‘Whisky? No agency does that.’
‘Exactly.
I’m going to check it out now.’
‘Want some back-up?’
‘That won’t help. Speak soon. Wait, John. What did you have to eat tonight?’
‘Er
. . .
Chicken Madras, why?’
Brook ran his lower lip under his teeth. ‘Just wanted to know.’
He ended the call and put the phone on silent then squelched up St Peter’s Street, past Waterstone’s and the small clock-tower which showed two o’clock in the morning. The temperature had dropped and the cold hand of night was beginning to grip. Brook pulled his flimsy overcoat up round his neck, burrowed his hands deeper into his too-thin pockets then quickened his walk to get the blood moving. First order of business after he took a bath – get some decent boots, assuming his feet hadn’t already rotted away to stumps. He pulled out a damp handkerchief and sneezed mightily into the cloth. An inquisitive dog popped its head out of a shapeless pile of blankets in a shop doorway and monitored Brook’s laboured progress with a smooth turn of the head.
‘Good dog,’ breathed Brook as he walked on. The dog, placated, yawned and burrowed back down towards the heat of its owner.
Brook ran the back of his hand across his nose. All he needed – living rough with a cold. He came to a decision. He was exhausted. He couldn’t take another night. This would be his last. The previous two had been fruitless – fruitless, that is, if you excluded the insights he’d gained into a life without a home. Three days and two nights on the streets, and so much about the behaviour and condition of the dispossessed had begun to make sense to Brook. The adoption of a flea-bitten
abandoned dog, like the one he’d just seen, was more than a play for sympathy from punters with spare change. The animal offered warmth and the kind of unswerving love and loyalty that acted as antidote to the vitriol unleashed by the well-heeled walking by. He’d heard it all.
Get a job, you fucking tramp.
You stink.
Why don’t you top yourself and do the world a favour?
And it wasn’t just verbal. He’d seen people sleeping in doorways, urinated on by drunken teenagers, kicked awake by shopkeepers and threatened with worse if they came back. And despite being a DI, Brook had not intervened. He told himself it was because he didn’t want to break cover, but a small part of him knew that it was more than that. In just three days of homelessness, Brook had become submissive and, in many ways, helpless. Now he actively avoided eye-contact with others, didn’t want to be noticed, to be the target of abuse or engage with people whose first reaction towards him would be contempt. Brook had assumed the position.
For a second he paused and pulled off a damp glove to scratch his beard again – something had bitten him, he was sure. Living without the basic freedoms and comforts bestowed by an income had quickly reordered his priorities. Food, warm shelter and clean clothes were no longer taken for granted but had become the fundamental pillars of his existence. Brook had never been the sort of person to spend more time than necessary over basic functions, but after the first twelve hours padding around Derby, in the oldest clothes he could muster, he not only longed for a hot bath but had a hunger gnawing at his belly that he’d never experienced before.
After
one full day, Brook stank to high heaven and had spent the emergency £20 note in his back pocket on the
Sub of the Day
, his first packet of cigarettes in a month and a small bottle of whisky, being careful to get the cheapest brands of both to allay suspicion amongst his new acquaintances.
He plodded on, taking the walk of the damned – head sagging forward, shoulders rounded, feet barely clearing the ground, like a prisoner in the Gulag. He reached the top of Osmaston Road and crossed the new link road, Lara Croft Way, which, like most road improvements in the city, had reduced traffic-flow to a virtual standstill during rush-hour. At two in the morning, however, it was deserted and Brook ambled across the four lanes, past the boarded-up bar, long since closed after a stabbing, and turned on to Leopold Street.
Just before reaching Normanton Road, Brook stopped and pulled out a grubby piece of paper given to him by Mitch, his new friend from the Millstone House Shelter. It didn’t have an address on it; the homeless didn’t use addresses – the consequence of being homeless, Brook supposed. Instead they preferred more traditional methods of navigation – a vague description of the location, the description of the house and how to get in.
Brook looked around and was held for a moment. On the other side of the road was a funeral parlour – Duxbury & Duxbury. He made a mental note to check they’d been contacted.
He turned back to the darkened, boarded house. He checked Mitch’s note again and approached the steel security grille fastened over one of the windows. This was the place. He pulled aside the grille so he could see inside. It moved easily but it was far too dark to see anything. However, the smell of
body odour hit his nostrils, as did a sickly-sweet smell which Brook associated with crack cocaine abuse. He listened for the scurrying of rats but heard nothing but the now familiar harsh rasp of sleeping vagrants mumbling and snoring in their fitful slumber.
Brook took a final breath of fresh air and lifted a leg through the window space, but his foot was suddenly held by a strong hand.
‘Fuck a ye doin’, pal?’ said a voice of pure Scottish tar. Despite the many things Brook had learned about sleeping rough, one thing remained a mystery. Why so many vagrants seemed to be Scottish.
‘Looking for Mitch and a place to kip,’ Brook replied in as gruff a voice as he could manage. He hadn’t yet slipped into the parlance as easily as he would’ve liked.
‘We’re full, pal. Fuck off.’ The hand holding Brook’s foot shoved it roughly back out of the window.
Brook didn’t move away. He knew from his days on the street that the only way to get a result now was to fructify his vocabulary and employ an unfamiliar aggression. ‘Who the fuck says?’ he snarled back.
‘You mouthin’ off, Jimmy? Jock says, so fuck off afore ye get a busted mouth.’
Brook tried not to smile, his default reaction to any form of verbal threat. He was a Detective Inspector and had been threatened many times. Almost always such belligerence was for show, an attempt to gain control over a situation that was overwhelming the aggressor. And when a DI smiled back at hostility, the violent facade often crumbled and Brook knew
he
had control. But not this time. He needed an alternative strategy.
‘I’ve
got fags,’ he said, producing a pack and holding them up to Jock’s face.
Jock squinted at the pack and grinned. ‘Giz un.’ He reached for the pack but Brook lowered his hand.
‘When you let me in.’
Jock eyed Brook then nodded. ‘Aye. Well, one more won’t di any harm, Jimmy.’ He stood back from the window and Brook clambered in. ‘What’s yer name, Jimmy?’
‘It’s Jimmy,’ said Brook, standing upright and surveying the room. He could see clearer now by the light of an old guttering lantern in the middle of the bare room. Half a dozen uninterested, glazed expressions fixed on him briefly then returned to gape at the floor.
‘Straight up?’ Jock coughed, laughing.
As soon as Brook was in, Jock went to Brook’s hand and pulled the cigarettes from him. He yanked one out and held it to the barely alight lantern. He pulled the first drag deep into his lungs and coughed the smoke back up. ‘Lovely. Here, Jimmy. Warm yer cockles.’ Jock tossed a bottle towards him and gestured to the floor. ‘Take a pew and join the party.’
Brook examined the bottle and pulled off the stopper, taking a sniff. ‘What is it?’
Jock laughed and coughed at the same time. ‘What is it?’ he repeated, and looked round at the other bearded faces. ‘We got a conn’sir with us, gents.’ He cackled this time and took another huge pull on the cigarette.
A small man with a baseball cap flashed a gap-toothed smile back at Jock, and then narrowed his eyes at Brook. ‘What does it matter, friend?’ he said in a faint Yorkshire accent. ‘It’s barley wine, if you must know.’
‘We
finished all the whisky for breakfast.’ Jock laughed again.
Baseball Cap continued to look at Brook as best he could. ‘Have a sip,’ he urged, looking over at Jock. ‘Maybe you can tell us what year it is.’ This time Baseball Cap laughed hard and wheezy and Jock joined in, shaking his head and muttering
‘What is it?’
to remind himself why he was laughing so hard.
‘Thanks.’ Brook stuck his tongue in the neck and faked a swig, as was his custom all those years ago in the Met when his old boss Charlie Rowlands passed over his flask at eleven in the morning.
‘Go on, finish it,’ said Baseball Cap. ‘Plenty more where that came from, Jimmy.’
Brook looked around at the floor and saw several empty whisky and barley wine bottles at the men’s feet. ‘You knock off an off-licence or something?’
Baseball Cap smiled thinly at him. He seemed to be the least inebriated of the group and Brook was becoming uncomfortable under his gaze. ‘Let’s just say we have a benefactor.’ Baseball Cap grinned across at Jock but fortunately his head had slumped forward into unconsciousness. ‘You know? A sugar daddy.’
‘I know what a benefactor is,’ said Brook. He scratched his itching beard again, eyes still locked on Baseball Cap. ‘You sound like you’ve had a decent education.’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Baseball Cap said. ‘You think only stupid people end up on the skids?’ He flashed a quick look round to check his roommates were too befuddled to follow. ‘Education,’ he hissed. ‘That’s where I know you from. Damen, isn’t it?’
‘The name’s Jimmy,’ said Brook softly.
‘Fuck
off, Damen. It’s me. Phil.’
Brook didn’t reply but squinted through the gloom at Baseball Cap. He obliged Brook by removing his cap and brushing the lank grey hair away from his face. From nowhere two jigsaw pieces of Brook’s memory clicked together. ‘Phil? Phil Ward? My God.’
The newly anointed Phil nodded. ‘Cambridge Athletics. Alverstone’s against the Centipedes, remember? We ran against each other in the five thousand metres.’
‘Not for long,’ recalled Brook. ‘You were a lap in front of me at halfway, I remember.’
Phil looked away, pleasure tinged with sadness. He took a pull on his barley wine. ‘I was quick back then. And I didn’t smoke or . . .’ He held up his bottle to save further explanation. ‘I assume you’re new to the life.’
‘Why?’
‘You look like you could interview after a wash and brush up.’
‘You don’t look so bad yourself,’ Brook lied. Without his cap he could see the ravages of vagrancy on Phil’s face – pockmarked ruddy cheeks which sank in towards his jaw, missing teeth, greasy thinning hair and the telltale jaundiced eyes which spoke of a liver failing under the assault of drink and drugs. ‘What happened? You were going to be a dentist, I seem to remember.’
‘Pharmacist,’ Phil grinned. ‘And I kinda still am.’ The black grin faded. ‘You haven’t got any rock to spare, have you, buddy? I’ll pay you back.’
‘No,’ answered Brook. ‘Fresh out. And you haven’t answered my question. What happened to you?’
Jock stirred at that moment and lifted his head at the same
time as the bottle went to his mouth. ‘Nuttin’ happened,’ he mumbled after a long draught.
Phil’s eyes flicked at the door and he disentangled himself from the scrum of semi-conscious men as delicately as possible. Brook followed him quietly out. Fortunately Jock’s head had begun to loll again. Up the bare stairs and into a room that looked out over the heavily overgrown back yard. There was just a mattress in the room but the floorboards were scattered with drug paraphernalia – torn-up Rizla packets, scorched wire gauze, needles, blackened empty bottles for the crack smokers.
Brook turned back from the window as Phil closed the door behind him and stooped to pick up a needle. He held it like an axe above his head. ‘What’s happening, Brook? Is this a fucking raid? I know you’re not in the life, man. You’re fucking famous. You’re The Reaper detective. I’ve read the newspapers. I’ve wiped my arse on you. You’re still a copper, aren’t you? ’Cos if you were on the street for real, you’d know the golden rule.’
‘Golden rule?’
‘What we did no longer exists. We don’t have pasts any more. We don’t have futures neither. We live in the present. The next score, the next high. That’s all we think about in here. Dead men walking.’ He moved towards Brook raising the needle higher. ‘That answer your question, Detective Inspector?’
Brook tried not to look at the needle and held up his hands. ‘This is not a raid, Phil. And that needle’s empty.’
‘Course it’s empty, you sanctimonious cunt,’ hissed Phil, now eyeball to eyeball with Brook. Brook could smell his breath, the sweat pouring off him, the stench of death. ‘I
emptied it into my veins. But what else is on there? AIDS? Hepatitis? You won’t know until the first bout of flu, baby.’
Brook urgently tried to make eye-contact. ‘Phil, you’re not going to get busted. Listen to me, Phil. You’re not in any trouble. I’m not here about the drugs. Put down the needle and let me help you.’
Phil couldn’t hold the pose; tears filled his eyes and he crumpled to the ground, dropping the needle on to the mattress. ‘I beat you by a lap and a half,’ he wailed.
Brook stooped and picked him up by both arms and forced his way into his face. ‘You probably still can, Phil. Why don’t you let me help you? I could put in a word, get you on a programme.’
‘I’ve been on programmes. They don’t help.’
‘So you just give up and stick a needle in your arm?’
‘D’uh.’
The two men looked at each other in the gloom then simultaneously broke into silent laughter which lasted more than a minute.
Phil took a deep breath and wiped the tears away. ‘’The fuck are you doing here, Brook?’
‘Looking for someone,’ said Brook after a moment. ‘I spoke to Mitch. He sent me. He was here last night.’
‘I know Mitch. He went to Millstone for a bath and a bed.’
‘He told me about Tommy McTiernan. He was here in this house.’