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He took the train out to Canning Town station It was overlooked by Canary Wharf, whose sleek, futuristic buildings rese metal blocks on the horizon; their size, like that of the national debt, ie from such a distance But a few , suited corporate world as it was possible to be Craside dockside developner pods, Canning Town exhaled poverty and deprivation Strike knew it of old, because it had once been hoiven hi Road he walked, his back to Canary Wharf, past a building with a sign that advertised “Kills 4 Co that somebody had swiped the “S”

The Ordnance Ar Co, off-white-painted pub The interior was no-nonsense and utilitarian, with a selection of wooden clocks on a terracotta-colored wall and a lividly patterned piece of red carpet the only gesture to anything as frivolous as decoration Otherwise, there were two large pool tables, a long and accessible bar and plenty of e drinkers Just now, at eleven in the , it was empty except for one little old irl, who addressed her only custoh the back

The beer garden turned out to be the gri bins and a solitary wooden table, at which a wos crossed and her cigarette held at right angles to her cheek There was barbed wire on top of the high wall, and a plastic bag had caught in it and was rustling in the breeze Beyond the wall there rose a vast block of flats, yellow-painted and with evidence of squalor bulging over many of the balconies

“Mrs Higson?”

“Call me Marlene, love”

She looked hiaze She earing a pink Lycra vest top under a zip-up gray hoodie, and leggings that ended inches above her bare gray-white ankles There were grubby flip-flops on her feet and ers; her yellow hair, with its inches of graying brown root, was pulled back into a dirty toweling scrunchie

“Can I get you a drink?”

“I’ll have a pint of Carling, if you twist my arm”

The way she bent her body towards him, the way she pushed straw-like strands of hair out of her pouchy eyes, even the way she held her cigarette; all were grotesquely coquettish Perhaps she knew no other way of relating to anything male Strike found her simultaneously pathetic and repulsive

“Shock?” said Marlene Higson, after Strike had bought theain, when I’d gave ’er up for lost It near broke’er a better life I wouldna ’ad the strenf to do it uvverwise Fort I was giving ’er all the fings I never ’ad I grew up poor, proper poor We ’ad nothing Nothing”

She looked away fro hard on her Rothman’s; when her arette, it looked like a cat’s anus

“And Dez,colored, it were obvious she weren’t ’is They go darker, see; when she were born, she looked white But I still never woulda given ’er up if I ’adn’t seen a chance for ’er to get a better life, and I fort, she won’t ood start, and mebbe, when she’s older, she’ll cohastly show of pathos “She come’n’ found me

“I’ll tell you so breath “A ot the call from ’er, ‘You know ’oo you look like?’ he says I says, ‘Dahn be ser silly,’ but he says, ‘Straight up Across the eyes, and the shape of the eyebrows, y’know?’ ”

She looked hopefully at Strike, who could not bring himself to respond It see froray and purple mess

“You can see it in photos of er,” she said, with a hint of pique “Point is, I fort I was giving her a better life, and then they went an’ give her to those bastards, pardon e If I’d’a known, I’d of kept ’er, and I told ’er that That o

“Oh yeah She talked to ht wiv the father, with S’Ralec He sounded all right The h Oh yeah Pills Poppin’ pills Fackin’ rich bitches takin’ pills f’ their fackin’ nerves Lula could talk to me, see Well, it’s a bond, innit You can’ break it, blood

“She was scared what that bitch’d do, if she found out Lula was lookin’ for ’er real onna do when the press found out about me, but there you are, when yore famous like she was, they find out ev’rythin’, don’ they? Oh, the lies they tell, though Sos they said abaht me, I’m still thinkin’ o’ suin’

“What was I sayin’? ’Er mother, yeah I says to Lula, ‘Why worry, love, sounds to me like you’re better off wivout ’er anyway Let ’er be pissed off if she don’ want us to see each uvver’ But she was a good girl, Lula, an’ she kep’ visitin’ ’er, outta duty

“Anyway, she ’ad ’er own life, she was free to do what she wanted, weren’ she? She ’ad Evan, a man of ’er own I told ’er I disapproved, son, with a pantoo that way But I ’ave to admit, ’e’s a sweet boy underneath I ’ave to admit that He di’n’t have nothin’ to do wiv it I can tell ya that”

“Met him, did you?”

“No, but she called ’ievver, and they were a lovely couple No, I got nuthin’ bad to say about Evan ’E ’ad nuthin’ to do with it, that’s proved No, I’ve got nuthin’ bad to say about ’i I said to ’er, ‘Bring ’i, see wevver I approve,’ but she never ’E was always busy ’E’s a lovely-lookin’ boy, under all that ’air,” said Marlene “You can see it in all ’is photos”

“Did she talk to you about her neighbors?”

“Oh, that Fred Beastigwee? Yeah, she told me all about ’im, offerin’ ’er parts hin ’is filht be a larf Even if she ’adn’t liked it, it woulda bin, what, another ’arf mill in the bank?”

Her bloodshot eyes squinted at nothing; she seemed momentarilythat they were beyond her ken, like an ie of infinity Merely to speak of them was to taste the power of money, to roll dreams of wealth around her mouth

“Did you ever hear her talk about Guy Somé?”

“Oh yeah, she liked Gee, ’e was good to ’er Person’lly, I prefer s It’s not my kinda style”

The shocking-pink Lycra, tight on the rolls of fat spilling over the waistband of her leggings, rippled as she leaned forward to tap her cigarette delicately into the ashtray

“ ‘ ’E’s like a brother to me,’ she sez, an’ I sez, never evver? But she weren’t int’rested”

“Your boys?”

“Me sons, me ovver kids Yeah, I ’ad two more after ’er: one wiv Dez, an’ then later there wuz another one Social Services took ’em off iet someone to find ’em, keep it quiet from the press, I’ll ’andle it, I’ll keep you out of it But she weren’ interested,” repeated Marlene

“Do you knohere your sons are?”

“They took ’em as babies

, I dunno where they are noas havin’ probleonna lie to ya, I’ve had a bloody hard life”

And she told hith, about her hard life It was a sordid story littered with violent lect and poverty, and an animal instinct for survival that jettisoned babies in its wake, for they demanded skills that Marlene had never developed

“So you don’t knohere your two sons are now?” Strike repeated, twenty minutes later

“No, how the fuck could I?” said Marlene, who had talked herself into bitterness “She weren’ int’rested anyway She already had a white brother, di’n’t she? She wuz after black family That’s what she reely wanted”

“Did she ask you about her father?”

“Yeah, an’ I told ’er ev’rything I knew ’E was an African student Lived upstairs fro Road, o others There’s the bookie’s downstairs now Very good-looking boy ’Elpeda couple of times”

To hear Marlene Higson tell it, the courtship had proceeded with an almost Victorian respectability; she and the African student see the first months of their acquaintance

“And then, ’cos ’e’d ’elped me all them times, one day I asked ’im in, y’know, jus’ as a thank-you, really I’m not a prejudiced person Ev’ryone’s the same to me Fancy a cuppa, I sez, that were all And then,” said Marlene, harsh reality clanging down aue i”

“Did you tell him?”

“Oh yeah, an’ ’e was full of ’oas gonna ’elp, an’ shoulder ’is respons’bilities, an’ e ’olidays ’E said ’e was co back,” said Marlene, contemptuously “Then ’e ran a onna do, run off to Africa to find ’im?

“It was no skin offDez by then ’E didn’tafter Joe left”

“Joe?”

“That was his name Joe”

She said it with conviction, but perhaps, thought Strike, that was because she had repeated the lie so often that the story had become easy, automatic

“What was his surname?”

“I can’ fuckin’ reo Mu like that”

“Could it have been Agyeman?”