I spent the rest of the day in that place Islingtonites only speak about in whispers to frighten their children up to bed: South of the River. Land of drive-by shootings and drive-through McDonald’s. Precisely, I spent it in the no-man’s-land between Camberwell and Brixton, looking for a young girl called Denise, who had disappeared from her home in Birmingham six months before. This, as Jemma had pointed out, is what I usually do. I find kids for parents who have lost them. Parents who have fucked up and failed in the only really important job there is.
I’d been looking for Denise for the last two weeks, on and off, ever since a watchful young dude called Jared had slunk his way into my office one afternoon and handed me a picture of her. I’d taken Jared for the missing girl’s younger brother but Jared told me he was actually Denise’s husband. I said that I’d keep an eye out for his missing wife, but in the days that followed I hadn’t looked too hard, simply showing Denise’s picture around while I was out looking for other kids. Denise was perfectly within her rights to skip both her town and her young husband, having reached the elevated seniority of sixteen years. There was also the fact that I didn’t know what she was leaving behind. I’d interfered once before in the life of a runaway and even though I wasn’t there to see them I was sure that the consequences for her had been pretty terrible. I hadn’t meant to hurt the girl but I’d sworn it would never happen again.
Just the day before, however, I’d got a tip-off. It came from a retired bus conductor of my acquaintance, a wise and wizened Barbadian called Joe, who sometimes gets his former colleagues on the network to keep an eye out for the kids I’m looking for. Joe had told me that a young girl with Denise’s dyed black spiky hair had been seen hanging around the Brixton area. One driver had spotted her two days in a row and from what he’d said it sounded like she might be hooking for the 22 Crew. The 22 are a posse of enterprising Jamaicans who operate their people-management concern out of a cafe on Brixton’s Railton Road. The 22 are the leading employers in their field, always on a recruitment drive, and it didn’t seem unlikely to me that a young runaway from Birmingham had been persuaded to follow a career path with them.
Even though finding Denise was just bread-and-butter stuff the tip was fresh, so I decided that Jo Thomas could wait until later. After leaving Mike and Ally, I walked downstairs and the Mazda, given a few slaps, sputtered its way into life. I rejoined the traffic, moving a little faster now, as if a stopper had been pulled out across town somewhere. Even though I’d felt Jemma’s pain, Jo’s death still hadn’t really got to me and I wondered once again why not, when it had had such a profound effect on my neighbour. Other people’s problems, other people’s lives in variable degrees of storm, while I seemed to be sailing along to the place I most wanted to be in life. Like the traffic that morning I’d shrugged it aside without making any conscious decision to do so. I suppose there was too much weighted on the other side: my own expectant happiness. The image of Sharon, soon to be more than an image.
I got to Brixton just after eleven and cruised slowly past the tube station, where used tickets were already being traded by a thin, ragged sub-species of human. Along the High Street clusters of wary young men leaned back on the store fronts while stout old women heaved striped bags of shopping past the discount shops and pizza restaurants. I drove round the one-way, then checked out the spot Joe had told me about, a leaf-littered stretch of road lined with Portuguese cafes. Denise wasn’t there. The only person touting for business of any kind was an enthusiastic evangelist dressed in a pink zoot suit, his cheap PA system translating the jewels of his message into a hissing, unintelligible babble.
My fresh tip was already stale but as I was down there I decided not to give up straight away. The spot may have been free of sin but I doubted that the evangelist had caused that. It was more likely the police, acting on the complaints of local residents. Young mothers who had seen their toddlers bending down to used needles once too often, old ladies fed up with pulling their dogs away from used condoms. I knew that the girls had probably just moved, and gang turf also meant that they wouldn’t have moved too far. I headed up towards the thundering interchange that is Loughborough Junction, keeping my eyes open. It didn’t take me long to find out that that’s where the circus had moved to. But was Denise Denton one of the attractions?
I parked in a bus lane across the highway from the six girls who were working the street and reached for my F1, checking each girl out with the zoom. Two of the girls were shivering outside a snooker hall. Another two stood in the doorway of a DSS. Two more were working the junction itself. Unfortunately for me, but not for her, Denise wasn’t one of them. I waited for half an hour, hoping that none of the girls’ supervisors had spotted me watching what was going on. The day was still clear but that particular area of London wasn’t the finest canvas for autumn’s delicate brush: a furry grey mist choked the air, smearing the store fronts and the window sills. The health risks of prostitution are well known but I suddenly thought of another one: asthma. If I’d been them I’d have worn a cycling mask, though that probably wouldn’t have endeared me to prospective clients. Or maybe it would have. As it was, the girls didn’t do anything to attract trade, simply keeping an eye out so that the park wouldn’t have to wait any longer than necessary. A couple of them got lucky even though it was a chilly Friday lunchtime.
If Denise had been with a punter she’d have been back by now, so I couldn’t see any point in waiting longer. Instead I locked up and walked down to the snooker hall, where I asked the two girls if they knew the face in the picture I was showing them. They both said no, as did the girls who had been outside the DSS but had walked up to see what I was doing. I gave each of them a copy anyway, in case they changed their minds or ran into Denise. My number was stamped on the back and I assured them all that if they rang me and I came and found Denise, there would be fifty quid in it for them.
‘I’m not the Bill,’ I said. ‘I won’t do anything to her. I won’t even tell anyone. I just need to know that she’s all right.’
All four girls took copies of the photo and I thanked them before walking up to the junction itself. By now there was only one person standing there, a tall girl of about eighteen. Or forty. It wasn’t possible to tell. Her face was ageless, pale as an ice lolly with all the syrup sucked out. A cold sore squatted on her lower lip like a squashed bluebottle. My eyes were drawn down from it to the hipbones pressing like mountain ridges through her beer-stained mini dress.
Beer-stained? I’m staying with beer-stained.
‘Business, love?’
The girl was trying to be casual but her voice was fuelled by desperation. I ignored it and told her, politely, that while I was there for business, my business wasn’t ‘pleasure’. I showed her Denise’s photo and studied her face as she looked at it and I thought that I did see recognition there. When I told her about the fifty notes she looked at me.
‘What are you?’ the girl said. ‘Daddy?’
I explained that I wasn’t Denise’s father, hiding my deeply felt hurt at being thought anywhere near old enough. I could see that the girl wanted the money but I could also see that she wasn’t sure about talking to me. I didn’t push it. Whether she’d call me or not was one thing but right then, with the other girls watching, she needed to give me the flick off. Like I’d done with the other girls I simply thanked her for her time and turned to go.
‘Wait.’
The hand that had taken hold of my left wrist was strong, even though the arm it was attached to was little more than a broom handle with veins. I stopped and looked back, thinking the girl had changed her mind.
‘You sure you’re not interested? French for twenty. Without, like. You can have me for forty, though, I’ve got a place close by. Come on, love, I can see you want to.’
The girl’s mouth trembled and the dead fly jumped. It took me a second to realize that she was smiling. Once again I said no thanks.
‘Come on, love, I’m cold you know? What about a hand job? Down here, come on, darling.’
The girl moved closer, pushing her sunken groin into mine, her grip on my arm closing even tighter. I tried to tell her again that she’d got the wrong man but she ignored me. The bones of her free hand went for my crotch and I couldn’t help it; a reflex jerked me backwards. The girl didn’t let go of my hand in time and the pull yanked her forwards. Before I could catch her she fell, stumbling over, her elbow joining the pavement with a sharp, loud crack. I put out a hand to her, to help her up, asking if she was OK. I put my other hand on her shoulder but she lashed out at it, clambering to her feet on her own. Once she was up she rushed at me.
‘Hey!’ I said. ‘Come on. It was an accident. Come on.’
I reached for my wallet to give her a tenner, one hand fending the girl off, but it was no use. She’d snapped. Her arms wheeled around me, aiming at my head, her feet jabbing into my shins. I tried to shake her off gently but I couldn’t. The girl was raging at me, trying to get at my eyes with her nails. I pivoted and swung her, hoping she’d spin off, but she managed to cling onto the sleeve of my jacket. She was spitting at me, trying to claw my face. When she realized I wasn’t going to let her do that she stopped for a second in order to tell me that I was going to die. Then she showed me something to underline her point. A triangle of rusty brown steel arced suddenly towards my eyes. I don’t know how she’d managed it but in her free hand she’d produced a Stanley knife. The point was now underlined, italicized and covered in highlighter.
I ducked beneath the blade and kicked the girl’s legs from under her. When she was down for the second time, I aimed a foot at her wrist, sending the knife scuttling across the pavement like a frightened roach. I walked towards it and kicked it further up the street.
‘My boyfriend, he’s gonna kill you,’ the girl screamed at me. ‘Bastard, he’s gonna kill you!’
I crossed back through the stationary traffic to my car and sat for a second, waiting as my heart slowly calmed down five octaves. Oh my. The girl was right: I was getting too old for this. I should have gone birdwatching. To my knowledge no one has ever tried to slash David Attenborough. I edged into the nearest lane, next to a Volvo estate being driven by a well-dressed middle-aged woman, who cut a deep glance at me, her face curdled with disgust. She must have seen what had happened. I could feel my face reddening. I wanted to stop her, to tell her, to explain. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Instead I had to endure her contempt, as the same tide carried us back to safety, to north London.