Die Twice

the time I’d finished, we’d travelled the sum total of about thirty yards.
Malik shook his head and gave me the sort of look that suggested he thought it was grossly unfair that he should be taking orders from someone with such a tenuous grip on reality. ‘Look, Sarge, I wouldn’t worry about it. You know, a dream’s just a dream. The chances are this girl’s all right.’
‘I hope so. I didn’t like the sound of the fact that she hasn’t been seen for a couple of weeks.’
‘Only by the local streetwalkers. Maybe she’s changed. Maybe she’s realized that prostitution and drug addiction is no way to lead a life.’
I laughed. ‘Do you really believe that?’
‘Well, it’s unlikely…’
‘Dead right it is.’
‘But it’s possible. And anyway, maybe she’s just plying her trade somewhere else. There’s got to be more chance of that than of her being dead in a ditch somewhere.’
Malik said these last few words a bit too loudly and a couple of people turned round and gave us funny looks.
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ I said. ‘You’ve convinced me.’
But he hadn’t.
*   *   *
We exited the bus on Junction Road when it became obvious that we weren’t getting anywhere and took the tube, which thankfully was still running pretty much as normal. It was 10.20 when we got out of Camden station. It was slowly turning into a sunny winter’s day, so we walked the rest of the way.
Coleman House was a large redbrick Victorian building on a road just off the high street. One of the third-floor windows was boarded up, but other than that it looked quite well kept. A couple of kids, a boy and a girl, sat on the wall in front of the entrance, smoking and looking shifty. The girl was wearing a very short skirt and a huge pair of black platform-soled trainers that, set against her spindly legs, made her look mutated. They both looked at us as we approached and the boy sneered. ‘Are you coppers?’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ I told him, stopping in front of them. ‘We’re investigating a murder.’
‘Oh yeah? Whose, then?’ he asked, looking interested. Morbid little bastard.
‘Well, why don’t we start with you telling me your name?’
‘What’s it got to do with me? I haven’t done nothing.’
‘You can’t make him give you his name,’ said the girl confidently, looking me in the eye. I put her at about thirteen, and she would have been quite pretty except for the angry cluster of whiteheads around her mouth and the excessive use of cheap make-up. Thirteen, and she was already a barrack-room lawyer. I had a feeling they were all going to be like that in a place like this.
‘I’m not trying to,’ I told her. ‘I’m just interested in knowing who I’m talking to.’
‘If you want to talk to him, you need an appropriate adult present.’
‘So, when did you graduate from law school then, young lady?’
She was about to come up with some other smart-alec answer but we were interrupted before she could get it out.
‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’
The speaker was an attractive white female, early forties. Quite tall – about five feet nine – and, from the sound of her voice, someone in authority.
I turned in her direction and smiled, opening fire with the charm. ‘I hope so. My name’s DS Milne and this is my colleague, DC Malik. We’re here as part of an ongoing inquiry.’
She managed a weak smile. ‘Really, what now?’
‘It’s a murder investigation.’
‘Oh.’ She looked taken aback. ‘Was there any reason why you were talking to the children?’
‘I was just introducing myself.’
‘No you weren’t,’ said the girl. ‘He was trying to find out who we were.’
‘Well, I’ll take over from here, Anne. Aren’t you and John meant to be with Amelia?’
‘We’re just having a quick smoke,’ said the girl, not bothering to look up.
‘Perhaps you’d better come inside, gentlemen, and we’ll talk in there.’
I nodded. ‘Of course. And you are?’
‘Carla Graham. I manage Coleman House.’
‘Well, then, please lead the way,’ I said, and we followed her through the double doors and into the building.
The place had the unwelcoming feel of a hospital: high ceilings; linoleum floors; health-related posters on the walls warning against shared needles, unwanted pregnancy, and a whole host of other obstacles to a happy and fulfilling life. And there was a nasty reek of disinfectant in the air. Dr Barnardo’s this wasn’t.
Carla Graham had a spacious office at the other end of the building. She ushered us in and we took seats facing her across her sizeable desk. There were more doom-mongering posters in here as well. One showed a huge photograph of a young child, no more than five, covered in bruises. The caption above it read: Stamp on Child Abuse. Below the photograph it added: Not on Children.
‘So, what’s happened?’ Carla asked. ‘I hope none of our clients are involved.’
‘Clients, meaning children?’ It was Malik asking the question.
‘That’s right.’
‘We don’t really know, which is why we’re here.’ I then told her about the discovery of the body the previous day.
‘I didn’t hear anything about that,’ she said. ‘Who was the poor girl?’
‘Her name was Miriam Fox.’ Carla’s expression didn’t hint at recognition, so I continued. ‘She was an eighteen-year-old prostitute, a runaway.’
She shook her head and sighed. ‘What a waste. Not a shock, because the potential for this sort of thing to happen’s there all the time. But a terrible waste, all the same.’
Malik leaned forward in his seat and I immediately got the feeling that he didn’t much like Carla Graham. ‘I assume you didn’t know her?’
‘I don’t know the name, no.’
I took the photo of Miriam posing for the camera out of my suit pocket and passed it over to her. ‘This is her. We think it’s a recent picture.’
She studied it for a long moment before handing it back to me. As I took it back I noticed she had graceful hands with well-kept, unvarnished nails.
‘She looks vaguely familiar. I may have seen her before with one of the clients,