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‘Listen, I came in here to give Mister Seddon a bed bath. I’m going to have to put the screens up, and since you’re not a relative . . .’"

"I raised my hands. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ I said. ‘I’d love to see you in action, but I’ve got places to be and crimes to solve. You know how it is.’

‘Yeah,’ she agreed, nodding. ‘I think so. Down the - what-d’you-call-it - mean streets . . .’

‘A man must walk. Exactly.’

‘You’re dead laid-back for a detective, aren’t you, Sergeant Basquiat?’

‘I used to be on the drug squad,’ I said.

‘The ganja gets to you after a while. Cheers, Petra.’

I left her rolling Kenny carefully onto his side. Sooner her than me.

The cop on the door gave me less than half a glance as I left Kanc

I looked at my watch. Still nowhere near midnight, but by the time I got over to Walworth the witching hour would be over and done with.

Good. I had things to do over there that I didn’t want the daylight to look upon.

7

The Salisbury at night was if anything even less prepossessing than it was by day.

The light of a hunter’s moon bleached the unresisting pastels from the faces of the towers, so that they looked like titanic ribs of bone, and shadows accreted like crusted blood under the walkways.

But the air was alive. While the residents slept, it seemed that the emotional miasma I’d felt on my first visit woke and stirred. It had been an annoying distraction when I’d been here before, setting my teeth on edge until I finally attuned to it and let it fade into the perceptual background.

But it was in the foreground now with a vengeance, buzzing in my ears like an angry mosquito.

No, not angry. It wasn’t anger I was feeling, it was something else - but reaching for the word made the feeling disappear, the droning whine shutting down like a mosquito does as soon as you’ve got the rolled-up newspaper at the ready. And it wasn’t really in my head that the mosquitoes were buzzing: it was in my fingers and in the palms of my hands, as if there was something that I had to do that was getting more urgent by the moment.

Yeah, that was it, now that I thought about it. It was the same feeling of urgency and greed that I’d got when I’d touched the old wounds on Kenny’s wrist.

I came in from the north this time, and because I knew my way I walked more quickly. Maybe I could be in and out before this oppressive presence gave me a headache and ruined what was left of my night.