Street Magic Part 2

Chapter Five

In all her time, Pete would never know why she trusted Jack Winter. Why she'd put her faith in him time and time again, as a child and now, and why she willingly followed where he led. She'd had no earthly reason to go to Highgate, to think for one minute that his words were anything but the sputtering of junkie circuitry.

But she'd gone. On nothing more than a feeling and a flutter in that dark cage where she'd locked up everything when Jack had died. Pete knew what Connor would have to say about that, and it was nothing that would put a spring in her step.

The MIT room in New Scotland Yard, no longer housed in the halls of visiting monarchy but a chapel for the warriors who trod the tangled veins and arteries of London, was dark. Pete's desk lamp created an oasis, but it didn't reach far.

She was searching for Jack Winter, not in her dreams as she had so many times, stumbling over headstones and blackened brush, but with cold key clicks, seeing what the Metropolitan Police had to offer on twelve years that she'd willfully missed.

The screen turned out drugs. Arrests. Minor vagrancies and trespa.s.ses that earned Jack stints in rehabilitation. Outpatient. Inpatient. Involuntary. Jail.

His life had not been kind, and it twisted Pete up like only Connor dying had before. But Jack had died, too, once, and Pete wasn't yet sure if it was relief or fear she felt at seeing him breathing. Jack certainly hadn't been thrilled to meet her again, for whatever secreted reasons Jack held.

Pete pushed back from her desk and looked at the glowing numerals of the wall clock. It was after midnight, and she felt it in the weight of her body. She shut off her light and walked out in the dark. In the morning, she would find Jack and make him tell her how he'd done the magic of finding Bridget, and why. Why now.

And why her.

Weevil Bill tried to run when he saw Pete coming, but she grabbed him by the sleeve of his silk windcheater and he tripped, crashing into the phone box bolted to the corner where Weevil Bill spent the vast portion of his life.

"I didn't do nuffink!" Weevil Bill squeaked. He was Pete's height, run to fat, and his breath smelled like a night of cheap pints and disappointment.

"I never said you did," said Pete. "But blurting it out like that makes you seem awfully guilty."

Weevil Bill slumped. "Wot you want?" he muttered. "I got places to be, y'know. I'm a legitimate businessman."

"Dealing hash to university students is a step up for you, certainly," Pete agreed. Weevil Bill started to slide down and sideways to make his escape and Pete helped him along, sending him to the pavement on his stomach.

"My friend in the Organised Crime Command out of EK tells me that you still deal the odd bit of smack, Bill."

"No& no, I'm out of that ever since the b.l.o.o.d.y Chinese moved in& they carve your organs out if you cross them."

"Bad luck that you got picked up with three grams last week then, isn't it?" Pete said. "You tell me what I want to know, I'll take you in and let you cool off in a cell until the Chinese are more amenable. You f.u.c.k me about, and I'll leave your a.r.s.e sprawled on the corner."

Weevil Bill dropped his forehead to the pavement and moaned. In this bleak corner of the city, none of the pa.s.sing cars slowed down to see what the fuss was, and the scant pedestrian traffic gave Pete a wide berth. She lifted Weevil Bill's chin with the toe of her shoe. "I'm looking for a bloke named Jack Winterabout three and a half meters tall, platinum hair, f.u.c.king junkie. Anyone of that description score with you lately?"

"Mebbe they did," Weevil Bill muttered. "But you put the bracelets on before I tell you."

"Some other morning I'd be cooperative," said Pete, feeling the crawl of exhaustion along her spine. "I'm not an unreasonable woman, after all."

She hadn't slept when she'd been in bed, and when her eyes finally drifted closed the images of smoke on dark stone and Jack's eyes, his old smile and his new needle marks, made her prefer a pot of strong tea and late-night telly. "But that morningit's not this morning," Pete told Bill. "Let's have it."

"Winter don't score from me much, but he runs with the blokes who use the galleries in Southwark, 'round where it ain't been torn down and built up so's only G.o.d himself could afford it," Weevil Bill said. "And that's all I know, as my witness."

Pete hauled Weevil Bill to his feet, handcuffing him with suitable ceremony and attaching the free end to a lamppost. "Oi!" Weevil Bill shouted. "What about my arrest?"

"Don't fret," said Pete, flipping open her mobile. "Mark. Yeah. Pete Caldecott here. Listen, I got a bust for you& he's handcuffed to a post up near the Camden Lock. You can't miss him."

The DS sputtered a laugh. "I'll hurry then."

"Oh, don't bother," Pete said, smiling at Weevil Bill.

"He's got nothing but time." She rung off with Mark and asked Weevil Bill, "Satisfied?"

Weevil Bill let out a miserable little sound, which Pete took as acquiescence. She got back into the Mini and gunned the engine.

The corner, the post, and Weevil Bill rapidly became a speck in her rearview mirror as she drove through the City and pointed the Mini across Blackfriars Bridge, toward the docks of Southwark.

Chapter Six

The smell of the Thames, rotted and salty, permeated everything in the street when Pete exited the Mini, and something darker than the damp chill in the air slithered against the underside of her mind.

She pushed it away. Nothing here except a disintegrating row of flats that exuded silent hopelessness.

A boy in a cheap leather jacket dozed on the stoop at the far end of the block, spotting for police and rival dealers and giving the place away as a shooting gallery. Pete kicked his foot once, twice. He snorted and shifted in his sleep, but nothing more. She was insubstantial as a fever dream.

A token agent's notice on the front of the building was covered with spray-painted obscenities, and faded enough that Pete thought even Susan, Terry's hopelessly cheery estate agent, would throw her hands up in despair. The door, half off its hinges from some long-ago bust, grinned at Pete with a gargoyle knocker as she pushed it open, feeling sticky dampness from the decayed wood and stippled paint. "h.e.l.lo."

Shredded shades were pulled over the windows, and in the blue-gray ghost light Pete barely avoided overturned furniture, Margaret Thatcher vintage, and a surfeit of filthy mattresses and crumpled blankets, like bodies under turned earth.

Pete took her penlight from her pocket and flashed it into the corners of the room, illuminating a gaunt sleeping face. Not Jack's.

A kitchen filled with more dripping rust and c.o.c.kroaches than any one room had a right to contain sped Pete up a set of rickety stairs and into a narrow hallway with bedrooms to each side. The first still held vestiges of wallpaper and an iron bed, like something one would find in an orphanage of d.i.c.kensian origin. A mother, who couldn't have been more than the age Pete was when she first met with Jack, looked up with wide black eyes. Her skinny baby let out a wail.

"Sorry," Pete muttered. "Just looking for& I'm looking for a friend."

The mother watched her silently, not breathing. "Jack Winter," Pete said desperately. "He's not here, is he?" He hadn't been at the last half-dozen squats she'd visited. No reason to think he'd turn up here. He'd vanish as surely as he had after& well. Pete didn't think about that.

"He's next door," the mother whispered. The baby grasped at the air around her face, cries weakening, and she dropped her head to soothe it without taking her eyes off Pete.

"Ah," said Pete. "Thank you." She stepped backward into the hall and went into the next room with a low thrumming in her blood, excitement and fear she had no right to feel because you didn't trust the ramblings of addicts and crazy people, Connor Caldecott's first rule in his long list.

The front bedroom looked out onto the street and the Thames, a view that would have been worth something once, just like the house and the men sleeping or murmuring on the floor.

Pete shone her light on each face in turn. They were mostly white, all thin and bones, stubble and dirt, and sometimes blood or vomit caking. Eyes glared at her dully in the thin beam of light.

Until she hit on the platinum shock topping Jack's drawn face. He threw an arm over his eyes and swore. "Who's that?"

Pete swallowed. She couldn't speak. It was the hotel room all over again, and she was dumb from the sight of him. Jack groaned and sat up. "You've got a h.e.l.l of a lot of nerve, whoever you are. Got a mind to put my fist in your teeth, c.u.n.t."

"It's me," Pete managed finally.

Jack squinted for a moment, and then flopped back on his mattress with a sigh. "And just what do you want?"

The wavering blade of the penlight illuminated the dull flash of a disposable needle at his hand. "We found Bridget Killigan."

"Of course you did," said Jack. "I said it, didn't I?"

Pete crouched and touched his shoulder. Jack jerked away from her and then hissed, rubbing his arms as a shiver racked him. "Get out of here," he said.

"How did you do it?" Pete said. "How did you know where to find her? Jack, I'm not leaving without an answer."

Jack sat up and rooted through a plastic Sainsbury's tote. Disposable sharps, a battered shaving case containing a shooting kit, and empty bags coated with crystalline dust slid through his fingers as he shook.

Pete clamped her hands around his wrists. "Jack. Answer me."

His face was wreathed in droplets of sweat and she fought the urge to brush them away.

"Leave me alone, Pete," he rasped. "I don't want to see you again. Not ever." He pulled loose, picked up an empty twist of plastic and held it to the light. "s.h.i.t." His slow-burn gaze shot back to Pete. "You're still here? I said get the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l out!"

There was a time, Pete knew, that those words from him would have devastated her. Words from Jack were like the tears of angels. Wounding words stabbed directly to the heart of her.

But this was the real and painful present, not a memory of the fragile girl who'd loved Jack the moment she saw him sing. "No," Pete said, jerking the bag out of Jack's hands. "No, Jack, we're going to have a word."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed for it. "Give that back," he warned.

"You want this?" Pete told him, holding his sharps and drugs just out of reach. "Then you talk with me."

Jack swiped at her once more and then sat down hard, glaring. "f.u.c.kin' h.e.l.l. When did you become a raging b.i.t.c.h?"

Pete straightened and crumpled the bag between her fists. "I don't know, Jack, but I think it was right around the time I watched you die."

Jack threw an arm back across his face. "Did you come here merely to grasp at my b.a.l.l.s, or was there something you wanted?"

"Tell me how you knew about Bridget Killigan," said Pete. "Right now, I'm trying to believe you had nothing to do with s.n.a.t.c.hing and blinding the poor girl, but it's becoming very hard, Jack."

Jack grunted and Pete thumped him on the arm with her closed fist. "Tell me."

He opened his eyes and met hers, and Pete was swept away again as quickly as she'd been at sixteen. d.a.m.n you, Jack Winter d.a.m.n you, Jack Winter. She bit her lower lip to keep her face expressionless.

"It's a simple thing, luv," said Jack. "Magic."

And G.o.d, she wanted to believe him. Would Would have, before. Even pale and sc.r.a.ped as his face was now, he was still Jack. And he was still feeding her lies because he thought her stupid. have, before. Even pale and sc.r.a.ped as his face was now, he was still Jack. And he was still feeding her lies because he thought her stupid.

"You're a b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she whispered, jerking her hand away. Didn't matter that she wanted him not to be taking the p.i.s.s, to be telling what he at least thought was the truth.

"Takes one to know one," said Jack shortly, rolling over on his side and facing away. Pete c.o.c.ked her arm and flung the plastic bag. It burst, scattering the contents across the filmy floor.

"Oi!" Jack shouted, scrambling after the needles as they clattered away.

"The person who blinded that little girl is going to get away with it because you're a git. Go to h.e.l.l," Pete hissed.

Jack stood, crossing the s.p.a.ce between them, his expression going hard quickly as a flick-knife appears. "Look around you, Pete," he grated, gripping her arm. "We're in in. h.e.l.l."

A human-sized lump on the mattress next to Jack's stirred. "Shaddup. 'M trying to sleep."

Pete bored into Jack, hoping her gaze scorched him. "Let go of me."

His mouth twisted. "Did that a dozen years ago." He left her and went back to his mattress.

Pete backed out of the room and half fell down the shadowed stairs to the front door, sucking in cold, clean outside air as she leaned against the Mini. She didn't know why Jack was angry, but it didn't matter, did it? He was still the same charlatan, still using smoke and tricks up his sleeves to avoid the realities of the world. Pete dug her knuckles into her eyes until her tears retreated.

I will not think of him. I will not gift him my tears. I will not let Jack Winter touch me.

Chapter Seven

Scotland Yard flowed around Pete, shuffling papers and ringing phones, inspectors each wrapped in a coc.o.o.n of worry and mystery, weighted by their unsolved cases.

Pete sat at the double desk she shared with Ollie, hands pressed over her eyes. They felt of sandpaper, as if tiny grains made up the inside of her eyeb.a.l.l.s.

f.u.c.k, she wanted a cigarette.

"DCI Newell wants to see you." Ollie touched her shoulder, and Pete jerked. Every time she got close to Jack she came away jumpy and displaced.

She wanted to believe him, that was the problem. He'd let the word roll so indolently out. Magic Magic.

The hiss of knowing knowing pressed on Pete's mind, begging her to admit that it was as likely an explanation as any, but she wouldn't allow herself to think of it. Connor's voice, his strong hands gripping her shoulders. pressed on Pete's mind, begging her to admit that it was as likely an explanation as any, but she wouldn't allow herself to think of it. Connor's voice, his strong hands gripping her shoulders. You listen and you listen good, girl. There ain't no such thing as what you say Winter did You listen and you listen good, girl. There ain't no such thing as what you say Winter did.

There ain't no such thing as magic.

"Thanks, Ollie." Pete sighed.

"You look like s.h.i.te, still," said Ollie bluntly, settling his comfortable bulk into his chair and rattling a used copy of the Times Times.

"Love you, too, Ollie." Pete shoved her chair back. Chief Inspector Newell would have all manner of questions about the Killigan case, and Pete deflected them the only way she knew howshe came into Newell's office on the offensive.

"No, I don't know how she got there or who took her. She hasn't spoken. For G.o.d's sake, Nigel, she's been blinded."

Nigel Newell blinked twice at Pete. "Thank you for that succinct update, DI Caldecott. However, I called you in on another matter."