much of a dig to work out who was writing the stories. It isn’t like there’s a budget for freelancers these days.
The false name is helpful to sources like Tariq, though, who feel less exposed when talking to me, less concerned that a link will be made between him and his most unlikely customer.
What makes Tariq so appealing to me this morning, other than the lost hash that needs replacing, is that he grew up on the same estate that is now riddled with tensions assumed to be the root cause of the stabbing on the high street last night.
Even in the middle of the day, it’s dark inside the warehouse as I walk towards the doorway at the back of the space where I see Tariq waiting, amidst a couple of old rolled-up carpets.
‘Safe, Isobel,’ he greets me once I am within greeting distance.
‘Tariq,’ I smile.
‘Come in.’ He indicates towards his office – a windowless room furnished with a desk, a chair and nothing else but a single calendar lining the wall.
‘Business or pleasure?’ he asks, pouring me a glass of water.
‘Both,’ I say and he raises his eyebrows.
‘There was a stabbing at the 29 bus stop opposite my flat—’
‘I heard.’
I pause. ‘OK, that’s a good start. I need a bit more about the gangs involved.’ I raise my hand before he can object. ‘Nothing on record, obviously. Just a bit of background. There’s no way anyone could ever trace it back to you. You know how it goes.’
After his usual insistence that he has nothing to offer, Tariq won’t shut up. As far as he is concerned, it’s inevitable that as one group starts to take precedence, challenging the existing power, then there will be war.
By the time he’s told me everything he knows about ongoing tensions in the estates around Somers Town, nearly an hour has passed.
‘That’s all I’m saying. If it’s not this beef, it’s some next beef. That’s what it is on them estates. It never ends. Same thing round these ends, except here it ain’t the Asians, it’s some next level beef. You know me, I’m no racist, but seriously, it’s too much. Now you look round, it’s all Albanians, Romanians. I’m telling you, you don’t even know about that. These Eastern Europe mans are aggy.’
He looks up, as if suddenly aware of how much he’s said. ‘Anyway, the other thing. How much?’
‘A half,’ I say and he nods. ‘Isobel, man. You smoke too much.’