Never Apologise, Never Explain by James Craig Page A

three bare light bulbs. There were no portholes. At each end was a sliding metal door, with an armed guard stationed immediately outside. Each person was told to take one thin blanket. There were enough hammocks for maybe half of them, with a canvas dividing off the quarters for the women. Beside the doors were four large buckets to serve as their toilet. The lodgings had clearly been used before. The floor was still sticky with fluids that Pettigrew did not want to inspect too closely. There had been some attempt to clean the place up for the new arrivals but, at best, it had been half-hearted. The smell of disinfectant only partially covered the smell of piss, shit and body odour. No one wanted to think about what had happened to the previous guests.

 
    EIGHT
     
    The city hummed around him. Reassuringly familiar, it soothed his agitation. Too impatient to wait for a break in the traffic, Carlyle jumped in front of a small, red delivery van, studiously ignoring the exaggerated hand gestures of the driver as he skipped down Long Acre. Reaching Seven Dials, a mini-roundabout, with a pillar at its centre bearing six sundials (the seventh being the pillar itself, casting its shadow on the ground), he headed towards the north end of Mercer Street, close to Shaftesbury Avenue.
    On the west side of the street was a small block of council flats known as Phoenix House. Built in the 1950s with the cheapest concrete available, the building would probably have been more robust if it had been constructed out of cardboard. Still, it looked clean and, from the outside at least, didn’t smell too badly. Carlyle buzzed, waited for a few seconds, heard the door unlock, and went inside.
    On the top floor of Phoenix House was Flat 8. For more than a year now, it had been used as a knocking shop by a young Birmingham girl called Sam Laidlaw. The place was tiny,no more than 500 square feet all told, but it had a small roof terrace which allowed Laidlaw’s clients an al fresco option in the summer.
    Laidlaw’s maid, Amelia Jacobs, was a retired prostitute who had known Carlyle for more than twenty years. She was a reliable contact, who had built up a healthy balance in his favours book over the years. A few weeks earlier, when she had asked to make a rare withdrawal, Carlyle knew that he would have to go and pay her a visit. Having already put it off a couple of times, he now felt obliged to put in an appearance.
    If not exactly the stereotypical hooker with a heart of gold, Jacobs was an impressive figure. She was a plain-looking black woman in her mid-to-late thirties, about 5 feet 4 inches with a no-nonsense short back and sides haircut and hard eyes that never focused on you. If you passed her on the street, you might imagine that Amelia was a teacher, or maybe even a lawyer. The reality was rather different, but Carlyle knew that Amelia was nonetheless worthy of considerable respect. Above all, she was a survivor. Local legend had it that she had once tried, with some success, to bite off the penis of an obnoxious punter. Carlyle knew a nurse working at UCLH on Gower Street who claimed to have been on duty when the unfortunate bloke arrived in A&E. He had asked Amelia about the incident once – she had just smiled and said matter-of-factly: ‘Another few seconds and he would never have seen his thing again.’
    Happily for visiting punters, and middle-aged policemen, reaching the top floor only meant three flights of stairs. There was a lift, but it rarely worked. Even when it did, Carlyle would rather take the stairs than risk getting stuck inside.
    Jogging up the stairs, he felt only slightly winded.
    Amelia met him at the door. ‘Thanks for coming, Inspector,’ she smiled.
    ‘No problem,’ Carlyle replied, trying to control his wheezing. ‘Sorry it’s taken me so long to get here.’
    She made a non-committal gesture. ‘Come inside.’
    A couple of minutes later he was sitting on an orange sofa in a drab sitting room that