The Killer Next Door(8)

She scans the road. Wherever there’s a crowd, there’s an opportunity. Today she’s done a circuit of the redemption stores of Tooting, Streatham and Norbury – no need for any great stealth, just confidence and an air of shame, a talent for playing the embarrassed, cash-strapped student who’s spent their loan on tech and run out of food. She rarely works her home patch, though, apart from the occasional foray into the Co-op when she’s forgotten to get cat food for Psycho. The West End, where people are distracted and careless with their tech, and she’s just one of thousands of girls in short skirts, is a richer and safer place in which to work. Only junkies and other people too wasted or desperate or tired to get themselves further afield work their own home patch. But her eye roams, automatically, and logs the chances available.

In front of the Brasserie Julien – one of the new arrivals, all brass and wood and marble table tops – a group of Yummy Mummies has gathered. The new breed of Northbourneite, driven further out by the rising prices of Clapham and Wandsworth and Balham in search of period fixer-uppers with room for a conservatory kitchen extension in the side-return. They’re drinking cappuccinos in the shade of the canopy, designer sunglasses perched on heads like hairbands, a couple of toddlers strapped into jogging buggies beside them, talking loudly about what a joy it is to live in such a multicultural area. Their handbags sit carefully between their feet, but a bag from the White Company hangs from the back of a buggy and all three have lined their iPhones up on the table like badges of identity. That’s £200, right there, she thinks. Just trip over one of their kids, and I’d have all their Apple products before they’d retrieved the organic low-fat apple snacks. Though their prices are going down as they get commoner and commoner, Apple products still have a greater resale value than any other tech because people still think they make them look rich. That’s why she specialises in scrumping.

She walks on, past the dusty display of dead pensioners’ unwanted knick-knacks in the window of the Help the Aged shop, the shuttered Citizens’ Advice, the Asian grocer that only seems to sell cumin and evaporated milk. She pauses at the window of Funky Uncles and sees that the eternity ring she sold there six weeks ago has gone on sale for three times what they gave her for it. It’s a mug’s game, this, she thinks. When I’m older I’ll have a pawnshop of my own. It’s a licence to print money.

Outside the new deli, a woman her mum’s age – well, the age her mum would have been – pauses and delves in her shoulder bag at the sound of a ringtone. Snatches the phone out, turns away from the street and starts to talk, the flap left hanging, unsecured. It’s like they’re tempting me, thinks Cher, as if they’ve heard my thoughts.

An old lady, auburn wig faded to rusty lilac, drags a wheelie bag past her, a leather wallet bulging from the pocket of the tweed overcoat she wears despite the heat. A sitting duck, thinks Cher; thinks of her nanna, tumbling to the floor in Toxteth, the hip that never really healed, and reaches out to touch her sleeve.

‘’Scuse me, love,’ she says.

The old woman regards her with half-vacant, faded blue eyes. Hairs like fuse wire sprout from her upper lip and chin. Cher smiles, encouragingly. ‘You don’t want to be leaving that sticking out like that,’ she says. ‘Someone’ll have it off you.’

She sees the woman struggle to interpret her accent. Fuck’s sake, she thinks, I’m only a Scouser. It’s not like I’m from Newcastle or something.

She points towards the purse, waits as the woman looks down, sees understanding dawn as she fumbles with knotted old knuckles to ram it deeper into the pocket. I don’t want to get old, thinks Cher. There’s nothing in the world will make me live like that, smelling of piss and my tits round my knees and not even able to keep warm on a day like this.

The woman looks up at her and bestows her with a snaggled smile. ‘Thanks, darling,’ she says, the tones of London almost as impenetrable and jarring to Cher’s ear as those of the Mersey were to her. ‘That was nice of you.’

‘That’s all right,’ says Cher.

‘Not many young people bother, these days,’ she says, and Cher realises, too late, that she’s befriended a talker. ‘You’re all in such a rush. I’m surprised you bothered to stop – young people are so selfish.’

Her tone has changed from the brief flash of gratitude to one of reproach. Oh, God, thinks Cher, never a good deed goes unpunished.

‘In my day, we respected old people,’ the old lady says, ‘and we got a clip round the ear if we didn’t.’