Verismo Bliss - Chapter 13

13.

Harry, because he had been one of the last people to see Spike alive, had been summoned to Holborn police station to make a statement. Routine only. At your convenience, sir, but sooner the better.
Holborn police station was not far from Gary’s Inn, on Lambs Conduit Street, and had been built at a time when utility was considered the new modernist beauty. A ten storey high rise office building of glass, steel and concrete, whose concentric bands of light and dark looked like the checkerboard markings on the police caps. It was a depressing building. Harry was glad his brief flirtation with joining the police had been just that, and nothing more serious; he really couldn’t imagine turning up to work at a place like Holborn police station every day.
He met Carr there who passed him on to PC Hayley O’Toole to take his statement, saying he would catch up with him afterwards. PC Hayley O’Toole said she remembered him from the Long Acre murder scene. Whilst taking his statement she asked Harry how long he’d known Karl and if he’d met his wife and kids. Everybody loved Karl at the station, she said, and he was helping her with promotion. Always had time for people, did Karl. PC Hayley O’Toole had eyes like a fawn deer staring down the barrel of a hunter’s rifle and wanting to play. She had auburn hair, which she touched whenever she said Karl’s name. Harry figured it was probably her first love affair. What did Carr tell them, he wondered. Did he give them some sob story about how his marriage was under strain due to having a disabled child, and that he had never done anything like this before? Did he tell PC Hayley O’Toole that he loved her but could never leave his family, because of his obligation to little Freddie? Dear little Freddie.
The statement itself didn’t take long. He signed it. She witnessed it with a flourishing hand. He thought of Guy Fawkes signatures before and after torture (of the utmost pain) and wondered if her signature would be so flourishing after Carr got bored with her and moved onto his next victim/conquest. She smiled with a smile that could make a young man’s dream come true, but all Harry could see was a car crash waiting to happen.
When they left the interview room they bumped into Carr who was with a middle aged couple. PC Hayley O’Toole metamorphosed from a polite professional into a love addled schoolgirl. ‘Karl…Inspector Karl…Carr. Inspector Carr, I’ve taken Harry’s, Mr Reed’s statement. Shall I put it in your room? Desk? On the desk? I’ll get you a tea. I’ll put it with the statement?’ She exited corridor left. She looked over her shoulder, bumped into a colleague and then disappeared round the corner. Damn, being in love was ungainly.
Carr introduced Harry to the couple: they were Steven Pike’s parents.
The man had metal and coal under his fingernails, and his mother, a woman with metal and coal bruises, looked like she knew trouble for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and knew how to act the stolid Northerner, but now looked like a woman about to go down with the camel and the straw.
Harry shook hands with Mr Pike. Spike had told him about his father’s hands once: ‘He used to hit my mother when he was drunk or sober, didn’t matter to him, and he didn’t need much of an excuse – tea too hot, too milky, too cold, not enough milk, you know? The only one he loved in the family was me older sister; he doted on her, man, like a lovesick teen mooning over her. She was his princess. When I came along he took to hitting me from the moment I was born. We had a joke, me and my mam, that it was him who first slapped me when I was born, not the nurse, to make sure my airwaves were clear. And he never stopped hitting me until I walked out that door. Best fucking thing I ever done. My only regret was that me Ma wouldn’t come with me. She said she loved him. How can you love somebody like that? How can you love somebody who causes you so much pain?’
Harry nodded a greeting at Mrs Pike. She looked blankly back at him, with eyes that were seeing something nobody else could see, or would want to.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Harry said.
‘I knew it’d come to this,’ Mr Pike said. ‘Minute he ran off to London with his tail between his legs. Knew it would come to bad. Good riddance, I said. But sorry the lad went this way.’
‘Did you know him?’ Mrs Pike said, her voice so quiet that Harry had to lean closer to hear her.
‘Yes, Mrs Pike, I knew him.’
‘Was he happy?’
‘I think so. He used to sell a magazine on the street. I would stop and chat to him, as many people did. Everybody liked him. Nobody bought a magazine without chatting to him. He told me he was trying to save up some money to move back to the North East.’
Mr Pike harrumphed.
‘He used to write me every few months,’ the mother said. ‘Lovely letters. Who sends letters now, tell me that? It’s all emails and texts now. But he wrote, he wrote to me.’ She took Harry’s hand and squeezed it with her tiny fingers.
‘Come on, pet, leave the man alone.’
Mr Pike took hold of his wife and pulled her away from Harry. He exchanged a few more words with Carr and then they left.
Harry wanted to do something. But what could he do? Mrs Pike was lost to desolation. Her only hope was that her husband would die before her and let her have a few years peace at the end of her life. Given that Mr Pike’s dietary intake probably included a few pints of heavy everyday, the chances were good she might get some reprieve. But then grief and despair could kill just as efficiently as hardened arteries.
‘Nice couple,’ Carr remarked. ‘I thought I’d never get used to the grieving relatives, but you do, you really do. It does just become part of the job.’
Carr took Harry back to his office where a cup of tea, Harry’s statement, and PC Hayley O’Toole were waiting.
‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t…’ she said, or didn’t say.
‘Thanks for the tea, Hayley. Do you want anything to drink, Harry? No? Hayley come back in about half an hour, ok?’
She left like a disillusioned child who can’t quite grasp that it isn’t yet Christmas.
‘I don’t suppose I need to read this,’ Carr said, putting Harry’s report to one side.
‘It doesn’t tell you anything new. You catch up with the others who were there with me that day?’
‘Sure. They all tell pretty much the same thing. The fight outside your place. What happened afterwards. Paolo went back to his work – verified by the illegal workers – I might have to do something about that when I can be bothered. That punk kid…Yukio Matsugai, aka Neapolitan or some such idiocy – he spent the rest of the day at the New Roxy. Again verified by the punters there. Then there was Oliver Falsham. You’re working on a case for his father, aren’t you? I didn’t realise that you were knocking about with the rich and famous, Harry.’
‘Not any more. He took me off the case.’
‘The daughter, right? Girls go missing, especially at that age. Not much he can do about it, even with all his money and power. Shame you’re off the case though – I imagine that Martin Falsham is the sort of person who rewards service to him with a bundle of notes and a lot of influence for the future.’
‘Those are the breaks.’
Carr shrugged. ‘Oliver Falsham. There’s a piece of work. He got quite uppity about me questioning him; wanted his lawyer there, the works. Fucking rich kids. I’d also bet he was a shirt-lifter, if we were allowed to say such things anymore.’
‘You never did like homosexuals, did you?’ Harry said, thinking about the photos of Oliver that Gwendolyn had on her memory stick.
‘Hell, I love ‘em, it means more women for the likes of me and you.’
‘What about Oliver? What did he do after leaving my office?’
‘Took himself off to Knightsbridge for a spot of window shopping.’
‘I can’t even afford to window shop in fucking Knightsbridge.’
‘Because he didn’t actually buy anything we can’t corroborate his story. The servants at the Falsham mansion, however, do confirm he was home that night. What do you make of him?’
‘A young man in the shadow of a great father. Bitter,’ Harry said.
‘Sure. Angry too.’
‘Angry?’
‘I got that feeling,’ Carr said. ‘He flipped at the most innocuous questions. His brief had to calm him down a couple of times. There was a look in his eyes. I’ve seen it before, from when I did beat work. My guess is he’s on drugs.’
‘Isn’t everybody these days?’
‘I need somebody for this,’ Carr said, shaking his head. ‘It’s fucking killing me. We’re keeping a lid on this last murder but it won’t be long before the papers get the gen on it. I think we have a leak somewhere, the papers have inside knowledge. You see that piece written by Gary Kent in The Guardian? Shit, he had to have an insider to write that.’
‘So you want to make Oliver the Ripper?’
Carr sighed. ‘I’m fucking desperate, Harry. No, if I was going to pin it on someone, it wouldn’t be on a rich fucker who could pull out all the stops, it would be some low life penniless poor sod.’
‘Have you got any leads?’
‘The guy leaves no trace. No fingerprints. Nothing. All we’ve got is those shoe marks all over Steven Pike. You know I said they were boots? Nope, size 8 men’s Oxford brogues. It’s a start, I guess.’
‘Sure, we get a suspect we check his feet.’
‘You get me a break on this and you will have the undying gratitude of the Met for eternity.’
‘The killer must be covered in blood afterwards. My guess is he must have somewhere local to stay - to clean up at least.’
‘Somebody hiding him, you think?’
‘Somebody always knows. I’ll do what I can, Karl, but it’s hard with my hands tied behind me by the very people who need my help.’
‘The Met Network? I’m working on it, Harry, I’m working on it.’
Carr reached for a packet of Zehigh. ‘Without these I’d probably have topped myself years ago.’
‘Not you, Karl, not you.’
Carr smiled as though he had been complimented. But what Harry didn’t say was that he knew Carr wouldn’t kill himself because if there was one person that Karl Carr truly loved in the whole wide world, it was Karl Carr.
‘Anything on that postcard from Gloria Isles?’ Harry asked, getting up and making to leave.
‘I’ve got somebody chasing it up. I’ll let you know.’
Harry stepped out of Holborn police station and sniffed the fumes of glue and cider. It was another clear skied day, but now there was a hint of coolness in the air, as autumn whispered her imminence. When he looked down from the sky, he saw Ramona Noche stepping out of a taxi, her long legs neatly poured into dark stockings. She was wearing dark sunglasses and was tapping at her smart, a grin on her face like a schoolgirl looking at her first sex ed. book.
Harry turned his back and switched his smart onto all channels. Everybody within the vicinity who had their smarts on and open appeared in a list. He scanned down it quickly for any name that could be her. Night Owl. Noche = Night. That must be her. Night Owl. He tried to connect to her in stealth mode but she was heavily protected. She was almost level with him now, still tapping at the screen.
He stepped in front of her, looking quickly at her screen, before saying, ‘Well, Miss Noche, have your sins found you out at last.’
She looked up, startled, and snapped her smart closed, but not before he had seen a fleeting glimpse of a photograph. He was sure the photograph was of a naked woman; a photograph from the neck down to the top of the panties.
‘Harry? What are you doing here?’ She slipped the smart into her handbag, as though she had been caught with a porno mag. She ran her fingers through her hair and, even with her dark skin, he could see that her face had reddened. But he wasn’t enjoying her discomfit. He felt it too.
‘Oh just doing my boy scout duty, helping out the plods. What about you?’
‘They wanted to see me. Ask a few questions. Routine, I think.’
‘The police like to ask the same question over and over again until you actually tell them what they want to know.’
She smiled and took off her sunglasses. She had regained her composure now. ‘I wish they’d find out who killed my father, then I can put this behind me.’
He put his hand on her arm. ‘They’re - we’re - doing what we can. If there’s anything I can do, all you gotta do is ask.’
‘You already do a lot.’ She looked away from him. ‘Chinatown. It was fun. Random.’
‘Just let me know and we can do it again.’
She put her sunglasses back on. ‘I enjoyed being with you, Harry, don’t get me wrong, but…’
‘But?’
‘It can’t go anywhere. I don’t want you getting the wrong idea. It’s just…the age thing. We can be friends though, friends with benefits. Yeah?’
‘Sure.’
She put her hand on his arm now. Then her handbag started buzzing and she pulled out her smart. Again, that smile; the lewd grin she had upon her face when she had stepped out of the taxi.
‘I gotta scoot, Harry, sorry.’
‘Sure, duty calls.’
Then he felt somebody standing next to him, and Ramona was smiling nervously and saying hello to that person, and then that person was smiling at Harry and Harry was grinning back as though he was with his best mates in the world and everything was really fucking brilliant.
‘Harry, I hope you aren’t trying to muscle in on my lunch date?’
Carr was smiling at him, his hand reaching around the back of Ramona.
‘Harry knows it’s not a date, Karl. No need to try and protect me. He buys me lunch and quizzes me mercilessly,’ she said, smiling at Karl and Harry.
‘You know me, Harry, I always mix business and pleasure, and when the suspect is a beautiful woman I always like to take them for a meal; I find a bottle of wine loosens the tongue so much better than a truncheon to the kneecaps.’
‘Suspect, is it?’ Ramona declared, playfully punching Carr on his arm. ‘And this is the man who is going to find my father’s killer!’
They all three laughed.
‘Catch you later, Harry, and I’ll do what I can about getting your access back. Promise.’
‘Bye, Harry,’ Ramona said.
He watched them get into a taxi. He watched the back of their heads through the rear window of the black cab. He saw them sitting closer than was needed. He saw them turn to each other and laugh, full bodied laughter, unashamed. When the taxi was eaten up by the traffic, Harry began to walk. He walked down Red Lion Street, heading south. It was mid-day. Lunchtime. The sun was high in the sky. The sky was clear but there was a cool breeze. He walked south. He found himself at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Already the green sward was beginning to fill up with people taking their lunches al fresco. Harry found a vacant tree and sat down beneath it. It was a large tree that afforded him a lot of shade. He didn’t know what sort of tree it was; he had never paid attention to that sort of thing.
He sat watching the people. Most of them were still wearing their summer wear, even though the weathermen had promised heavy rain later on. England had suffered monsoon like weather in recent years. Much flesh was on display. Some of it would have been better hidden away. Harry watched the young women lying back under the sun, or on their fronts reading newspapers or books. Others were in couples, holding hands, laughing, kissing. He sensed, maybe for the first time, that something had passed from his life and wasn’t going to return.
A child, just a toddler, waddled past him, giggling, chasing a startled pigeon.
A cloud straddled the sun.
The chimes of an ice cream van playing Greensleeves tripped across the park.
Somebody shrieked with delight.
A siren wailed in the distance
And then it suddenly began to pour it down on Lincoln’s Inn Field. People ran for cover. Harry slowly got up and walked to the first pub he could find, The Charles Dickens. If Charles Dickens had ever drunk there, then Harry was the bastard son of Winston Churchill. He ordered a Guinness. He felt like something dark and heavy. He drank it down in five minutes, leaning against the bar. He ordered another one and a whisky chaser, and found a spare seat tucked away at the back. From where he sat he couldn’t see the rest of the pub, or the patrons; that’s how he wanted it.
Harry wondered why he turned to drink to soothe his marauding melancholy. He guessed it was natural for people to find ways to numb the hurt they felt, rather than endure it, especially when certain pains really did heal with time. So, drug me, until time has done its work and I can move on. But choosing booze seemed completely irrational; especially when Zehigh was so ubiquitous and effective. He had seen what alcohol had done to Mary. It had replaced all her problems with just one: alcohol. It was like those debt companies that pay off all your debts and then charge you double interest for just one big debt. It seemed the easy answer to start with.
And what had been Mary’s problems? They were deep seated. He’d known that when he’d first started seeing her. She hadn’t hid anything from him. She had been abused from the age of five until thirteen by an uncle who everybody else in the family thought was the life and soul. It had only stopped when he collapsed, unexpectedly, at the age of 50, with a heart attack. At the funeral, Mary cried tears of relief. She had never told anyone. She struggled to form any meaningful, healthy, relationships with men, viewing sex as something secretive, deceitful and wrong. Men loved her for that, because she would sleep with them as easily as making a diary entry at the end of the day. And she didn’t expect anything else from them.
She had met Harry when he was working at Grabsco, where she was part of a research team. He was older than her by ten years. He asked her out for a date and hadn’t slept with her on the first night. This impressed her, but it wasn’t because Harry was noble, just that he was being treated for a fungal infection of the foreskin and felt too sore to indulge in sexual activity. When he told her this many years later, she had laughed so much she had spilt her drink - and she never liked wasting drink.
When Mary found out Harry was fertile she immediately booked in to be sterilised. She had to fight to get it on the NHS, but she could fight when she wanted to; there was no way, she declared, that she was going to bring a child into this world. For somebody whose childhood had been taken from them, it was a rational decision.
It would be trite to say she was looking for a father figure but for a time he gave her stability and she smiled more than she was sad. But her inner demons and her lack of confidence conspired against them. She become so convinced that Harry was cheating on her that in the end he did cheat on her; figuring that he might as well have some fun if she wouldn’t believe he wasn’t. But it was never fun. Just guilt.
Then she took her lover: alcohol. And she gradually drifted further and further away from him, like a lush on a sea of vodka, until all that was left of the Mary he had married was just a spec on the horizon.
There was a message on his smart: Tried giving up Zehigh yet? WT
He hit reply, but it came up number unrecognised. Wat Tyler was good at hiding his tracks.
Another message: Where is Navaho? WT
Harry hadn’t thought about Nav for a while. Everybody was missing her except him, and as far as he knew he was the last person to see her. Should he be worried?
Another message. It was getting annoying now; how had they got his number? But this message was more interesting: Talk to Richard Verlaine about Raf-Med. Kindred Towers, Whitechapel. WT.
Harry punched the address into GigaEarth and it displayed the location of Kindred Towers, on Settles Street, just near the East London Mosque.
Harry downed his pint. He might as well get on to it now. Work was just another way to be drugged. Like magazines, TV, radio, music, gadgets, porn, it helped to drown out the sounds of despair. Harry worked because what else was he going to do?

Whitechapel, situated in the borough of Tower Hamlets, always evoked the image of Jack the Ripper stalking fog bound alleyways, Victorian slums, ragamuffin urchins, gor blimey geezers drunk in pubs and prostitutes on every corner. The Whitechapel of the 21st Century couldn’t be more removed from that image. It had become yuppified. For twenty years a process of gentrification had taken place. The Muslim immigrants, mainly from Pakistan, had begun to buy up the houses vacated by the indigenous English who felt ghettoised by encroaching Islam; in the shadow of the mosque they read the leaflets that told them that the immigrants’ needs were put before their own. So they began to move out to places with higher crime, but where they felt safer, because the faces were white and black and were called Johnny not Mohammed.
So the Mohammed’s of Whitechapel bought up the houses cheap, gentrified them, and sold them back to richer white men who worked in the City or the Arts, and they brought money with them and a culture that didn’t involve getting paralytic on drink and drugs and vomiting all along the Whitechapel Road.
But, as Harry made his way from Whitechapel Tube to Kindred Towers, he felt the area had lost its heart. Sure, he felt safer walking down the clean streets, but he knew the bastards he passed in the suits were cut from the same cloth as those whose greed had caused the Financial Meltdown. And they had destroyed more lives than one mugger ever had.
Kindred Towers was a new build brownstone. Seven storeys high. It was designed to look like those New York apartments you saw on the old re-runs of Friends or Seinfeld. The design had been called cod community constructs because they looked friendly from the outside, but inside, each apartment was locked away, bolted and barred against your neighbours.
Harry stepped up to the security door and scoped the names. Richard Verlaine was number 42. Harry buzzed him. Silence. He buzzed him again. Silence.
A woman entered the neat garden and went up to the door, holding out her proximity card. Harry smiled at her. He hoped she couldn’t smell the drink on him.
‘Excuse me, do you know Richard Verlaine? Apartment 42?’
‘42? Sorry, I’m on the third floor,’ she said, as though the possibility of her knowing anybody from a different floor was preposterous.
She was around the age of Verlaine’s apartment number and carried two bags of shopping - designer bags holding designer shopping. She smelt of Gucci and DKNY and looked like she ate too little small portions of haute cuisine.
‘My names Harry, I’m an old friend. I work with him. At Raf-Med. You know Raf-Med?’
‘Sure, what woman doesn’t? You see this face? Wrinkle free thanks to Babskin.’
She smiled a wrinkle free smile and her eyes shone sans crow’s-feet.
‘You don’t look old enough to need Babskin,’ Harry said, grinning. ‘But you’ll never guess, that was Richard’s speciality – he works on women’s beauty products.’
‘Really? Maybe I should get to know Mr 42.’
‘Thing is he hasn’t been to work for a few days and I’ve been sent round to see if he’s ok. He hasn’t been answering his smart either, you see.’
‘Well, I really shouldn’t let you in…’
Harry looked around conspiratorially. ‘I won’t tell anyone; Boy Scout’s honour.’
‘You don’t look like you were a Boy Scout.’
‘Oh I got all my badges; they even had to invent some for me.’
She laughed. ‘I bet they did at that. But still…’
‘Tell you what, you just let me go up and check on Richard and I’ll make sure the company knows how helpful you’ve been. I’m sure they will send you something as a thank you. There’s this new cream that isn’t on the market yet, they say it can take ten years off you; maybe you could test it for them. Though if you lost ten years they wouldn’t serve you in pubs.’
She looked to the heavens but he had caught her like a swan snagged in fishermen’s lead weights.
She let him in and they caught the lift. ‘My names Veronica. I’m in 37. I like my men tough and generous. Just so you know.’
Between Veronica getting out on the third and Harry getting out on the fourth he had already forgotten what she looked like.
Apartment 42 was at the end of the hallway. The door was protected by another proximity card device. Harry took out his smart and opened a folder that had an icon of a masked burglar in a red and black sweater. Subtle. Bringing up the Faximity programme he pressed the smart against the reader by the door and waited.
This sort of activity always depended a lot on luck. If somebody came out of one of the other apartments he could bluff his way out of the building, but he wouldn’t get into Verlaine’s room.
Six minutes he stood there before he heard the click and saw the light turn from red to green. He opened the door quickly and went inside. It was dark in the room and there was a musty smell. He walked through the small hallway and into the main living area, with open plan kitchen. The curtains were drawn, and he left them that way and didn’t put on the light; the fewer things he touched the better, his eyes would get accustomed to the light.
Slowly, and as quietly as he could, he checked the bedroom and the bathroom; there was nobody there and, thankfully, he didn’t find a body. He hadn’t really expected to, but it was always a possibility that he’d been set up.
The apartment was decorated in what was considered ultra modernity, but was really, like most things, a re-hash of something older – in this case the modern design was based on the Bauhaus school. It was furniture of the production line: straight lines, steel, glass, perfect utilitarian design. Harry liked the apartment but knew he’d never be able to afford a place like that unless he had a Martin Falsham hire him every month.
Not only was the apartment decorated in the Bauhaus style, but its resident appeared to have a Teutonic approach to living. Not a book was out of place on the bookshelf. There were no dirty plates or cutlery in the sink. The cutlery in the drawer was arranged as orderly as soldiers. The fridge was stocked with only essentials. Harry was going to have to search very carefully. But what was he looking for? Now he was here Harry realised he’d been an idiot just to set off on the word of WT. He hadn’t even done any background on this Richard Verlaine. Still, now he was here, he figured he might as well poke about.
In the bedroom the bed was made hospital style. The clothes hanging in the wardrobe looked like they had never been worn. The only obvious blemish on this show room like style was the open, and empty, suitcase on top of the bed. Had Verlaine been planning a journey and been interrupted? Or maybe that’s where he packed himself at night, so as not to disturb the military precision of the bed’s blankets.
The bathroom was as clean as an operating theatre before performing surgery on the Queen of Sheba. It smelt as fresh as the New Forest on a spring morning. Harry decided that either Verlaine never lived here in the true sense of living, or else he suffered really badly with some form of OCD. And was probably gay to boot.
Harry went back into the living room. He almost wanted Verlaine to return and find him there; at least it would give him a shot at getting some information. He looked around the room and suddenly became aware of the one item that stood out like a fox hunter at a Greenpeace rally. Why hadn’t he noticed it before?
The framed photograph was of a laughing woman, attractive, mid to late forties, white skin and blonde hair. It was the only item in the apartment that could be called a personal effect, a decoration; it was a frippery among Teutonic order.
Harry flipped the back off. Between the photograph and the backboard was a folded up flyer. On the right of the flyer two heavily pregnant and heavily naked women were holding each other, their heads turned to face the viewer, bump to bump, cheek to cheek, legs entwined. Under the women was the name of the club it was advertising and their motto: The Bump Bangers Club: Beautiful, Bounteous Bodies. There was no phone number, website address, or physical address. The flyer stated it was membership by sponsorship only: we’re not illegal, just exclusive.
Harry turned over the flyer and saw the name of a café in Soho and a date and a time. It was two days away. 8 pm. The café was called Black & White and Harry was pretty sure he knew it.
He put the flyer back behind the photo and the frame back on the shelf he had taken it from. Had he put it back just right? Anybody who had an apartment like this would probably know the position of the frame to the millimetre. He moved it slightly to the right and then stepped back.
His smart started bleeping and made him jump. His heart raced. Shit, he must remember to mute the bloody thing when doing some b and e. It was a message from Ramona: Hey, hope you’re ok?? Sorry didn’t have time to talk much earlier. You know what the police are like! xx
Oh yeah, Harry thought, I know the police. I know Karl Carr in particular.
Harry started typing a reply: So did you fuck Carr today? Did you send him naked pics of yourself so he could toss off to you whenever he wants? Did he tell you about his disabled kid? Harry pounded out the message with his fingers as though he was gouging out Carr’s eyes. Then he stopped. He punched the clear button. He typed: I know the police. Hope Carr didn’t grill you too hard. Talk to you later xx.
He pressed send, pocketed the smart, and walked backwards out of the room.
As he was descending in the lift his smart buzzed again. It was a picture message. The picture was of a naked woman from the neck down to the top of her blue panties. The right nipple had a bar through it. The skin was the colour of milky coffee.
Outside, the sky above Whitechapel was beginning to turn red and it seemed to Harry that the very buildings were dripping sweat.