Lomax Road was a turning to the left halfway down Whitechapel just past the London Hospital. A tall narrow house which looked to be as grotty inside as it was out. A blanket was pinned up at the ground-floor window, grimy nets at the one upstairs.
‘Be a laugh if she’s in there, won’t it? Feet up, watching the box, having a bevvy.’
‘Nothing would please me more.’ Barnaby studied the various bells. The wooden backing was half hanging off the wall, the wires rusty. Benson. Ducane (Chas). Walker. Ryan. He pressed them all. A few minutes later a small sash window was pushed up and a young girl looked out.
‘Whaddya want?’
‘Police,’ said Sergeant Troy.
‘No police in here. Sorry.’
‘We’re looking for Carlotta Ryan.’
‘She’s gone.’
‘Could you perhaps spare a minute?’ asked DCI Barnaby.
‘’Ang about.’ The window slammed shut.
Troy muttered, ‘What a dump. Just look at that.’ The concrete front garden was full of splitting bin bags, festering rubbish and dog mess. ‘I bet the rats queue up to have it away on that lot.’
They could hear her clattering downstairs, clopetty clop, clopetty clop, like a little pony. Which meant stone steps or old lino, about what you’d expect in a dump like this.
A tall, slim girl stood facing them. She wore sprayed-on leather hipsters and a once-white jumper, well short of her waist. Her hair was apricot with bronze tips, in a rough poodle cut. Glitter dust bloomed and sparkled on her cheeks and eyelids. Her navel was pierced with a ring from which depended a very large, shiny stone. Her hands were grubby with bitten nails. Barnaby thought she looked like a shop-soiled angel.
He introduced himself and Troy then asked if they might come in for a minute. She looked up and down the road, for all the world like a suburban housewife embarrassed at having the police on the doorstep. A comparison dispelled by her first words.
‘You gotta be sharp round ’ere.’ She closed the door behind them. ‘They see you co-operating with the old Bill . . .’
The stairs were stone and the walls covered with dirty anaglypta. They had been painted so often that the original pattern of swirling feathers had been almost obliterated, at the moment by an unpleasant brownish yellow gloss.
It was not a large house - there were two doors on the ground floor and two on the top - but it was tall and the stairs were very steep. As they climbed after the girl, Barnaby, holding the banister, huffed and puffed. Troy enjoyed his rear view of the leather trousers. Halfway up they passed what looked like a very grotty bathroom and toilet. The window which the girl had looked through was still open.
‘Which . . . which flat is Miss Ryan’s?’ wheezed the chief inspector.
‘You all right?’
‘Huhh . . . huhh . . .’
‘I should come and sit down before you fall down.’
‘I’m fine. Thank you.’ Barnaby hated to reveal any physical weakness and he made a point of wandering round the girl’s room for several moments before he actually did find a seat on a zebra-striped Dralon settee, splitting its sides with fair wear and tear.
‘Carlotta lived next door.’
‘Could you give me your name, please?’ Sergeant Troy lowered himself carefully onto a pink furry stool with purple leatherette trim and a little sequin fringe. He felt like a poser in a clip joint showered by sardonic abuse along the lines of ‘get your kit off, sailor’ or ‘ooh, look - a chipolata’.
‘Tanya.’
‘Very exotic.’ He smiled across at her. ‘Russian.’
‘Yeah. If me mum could’ve said no to the Smirnoff, I wouldn’t be here today.’
Barnaby laughed and Troy turned his head, surprised and resentful. He had lost count of the little witticisms he had polished up and delivered to the chief to ease the boredom of the daily grind. If he got a half-smile he reckoned he’d won the jackpot. Now he couldn’t even console himself with the thought that the DCI had no sense of humour.
‘Surname?’
‘Walker.’ She stared at them both. ‘What’s she done now then, Carlotta?’
‘How well did you know her?’ asked Barnaby, leaning forward in his usual friendly fashion.
‘We got on OK, considering.’
‘Considering what?’
‘Different backgrounds and that. I were at Bethnal Green Comprehensive, she went to some posh school in the Lake District. Way she described it, you’d’ve been better off slagging round the Pentonville Road.’
‘Did you ever think she might be making it all up?’
‘Oh, yeah. She were a dreadful liar, except she called it imagination. “You can imagine yourself anybody, Tarn,” she used to say. And I’d say, like, “Get real, Lottie.” ’Cause when you’ve finished imagining, it’s the real world you’re stuck with, right?’