Tariq calls at eight the following morning, bringing me back from a deep sleep. Twenty minutes later I’m on Royal College Street, ducking into the Renault 5 I bought for almost nothing from a man who had been upgrading to a family estate, the week I passed my test. He’d looked mournfully at my open palm as he handed over the keys and I’d wondered whether it was the old banger he was sad to say goodbye to or whether he was thinking of the passing of his life as he’d known it.
Even at this early hour, the sky outside is a piercing blue, glowing with some sort of promise. Swinging my bag onto the front seat next to a pile of old magazines, empty cigarette packets and discarded cans, I turn on the engine and watch a jet-stream of dust shoot out from the fan.
Tariq’s information had been sparse – more of a vague location than an address – yet as I make my way through Kentish Town, along Fortess Road and down Tufnell Park Road, there’s a feeling of anticipation.
At Holloway Road, I turn right and then left onto Seven Sisters, past a patchwork of churches and mosques. Going left at Finsbury Park past endless roadworks, I finally pull up outside a cluster of shops lining a quiet curved road. There is the greengrocer’s Tariq had described and, next to it, the social club, which he suggested, without using as many words, might be a cover for something more dubious.
With nothing else to do but sit and watch, I pull into the mews opposite, turning off the engine and setting my eyes on the social club, reminding myself, when the doubt threatens to cloud my conviction, that I have broken cases with more tenuous leads than this in the past.
The building in question – indicated by a handwritten sign in childish writing above the door – is an inconspicuous if unconvincing affair, the wide windows in the front concealed by frosted plastic sheets.
I sit and wait, the rush of adrenaline subsiding as the minutes pass, until two hours later I am desperate for caffeine.
Pushing the car door, which resists and then opens too fast, I pat my pocket to check for change before crossing towards the greengrocer’s. The bell above the door tinkles as I step inside, and my eyes struggle for a moment to adjust to the relative darkness after the blazing sun in the street outside.
Moving straight for the fridge, I pick up a Red Bull from the shelf before heading to the counter to pay. The woman at the cash desk is deep in conversation with another customer and I stand there for as long as I can bear before clearing my throat.
‘Just this,’ I say, placing the right change on the counter, cracking open the can as I move back out of the shop.
Stepping off the pavement into the road, I hear the blare of a car horn and a BMW appears out of nowhere, swerving so as not to hit me.
‘What the fuck?’ I say to myself as much as to the driver and step back onto the pavement as the car pulls into a side street next to the row of shops. Starting to cross again, this time I check for the blind spot, and as I look back I see a young woman, around my age or younger, with thin, bleach-blonde hair pulling herself out from the back seat of the car.
There is something about her pale, Bambi-like legs tottering on shiny black heels, the hollow circles under her eyes visible even from this distance, that catches my attention. Ducking back into the car, where I am protected from view by a smeared windshield, I watch the girl move through the alleyway which runs along the side of the social club before disappearing out of view.
For a moment I sit in the car, drumming a finger uneasily against the steering wheel, taking a moment to gather my thoughts before discreetly pushing open the door and stepping onto the pavement.
Taking a few steps to my right, I can see into the alleyway through the partial screen of a hedge to where the BMW is parked on the cobbles, next to a tree whose roots seem to burst out from the pavement. The car’s nose is pointed towards the back door of the building. Without bothering to lock my car, I cross the road, further down this time, and take shelter behind the hedge at the foot of the alleyway where the BMW has been left, at a slight angle.
From here, there is a perfect view through the open back door into the social club. Just as I lift my head above the parapet, I see the driver emerge through the doorway. Behind him are two more girls with the same blackened eyes and vacant expressions as the one who has just gone inside.
Ducking down again, my heartbeat rising in my chest, I hear the man speak and the girls get into the back seat while he lowers himself through the driver’s door, with an instinctive glance over his shoulder.
Moving stealthily back across the road as the BMW reverses into the street, my hands shake as I turn the key in the ignition, pulling the wheel all the way to the right just in time to see the BMW shooting up the road.
Gently pressing my foot on the accelerator, the second speaker suddenly comes to life and there is a surge of music as I race up the street after them, turning sharply and feeling my phone drop from my pocket into the footwell.