the front door. ‘Me and my little brother moved into number sixteen.’
Sonya smiled, but couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘So does much go down around here on a Saturday night?’
Sonya pointed through the gap between the buildings. ‘There’s the King Of Russia over there, but that’s usually an older crowd. If you walk past there and go across to the opposite end of the estate, you’ll come to the Queen of Russia. That’s more my kind of crowd and there’s a live band most Saturdays. I actually work behind the bar sometimes when it gets packed out.’
‘Cool,’ Dave nodded. ‘If I pop in later, maybe you’ll let me buy you a drink?’
Sonya bit the end of her thumb and grinned. ‘Sure, maybe I’ll even buy you one back.’
‘I’m Dave, by the way,’ he said, reaching out to shake hands.
‘Sonya,’ she replied.
Dave took her hand and grasped it gently. ‘It was good meeting you, Sonya. I’d better get back, I’m making dinner for my little brother.’
Dave strolled into the flat and closed the front door with an exuberant backwards kick.
James’ jaw hung open. ‘I can’t believe you did that,’ he gasped.
‘What?’ Dave asked innocently.
‘You totally got off with her. You’d never even met her before.’
‘It’s not so hard,’ Dave said. ‘I used to be scared when I was your age, but birds aren’t swamp creatures from the planet Zog you know. Just go up and start a conversation with them. You either get somewhere or you don’t.’
‘Still,’ James said, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Just walking up to a stranger and getting off with them is so slick.’
‘Of course,’ Dave grinned smugly, as he picked his lasagne off the coffee table, ‘it does help if women find you totally irresistible.’
He swallowed a mouthful of food and did a gigantic belch.
‘Did you have to make me sound like a five-year-old?’ James asked as he settled back on the sofa beside Dave.
Dave looked mystified. ‘You what?’
‘I’m making dinner for my little brother,’ James quoted. ‘I wouldn’t mind, but I’m the one who took it out of the cardboard and pierced the film.’
*
Hannah had a couple of girlfriends with her when she rang for James. He recognised Liza Tarasov’s podgy features from police surveillance photographs Millie Kentner had shown him. The other girl was called Jane.
‘Jane used to live in your flat,’ Hannah explained, as James pulled shut the front door and set off along the balcony with the girls. ‘She moved down to a ground-floor flat on another block, ’cos her nan can’t handle the stairs any more.’
It was a ten-minute uphill stroll to the reservoir. The area around the man-made lake was a mixture of lawns and shrubs. Joggers and dog walkers used the paths and little kids played football or Frisbee on the grass while their parents kept watch. But the three girls led James away from civilisation into an overgrown area beside a quiet road. The only charming feature amidst the empty beer cans and car tyres was a fast-flowing brook that fed into the reservoir, but even that was partially dammed with rusted kitchen appliances.
James had read up on the history of Palm Hill. He knew a ￡3-million youth and community centre had been built after the riots, along with teen-friendly zones on the estate where kids could hang out without their racket disturbing residents. But over the course of his missions, James had noticed that kids his age tended to reject any place they were meant to go, in favour of some unsavoury spot where they could get up to all the stuff their parents had nightmares about.
There were about thirty kids aged between twelve and fifteen, mostly sitting in fours and fives. The atmosphere was mellow. A few of the younger lads made a racket as they whizzed around on bikes, but most kids sat in the long grass gossiping, as the sun dipped behind the houses beyond the field.
James’ mission priority was to chum up with Liza and Max Tarasov, but Hannah was a major distraction. She’d made a big deal out of telling James that she didn’t have a boyfriend, and they were having a really good conversation about everything from Premiership football to ways of getting out of homework.
Liza disappeared with a group of girls. That left James and Hannah sharing a can of Heineken she’d bummed off an older boy who blatantly fancied her, and Jane was feeling left out. Eventually, Jane got fed up and said she had to go home early