by Tom Trott
I was uncomfortable. I don’t like having clients who know me from before. It makes me vulnerable. I can’t be the cool-headed and cold-hearted bastard that the job needs. I was about to tell her there was nothing I could do, but she read it in my face before I had the chance.
‘I just want to know he’s ok. I ain’t heard a thing from him in years!’ she pleaded.
She might have been turned down a thousand times from the way her voice shook with desperation. Maybe she had. She could have been to the police. Probably had. But he wasn’t really a missing person, just missing from her life, and they don’t have an estranged families department.
‘Mrs Sweet—’ I was trying to pacify her. It didn’t work.
‘I ain’t seen him since before his dad died. And for god’s sake, Joe, don’t call me Mrs Sweet. I didn’t like that even when you were a kid.’ She took a drag on her cigarette.
I stayed calm. ‘He didn’t go to the funeral?’ That surprised me. Rory was an idiot sometimes, but never heartless. His own dad’s funeral, I couldn’t believe it.
‘Neither did you.’
I didn’t have a response for that. The truth was that I didn’t go because I wanted to avoid just this kind of situation.
‘Do it for us, Joe. For everything we did for you.’
That was a lot, for sure. But I don’t like being blackmailed. Either emotionally or the real kind. So I shut her down, as lightly as I could.
‘I’m sorry. Maybe if he was still my friend, or maybe if I thought he gave a shit about me I would feel inclined to help. But as it is, I’m trying to run a business here.’
‘I don’t have any money, Joe!’
So that’s what she thought of me. Fine. I didn’t care. And that was that: ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Sweet.’
My Honda purred between my legs. The sea spray just managing to sneak into the gap below my helmet. The wind felt like a riot shield pushing me over.
It couldn’t be Rory, could it? The age. The hair. His chest… Fuck it, I needed to be honest with myself. I always knew I’d find you dead one day.
2
What’s Different Now?
i headed straight for Gerard Street, which is amongst those terraces between London and Ditchling Roads, the poor side of London Road station. Even with Ken dead, and Rory and Thalia moved out, I doubted Elaine had moved. It was their house, through everything. Even I had lived there for a time.
I parked up and decided that I should probably now check the time if I was going to start knocking on doors. Not yet nine. But gone eight. I didn’t think that was too rude. Not in the circumstances.
I knew how to find the road: the big metal dragonfly on the side of the corner house, but I couldn’t remember the number. I walked down the road, taking in each house in turn. There’s that strange feeling you get when you stand in front of the right house. It’s like doing one of those nursery games with the different shapes and the different holes, only with your eyes shut. You might not know which one you’re picking up, but you know when it fits the hole.
Their house was narrow, and otherwise indistinguishable from the rest in the terrace if it wasn’t for the purple door. I didn’t even remember it had a purple door until I saw it. Then I wondered how I could forget. Then I realised that I can’t have forgotten because I recognised it when I saw it. Some unsummonable memory did its job when I needed it.
It looked like nothing had changed. The purple door, the rusted railings, the ratty blinds behind the kitchen windows. Because the roads were cut into the hill, the gardens on this side of the road were a storey lower than the front of the house, giving the place a strange split layout. You entered on the middle floor where their kitchen was and Rory’s bedroom had been, and went down to the living room, or up to the other bedrooms. This meant you had to climb up around five steps to reach the door.
I knocked and took a couple of steps back. I wasn’t sure why, but standing there I felt like a child again. Embarrassed.
The door swung open in a bad mood. There she was, standing in a dressing gown with a cigarette stuck to her lip. The same. But very different. Haggard. Tired. Instead of smile lines now she had frown lines. And greying hair. She looked more like officer George than her former self. Not that surprising, I supposed, she had gone from a happy family to being on her own. And her son a drug dealer, absent from any of their lives. At least Thalia was all right.
I tried to start a sentence, ‘Excuse me…’ but she recognised me before I could get any more out.
‘Joe?’ She sighed, as though she had thought she would never see me again. ‘Little Joe.’
‘Hi, Mrs Sweet.’
If she couldn’t already remember our last conversation, she could now. She looked down on me. In both ways.
‘Looking for Rory?’
For the first time I could remember I struggled getting my words out, ‘I don’t suppose…’ was all I could manage.
‘Speak to Thalia.’
That was all I was going to get. This is why I hate personal cases. This is why I refused last time. I need to focus, and I can’t focus when I’m trying not to hurt people. I gave a pathetic nod and stepped down to the pavement.
‘What’s different now?’ she called as I turned my back on her.
I left that hanging in the air. I wanted to avoid saying the wrong thing. After all, I didn’t know anything.
Where did Thalia work? It was a dry-cleaners, I was pretty sure. Somewhere off London Road. Chinese owners. Baker Street maybe.
It was. I really wasn’t in the mood for politely asking if she was around so I just pushed past the owner into the back.
And there she was. Packaging up a suit. She was better looking than I remembered. When I was younger she was just Rory’s little sister, but now she was undeniably a woman. Every slight imperfection had rounded out into distinctive features. And where she had been a plump girl she was now a woman with curves in all the right places. I wondered if those curves were natural or just cleverly clothed. But since she was wearing clothes, I didn’t much care either way. From shoes to hair she went up, out, in, out again. And on top big round lips and big dark eyes that were staring at me, this strange man who had barged his way into the back of the shop to find her, with some concern. But then she recognised me.
‘I’m looking for your brother,’ was all I said. I thought straight to the point was best.
The shop owner pestered her too much for her to ask me why, but she handed me a key and gave me an address off Lewes Road. I guess looking back it was strange that she always had the key on her. But with Rory you never knew when there might be an emergency.
I rode down to the gyratory. Rory had moved into one of the new flats built out of the old garage or petrol station, or was it something else? It was something that wasn’t needed any more, and homes in Brighton really were. Still are.
The new building had been a clean white box, but already pollution and dirt had stained it several shades of grey. Designed to look expensive, but done on a budget. They had Juliette balconies, I could see, one pretence to luxury. Not that I should turn my nose up, it looked a damn sight more respectable than my place.
I parked up and entered the main stairwell where I was confronted by a big, bright sign screaming “Proudly built by ABC Construction.” If a sign can look smug, this one did. The carpet was the cheap, wiry kind that you expect to find in function rooms, and the stairs had those infuriating metal treads that you used to catch your school shoes on. The inside walls were white too, only they were still white and regularly cleaned. I was amazed that Rory could afford whatever the rent was here.
I went up to the third floor, the top floor, and to the second door on the right, putting my ear up against it. I didn’t want to knock or call out in case there was anyone around. I didn’t want to be noticed. I couldn’t hear anything, not even the traffic from the street, so I slipped the key in and cautiously let the door swing open, without taking any steps. Still nothing. I crept in
and quickly checked the two rooms without taking any notice of them, just making sure I was alone. I was. So I shut the door and began to take the place in.
It was a one-bedroom flat, not too dissimilar to mine in its layout. One living room with kitchenette, a bedroom, small bathroom, and in this case a separate toilet, which I found unusual in a new-build. Perhaps it was some strange holdover from the building it used to be.
What was very different was the style. Despite how small the overall floor space was it still felt sparse, and not in a cool, modernist way, more in a way that made me think Rory didn’t own much. What little furnishings there were looked like they came with the place. Really, it looked like a show home. Tripod lamp. Old-style filmmaking lamp. Bare bulbs, also old-style. Scandinavian furniture. Architecture magazines that I was pretty damn sure Rory didn’t read. Even art on the walls.
It didn’t look like the home of a drug dealer. In fact, I would have been so sure I was in the wrong place and promptly left if it wasn’t for that on the fridge was a photo of Rory and Thalia. They were smiling, which dated it back a few years. Still, I didn’t have any pictures of him and those kinds of things always come in handy, so I took it. But it wasn’t what I was looking for. I knew what I was looking for. Weed. Or something stronger.
I went back to the bathroom and scrubbed my hands clean, which was more a ritual before a search than it was serving any practical purpose. Then I slipped on the pair of latex gloves that I always carry with me, and started looking.
I looked in the toilet cistern first, the traditional place, but found nothing. The next obvious place was behind the bath panel. Again nothing. I was struck both times by how clean these nooks and crannies were. Either Rory didn’t get up to much or he hadn’t been living here long.
I moved on to the bedroom and checked first under the bed itself. Nothing there. Literally, nothing there. It was like a hotel. Although even hotels give you slippers. I checked in the wardrobe, this looked a bit more lived in. He had clothes, at least. In the top of the wardrobe he had a shoebox of photographs. They were old, and I was sure I would be in some of them, but it wasn’t what I was looking for so I moved out of the bedroom to the living room and kitchenette.
Here there weren’t really any hidden spaces, the cupboards were mostly bare and none of the panels were loose. The only place I thought I would hide drugs was in the extractor fan, behind the filters. It was a good idea but all I got for it was a face full of dirt. This meant it had to be the one I dreaded: under the floorboards.
Floorboards are a pain because it can be any of them, you have to spend ages looking for the one loose one. I tried all the boards with my flick knife, another part of my essential kit, but none of them gave. I had just made it to the boards by the sofa, in the middle of the room, when pulling my knife from the gap I noticed a tiny bit of red on it. Reddish brown. Dried blood. I had seen it more than enough times to know.
I pulled out yet another essential detective’s item, a black light. For those who don’t know, it’s an ultraviolet torch that shows up every little stain that you’ve tried to remove. It revealed wash marks where someone had been cleaning something up, from the middle of the room to the front door. Someone had bled a lot, and then been dragged outside. Dead or alive wasn’t clear.
So it was confirmed. At least, in my mind. The body looked enough like Rory, and his flat was a crime scene. Shit. Rory, the only best friend I had ever had, dead. And not in a nice way either. In some slow way. I needed to sit down, so I slumped onto the sofa.
Another idea struck me. The sofa. Not in the cushions obviously, you would feel that, but the frame. I jumped up and with all the emotion that was boiling away inside me turned the sofa over far too easily. Neighbours would hear that.
There was a hole, I plunged my hand in and instantly felt a package. I yanked it out, ripping the hole much wider in the process. It was sealed in a black bin bag. Too heavy for weed and too light for a brick of cocaine or heroin. Not in the mood to be careful, I ripped it open and smaller bags flew everywhere.
They were small, clear bags. I picked up the nearest one and could see inside were five small, round, blue pills. Each with a tiny star debossed in the centre. I sighed a long, deep sigh, like the rush of air from an opened hangar. I knew these pills. Rory, you dumb fuck.
It must have been only a few months ago, although being before the police blacklisted me, it seemed far longer than that. I was hired over the phone to find a young woman.
‘We just want to know she’s alright,’ an anxious voice trembled.
I was slowly becoming a one-stop-shop for concerned parents with children lost to the darker recesses of Party Central UK.
‘Tell me about her,’ I said.
‘She’s a good person. Kind. Caring. Big hearted, you know. Loads of friends.’
‘Let me stop you there.’ This is where I would look sympathetic, but over the phone that’s difficult. ‘Without being insensitive, I need you to imagine she’s not your daughter. Can you do that?’
‘Ok… why?’
‘Now describe her.’
She had my name, sort of: Jo Whiting. They told me she had started at Brighton University, studying nursing, but they found out almost a year into her studies that she had been thrown out after three months. I figured she was one of those students who sees Uni as a paid jaunt.
Apparently when they stopped sending her money they stopped hearing from her. They had tried everything they could, contacting friends, her landlord, even the police, but no one had heard from her, and if she didn’t want to be found she wouldn’t be. Not by them, anyway. Once their retainer had cleared, an essential part of screening out time-wasters, I got to work.
It was a time consuming one, but I was on expenses so that didn’t matter. There were only so many areas of the city where people rented rooms cheaply. There are luxury flats, family flats, and there are student rooms where landlords fleece you because mummy and daddy can afford to pay five-hundred a month for one room of a house. But still in some areas for two-hundred a month you could net yourself a proper shithole. One room of a shithole, mind. People pay in cash and you turf them out if they can’t, taking whatever gear they’ve left behind, which you can sell on the corners or in clubs to make up your losses. A government report came out recently that said Brighton and Hove had some of the least deprived and most deprived areas in the country. One area was so bad it was just outside the bottom one percent, whereas others were some of the most affluent in Britain. The city centre was also fifteenth in the ranking of where in the UK you were most likely to be the victim of a crime.
I could smell drugs in this case. In this town, in this business, you get a nose for it pretty quickly. Until recently Brighton was the drug-death capital of Britain, with more drugs-related deaths per head than any other city. I liked to think that this was because those who were dying were the bastards who came down at the weekend because of its party reputation. They were all fucking Londoners. I hoped. Now the title had been passed to Liverpool, although I’m sure us, London, Cardiff, and Glasgow will be fielding good teams this year.
I spent every day of the week checking more and more hovels. I also checked in with Lenny, a homeless guy whose spot was outside my office.
‘Don’t recognise her, chief,’ he mumbled.
‘If I give you the picture could you ask around for a couple of days? Twenty quid in it for you.’
He held out his hand.
‘Ten now. Ten when you give me the picture back.’
‘What if I find her?’
‘Find her and I’ll give you fifty.’
It was no good though. The homeless community is pretty well connected, they’re always sharing tips about which shelters are good, and which places outside are safe, and yet no one had seen her. That meant she had somewhere to live. Lenny was clean now but he had been on the junk before, so he was able to narrow down my list of places. He had saved me a lot of foot ache and a lot of blisters. T
hat alone was worth the twenty. It was on the Friday that I found her.
It was a house on Upper Lewes Road, one of those ones like Rory’s old house, with a split floor where the front is at street level but the back is one story lower. In this case the back of the house was also a scooter repair shop that opened onto the main Lewes Road.
I banged on the front door. No answer. So I picked the lock. I braced myself for confused, strung-out looks. Several times that week I had picked my way into a den only find plenty of people inside. They were simply too high to answer the door. But this time there was no one. Just a rush of air trying to escape. Sick air. I covered my mouth. Drug dens smell of dirt and smoke, this one smelt of death.
I flicked on my torch. At the time I didn’t know why it was so dark, but I saw later on that all the windows had been covered in case some nosey neighbour caught them shooting up and decided to call the police.
The place had rats, there were droppings every few steps. I had to kick my way through empty bottles and rotting newspapers as I checked each room. Stained wallpaper. Clusters of dead flies on the windowsills. Dried vomit pools, with chunks in. Strange discarded clothes. Bare, ripped mattresses. In one room a rotted plate of food, forgotten about in a chemical haze. All of these rooms were empty so far, but I could hear something from the one I hadn’t checked. A buzzing. It was flies. All the live flies were in one room. Which meant I knew what I was going to find. Only I didn’t know exactly what I was going to find.
I pushed open the door and it swung ominously. It stank. I had to bat the flies away from my face. And there she was, a twisted body on the white bedsheet. A few days dead already. Then everyone had scarpered. What junkie wanted to be caught with a dead flatmate, even if it was nothing to do with you.
The sheet, pillow, and some of the wall had been dyed an interesting shade of blood, with just a hint of vomit. It had been painful. I prayed to god she had been too strung-out to feel it.
Something crunched underneath my foot. It was a small clear bag. And inside were two small, round, blue pills. With stars debossed in the centre. I called the police and waited until her dad arrived. I should have pressed him for payment, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
