I say, ‘Half-time Mike?’

He sniffs and rolls his eyes and walks back down the hall.

The window’s open and the radio on. A hot Sunday in May and all you’d usually hear would be Bob fucking Marley, but not today. Just Jimmy Savile playing twenty-five years of Jubilee hits, as every cunt and his stash hide under their beds, waiting for the sirens to stop, the shit to end.

Karen lights a cig and looks up.

I say, ‘You do know Steve Barton?’

‘Yeah, unfortunately.’

‘But you’ve no idea where he is?’

‘If he’s any bloody sense, he’ll have legged it.’

‘Has he any bloody sense?’

‘Some.’

‘So where’d he leg it to?’

‘London. Bristol. I’ve no fucking idea.’

Karen’s flat stinks and I wonder where the kids are. Probably been taken off her again.

I say, ‘You reckon he did it?’

‘No.’

‘So give me a name and I’m out of here.’

‘Or what?’

‘Or I’ll go and get some fucking lunch and let my mate out there question you, and then I’ll come back and we’ll take you down Queens Street.’

She tuts, exhales, and says, ‘Who do you want?’

‘Anyone who likes a bit of strange. Anything odd.’

‘Anything odd?’ she laughs.

‘Anything.’

She stubs out the cigarette on a plastic tray of chips and curry sauce and gets up and takes an address book out of the knife drawer. The room now stinks of burning plastic.

‘Here,’ she says, tossing the little book over to me.

I scan the names, the numbers, the licence plates, the lies.

‘Give me someone.’

‘Under D. Dave. Drives a white Ford Cortina.’

‘What about him?’

‘No rubber, likes to stick it up your arse.’

‘So?’

‘He doesn’t say please.’

I take out my notebook, copy down the licence plate.

‘Heard he don’t always pay and all.’

‘Anyone else?’