The Brick. Unusual name for a pub. He took his pint and went to stand outside the front doors. The light in the sky was fading fast, and there was an annoying February wind. In Leeds there’s always an annoying wind, unless there isn’t, then you wish there was. Either way, the weather’s always just a little bit shit. On the door was a poster, handwritten in thick black marker pen on bright orange paper: a DJ on Friday, a band on Saturday. What might have been, eh, Joe?
Across the road from the pub was a strip of grass that sloped upwards, long and irregular, too steep to be of any use. Beyond it were half a dozen rows of back-to-back houses running all the way up the hillside, their chimney stacks jet-black against the evening sky. They were larger than average for the area. Good solid stuff. Turn of the century. The previous century.
He sank a third of his pint. IPA? Bitter? He couldn’t remember what he’d ordered. It had the reassuring aroma of dusty rags and sweet mould. Real ale, the taste of his youth. Young lads today? Hardly any of ’em drank this stuff. He studied the pint glass in his hand. A young lad? Forty-eight hours he’d been gone. Could you even class that as missing? It was a decent bender, was all. Mum didn’t think so, though.
He looked again at the houses. The one at the end had two little attics, a narrow, angled staircase leading up to them. Each room had a fireplace, an original ceramic surround with floral patterns in relief on the tiles, an unexpected touch of elegance. For his entire childhood, a small vase of plastic flowers had sat in each fireplace. Other than that, the rooms had stood bare and unused. They could never persuade their grandma to do anything with the attics. When she died, they sold the house to a mobile hairdresser. Did he still live there? Had he done anything with the top floor?
DS Joe Romano spent the next couple of minutes wondering whether he could use his warrant card to talk his way into the house and have a quick look at the attics. While he was there, he might just pop down into the cellar and see if he could find his grandma’s old mangle.
He finished his pint and considered another. It was only as he was walking back to the bar that he remembered why he was here. Mrs Shaw had lost her son and didn’t know where to find him.