Business of Dying (14 page)

'Yeah, sure.' I took out my cigarettes and offered her one. She took it and I lit it for her, lighting one for myself at the same time.

'Look, thanks. It was good of you.' It was given grudgingly, but I suppose it was better than nothing. What is it with kids these days? The little bastards have never got any manners.

'Do you want to grab a quick coffee somewhere? Calm yourself down a bit?'

'No, I'm all right. I'm fine.'

'Come on. I'm buying.'

I could tell she was thinking that a sit-down and a hot drink might be quite nice. The problem was the company. 'I don't want to sit there with you going on at me about this and that, and questioning me. I ain't got time for that.'

'Look, just a coffee and a cigarette. I could do with one myself. I'm not used to that sort of exercise.'

She gave me a dismissive look. 'Yeah, I can tell.'

We found a cafe on the Gray's Inn Road not peopled entirely with lowlifes. I bought two coffees and we found a booth at the back.

'I'm surprised you're out on the streets so soon after what's happened,' I ventured.

'I thought you weren't going to go on at me. If you're going to fucking lecture me, I ain't interested. I could be out earning money, you know.'

'Or you could be in the back of that bloke's car, bound and gagged--'

'Look, I don't need this fucking shit. . .' She started to get up from her seat.

'All right, all right, I won't lecture you. I'm just worried about your safety, that's all.' She sat down again. 'You had a narrow escape out there tonight. Remember that.'

'Don't worry about me. I can look after myself.'

'Yeah, you said that. I expect Miriam Fox thought the same thing.'

'There's perverts out there all the time. It's one of the risks, isn't it?'

'I suppose if you put it like that, yes it is. When we spoke yesterday, you said you didn't know Miriam Fox was a prostitute. That wasn't true, was it? You knew.'

'You coppers are all the fucking same, aren't you? You never stop asking questions.'

I laughed. 'Look, this is purely off-the-record talk. Anything you say here can never be repeated in a court of law. You ought to know that. All I'm trying to do is find the person who murdered Miriam and take him off the streets. So he can't do it again.' I pulled out two more cigarettes, again lighting hers. 'It's in your interests, probably
more than mine, to make sure that happens.'

She thought about it for a moment, her self-interest clearly wrestling with her innate distrust of the forces of law and order. I took a drag on my cigarette and waited for her. I was in no hurry.

'Yeah, I knew she was on the game,' she said eventually. 'Course I did, but I didn't have much to do with her. She was a real bitch.'

'In what way?'

'Well, she just rated herself, you know? She looked down on the rest of us like we was some sort of fucking scum. And she was a scheming cow too. Always talking behind people's backs, turning them against each other. I never liked her, so I kept out of her way.'

'She was with Mark Wells, wasn't she?'

Anne nodded. 'Yeah, and I don't have nothing to do with him.'

'Why not?'

'He's a nutter. You get on the wrong side of him and he tears you a-fucking-part.'

'Do you think he might have had something to do with what happened to Miriam?'

'I thought it was a pervert that did it.'

'It might have been, but we don't know at this stage. It might have been someone else. Someone who knew her. Someone like Mark Wells.'

She shrugged. 'I don't know.'

'Do you think he'd be capable of it?'

'Look, you shouldn't be asking me that. I don't want to start answering those sorts of questions.'

'Anne, whatever you say to me here won't go any further than this table, and your name'll never be mentioned. I'm just trying to build up a picture, that's all.'

'If Mark Wells ever heard I'd mentioned his name to you, he'd fucking kill me.'

I thought about telling her he was already in custody, but held back. I didn't want to prejudice her answers, no more than I had done already, anyway. 'He won't hear it. I promise. No one will.'

'He's a vicious bloke. I've heard some nasty stories about him kicking the shit out of people if they piss him off, and I heard he knifed this geezer once because he owed him some money for something. But what would he want to kill Miriam for? She was earning him cash.'

Which was a good point, and one that was going to need answering.

'Anyway,' she continued, 'he's already short of girls.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, Molly was one of his girls and she's gone now.'

I thought about my dream again. 'Where do you
reckon Molly's got to? I'd like to find her and ask her a few questions about Miriam. They were good mates, weren't they?'

She nodded. 'Yeah, they were. Fuck knows why. She was about the only one who liked Miriam.'

'Can you think where she's gone to?'

She looked down at the table top, dragging constantly at the dying remnants of the fag. We'd had quite an adult discussion, and it was fair to say that in some ways she was older than her years, but at that moment, she looked her age. A kid trapped in an adult's world.

She sat like that for what felt like a long time, not saying anything. I sat back in my seat, thinking that maybe I'd annoyed her in some way. It was difficult to tell. When she spoke, it was without looking up, and her words were quiet.

'I don't think she's gone anywhere.'

I wasn't sure I'd heard her right. 'What? What was that?'

This time Anne looked me right in the eyes, and I thought I saw the beginnings of tears in them. 'I said, I don't think she's gone anywhere.'

'What do you think's happened to her, then?' I asked quietly.

'I don't know,' she said, looking away.

'Well, you must have a reason for thinking that way.'

'Look, stop hassling me with all these fucking questions.'

I paused for a long moment, thinking that I was glad I didn't work with kids. Especially teenagers.

'I just don't reckon she's gone anywhere, that's all. In fact, I'm fucking positive.' This time I didn't say a word, but I was intrigued. 'She wouldn't have left Mark. I know that.'

'Mark Wells?'

'Yeah. She loved him, you know? She'd have done anything for him, even though he didn't give a fuck about her. He's already got a couple of girls so he didn't need Molly. I mean, he fucked
her, but that was it. She was just an earner to him.'

I thought of the smiling face in the photo-me images. She was too young for those sorts of complications. 'You don't reckon she may have just got pissed off with Wells and decided to sling her hook? From what we've heard, she's walked out and disappeared before.'

'No, I don't reckon that. The last time she left it was with her old boyfriend, but she hasn't been with him for ages. She wouldn't have gone away on her own. Not without Mark. She was well into him. Talked about him all the time.'

'Were you and her close?' I'd asked Anne this yesterday and got a negative response, but this time I thought she might tell me the truth.

'Sort of. She talked to me a fair bit. You know, about this and that. But mainly Mark. She was always talking about Mark.'

'What did Miriam think about Mark? Do you know?'

She shrugged. 'She used to fuck him, but that was it. She weren't in love with him. Not like Molly.'

'And when you saw Molly last . .. when was that? About three weeks ago?'

She shrugged again. 'Something like that, yeah.'

'Was that about the time she disappeared?'

'I saw her one day in the home and then she went out that night and no one ever saw her again.'

'How did she seem when you saw her? Was she in good spirits or was she pissed off about things?'

'She was normal, you know. Just like she always is.'

'She didn't say anything about leaving, or anything?'

'No. Nothing.'

So where did that leave us? I wasn't even investigating Molly Hagger's disappearance and yet here was a girl who knew her, and who knew Miriam Fox, telling me that there was something very suspicious about the whole thing. Once again, I was reminded of my dream. It was as vivid now as it had been when I'd woken up in the darkness, sweating and fearful, but it had lost its power as a premonition. Was there something in what Anne was saying, or was it the imagination of a teenager at work? Molly could easily have taken off somewhere without telling Anne, who admitted she wasn't that close to her. It was also quite feasible that Molly hadn't been as obsessed with Mark Wells as Anne was making out. After all, she was only thirteen years old, and even I knew that thirteen-year-old girls are pretty fickle when it comes to love.

'You don't believe me, do you?'

'Yeah, I believe you, but if she hasn't gone anywhere, then where is she?'

'I don't know.' She shrugged her shoulders and looked at me with eyes that didn't belong to a kid. 'Maybe she's dead.'

'Do you think that? That she's dead?'

She nodded slowly and with worrying confidence. 'Yeah. I think so.'

I cleared my throat, not liking the feeling I was getting. 'Do you think the person who killed Miriam might have killed her too?'

'Could be.'

'The man who attacked you tonight . . . what happened?'

'I was standing in my normal spot when he pulls up in this car. I should have been with Charlene, but she didn't turn up tonight so I was on my own. He just beckons me over like a lot of them do, then when I get over there, I take a look and I don't like the look of him.'

'What was wrong with him?'

'He just didn't look right, you know? He had this horrible smile and there was something about him. He gave me the creeps.'

'Go on.'

'Well, he opens the passenger door and pats the seat, and he's sort of leering at me like some sort of fucking perv, and telling me to get in. But I reckon he's kinky; he looks the type. The type who'll take you out somewhere quiet and really give you a going over, so I say no thanks and start to go. But he
just grabs me and starts pulling me in, telling me it'll be all right, that he's not going to hurt me, but he's fucking rough and he's pulling me by the hair as hard as he can, the bastard ...' She paused. 'And then you turned up.'

'What did he look like?'

'Biggish guy. Fat. Bald. Fat face.'

'What sort of age?'

'I don't know. About fifty or something.' Which probably meant thirty.

'And you've never seen him before?'

She shook her head. 'There was just something about him, you know? I don't normally feel that way about punters. I mean, they're all fucking old and ugly, most of them anyway. But this one was different. I just knew he was dodgy.'

I tried to remember the make of car he was driving. It was a Mercedes saloon, not particularly new, and I think the colour was light brown or beige. Not dark-coloured like the one that had picked up Miriam. Other than that I had nothing.

'It'd be good if you could make a statement.'

'Why? I've just told you what he looked like. Do you think he could have been the one who killed Miriam?' It looked as if the thought had only just occurred to her.

'I don't know. I really don't. Maybe.'

She shuddered. 'Fucking hell.'

'You'd do a lot better not working the streets, Anne.'

'I need the money.'

I thought about sitting there trying to persuade her as to the error of her ways, but I'm almost certain it wouldn't have done any good. Change comes from within. You've got to believe that what you do is wrong and needs to stop, and I was pretty sure Anne didn't feel like that.

'Come on, let's take you back to Coleman House.'

She snorted. 'Fuck that. I'd only been out there ten minutes when you came. I haven't earned any money yet.'

'Call it a night off.'

'My man don't believe in nights off.'

'And who's your man?'

'Come on, you're a copper. I ain't telling you that.'

'Well, I hope he's an improvement on Mark Wells.' As if.

'Yeah, course he is.'

'Then he'll understand, won't he?'

She laughed, much too cynically for a thirteen-year-old. 'He won't be happy if I don't earn him some cash.'

What a gentleman. 'All right, let me do you a deal. I'll give you forty quid if you go back to the home tonight.' It was a stupid gesture. The money would end up in the hands of her pimp or the local crack dealer, who were probably one and the same.

And if Anne chose to put herself in danger, it was hardly my concern. Especially as whatever happened tonight, she'd be back on the streets tomorrow anyway. But I didn't want to be responsible for leaving her out there tonight.