Die Twice

better life for themselves, and this girl was trying to do exactly the opposite.’
‘Don’t ever try to understand people,’ I told him. ‘You’ll just be disappointed. Have the family been informed?’
‘The local boys are round there now.’
‘Good.’
‘I’ve got her last known address here. A flat in Somerstown, not far from the station.’
I had to hand it to Malik, he didn’t hang about. ‘Has it been sealed yet?’ I asked him.
‘Yeah. According to the DI, they’ve got a uniform down there at the moment.’
‘Keys?’ It was always worth asking this sort of thing. You’d be amazed how many times simple things like means of entrance to an abode got overlooked.
‘I had to pick them up myself. The landlord was one cheap bastard. It turned out she was late with the rent. He asked me what he could do to get hold of the money she owed him.’
‘I hope you told him where to get off.’
‘I told him he’d have to talk to her pimp. I said as soon as I got his address, I’d give it to him.’
I managed my first smile of the day. ‘I bet that pleased him.’
‘I don’t think there was much that was going to please him today.’ Anyway, the DI wants us to check out the address. See what we can find.’
I told Malik where I was and he said he’d come by and pick me up en route. He rang off and I lit a cigarette, sheltering the lighter from the cold November wind.
As I stood there breathing in the polluted city air, it struck me that maybe Malik was right. What the fuck had Miriam Fox been thinking about, coming here?

6
For me, one of the worst jobs in policing is looking through the possessions of a murder victim. A lot of the time when a murder’s an open-and-shut case, which mostly they are, it’s not necessary to have to do it, but sometimes there’s no choice, and it’s a painful process, the reason being that it puts flesh and bones on people, gives you insights into what made them tick, and this only serves to make them more human. When you’re trying to be rational and objective, this is something you could really do without.
Miriam Fox’s flat was on the third floor of a tatty-looking townhouse that could have been improved dramatically by a simple lick of paint. The front door was on the latch so we walked right in. Bags of festering rubbish sat just inside the entrance and the interior hallway was cold and smelled of damp. Thumping techno music blared from behind one of the doors. It annoyed me that people lived like this. I was all for minimalism, but this was just letting things go. It had nothing to do with poverty. It was all about self-respect. You didn’t need money to clear away rubbish, and a can of paint didn’t cost much. You could get a lot of paint, plus brushes for everyone, for the price of a few extra-strength lagers or a gram of smack. It’s all about priorities.
A uniformed officer stood outside the door of flat number 5. Someone in flat number 4, which was just down the hall, was also playing music but thankfully not as loud as the guy downstairs. It also sounded quite a lot better – hippy stuff, with a woman singing earnestly about something or other that was obviously important to her. The uniform looked pleased to be relieved of his guard duty and made a rapid exit.
I checked the lock quickly for signs of tampering and, seeing none, opened the door.
The interior was a mess, which I suppose I expected. At least it was in keeping with the rest of the building. But it wasn’t the mess of someone who’d gone completely to pot and no longer cared about her surroundings, which is a lot of people’s image of the desperate prostitute. It was a teenage girl’s mess. An unmade sofa bed took up close to half the floor space of the none too spacious living room. It was liberally sprinkled with clothes, not the sexy ones a Tom wears to attract her customers, but leggings and sweaters, stuff like that. Normal stuff. There were two threadbare chairs on either side of the bed and all three items of furniture faced an old portable TV that sat on a chest of drawers. There were pictures on the wall: a couple of impressionist prints; a colourful fantasy poster of a female warrior on a black stallion, sword in hand, blonde hair waving in the imaginary wind; a moody-looking band I didn’t recognize; and a few photographs.
I stopped where I was and gave the place a quick once-over. A door on the left led to a bathroom while one on the right led into a kitchen that didn’t look to be much bigger than a standard-sized wardrobe. There was only one window in the whole flat as far as I could see, though thankfully it was large enough to throw a bit of light into the place. The view it offered was of a brick wall.
On the floor in front of me, amid the teen magazines, empty KFC boxes, Rizla packets and other odds and ends, was a huge round ashtray the size of a serving plate. There were maybe ten or fifteen cigarette butts in it, plus the remains of a few joints, but what caught my eye were the pieces of screwed-up tin foil, the small brown pipe, and the dark patches of crystallized liquid, splattered like paint drops inside.
It didn’t surprise me that she was a crack addict. Most of the girls are, especially the young ones. It’s either that or heroin. It’s what keeps them tied to their pimps, and it’s why the money they earn is never quite enough.
I lit a cigarette, figuring it wasn’t going to make any difference. Malik gave me the briefest of disapproving glances as he put on his gloves but, like Danny