She pulled her linen coat around herself more snugly and pushed the shoulder strap of her bag further on to her shoulder so that she could hold it firmly under her arm. That made her feel safer too, and she turned and walked casually – neither too quickly, nor too slowly – to the yard. Without hesitation, she turned into it. There was no need to skulk or be anything other than what she was: an enquirer. Anyway. Connie had given her an open invitation to come and look round again if she wanted to, hadn’t he? Well, here she was, accepting it.
She walked steadily across the yard to the entrance through which she and Maureen had gone the other morning. Now the great double doors were closed and there was a padlock across the handles; but set into one of the doors was a smaller one, and tentatively she tried the handle. It turned, gave way, and the door opened.
She had to stand quietly inside for a moment to get her eyes accustomed to the low light levels. It didn’t take too long. Somewhere ahead there were lights burning, and there was a faint glow along the walkways beside the conveyor belt, but the belt was still and there was much less noise than when she had come here last time. No rattle and buzz from the belt; no clatter and thudding from other machines; no chatter of voices. Only a faint hum of electrical activity somewhere; or was that a sort of tinnitus in her own ears? She set her fingers into her ears for a mement to test them and knew her first impression had been the right one. There was something electrical switched on somewhere in the bowels of the place.
After a moment’s hesitation she pulled the small door closed behind her. She wasn’t trying to be deceitful and hide, dear me no, she thought. But there was no need actually to advertise her presence, either. Maybe she would find what she wanted – whatever that was, and right now she had not the least idea – before Connie even knew she was here. That would be really great.
She waited another few seconds as the darkness increased with the small door’s closure, and then lightened again as her eyes became used to the new levels, and she moved forwards. She was wearing soft summer shoes that were blessedly quiet, and she moved across the messy stone floor easily and silently towards the walkway that led alongside the great conveyor belt.
The smell was strong in her nostrils now. The space was hot and heavy with the day’s sunshine and, indeed, the stored heat of many preceding days of the heatwave; and the smell of old fabric and human bodies and the sweetish odour of decaying organic matter that was part of it all seeped into her. It’s as bad as the mortuary on a busy day, she thought, shifting her bag to the other shoulder, so that she could more easily move alongside the conveyor belt.
It was still strewn with clothes, and the work-stations where, the last time she had been here, busy people had stood pawing through the unsavoury items on the belt had a forlorn look. There were stools beside some of them, with tied-on rags to pad the seats, and above the belt, in some places, people had pinned little markers of their own. A picture of grinning happy faces from Sierra Leone, as the script said clearly at the foot of the card; pin-ups from aggressively white magazines of breasty women with unfeasibly long legs and pouting lips like pillows; snapshots of family members; curlyedged birthday cards. There was something deeply touching about them, George thought as she slipped past, something so human and so very lonely. She felt a twinge of pity, but didn’t know quite why, or for whom.
The light was getting steadily stronger as she reached the end of the conveyor belt and she stopped when she got there and peered round it. At the far side of the vast warehouse, so far away that it looked like a toy, a door stood open, and a beam of light was thrown out on to the littered wooden floor. She stood and listened hard.
She thought she could hear a voice now, but it was hard to be sure. It was a long way across from where she stood to the doorway – as much as 120 feet, maybe more, she estimated; this really was a massive place. When she’d been here before she hadn’t realized just how wide a spread it had, though it was comparatively narrow in the other dimension, fitting neatly as it did between the road that led into the yard and the river beyond. That would be only about fifty feet, she hazarded. Possibly less. Not too far for the gully that ran from the macerator in the basement to the river and its running water …
She would not think about that now; she had to concentrate on what to do next. She decided to walk across the big expanse and knock on the door and see who was there. She had no reason not to be here, after all. She’d broken down no doors to get in.
But all the same she moved as softly as she could, so that she wouldn’t be heard as she made her way across the dark space to the open door.
The hum of the electricity diminished and she thought, wherever that’s coming from, it’s not up here. Down in the basement, perhaps. She looked around, peering into the darkness, and could see there was no access to the floor below here, unlike the other side of the conveyor belt, where there was a hole in the floor through which the spiral staircase made its way down. The macerator, switched on and ready to operate? Perhaps, and again the idea made her shiver a little, and she pulled her collar against her neck as she refused to think about that horrible machine. It was nice to be cool, she told herself defiantly, but knew she wasn’t. It was as hot and heavy on this side of the warehouse as it had been on the other. She was plain scared, that was the truth of it.
Now she could hear voices. There was little doubt of it. A faint murmur, steady and soft, without emphasis or any rise and fall in inflection. She stopped for a moment, trying to hear properly, but there was no way she could tell who it was. There was nothing in the sounds that stirred any memory in her, and she moved on, until she was standing no more than a few feet from the door, a little to one side of it.
This was the point at which she should have knocked on the door, stepped in and announced herself. Asked for Connie; said she’d come back as invited. But what would be the point of that? she asked herself now. He’s not going to answer any questions. Indeed, a part of her mind jeered at her, what’s the point of being here at all? What do you think you’re going to find out? And she had to admit she didn’t know. She just had a deep conviction that the answer to everything lay in this space, and that those answers would free Gus from his trap. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she knew she’d as sure as hell recognize it the moment she saw it.
‘So how should we know?’ The voice was suddenly a little louder; not very much so, but enough to be comprehensible, and she stood very still. Was it familiar? Or did she imagine that it was because she so much wanted it to be? She could not be sure. Nor could she move, and certainly couldn’t knock. ‘All we did was arrange a job for him. That’s all, no more, no less. He was happy, so why aren’t you?’
‘’E ’asn’t phoned nor written.’ This voice was very different and though she had never heard it before, George was sure, immediately, of its identity. Lenny Greeson. There was a whine in it, a sort of miserable pleading that matched everything she’d heard about the man. She moved a little, needing to be closer, to hear more. See, even.
She had moved somewhat sideways and now she could see into the room via the crack in the open door; a long sliver of light, broken in places, and as she concentrated she could see that she had the back view of someone who was sitting at a desk. There was something about the head, she thought, that was familiar, and she frowned again, trying to recognize it. Connie? No. His hair was thick and curly and dark. This head was very sparsely covered, with little more than a mousy fringe at the back. Again it was vaguely familiar, but she could not place it. There was another person there too, throwing a shadow across the desk, but she couldn’t see who. Just that it was a large person, with heavy shoulders.
‘’E always keeps in touch wiv me,’ the whine said. ‘Always. I never knew ’im not to. An’ it’s bin all this time and never a murmur. I don’t like it, and so I tells yer.’
There was a truculent note to the whine now and it made George uneasy. It was so irritating and so silly a sound that it made he
r impatient, and she thought, whoever he’s talking to won’t take kindly to that. It will make him angry. And I fear that anger.
‘Are you his mother or his brother?’ the other man said. There was a cold sneer in his voice which was now clearly audible. I was right, George thought with a moment of triumph. It is Lenny. And this other man is angry. I was right.
‘But I don’t like people to be anxious,’ the man said then, and now his voice was back as it had been, low, almost impossible to hear, and uninflected. ‘We’ll see what we can do for you.’
‘I’d be ’appier,’ Lenny said eagerly.
I wish I could see him, George thought. I must know what he looks like. I know that’s who it is. It has to be.
‘I mean there’s only me an’ Don left, see? An’ I get upset, like, when I don’t know what ’e’s up to, ’e’s bin in trouble a lot, see. Always was a bit of a lad, even when we was nippers, and I’ve always bin the one what’s looked after ’im.’
‘Yes.’ The other man spoke so softly it sounded like a breath and then the light coming to George from the crack in the open door changed and shifted its shadows and she realized that the man sitting at the desk had got to his feet. Now, she thought. Now I must step forward and tell them I’m here.
What she actually did was slide sideways and to the right, so that she could press herself against the wall in the area where she estimated the shadow of the door would fall once it was fully open. Oh, God, she thought. I pray my jacket’s not lighter than the wall, please don’t let my jacket be lighter than the wall …
She need not have prayed so hard. No one looked back to see her. The door was pushed open and two people came out, a tall man following a thin scuttling shape that was obviously Lenny Greeson. This second man was wearing jeans, which seemed to emphasize his overall bigness and rather heavy legs, and a short-sleeved aertex shirt, which showed his arms were heavily muscled, rather than just fat. George couldn’t see his face, because only his back was illuminated and that for only a brief time as he caught up with Lenny, who was walking just in front of him. He hurried Lenny forwards.
The glimpse George had was very quick, but she was sure she’d got it right and felt as though she’d been knocked down by a horse and left breathless. She stood gazing blankly into the darkness as she tried to digest the information.
Salmon? Detective Sergeant Bob Salmon, for pity’s sake? How could he be here? Had he found the connections already? Was he trying to solve the problem too? And even as she thought it she knew she couldn’t be more wrong.
Bob Salmon, who had supported Lenny’s complaint against Gus. Bob Salmon, who had been put in Gus’s team to break up the local criminals who had been working too closely together for the police peace of mind. Bob Salmon, big, strong, up to his ears in the whole business, in a position to know all there was to know. Her rage was so sudden and so powerful she had to bite her tongue to distract herself from the urge to rush out, hit him, scream abuse and hatred at him. But she controlled it, and caught her breath as he disappeared into the dimness.
She was about to step forwards to follow them when the door moved again and the last man came out. She stood very still, staring at the door to see who it was. Had she recognized his voice, or had she imagined she had? But he turned off the light as the door moved and she could see no more than a shadow; a shadow which closed the door behind it and then walked confidently into the darkness behind the others. Connie? Perhaps.
She stood there for a long moment and then, with a deep and quiet breath, followed them, walking very softly now as they went back to the conveyor belt walkway and alongside it. The hum of the distant electrical equipment became louder again; and as she reached the halfway point along the walkway herself, a bright light sprang up ahead and left her standing, terror-stricken, as still as an animal caught in the glare of a predator’s gaze.
The light had been switched on in the basement. She could see the brilliance pouring up in a great cone above the hole in the floor through which the spiral staircase passed, and in the centre of the cone the shadow of the staircase, curling like a caricature of a helix. And saw against that the moving shadows of three figures going downwards. They did not stop or show any signs that they had seen her behind them.
The shadows disappeared but the light remained; then suddenly the place seemed to erupt into din. She yelped aloud in her acute fear and was frozen with the conviction she had given herself away. But nothing could be heard above the din and now she knew she was safe from being heard, as she recognized that the noise came from the maceration machine being switched into full action, she sprinted for the hole in the floor and peered down.
The three foreshortened figures were there: Bob Salmon standing close beside the machine; and in front of it, apparently staring at it with his shoulders tense and his back expressing a shrinking uncertainty, the man George was sure was Lenny Greeson.
She moved forwards, wanting to see the other figure more clearly. As she did so, it came into view, almost directly beneath her and behind Lenny.
She could see the right hand with something held in it, covered with the fingers of the other hand, and that frightened her. She leaned further over still for an even better view; and her bag, which had been hanging from her shoulder, swung forwards, slid off the smooth fabric of her jacket and down her arm to swing wildly over the head of the man standing behind Lenny.
He looked up as its shadow tracked across the space and she knew she was clearly visible. The light from the floor below was too strong to have left her unseen, and anyway she could feel the heat of it on her face. He could see her as easily as she could see him and she stared at him in amazement, a sense of blazing triumph filling her. She’d been right. She had heard that voice before. Those even, elegant tones that she had always found so surprising. Now all she could do was smile widely at him, her fear quite banished by pride in her success at tracking him down.
‘Hello, Mr Lester. Mr Reggie Lester. Did you take any bets on me being here?’
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She was never to forget the speed of his reaction. He reached up and with a sort of half-jump grabbed for her bag and pulled hard on it. Instinctively she held on, and used her other hand to keep herself from being pulled head first down the spiral staircase; by which time Bob Salmon had registered what was happening and had leaped for the staircase and was halfway up it, reaching for her.
That was the point at which she let go of her bag at last and scrambled back, but her feet slid on a piece of rag on the floor and she fell over. By the time she was on her feet again, Salmon had reached the top of the staircase and was stretching out a hand towards her.
But at last she was up and running, cursing herself as she went, because stupidly she had gone the wrong way; back up the walkway by the conveyor belt in the bowels of the great warehouse, instead of towards the double doors and the way out. Once she was through the little door and into the street, she knew she could get away; there would perhaps be other people…
But she ran headlong into the darkness, leaving behind the cone of light from the basement, wincing as she went, terrified of both the man pounding after her and the looming invisibilities ahead of her, of machinery and stools and bins and baskets. At one point she ran into a wheeled bin, and nearly fell but managed to get round it, giving it a push behind her as she did so. It careered back and caught her pursuer. She heard him grunt and swear as it hit him and that cheered her, made it possible to run even faster, especially as the darkness was getting friendlier now that she was away from the light and her eyes had again become accustomed to dimness.
She dodged round the head of the conveyor belt and ran back down the other side. All she had to do now was go round the great press at the far end – and she had a woolly memory of how that had looked and precisely where it was from her previous visit to the place, when the doors had been open and the light burning brightly overhead – all she had to do, she told herself as her lower teeth began to ache with the
effort of breathing so fast, all she had to do was dodge round it and reach the little door set into the double doors, and she’d be out and away – all she had to do –
She had forgotten Lester, until she found herself sliding awkwardly on another pile of rags and fell clumsily. He had, she realized, run the other way, around the head of the conveyor belt, to cut her off on that side, but in the darkness missed her and ran past, nearly colliding with Salmon, behind her. She heard them both shout something loud and furious, but what she couldn’t tell, for the row of the maceration machine was still going on. She doubled herself up and rolled, so that she disappeared, she hoped, beneath the overhang of the pressing machine’s baling platform. She pulled her head down so that it was shielded by her bent arms, making herself as foetal as she could; and prayed silently with all the desperation of a terrified child that she was invisible.
She wasn’t. She knew she wasn’t as she heard the voices of the two men who had been running after her; they had realized what had happened and were coming back towards her, together, bending low, sweeping their arms in wide arcs as they reached under the conveyor belt, and it would be, she knew, only seconds before they reached the baling press and touched her. She couldn’t move without being seen, and the bulk of the great press stopped her from escaping to the side or rear. She tightened her eyelids until her vision exploded into coloured dazzle and tensed herself against the hands she knew would grab her at any second; but then there was another sound. She twisted her head round to hear it more clearly, then rolled out of her hiding place to reach for the legs of whoever was nearest to her and pull on them.
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