‘But—’

‘They call him Sacks because if you cross him, he has you cut up, put into sacks, and hidden where you won’t ever be found. You’re not on the front pages as a murder victim. You’re just another runaway.’

I swallowed and looked at the door. ‘So, who’s this new guy and what does he want?’

‘He wants money. Or rather he wants to use the fact I owe Sacks to make me work for him.’ She scowled. A fierce thing.

‘Work?’ I felt myself redden. ‘What kind of—’

‘That kind. The kind I won’t do. The crew are always trying to get new girls. I guess this guy wants his own string.’

‘Maybe the police . . .’

Mia’s turn to snort. ‘Should I start by telling them I owe money for drugs, or save that for later?’

‘So, pay them. How much can it be?’ I patted my pockets unconsciously. She’d got the resin for me, and then I’d asked her for more. This was my fault.

‘It doesn’t work like that.’ Mia stayed hunched around herself. I wanted to take her hands, say it would be alright, do something useful, be the solution rather than the cause of the problem. ‘Once you owe them, it’s a loan. Loans have interest. The interest is whatever they say it is. It should have been a hundred quid. I gave that guy in the hall everything I could get together last week, eighty-six. He told me I owed two hundred.’

‘Well, we find out how much they want, then pay it.’ I had over three hundred in my building society account. I’d been saving since I was seven. And John could always loan us some. Money wasn’t anything to him.

‘How much do you think they’ll add on for being hit with a bat?’ Mia managed a half-smile.

‘Go to the new guy. Forget Devis.’

‘Devis?’ Mia shot me a narrow look. Even with a black eye and no makeup she still looked achingly pretty. ‘You know that creep?’

‘Yeah . . .’ It suddenly struck me how odd it was that I knew the thug hammering at Mia’s door after a drug debt. And how crazy it was that, rather than some street hardened criminal, it was an only half-successful bully from a private school. A schoolboy. ‘It’s weird.’ I stood, seized by an uneasy feeling. ‘You didn’t tell me what Sacks’s new guy is called.’

Mia shuddered. ‘They call him Rust. I don’t want to know why.’

The knocking at the front door made us both jump.

We went into the hall, not hand-in-hand, but close enough together to know we both wanted that support. I could feel Mia trembling and my own hands shook. The knocking came again. A polite tap, tap, tap. Mia inched up to the spyhole and peered through. She pulled away as if bitten and motioned for me to look.

The fisheye view distorted Ian Rust’s already weasel-like face into something from nightmare. A long, angular nose thrusting at the spyhole, his eyes dark beads to either side.

As if sensing us there he tapped again, and called out in a faux-sweet falsetto, ‘Miiiiiiiiaaaaaaa! Oh, Miiiiiiaaaaaaa!’

I jerked back and we both stood, paralysed, my heart pounding loud enough that Rust should have been able to hear it through the door.

‘Miiiiiaaaaaa!’ he crooned.

A pause, then movement at the letterbox. Instinctively, we both wedged ourselves to opposite sides. A glugging sound followed and a familiar astringent smell rose around us. White Spirit, perfect for cleaning paintbrushes, or for arson. ‘Miiiiiaaaa!’

‘Fuck!’ Mia jumped back from the door.

‘How do we get out?’ I joined her and kept backing. We were on the eighth floor, and I doubted the flat had a back door.

‘I have to let him in before he lights it,’ Mia said. She raised her voice. ‘Wait! I’m coming.’

Before Mia could move, a short, scrawny woman emerged from the opposite door in a nylon nightdress covered with cigarette burns. Her greying hair stood out in all directions and she had an empty whiskey bottle in one hand.

‘Mum!’ Mia made a grab at her, but the woman slipped by, swearing softly, and had the door open a moment later.

Rust seemed unfazed, his malicious grin not slipping a millimetre. ‘So sorry to disturb—’

Mia’s mother smashed the bottle on the doorframe and sliced the jagged stub across Rust’s face. It took me by surprise, Rust less so. He jerked back with unnatural speed, but even so one of the glass points managed to cut him below the eye from his cheekbone to his nose.

‘Bitch!’ He stepped back, hand clasped to his face, blood leaking between his fingers.

‘You want the rest?’ Mia’s mother followed him, raging, broken bottle held before her. ‘Little bastard!’

Rust looked ready to spring, but the distant sound of sirens gave him pause. ‘Mia.’ He acknowledged her at the doorway. ‘And I know you.’ Fever-bright eyes found me. ‘Nicholas Hayes. I know where you live.’ His grin returned and, with his hand still pressed to his face, he hurried off to the stairwell.

Mia’s mother shuffled back into the flat, ignoring both of us. She reeked of booze and seemed to have gone from raging to sleepwalking in moments. ‘Clear that glass up.’ Spoken to nobody in particular as she returned to her room.

‘Shit.’ Mia looked at me, looked at the fire door and the trail of blood drops leading to it, looked back to me. ‘Shit.’

I opened my mouth, but could find nothing to add to her assessment.

‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ she asked.

‘I . . . uh . . . I’ve got someone you need to meet.’

CHAPTER 10

‘Where are we going?’ Mia followed me, clutching a brightly patterned cloth bag at odds with her otherwise all black theme. She’d put on a jacket that was too thin for the season and she looked cold already.

‘I told you. I know a man who knows everything.’ I strode past the broken-down sofas, scanning the plaza for any sign of Devis or Rust. It seemed crazy that either of them should be here. I guessed that the drug dealing was Rust’s extracurricular activity, and that now he’d been expelled he had decided to make it a career move. A ‘normal’ Maylert’s graduate with a mind to try his hand at dealing narcotics would find a contact and sell on at a margin to their well-heeled friends, at public schools, at dinner parties, and the like. Rust, though, seemed possessed of the kind of crazy that wanted a more lucrative slice of the pie, joining the hard-core criminals at the source. And Devis, a born minion and too scared to say no, had been dragged in with him. ‘Come on. Demus will know what to do.’

‘You said he wanted to see me on Saturday evening.’ Mia stopped to adjust her shoe.

‘Yeah . . . Well, I figure he should know enough to know we need to see him now.’

‘In Richmond Park?’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s miles away.’ Mia caught me up.

‘It’s a fair way.’ She had a point. We could collect my bike from Elton, but I couldn’t exactly take passengers and it was a good walk, especially in a cold wind with the sun heading down.

‘It’s my best shot, OK?’ I turned on her. We were in the street now, the four Miller blocks behind us. ‘You want to stay here for Rust to come back?’ I didn’t much want to go home either. I know where you live. That’s what he said. And nowhere feels safe with someone like Rust out there, biding their time. ‘Seriously, this guy knows everything. He’ll know we’re coming early, and he’ll know how to fix this. I can’t explain better than that. Just trust me on this one.’ I could explain better, only she’d think I was mad and wouldn’t come.

Mia stopped again. I bit back a ‘hurry up’. ‘If he knows everything, and he knows we’re coming three days early, then why doesn’t he know to meet us here?’

‘I . . .’ She had a good point. ‘That’s a good point.’ A very good point.

A black BMW with tinted windows rounded the corner from Station Road and roared toward us, squealing to a halt slantwise across the street.

‘Shit!’ I tensed to run. Rust didn’t have a car. He was barely old enough to drive. Maybe turned eighteen. It had to be Sacks. He’d called in Sacks!

The driver window rolled down. ‘Get in.’

It was Demus.

We didn’t drive far, just a little past Elton’s block. Demus parked in a side street.

‘That’s the guy!’ Mia hissed at me the moment she got in. ‘From the park.’ Then, realising. ‘This is the guy you wanted me to meet?’

‘Trust me,’ I hissed back. ‘He’ll be able to help. He knows everything.’

Demus pulled up, turned off the engine, then turned to look at Mia over the back of the seat. For the longest time he didn’t say anything, just stared. I have to admit it was more than a little creepy.

‘What?’ Mia demanded. She’d had a rough day and Demus got the sharp edge of it.

Instead of flinching he just smiled, a broad, happy, stupid grin.

‘Think of a number, Mia,’ I said. ‘Any number you like. He’ll guess it.’ It’s bad enough making a fool of yourself. Worse watching yourself make a fool of yourself.

Mia frowned. ‘OK, diceman. I’m thinking of a number. What is it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Demus said.