‘It’s a good place to recruit.’
‘I’m not a volunteer.’
‘Course not. You’re an employee. But you were lucky I found you first. It could have been the Pakis or Bangladeshis. They look for strays and runaways. White girls mainly. First, they give you a burger, then it’s drugs and alcohol. Next thing you’re strapped to a bed, fucking every cousin and uncle from here to Birmingham!’
He’s not lying this time.
The car pulls up outside a derelict-looking building with a broken sign that says COACH HOUSE INN. A tattered flag flaps from a flagpole and a sign on the cyclone fence warns, ‘Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted’.
‘I know it doesn’t look like much,’ says Felix, ‘but you can’t judge a book by its cover, you know.’
That’s the only way I judge books, I think.
He ducks through a gap in the fence and pulls back a sheet of corrugated iron, revealing a door with a keypad entrance that looks out of place given the state of the building.
Felix punches in the code, trying to shield the keypad with his body, but I clock the number anyway: 4.9.5.2.
‘Is this where you live?’
‘Nah, I got my own place.’
‘Who lives here?’
‘People like you.’
We enter a lobby area littered with broken furniture and smashed ceiling tiles. The walls have been tagged with graffiti or spray-painted with pictures of male and female anatomy. Someone or something has defecated in the corner, creating a smell that makes me want to gag. Corridors run off in three different directions. Felix leads me along one of them until the stench starts to fade. He nudges open a door with his foot.
‘This can be your gaff.’
I peer inside. The low-wattage bulb barely casts a shadow. The room is shabby and neat, with a bed, a nightstand, a table and chair. The carpet is scarred by cigarette burns and the bedspread is a faded green with a yellow fleck; at least I hope it’s a fleck. In my imagination, I picture how many thousands of people have stayed here, and the acts of desperation that have been performed on the mattress; the humping bodies, warm corpses, lonely travellers, tourists, cheating spouses, sales reps and battered wives who have cried themselves to sleep holding their children.
The adjoining bathroom has a toilet, sink and shower. Pulling open the rear curtains, I look out onto a wrecker’s yard full of rusting car bodies and piles of twisted metal. Beyond another fence is a factory full of metal shipping containers stacked in rows.
I glance down at a pile of clothes on the bathroom floor: ripped jeans and cheap blouses and a Mickey Mouse jacket with silver spangles threaded around Mickey’s ears.
‘Whose room is this?’
‘She’s gone.’
‘Why did she leave her stuff?’
Felix shrugs. ‘Maybe I gave her too much money. Maybe she stole from me.’ He looks at the pile. ‘You’re welcome to her gear.’
I shake my head.
‘Suit yourself.’ Felix scoops up the clothes and tosses them into the hallway.
‘Is that you, baby?’ asks a high-pitched voice, before an emaciated girl-woman dashes into the room and throws herself at Felix, who catches her and takes a step backwards, carried by her momentum. Her legs wrap around his waist, her arms around his neck. She’s dressed in jeans and a bra. She tries to kiss him. Felix turns his face away. ‘Your breath reeks.’
‘I been sleeping.’
The girl-woman notices me for the first time. ‘What’s she doing here?’
‘This is Evie.’
‘You said we didn’t need nobody else.’
‘Anybody,’ says Felix, correcting her.
The girl-woman frowns with eyes that are black rimmed and hollow, as if her skull were collapsing. She could be anywhere from twelve to thirty, with sharp hipbones sticking out from above the waist of her jeans and no discernible breasts.
‘This is Keeley,’ says Felix.
‘We’re together,’ says Keeley, holding onto Felix. There are bruises along her arms and more on her neck.
‘Did you bring me something?’ she asks in a pleading voice. ‘Baby wants her medicine.’
‘Later,’ he says dismissively. ‘We have company.’
‘But you promised.’
‘I said later!’
Keeley drops off him like he’s raised a fist. Instead he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wad of cash, peeling off several twenties. ‘Go buy some food. And get Evie a toothbrush.’
‘Why me?’
‘Because I asked you nicely.’
Keeley doesn’t want to leave. Felix gives her a look and she grudgingly obeys, shooting me daggers on her way out. I’m still thinking about the money Felix had in his pocket.
He turns in a slow circle. ‘Home sweet home. I know it’s not much, but it beats lying in the gutter. The shower works if you want to freshen up. There’s no kitchen, but Keeley has a microwave in her room. Either that, or you can get takeaway.’
‘Where are you going?’ I ask.
‘To see my dear old mum.’
‘You said I could earn some money.’
‘Yeah, sure, but it’s too early in the day. Deliveries are mostly at night.’
‘What do I do until then?’
‘Sleep. You look like shit.’
I want to a make a smartarse comment back at him, but I can’t think of one because I’m too tired.
Not everything Felix has told me has been the truth, but that makes him like everybody else – not to be trusted. Right now, I don’t have many choices. I need somewhere to stay, and money to start again and this is the only game in town.
43
Lenny is on speakerphone with DS Edgar asking about Jodie Sheehan’s burner phone.
‘There were thousands of people at the fireworks and most of them were carrying phones,’ says Edgar. ‘It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.’
‘This might help,’ says Lenny. ‘Jodie was picked up by Ian Hendricks from outside the fish and chip shop that Monday evening. He claims he dropped her at a house on The Ropewalk at nine-thirty. If we isolate signals from those locations, we should be able to identify which phone Jodie was using.’
‘What was she doing at The Ropewalk?’ asks Edgar.
‘Ask me later. We’re heading there now.’
The call ends and Lenny follows signs towards the city centre. Ian Hendricks has been quiet in the back seat but grows more animated as we get closer to The Ropewalk – an upmarket area full of grand Victorian houses, many of which have been converted into flats or turned into offices for accountants and solicitors. A few private houses remain, lovingly restored and harking back to a time when horse-drawn carriages clip-clopped over cobblestones carrying women in whalebone corsets and men in frock coats.
‘That’s the place,’ says Hendricks, leaning between the seats.
We’ve stopped outside an imposing cream-coloured house that looks like an iced wedding cake.
‘Are you sure?’ Lenny asks.
‘Yeah. I dropped her at the gates and she walked up the driveway to the side door. The place was all lit up – like they were having a party. Cars were parked up and down the road.’